DeProgram with John Kiriakou and Ted Rall - DeProgram with Ted Rall and John Kiriakou: “Hell No, Bibi, We Won’t Go!”

Episode Date: August 28, 2025

The IDF wants to finish off Gaza. But they have a problem: refuseniks! Some Israeli soldiers are refusing to serve in Gaza because they’re exhausted or they refuse to help with genocide. Meanwhile, Western media outlets are already covering the war as an after-action report and accepting Israel’s pariah status as a given. How serious is this? That’s today’s main topic on “DeProgram with Ted Rall and John Kiriakou,” airing today at 5 pm ET LIVE and streaming 24/7! Israel’s Gaza City Offensive and Reservist Challenges: The Jewish state prepares to mobilize 60,000 reservists to smash what’s left of Gaza City offensive, but many soldiers are not reporting, citing exhaustion and disillusionment. Military faces strain as reservists struggle with prolonged service, with some units reporting 40-50% no-shows, threatening Netanyahu’s ongoing conflicts in Lebanon, Syria, and the West Bank. Biden Created the Famine: As NPR shows, famine in Gaza emerged from Israel's blockade, which slashed Gaza’s pre-war 3000 daily aid trucks to a trickle, forcing reliance on animal feed and weeds by February 2024. The Biden administration faced internal rifts: some urged leveraging arms aid to enforce humanitarian access, but Biden prioritized military support, providing $17.9 billion in 2024. Efforts like a $230M pier and airdrops failed. Negotiations yielded modest gains, like 400 trucks daily in April 2024, but Israel’s restrictions persisted. By August 2025, Trump’s blockade and $30M Gaza Humanitarian Foundation worsened starvation, with 2,000+ killed seeking aid. Over 60,000 died from hunger, mostly children, creating an epic, preventable U.S. policy failure.Walmart Roku TV Privacy Breach: A Walmart customer discovered live footage from a stranger’s home on a resold Roku TV, linked to the original owner’s account. The incident highlights risks of reselling electronics without factory resets. Walmart advised a reset, but privacy concerns persist. Tulsi Gabbard Burns CIA Officer: The DNI posted a memo revealing an undercover CIA officer’s name, prompting backlash. The move, tied to Trump’s security clearance revocations, raised legal concerns over privacy violations. Critics argue Gabbard’s actions endangered CIA operations and cover procedures. Russian Surveillance Drones Over Germany: Russian drones fly over eastern Germany, spying on U.S. and allied military supply routes for Ukraine. The flights, possibly launched from Baltic Sea ships, aim to bolster Russia’s sabotage campaign. German defenses struggle to counter these espionage efforts, despite new interception techniques.

there, you're watching Deep Program with John Kiriaku and me, Ted Raul. It's Thursday, August 28th, 2025. Thanks so much for tuning in. Please like, follow and share the show. John, nice to see you there. You're looking good. Thanks, man. I'm in the Shenandoah Valley of Western Virginia, where it's so gorgeous. Beautiful. Oh, my God, it's fantastic. I want to spend some friends. I once had to spend an entire month just driving around West Virginia just because, and I really was happy I did it. I mean, it was like a state that I didn't really know much about or had not. I'd only driven, like, from a lot from Dayton to New York through that little sliver near Wheeling of like, I think it's like 12 miles across. Yeah, you're in and out in five minutes.

Yeah, it's very strange. Although, you know, Wheeling's got a couple of good restaurants, at least. All right. So let's get to it. We're going to be talking about a couple of stories out of Israel. I was heartened to see that there's a growing draft resistance movement, reservists who are refusing the call-up into the IDF. Some of them are just tired of the war, but some of them are resisting because of moral reasons. We'll get into that. 40 to 50% of some units are no-shows.

So it's kind of a big deal. NPR has a piece that's really worth reading, although very disconcerting. We'll talk a little bit about that. about basically the Biden administration's role in facilitating, creating, and expanding the genocide and the famine in Gaza, you can't possibly read it. And bear in mind, this is NPR. You can't possibly read it and come away and still defend anything that Joe Biden did. Then a really interesting story, John. I want to get your take on this. A person buys a, a lady buys a TV at Walmart, turns it on, and she's looking into it.

some total stranger's living room, huh? What is up with that? Very strange. Tulsi Gabbard burned a CIA officer. Looks like it was an accident, but I'm sure you'll have thoughts. Remember, in my case, the judge said that she would not respect mens rea, that it didn't matter if it was a mistake. If you did it, you did it.

Her exact words were, Mr. Kiriakou, you either did it or you didn't do it. it, and I think you did it. She went to law school? Yeah. Clinton, that tells you a lot. Very strange. And finally, Russia is being accused of sending spy drones over Germany. So we'll get into that.

What floats your boat the most right now? I'll tell you, I'm the most interested in this Tulsi Gabbard story. And we've mentioned this a couple of times here on the show. Last week, Tulsi fired 37 CIA analysts. all of whom had something to do with a national intelligence estimate saying that the Russians had interfered in the presidential election. We know that they didn't interfere in the presidential election, but she fired all 37 of them. And we even said on the show last week that this is career ending because not only did she fire them, she revoked their security clearances, right?

So if you don't have the security clearance, you might as well not live in Washington. Just leave. Go back to whatever part of the country you came from. She listed those 37 people and the names were carried everywhere in the media. In fact, I even said on the show that I recognized a couple of the names. I didn't recognize most. I've been out of it for 20 years, but a couple of the names were senior, senior people who were in temporaries of mine when I was still at the CIA. Well, it turns out one of those people was undercover.

And so by releasing their name, Tulsi violated the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1981, which is exactly why I went to prison. I was accused of violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1981. Tulsi's not going to be prosecuted. Nobody should be prosecuted for that. It's probably illegal, unconstitutional, because it squelch's free speech. The reason why it's on the books is that nobody's ever challenged it, including me, because it was like, take the deal for two and a half years or get 12 to 18 years.

And what are you going to do? You take the deal. And so the way it works, right, just to be clear on this, now you're out, obviously, because there you are in the Shenandoah Valley, but could you now, you don't have any standing, right, to challenge. I do not have standing because you're out. Well, no, because as part of the plea deal, I had to waive my right to appeal. And so it's done for me.

