DeProgram with John Kiriakou and Ted Rall - DeProgram with Ted Rall and John Kiriakou: “China Using LinkedIn to Recruit Spies”

Episode Date: November 19, 2025

Political cartoonist Ted Rall and CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou tell you all about a bizarre scheme by the Ministry of State Security to ensnare UK lawmakers, staffers, consultants, economists, and think tank experts. Shifting to the U.S., the latest NPR/PBS News/Marist poll reveals Democrats surging 14 points ahead—55%-41%—on congressional ballots, independents favoring them 33 points, signaling a possible “blue wave” if Democrats don’t mess it up. Trump is greenlighting CIA covert ops in Venezuela—prepping sabotage, cyber, or psyops battlefields—as the State designation of “Cartel de los Soles terrorists” turns out to be a figment of the imagination. And Montreal's Allan Memorial Institute survivor leads a class-action lawsuit exposing CIA's MK-Ultra mind control via unwitting LSD dosing, electroshocks, "psychic driving" tapes, barbiturates, stimulants, nitrous oxide, sensory deprivation, and comas on thousands of Canadians across 100+ sites. Wanted in the UK: MSS Spies: MI5 unveils China's Ministry of State Security (their CIA) deploy China-based headhunters like Amanda Qiu and Shirly Shen to covertly approach UK targets via LinkedIn and fake firms, posing freelance geopolitical gigs to harvest low-value intel pieces as a predecessor for broader efforts. Security Minister Dan Jarvis calls it a threat to democracy, just months after prosecutors dropped charges against accused spies. Beijing's embassy fires back, calling the allegations "malicious slander," as MI5's Ken McCallum last month decried Beijing's cyber thefts and public life intrusions.U.S. Midterm Poll Bad for Republicans: The November 10-13 NPR/PBS News/Marist survey of 1,443 adults shows Democrats commanding a 14-point edge—55%-41%—in congressional races, with independents swinging 33 points blue, evoking 2017's prelude to 40-seat gains amid Trump's 39% approval low and 48% strong disapproval peak. Voters blame Republicans or Trump for shutdowns hits 60%, while 57% prioritize price drops over immigration, eroding GOP momentum despite 90% base approval. Institutional distrust soars—80% hate Congress, 75% hate media—with 80%+ across aisles viewing opponents as "closed-minded," 70% "dishonest," independents harsher on Republicans, brewing volatility after the Dems’ recent wins.Trump Goes Covert Against Venezuela: President Trump authorizes CIA covert measures—potentially sabotage, cyber, psyops, coinciding with the USS Gerald R. Ford's weekend Caribbean arrival, 15,000 troops, and "Operation Southern Spear" buildup rivaling 1962's Cuba blockade, as planners map drug facility and Maduro-loyalist strikes. Back-channel parleys yield Maduro's rejected two-year delay on resignation for U.S. oil access, with State set to terrorist-label the fictional “Cartel de los Soles,” enabling escalation; Trump hints at ground forces, stressing drug/immigration curbs publicly while eyeing resources privately. 21 congressional-bypassing boat strikes killed 83, only hitting cocaine despite fentanyl talk, amid undecided endgame—diplomacy, voluntary exit, or forcible removal.MK-Ultra Lawsuit Advances in Canada: A Montreal judge rejects Royal Victoria Hospital's appeal, advancing class-action suit by Allan Memorial survivor Lana Ponting, age 16 in 1958, against CIA-backed MK-Ultra experiments involving unwitting LSD, electroshocks, "psychic driving" tape loops of conflicting messages, barbiturates, stimulants, nitrous oxide, deprivation, and comas on thousands via 100+ sites. Committed for "disobedient" teen antics post-move, Ponting uncovers files revealing Dr. Ewen Cameron's McGill horrors—unbeknownst CIA-funded till 1964—yielding lifelong meds, nightmares, memory loss; excluded from 1992's C$100,000 humanitarian payouts sans liability.

Good morning, good morning. You're watching D. Program with Ted Rall and John Kyriaku. John, good to see you. Good to see you, Ted. Good morning. Good morning. So lots to talk about as always. So I love the, there's a couple of spy stories.

So you might have some stuff to say about this. The MSS, which is the CIA for China, is being accused by the UK. of recruiting assets or maybe agents through LinkedIn. So, you know, I mean, this is good news. I mean, for years I've been on LinkedIn and I've never gotten so much as the slightest lead from LinkedIn. So I was beginning to wonder if there were any real jobs on it. So this indicates to be that at least in the UK,

there are real jobs betraying your country. Let me add something to that. So I'm on LinkedIn all the time. I have thousands and thousands of contacts. I don't send out contact requests, but people send them to me. And unless you're like obviously a nut or a weirdo or a scammer, I just accept people. So anyway, about a year ago, I got an invitation from a professor in China, at some university I never heard of.

And so I accepted it. And then he said, he messaged me and he said, oh, I've watched your videos on YouTube. and I would like to invite you to come to China to speak. Okay, great. I'd love to go to China to speak. I have a speaker's agent. I have a price. And so I said, great, let's have that conversation.

In fact, that's exactly what I said is let's have that conversation. So then he comes back and he says, I've made all the arrangements for five stops. And I said, whoa, wait a minute. we haven't even begun to discuss this yet. So no. We're not going to do five stops. This has gone on for the last year. And as recently as two weeks ago, he emailed me and said,

why don't you respond to me? I've already arranged all of your stops all across eastern China. And I wrote back finally and I said, I don't do work for the Chinese intelligence service. and then he blocked me. But that's what he was. I said, I showed, I showed all these messages to a dear friend of mine, Fulton Armstrong.

