Danny Jones Podcast - #399 - NEW Directed Energy Weapon Leak, DARPA Dolphins & ‘Ghost Murmur’ Tech | Jack Murphy

Episode Date: May 25, 2026

Watch every episode ad-free & uncensored on Patreon: https://patreon.com/dannyjones Jack Murphy is an author, journalist, & co-host of ‪@TheTeamHousePodcast. Jack is also an Army Special Operation...s veteran who served as a sniper and team leader in 3rd Ranger Battalion and as a senior weapons sergeant on a military free fall team in 5th Special Forces Group. SPONSORS https://incogni.com/danny - Use code DANNY for 60% off an annual plan. https://mengotomars.com - Use code DANNY for 50% off FOR LIFE, free shipping & 3 free gifts. https://takeultra.com - Use code DANNY for 15% off. https://whiterabbitenergy.com/?ref=DJP - Use code DJP for 20% off EPISODE LINKS @TheTeamHousePodcast https://substack.com/@thehighside FOLLOW DANNY JONES https://www.instagram.com/dannyjones https://twitter.com/jonesdanny OUTLINE 00:00 - Getting his story killed by CIA 07:02 - Epstein files latest 14:49 - Jack reveals his sources 15:54 - Havana Syndrome patient zero 23:32 - DOD acquires microwave weapon 25:21 - The behavior adjustment device 28:33 - Espionage has moved to the gig economy 33:27 - Cuba's intelligence service is really good 38:09 - Russian microwave weapons 44:25 - Long-term health effects of Havana Syndrome 48:30 - The CIA's "Ghost Murmur" tech 53:49 - DARPA's insane new war technology 01:01:19 - Underwater recon in the Strait of Hormuz 01:04:08 - Iran's highly enriched uranium 01:07:39 - Iran rescue mission 01:09:46 - CIA "Nocs" in Iran 01:19:27 - How to spot an intelligence agent 01:24:37 - Likelihood of military draft happening again 01:25:50 - The argument for bringing back the draft 01:29:31 - The American Dream is dead 01:37:22 - Special Ops Mothership at Diego Garcia 01:39:47 - Where the government hides secret tech 01:42:34 - Theft of agricultural drones 01:51:27 - Thomas Massie & the Israel agenda 01:58:55 - The Most Dangerous Man 02:00:39 - Sarajevo sport hunting 02:08:11 - The only reason Epstein went to prison 02:15:12 - Evidence Epstein is alive 02:21:46 - The JFK files stolen by the CIA 02:29:26 - China is playing the long game Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Starting point is 00:01:07 That's crazy. A little bit over three years, man. Time really does fly. You have a whole family since the last time I've seen you. I know. Two more kids since you were here last. Oh, my God. It's crazy, dude.
Starting point is 00:01:21 And the last time you were here, we discussed, you had come across an insane story regarding the war in the Ukraine, the Ukraine-Russia war. How you had a bunch of sources that were telling you that CIA was working with another intelligence agency inside of Russia to do sabotage operations in Russia. And you were, I've talked about this so many times on this podcast from the last three years. It's insane. How you were like working with a huge publication for months on releasing this. And then right up to the day, got to the day where you guys were going to launch the whole story on their platform.
Starting point is 00:02:03 And then you had to have a call with the deputy director of the CIA. And they had an off-for-record agreement. You couldn't publish it. Insane. Well, that decision was made without me. I mean, ironically, they waited until the moment I was unavailable to have that conversation. And then by the time I got back and got back online, like, oh, yeah. And I mean, this is a little bit of like insider baseball, but like maybe some people would be interested.
Starting point is 00:02:29 And I think your audience, too, you know, there's a belief that the CIA controls the media, right, for instance. It's not that. That's not how it works, but there is a relationship between the media and large governmental bureaucracies like the CIA. I'm not trying to split hairs here, but I mean, I'll tell you how it works, is that you have newspaper reporters who have to report news. They need to get their stories. And what they do is they have relationships. Usually it is with a deputy director or deputy commander, if it's a military command. And they will speak on background, give maybe an off the record quote. And what happens is that these journalists can over time, in some instances, become captured by their sources. Yeah. That they do not want
Starting point is 00:03:15 the government to turn that spigot off, that spigot of information because that's their career. And look, I mean, again, not to be too cynical, but some of these editors at big news publications, they have mortgages to pay. They have kids to put through college. They're not going to let go. out on a limb and risk their career for some national security story. Right. You know, so there's this this sort of influence that exists that, yeah, I mean, I think it's super bad and I don't think it's conducive towards transparency. No, and it certainly is convenient to the people that work for the big government agencies,
Starting point is 00:03:55 right? It's convenient for power, right? It's convenient for them. They have an unlimited amount of money, and, And the people that are doing this reporting that are relying on them, you know, they need that money. It's human nature. And it sucks because it's, that's like the antithesis of what journalism really is, right? Right. Right. And yeah, hence, uh, hence the substack. Right. That's why we got people like you out here and, and Tim Dillon.
Starting point is 00:04:22 People, I get most of my news from Tim Dillon. I love a Tim Dillon rant. Uh, I mean, yeah, the state. of the news media is a whole other thing. I mean, you can see everything going on with CBS. Yeah. You know, the press corps. Larry Ellison and that stuff. The press core getting kicked out of the White House and the Pentagon. And I mean, I'm not sure how much of a value add the press core has been since, you know, maybe the JFK assassination. But nonetheless, I don't agree with, you know, it's press censorship or restricting transparency around the press. And then all the layoffs, It's not just a CBS.
Starting point is 00:04:59 It's almost all across the board. I mean, so many people have been laid off in journalism. And there's some people out there. I get it. There's some people listen to this that are like, screw journalists. You know, and I mean, I have issues with journalism myself. Like I just described, you know, their relationship with the government at times. But the thing is that journalism is a net positive overall big picture for society and for the American public.
Starting point is 00:05:26 In other words, it's much better that it's there than if it was not there. If it was not there, we'd be in extremely in much more trouble than we're now, right? That's the kind of like counterfactual I'm trying to make. This is why we should value. And it's hard because in this day and age with technology and the way the Internet's going is we have more and more and more and more journalism, right? We have every all these new pop-up journalists everywhere can be on main on the street type interviewers, whether it be like YouTubers or just people who post on Twitter all day. It's it's getting harder to filter the wheat from the chaff, right?
Starting point is 00:06:09 And to get cut through the noise to what's real, to what's not real, to what's just, you know, lazy journalism. And I still think that's better than having two or three big TV networks who are just getting piped their information straight from the CIA, right? You just got to, we have to become as citizens and consumers of the news, we have to become better at filtering out the bullshit. Yeah, no, that's just tough. That's absolutely true. Media literacy matters. And you're right, though, it is tough. It's tough for you and I. It's tough for, you know, I mean, it's tough for me at times. So you can imagine somebody who's not in journalism and doesn't really follow national defense, how difficult it is to piece these things together, like what sources are viable, which ones aren't. And right now, you know, as you point out, we have like a very libertarian model towards how journalism works. So like almost anyone can jump in and participate and compete on the free market.
Starting point is 00:07:10 Right. And that has good things. There's good aspects and bad aspects of it. I mean, it is conducive to stories getting out there that would not be published in a major publication normally. So there's that. But yeah, the flip side is just, there's so much information out there. Where do you begin? Right. Exactly. So what have you been working on?
Starting point is 00:07:33 I mean, there's no shortage of shit going on out there on the world right now. Dude. It's like, it's so hard. It's like every three hours, there's a crazy news story that's coming out, whether it be in regards to their array. Iran War or these Epstein files are fucking aliens or hauntavirus, you name it. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and our government is even like the purveyor of like UFO leaks now.
Starting point is 00:07:55 Like how my God, dude. It reminds me of when the first Epstein file thing came out where they came, the influencers came out with the binders. I remember that. Epstein files. Yeah. Yeah. And we've still, we've still only seen like 50% of them, right?
Starting point is 00:08:09 Oh, the Epstein files? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. If that. Yeah. Fully redacted. Not protecting the victims. only protecting the billionaire PDF files. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:08:18 When that stuff came out, like, oh, I'll get back to the topic. But I mean, when the Epstein stuff came out, what we have seen, it was like worse than I thought it would be. Oh, way worse. Yeah. Like, I thought, yeah, I mean, we know he was involved in sex trafficking and he's a really bad guy. I suspected that there are going to be some Israeli intelligence stuff around him. Yeah. But all the stuff that like came out about him and the Russians, it's like, whoa, dude.
Starting point is 00:08:44 what was going on here. And I can only imagine what's in those unreleased files. What was the part about him and the Russians again? He was making like trips to Russia, even after the Ukraine war began. He was making these like trips to Russia. He was trying to meet with Vladimir Putin. He was trying to meet with Putin, right? Yeah.
Starting point is 00:09:01 And he was going over there and I don't even want to know what he was doing over there. I mean, I think we all know what he was doing. Yeah. You can imagine if the Russians had stuff on him. Yeah. And who, I mean, God only knows. This whole thing is such a, well, I mean, his, his, not really his father-in-law, but Galane Maxwell's dad was like a famous triple spy, right?
Starting point is 00:09:23 Robert Maxwell. Yeah, Robert Maxwell. Yeah. He worked for the KGB, MI6, and the Mossad, and allegedly was whacked by a Mossad fucking seal team or something. I mean, I believe the story is he, like, drowned off the back. That's the story. Right. Yeah, I don't know.
Starting point is 00:09:40 But he was threatening to, like, expose all the. shit right before that. I don't know. I don't know any details about it, but there's a book out there called Gideon Spies. Oh yeah. I read many years ago that has like a whole chapter, I think, about him. Yeah, I've heard that was a really good book. I have friends who read that. It was interesting. Yeah. Yeah, the obscene stuff's insane. The most insane part about the government dropping this Epstein files on us and the alien. Well, fuck the alien files. That's all distraction. All that shit was already public. Um, is that like they do it and they give us no context or analysis. or anything.
Starting point is 00:10:13 It's like they drop it on us and it's okay, okay, what's the FBI's conclusion on this? Right. You know, like, what is, like, where's your report? No, we're just going to give you all this crazy insane shit about a ball and human sacrifice and trafficking people across borders and people being murdered and eating like code words for human flesh and stuff like this. But no, no analysis from the FBI here. This is just do with it what you will.
Starting point is 00:10:42 And going back to what you said about the average person trying to piecemeal like what is accurate information, what is true. Yeah. The average person has to go through 3.5 million pages of Epstein files. It's only 2% of the total related data. That's so wild, man. Yeah. And I mean, like zoom out like a little bit, like big picture, like what's going on here socially is that our government is basically telling us this is a load bearing child sex trafficking network. so it just can't be messed with.
Starting point is 00:11:13 Like you can't go in there and start pulling that apart because it's like the government would collapse and all these social. Look at the Dow. It's at 50,000. Do you want the Dow to not be at 50,000? Why do I hate America? Tim Dillon said it best on his recent episode.
Starting point is 00:11:31 He goes, you know, America used to be the high school quarterback. You know, we were the bully in the hall. We were the quarterback. back. Now we're the weird kid who may have a gun. His rant about how like the last aspect of the American dream that's still alive is fantasizing about killing your coworkers. Oh my God, dude, Tim Dillon is a national fucking treasure. He's off the wall, man. He is. And he gets invited to, he gets invited to dinners from by like J.D. Vance and he talks about how like Peter Thiel invited him to dinner.
Starting point is 00:12:14 And he was. Was he on the island though? Tim? Yeah. Probably probably probably. No, I doubt it. I don't think he was. No, he wasn't joking. He, um, he will purposely not go to these events because he knows that they're trying to get him to parties and dinners just so he won't talk shit about them. Right. So like he purposely like doesn't do any of that stuff. He's just, he's just, you know, a rogue, commentator. Like he refuses to be a part of any of those circles just so he has the freedom to like just call it like he sees it, which is really refreshing to see. I get it. But yeah, man, this stuff has kept me busy, you know, not all this other crazy stuff we're talking about.
Starting point is 00:12:59 I don't really write about that. But just, yeah, it's from purely a national security perspective. There's so much stuff going on all the time. And real briefly, just give people, your quick background with third, third Ranger battalion, right? Yeah, a million years ago, I served in the Army. Yeah, I served in the Ranger Regiment and special forces. Then got into journalism, you know, probably like 13, 14 years ago at this point.
Starting point is 00:13:28 And so I write investigative journalism with my colleague, Sean Naylor, who's been on this show. And we have a substack that's called the High Side when we publish a lot of articles about the special operations and the intelligence community. That's sort of our main focus. Yep. I've been ripping through it for the last couple days, man. Incredible shit. Like you guys are really getting the stuff that like doesn't boil up to the very like top headlines of all like the mainstream stuff. You guys are really like down like turning under
Starting point is 00:13:57 rocks like figuring out like the the nitty gritty of what's going on. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, there's so much or I'm sorry, there's so little of that type of reporting on the intelligence community and the special operations community, it really takes a long time to write that kind of stuff. There's really only a half dozen of us in the country. I'm sorry if that sounds a little pretentious, but there aren't many of us that really work in this field, I feel like. Maybe you could add a couple people to that,
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Starting point is 00:15:41 Use the QR code on-screen to lock it in now. When it comes to, like, your job as a journalist and working on these stories, how many people, when it comes to, like, when it comes to sources, how many sources do you rely on in or out of the government, military, or CIA, what have you? I mean, it's a combination of people who are still inside the system and people who are not. Got it. And I'm sure that people that are not still have connections inside, right? Yes.
Starting point is 00:16:13 I mean, they're all, you know, if you're using them as a source, it's because they have some sort of connection. Right, right, right, right. You know, personal or by affiliation or whatever the case may be. Each of these stories we work on has sort of a different origin story, the way that I come to sources and the reason why I start working on a story. they're all a little different. The one we did about Havana syndrome, for instance. Incredible. It was like a movie.
Starting point is 00:16:41 It's crazy, isn't it? It's a wild story. And Sean and I worked for probably the better part of a year or more than a year on that. And I got introduced to the former CIA officer who is known by many as Patient Zero, the first guy that was struck by Havana syndrome in Cuba in, in 2016. And I went and visited him and his family, who they live in a very remote place.
Starting point is 00:17:11 That's all I'll say about that. I went out and spent like a day and a half with them. And I wanted to see if there was more reporting that can be done on this topic. Havana syndrome was at that time and still is controversial. So of course, I'm digging on that to see if there's more that can be written about it or should be written about it.
Starting point is 00:17:28 High level for people that aren't aware of it. Just explain. Sure. It's a, I mean, it's a story that sounds nuts, but it's true. We had a small CIA station in Havana, Cuba, around 2016 during the Obama administration. We were normalizing relations with the Cubans. And the CIA decided to get a little bit more aggressive in how they recruited sources, that they were going to start approaching more people in Cuba and trying to do more recruiting. One day, this source of mine, his name is Adam in the article we wrote, which is not his real name.
Starting point is 00:18:09 The CIA won't let him use his real name publicly in association with the organization. Yeah. Is that common? I would not say it's common, no. Most people have their cover rolled back and they'll say, hey, I'm Joe Smith and I was in the CIA. This is sort of a unique situation. he's not allowed to publicly say, like be in front of a camera and say he worked for the CIA. He cannot say his real name.
Starting point is 00:18:40 Oh, he can just not say his real name. So he can have a fake name. He can say, oh, hey, I worked for the CIA. You can say, I'm Adam and I worked for the CIA. Got it. I understand. I know the laws and the rules are kind of silly. And I don't really know who they're protecting or aimed at protecting at times.