When I got out of prison, Daniel Ellsberg called me and he said, we've got to find somebody to appeal their espionage conviction so that we can get the espionage act declared unconstitutional. I said, but Dan, nobody has standing. You have to have been charged with espionage. refused a deal and convicted of espionage to be able to challenge it and he said geoffrey sterling has standing i said that's true he went to trial and clearly didn't commit espionage but was convicted of it anyway please remind us who that is sure jeffrey sterling was a cia officer who um filed a racial discrimination lawsuit against the agency and they came down on him like a ton of bricks

accusing him of leaking information to James Risen of the New York Times, information about the Iranian nuclear program. I believe in my heart that Jeffrey is innocent. He has told me. He's looked me in the eye and said, I was innocent. I believe him. So I called Jeffrey and said, you know, Dan Ellesberg called me. This is the idea that he has.

And Jeffrey said, I can't do it. He said, I don't have the inner strength to go through any more of it. I just can't do it. And I said, you're the only person. who has standing you hear that a lot in in these situations uh i had several co-plaintiffs in the la times thing and several of them were like in their 60s and again the say that you know they just didn't have what it takes they were just like i'm not strong enough and frankly anyone you and i both know what you go through yeah i didn't judge i i was like you know i i get it it could kill you

yeah most definitely i wanted to say one of the thing too i've told story a couple of times. And we've got a question from Ridd about Martha Kessler. I was going to bring that up. Oh, did I ever reconnect with Martha Kessler after she was fired by Brennan? Believe it or not, when I woke up this morning, the first thing I did was to log on to Mnect. That's that app where people ask you questions. And I had a question. And it was from Martha Kessler's daughter. And she said that she was watching the Patrick Bet David podcast, PBD, and she said she was shocked when I mentioned her mother. And so she's trying to get a fuller view of who her mother was

when she was at the agency in these senior positions. And so I'm going to set up a call with her. I was fascinated to get a text from her. Fascinating. But no, I never connected, I never reconnected with Martha Kessler. And she died in 2005. So I had just left the agency when she passed away. And also this is, of course, a good question from Frasmataz.

Could Scooter Libby have been prosecuted under the Espionage Act or whoever leaked Valerie Plame? I mean, there was a conspiracy. Dick Cheney was involved. Yeah. Well, it was Rich Armitage, who was the Deputy Secretary of Defense, who leaked Valerie Plame's name. not only could he have been charged with violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act everybody assumed that he would be charged at least with that and in fact he was never charged with any crime Scooter Libby never leaked Valerie Plain's name he was never accused of leaking

Valerie Plains name he was accused of perjury and that's what brought him down see this is the thing though this that's a good question this is the thing the hypocrisy that goes into these decisions to charge. If you're one of the, one of the swells, one of the inside people, you can say anything you want. But if you are an outsider, a dissident in any way, a truth teller in many respects, be prepared for a rough road. Yeah, that's a that's an understatement for sure. All right. So what happens? I mean, can this officer successfully sue to be compensated? I mean, the career is over. There's going to be lost income, I would assume, right? I mean, you, you know, you've just been burned. I mean, or do they just simply, like in Valerie Plame's case,

could they have just assigned her to something else not undercover and she would have been fine if she decided to stay? How does it work? Well, see, that's a good question too. And that one's not easily answerable because not only was she under cover, she was under deep cover. She was a knock, a non-official cover officer, meaning instead of saying, oh, this is Valerie Plain, she's a, you know, political officer at the American Embassy. It was, this is Valerie Plain. She's a curator at the local art museum. And so it's a whole different kind of cover.

It's one that you can't come back from. You know, there are people who are blown all the time. Their cover is blown and, okay, then, you know, then you're sent to a country where you're going to be declared to the local. local service. For example, when Aldrich Ames revealed the identities of more than 100 officers, they had to be, the terminology is brought in from the cold. So they could no longer be undercover officers in Russia, where they were all assigned at one time or another. But they could do the job in other countries in conjunction, in cooperation with the local intelligence service.

One of them was a friend of mine, Mark Polymeropolis. He was a friend of my, Mark Polymeropolis. He was was in his first tour when Ames blew his identity. And he ended up becoming the station chief in Moscow, which was just like a thumb in the Russian's eye. You know, oh, yeah, you blew our officer, your spy blew our officer. Now he's going to be the one in charge of operations against you. And he was. It's, yeah, I mean, do other countries roll as spitefully as we do? I mean, like, I think about even non, you know, espionage related stuff like, like we, I forget the guy's name, but there was some Soviet dissident that here in New York City. they renamed the street after him that the so that the soviet embassy was on like like solzhenitsyn lane or something

yeah it was someone else but yeah like that they did that here at the other countries don't do that right i mean oh yeah yeah yeah they do oh sure yeah they do yeah they'll they'll have like malcolm x boulevard in in moscow and you know this is a good question also from reed did joe wilson know about his wife being a knock when he married her. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Because in the old days, right? Like, basically, you weren't allowed to tell your spouse, and it led to a lot of, you know, they all, a lot of divorces. People thought that their spouses were cheating and stuff. Is that basically right? Yes, that is right. And that's, that's, I've told the story before where my, my first wife knew that I was in the CIA, but that was literally all she knew. She didn't knew, she didn't know anything else.

She didn't know what I did all day long. did she did it first and then just stopped asking and then when um when 17 november um assassinated our next door neighbor and they left a manifesto saying that they had set out that morning to kill me instead of instead of stephen saunders the british defense attache they put me in an armored car and took me to the embassy and i said wait a minute wait a minute i said i just dropped off my kids at school I can't just go to the, go to the airport. And they said, no, we're going to pick up your kids. We're going to pick up your wife.

So they sent a car to pick up the kids, a car to pick up my wife. A team packed out our house. But when my wife got to the airport, I was already there. And she walked up to me and she said, I want a divorce. I'm not doing this anymore. Oh, shit. And that was it. We flew home together on the same plane.

Awkward. And that was the end of our marriage. And it was just, she was just freaked out by the fact that you had this, something you could talk about. Yeah, how was work? I'd say, great. Would you do? Nothing. Who'd you see?