Fulton and I were at the CIA together. He was the national intelligence officer for China. And then we were on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee staff together. And I said, tell me if I'm nuts, but this is Chinese intelligence, right? And he looks at it and he says, 100%. The Ministry of State Security. Yeah. That's amazing.

Yeah. I didn't expect there to be a personal anecdote there. The Chinese, the Chinese are successful when they're trying to recruit somebody who just wants money. They don't care about the fallout. They don't care about the risks. They want money. The Chinese have the money. In terms of developing a source who may or may not realize he's being recruited by Chinese intelligence, they're really bad at it.

they're really, really bad at it. But normally they're looking for people who have access to very sophisticated technology. Well, so in this particular case, and I guess we're just going to leap into it, just please like, follow and share the show. You know all that stuff, guys. And we'll bring in Robbie later on to talk about why you should all watch us on not on LinkedIn. Well, maybe we'd make money on LinkedIn working for China.

But certainly over on Rumble. But, okay, so the allegation here from the UK, and I guess it's sounding increasingly credible, is that they approach, they've been approaching all sorts of people, like academics, MPs. What would they want from a British MP? I mean, I guess some of them have access to classified information. I mean, is the idea basically, like, they dip their toe in the water, like, come and work for us, and it sounds legit at first, like, you're just asking for, say, a white paper. or a report or something that's publicly available. Maybe. And then you, then you, then you, then they ask for something a little more. And it goes like that. Normally that would be the progression, yes. But with a member of parliament, you would all, you would also have access to inside information on official deliberations.

Anything from trade to defense to politics, you would have an insider reporting back to you. Now, listen, 90% of the time, you'll be able to get that same information out of a newspaper. But that extra 10%, they're willing to pay good money for it. Interesting. And money's no object. Money's no object. They're flush with money. So whatever.

So I guess the question now is, what if anything can the UK or any target of this kind of approach? Right. I mean, obviously, you can't inoculate yourself, but how can you mitigate it? Right. You know what? Teach your people good counterintelligence techniques. Most people wouldn't realize that they were being pitched or targeted by a Chinese intelligence officer. And that's the whole point from the Chinese side.

And so just, you know, make sure people are always questioning. The headhunters here were clearly Chinese. I mean, you know, someone named Amanda Chu and Shirley Shen is clearly, they're clearly Chinese, but there's lots of, the problem is there's lots of legitimate Chinese business people. Exactly. Yes. So just have your counterintelligence antenna up.

Yeah. And if there's something in your gut that makes you think that that it's wrong, something's wrong. Too good to be true. Yeah. Then it is too good to be true. Yeah. Well, I would be suspicious, John, of anybody approaching to offer me money on LinkedIn. I'm really not kidding.

It's to me the most worthless thing ever. I've never had anything legit pop up ever. I mean, I've never had someone say, hey, let's do them. You know, would you draw a freelance cartoon for me? Or I'd like just buy an original. Nothing. I actually make money on LinkedIn.

Really? I just made a thousand bucks a week ago. Good. A guy asked me, he said, hey, can you do a one-page paper for me? I said, yeah, give me a thousand bucks. And boom, five minutes later, he zels it to me. I've been, I must be, well, you've been. might just have a better profile than me, but I also don't. I always wonder if I'm not doing

social media right. All right. Well, other stuff to talk about. New poll is out. Super interesting. Want to you get your thoughts about that. It's the first look at basically the midterms. And it looks like right now, Democrats would seem to be sitting pretty, but I'm not so sure I believe that. And then Trump has authorized CIA covert action against Venezuela. So I want to talk to you about, like, what that could possibly entail, because it seems like that's very broad and possibly very vague. And then last but not least, I wanted to, I'm fascinated by M.K. Ultra. My son is fascinating, fascinated by M.K. Ultra.

And, you know, this really seemed like something that by now happened so long ago that it would really be in our rearview mirror and just a subject of history. Yeah. But there's a new lawsuit that's just been authorized up in Canada. in Montreal, there's a class action lawsuit from one of the victims who was, she's quite old, but back in 1958, she was 16 years old. So she was born in 1942. And she went through all, apparently through all sorts of hell when she was basically like kind of like a disobedient juvenile delinquent type. And some judge, you know, basically sent her off to the tender mercies

of the MK Ultra program that was being administered by a. Canadian guy who's now long dead. And we know with 100% certainty that many of the MK Ultra experiments took place in Canada. Why? We asked the Canadian intelligence service to help us out. This was all anti-Soviet, anti-Chinese, you know, remote viewing and LSD and all that stuff.

And they gladly helped. Was it just, I mean, it was just because we're allies. I mean, from the CIA point of view, why not just do it here? at home or was it partly, you know, it's a little bit remote. It's a little bit plausible deniability. We mostly did it at home. What M.K. Ultra is for people who don't know. It was a top secret CIA program from 1955. The origins were 195 up to 1975 when they were caught by the church committee. And so what they did was things like they experimented on American citizens without their knowledge by dosing people with LSD.

They hired prostitutes in San Francisco to go out on the street, find Johns, lure them back to the CIA Safehouse and dose the Johns with LSD, just to see if the Johns would give up their deepest, darkest secrets. They pumped a germ into the air during an especially foggy morning in San Francisco, just to see if they could successfully infect large numbers of people, and 11 people came down with this very rare upper respiratory infection. And then it was things like... In the New York City subway system, they dropped a germ off the back of a subway in a light bulb.