Starting point is 00:18:55 But he was, went home at the end of a day while he was in. in Havana was laying down on his couch, I believe it was, watching. It's always sunny in Philadelphia on his laptop. And suddenly he had this like loud noise that he started getting barraged with. He described it as it's like sticking a number two pencil in your ear. It hurt that badly. It went on through the night. He had blood coming from the ears, blood coming from the nose when he woke up.
Starting point is 00:19:28 And that went off and on, you know, and he would be second guessing himself at certain times like, oh, you know, the Cubans have bugs, the homes they're staying in are bugged. They know that. And you sort of thinking like, oh, maybe they're listening in on me or something. That's all it is. So it kind of like ignored it at first. But it got worse and worse. And then other people in the embassy started coming forward with very similar symptoms, with a very similar story to Adams. And that's when he. realized like this is systemic, like this is something that's being done against us, deliberately. And I can say that I know through sourcing that the Cubans were working with the Russians to do this, that they were pulsing these CIA officials with very quick pulses of microwaves, like hundreds or thousands of pulses a second that creates a sort of cumulative effect inside the human cranium. And it leads to vestibular issues.
Starting point is 00:20:29 A lot of symptoms that have similarities to traumatic brain injuries. So people having vertigo, headaches. And from the time that this started in 2016 in Cuba, it then sort of exploded globally. You started having people at the embassy in Austria, the embassy in Beijing having these problems. We have stuff happening in Vietnam, Indonesia,
Starting point is 00:20:54 India. What about Moscow? Yes, Mark Palmeropoulos, which is his real name he's allowed to use. He got hit in Moscow. He went to Russia on a sort of official trip. So the Russians know he's a CIA officer. Declared, right? Declared. And he's going there to do liaison. They're going to have a meeting. I don't know what the meeting was on some sort of cooperation, probably counterterrorism stuff. He went there and he got hit in his hotel room. Got blasted. Wow. And he's still dealing with the effects of that today. So this thing went global. And our government has lied through its teeth about it. They have gas lit the survivors about it. All sorts of really nasty stuff that's gone on. I mean, that article we wrote is pretty extensive. But I'm here to say,
Starting point is 00:21:51 I know Havana syndrome is real. When you cut through all the lies and all the bullshit, something was really done to these people. And our government failed to respond to it in a timely or meaningful manner. In fact, they're still trying to cover it up to this day. And this next part is a little bit of speculation because no one really knows why our government has worked so hard to bury this. other than maybe career incentives that just make a scheme. I mean, right.
Starting point is 00:22:22 We already let MK Ultra out. What's... And that's different. I mean, we were doing unethical testing in that case. Yeah, testing innocent people with drugs. Right. And in this case, it's our people being hit and targeted by a foreign adversary. And we're hiding that.
Starting point is 00:22:37 Yeah. So the speculation when I talked to CIA folks is that essentially it became a personnel issue in the sense that, there were already CIA officers telling their bosses, like, you know, they're slated to get deployed to, not deployed, but stationed in Kazakhstan, in, you know, wherever it is in Mombasa. But the CIA guy who was just there came back, blasted, microwaved out of his mind. And so this guy is seeing that and his wife is seeing it. And his wife's like, we're not going there. Are you crazy?
Starting point is 00:23:15 So this had the potential to shut down CIA human intelligence operations globally. If we just could not work out of embassies anymore, if we could just not send American spies abroad anymore. Because this weapon is very interesting in that it's not an assassination weapon. You're not killing someone. So you're not going over that threshold to lethal operations. But what you are doing is you are. I'm sorry for the term, I mean, but they'll tell you themselves. It renders you mentally incompetent.
Starting point is 00:23:51 Like you can't remember anything. You can't do your job anymore. So what you're doing by hitting people with this weapon is you're taking chess pieces off the board. One by one. They can't be deployed. They can't go anywhere. They can't work as intelligence officers. Because you're creating this deterrent where the people that are aware of it, they don't want to travel anywhere.
Starting point is 00:24:08 Right. Right. So one component of it is the actual physical attacks. And then there's another component that is like a psychological operation. Right. And yeah, I mean, I'd really emphasize that, yeah, our government was and is lying about it. And it is real. I know it sounds like science fiction, but there is a weapon that one of these microwave weapons was surreptitiously acquired by the U.S. government.
Starting point is 00:24:36 The Department of Defense was testing it. And there was a recent reconsolidation of the committees that were investigating Havana syndrome. and the Secretary of Defense or the Secretary of Wars, he prefers to be called, Pete Hegseth, was initially early on in this administration pretty aggressive about wanting to get to the truth. And then something changed. And I don't know. Ratcliffe is really worried about a Kentucky senator. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:25:04 I mean, listen, your guess is as good as mine with these people. But yeah, the Havana syndrome was a really hard. story to report on. One of the most difficult ones I've ever worked on. I think Sean would tell you the same. Well, we had those, you know, during like the Philadelphia experiments and all that, you know, when we were doing all those experiments with those types of weapons, right? Like we were experimenting on sailors, on ships, right, with like beaming these weapons
Starting point is 00:25:35 where they were more like crowd control type weapons, right? Oh, right. Like a loud sound. LRAD. Right. Yeah, that exists. El-Rad, right, right, which is, you know, it's kind of similar, not exactly the same. Right.
Starting point is 00:25:48 So do you think it's possible that we, like, who do you think got this stuff first? I think the Russians invested heavily in microwave weapons in a way that we didn't. And I've been told the Russians tend to use technology we have, but in different ways than we would. So I think the, yes, that the Russians got interested in directed energy. a lot sooner than we did and have pursued it more aggressively than we have. However, I did another story about how we have a somewhat similar weapon. It's the guys that use it call it the behavior adjustment device. I love it. Yeah. So it's it comes in like a Pelican hard case. You open it up. It has a control unit, a battery, and a dish that's a little bit bigger than a tambourine. So it
Starting point is 00:26:42 looks sort of similar to the LRAD. And what that does is it beams microwaves over 100 feet. And what it's designed to do, the way we use the technology, the idea behind it. And I don't have any accounts of us actually using it in real life. Just some rumors that guys maybe flipped it on in Iraq. But yeah, maybe. But I do know people who have deployed with it and know how it works. and what it does. And so the idea being that if you had terrorists hiding in a safe house or something
Starting point is 00:27:18 like that, you would bombard them with these microwaves. It would make them very uncomfortable. And that would induce them to do one of two things. Get them, blast them out of the safe house, get them up and moving. And now you can follow them, see where they're going. Or to get them up on comm. So they start making phone calls, which they can be intercepted. So again, the behavior adjustment device. So we have something similar, but it doesn't work the way the Russians use it. And we didn't build it to do what the Russians have used their weapon for. So we haven't done. There's no accounts or any testimony of anyone ever doing the same thing that the Cubans did to our people, like beaming it into an embassy and trying to. Not that I've heard. Right. No, I haven't. And that
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Starting point is 00:29:28 What ended up happening with Adam and the other. The story starts out where they're sitting in front of a hotel or they're sitting in front of a diner and they're getting, someone's taking photos of them and you track this person back to a foreign country. This person literally is taking photos like an overt, some sort of overt intimidation tactic. Yes. Yes. Harassing surveillance. Harassing surveillance.
Starting point is 00:29:48 And that was in Philadelphia. So that's a big part of the story that we broke that had not been reported before is that when these guys came home from Cuba in other places and they started going for treatment at UPenn, seeing vestibular rehabilitation specialists and things like this. they came under really intense surveillance here in the United States. A lot of them had break-ins into their hotel rooms, into their private residences. From Cubans? In some cases, there may have been some traces back to Cuba. This is an interesting thing about the modern-day version of espionage, is that espionage is happening on the gig economy in a lot of ways.
Starting point is 00:30:34 So it's like Uber drivers and Dorian. dash guys and they may not even know what they're doing or who they're working right right they're like they're like told like hey go to the street corner there's going to be some people there take some pictures of them and leave you know whatever wow um so yeah it's a crazy yeah so you you get like a lot of like Bangladeshis and you know people like this um who probably don't know what they're doing really um and and but some of these people definitely were pros they knew what they were doing that they were able to surreptitiously break into home homes. And they would do like weird things. Again, it's harassing surveillance. So they did stuff
Starting point is 00:31:11 like one here in America. Here in America. One of these guys, they got his gun cases out of the attic. They took the cases but left the guns. And another case they would take, you know, like the medication out of your medicine cabinet and throw it in your dishwasher. Stories like, you know, they would go into your closet and take all your jackets and shirts and turn them inside out and put them back on the hanger now when you try to describe that kind of surveillance to people what do you sound like you sound like someone you're suffering from paranoid schizophrenia it's very discrediting on the surface right until you realize what's going on here this is that story uh in annie jacobson's book about area 51 when the CIA pilots first started testing the jet planes over nevada they would bring the the pilots would go
Starting point is 00:32:03 up, the CIA pilots would go up in the jet planes with gorilla masks in the cockpit in case a civilian airplane gotten visual distance of them, they'd wear the gorilla mask. That's awesome. It's the same thing, right? That's awesome. Yeah, right. So if the pilot tries to describe what he saw, he sounds like a whack job. Exactly. Do you imagine like a journalist publishing that in a newspaper? Like, this is what the pilot says he saw. Sure, buddy. Okay. Have another. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I mean, And I've heard that story, similar stories to that harassing surveillance before from John Kariaku. He said that he had some friends who were, one of them was in the CIA.
Starting point is 00:32:41 The wife was. The husband of the wife was CIA, was declared. They went to Israel. And the spouse decided to like continue their studies there. So to like go to university or whatever. And there was like three or four different occasions where they'd come home. The first time they came home, they were declared. They had shit in all the toilets, unflushed.
Starting point is 00:33:03 Like, someone took a shit in every single toilet. And then it got so bad, like, at the time they decided to leave, they came home. And somebody had, like, cut their dog's tail off and, like, bandaged it up and, like, left the tail in the middle of the floor. This happened in Israel? Yes. There must have been something going on politically that they were pissed. Or the CIA was maybe doing something in another country, even, that pissed them off. Interesting.
Starting point is 00:33:24 Yeah, yeah. Because, I mean, they're not going to get that aggressive for no reason. Maybe dropping a deuce in the toilet is pretty benign. But some of the others, yeah. In Cuba, they actually, the Cuban intelligence service, DGI, will actually put teams of psychologists on each CIA officer. And they work it. And they basically just stay on that person and figure out what will break them. Really?
Starting point is 00:33:50 Yeah, yeah. And it's different for different people because psychology is different. So if you have a pet, they might take it and throw it out in the rain and you come home and your pets out there on the brink. death reason. They might pile up all your clothes in your living room and piss on them. Whatever it is. I mean, there's other thing. I've heard stories about like scorpions taped inside the person's clothes. Oh my. And Cuba. In Cuba, yeah. So they will do all kinds of things. I mean, they'll try different things, different techniques to see like what's going to break you. How robust is Cuba's intelligence service right now? It's, it is and has been competent.
Starting point is 00:34:28 Really? Frighteningly competent for such a small country. That's crazy. Most of the people who have been run against Cuban targets will tell you that DGI has it together. And it's interesting that the kind of recruitments they get, when they recruit Americans, they get ideological recruitments, which is interesting because the CIA gets very few ideological recruitments. Usually it's like, hey, we'll let you come to America, we'll pay you some money in an escrow account, this kind of thing. Right. But Cuba gets more of the true believers, people who are committed to the, the revolutionary cause.
Starting point is 00:35:04 Or anti-American cause. But, you know, on the other hand, DGI suffered a pretty catastrophic defeat when their boys that were guarding Maduro got hosed by Delta Force. When they picked up Maduro, there's dozens of DGI paramilitary guys. Oh, in Venezuela. Oh, yeah. They went in and whacked them. Our guys went in and whacked them. Really?
Starting point is 00:35:26 Yeah. I heard a story that not verified. This is more of a conspiracy theory, that Maduro was working with the CIA from the previous CIA, not the current CIA, but from the previous administration, that he was actually working with them as an asset or somehow. They had some sort of an agreement or whatever. And the conspiracy part of this is that when they went in to get him, it was not that hard. kind of got him to agree under the condition that when they get him here, the plan is when he goes on trial, Trump's going to get him to admit that they use their software to steal the election in 2020 and get Trump a third turn. I would not be surprised as exchange to let him go or get him a better sentence.
Starting point is 00:36:13 If it came out that like Stephen Miller was trying to work that right now, I would not even be surprised. Like that would not shock me. Do I believe that? No. I mean, it's hard to parse out, like, on the surface level of it, like, was he an asset or I don't think he was? But is it possible that the CIA tried to approach Maduro and talk to him? You know, in my reporting in a lot of these stories, you know, one of the questions that comes out time and time again is should the CIA talk to terrorists? Really bad people. Sometimes people have American blood on their hands. But look, if you want to want to infiltrate al-Qaeda or some similar organization, you can't go and talk to some choir boy.
Starting point is 00:36:57 You have to go and talk to some bad people. Of course. Because they know the bad guys. So there's this constant like push and pull of like how far do we go. I worked on one story where the CIA was working on recruiting someone who's involved in the murder of Daniel Pearl, who was a journalist killed in Pakistan early in the war. And they wanted to recruit this guy because they thought he could get them to Zawahiri, who's the number two guy under bin Laden. So again, this is a very like real ethical and moral issue. And I would, I don't know what the answer is necessarily. I'd pose this to the American public.
Starting point is 00:37:35 Would you be comfortable with us working with that guy? I mean, that's a tough decision to make, isn't it? I don't think so. I think that you should have, I mean, in this world of covert operations that we live, live in, you know, you have to have people close to the source of our enemies and of the people who are trying to subvert us. Because, I mean, if they're doing the same thing to us, we have to be doing the same thing. It's like a, it's this shadow war of espionage where we have to have as much intelligence as possible. And, you know, if we have people that are willing to get that
Starting point is 00:38:15 close, then we should absolutely do that because it's better than, you know, just shooting everyone, I think. Right. Yeah. I mean, it's a balance. And, you know, I've told a friend of mine, I said, well, why don't you just recruit the guy? And then when you get what you want out of them, just drone strike them. He was like, no, we can't do that, dude. Like, what are you talking about? Right. I did talk to a Marine Corps intelligence guy. The military operates a little differently than the CIA, especially in a war zone. And they had a recruited source who was fording with the bad guys again. And they kept them in play as long as he was useful. And then they did a strike on him once they were done with him. Oh, really? Yeah, yeah. Wow. Yeah, that's the crazy. What is this?
Starting point is 00:39:04 U.S. military tested device that may be tied to Havana syndrome on rats, sheep, confidential source says. Oh, this was just, this just came out. Was this based on your stuff? No, I don't, I don't think Okay. 60 minutes, huh? Let's hear it. While they're still around. Right? Sorry, man.
Starting point is 00:39:24 Three independent sources from different agencies tell us that undercover homeland security agents purchased a miniaturized microwave weapon from a complex Russian criminal network. It's classified. We didn't see it, but it has been described to us. We are told it doesn't look anything like a gun. It's designed to be concealed and small enough to be carried by a person. It is silent and doesn't create heat like a microwave oven. Our sources say the device is programmable for different scenarios and can be operated by remote control.
Starting point is 00:40:03 The range of the beam is several hundred feet. It can penetrate windows and drywall. The vital components were made in Russia. Our sources say the key is not the hardware, but the software. The programming shapes a unique electromagnetic wave that rises and falls abruptly and pulses rapidly. Pulsed microwave radiation. Just what Dr. David Relman's investigations predicted. I've interviewed him.