Yeah, nobody. And then I go out at midnight and I don't come back until six o'clock in the morning. And then I just shower, shave, and go back to work again. And she's like, like this. What was her name? Did you have a fun time? You know, stuff like that. And I'd be like, listen, I was meeting with an Iraqi.

dude do I smell like I've been with a woman and then finally when they tried to kill me she was just like I'm done no more yeah well not everyone's along for that can go along for a ride like that for sure that's horrible though uh for sure um I guess so nothing much so will will this uh will this undercover officer formerly undercover officer will they stay at the agency or do you think they'll leave Oh, no, they were fired. Oh, right. Yeah, they were fired, which is like a double whammy, right?

So not only is your cover blown, but you can't even put on your resume that you were, you know, the manager of a mutual fund or whatever the cover was. Right. Because you actually were managing the mutual fund. Yeah, they should sue. Or getting paid for it. Although good luck suing. Yeah, good luck. Has anyone ever successfully sued the CIA?

in civil court not that i know i mean they're in small you know sort of picky eun kind of victories like you sue for the right to sue that kind of thing right right stevie's asking if we should do it if we can do a discord server um my understanding is that robby um is working on that for us right yes yeah okay so it's a good question right we we need to be on discord Yeah, no, clearly. Yeah. Okay. Well, I'm still a little bit blown away by that story.

Oh, who's awful. And so don, Selwyn, 23, 24. Thank you very much, man. Thank you for your generosity. He's got a good question here. Is Washington, D.C., really the Game of Thrones with Trump as king and his cabinet as his lords of the land? Because I'm kind of disturbed by the CDC firings,

but the CDC personnel and staff are fighting back. I feel the same way about these CDC firings, but yeah, I think I would call it Game of Thrones. One thing that Trump understands better than most Americans, I think, is that you can do literally anything you want, even if it is patently illegal or unconstitutional because you know that it's going to be a while before the case works its way through the courts and you're ordered to take it back. Right? So for at least a little while, you can do anything you want. Look at this poor, what's his name, Abreggo guy, the guy. Oh, Kilmar Albrego Garcia. Kilmar Abrago Garcia, this poor guy is constantly having to play catch up

because the administration is going after him like every day, knowing that it's unconstitutional, but they are willing to take their chances at being slapped down. Yesterday, he declared his intention to apply for asylum in the United States. That was a nice slap back. Yeah, I just wonder, I'm not sure how that works, right? Because he's suing and asking the judge, I don't know if a judge can grant asylum. I thought that was an administrative procedure through the Secretary of State. Yeah, through Homeland Security.

All right, so let's talk about these surveillance drones while we're on the subject of espionage. So, I mean, you know, I'm old enough to remember when violating another country's airspace was considered an act of war. That ship has sailed a long time ago since, I don't know, you could say since Gary Powers or, you know, maybe, or certainly the U.S. has had spy planes and drones and satellites over, well, satellites don't really count somehow. If you're high enough, it's okay. But, you know, so first of all, I guess the question is, you know, when it comes to Russia, you know, there's a Russia phobia is a real thing. You always have to ask, you know, is it a lot of paranoia? Is it real?

And if so, is it an act of war? And what, if anything, can the Germans do about it? Well, I'm going to make an assumption here that these were Russian drones. I would wonder how, though, they got over Germany because you'd have to either cross the whole of Poland to get there. Apparently, they were apparently launched from ships in the Baltic Sea. That would make more sense to me. But, yeah, an act of war, not so much as a violation of airspace,

which the Russians do to us all the time in Alaska, for example. and we do to them with some frequency as well, as do the Norwegians, the Swedes, the Turks. So, yeah, it's one of those things that what you do is you have your ambassador go into the, into the Minister of Defense's office in Moscow and lodge a formal, a strongly worded diplomatic protest, you know, saying like this, to quote the stooge is, why yada

I thought you were going to when you mentioned the Stooges I thought you meant Iggy Pop's first band so another Midwestern reference there so we have a question from Srod 1916 have we talked about

Sy Hirsch and his London Review of Books article on Bin Laden raid before interested in your thoughts and I did yeah Michelle and I did I'll preface this by saying, I have a lot of respect for Sy Hirsch.

For whatever reason, he doesn't like me. And I once told him, that's cool. We don't have to be pals or anything. But we have a lot of friends in common. So we run into each other at these events. But my problem with Sy Hirsch is it's an ongoing problem with a lot of what he writes. He's the only investigative journalist I have ever met who is willing to publish based on information from one single source.

And sometimes it's so great that he wins the Pulitzer Prize. And sometimes it is so bad and so wrong that he is ridiculed and ostracized. I saw him at a Christmas party recently. And he mentioned that things had gotten so bad for him professionally that he can only publish in the London Review of Books. There is not a single American publication willing to publish a story. by Sy Hirsch. Yeah, and I always assume

that was the politics of it, but I mean, he's been on the wrong side of the politics for a long time. Yeah, for a long time. So, okay, so I mean, I guess two quick questions. Bin Laden raid article, basically he argued that bin Laden was taken alive and then basically Obama

said, basically gave the okay to have him whacked, and then that basically the body was packed up, and over the mountains of Waziristan, basically, they threw them out. They didn't, no burial of sea, you know, just threw them out over the mountains. You know, bye-bye, bye-bye, by-bye, by-bye, Osama. So you're not buying that one.

No, not at all. There were so many people involved in that operation who ended up telling exactly the same story, except for the one detail that three different people took credit for shooting him. too many witnesses, too many moving parts, and why would you just dump a body in the mountains for some tribesmen to find it? That was my problem with that. Yeah, bury it at a place of veneration

that's going to become a mecca, no pun intended, for every Wahhabi fundamentalist in the Middle East. It doesn't make any sense. However, I will say that the Nord Stream story run more true than not to me. I mean, certainly the official story that we're being told. That guy's a Patsy, right? The guy that they are, that the, is it the Germans who arrested him?

Well, the Germans are going to prosecute him. And the guy who's under arrest. I mean, the yacht story, like, I'm a diver. That can't be true. No. It just can't be true. It defies the laws of physics. It's not law.