Correct. And it broke. And they wanted to track it, right? It was about... And they thought it was innocuous. Yeah. And some really old guy who suffered from us who had... It would have been me.

I have respiratory issues. Sure. And he was like, I don't know, maybe 80 or something. And he kicked. He died. Yes. That's what they did. And there were sub-operations, M.K.

Chick-Wit, M-K., nightclub, that did other things. The truth is the CIA dosed its own employees with LSD, at least one committed suicide, probably two. And it was only because the church committee accidentally stumbled on it that we know anything about it. And then Senator Church in that hearing ordered the CIA director to preserve every page of documents. And he went back to CIA headquarters and ordered everybody to destroy everything. And so what we have left is just about

20% of the documents that they either hadn't found or didn't destroy, couldn't destroy for whatever reason. So we really don't know anymore what MK Ultra carbon paper is carbon paper was an investigator's friend back then because that right every government memo was carboned right like you know for people who are old you know it's basically how to make a Xerox copy before there was a Xerox machine and so you know like whenever I've researched government archives you'll often find the same document the same memo you know in six different archives because it was you know you know, different places.

So it's hard for a government to get rid of everything. It always looks like that. Yes. That last scene of Indiana Jones in the giant arc, in the giant warehouse. Warehouse. Yeah. Somebody makes a comment. Oh, no, no.

We'll get to that. We'll get to that in a minute. But anyway, M.K. Ultra. I mean, and I know that we've got a packed show. We only have 45 minutes left, and there's a lot on the agenda. But I wanted to say something, too. The Washington Post is reporting today that, a democratic delegate, this is a non-voting member of Congress from the U.S. Virgin Islands by the name of Stacey Plaskett.

I never heard of Stacey Plaskett until this morning. She was found in these latest Epstein documents to have been texting Epstein in 2019 live while the Epstein hearing was going on. It was just found in this in this tranche of documents last night a republican from south carolina by the name of uh ralph norman introduced a resolution to um censure her saying it was beyond comprehension that she would communicate with epstein live during a hearing on epstein was this a closed door hearing no it was no but epstein told her what questions to ask of michael cohen trump's former attorney wow yeah get this so he had his so he had his he had his his eye in the room yeah he did he had his eye in the room the resolution to censure her failed 214 to 209 all democrats voted no that just i mean

talk about frigging corruption that's disgusting disgusting um you know by the way speaking of disgusting uh perhaps the man in america with the dumb ideas about women in science, Larry Summers. Yes. He, you know, has just stepped down right before the show from the board of Open AI. I guess my chances of being decensured from JetGPT may have gone out the window with him. Or maybe not. Maybe they've increased.

But he's gone. He said that he was stepping. He was not going to do this. But a couple of days ago, he apologized, said he was deeply ashamed of his association with Epstein, and I assume more maybe than his association. Yeah, so why didn't, why didn't he say that years ago? Years ago. Why, now that we've caught him as a pedophile, only now he decides he needs to resign

from these boards. And only now is he so deeply ashamed. And now he's, but he still wants to teach. Yeah, he still wants to teach. And he still is going to teach unless Harvard fires him. He's not the president of Harvard anymore, but he's still a tenured professor. Absolutely. Yeah. And this is, I mean, by the way, I don't know how much I would be interested in learning from a person who doesn't think that women are as good at math and science as men. Call Marie Curie. I don't know. But, but I mean, so, yeah, I mean, he's been caught. I mean, is that it for him? I mean, basically it's this. This is the new crisis management when you get caught doing something really terrible. I'm going to step aside. I'm going to back off. I'm going to reassess.

spend time in therapy, maybe go look at plants and animals. You know, I mean, and so that's it. I mean, the implication is really clear that he was doing very bad things to very innocent girls. Yes. Yes, he was indeed. Yeah. And there's not going to be any price for him to pay. Just this self-flagellation that's all for the public's consumption.

And then that's all. Question related to this for you, John, from D's nuts. I just watched your latest episode on Deep Focus. You guys predicted that the Senate would block the release of the Epstein files. But last night, the bill passed. Thoughts? Yes, I do have some thoughts. So we were wrong about that for a reason that developed very quickly.

John Thune had said, John Thune, the Senate Majority Leader, had said several times over the past week that he was not going to allow this thing to come to a vote. But night before last, Donald Trump urged Republicans to vote yes. they voted yes well it was the the final vote in the house was 417 to one uh there was one just piece of trash from i think it was from texas or louisiana that voted no and um and soon realized that the the train had left the station and it was barreling right toward him and so he decided it to get on the right side of this but i'll tell you what and this is another indication of the insider corruption that are both parties. To save Foon, Chuck Schumer asked for a voice vote.

All those in favor say aye, I, all those opposed, the eyes have it, just like that. That's literally the length of time that it took. Yes. They didn't do a roll call. No, there was no roll call vote. And so there is no written record of how anybody voted. And now literally everybody, but this clown from Louisiana, can say, I stood up against the pedophiles, I stood up against Epstein.

No. Trump will sign, right? He will sign. He said he'll sign. Although today the Times has an article saying, sure, he's going to sign it. And then who's going to ensure that he actually does it? Right. Well, that's always the thing, right?

And like with the DOJ, and of course there's the get out of jail free card, the DOJ saying, well, but there's an ongoing investigation. and we can't release it just yet. We'll get back to you. John, thanks for the $5 donation. US Triple X A-Rod is asking a very pertinent question. Will there be any way to tell if the release of the documents is legit? I don't trust Bondi, Patel, or Trump not to alter the documents,

especially after finally agreeing to release them. I mean, it is true that these are digital files. And, you know, I went, I did a deep, but it's common sense, but I did a deep dive through this in my lawsuit against the LA Times, which also involved like a discussion of the difference between analog and digital files. If you have a paper memo like in the old days, like Carbon Pop copied, it's very easy to authenticate whether it's real or not. That's right.