Starting point is 00:40:35 Oh, really? What's his story? He is one of these guys who's like super smart. you know, a clinical doctor, but also someone who studies, you know, the high-level science. And he, like, bounces between private sector and, like, White House. Like, I think during the Biden administration, he was actually at the White House working on this issue. Oh, really? Yeah.
Starting point is 00:41:00 Wow. Yeah, he knows his stuff. Keep going to. And what the Russians spoke about was the importance of the energy being pulsed in order to have biological effects on humans, When you produce pulses like this, you can actually stimulate electrically active tissue, like brain tissue, and the heart, for that matter, mimicking what the brain normally does, but now you're driving it with your pulses from the outside. An ideal stealth weapon. Ideal. Ideal. Because literally, the person feels as if this is in my head. Our confidential sources tell us the still-class-by weapon type shit.
Starting point is 00:41:44 Has been tested in a U.S. military lab for more than a year. Tests on rats and sheep show injuries consistent with those seen in humans. Also, as a separate part of the investigation, security camera videos have been collected that show Americans being hit. The videos are classified, but they were described to us. In one, a camera in a restaurant in Istanbul captured two FBI agents on vacation sitting at a table with their families. A man with a backpack walks in, and suddenly, everyone at the table grabs their head as if in pain. Oh, my God.
Starting point is 00:42:28 Our sources say another video comes from a stairwell in the U.S. Embassy in Vienna. The stairs lead to a secure facility. In the video, two people. on the stairs suddenly collapse. Three independent sources. That is almost all of that is totally accurate to what I know. The only thing I would add a little bit to is the Istanbul story. So he's saying that-
Starting point is 00:42:56 Were they at the table? Yeah, yeah. They were FBI agents in Istanbul with their families. So they were saying there that it was like a restaurant camera. It was a Turkish intelligence service, MIT, was making recordings. They were doing surveillance on these FBI guys as they're cruising around and While they were doing that these guys got hit with this microwave weapon So the MIT guys it seems inadvertently made a video right of them hidden and I'm told it's really bad like the kids are freaking out and everything
Starting point is 00:43:28 Yeah So we knew that MIT had made this video But they didn't want to give it up So my understanding is that the NSA hacked into MIT and stole it. No fucking way. Yeah, yeah. But otherwise, I mean, all the problems with, you know, the mainstream media in 60 minutes or CBS. I mean, that's good journalism.
Starting point is 00:43:56 That stuff matters. Yeah. I'm glad that, you know, they're out there doing it. So the story is a guy with the backpack may have been the culprit for that. They said a guy with the backpack walked in. And then all of a sudden, everyone at the table, the FBI agents and their kids sort of grabbing their heads. It could be. There's also three different generations of this weapon.
Starting point is 00:44:18 They've refined it over the years. I'm told that the most recent one, the scary thing about it is, you know, remember Adam describing it as feeling like a number two pencil that is stuck in your ear. The newer one, you don't feel anything. You don't know that you're under attack. Really? Yeah. Yeah. So you'll have those same sort of Havana syndrome effects.
Starting point is 00:44:39 But you won't know when or where it even happened. All of a sudden, you'll start to experience vertigo and memory loss. Right. Like Dr. Relman said, the perfect stealth weapon. Yeah. Have you heard of the voice to skull or whatever? That's the Frey effect. What's that?
Starting point is 00:44:57 It was a doctor fray. I'm sorry that I can't remember the guy's full name. But they did experiments and this is legit science where they beamed. They basically used some sort of beam to. to transmit someone's voice right into another person's head. And, yeah, I've been told about it, but I haven't studied it in depth. So, okay, the guys who were the focus of your, you're and Sean's piece on this, what sort of medical attention were they able to get, were they able to get help with this?
Starting point is 00:45:33 That was literally a fucking nightmare for those guys. As the CIA is in denial, but these guys are getting worse and worse, they end up sending them down to Dr. Hoffer down at, he's down in Miami. I've heard of that guy, yeah. He did really good work. He's a good guy. Tried to help them out. He wanted to diagnose them with TBI. The CIA, I think, pushed to have them diagnosed with concussions because anything can close.
Starting point is 00:46:06 concussion. I mean, you can run into a wall and get a concussion, right? So it's a little more general. Eventually, they stopped the Havana victims from going to see Dr. Hoffer. In time, they finally got in with UPenn. UPN. UPN also did really good work. They studied them. They did a lot of science on them, a lot of studying. And they put them in MRI machines and everything else. I spoke to this woman, Dr. Verma, who did all the fMRI work on them. It's really incredible. But then that ended.
Starting point is 00:46:47 And again, these guys are sort of left hanging. There's an NHI study. And this is where something that was unethical, if not illegal, happened. The CIA said, you have to participate in this NHI study. to get treatment. You can't compel somebody to participate in a study. Like, we're going to hold your health over your head. Right.
Starting point is 00:47:08 And that study was subsequently shut down because of the ethical considerations. Jesus, too. So, I mean, these guys, they suffered, you know, the term you hear nowadays is moral injury. All of these guys and women suffered significant moral injury from all of this. They expect the Russians to come at them. Everyone expects that. but they didn't expect the CIA to turn their back on them. Right.
Starting point is 00:47:31 How are they doing now with it? Are there symptoms getting any better or is it still terrible? Not better, but the vestibular rehabilitation does help them, as they have described it to me, it helps them learn to live with their injuries. So the effects don't really go away, but they learn to compensate for them better. There is a, it does seem that recovery is possible through this vestibular rehabilitation. It's always crazy when you hear stories about this kind of stuff coming out in the news, you know, because like before you hear real stories, like what you did, like half the people dismiss them as like, oh, okay, sure, like conspiracy theory or whatever. Like, there are a lot of people out there who are mentally ill who feel that they're being stalked and bombarded with microwaves.
Starting point is 00:48:18 And, you know, those people. Which is great for the CIA because then they can use those people to write off everybody. Yeah, yeah, no, yeah, basically. And those people don't like me, and they don't like the Havana victims really either, because we don't confirm their worldview, I guess. Right. But we have seen, you know, speaking of like spooky weapons on the Maduro raid, you remember President Trump talking about the discombobulator array?
Starting point is 00:48:50 Yep, I do remember that. So I've talked to a bunch of people about this, And I haven't found anyone who can confirm that we used any sort of novel ray gun on this operation. We do have certain directed energy weapons. We've talked about the LRAD. We talked about the behavior adjustment device. You know, we have some things. But we didn't use it on this operation because it would have been really hard for us to just blast those Cuban paramilitary guys and not hit the Delta operators that are coming in and storm in the house.
Starting point is 00:49:21 You'd have like a sort of fracture side. Um, so we didn't do that. Um, and then another thing came out when we, uh, rescued that, uh, weapon system officer out of Iran that got shot down. Oh, the murmur ghost ghost murmur. Total bullshit. Is it really? Oh, God. Yeah. They're, so a lot of that, where did that story come from? Where did that story originate? I remember, I thought it was in the New York post, but I think somebody asked, I think it was the post. Somebody asked one of the like, like, Hegsath or Trump about it. I can tell you where it really originated was with Ratcliffe in his choky voice. Ratcliff. that's who it was. Yeah, that's where the story originated. And it has a lot to do with,
Starting point is 00:49:58 I don't want to blame the CIA institutionally, but the director, Ratcliffe, he tried to snag as much credit for that rescue operation as he could and blended his CIA into the narrative in the press. Remember I talked about source capture? Yes. That's why that's a problem. So he was out there showboating and spotlighting, trying to, you know, hog some media attention for himself. I'm told the task force guys, the like actual soldiers who are involved in that rescue. I mean, soldiers, airmen, Navy SEALs, Air Force. Did you talk to any of those dudes? I've talked to some people who may have been on the periphery of it. Okay. They're pissed that Radcliffe did this. Really? Yeah, yeah, that he's like trying to sweep in and take credit for it. They're like, this is messed up,
Starting point is 00:50:44 man. How much involvement did CIA have in that? A little bit. So one of the things they did do, which I believe was helpful was a institute a sci op or a deception operation and they did this using what's called a man in the middle attack so if you have the enemy the iranians in this case they're communicating by radio different elements headquarters and a unit in the field right so what you can do if you have the technology is you can jam headquarters and then start transmitting to the unit on the ground as if you are the headquarters Persian Farsi speakers masquerading as a Quds Force commander, IRGC, or whoever it is. And like, your orders are to go here and do this and blah, blah, blah.
Starting point is 00:51:31 So that's a man in the middle attack. And they did that and convinced the Iranians that the pilot was going to be rescued along the coast, that he was somewhere down the down by the coast and we were maybe going to pick him up on boats or something like that. So it diverted a lot of forces south towards the coast of Iran towards the Persian Gulf. And I'm told that was at least somewhat helpful. And wasn't there also like a huge amount of military planes that were sent out to go in different directions to divert them? Yeah, flying all over the place. Like 150 planes I heard or something like that combined with helicopters.
Starting point is 00:52:08 Yeah, yeah. That's what Trump said, right? Yeah. And I mean, it wouldn't surprise me at all. I think they mobilized everything to try to get this guy out. And they did, thank God. But I mean, that's a crazy story in of its. So where did this ghost murmur story come from? Where did it originate? Ratcliff and his boys.
Starting point is 00:52:30 So they were the first people to say it? Or do they leak it to the press? They leaked it to the press. And then the press got a hold of it and then they were asked about it. I see. There are heartbeat sensors. Like that's actually kind of like old oldish technology. But the idea that you had a heartbeat sensor on a fucking drone at, you know, 50,000 feet. And it's finding this one guy's heartbeat against all of the back. of all the people looking for him and everything else. Like, come on, dude. So yeah, there are some very novel technologies out there. And we develop sometimes these very expensive, bespoke technologies that don't really work in the field.
Starting point is 00:53:08 They break down very quickly. We've had this problem with laser weapons or microwave weapons over years. But we do have some things that work. Yeah, I mean, I can imagine the stuff that DARPA works on, you know, that has been working on for years to try to, like, create more resilient soldiers. on the battlefield or to make the battlefield operations more effective.
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Starting point is 00:55:00 that's actually already in use, at least being tested already, where somebody in Washington can put on this neural net over their head and somebody in fucking Iran or Afghanistan or somewhere over there, can also put on a neural net. And the person here can hijack their brain and like operate, do like a surgical operation on somebody in the field.
Starting point is 00:55:30 So like a surgeon can take over your body on the other side of the world and perform surgery. Like automation. Yeah. Like you're controlling a robot. Like you're hijacking their fucking body. And they had an experiment that tried to do this. Yeah, this guy was saying it's real.
Starting point is 00:55:45 It's already being like it's already being done. It's just not like fully like out of the bag yet. I don't know how. I'm not a scientist. I don't even know how that could be accomplished. But yeah, I mean, some weird things do exist. Yeah. It is fun to look at some of the DARPA stuff that is like public and declassified.
Starting point is 00:56:03 Things like upward falling payloads. Well, I haven't heard that. So, like, if you had something at the bottom of the ocean and it had like an airbag, you suddenly inflate it with oxygen. Now, it's a payload that falls upwards. It's coming way up. And when it hits the surface, it'll break above the surface. Oh, whoa.
Starting point is 00:56:22 And it could potentially be picked up by an aircraft if it comes on a parachute or something like that. What? That's, I mean, you can look this up. We're talking about bombs? No, I don't think it would be a bomb. I think it would be more like if you put a recording device on an undersea fiber optic cable. Maybe you could use it to do something like get the recordings off the bottom of the ocean. Okay, I see.
Starting point is 00:56:46 But, I mean, I just read the release from. DARPA. I don't know if this thing was ever how far the experiment got, how, you know, if it was ever operationalized. I don't know. Have you seen the DARPA dolphins that are like doing sabotage on undersea cables and stuff? Oh, those aren't DARPA. That's the marine mammal program. The Navy has that. Oh, that's the Navy. Yeah, yeah. Marine mammal program. And I've looked into that a couple of different times. And those guys are surprisingly closed-lipped about the program, which is funny because I can get all this stuff out of all these CIA people that the marine mammal program is I have yet to crack that nut but I have heard some pretty funny stories from Navy divers
Starting point is 00:57:28 who get assigned to that unit for a little while one guy was telling me about they had this big dolphin they called them half dead Fred yeah and and Fred didn't give a shit and he said too he's like get this all this flipper stuff out of your head that these dolphins like they will grab you by the wrist and drag you under 25 feet of water just to fuck with you like just to see what you're made of you know really yeah yeah why they call him half dead friend because he didn't give a shit and like he i think he just like roll over on his back and like wave a flipper at them when they told them to do stuff it's like giving them the bird and uh half dead fred disappeared during training one time it was mating season and he didn't come back for like three months. He was totally AWOL. Wow. Yeah. Yeah, half dead Fred. And the other interesting
Starting point is 00:58:24 thing is they did deploy the marine mammal program during the Gulf War in 1990. And I'm told a couple of the dolphins died actually. I'm sure. Because it's something to do with the ocean conditions. A couple of them didn't make it. I don't know if they're over in the Persian Gulf now, but actually all this stuff going with the straits of her moves would be like tailor made for that program because the dolphins are trained to go out and identify obstacles underwater right they're to go out there spy dolphins find find the mines find all that kind of crap and identify it so then navy eOD divers would go in and dispose of it and then our ships could go through um so yeah the dolphins could definitely do that job i think yeah it makes me just like wonder you know maybe they had dolphins fucking bomb that north stream
Starting point is 00:59:15 pipeline, you know? Like, I have read that we do not have like a, well, well, there's the story about how they fitted them with nose cones at one point that would shoot out like a spike to kill Soviet divers. That's a story that's floating around out there. But as far as using the dolphins for offensive operations, they, they did some experimenting with the dolphins and having them like lay mines, like go find the enemy submarine and put a mine. on it. And what they found is that the dolphins can, like, it's wild, like through echolocation, I guess they can identify like metallic and nonmetallic metals. Like they're very sensitive. But the one thing the dolphins couldn't do is identified the difference between the whole
Starting point is 01:00:02 of a Russian submarine and the whole of an American submarine. So my understanding is we never really developed that program because we're afraid of what would happen if we, if we set them loose, They might come back at us. Right. I mean, think about if we could figure out a way or if the smartest people that are working in the government could figure out a way to communicate with the dolphins because we know they're hyper intelligent, right? Like the barrier is the like they are.
Starting point is 01:00:25 Yeah. Their language is very complex. They could figure out the language barrier to figure out how to tap into their mind somehow to like see through their, I don't know. There's an article. I mean, maybe this is neither here nor there. There's an article I think in the Atlantic a couple years ago about. marine biologists looking at using AI to decode the language of whales.
Starting point is 01:00:48 Oh, yeah, I heard about that. Could we talk to a sperm whale? And what would it say to us? You know, and I think, you know, what do? This is just me bullshitting, of course. But I mean, I think that if we could talk to a sperm whale, it would probably tell us, fuck, man, it's cold down here. Like, it would probably be pretty disappointing what it would
Starting point is 01:01:12 would tell us. You know what I mean? Yeah. It's just so interesting how long we've been interested in trying to use animals to help us in fucking geopolitical feats. Like there was that story that got John Lilly. I don't have you heard of him. You got a grant from NASA back in the 80s, I think it was, to try to work on this communication between dolphins and humans. He was literally paid by NASA to figure this out. And he was like, he was in Miami, I think, when he was doing this. And he was cutting open the heads of dolphins, putting probes in their brains, keeping them in these little tanks and, like, sinister experiments. John Lilly ended up going off the wheels. He went off the tracks, like went crazy because he was addicted to ketamine and thought he was talking to aliens.