Exactly right. Oh, my God. Totally agree. But the question is, I mean, of course, that's not true, but is the Syhurst story true? They could both be wrong. They could both be wrong. Yeah. It seemed kind of obvious to me that this was, Nord Stream 2 was an operation that required not just real expertise and capability, but state expertise and capability.

That's what I think. Yeah. Yeah. And we have a question. Did I need authorization from my former employer when I published by my first book? It took me nine months to write the book and 22 months to get it cleared, and they ended up rejecting 120 pages. So, yeah, it was hard. Everything I write, I have to send to them for clearance.

But as the years have passed since my arrest, and my detractors have either died or retired, it's gotten much, much easier. What do you make of the guy that they arrested? Thank you, Nadia, Margaret. He was arrested in Italy. So, you know, what's the story here? Is it possible that this guy actually had something to do with Nord Stream 2? Or he's just a fucking Patsy?

I can't imagine, Ted. I think he's a Patsy. I really do. All right. Yeah, we're on the same page there. It really do. And I feel for the poor guy, whoever he is. Oh, no, it's really not good.

I mean, like, so it would, you know, what would be the purpose here? Do you think the authorities could genuinely be misled and genuinely think, oh, this is the guy, we really believe this? Or is it like we're going to come up with a cover story and just arrest someone who is convenient for us to arrest? I mean, how do these things go? I hate to be cynical. And I, and there's nothing I hate more than sounding like a conspiracy theorist. But I think that they found somebody that they could just take a dump on, somebody who could take the, fall and they chose him now whether he agreed to do it for money or he really is just a patsy

who's going to have his life destroyed i have no idea but this just seems too convenient for me too convenient i mean and also i guess the other question is like why does the i mean obviously the german government decided to look the other way when one of their main sources of energy got blown up and it fucked up their people's ability to get affordable energy to heat their homes in the winter and stuff. I mean, you have to think that the German people would not be pleased about this, but still, wouldn't the heat have been off by now? I mean, pun intended? You'd think, you'd think that these European countries would have fallen apart by now. It would have frozen to death during the winter.

I remember, but what I mean is the heat is on the political heat. Like, you know, in other words, like they're not. It should have collapsed governments by now. But they're like also kind of like at this,

by this point, like why not just forget the whole thing and pretend like it never happened? I mean, it's been a few years. Why stir it up? We go as we always say, right? Yeah. It's always,

it's the cover. Yeah, it's exactly. Don't get in the way. The cover up, you know, it's the cover up that gets you. in trouble. I mean, nothing says cover up like, you know, like a cover story. Yep, I agree. All right. Well, we're going to follow that with great interest. I mean, the other thing is it

doesn't make any sense even with their own narrative that he acted alone. Yeah. So he can't have acted alone. I mean, it's just so nuts. Well, he didn't do it. No. No. He's just a random Ukrainian. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, because I mean, I remember just think, yeah, I mean, we could get into the physics of it if you're interested. But do you dive? I took lessons in the pool of the American embassy in 1991. And then I went diving once in the Red Sea at Sharma Shake, Egypt in like 92. And then I never went again.

I mean, the thing is, like, yeah, this pipeline was, I think, at about 280 feet of depth. And so the thing is, right? So, a recreational diver at most can go down to 130 feet, right? Like, that's it. And it's dark and really, really high pressure. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's 130 is really dark. So you do an aggressive descent, like you basically go, you point straight down, you kick like crazy, you get down there.

You can, the whole dive is six minutes from there, down, and back. So you can basically go, putter around for 45 seconds. Then you have to make your way up and do your safety stops on the way back. Otherwise, you die of the bends. That's at 130 feet. Now, because it's exponential, right? 260 feet is not twice as hard. It's four times as hard.

Four times as much pressure, which means the air goes four times faster. Which means you would have at most a minute and a half to go from top to down to the bottom and back up. I'm sorry, you're going to have, what, two seconds down there? So during those two seconds, you're going to break the shell of the pipeline. You're going to install the plastic explosives. You're going to leave and be gone before that thing blows up. And that's at 260 feet, and it was deeper than that. It's just not possible.

I had a relative, my cousin's husband, he was a professional diver in the first. French Navy. He used to go down to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean and install nuclear weapons for a nuke tests. Remember when France was still doing nuke tests well until like the early 80s? So he was one of those guys, right? And they would go down to like 1,500, 2,000 feet. But they use submersibles and mixed gases. And you know, and they have like 15 tanks like lined up side by side. It's a whole like you said, state it's a state enterprise right i'm not sure i mean maybe like bp can do stuff like that you know maybe the nordstream guys could do it like if you believe the idea that the russians blew up their

own pipeline which is absurd but but like basically it's just not possible no no it's not possible i agree can't do it no well all right so although i'm getting pushback here from Spectrum says you can go to 56.6 meters, which is about what 100, that's about 200 feet, maybe. If you go with 1.6 PO2, okay, sure, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe. But anyway, this is 280 feet down. I mean, it's still, there's no way. Not to mention the time that you need down there. That's really the problem here. Yeah. Well, Spectrum's still arguing. All right, I'm going to do a deep dive on this pun intended um thank you spectrum um all right so we shall see what happens here okay so um walmart we're going we're going in reverse order here on the on the on the uh on this on

stuff so i thought this was really interesting so um this uh lady goes to walmart uh she buys a uh a television set um she's a tick tocker so that's how this ended up breaking up her name is helene bratton uh she said her friend bought a roku tv apparently it was previously owned and then returned you know sometimes you do that like at a box store or whatever happens to me at ikea all the time where it's like it was returned then like pieces are missing that's all it's fun when you're putting the thing back together yeah um because the original owner never logged out of their account, the new buyer started

seeing footage from inside a stranger's house. So apparently, Roku, this is a quote, has this thing where you can go and look at the camera through the TV. So you can monitor your house and stuff through your TV. She explained about a week ago, things started popping up at the bottom of the TV screen.