But a digital file is really easy to manipulate and it's very almost impossible to authenticate. I mean, the only way really you can authenticate it, correct me if I'm wrong, is by very, let's say, for example, I email you and you, and you print it out and you say, this is a copy of Ted's email to me. And then you can check with me and I can say, this is my copy of it. And if the two are the same, then probably that's legit. But that's not really beyond a reasonable doubt. We both could have altered it in the same, or modified it in the same way. I mean, if it's in, if it went to 10 different people, it's far likelier that that's really the one, right? They can do what they did to Jeslin Radak. Jesslyn Radak was one of my attorneys in my

case. She's a famous whistleblower in her own right. She was the director of ethics at the Justice Department. The night that John Walker Lind, the American Taliban, was was captured in northern Afghanistan. The FBI called her in the middle of the night and said, we just caught an American citizen. She said, whatever you do, you have to read him his rights. And they didn't. I know. Well, she had written up a memo, an electronic memo. And it was in the system. She sent a copy to the attorney general, a copy to the head of OLC, a copy to the head of this group and that group almost the legal counsel right and so she goes into work and her boss is like what are you doing you write a memo and you send it to everybody in the building she said the guy has he's an

american citizen he has constitutional rights they deleted that memo but she had printed a copy that they didn't know about and she's the way she sent it to a reporter at newsweek now the Reporter Newsweek then, when he published it as a photo of the memo, forgot to redact her name. Oh, Jesus Christ. And so is he working at the intercept now, this guy? Might as well be. And so she was not just fired from her job as the director of ethics. She was put on the no-fly list and the Justice Department tried to have her bar license suspended.

So, listen, the bottom line here is we're going to just have to take their word for it. Yeah, we are. Unless they just screw something up and a whistleblower comes forward. Robbie's saying pointing out something that is true, but I don't think it makes a difference. You said the metadata can be analyzed when you alter it. It stamps the data. True. But metadata can be falsified, too.

I mean, a really great example of that was the hack of the Hollywood studio that was allegedly by North Korea. And that met it. Allegedly there was code in there that was, you know, DPRK type typically used hacker code. But anyone can cut and paste that shit in there. I mean, it's just digital. Digital information is fungible by definition.

I mean, all of them. Even if it's, you know, even if it's under the hood, which is what the metadata is, right? Although metadata is useful for investigations, right? That's how they caught. remember the guy who oh my god that cyber guy who went on the lamb he he was a he had done this it's killing me someone in the chat's going to know this he was this very flamboyant tech entrepreneur who did um cybersecurity software and then he was on the lamb in the Caribbean and he

was sending photos to the authorities to troll them and the metadata from like revealed where You know, when you send a photo, when you take a photo with your phone, it tags where you are when you make it. So, anyway, the point is. All right, so we have a bunch of questions to get through here. Okay. Exile, the Knights of Malta now wants to know. I have a question if we haven't met the threshold to require military tribunals convened, what would that look like then? I don't know what that's about.

Okay. sorry this one i'm going to have to say i don't know but i'm going to look into frog enthusiasts ted as a french have been following the la fage cement company prosecutions with relation to funding groups in syria whole thing stinks of intelligence operations i don't know anything about this i'll look into this i don't either um but i will look into it um why does epstein never get compared to bill browder mark rich kalamowski of ukraine etc is it because epstein didn't do business in russia Probably. That's a good question. Probably. And I think we're so focused on the pedophilia that people aren't really looking at the influence operations that were at the same time.

That's right. This is for you, John. Hamad 8077. Did Israel actually threaten to nuke Iran? That's what President Trump said. We don't know if that's true. But Trump said just after we bombed Iran, the reason he did it was that Netanyahu told him, if you don't bomb Iran, we will and we're going to use a nuke. I believe Trump. I do, too. I believe Trump on that. I mean, it just, you know how sometimes it just rings, something just rings true?

Frasmatas, WikiLeaks, DNC, 2016 emails were verifiable because the email server generates a hash using an encryption key or people use a PGP key to sign a document. Okay, so I got to push back on that on a number, on two reasons. First of all, so a very good friend of mine was instrumental in developing PGP, pretty good privacy. And he explained how that works. And the point is, it's not 100% for sure, especially not now. It was kind of like, you know, cybersecurity, encryption is an arms race, and things are always getting, you know, what works. stops working, right? Otherwise, we'd still be using the Enigma machine. But the thing is, those

emails were not leaked by email. They were leaked on a thumb drive. They were carried by a disgruntled DMC staffer over to a park near American University in Washington, D.C., and handed over to Craig Murray, former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan, who, by the way, is the author of a couple of really great books. Yeah, he's brilliant. And he's a hilarious, brilliant guy who I really hope to get to meet someday. And he, and anyway, he worked for WikiLeaks. And basically, and so we know that the thing that's tricky is everybody's been inside

those files, right? Like, so Russian intelligence has been in there. I think Clovis has been in there. Everybody, like, broke in because the DNC had shitty security. But the people who actually handed it over that was, and we know. because of the speed that the data was sucked out is consistent with a thumb drive as opposed to the much slower speed that it would take to transmit over an internet line. I mean, am I wrong about that?