Starting point is 01:01:57 He thought he was communicating with like an alien species. He went totally crazy. But like he was doing legit research for NASA way back in the day. This was like during the time of Flipper, like when they were actually making a Flipper show. Yeah, yeah. That was the 70s. Yeah, yeah. But yeah, dude, that shit's wild. For the Strait of Hormuz, though, I heard that there's all kinds of like underwater reconnaissance shit going on under the water. I'm sure there is.
Starting point is 01:02:27 I heard they have like, I heard that the Iranians have like port like many little portals inside under the water in the rocks where they can like deploy autonomous, underwater drones and shit. Have you heard anything about that? No, no, I haven't. I would be surprised if they're that sophisticated. Yeah. They seem pretty good at keeping us at bay with ballistic missiles and so on.
Starting point is 01:02:52 But I'm sure that they've put underwater mines and other underwater obstacles and that we're down there trying to find that stuff. Yeah, it would not surprise me at all. Yeah. It's insane, man. It's just like trying to follow the whole Iran war thing has been difficult because it's just like there's some new twist happening every week. And it just by and large, it just doesn't seem like, correct me from wrong,
Starting point is 01:03:19 that we're anywhere close to a winning situation with this thing. It seems like every week that goes by, we have less opportunities to back out. Correct. Yeah. I mean, the problem is that there isn't a plan that's linked to any sort of strategic end state. You know, the plan was, well, we're going to bomb them. Okay, well, that doesn't work. What are we going to do?
Starting point is 01:03:42 We're going to bomb them some more. All right, that's not working. So what do we do? We'll drop some more bombs, you know, and it just goes on and on. I think that, you know, some of these other operations that we've talked about during the Trump One administration, there's the Soleimani assassination and the Baghdadi raid. Then during this administration, there was the Maduro raid. There was the first Operation Midnight Hammer, the first bombing run and ran. And there's really no repercussions against us for that.
Starting point is 01:04:12 No, they never retaliated. And I think that the president kind of learned the wrong lesson from all of those operations. So we killed, so in Trump won, Trump killed Soleimani with a drone strike, right? Yes, that's right. And Soleimani was like a top general or something? He was the head of Quds Force. He was like the head Iranian paramilitary leader and like the kind of critical link between Iran and their proxies like Hezbollah. And what was Iran's response?
Starting point is 01:04:40 Nothing that I know of. Nothing. No retaliation at all. No. Not to my knowledge. And Midnight Hammer also. Yeah. And I mean, there's some other stories. There's some Iran stuff that I'm working on that I can't really go into detail on right now because it's very much still work in progress because this stuff is still unfolding before our eyes.
Starting point is 01:05:03 I would just say this highly enriched uranium issue is not going away. Something's going to be done there at some point and not necessarily by us, but it's going to be addressed. So I'd keep an eye on that. What do you mean it's going to be addressed? The highly enriched uranium? Well, the highly enriched uranium that Iran has created, something supposedly somewhere around 300 kilograms. Right. Now, 300 kilograms is a lot, but you only need a couple milligrams to make a really big problem, meaning a dirty bomb or something like that.
Starting point is 01:05:38 Right now, that stuff is in underground facilities that we bombed. So the entrances appear to be caved in, covered in rubble. But we as Americans and the Iranians, too, for that matter, I mean, we're not just going to stand by forever and leave this stuff sitting out there because it's a major national security issue. Like that'll come back to haunt us at some point. Now, I'm not necessarily saying the United States needs to go in and remove it, but something needs to happen. It can't be left unsecured out in the desert indefinitely.
Starting point is 01:06:15 In Iran. In Iran. So what do we do? Like, they've been enriching this uranium for how long? Well, according to Netanyahu, they've been enriching this uranium since I was, you know, three years old. Well, yeah, I mean, he's been saying that we're weeks, months away from a nuke forever. But they've been working on the, I think what Iran is doing and has been doing is trying to maintain kind of a posture of like we're not creating a nuclear bomb, but we're retaining the capacity to create one anytime we want. But wasn't there like two big intelligence assessments done recently on Iran's capability, nuclear capabilities?
Starting point is 01:07:02 Two big intelligence assessments where they got like all the top intelligence people in the U.S. to convene and do a whole assessment of Iran's capabilities, and they all came back both times that they do not have the enrichment to create a nuclear weapon. I mean, yeah, it doesn't seem that they were close to creating a nuclear weapon. Like I said, I think they were interested in retaining the ability to plausibly threaten creating one. But I mean, I think this whole Iran thing is just a huge boondoggle myself. but others may disagree. I also heard that that pilot story could have been a cover.
Starting point is 01:07:45 I've heard this story, yeah. For trying to get some uranium out of there? No, it did happen fairly close to one of those facilities. And they may have even executed on some like contingency plants that were set up for that. like that improvised air strip that they used out in the farm that maybe might have been something that they were looking at for that operation and they ended up using it for this instead. We got to get this guy out of here now. That's a possibility.
Starting point is 01:08:19 I can't say I know that for a fact, but I'm just saying it makes sense they may have used some of those plans. But no, we were legitimately trying to rescue that guy. We weren't making a play for the uranium. him. Okay. And wait, in the plane, though, two guys were in the plane. Yes. The Whizzo is the one that got rescued. What happened to the other guy? He got rescued too, but he got rescued like right away, like a couple hours afterwards. The other guy was just there. Yeah, yeah. The search and rescue team came in. They had some, those guys had some balls go in there, yeah, by themselves, basically, where their
Starting point is 01:08:52 like support aircraft were struggling to catch up with them. They went in there and they pulled that guy right out. In helicopters. In helicopters. And, and the, other guy, the whizzo, the backseater in the aircraft. As I understand it, he received some pretty substantial injuries when he came down. And he was late, apparently, in getting the authentication code out over the radio. Right. To authenticate that to headquarters, you know, this is me. I'm in the wind. Come get me. And it was probably because of his injuries. Once they did identify him, positively identify him, the whole operation, all that machinery launched. Right.
Starting point is 01:09:36 And they went out there. And basically that, you know, the Air Force erected like a grid square around where that guy was. And like one guy described it to me as like a fuck around and find out square. Like any Iranians try to come in that square, we're just going to like blast them off the face of the earth. Wow. So yeah, we were like smoking dudes. around him. There were some like paramilitary guys that were like getting pretty close to him. And then of course, you know, Little Bird pilots got over there with the operators and rescued him and got him back to the improvised air strip, which a whole bunch of fun erupted there too when the aircraft got stuck in the soil.
Starting point is 01:10:19 Oh, yeah. Yeah. I heard that dude like scaled like seven like a huge mountain or something like that. I think he went up a ridgeline, yeah. Huge ridge line. Which makes a lot of sense that he was. he's using the terrain to his advantage and making it much harder for the Iranians to get to him.
Starting point is 01:10:33 Right. Because you can imagine if he's out in the open desert, like they're gonna catch up with you. This is, I bet, I wonder if Mad Dog would know this, but I wonder like how many knocks do we have inside of Iran? So this is a separate story that Sean and I just published with our friend, a colleague, Zach Dorfman, about non-official cover people.
Starting point is 01:10:59 And you're talking about Jim Lawler. He knows way more about Iran. He's an Iran expert. Yeah, he knows way more than I do about Iran. So yeah, you should ask him. I read your article about the hard knocks. That's right. It's amazing.
Starting point is 01:11:12 So the CIA does not have a lot of knocks. I'll just say that. Zach Dorfman wrote a book about the CIA knock program, which is forthcoming. I have nothing further to say about it. You can have Zach on here. if you want and when the book is published. And he's going to have some pretty cool stories coming out of that.
Starting point is 01:11:33 But as he was researching that book, he came across some information also about the special operations, J-Soc, knock program. And he started telling me about what he had. And I was like, huh, okay. And he's like, yeah, this doesn't fit into my book. So maybe we can turn it into an article. I was like, okay, well, let me see what I can find out. And fairly quickly, I pulled up, you know, four, I think four different sources who had strong firsthand knowledge about this subject.
Starting point is 01:12:08 I guess what, you know, for the listeners, we should point out what a knock is. Yeah. What is a knock and why are they important? So there's two types of cover. There's official cover and non-official cover. Official cover is when you are an intelligence operative of some sort, but you are being put under credentials as a State Department person or, I mean, whatever the case may be. You could even be like, say you're a Delta Force commando that's trained to be a spy,
Starting point is 01:12:39 they could put you in a regular Army infantry unit. And that would be official cover. Right. You're still presenting yourself as an American soldier. Yes. This happened. I remember stories about Delta Force guys in the Balkans doing this, where they would be like, you know, the generals PSD.
Starting point is 01:12:57 or they would be like a liaison officer to the Germans, but really they're there for an intelligence operation. That kind of stuff happens all the time. And non-official cover is when you're being placed under a commercial cover. Like you're working for a company, Fortune 500 company, maybe you're working in construction or mining or logistics or whatever's going to get you where you need to go. The big difference, I mean, there are a couple of big differences.
Starting point is 01:13:27 It's a lot harder to put somebody under non-official cover, under a plausible cover. When you're taking, and one of the things in our article that comes out of it is it's really hard to take somebody who is a seal or a ranger or whoever and make them a non-official cover guy because their entire life is about working in a team. Right. Right. And now they're having to be a lone wolf, which sounds sexy on paper. You're a civilian, not attached to any government. Sounds cool on paper, doesn't it? But the reality is that it's a very lonely life and high stress too.
Starting point is 01:14:01 You know, you're assuming a lot of risk because another big difference here is that if you're under official cover and you get arrested in Russia even, you will be dubbed persona non grata by the Russian government and deported. Right. You're sent home. You know, maybe you get a black eye when they pull you off the street, but you're going home, right? If you're a non-official cover and you're in a country like Russia or Iran especially, dude, you're done. You're dead or you're in jail? You're dead. You're dead.
Starting point is 01:14:30 Oh, yeah. You are fucked. Capital F. Fucked. So let me ask you this. Jonathan Pollard, what was his? What would you classify him as? The Israeli spy.
Starting point is 01:14:44 Yeah, I would classify him as a foreign intelligence asset. So he wasn't a knock. I don't believe so, no. Okay. For like for the Israelis you mean? Right. If he will, no, I don't, I don't, I'm not totally familiar with his case, but I don't believe he was.
Starting point is 01:14:59 No, I think he was. A knock is somebody. So basically, if you're a knock and you get caught, the CIA is going to deny you 100%. 100%. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, the U.S. government's going to say, we have no knowledge.
Starting point is 01:15:11 Got it. And can a knock also be like an agent, like a recruit? So a knock is a, uh, in, let's. Or is just like a formally trained? somebody who's formerly trained like in America right to do and then sent over somewhere. So they are actual, they are going to be recruited either into the CIA or into the military. And then based on a lot of times it's based on things like ethnicity, language ability, having multiple passports, etc. Like somebody.
Starting point is 01:15:51 Incredible backstory, no holes in your history. Something that we can parlay. right into this. Because this would be way easier just to recruit somebody in that country. Right. And we do that. That's recruiting a foreign intelligence asset. But in this case, you're putting them through that extensive training and then sending
Starting point is 01:16:09 them overseas for a period of time to collect intelligence or set up logistics or whatever the case may be. So, yeah, we wrote this pretty long article about the J-Soc program. And, you know, some of the successes they've had and also some of the failures. You know, we talk about the army putting Knox into Iran in the past during the war and terror years successfully. Wow. But also how this program, both the CIA side and the military side are fraught with problems also. One of the big ones is like, if you heard the term ubiquitous technical surveillance?
Starting point is 01:16:49 No. So UTS. Oh, it was just like the DNA? It could be that. Yes. Biometrics, DNA, surveillance cameras that are connected up to AI that's looking for you. That every time you go through the airport, they're taking your picture, they're taking your fingerprints, even small airports in smaller countries now.
Starting point is 01:17:12 I mean, everyone's kind of doing it. And that makes it more and more difficult for you to do anything sneaky. You know, it's even if you're traveling under a false passport, it's like, okay, but your fingerprints don't change. So it becomes hard. There's going to do the thing in men in black where they put your fingers on and burn them off. Yeah. Well, I mean, there's a couple of different workarounds. There have been workarounds in the past. You would just fly the person to a country that they don't have biometrics in the airport, have them buy or rent a car, drive to the third country, you know, rather than fly directly in there, things like that. But it's becoming harder and harder.
Starting point is 01:17:54 because the technology is ubiquitous, because it's everywhere, because you have these large language models that are sifting through data, and they're gonna pull your identity off the internet. It's super difficult. And right now, I think especially the military looks at it is like when we put the person through all this training that they're like a one and done or a two and done.
Starting point is 01:18:19 So they'll do like one or two missions and then they're going back to their normal job because of this, because their identities are going to get burned. Yeah, I imagine there's some countries that are way harder than others. Like, how do you do this in China where there's like literally cameras that track your gate everywhere? You don't think I would blend in in China? Yeah, yeah. So there's that, that there's cultural differences, you know, make it difficult for us.
Starting point is 01:18:47 But you're correct about the technological aspect of it too. And I wasn't even aware they could do that with DNA. I didn't know they were doing DNA tracking. So, I mean, yes, DNA sniffers. That's a thing. And we have all of these problems with our data also not being secured, which plays into it. The Office of Personal Management hack, the Chinese got all of the top secret security clearance applications from the United States. Really? Yeah. So one of those guys, you try to put them under non-official cover, send them to a country like China. What's going to happen? When did that happen? That happened a while ago. That was like 10, 12 years ago maybe. Oh, wow.
Starting point is 01:19:32 So UTS is making it increasingly difficult for these guys to do their job. And we're at sort of an inflection point, I think, where the intelligence community is having to rethink about this and rethink about how we use Knox. And, I mean, one proposal I've heard or one thing, you know, that we might do in the future, is like you kind of pointed out, recruiting foreigners. Like we're going to recruit this guy in Morocco. Maybe we bring him back to the United States. Maybe we just train him in his home country,
Starting point is 01:20:06 give him all the training he needs, and now he's going to be our guy. Now he doesn't need like an elaborate fake backstopped cover because he can just be himself. Exactly. Right. That's potentially an option. So one of the things that your article was pointing
Starting point is 01:20:24 out was that the difference between actual like CIA knocks and military knocks, right? And the military knocks have more trouble because, you know, a lot of those guys are more like brute knuckle dragger types, right? And they're not like, they're not like sly, like multiple languages, that kind of kind. So yeah, the, you know, average special ops guy has a pretty strong physique, a kind of body type that stands out, you know, full sleeve tattoos. We like to work out. Hand of bar mustache. I have tattoos.