It's some random person's house that bought the TV and returned it to Walmart. The friend couldn't log out because it required a password to log out. When she called Walmart, the staff told her that it was weird and advised her to perform a factory reset. So basically the person had logged onto their account on the TV and didn't log out. But the video has now seen, I mean, this is kind of like crazy that they didn't do a factory reset and that the reselling is so common. You know, I think John about like all the times

I stay in a hotel and I'll log into my Netflix or my HBO Max on the hotel TV. And, you know, I know they have a thing, good hotels like Marriott have an automatic reset where they turn it off. And I don't really care if people know that I've been watching, I've been binge watching Banshee lately. But like, you know, I mean, this has some, to me, this has that like these companies like Walmart need to get more serious about privacy. Totally, totally agree.

They need to get very serious about privacy. And this is something that's easy to do. And it's not going to cost Walmart anything. Just reset the TV. Well, it costs them some time, right? They're going to have to plug it in and turn it off. But it'll take like, you know, five minutes or whatever. You know, I live with a gay couple.

They're seniors and they rent two rooms in my house. And when I came up to New York last week, And saw you and Sean O'Brien. I was up there for, what was it, three, four days, Ted? Yes. I came back and these guys had binge watched every gay love story movie on Prime. So I go to, I go to prime and I'm like, are you kidding me? I said, you guys, every recommendation I have.

Oh, no. movie is some gay love story. I tend to focus my interest on on horror and like award winners. You know, gives you the title award. Yes, yes, yes. That's pretty much all I watch. And documentaries. I watch a lot of documentaries.

You can create, they can create their own profile on your TV. That's what I said. They said, well, you know, we turned it on and it just, it prime just popped up. And I go, yeah, but you create your own profile. So, see where it says plus? Yes. You're the plus. The plus is for you. To squelch these gay love story.

Oh, my God. Yeah, that's kind of like what, you know, those ads for reputation.com. I was curious to what do they do exactly? So let's say there's something bad about you, like, you know, whatever. Ted Rawl, you know, did this or that. So in that come up, and all they do is they create new content, and like flood Google with it

so to push the bad news down until then that's all which you can do yourself so you don't really need them yep yep that's right that's what you have to do oh my god's what I have to do it's like thanks a lot

Michael Velloff broke back streaming it's like literally it's like I wish I could quit my algorithms but I can't or I can't quit you that's awesome that's a true totally 21st century problem oh my god that's so great um okay well now that we're laughing let's just let's talk about something less amusing um unless you're Israeli you might find it amusing so um I actually did kind of find it amusing that finally you know I've been

kind of deploring how long it's taken for there to be resistance in you know there used to be a big liberal contingent in Israeli politics. That's right. And, you know, I used to always tell people like, no, no, no, no, like a lot of Israelis are very cool. They want the two-state solution. They want Palestinians to have equal rights. They don't like the current situation. But that hasn't looked like the case for a long time. But now some, so Netanyahu is unleashing this new offensive against what's left of Gaza a city, 60,000 reservists are being called up. But some units, I mean, only some units, not all of them, are reporting 40 to 50 percent no-shows. That's a lot. Soldiers are saying,

listen, I'm not into the genocide, or they're saying, listen, this shit's gone on too long, and I'm just done here. And, you know, Israel famously isn't good at fighting long wars. And this is officially getting to be a long war. So it's to the extent. that you can even call it awards kind of a one-way shooting match but you know like someone said in the in the chat here much earlier on the PTSD and the IDF must be off the charts it's got to be it's got to be just out of control yeah and you know this has happened in the past it happened after the invasion of Lebanon where the whole country was gung-ho to go in there and just wipe out the PLO and then after they got bogged down, everybody just wanted to go home. You know, the PTSD really,

really set in. Quick, quick question here from Nadia Margaret. Can you explain Qatar's relationship with Egypt and why on earth the cutteries would inject seven and a half billion dollars into the Egyptian economy? Honestly, to piss off the Saudis. The Saudis have a very close relationship with, with they have for a very long time at least since the early 19 mid 1960s and and the gutteries have a terrible terrible relationship with Saudi Arabia and so any way that the gutteries can just can just get a get a jab in at the Saudis and vice versa they'll do it so knowing that the Saudis and the Egyptians are very close the gutteries say oh we'll give money to the Egyptians and help the Egyptians.

The Egyptians are, you know, Egypt is called Omadonia, the mother of the earth, right? All Arabs, they say, sprouted from Egypt. And they know all it's going to do is piss off the Saudis. The Egyptians are perfectly happy to take the money. The Egyptians, though, were so close to Saudi Arabia that last year, after the Saudis were particularly generous with them, they gave Saudi Arabia this little tiny uninhabited island in the Red Sea as a gift to thank them. And the Qataris are like, yeah, let us try to throw a wrench into that and see what sticks.

That's what it's about. By the way, Marcel is saying on YouTube, fireworks are sort of de facto illegal in Israel because people don't use them because so many people have PTSD. I have to admit, I have a little PTSD from Afghanistan, and I don't like fireworks for that exact reason. And, yeah, so, yeah, Egypt can't fail 110 million people, Houdini says, true. So, I mean, we're going to see more of this, obviously, John. This is going to be, it's going to have an effect. You know, I mean, and then also at the same time, we have this article from NPR, which is absolutely devastating, right?

So basically, a lot of Democratic friends of ours, I'm sure you had them too, were saying, look behind the scenes. Biden's doing everything he can. He's calling BB and asking to have food aid come in. And there was a devastating chart that they published that showed that prior to October 7, 2023, typically about 3,000 trucks worth of aid and other supplies entered Gaza daily. That number plunged down to a trickle of just a few. Ever since then, it never got higher than 500. ever again. So obviously, you know, it's not surprising that, you know, you could end up with, you know, with famine as we have. And pretty much by April of 2024, they were, the highest different one was 400 trucks a day. Biden, meanwhile, sent $18 billion in military aid to

Israel. And basically, there was a split inside the administration between people, the upper echelon, which was like Tony Blinken, you know, basically fuck the Palestinians and give the Israelis everything they want. And then the lower ranking people in the State Department who were pissed off and wanted the administration to lean, to cut off arms and or at least threaten to cut off arms. And so now, all told, according to NPR, 60,000 of the dead. And so this is higher than the Gaza health ministry estimate, died of hunger, 60,000, mostly children. And basically NPR lays this entirely at the feet of the Biden administration, and now Trump for continuing it.