No, you're exactly right. And Bill Benny, for those of you who don't know who Bill Benny is, he is the former number four at NSA. His title was Director of Technology, which says a lot. Bill is one of the most brilliant thinkers I've ever encountered in my life and a noted whistleblower in his own right. And Bill is 1,000 percent certain that these documents were loaded onto a thumb drive because he examined the speed at which the data was downloaded. And he said that the speed indicates that it could not possibly have been done, remotely, i.e. it wasn't the Russians hacking into the DNC server.

Even though they did. Yeah, even though they did on a different issue. They just looked. Yeah, they looked. They didn't download anything. And then Bill asks, you know, another question, if the, if the DNC was so surefire certain that these were downloaded remotely, why would they not permit the FBI to look at the servers? Right. They've never turned the servers over to the FBI.

So what do they have to hide? Well, you know, Hillary and her people, she has a heart on about her servers. Yes, she does. So, yeah. So, I mean, I think nothing like that is really truly verifiable. So the term Epstein, this is from podcast, KISS kid on YouTube, sorry, on Rumble. The term fixer has been applied to Epstein, but since he had his hand in so many things, would Spymaster be appropriate? I don't know.

What do you think, John? That's more you than me. I don't know. I don't know to tell you the truth. I think he was a connector, sort of like Malcolm Gladwell type. You know, connector day. He just, you know, it's one of those people, like, in this case, for evil.

He connected people. And it kept him relevant in those circles. By the way, it's John McAfee. Thank you very, very much. It's to Johnny Jackson for reminding us of that. Yeah. McAfee was a wild man. Let's see.

John, I heard some private contractors. This is from Ray C-2020, have higher clearance than some agencies. Could that be possible, like for employees of the Global Strategies Group? Yes, that is absolutely possible, especially at places like DARPA, NSA, and CIA. You know, it's funny, we used to wear these badges. The badges are color-coordinated at the CIA. Now they're standard across the entire intelligence community. So a blue badge means top secret SITK gamma.

Everybody's got it. Everybody. If you're in the building. If you're in the building. And it used to have an H on it. The H meant SITK gamma. Then there would be like, what do those stand for? Special intelligence, talent compartment, keyhole compartment, gamma compartment.

Okay. That's everybody gets it if you're a CIA employee. And then it goes up from there. It sounds so cool. It makes me want to join right now. Green badges are contractor badges. Yellow badges mean you're cleared only to the secret level. So all of the,

most of the language instructors only have yellow badges because they don't need access to top secret information. They're just there to teach a foreign language. And then red badges means you are not, cleared. So the guy that works in the Dunkin' Donuts at the cafeteria, he's got a red badge. And the lady that vacuums the floor in the evening, she has a red badge. But if you had, if you had compartments above top secret, like the questioner is asking, they would add letters to that blue badge. So you wouldn't just have an H. You'd have an H and L and E, a Q,

and S, a T. And they all meant something. But then they did away with that. So now, If you're cleared for something special, you know you're cleared for something special. And everybody else in that compartment knows you're cleared for something special. So they're not going to advertise it on your badge. And your badge is encoded. That's right. The badge is encoded. So, yeah, it's not unusual at all.

Like, for example, when I was the executive assistant to the deputy director, I had access to literally everything that the Directorate of Operations was doing around the world. So I had like eight different compartments beyond SITK gamma. And then there was this, there was a guy, a man and a woman, they were colleagues, but they were really having an affair and they made no effort at hiding it. But anyway, they would sit in on my morning meetings, but they belonged to the Directorate of Science and Technology. And when I needed to give them a briefing book or to go talk to them or ask a question or whatever,

I had to go buzz their office, but I was not allowed to step inside the office. And it was because whatever they were doing back there, it was too highly classified for John to know about it. Gotcha. A couple more questions than I've got to do an ad, do some housekeeping. thing. Village idiot. What percentage of Congress do you think legitimately could be credibly prosecuted for a felony? Insider trading, others? I'm going to say probably 80. Lots. Yeah, I would have to agree. Lots. Yeah. You know, I'm down on Congress normally, just because I have no respect for them because I've worked with them and they're mostly dogs. But when something

like this happens with, you know, live texting Epstein during an Epstein hearing happens. Yeah. And literally every Democrat votes not to censure, the entire party's corrupted. Agreed with that. By the way, thanks for the donations. Marble 455. Thanks for the two bucks.

Who's the U.S.'s closest friend, Canada or the U.K.? That's a good question. Yeah, the U.K. Mora, thanks for the two bucks. That's an easy one. Thank you for the two bucks. And thank you for your support, you guys. We are in dire need of cash these days.

You can say that again. For real. Let me add one thing. We had a question right at the very beginning. Somebody asked, what's going on in Greece? Kimberly Guilfoyles there and they're loving on her. While you're at it, John, someone's asking about Greece building drones for Ukraine. Is that a good idea?

So two Greek stories. Go ahead. So I have family in Greece that span the political spectrum. My grandmother's first cousin was a member of the Politburo of the Communist Party of Greece. And on the other side, I've got a relatively close cousin who was elected governor of the Dedecanese Islands from the Conservative Party. So I've got everybody in between. And they all love Kimberly Guilfoyle. I don't understand it.

But some of them have told me that it's an extension of their love for. Because we're about to lose an ad if I don't, like, read it right now. Very short. Looking for a comfortable but unique option for your gaming setup. Check out technosport.usa.com with a wide range of ergonomic chairs and an array of colors. You'll definitely bring your setup to the next level. Always comfy, never boring. Technosport.