Starting point is 01:20:58 I'm not talking smack. I get it. But a spy, a successful spy, probably looks like an insurance claim salesman. Like, you know, guy that's fat, balding, you know, just unassuming person. But there's other things, too. I mean, there's military culture the way soldiers speak, though even the way you. you stand. I mean, your posture is something that give you away. When you live in this military culture, it just becomes harder and harder for you to blend in in your own culture, much less
Starting point is 01:21:31 someone else's. And as I was saying earlier, I mean, it's also a difficult lifestyle when your entire life has been, you know, working with a platoon of Rangers or a platoon of seals or a Delta Force team or whatever the case is. And then go into this sort of like very lonely sort of existence. And I was, you know, even when I came in and I started first research in the story, I was a little critical, I think, of the stories of Knox who get in trouble with booze and women. It's like, come on, man, where's your, where's your self-discipline here? There's a lot. This is kind of important stuff, right? But when you start to understand the way the lifestyle these guys have, I think it's, it becomes very natural that they're looking out, they're looking for some
Starting point is 01:22:16 sort of human connection. Right. Because they're not getting it anywhere. They're starved of it, right? Right. And then, yeah, booze and women, it leads to operations getting compromised. And there's one story in there. I talk about a Connex container with like $3 million worth of clandestine communications equipment that we put in a country in Africa. And the knock that was running the logistics company got drunk and revealed a bit more than he should have to a woman. Oh, no. And as far as I know, and the people I know, no, that conox container is still sitting in a
Starting point is 01:22:53 conics yard in Africa somewhere. They just like abandoned it. Oh my God. That's crazy, dude. Jesus Christ. Well, I mean, that's like the whole thing. I mean, that's the story. That's the Havana syndrome story is like the main, the main thing about this.
Starting point is 01:23:08 The biggest problem is the human intelligence part of it because we're the most vulnerable, one of the most vulnerable to being, not just because we're these biological entities that can be injured in multiple ways, but we have like these human desires and instincts and things like this and vulnerabilities to where it's not optimal, right? It's better to use satellites and drones
Starting point is 01:23:31 and fucking dolphins. Yeah, I mean, you're right. As Americans, I think we're much more comfortable with that, right? Like laser guided precision munitions, laser beams, you know, high tech death race. We love all that shit. Yeah. But I mean, it's really important to invest in the human being because the human being is the weapon, right?
Starting point is 01:23:53 All this other stuff, they're just tools. And I think sometimes we overlook that and we don't want to put the hard work into investing in the human. How do you find humans? It doesn't seem like we're built like Chechnians, right? Like America is going the way of like tick we're built for TikTok. Yeah. As Tim Dillon would probably say. And like how do you find Billy Waws in this day and age?
Starting point is 01:24:22 You know? Like how do you find guys like that who they, they, this is what they yearn for. They yearn to go over there and be the surprise, kill, vanish guys, you know? I think those people are still there. I think there are a lot of young American men that grow up wanting to do that. Really? Yeah, yeah, I think so. Even with the way how the lies of the Iraq war and the Afghanistan war, like how that's all come out and like these guys like, I mean, I've had a lot of guys in here who, you know, ended up going over there and they came back here and like fucking regretted it.
Starting point is 01:24:58 Like not just because of all the, not just because of, you know, all of the hyper vigilance and the PTSD and stuff that's involved with that and the depression. But like compiling onto that is like, oh, wow, this was all sold on a lot. or whatever. And like it was we didn't it was Vietnam basically all over. I mean I feel the same way in a lot of regards like we should learn from history. You know we see this stuff happening over and over again. We should maybe be more skeptical about this war in Iran right now. Right. Because our government. I don't think everyone. I mean, I don't think there's many people who are that do believe in this war in Iran. But I mean, the military doesn't seem like it's having huge issues with recruitment right now. They're having some, as I recall. Well, you.
Starting point is 01:25:41 see they're talking about the draft now. Yeah, I mean, I don't think that's a possibility. That's like, you know, you were saying about like the TikTok generation stuff. You install the draft and shit gets very real, very fast for a lot of people, including wealthy people and people who are politically connected. Yeah, well, because Palantir came out with their manifesto saying they want to bring back the draft. And then the guy. Thank you, Palantir.
Starting point is 01:26:08 Appreciate that. Yeah, right. Exactly. And Alex Carp's on the front lines. Yes. John Wayne in it with his helmet strap off. Right. Cigar on the corner of his lip.
Starting point is 01:26:17 With his fentanyl lace urine. And then the guy who's running against Thomas Massey in Kentucky also recently said that they think he, like, other than the fact that the reason he's running in Kentucky is because he wants us to be more dominant and lethal in war. But he also thinks that it's, it would be optimal if we brought back conscription. So it seems like there's whether, you know, whether it's possible or not, whether it's likely or not, it seems like people are talking about this more. I mean, there is an argument to be made about, you know, national service, you know, should young people, you know, spend a year or two in some sort of national service. I mean, I'm against it myself. You know, conscription is like something you do in an emergency situation. Right.
Starting point is 01:27:07 But, you know, I think at the counter argument, of course, is if you had conscription, it gets the entire society invested in our foreign policy and in our war. And maybe a lot of these stupid wars wouldn't be happening if we had a conscription, if we had some sort of a draft. Because now rich people's kids are going into the military too. Like I said, this shit gets very serious, very fast for a lot of people. Yeah, that's interesting. The fact that we have an all volunteer force and we have a TikTok society that's so disengaged
Starting point is 01:27:44 is what allows a lot of this stupid shit to happen, in my opinion. That's what allows us to be in Afghanistan for 20 years, just spinning our wheels. And maybe if Americans were being drafted into the military and deployed to Afghanistan, that war would be over in like a year or two. Interesting, right. I mean, if you have the same people who are lobbying, literally for this, war to happen have their kids be drafted. A little bit different, isn't it?
Starting point is 01:28:11 How does that play out? A little bit different. It doesn't seem like people are going to, like, I don't think people are going to, maybe I'm seeing something differently than you are, but people are going to volunteer to do that kind of work anymore. I think what you're seeing is some of the trepidation maybe from military veterans or from older people who were at least engaged, you know, and paying attention to these wars as they unfolded. But man, there's something about youth when a human being is born.
Starting point is 01:28:40 It's like pressing the reset button on history. And the experience, the military experience is like so profound, especially in men. I think there's always going to be a population that's going to want to join up and try to prove something to themselves. Stephen Pressfield, the author, has this whole story about how he got drafted in the Marine Corps during Vietnam. And he was like an anti-war hippie. He didn't want to be there. He's like, this is bullshit. He was like, by the time we got to the graduation from Marine Corps boot camp, he's like,
Starting point is 01:29:11 I had tears in my eyes because like it was such a profoundly emotional experience. It's like in our DNA. And that's good. We need people like that, right? You know, people that want to be Billy Waugh, you know, and be that kind of dude. But we, you know, now, you know, me as a 42 year old and other Americans out there who vote and pay taxes, we need to make sure we're doing the best thing for those soldiers, for those service members, and that when we deploy them, we're deploying them in furtherance of achievable
Starting point is 01:29:44 strategic goals. We're not just sending them out there to just drive around until they get IED. Like, that's irresponsible and unethical. Yeah. Yeah, 100%. If you enjoy watching our show on Spotify or YouTube and you want to be more involved, I encourage you to please come check out our Patreon community. Not only does our Patreon community get every episode you see on YouTube early, fully uncensored, and ad-free, but we're also doing Patreon-exclusive episodes as well as live Q&As, and you can get your personal questions answered by our guests every single week. For me, being able to collaborate and communicate back and forth with our Patreon community every week has been huge. And this is my way of saying thank you for the cost of a cup of coffee a month. Now back to the show. There feels like more of a separation between that political layer of people.
Starting point is 01:30:31 and the actual people, the citizens of this country, right? Especially when you have this like Epstein file stuff come out and, you know, it's like we can see you're plainest day. Email saying that these people are just trying to find a way to profit off of civil wars in different countries and profit off of arms trafficking with the freaking trilateral commission, which you've been laughed out of a room for talking about the trilateral commission three years ago. Are they even still around though? I think so. Yeah, they have a full website with like a member list on it. And like, yeah, like, they, who is? We just had somebody on her.
Starting point is 01:31:04 I think you're right, though. That in, like, in big picture, overall, there's an increasing skepticism towards government. The emperor has no clothes. People are seeing it. Whatever metaphor you want to use, the Epstein files plays a big role in that. And, you know, making people feel nihilistic. Like, does anything really matter? Like, we don't even prosecute this.
Starting point is 01:31:28 then what do we go after? What do we stand for? A feeling that America is just this giant shopping spree. Yeah. Everything's up for grabs, shove $100 bills in your pockets, you know, get rich while you can. Right.
Starting point is 01:31:43 And just this overall loss in loss of faith in the institutions of government. And I think that people younger than me, so let's say people under 40, I think they have no, expectation that their lives are going to get better. Right. I think there's a sense of hopelessness.
Starting point is 01:32:06 You know, and the American dream is dead. I mean, we can see that in the data. Well, I mean, yeah, you can't, they can't pay off their high school. They're college debt. They're going to college for all these years so they can, what, drive Uber, deliver Caesar salads just so they can afford rent. They're never going to be able to, people are never going to be able to afford it to buy a house. It's insanity.
Starting point is 01:32:25 You know, it reminds me of there's this great documentary. done by a guy named Adam Curtis called HyperNormalization. I love that documentary, man. I've watched it twice. Me too. Yeah. And it reminds me exactly of this moment. Correct.
Starting point is 01:32:36 Yep. Yep. Where the people have just lost faith. They've lost faith. They know the government is fake. But they don't know what comes next. Right. You know, that's the aspect.
Starting point is 01:32:46 You know, the documentary about, it's about the Soviet Union for people who haven't seen it. Right. And how the Soviet Union was collapsing. And people knew it was collapsing. They knew communism didn't work. But they continued going. through the motions because no one had a clue what was going to come next or what should come next. And you're absolutely right. We are in that moment where the artifice of society is
Starting point is 01:33:11 kind of collapsing or at least it's being hollowed out of any meaningful content. But nobody knows, including me, I don't know. What is the next system of governance? What is the next system of economics that is supposed to prevail? The only thing we're being told right now is AI. Like AI. Yeah, exactly. AI is like the new ghost in the machine. It's like some sort of demigod that's going to create a post-scarcity society.
Starting point is 01:33:36 It's like, what? Like, what do you even talk? I think they, I think the tech overlords are just going to try to turn this country into subscription model. Like Blade Runner shit. Yeah. It's going to be, you just pay a subscription. You pay a certain percentage of your income to be, to be a part of America.
Starting point is 01:33:51 And you have to give them your, give them a sample of your DNA, all that shit. and they completely control every aspect of your life. The sad thing is if we don't push back on it, like, yes, that's exactly what they'll do. When you really, like, dig down and figure out, like, how much money that these tech companies are getting and, like, the sort of narrative, they're also trying to push out, it's very, it's very creepy. You know, like, they're trying to paint everything that's happening under this guise of Christianity. and in Silicon Valley, particularly with Peter Thiel, and he's also doing these anti-Christ lectures.
Starting point is 01:34:31 And then at the same time, they're doing this in the military. They're secular Christian fundamentalists. They believe the singularity is coming, which is just like a different version of the rapture. Yes. It's the same sort of like magical thinking. Well, and they also want to live forever. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:34:49 Which is like, that's not very Christian, you know. Did you see the whole story about all those people? people in the military like blowing the whistle about their superiors telling them that this Holy Ron war was like a Trump's the next coming of Christ and we need to do this. I did, I did see that come out. I don't know if it's true or not, but I remember when that we talked to the guy. Oh, did you? Weinstein?
Starting point is 01:35:11 Weinstein, yes. Weinstein. Yeah. What did you think? Well, he seems to be, he has an organization that is like dedicated to keeping religion out of the military, right? And he was telling me that he talked to a bunch of the whistleblowers about this stuff. And it was totally real.
Starting point is 01:35:32 That their superiors were all telling them this. There was like over 50, over 50 people in the military that came out and said the same thing from different aspects of the military. Yeah, different commands. They said their superiors told them that this is like a religious war that we need to, that Trump was anointed by Christ. Well, I'll tell you. There is a very strong, and I, look, I don't have any problem with.
Starting point is 01:35:58 Oh, 15. Okay. I don't have any problem with Christianity or with Christians or anything like that. But there's a amongst, especially the officer class and the military. I have a problem with baking that into your military. Yes. There's a pretty strong strain of it. And I remember, I can actually remember the date of this because it was September 11th, 2005.
Starting point is 01:36:22 I was in Iraq with Ranger Battalion and our platoon decided to have sort of like a memorial event to the people who are lost in 9-11, which is totally, I think, reasonable for soldiers to do something like that. The chaplain was invited to come and like give a speech or whatever. And when he started giving his spiel, he told us straight up, he's like, this is a religious war, men, and make no mistake of it, this is a religious war. I'm like, and I'm very atheist, quite frankly. And again, I don't have any problem with my Christian teammates. But when I hear stuff like that, I'm like, oh, okay. All right, man. Right.
Starting point is 01:37:04 Yeah, that's a big problem with it because you have people, I'm sure, in the military who are of many different religions or like atheists or skeptical of religion. And when you start to do that, you drive a divide between your teammates. Right. And I mean, this is a, that was good Lord. that was over 20 years ago now. But now you're seeing it quite overtly, you know, and like Homeland Security, social media accounts and stuff like that, one nation under God and all this sort of kind of,
Starting point is 01:37:31 it's when it's when it crosses that threshold and it becomes something that's kind of creepy. You know it when you see it, I guess. Yeah. Yeah, it's very odd. I don't know why they're doing that, but it seems to be a coordinated effort, you know, with Hegg Seth is one of the big people that are, that's behind it.
Starting point is 01:37:48 Well, yeah, I mean, I'm probably not supposed to go too deep into partisan politics, but I mean, that's just bad people will try to hijack religion for their own causes. Yes, exactly. You see that throughout history. Yep, 100%. Man, you're totally right about that. So going back to all the stuff with Iran and we were talking about Venezuela before that, you also, you did a story. story on this ghost mothership or something like this, this mothership that was found in Diego Garcia. Was that you that did that? Or was that on, it was on the higher side substack, but I was
Starting point is 01:38:30 reading that. No, we didn't do that story, but I know what you're talking about. It's sort of the like, it's not necessarily covert, but it's like kind of a low key special operations platform. Yeah. It was down at Diego Garcia. Yeah. I remember that. So that's crazy. So that thing was allegedly off the coast of Venezuela before that Venezuelan raid. Yes, I believe it was. And something about that ship is like, if they can track where that thing is, that means like some sort of big operation it's about to go down. They can launch platforms off of there. So, yeah. Like what kind of platforms? What do you mean? I'm not sure if it does like amphibious vehicles. I don't think so. But I think they can get like ribs, like smaller boats, like sealed delivery
Starting point is 01:39:11 vehicles. Oh, really? Type stuff. Dago Garcia is like in the middle of nowhere. Yes, it is. So why would it be way down there? Just like... So Diego Garcia is like a major resupply point. I believe it's actually a British island. But the United States has like bunkers there with all munitions and stuff like that. It's a crazy looking island. It's an atoll, right?
Starting point is 01:39:33 Where it's like a collapsed volcano. Oh, oh. Yeah. So it's like circle. It's a circular island and the inside of it's all water. Right, right. bizarre looking. Yeah, I had a friend there recently.
Starting point is 01:39:44 Oh, really? Yeah, yeah. He was there when the Iranians lobbed the ballistic missile at Diego Garcia. Really? What happened to that ballistic missile? I just landed harmlessly in the ocean. It wasn't even close to them. Wow. But yeah, there's... Pull up like a global map of it to show, give people like the context of like how... There's a little town on there. And he got pissed because when the ballistic missile came in, they stopped.
Starting point is 01:40:14 selling alcohol at the little shop there on Diego. No way. They shut down alcohol. They're like, we're on a war footing mend. No more alcohol. Wow. So he was really butt hurt about that. How far is that from Iran? That's pretty damn far, bro. That's a ways. That's a long way. I wonder how far that missile went. That's insane. I mean, hundreds of miles. I heard, I had somebody who told me that Diego Garcia was the area 50, of the ocean. That they have all kinds of spooky stuff out there. They might.