And they talk about the silly, performative stuff like the peer, remember that. Right. And that's what it was, performative. And the airdrops. Yeah. But basically there was no willingness to. and basically the Israelis behind the scenes, including Netanyahu, we're constantly telling their American counterparts,

we are not going to send anything in. Netanyahu apparently told Biden at one point, if I sent in even four trucks of aid, the IDF tanks would be pointing at me. Well, maybe we need to take the chance and do that. I'm okay with that. I'm okay with that as well. Yeah.

So, I mean, so to me there's a lot to unpack. Yeah. So let's talk about Biden's legacy. You know, I mean, I don't think anyone, you know, when Joe Biden dies, I think this should be at the top of his obituary. Like, you know, that he, he was a, you know, the devil's assistant when it came to the big, the genocide of the 21st century. That's right. And, you know, I mean, how likely is this to stick to him? I think actually it will stick to him. History has. has a way of evening the playing field. And I think that in the end, this is what is going to be Joe Biden's legacy. And I think scholars at the same time are going to look back at Joe Biden's very long Senate career

and say, even in the Senate, he did nothing to help the Palestinians, hungry children, African Americans. I mean, there are a lot. of things that we can criticize joe biden on this is this is the worst but it's one of many and i think you know in the end he's going to go down in history as the equal of people like you know calvin coolidge or benjamin harrison people who most americans would say who you know having accomplished nothing, or even having made the world a worse place. Totally. Matthew Blarinz,

thank you very much for your donation, wants to know what differentiates Israel from other Western supported countries that commit atrocities? That's a good question. And I have the answer. For me, the answer is as an American, Israel is the number one recipient of American foreign aid. And it is our tightest ally in the Middle East. So when they, when they kill, when they kill Palestinians, they do it with U.S. weapons and U.S. money and their economy is completely propped up by us. So we're helping. It's not like if, if the Myanmar junta kills the Rohingya, that has nothing to do with us. We're not helping them. I mean, sure, we're not invading to overthrow the government, nor should we. But, but that's, that's, to me,

me the main difference. Also, I mean, I do think the Israelis go about this with a certain, you know, ethno state, apartheid sort of mentality that makes them particularly barbaric. I agree. And one of the reasons why that bothers me so much is that the leaders of Israel, and I'm not talking about just Benjamin Netanyahu, but I'm talking about almost all of the leaders of Israel, whether they're cabinet members or Knesset members or, you know, the head of the water board for Haifa or whatever, they're almost entirely European. They're not Middle Eastern Jews who have been in that area for hundreds or for thousands of years.

They're Europeans whose parents and grandparents emigrated to Israel. And then they just declared it as their own. This is ours now. These people who've been here for all these centuries, they have to leave. Yeah, well, but with, John, you don't think it's okay. Like, so I've been, hey, listen, I've been gone for 1,900 years. Right. But I'm back.

So, scooch. Yeah. I'll take that house. Thank you very much. Yeah. Oh, and let me bulldoze your, your olive trees that have been there for 300 years. Yeah, no, I mean, I mean, I think that's the, I mean, I think that that's the difference, right, like, primarily. Also, Carter, thank you very much for your job.

generous donation. Thank you. Really appreciate it. Look, he's looking forward to your podcast episode with Dalton coming up on. You know what? Dalton just texted me the trailer and I haven't looked at it yet. But one of the things I love about Dalton Fisher is he does literally everything himself. Ted, you and I couldn't do that.

Robbie talks and I'm like, God bless Robbie, because I don't know what the heck he's talking about and he does exactly as he says he's going to do and he's very tech savvy and very helpful and everything runs smoothly i couldn't do that and dalton does everything himself whether it's cutting and editing shorts or sound or lighting his studio is in his childhood bedroom in his parents house and he told me he spent 15 000 dollars to make it look like a legit legit professional studio. That's cool. It looks like he went into some, you know,

standalone building that's just there to be a studio. It looks fantastic. He's taken this very seriously. John, this is, I'm really glad we got this question because I really want to bring this. I really want to answer this. I'll let you have a shot at it first. A boreal de Finitif also asked fairly,

or it's a commentary, it's the only democracy in the region by far, John. Oh, oh, no, no, it's not. Do you want to explain why it's not? Yeah, because only 6% of Arabs are allowed to vote. It's not a democracy any more than Kuwait is a democracy, where only people who can trace their lineage to the census of 1920 can vote. Or an Egyptian democracy where, sure, anybody can vote so long as you're not,

to religious, you know? Yeah, it's like, no, I mean, so, yeah, there's not, so Israeli, yeah, Israeli Arabs don't have full voting rights. That's the, you know, we can start there. But honestly, I'm going to, I have to go to the occupation first. If you occupy for a long time, I mean, since 1967, vast swaths of territory, basically you control, imagine if the United States, half the population was basically occupied territory with stateless people who are not allowed to vote,

well, those people are under your control. It's not like a, to me, occupation is temporary. Effectively, de facto, Israel has annexed these territories. And it's been over half a century, and those people can't vote. So most of the people under your control inside your borders, effectively, can't vote. By definition, that's not a democracy as far as I'm concerned.

No, I agree. It's not a democracy. Thank you for as much as we love and appreciate producer Robbie as well. Producer Robbie is off today, but he will be probably back tomorrow, I would think. So, yep, much appreciated. Yeah, Marie Lerl says, Egypt's more of a democracy than Israel. They're persecuted by the U.S. and Israel, but there are people with equality among them. Well, I mean, certainly there are democratic trappings to Egypt, for sure. I mean, although I don't think Cece is going anywhere anytime.

No, that's an ongoing problem. Yeah. So Hugh keeps buying this Hasbara. We should talk about what Hasbara is, right? So Nadia Margaret says, so Hasbara is sort of like it's a Hebrew word for basically like, I think it means like to inform or to explain. And basically it's a movement where that is either organized or, In some cases, you self-appoint, where basically supporters of Israel put themselves out on social media or wherever.