Use code rumble for 10% off your entire order. Sorry, John, as you were. No, no worries. No worries. Yeah, so they love Trump in Greece. I don't know why, but they love Trump. and I think that this love of Kimberly Gilfoyle is an extension of their love for Trump

All right, so a little more housekeeping bringing in Robbie to remind people who are new to the show and maybe people who just are stubborn why they need to watch us on Rumble. Robbie, fuzzy Robbie's here, but apparently he's going to be clear thanks to one of our fans

is going to generously has offered to buy him a new camera. So thank you if you're watching. Thank you. You'll be able to see me in all of my shiny-headed non-fuzzy glory once that happens. But no, the reason why we're on Rumble, well, it's twofold. One, most pertinent to

John and Ted, is that it pays significantly better for every nickel that YouTube pays in ads, because they're in the Rumble creator program, Rumble pays about 90 cents per dollar. So if you watch on Rumble, they get paid more. And because they have bills, they appreciate getting paid more. So watch

us on Rumble, and it really does help a ton. Second, Rumble is a free speech platform. They put out content on Rumble that you cannot see anywhere else. And if you are a channel subscriber for $5 a month on Rumble, you have access to all of that content. Plus, unlike YouTube, Rumble sends 100% of that money to the show. They don't take a cut out of it at all.

YouTube takes about 35% to 40%. Rumble gives every dime of it to the show hosts. So if you all have this to continue, follow us on Rumble, see content. You don't get anywhere else and stand for free speech. All right. Thank you very much for that, Robbie. Okay, so we have we can do more. We should do more.

Let's bang out the questions and then we need to get to our remaining stories. Real quick, Greek drones to Ukraine. I didn't. You know, for me personally, I think it's, I don't know, it's a good idea if you're Ukraine and Greece because the Greeks have this nascent defense contracting industry and it's going to be good for the economy. but, you know, just, I don't know, prolongs the war, I suppose. Yeah, it does. I mean, we know the inevitable, you know, the conclusion here is inevitable, although it's

been grindingly slow. Village Idiot also wants to know, have we covered Seth Rich or the J6 Democratic HQ pipe bomb? Not really. No, we really haven't. And I'm wondering if that article in the blaze was incorrect. You know, they said, they said that the pipe bomber was this. female capital police officer. Nothing came of that.

Who had been on rotation to the CIA. She finally came out through her attorney and said, that is a bald-faced lie and I never had anything to do with anything. And then it just kind of went silent. Well, she should sue. That's the proper solution here. That's it. Because when you sue,

I mean, it's like when you're defamed or libeled, as I learned, you have to sue because then you're telling the world, I'm willing to spend money and time to stand up for my good name, and I'm going to expose myself because there's going to be discovery. So if I'm lying, I'm putting up or shutting up, right? Everyone's going to find out the truth.

Thanks for the buck, Juna A. Javid, this is for you, John. Pakistan's new field marshal seems like he's making moves. Imrakhan is in jail. Corruption is high. Corruption's always high. It's Pakistan. Pakistani U.S. relations are quote-unquote. improved thoughts you know i turned down another interview this morning from cnn india and they were like

mad this time they sent five questions they were like answer our questions and i said you guys what part of no do you not understand i said every time i answer a question about pakistan or india you guys make it a banner headline with three exclamation points you take it completely out of context and then i get a dozen death threats no so the answers no but i will say this And I'll probably get threats for this, too. Pakistani corruption is so deep and so broad. That's totally true. That it's almost impossible for the country to have a true functioning democracy.

Pakistan also has a long history of military coups and other interventions into its democracy. Imran Khan should not be in prison. It's not really a, it's not really a democracy. It's really a military dictatorship with a veneer of democracy. That's right. But Imran Khan shouldn't be in prison. He should be allowed to, you know, defend himself

and have his day in court. They always send their former prime ministers to prison. Every one of them. Nawaz Sharif. Every last one of them, Benazir Bhutto. Yeah. It's like that you know that like when you run for the job, well, I will end up in prison at some point.

I don't know who would want the job. God, or you get assassinated. Or you get assassinated, which is just as likely. Angela, Fala, much appreciate. John, so was Q clearance for energy or for financial? Q is for energy, and it's temporary. So Q clearances are controlled by the Department of Energy. I only had a Q clearance once.

I had to go to Tennessee for a conference. And so they gave me a Q clearance that lasted only for the duration of the conference. And then they took their Q clearance back. But Q really is, it's a clearance for nuclear information. They jealously guard it. Okay. Off-topic question from Peruse. How easy is it to spoof the AIS signal on yachts and ships, i.e. make them disappear when they sail and pretend they're somewhere else.

I understand this is possible. I have no idea. It sounds like something that would be pretty easy to do, though, to me. F you said, thanks for the buck. He said that he served in the Peace Corps in Palau and Micronesia. Have you ever been to any of the South Pacific Island? No, but I'm dying to go.

But I'm going to go to the Solomon Islands in July with Jeremy Kuzmarov of COVID Action Magazine and we're going to do some live on the ground reporting on this kerfuffle between the United States and China over who should have access to Japan's World War II era military bases. So we're going to, we're going to get there through Fiji, which I've also never been to. And we're going to spend about 10 days on Guadalcanal. I'm excited about it. Well, it sounds amazing. Everyone I know who's been to places like Tahiti or the Micronesian

Island of Yap has absolutely loved it, even though it takes 50 million years and 16 flights to get there. But, you know, but at least with the air traffic controllers back to work and not calling in sick anymore. I just want to parenthetically say, these air traffic controllers kind of are irritating me. Like, they, it's like you were in the middle of a shutdown, and it was treated as legitimate by everybody that they're kind of like slow walking and calling in sick. And it's kind of like, oh, well, you know, you can't blame them. I'm sorry. Like, you're going to be paid later. You get paid much more than the average American gets paid for whatever they're doing. And you're doing an important, like really important job.