Starting point is 01:40:51 Flying saucers and shit. That would be a better place to hide it, not Area 51. True. You know, Area 51's kind of known for this stuff. So if you want to really hide that stuff, you should put it down. There's a lot of spooky stuff down in, like, the Panama City area of Florida.
Starting point is 01:41:05 Hmm. I think a lot of the Operation Ivy Bell stuff was run out of there. When we were tapping, we first started tapping Soviet under sea cable. back in the 1970s. Oh, really? Yeah. Did I ever tell you that story?
Starting point is 01:41:20 No. So I talked to one of these divers on the phone years ago, and basically they took the submarine. They went into the bay in Kamchatka in, you know, far flung eastern Russia. And they were looking for like, you know, signs and stuff along the coast that would say, like, caution. Don't, you know, be careful. There's an under rubber cable here. Right. Like, okay, we know there's a cable in the area. And they went down and the way he was describing it to me, he was one of the divers that locked out of the submarine. And he was telling me the story about the tap was already on the line. He had to go and recover the recordings. And the recordings, this is back in the day, they were analog. So they were like huge tape cassettes. And the whole, the tap was also like, you know, the size of this table almost. And it was really one. because he told me it was powered by a small nuclear reactor.
Starting point is 01:42:21 And so when he came up to it, he said because of the warmth, it was just covered in like snow crabs. They were just all over it. And it would take me like an hour to peel all the crabs off and like zip tie them to something else to keep them away. What? And then he'd have to recover the recordings. And he said it was amazing. He's like, I guess with those fiber optic cables, like you can dial down through each level of the fiber optics. and listen to the different lines that are going through.
Starting point is 01:42:47 And he's like, we'd hear like a Soviet soldier, like playing Elvis songs on his guitar to his girlfriend over the phone who's in Moscow, like just all kinds of wild stuff. And the Navy got a lot of intelligence off of that. But yeah, a lot of that stuff I think was focused out of the Panama City area, which is also where a lot of the CIA spooky maritime stuff is based out of also. And I think maybe we talked about it the last time I was on
Starting point is 01:43:14 about the guys in the South China Sea that were killed. Oh, yes. And a hurricane. Yes, yes. Yeah, we were talking about that. CIA op that unfortunately went wrong. Yeah, that's crazy. What about that story that you did about those drones that were stolen?
Starting point is 01:43:33 Oh, shit. So there was these big agricultural drones. Agricultural drones that were supposed to spray fertilizer. This happened, maybe. like a month and a half ago now. Yeah, it was a company, Ceres, that manufactures these big agricultural drones. They can carry something like 40 gallons of liquid on them
Starting point is 01:43:55 and disperse them within like eight or nine minutes or something like this. So they can aerosolize it. And there's a legitimate use of this. You'd use it to spray like pesticides on crops or whatever. And this is becoming increasingly common. So they were sitting at a warehouse in New Jersey, a bunch of these drones.
Starting point is 01:44:14 was this? This is like a month and a half ago that they were stolen. Okay. A driver, so it's like a holding warehouse, you know, New Jersey. People drop off pallets and then the buyer sends a driver driver transporter to come and pick it up. Yeah. You know, the bill of lading and all that stuff. So box truck pulls up to pick up these drones. The guy has paperwork, he has a driver's license, everything, the bill of lading, everything looks totally legit. They're like, here's your drones, bro. Put it on the truck. He gets on and drives off.
Starting point is 01:44:50 And so the warehouse calls up the company and is like, hey, the guy just came to pick up your drones. And the company was like, what guy? And at that point, everyone does a big fire drill. They're like, oh shit. And it turned out that the guy used a fake driver's license, the Department of Transportation number on the side of truck was fake. The license plates were either fake or stolen. And they, someone also hacked into the computer system to make it look like, you know, this was a legit driver. There is some sort of digital manipulation also. So it's pretty sophisticated in how this happened. You know,
Starting point is 01:45:29 they're called transit heists. And now these drones are in the wind. And the FBI gets involved. Did they're like $50,000 drones, each of them? I don't know how much they cost, but they're pretty robust. Yeah. I thought it says it was like something like 50 or 60,000. So drones like that, you know, could be used for nefarious purposes. If you load them full of poison, some sort of chemical or biological agent, and spray them over a civilian population.
Starting point is 01:46:01 Whoa, look at that, bro. Yeah. That's huge. It's a unit. Jesus. Good Lord. Okay, it has a huge tank to hold the chemicals right underneath it. So the FBI is shit and bricks looking for these things.
Starting point is 01:46:18 They get, the ATF even gets involved in case, you know, to track fertilizer because they're afraid they might put conventional bombs on these. This is something that law enforcement's been looking at for a while is like, you know, the use of drones for terrorism and even like assassination. You know, if you think about that like Luigi dude that killed the health care CEO. Like if somebody wanted to do that, you'd send like two drones and like one would blow the glass out in the building and then the second drone would go into the office and kill the guy. So the police are looking at things like that a lot now.
Starting point is 01:46:53 They're doing this whole fire drill looking for the drone or drones. About a month after they were stolen, I published that article with Sean on the high side. and that got picked up by, I don't know, probably like a dozen different media outlets picked up on it, including some big ones. Like it was in the New York Post and elsewhere. And so a couple days later, the drones were recovered. They were found just laying in a warehouse. Oh, really? A different warehouse in New Jersey.
Starting point is 01:47:28 Yeah. And a person I know told me, if somebody just comes and dumps like a house. pallets in a warehouse like everything's tracked digitally nowadays if there's like something that's not supposed to be there like that's not going to go undiscovered for more than a few hours so the idea that it was sitting there for weeks and nobody noticed is like ridiculous um but the thought i have heard a little update to this story um the fbi has some thought that because we published this story it's spooked whoever stole it and they dumped it and ran. I don't know though
Starting point is 01:48:05 I mean the most scary idea is that it was some sort of like Iranian that's what the fear was yeah yeah that was going to conduct some sort of a terrorist attack but it was so sophisticated right like how would they do something so damn sophisticated like that you know with the scrubbing of the or the having the fake DOT numbers the driver's license well transit heists and they would have to almost be in communication with the people who were supposed to pick it up to know exactly when they were coming. I have been told the FBI is looking at that as well, that there's like an insider threat. Right. Or it could just be, you know, it could just be as simple as like a just a ploy to make money, you know, to fake that they were stolen,
Starting point is 01:48:50 maybe get an insurance claim on it or something. Who knows? Oh, I don't want to accuse the company of that. I don't have any evidence of that. But I mean, companies do do that shit. Like, it's happened before. I believe it. And also, you know, the, it's, it's New Jersey. Things have been falling off the back of trucks for a very long time. Our Italian American community may or may not have been involved in those, those activities in the past. Right. Right. Yeah. The drones, Ukraine is very good at drones, allegedly. Those videos that are coming out of you. I mean, I think factually. Yeah. The, the stuff that they've been doing with the drones, like the videos that I've been seeing, that are fucking horrific
Starting point is 01:49:33 of how they've been using those drones to blow shit up and there was also something that recently came out of they're selling their technology to us now with their drone technology probably their expertise their expertise or whatever yeah
Starting point is 01:49:49 I don't follow the Ukraine war like day to day super carefully but you know something you get might be interested in I heard recently that we are sending J-Soc guys to Ukraine. And what they're doing over there was described to me as playing hide and seek with robots. So basically what they've been doing over there at the tactical level is like kind of like sending out decoys that are going to draw in the Russian drones. And then when they draw them in, they'll disable them or shoot them down or whatever they're going to do.
Starting point is 01:50:25 Oh, really? Yeah. And meanwhile, the Ukrainians have their drone. drone operators that are out there looking for the Russian drone operators. So for the Ukrainians are looking for the Russian drone pilots while the J-Soc guys are like disabling the drones themselves. Oh, interesting. So it's like trying to lure them out. It's like, yeah, it's basically like a drone ambush. Wow. That's insane, man. Yeah, you don't hear anything about that, that conflict anymore. Like, does it seem like it's a priority? Um, yeah, I mean, I just, I think a lot of that is because of, um,
Starting point is 01:50:58 this administration just in the headlines every single day with some new thing. Yeah, the war in Ukraine, unfortunately, has kind of maybe taken a backseat. I was recently at an awards dinner for journalists, and a few of our CIA stories were nominated in one of the categories. But, I mean, the thing I noticed was that across the board in all of the categories, immigration stories played a huge folks. on the on you know which not just the ones that were nominated but also one so I mean that's just to give an idea of like I think where people's heads are at I think that immigration stuff is pretty serious maybe there was like one story out of Ukraine that won an award you know immigration stories are getting the most attention yeah like ice and detention facilities and all that kind of stuff
Starting point is 01:51:52 yeah like how long ago was this this was a week ago really yeah I feel like I haven't heard a lot about immigration in the last couple in the last month or so. I feel like the Iran War and the aliens have been taking up all the... Well, in fairness, the awards are for the previous year. Ah, I see. I see. That makes sense. That makes a lot of sense.
Starting point is 01:52:16 Yeah, which I get. I mean, yeah. Right. Hold that thought. I got to get a leak real quick. Okay. We'll be right back. I've never seen so much attention on something like this before.
Starting point is 01:52:26 on a congressman on a on a on a on a election for a primary for a congressional person like i feel like this thomas massey thing is is got so many people riled up yeah i wish i could speak uh coherently about yeah have you pay any attention to it all not this well it's interesting because it's because mariam adelson is donated 20 million dollars to the person that's challenging him okay and mary al maydus adelson is also the person who donated $200 million to the Trump campaign. And she's basically an Israeli who Trump famously joked about her. He was with her, I think in Tel Aviv when they were doing some sort of a dinner. And he's like, you know, Mariam, I think you like, you care about Israel a lot more than
Starting point is 01:53:15 you care about the United States. And he was like joking about it. But he was being serious because everybody knows that's the case. You know, if you watch the BB files, we pay attention to their history. So it's crazy that Kentucky, one of the. the poorest states in our country is getting $20 million funded in the opposition of Thomas Massey, the guy who is explicitly calling out no more foreign funding and wants to get out the Epstein files. And he has the whole wrath of the administration coming down against him too.
Starting point is 01:53:44 It's a, yeah. I mean, Israel is a whole other can of worms, but that's a, that's also a generational thing. And over the next 10, 20 years, I think you're going to see. a lot more opposition to Israel. And I think that I've talked about this, you know, recently, but I don't understand how the next president, whoever runs for the president next in this country, is not going to have to have that be a main point of their campaign. Like, look, no more fucking foreign aid to.
Starting point is 01:54:16 Or at least like not like being all in, like anything you want from us will give it to you. Anything you want to do with our weapons will allow it, you know, like somebody who's like, bump in the brakes a little bit. Yeah. And like I don't blame like that's the whole thing. It's like Israel is doing what they should do, right?
Starting point is 01:54:38 That's they're doing what they think is in their best interests. I blame the people here who work, who are politicians in this country who just take the money. And they and they pretend like they are working for us when they're really not. I mean, I think it's debatable if, you know, ethnic cleansing is really in Israel's best interest long term. But I see what you're saying. I mean when it comes to subverting our people. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we pay taxes to the United States government. We don't pay taxes to Israel. Exactly. We expect our representatives to represent us, not some foreign country. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And that's, it seems like the younger generations are becoming more and more aware of this shit that more than ever now. Yeah. Yeah. The Israel stuff is really becoming like cement slippers for politicians, I feel like. Yeah, that's a good way of putting it. Yeah. That's a good way of putting it.
Starting point is 01:55:31 And, uh, it, you know, this Massey guy, I mean, he's just getting like, like grassroots support from everybody. Like he's getting donations from people on like he's just posting on Twitter, doing interviews, talking about like what's going on. And he's getting ambushed by, by like the mainstream media saying like, you know, you're pretending to be a Republican. You're a rhino. You don't vote for Republicans.
Starting point is 01:55:52 And like he says straight up, he's like, I've voted with my party on 95% of the issues, except for foreign aid and to APEC and to Israel and the Epstein fallacy. Like those are the only two things that I go against my party on. And now is getting to the point we're like, okay, this crazy Israel shit, like in our country now is getting so out of hand. They should have foreseen this. So it's like maybe they, this is intentional. No.
Starting point is 01:56:19 I mean, I don't think politicians theirs or ours are really capable of like that kind of long-term thought. And I mean, you hear the term all the time, you know, ascribe to Trump and others, you know, they're playing 3D chess. They're playing three-dimensional chess. Let me tell you something. There's nobody in the world competent enough to play three-dimensional chess. On a good day, on a good day, the United States can play chess. Most days, day-to-day, we're just playing checkers. Just day-to-day decisions. Yeah. So, yeah, when you hear, I know, I'm very skeptical about, I think, I think Netanyahu's trying to save his own ass. Trump's trying to save his own ass.
Starting point is 01:57:03 It's just, these are politicians. It's what they do. Yeah. Well, he came out on the media the other day and he said, I want to, I want to start weaning off of the aid from America. Right now it's $4 billion. And he's like, over the next, I think 10 years, we can completely wean off that foreign aid. Yeah, I believe it when I see it. 10 years, huh? How about cold turkey? What about all the money we paid already? Like, do we get a
Starting point is 01:57:27 disc? Do we get a refund? Yeah. Mike Huckabee making his whole little spiel is like, if you don't support Israel, you won't have computers anymore. You won't have cherry tomatoes. It's like, dude, what? Oh my God. You see that interview he did? He's our, he's our ambassador to Israel right now. I should point out. He did that interview where he's like, yeah, I don't. With Tucker? Yeah, where he's like, I don't mind if Israel takes over everything from the Nile to the U.S. Euphrates because like the Bible says that's their land. Yeah. It's like, bro.
Starting point is 01:57:57 Like again, I don't have a problem with religious people, Christian or Jew. But when you hear like that's, that has political repercussions. Oh, yeah. I'm like, I'm not really on board with this, man. Yeah. They want to turn Israel into ancient Babylon. They want to bring back the borders of ancient Babylon. Well, I mean, and you saw the thing Mike Johnson and the red heifers.
Starting point is 01:58:17 Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I wish that was a conspiracy theory. I wish that wasn't true. Yeah, the red heifer. And there's like the thing about the dome of the rock too. Like the dome of the rock needs to be destroyed or something.
Starting point is 01:58:29 Oh God. Or what is the real name for that? The Eloxa mosque. These people are so nuts. Yeah. It's just it feels so weird, man. All of the all of the religious zealots that are like intertwined with this whole Israel thing. You know, like with not just like the, there's like,
Starting point is 01:58:53 the evangelicals, you know, how they've like gotten all the evangelicals. There's a whole evangelical lobby here apparently. And now they're all going over there and they're somehow like convincing them that they, you know, the Jews and the evangelicals, it's this religious cohesion where we need to bring back the second coming of Christ. And it's just like, whoa, dude. This feels like the Waco thing. Yeah, yeah.
Starting point is 01:59:16 I mean, again, I'm not religious, but I think like, you know, if there's going to be a second coming, if there's going to be a rapture. I think that's kind of like on God to figure that out. It's like it's not up to us to usher it in. Well, we got to hasten it. We got to hurry it up. They're accelerationists. They're trying to accelerate the coming of the Antichrist.
Starting point is 01:59:35 Yeah, I don't think I'm on board with this. No, yeah. I hope this is all over soon. I do. I'm not optimistic. But God damn. I, yeah, I don't know. Do you want to talk about the book a little bit?