In any context, they call into a talk show, and they basically try to explain things from Israel's point of view. And the effect of it is, if you ever notice when you're swarmed online, when you make a comment by people who all seem to have similar talking points, you're being Hasbaraed. That's what's happening. it might seem like wow there sure are a lot of people out there who really love Israel and there are but the truth is it's very organized it's not really it's not that organic really yeah yeah you know I was I was on some podcast the other day and somebody kept saying in the comments like over and over again don't believe him he's a trained fibber don't believe him he's a trained fibber he fibs everything he says is a fib i'm like who the fuck is this and then somebody else

wrote underneath john if you're reading the comments ignore the bot and i was like oh it's a bot i didn't even think of that and then the bot didn't respond to it and then after a while it just stopped so annoying hey so deep program show fan says john you've often said that the cia regularly kills people what does this actually look like outside of wars who does it that's a good question um they try to make it as clean as possible i can't even believe i'm describing it like that but what that is is um a team will fly out let's say let's say they get in order to kill you know some libyan cleric i'm just making this up sure um They'll do it in several different ways.

You can send in a team in the middle of the night. They parachute in, you know, to wherever, 10 miles away. They steal a car, drive to the guy's house, discreetly pick the lock. They'll have somebody from the agency's locks and picks team. Pick the lock. They go in and with silenced, you know, suppressors on their, on their guns, they'll just to assassinate the guy. Sometimes they will parachute in or boat in, you know, in the middle of the night and snatch a guy, throw him in a van and just drive to the airport

or drive to the boat and, you know, take him offshore. Sometimes they'll just walk up to him in the market. And as they're walking past him, you know, scratch him with something, some kind of poison that will kill him in the next two, three, four hours. Oh, that's like the famous KGB killing with the Russians used to do that. Yeah, the Russians used to do that a lot. And they taught the Bulgarians to do it all the way into the early 1980s. That was a favored Bulgarian assassination technique. You come home, you feel like you have a terrible, terrible flu. Catching the flu. And then you're dead the next morning. Yeah, ricin's crazy. Yeah, rice is. It's a point in breaking bad, of course. Right. And you can make ricin,

at home. I mean, you shouldn't do it because if you Google it, the FBI is going to be knocking on your door. Not to mention, it's very, very dangerous because it's an alkaloid. So if it get even a little bit, you touch it with your skin, it can get into you. Yes, just like anthrax. Yeah. So it's not, don't find kids, don't try this at home. Do not do this at home. Okay. Yeah, so thank you firmware for your donation, very generous as well. Israel has an entire government department dedicated to Hasbara with a $150 million budget. I 100% believe that. Peruse S wants to know on YouTube, does the CIA and or other agencies actively search for compromise in friendly countries just in case there needs to be some arm bending in the future?

not that that was they were trending away from that when I first started at the agency in fact that was a question that I asked in the operational training training in the late 1990s and one of the one of the instructors said you know we only did that because the Russians did it so frequently but we've found that it's just not really good for source development if you're developing a source and you want this source to communicate espionage for you or commit treason for you or report to you from from you know a position in place in a hostile capital he's not going to do it because you're threatening him you're blackmailing him he's going to do it because he loves you and you're his best friend or you're giving him so much

money that he just can't say no but compromise it's just something that doesn't work in training One of the instructors told us a story about hiring a prostitute who lured an Iranian Ayatollah, not a senior one. There are thousands of Ayatollahs in Iran. This is back in, you know. What Ayatollah, too, Ayatollah? You're right, exactly. This is around the time of the revolution. And she took him into a hotel room that was wired for audio and video.

They had sex. the CIA took dozens of pictures of him. And then when he traveled overseas in the region to another country, they confronted him with the photographs. And he says, nice work. I'll take two of those in 8 by 10 and give me three of those in 5 by 7s. And oh, can I have this one on slide so I can put it on my wall? And he's like, you people, what's the matter with you people?

You're not going to compromise. me. And that was kind of the end of compromise for the CIA. It just doesn't work. It doesn't work. So what happens if you use it? I mean, do people just leave or? Yeah, they say, fuck you and then they report. So publish and be damned, basically. That's super, super interesting. A good question, actually, in the feed. I hope it didn't get like pushed up too far here. Houdini wants to know. If the CIA has its own tactical team, why didn't why didn't they carry out the bin Laden operations instead of the Navy SEALs. Good question.

They did. That Navy SEAL team was on loan to the CIA. So it was a CIA operation. It was directed by the CIA's counterterrorism center. And all of the Navy SEALs were temporarily CIA contractors. Was there ever any chance that Osama bin Laden could have been captured alive and brought or brought back to face justice either at the Hague or in New York. Yeah, of course there was.

But Obama said in his memoir, one of his three memoirs, that he made the decision just to kill him. Just kill him. Is that legal? Oh, yeah. Yeah, if illegal under U.S. law, if the president or the president's representative, who is usually the national security advisor or the state,

CI director, determines that a person is a clear and present danger to the United States, any American installation, or any U.S. person, which is an American citizen or a green card holder. You can kill that person legally. Yeah, but the president has to order it. So this is the holder argument, right? Yes, exactly. That's exactly what it is.

The president is like a medieval, a feudal lord, has the power of life and death over every other human being on planet Earth. Correct. Isn't that awful? That shouldn't be. No, no, it shouldn't be. So what the CIA has gone on to do, remember, you know, the killing of bin Laden was, what, 14 years ago. Yep. They've developed a variety of teams.

There are teams that belong to the Counterterrorist Center. There are teams that belong to what's called the Special Activities Division. And now there's something called Global Resources. And you can send any of those three teams or components of those three teams pretty much anywhere in the world to kill who you want to kill. Remember, in 2011, I think it was, the New Yorker broke a story about John Brennan's what they called the Tuesday morning kill list meetings. So every Tuesday morning at 7 o'clock,

John Brennan would convene a group of CIA people at the White House, and they would come up with a list of people to kill that week. And so the teams would go out and do their killings, and then they would all reconvene next Tuesday at the White House and hear who they're supposed to kill for that week. These are, and these are the same people. These are the normal people.

Thanks, Angela, for the donation. Marble, thanks for that donation as well. Marble wants to know, what are the risks of a country, if a country recognizes Palestine, what happens? There must be risk? I'm not so sure. I don't think there's much risk.