And it sucks that you're not being paid. You should be paid. But be a patriot and show up to work and, you know, and tell the planes where to land. I'm sorry. It annoys me. It's like, or let's treat everybody who withholds their labor with the same level of respect and consideration and say like, oh, you know, you're not paid enough and you want

a slow walk or do a sick out, then good for you. But like, just because you're in, you know, somehow they have special papal dispensation for being ATC, which I guess they didn't have under Reagan. I don't know. It annoys me. Yes. Okay. Let's talk about, what should we talk about?

Venezuela? Should we talk about it? Yeah, let's talk about Venezuela. And may I start off by saying something about covert action? So the president announced this covert action program against Venezuela, presumably to overthrow the Maduro government. Let me tell you how unusual it is for president to even utter the words covert action. I was a witness in the Scooter Libby trial in 2006 or 2007, I guess it was.

And I had to go before the special prosecutor, who ironically prosecuted me a couple of years later. So I'm meeting with the special prosecutor and the CIA General Counsel's office is represented and Scooter Libby's attorneys are there and the Justice Department has its people there. And he asked me a question, did I ever see these two senior CIA people talking to each other? And I said, well, they're not friends, if that's what you're getting at. I mean, the only conversation I ever saw them have was about a covert action program. And the CIA General Counsel jumps up and he's like, stop. And I said, I wasn't going to say anything about covert action.

he's like you can't even say the words covert action we don't even acknowledge that there is such a thing as covert action and i said okay sorry now the president's going on national television yeah he's going on a national television uh to talk about the covert action program that he just approved at you know six levels above top secret boogs funo of g is calling me out can you be any more anti-worker telling people to it up when they're not getting paid is crazy. No, I'm saying that if anybody quits for not being paid, they should be treated with that respect. I don't like the fact that there's an exception for air traffic controllers that somehow when they do it, it's okay. But when the rest of us don't do it, it's not okay. So I'm doing what aboutism. Sorry. That's, that's my thing.

Right. I can defend what aboutism. Okay, so covert action. can take many, many forms. I mean, I think of some really notorious examples during the Soviet Union when American commandos blew up the trans-Siberia oil pipeline in Siberia, causing ecological damage when the U.S. hired Afghan guerrillas, terrorists, to cross the Amudaria River and then attack an oil refinery in what was then the southern USSR. But it can also be, like dumping cash in a bathroom in Moscow, so to try to undermine the state currency, the ruble. There's all sorts of things you can do.

So when covert action is authorized by the presidents of the United States, first of all, does it have to be authorized or does the U.S. does the CIA just do covert action as a matter of course? And then if it has to be authorized, does it have to be specified like, well, you can you can blow up, you know, energy infrastructure, but you can't do a cyber attack or you can do a psychological operation, but you can't do this. How does it work? It's very bureaucratic. So the CIA has something called the covert action staff. And let's say I have an idea. Hey, I have an idea to overthrow the Venezuelan government. I write it up and I take it over to the covert action

staff. They put it in the proper official format and then they send it to the operational component that would have jurisdiction over it. If they say, yeah, this is a good idea. Let's overthrow the Venezuelan government. Then they send it up the chain to the deputy director for operations. If he signs off on it and the director signs off on it, then it goes to the general council. The general counsel has to decide that it's legal to overthrow the Venezuelan government. If he decides it's legal, then it goes to the Office of Legal Counsel at the Department of Justice. If they decide it's legal, then it goes to the National Security Advisor, I'm sorry, to the National Security Council General Counsel.

If he decides it's legal, it goes to the National Security Advisor for a signature. If that signature is forthcoming, it goes to the president. If the president signs it, then the CIA can go ahead and try to overthrow the Venezuelan government. That's kind of insane. Before we take some more questions, I do have to point out. So the government went to, the Trump administration went to war against Antifa, which is an organization that doesn't actually exist as an organization. Now they are going to, they're going to war against the so-called Cartel de Los Solis. Oh, my God, I read this.

This is such a great story, right? So the cartel, it sounds like a, you know, like as an American, I was like, okay, well, that sounds like a real evil cartel thing that we should maybe be doing something about. As it turns out, there's no such thing. So it's just a term that Venezuelan journalists came up with and became popular among Venezuelans to describe stars. Soles is stars in Spanish, and it means cartel of the stars, and what it is, it's an insult to refer to the generals who are corrupted by drugs in Venezuela, cocaine, and they have lots of stars on their uniforms. So it's basically saying that these are drug corrupted, but they don't have a cartel.

It's kind of like just, it's an expression. It's not real. And yet, this is now on an executive order. It's an internal document. The Secretary of States talking about this threat presented by the Cartel de la Sola, counting on the ignorance of the American people. John, just Trump and Marco Rubio, do you think they know that it's bullshit and they just don't care?

Or do you think they don't really know it's bullshit? I think they know. I think they know and they don't care. You know, one thing about Trump is when he decides he wants to do something, he's not going to let anybody stand in his way, whether what he wants to do is legal or illegal. And so he's decided. Is he really not different from other presidents? No, he's the same as every other president. The only difference is that he actually says it out loud. Yeah, I like that. That's it. Yeah, I do. I do. You got to respect it.