Starting point is 01:59:53 Yeah, yeah, yeah. There are some like real life stories in there. I think people get a kick out of it. Is this book out yet? No, it comes out June 9th. Okay. The Most Dangerous Man. Yeah, so the book, it's a military thriller, a novel that I wrote that's coming out in June.
Starting point is 02:00:09 And it's based off of a premise that everyone's familiar with. It's the classic short story written over 100 years ago, the most dangerous game, which is where the title, The Most Dangerous Man comes from. And the premise, again, people have. have seen it in movies, if nothing else before. The concept of human beings hunting other human beings for sport. And in this book, a group of tech bro billionaires have a army ranger kidnapped in West Africa and they hunt him for sport.
Starting point is 02:00:41 So there are characters in there, bad guys, villains who might be inspired by real life people. Oh, wow. And I think it's a lean, mean novel. Really, I didn't want to blueball the audience. You know, we get right to it. There's not a lot of bullshit in there. And, you know, the nicest thing.
Starting point is 02:01:04 I ran into Mark Graney, one of my favorite authors. And I ran into him at a conference the other day. And he read it on an airplane and was like, it was exactly what I wanted it to be. I was like, all right. That's amazing. Yeah, accomplished the mission. But to maybe get into like some of the real life stuff that kind of inspired me to write this novel, it wasn't just that I enjoyed that short story that I read in high school. Going back over a decade at this point, I was having lunch with a ranger buddy of mine. I was in college at the time. He was contracting, doing maritime security stuff. And so we sit down and we're having something to eat. And he tells me this story that he's hearing through his contractor buddies,
Starting point is 02:01:49 working in Africa, that there are these African safari guides that take wealthy people, big game hunting. And they also have contracts to do counter poaching stuff. So they're trying to stop people from killing the elephants on national game reserves and things like that. And he said what one guy did was he combined the two business models. So he started taking his wealthy clientele hunting poachers for money. Is this the vet paw? No. I believe that's a real life organization. So no. I don't I I've never heard them mentioned it with that kind of activity. The vet paw is an organization that they take military veterans out to Africa and they basically hunt poachers. They like they kid they
Starting point is 02:02:38 fucking render them. They go to their house and they pull them out of their fucking bed tonight. I've heard of some of these groups. I don't know them to be involved in what I'm describing. Okay. But I thought that was really interesting when my buddy told me that. And so again, like 10 years go by. And more recently, another friend told me a story kind of out of the blue. And this person had not direct knowledge, but they knew a European royal family that had gone down to West Africa and done this. And it was described to me like, you know, those videos of like people hunting hogs from helicopters. Mm-hmm.
Starting point is 02:03:16 It was basically that, but they were hunting poachers. Oh, shit. And I was like, yeah. Just mowing them down. That's exactly my reaction. I was like, no shit, man. Like the native poachers there. Yeah.
Starting point is 02:03:30 So that went into the inspiration for this, for this novel. And then, you know, towards the end of writing it, actually what came up on my radar, it actually popped in the news. A new story about people during the Bosnian war in the 1990s, wealthy people from Russia, the United States and Italy and perhaps elsewhere paying a lot of money to certain people in Serbia to go to the outskirts of Sarajevo and shoot civilians. They were like game hunters and they paid money for this. They actually said they paid a tariff on the people they killed. And they paid the highest tariff for where was this Sarajevo where's that in Bosnia in Bosnia why were they doing this for sport there's competitions to shoot the prettiest girl they had to pay the
Starting point is 02:04:30 highest tariff for shooting kids yeah this came out in in like the guardian and stuff like that and a lot of it is based off of a documentary called Sarajevo safari and I went and found the documentary and and I watched it towards like the end of editing this book actually. And it's horrifying what's described in that. They interview a mother who's like, her daughter was like two. She was just learning the walk and a sniper targeted them at the park and killed her daughter. It's horrifying. It's horrifying stuff. And this scenario, what I'm describing to you is working its way through the Italian court system right now. Because I don't know exactly what's going to come of it if they're going to try to
Starting point is 02:05:18 prosecute people or not. In the Sarajevo Safari documentary, yeah, there is Times of London. They interview like Bosnian intelligence officers and other people. They interview one of the fixers. His like faces blacked out, but he was like the intermediary that would like bring the people to Serbia. And they were wearing like all their hunting gear and they'd have their bolt action rifles and everything. Yeah.
Starting point is 02:05:47 Wealthy Europeans were paying, like who were the people that they were paying to do this? The Serbs, allegedly. And so did they want the bodies or do they want footage of it? Or like, what did they? I don't know if they were making footage of it, but I think they were just, they were hunting human beings the way, you know,
Starting point is 02:06:10 normal people. Did these wealthy people want the bodies? Not that. I don't think they could recover the bodies because that would require them to go into the city. Right. So, I mean, all of that kind of played into the influence for this book. Holy shit. Yeah, there's a group of tech bro hunters in the book and there's a European royal family shows up later on. Wow.
Starting point is 02:06:35 I can't believe I've never heard of this, dude. It's, yeah, it's pretty sickening. Actually, I almost feel a little bad talking about. it because like this book is fictional and it's there's a bit of social commentary in there but it was intentionally you know supposed to be you know an entertaining novel um and then when you read this it's like yeah that's just horrible it's not entertaining at all rich sniper tourists allegedly paid 90 000 to shoot civilians including kids during human safari trips to sarajevo wild claims allege this has just reported last november
Starting point is 02:07:13 number go down wealthy sniper tourists allegedly played nine thousand to shoot people during human safariiab in the 90s uh extra fee for kids including wild claims of being probed by italian prosecutors more than 10,000 were killed in sarajevo by snipers and shelling between 92 and 96 yeah but during the i mean it's just a small number that would have been you know most of them killed by you know military snip by military stuff right right who but who knows really how many of those were killed by people there are for commercial purposes, right? Oh my God, dude. Was it tens?
Starting point is 02:07:52 Was it hundreds? I don't think anyone knows. You know, like you hear stories of this too. You see this stuff in like show, like TV shows and like you hear like the crazy like occult stories of like rich people that like, okay, we're going to chase you through the woods and we go on this like ritualistic hunting thing where you have to run from us and we try to hunt you. And like you never think that this stuff is actually fucking real, dude. I mean, this is like Epstein files type shit. Yeah, it's like the degeneracy of it, right? Mm-hmm, which has been happening, you know.
Starting point is 02:08:22 Murdering innocent people for your own vanity. Dude, like, what is it about people? What is it about people that, that drives them to do this kind of thing? You know, is it, because it always seems to be like the top tier of society or like the richest people who are like royalty or. Well, there are psychopaths. you know, at the bottom strata of society too, but we locked them up in prison, you know, or in mental institutions or whatever. But when you're rich, you got a get out of free jail card. Again, get out of jail free card in a lot of ways. Jeffrey Epstein had one of those, for example,
Starting point is 02:09:01 until, again, back to our conversation about why journalism matters. The only reason why Epstein was put in prison and prosecuted was because of reporting that Julie Brown did at the Miami Herald. Julie Kay Brown, yeah. Yeah, she's great. Otherwise, he'd still be walking free today. Yeah. I was wonder, I wonder when the CIA caught wind of him, you know, because we knew that when that one guy, the guy in Florida who was working for Trump came out and said that we know he's intelligence. And basically that's why, like, we can't release any of his stuff because he belonged to intelligence.
Starting point is 02:09:38 He wouldn't have known if he was foreign intelligence, right? Who was this? It was a Florida politician and he worked under Trump's first administration. Okay. Latino guy. He has the famous quote saying that we knew, we had information regarding Epstein and we can't disclose it because that we are aware that he belonged to intelligence. And he tried to. Yeah, which means what?
Starting point is 02:10:11 He since has tried to walk that back. Acosta. Okay. Alexander Acosta. Yes. And he's the guy that had to step down, didn't he? Did he? I'm not sure.
Starting point is 02:10:23 Did Acosta have to step down? Wasn't he like the AG or something like that? Yeah, that sounds right. And he had to step down because he was involved in like this sweetheart deal that Epstein got. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yeah, he had to resign over that during the first Trump administration.
Starting point is 02:10:41 Mm. Yeah. So I'm wondering like at what point because the claim is that, you know, he, the CIA was aware of him and he was clearly, you know, working with, you know, he worked with a hood Barack who's legendary, you know, former head of Israel. And so, you know, it's like at what point did the CIA become aware of him? And why did the CIA choose to work with him? Well, I don't think the CIA worked with him. But given his international connections and the people, like, again, like if you're an American and you're trying to have a sit down meeting with Putin, you're going to come up on intelligence interceptions. Like they're going to become aware of you.
Starting point is 02:11:26 But the CIA can't actually like monitor American citizens or recruit them as like an intelligence asset. But they can't monitor American citizens, but we know they do, right? Not the CIA. What happens is like outgoing stuff gets captured. So like if I as an American citizen am trying to talk to bin Laden or something like that. Right. My information will be intercepted in the process of that because they're watching bin Laden, not me. Oh, I see.
Starting point is 02:12:05 But then when they see that I'm talking about it. cause, right? Now that's going to go to the FBI, and the FBI is going to start working that. Right, right, right, right. But my thing with the Epstein thing is like, he clearly had undeniable ties to Israel, and he was getting all these powerful people together
Starting point is 02:12:27 and quite obviously getting lots of valuable blackmail on them, all kinds of knowledge on our, getting scientists over there, heads of state over there, And compromising them, presidents, fucking Bill Clinton. So, like, don't you think it would be possible that once the CIA became aware of him, which I'm sure they did way earlier, then he got arrested? Like, if the CIA was not aware, they're so fucking incompetent.
Starting point is 02:12:56 It's not even funny. But, like, if they, when they, whenever they did become aware of what he was doing and his operation, is it possible that they were like, listen, motherfucker, we see what you? you're doing, we know what you're doing, we're not going to let you do this anymore unless you pay us a tax. Like give us some of the stuff. Like we're going to start getting some intel. I don't know. I mean, I've heard these allegations for years that like the CIA is running global drug trafficking. I'm like, these guys, I mean, the thing about the CIA is, and on one hand, it's very interesting, but on the other hand, it's not as interesting as a lot of people think it is.
Starting point is 02:13:31 You know, one of the funniest descriptions I ever heard was that it's like the post office, but with spies. That's not entirely accurate. Maybe the more accurate thing I heard as a former agency guy told me he's like, the job is 99% bureaucratic bullshit and one percent, holy shit, I can't believe we're doing this. That's probably more in the ballpark of what it's really like. Yeah, yeah. I think from the files, I think it became clear. I think he was above, like, the intelligence layer. You know what I mean?
Starting point is 02:14:05 I mean, he's above every layer in a sense when it comes to any sort of accountability. Oh, sure. And I think he's probably still alive. Really? Yeah. You think he's hanging out with like Tupac and Biggie? No, I think he's probably in Israel. I think you probably got a facial reconstruction.
Starting point is 02:14:22 And he's probably back there somewhere or on another island somewhere. Maybe he's in Las Vegas with Elvis. I don't think Maybe he's Palm Beach Pete, bro. Have you seen Palm Beach Pete? Uh-uh. You haven't seen Palm Beach Pete? No, no.
Starting point is 02:14:36 Oh my God. Show him Palm Beach Pete. Palm Beach Pete is a super celebrity living in South Florida because he looks just like Jeffrey Epstein. Oh, really? And he actually met Jeffrey Epstein. He talks just like Jeffrey Epstein.
Starting point is 02:14:49 And he's like, he's going on like late night talk shows. Oh, my God. He has a cameo account. People are paying him. Look, this is him. Put your head phone. Yeah, man. Check this guy out.
Starting point is 02:15:07 Some dude randomly filmed me while I was driving on I-95, unbeknownst to me. And the next thing I know, I'm a viral sensation. It's pretty crazy. I want to thank everybody for the positive comments I got from saying, I'm not Jeffrey Epstein. I'm just Palm Beach Pete. Going to play some tennis today, going to town, have lunch. I'm so not Jeffrey Epstein.
Starting point is 02:15:32 I'm just me being me. And it's a crazy phenomenon that has went really viral. And I really appreciate all the support. And just want to reiterate, I'm Peter from Palm Beach, have nothing to do with Jeffrey Epstein. He's a very bad person. What he did, obviously. And he is dead. And I'm alive.
Starting point is 02:15:53 He ain't dead, motherfucker. Dude, that's hilarious. He's alive. I'm convinced he's alive. I think, man, this is getting off topic. But I mean, Jeff Epstein is the type of guy. Like he could not have done prison time. Like a dude like that, you put him in the box.
Starting point is 02:16:15 And I think he chose his own way out. So number one, they're in the Epstein files and in recorded depositions with him. He has stated that he does not have a prostate. There was emails with him and his doctor talking about medications he was going to go on and all this stuff, and he's explaining the reason why he's on these medications is because he doesn't have a prostate. He got his prostate removed early on in life, right?
Starting point is 02:16:44 In his official autopsy, there's a full examination of his prostate. Hey, y'all, it's Kelly Clarkson with Wayfair. Ever order furniture online and wonder, what if? Like, what if it doesn't hold up? That sofa was four days old. You should have ordered from Wayfair. With Wayfair, there's no what if. Just style you love and quality you can trust.
Starting point is 02:17:03 Visit wayfair.ca. Wayfair, every style, every home. Which is in fine working order. That's the first big red flag. Why the fuck does he have a prostate after he's dead? That is, yes, if that's true, it's quite odd. Quite odd. Also, the new note that came out from that freaking juiced up gorilla that they put in the cop killer.
Starting point is 02:17:31 Well, he's a cop that smoked like four people. Yeah, yeah. killed four people and the dude looks like he's injecting gasoline into his veins. He's so big. They put that guy in his cell after he assaulted or was it the story that he allegedly like, I forget what the first story was, but I guess I think he was assaulted by the guy first. And then now after all these years, the guy comes out, his law, his lawyers come out with this note that's allegedly a suicide note. And it's definitely Jeffrey Epstein's handwriting, too. Like, we know this.
Starting point is 02:18:10 Like, why wouldn't you release that six years ago? Yeah, correct. I mean, the thing is that, you know, this is like the new JFK assassination that, you know, we were, I mean, actually, it's a lot worse. You know, but I think that this guy escaped accountability for so long. So many people could have stopped him and should have. Right. We are lied for, and we're, I think they're probably still lying to us about. what this guy was up to, goes back to that loss of faith in the institutions that we were talking about that,
Starting point is 02:18:43 now you can't help but wonder, like, what else are you lying to me about? What else is going on? How many other Jeffrey Epstein's are there out there? Right. People wonder about that, and I'm not saying there are others out there, but it's quite natural to ask that question. Yeah, it is. And that's a good question. And how many more people are still like that that are out there operating that we have no clue exist, you know?
Starting point is 02:19:09 Like they haven't they haven't even started to excavate the surface layer of this whole thing. And I don't think that we'll probably ever know the truth about it because it's like it's like civilization ending type shit. You know, the people that were involved. Fall of Rome type shit. It's fall of Rome type shit earlier it is. It's like the same shit Tiberius was doing, you know, with like these. crazy stories of these sadistic, ancient Roman emperors that were just killing and torturing people all the time. Yeah, for fun.