Yeah, I do. Question for you, John, are you, well, I'm going to skip this. Well, okay, John, quickly, are you familiar with the Greek community in Tarpon Springs, Florida and the Sponge, Downtown? Oh, yes, yes, yes. Tarpin, man, is one of my favorite places. It's, the Greek food is absolutely incredible. They're all from the island of Kalimnos down there, which is the next island north of where my family is from. But Tarpin has been a mecca for Greek immigrants for a century. And it's because so many people in Kalimnos were sponge divers.

and it's the same situation in Tarpin where you can dive for sponges and they did a hundred years ago. So yeah, I love Tarpin. Thanks very much for the generous $20 donation from MT16N7. Did we see the story about the UK Ministry of Defense

putting warning stickers inside its Chinese-made staff cars advising staff not to discuss classified information due to fears of built-in microphones? And it's, in all the papers, the telegraph, the Times, the Guardian, the Daily Mail, the UK Defense Journal, oh my God, yeah, what in Blazes would possess them to buy Chinese cars for the UK defense ministry leadership? Oh, my God. Well, I guess they couldn't afford Rolls-Royces, right? Finish Lika just says, I think, I find it astonishing I can actually communicate. And my

stupid messages are read by people of stature here. There's so many great intellectual people around social media, academics, scholars. I know. I find that amazing. American pastime for you, John. Generic question, how did you decide on what counted as truth in a world based on secrecy while at the agency? And unfortunately, we don't have two hours to answer this. Also, did your understanding of the truth change after you left?

No. No. I say this all the time. In our guts, we all know the difference between. right and wrong, truth and fiction. And you just can't let that culture, that culture of secrecy bastardize what you know to be the truth. And so you just have to, you know, trust in yourself, trust in your judgment, and know deep down that you always have to do the right thing. Because the truth's going to come out. And you want to be on the right side of it. It always does.

last but not least, we really do have to talk about this. So the new NPR PBS Merrist poll shows Democrats ahead by a lot in a generic congressional race by 55% to 41%. Independence are plus 33 for the Democrats. This looks a lot like 2017 before what turned out to be a big blue wave in Donald Trump's first term, midterm elections in 2018. So Trump's approval is really low, even for him. Historically, he's always sort of weaved between 40 and 45, sort of average 42, currently at 39, but he's got very strong disapproval. That's stronger than usual. Republicans are being blamed for the shutdown, although I think everyone, well, there's going to be more shutdowns, right? We're only good till January. Yeah, we're only good

until January. So here's the thing, John. 57% of Americans say that they want prices to drop more than they care about any other issue. They just don't care. John, isn't the media and everyone getting everything wrong? Nobody, prices aren't going to drop, can't drop, and we don't want them to drop because that would be deflation, right? I mean, what we need, don't we, what Americans really need is higher incomes. Oh, absolutely. But I think they're not thinking about higher incomes.

They want prices to go back to what they were a year ago or two years ago. It's not going to happen. It's not going to happen. You know, I'll admit to everybody. And I'm not proud to admit it, but I really love. like raviolis, like just right out of a can. I don't even heat them up. I just open the can and eat them out of a can. And I don't know why, but I just, I have this thing where I refuse to pay more than 99 cents for a can of raviolis. And so I'll just wait until they're on sale

for 99 cents. They're usually a buck and a quarter. So I went to the grocery store the other day. And the raviolis are 249. Whoa. 249 for a can of lousy raviolioli. I'm not going to do it. I'm not going to pay it. I won't spend the money. I want everything to come down to where it was a year ago, too. Me too. But I mean, I just think, but I mean, I'm going to write about this very soon, maybe next week, just about. I mean, really, truly for both parties, the solution here has to be, you know, higher income, higher wages. I mean, that's what's been.

screwing the American people is higher prices are not a solvable problem because of the way that the system is currently set up. Okay, so Cartel de la Solis, well, I mean, I guess, so what do you think? I mean, what kind of covert actions are we going to actually do in Venezuela? You know, probably lots and lots of propaganda. That's the easiest sort of entry level covert action. Lots of propaganda. And I wouldn't be surprised if we, eventually begin arming opponents of President Maduro. That would really ratchet things up. And then you're going to have fighting in the streets.

Maduro has reportedly offered to resign in two years in exchange for the U.S. having access to Venezuelan, having, I guess, concessions for Venezuelan oil and natural gas. Apparently Trump said no to that. Why would we say no? not that we don't have access to this either i don't understand that i mean oil is a global energy is a global market i mean we don't really care about specific venezuelan oil we just you know we just want more oil so the prices go down so that our cost the costs for industry go down but anyway that aside we have like a minute yeah i i i don't know we used to buy almost all of venezuela's

oil anyway and it would be refined in Texas and it put people to work and it gave us free, not free, it gave us cheap oil. And then we cut them off. That's it. So I'm maybe. That's very strange, right? Yeah. We're cutting it's just like the way that we and the Europeans cut off Russian oil and gas. Yes. It's like why would we do that? It's like we're cutting off her own nose to spite our face. It's not like Jeff Venezuela and Russia can't sell their shit elsewhere. Anyway, thanks everyone for tuning in. We're going to be back tomorrow Thursday at 9 a.m. as we are, every Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. And so thanks for listening. And please like, follow and share the show as Robbie counseled. Please kindly watch us over on Rumble. It makes a huge difference. Thanks for

all your generous donations. Please stay tuned for the TMI show with Ted Rall and Manila Chan. That's me, Ted Rall. And we're on in just a minute. See you later. Bye, John. Bye, bye, bye, Ted. Thank you.