Starting point is 02:19:42 For fun. And like I said, going back to what you were saying about your book, about those people that are hunting people, it's like the level of like psychopath and sociopathy that are in these people that's in these people. It's just like it's a, it's a tale as old as time with people that are the, layer of society doing this kind of shit. The extreme wealth and power, I mean, it definitely seems to have a negative consequence for these people. What is this, Steve? Oh, this is the, uh, the prostate email.
Starting point is 02:20:18 Okay. Oh, we're saying in the deposition. So Richard says exactly. And it's not clear, uh, what other effects, those hormones might be having, um, that aren't replacing the testosterone. And so the advantage of to taking testosterone, there are two different things. You can have high testosterone and still have a need for Viagra because you don't have a prostate, right? Jeffrey Epstein, correct.
Starting point is 02:20:40 So that's an extreme example. Bladder contains approximately 5 ml of cloudy yellow urine. The prostate is slightly and diffusely enlarged with marked enlargement of the, whatever that word is. And the testes are unremarkable. Yeah, I wonder what, how? I mean, I'm horrified that we're having such an in-depth conversation about Jeffrey Epstein's prostate. Right. But yeah, I wonder what was going on there.
Starting point is 02:21:13 Yeah. Nothing to see here, bro. There's also a crazy show that was done with, I think it was Discovery maybe, where that guy, Andy Bustamante, that like famous YouTube spy, he did this series on, or like one episode of the show that they're doing where they got the blueprints of the cell that he was in and like the official blueprints. And then they like reconstructed it and tried to like simulate how to hang yourself.
Starting point is 02:21:50 And there was like virtually no fucking way to kill yourself. And unless like they, he tried doing it like with the exact rope or the exact cloth tied around his neck within the confines of that. cell and he's like there's no way you could jump off this bump without fucking hitting that wall and like smashing your head on the wall and you'd have a huge contusion on your head. He's like there's no way he could have like reasonably like strangled himself to death. So and then there was also like a separate little area of that cell that was like a cut out into the room where like the wall came in at like a 90 degree angle.
Starting point is 02:22:23 And he's like, it's weird. He's like this part of the cell isn't on the official blueprints. He's like, but it is there. So he's like, why would there be? Why would this be different in the blueprints and from like what the actual dimensions of the cell are? And they're speculating that it could have been like a secret room that he could have been in like exfiltrated out of. And he's like, yeah, it wouldn't have been hard to do this, you know? But who knows?
Starting point is 02:22:49 Yeah. I mean, it starts to sound like magic bullet theories at a certain point. But yeah, yeah, it does. Speaking of the magic bullet, did you see the stuff that just came out about allegedly the DNI office like the C. I stole a bunch of files out of the DNI office. Yeah, I did. I saw that, like, coming out in social media and stuff. I mean, I don't see how that could possibly be true.
Starting point is 02:23:11 Yeah. Like, who's the CIA going to send to the DNI to confiscate files and why for what purpose? Yeah. So it was supposed to be a bunch of MK Ultra files, JFK files, and something else. I think especially with this administration, you have to be cautious about, like, what we were talking about with Ratcliffe, where, you know, there are all these little chai boys around the administration who are all competing with one another for the king's favor. And I think that's where a lot of these like leaks and stories and stuff sometimes come from. Yeah, well, I was watching
Starting point is 02:23:48 something about that. And it was saying that that happened a year ago. But the story is now somehow just hitting the news about the DNI office, who is the, I mean, the head of the, The DNI is Tulsi Gabbard, right? She's the head of director of national intelligence. What's Tulsi saying about it? Yeah. Yeah. What did Tulsi say about that?
Starting point is 02:24:09 Find out what Tulsi said about that. Because I heard that that actually happened a year ago, but now all of a sudden it's in the news. And the Anna Polina Luna lady was on TV demanding that the CIA returned the documents. Like you have 24 hours to return these documents or else. I mean, the sad thing is like I know people are hoping. that the U.S. government has these like documents on the JFK assassination that are going to like offer clarity and bring about some sort of like resolution. And I'm sorry like I'm that guy that's
Starting point is 02:24:44 probably going to piss off a lot of your listeners. Like those documents don't exist. Like we don't have them. You know, Trump keeps talking about this stuff that he's going to release this and release that. And even the other stuff that he talks about like the election being rigged. He's the president. He has this whole apparatus under him. He can declassify anything he wants, order investigations into things. Where are these documents? Where's the proof? And again, it's just these documents don't exist. And it's very similar to the whole like UFO disclosure thing. Yes. Disclosure's right around the corner. It's coming. Well, I think if there's, I think that stuff's real, I don't think the president has access to it. So Tulsi Gabbard says her office denies the Florida lawmaker's
Starting point is 02:25:30 of CIA rating and seizing JFK and NMK Ultra Documents. Okay. I seem to, I found this with. This all feels like a big limited hangout. It's probably just some person in that lawmaker's office trying to get the boss into the headlines or something. Right, maybe. And that's the problem again, like talking about like the issues with journalism is, especially when you work for big publications, you know, New York Times,
Starting point is 02:25:59 Is that the best you could find is Fox 9? Oh, that's what I was trying. There's only three articles I could find. And they're all odd. This is another one. I, we on, whoever we on is. That's China. Same information is just.
Starting point is 02:26:10 Tulsi Gabbar's office denies whistleblower claims on the CIA raid. Okay. Is that when governmental offices are leaking something to the press, to, especially newspapers and so on. Mm-hmm. Sometimes those leaks are contained some accurate information, but They're also being weak for political reasons. Like someone in the office is trying to screw over someone else in the office.
Starting point is 02:26:37 And you don't know who those people are or even what their motivations are. So like, yeah, you see a story like this hit the press and like you say they're kind of weird. Like it seems like a weird article with kind of like opaque information. And maybe that's what's going on there. John Kariakou told me that the reason that the FBI and he says he has sources that are like very tight in, like still has like very tight sources in, um, in the agency and like in the White House and stuff. And he told me on this podcast that the reason that they're not going to release the JFK files is because they point to a very specific country, basically saying Israel.
Starting point is 02:27:16 He's saying that Israel's there's some stuff. I think it has more to do with Cuba. We had probably assets in Cuba. And I think that's the last stuff that they're hesitant to declassify. Um, because they don't like to give up their sources in methods. If it's, look, you can, I'll be here on camera, on audio saying there is not going to be any new revelations from any government files about the JFK assassination. I'm with you. I don't think there will be either. You know, that sucks. I know there's a lot of people out there who want some sort of resolution to this. It's like an open wound for a lot of Americans, even all these years later. But I don't think we're going to really get any deeper information than we have today. Yeah. I think the person that I've talked to you who has like the most
Starting point is 02:28:02 like smoking gun evidence I've ever seen is this guy named John Newman. I don't have you ever heard of him. No. He was a consultant actually on the first JFK film with Oliver Stone. And I've had multiple JFK experts on here. And I've asked all of them. I'm like, who's like the number one like de facto most educated person on this whole thing who's like read all the documents and and been studying this longer than anyone.
Starting point is 02:28:31 And they all say that this John Newman dude is. So I had him in here. And he was telling me this crazy story on how he actually tracked down a cable. This doesn't prove who did it. But it does prove that who was involved. He says he tracked down a cable between the FBI and the CIA, the CIA's Mexico City desk and the FBI. FBI basically that shows that there was this thing called a flash stop on Oswald's record.
Starting point is 02:29:03 Meaning it was like a like an alarm siren. Yeah, they were watching him. They were watching him very closely. And a couple days or maybe a week before JFK was assassinated, the flash stop was removed off of his file because he said that like that flash stop, if he was anywhere near that area during that day, it would have set off all the alarm bells. And he would have been in the equivalent of a fleet at a Lysol convention. But in the 1960s, how would they know if he was there or not?
Starting point is 02:29:39 I don't know. Nowadays, with license plate readers and everything else, I mean, I... But he found, so he found the CIA lady who signed off on that cable, that CIA cable. And he went, her name was Jane Roman. And he went and interviewed her at her home before she died. And she's like, what is this? What do you make of this? cable. Can you explain this? And she goes, it's very indicative of some sort of close interest in
Starting point is 02:30:04 Oswald that is way above my pay grade. And she's like, I didn't ask any questions, but it's very odd. I mean, I'm not a JFK expert either. But I mean, I believe that they were interested in him because he was approaching the Soviets at one point. Yeah, he defected, right? Or something like this. I mean, I recall the story. So I mean, it makes sense that they would have an interest in him. In retrospect, of course, maybe they should have had more of an interest in him. Right. Yeah.
Starting point is 02:30:33 Yeah. One of the things we haven't talked about yet is China. What do you, what is your like overall view of how China is doing on like the geopolitical stage compared to when we're involved in this Iran thing? I know they're definitely affected quite a bit by this. and then Trump just went and visited China and had a bunch of nice things to say about them and wants to work very closely with them. I mean, obviously we don't want to get into
Starting point is 02:31:02 a fucking punching match with China. Yeah, absolutely. I don't think the Chinese want that either. I mean, I think China is very shrewdly playing a longer game here than we are. The first Trump administration was pretty antagonistic towards the Chinese. Biden came in and also was pretty antagonistic
Starting point is 02:31:23 and about, you know, nationalized and critical industries and things like that, getting away from Chinese dependents. Trump, too, seems like they want, you know, reconciliation with both Russia and China. Maybe, I guess they want them as trade partners. I don't have to guess. I mean, look at who we brought with them on that trip to China. Every CEO known to man. Everyone looking to cash in, shove $100 bills in their pockets. Must be nice to have those kinds of political connections. Did you see the videos, the videos and walking around, like the kids jumping up and down? It's shameful, really.
Starting point is 02:32:03 But, I mean, I think the Chinese are pretty content to sit back and watch the chaos unfold in the United States. Because they don't have to do anything. All they have to do is watch us screw up. Yeah. And, you know, the Chinese have in some documents in the past described their approach towards America as trying to manage a declining empire because empires in decline lash out and they get violent and they try to blame other people for their problems. Now I'm not trying to downplay the you know threat that the Chinese pose in some ways to the United States but they're not wrong either right they can they feel
Starting point is 02:32:44 that I think they feel that they can kind of sit back and just watch us and plode from within they don't really have to compete with us never mind get into a shooting war with us like right is that really necessary. Right. The way America is right now, if China did invade Taiwan, what would we do? Would we do anything? Would they even have to invade? Do you think they could just like buy off those politicians? It seems like there's some diplomacy happening, right? Yes. I mean, a lot of that's already in the works. And KMT, the Chinese nationalist party, is leaning towards unification with the Chinese mainland. So yeah, I think from China's point of view, they would much rather have Taiwan vote itself back into the mainland. Right. Yeah, I don't think, I don't think China is like
Starting point is 02:33:33 hankering for a war or anything like that. That's not their prerogative. And is that, do you think that's a, like, how is that a problem for us? Well, that they're not looking for a war is not a problem. I mean, I mean that they unify with Taiwan. Well, take Taiwan, however you want to say it. Taiwan is interesting in the sense that these Chinese nationalists escaped from China during the cultural revolution, when the Chinese civil war essentially, escaped to Taiwan. And Taiwan represents a Chinese population very close that has embraced democracy and capitalism and makes it work. And it kind of flies in the face of the party line, literally the party line of the Chinese Communist Party Party that, freedom can't work for Chinese people. Taiwan contradicts that.
Starting point is 02:34:29 So it's a problem for the Chinese. From the United States, from our perspective, as we become isolationist or increasingly non-interventionist, maybe we don't care. Okay. If the Chinese control the shipping lanes in and out of Asia, do we care about that? Does that impact us?
Starting point is 02:34:49 you know if they start um they're already taking over these artificial islands or actual existing islands um from the philippines um it's a strategy that has been described as slicing the salami you're just changing norms very slowly very incrementally yes and then by the time somebody's like oh shit the chinese control you know half of southeast asia and it's like oh well what are you going to do about it now that yeah it's like a soft power strategy i mean like the Belt and Road. Some, some hard power. I mean, annexing Filipino territory is hard power, but there's a lot of soft power. You're right. And a lot of diplomacy. So ideally, I mean, we could reach some sort of, you know, modus vivendi, a sort of like normalization of things,
Starting point is 02:35:40 of relations with China. But the reality is America sees itself as a hegemon, the Chinese see themselves as a hegemon, like, we're going to collide. And we should probably be realistic about that. But, I mean, again, back to the Taiwan issue. If China did invade Taiwan or did reintegrate it into the mainland, ask the average American why that matters to them. They're probably like, where's Taiwan? What's that? Right. So, I mean, yeah. Well, the big thing is like the chips, right? Semiconductors. The semiconductors. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I mean, if you care about democracy, A lot of people seem not to. Yeah.
Starting point is 02:36:24 And they also, they manufacture like 90% of our pharmaceuticals, our pharmaceutical products there. They own a huge ton of our debt. It's like we're really in no position to challenge them whatsoever. The Taiwanese or the Chinese? The Chinese. Oh yeah. So that's a lot of the like stuff that we were trying to do to bring some of that industry back to the United States so that we're less reliant on the Chinese.
Starting point is 02:36:51 Honestly, I don't even know where those policies and where those programs are under a second Trump administration. I'm not sure. They may not exist. Yeah. Yeah. And it, you know, it's kind of like it's strange. And then Trump's also talking about taking Cuba. People are saying that he's going to try to take over Cuba in like the next month or so. I don't know how that works. I don't know what the, you know, some people think it's good. Like, oh, great, we'll have more vacations. spots, but like how logistic, how real is that? Is it going to be as easy as Venezuela? I mean, I think Trump has brainwashed himself into thinking he can chalk up these easy military wins like we were talking about earlier. And then he pat himself on the back, give him one of these,
Starting point is 02:37:34 be like, oh, yeah, we won. So you see him like going and fucking with like Denmark over Greenland. Right. Or like the Canadians. Right. Like what was the strategic benefit of any of this? Like we have military all over Greenland already. If you want to put a new military base on Greenland, just ask the Danes. They'll be like, yeah, okay. Seriously, they want to work with us. So I think, especially as this administration goes on and after midterms, he's going to be totally constrained as far as what he can do domestically. So I think you're going to probably see it increased rather than decrease his desire to use the military to achieve quick, easy, political wins. And as we've seen in Iran, they're not always so quick and so easy. Right. Yeah, man,
Starting point is 02:38:24 it's crazy times. Thanks for doing this, bro. This has been fucking awesome. Thanks for having me. I hope the interview was useful and- Oh, hell yeah, man. Listeners like it. Amazing. What else can people look forward to coming out? Obviously, your book's coming out soon, right? Yeah, the most dangerous man. Yeah, hold it up so people can see the cover. Coming out June 9th. Kindle, hard copy. be whatever you want. And then new stories you're working on. New stories. We're working on stuff at the high side.
Starting point is 02:38:53 Sean and I have a few things working. One of them, I'll just say the uranium enrichment is something that I'm watching. The uranium issue in Iran. Otherwise, the podcast, the team house, that's still going strong,
Starting point is 02:39:09 interviewing all kinds of special ops guys. CIA folks. I get a lot of my guests from your podcast. Oh, do you really? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, if you ever want me to introduce you to any of those folks, just let me know.
Starting point is 02:39:20 And so, yeah, that's it. Otherwise, I'm moving to another part of the city this summer. And that's going to keep busy. You're getting out of Brooklyn? I'm still going to be in Brooklyn. Right on the sort of the edge of Brooklyn and Queens. Okay. I'm staying in the area.
Starting point is 02:39:37 Love it, man. Yeah. Well, thanks again, dude. This has been super fun. We'll link all your stuff below for people to check it out. Yeah, thank you, Danny. All right. Good night, everybody.

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