It remains to be seen, I think. I mean, France is doing it, the UK is doing it, Canada's doing it, Australia is doing it. Maybe there used to be risk. What do you think? Yeah, I think they're probably used to be risk. And this is what the Israelis have done. Economically? Yeah, sure.

The Israelis have overplayed their hand. And I think it's because the U.S. has pretty much put them up to it. Like, you guys can do anything you want. You can commit any atrocity, any crime against humanity, and you will never lose the support of the United States. And so I think they just assumed that the rest of Europe, and Australia and New Zealand would go along with that and they've crossed a line and now there actually is a consequence.

Philip Blair has a question or comment and I want to talk about it a little bit. I'm curious because I'm curious what you have to say, John. Just like Obama intentionally put Aaron Swartz in a situation where he'd likely take his own life and he did. Aaron Swartz was a U.S. citizen. So Aaron Schwartz committed suicide. He was basically a militant pro-libertarian, the Internet information wants to be free guy. And this is a zealous Boston-based federal prosecutor went after him for basically he broke into J-Store, which is the academic database and hacked into it and basically released a bunch of academic papers, millions of them.

on the on his theory that uh information like that shouldn't be behind a paywall yeah um he did a couple other things too but basically he busted into the mit um uh server i know all about this because i was going to write a so you know i have those those little tiny um graphic novel biographies of snowden and trump and burney and so on and i my publisher assigned me to do aaron schwartz and um when i interviewed I tried to get interviews with his family members and people who knew him no one would talk to me they either didn't trust me or they or they just were too hurt and and traumatized by what Aaron had done so and so there was no there so I couldn't do the book I mean I was very frustrated because I was like look it's going to be a respectful

treatment the other ones were and so you know it's kind of like check me out you know, but anyway, the point is I did learn, I did do a lot of research and I did a lot of interviews with people who did know Aaron. Do you think Aaron was pushed to, I mean, do you think he was just a fragile guy who would have committed suicide anyway? Or, you know, is this kind of a thing where the government sometimes pushes someone? I remember thinking that when the LA Times was going after me and they were declaring lawfare and going beyond just defending themselves, they were really fucking with me

and pushing the pressure points that they would have really liked it if I'd taken my own life that would have been like a major like toast down at the old boys club you know how do you think they view things like that

you know when he when he took his life I gave an interview to Kevin Gestala and Kevin asked me if I was surprised that Aaron had committed suicide and I said no I'm surprised that more people don't commit suicide.

I said, God knows, I considered it. And I actually had made a decision to do it. And I think my wife, my ex-wife now, recognized it. She was going to go to bed one night. And I said, oh, I'm going to stay up and watch TV. And she said, no, why don't you come to bed? I was going to go to the garage and turn the car on and just lay across the back seat. and she just would not let me stay up.

And she forced me to go to bed. So she knew what I was going to do. But yeah, I think, listen, when they're threatening you with 30 years, 40 years, 50 years, or in the case of Julian Assange, like 100 years, they don't have any problem if you commit suicide. It's one less, it's one less piece that they have to do. Pain in the ass. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, that was a terrible, terrible loss when Aaron Schwartz. And I would agree about Frasmataz, L.A. Times is a known government cut out for sure. You know, they also helped to do in, what's his name from the Mercury News. You know who I'm talking about, Gary Webb. Gary Webb, yeah. The L.A. Times was up front there in terms of, they couldn't find enough spots in his back to sink the knife into. Oh, yeah, and it was no coincidence that the Washington, Post story and the New York Times story that just eviscerated him came out on exactly the same

day. Yeah, they coordinate. Sure. Sure they do. Yeah. Okay, we probably should wrap it up, take another question or two, but how many people, is it normal for a CIA case officer to recruit, asks, O'Me, how you doing? Also, what happens to you if you spend months on it and fail to recruit someone yeah great questions so when i was when i was in athens my station chief pulled me aside one day and um and he said you know i've been a i've been an operations officer for 25 years and in my 25 years i've recruited nine sources and he made it to the senior intelligence service level four huge right community leader of the intelligence community nine recruitments in 25 years he said to me you've been here two years and you recruited five people and every one of those people was a badass let me tell you

dangerous criminals killers i wasn't recruiting safe housekeepers little old ladies to make sure that the safe house is nice and clean when you need to use it for a meeting i recruited badasses and i said you know it's the craziest thing i just have a knack for it. Like, I can, I can well hide my disdain for a person. I may hate you, but you don't have any idea that I hate you because we're talking about whatever it is that interests you. We're talking about baseball. We're talking about, you know, the founding of the popular front for the liberation of Palestine or all the people that went to batter in Meinhoff's funerals when they committed suicide and we could talk about the theater,

we could talk about, you know, FIFA, whatever you want to talk about. And I will make it look like I'm your best freaking friend. And that's why I was successful. I worked for a guy who made GS-15, which is the top grade in the GS scale before you make it to senior service. God knew he knew he was never going to make to senior service. But in his 25 years, he made one recruit One. And it was a guy who reported on Spanish wheat harvests. When that used to be a thing back in the 80s, he was a disaster. And he made it all the way up to GS-15 with one recruitment. So if you have quality recruitments, you're going to do just fine. Gotcha. So it's not just about like, it's not like a cop writing traffic tickets. You just have to get the numbers up. A couple quickies. Thanks for the donation marble, is Trump's cabinet the most unqualified cabinet in modern times? I'm going to say, I don't know, you know, there's been some, we've forgotten about some seriously unqualified people. I mean, my favorite was Reagan's Secretary of Energy, Edwards.

Oh, James Watt. He was a, well, that's the interior. No, no, that was interior. Yeah, James Wats, who actually hated the environment. So that's kind of bad. Edwards was a dentist. who inexplicably was running the Department of Energy. I forgot that. And Reagan had that weird thing of putting, you know, so let's see. Didn't he have a general as his secretary of state at some point? Yeah, Alexander Hague. Alexander Hague, right?

I think he was the first guy to do that. That's supposed to be the diplomat spot. Now we can't get rid of Colin Powell, put it afterwards. Yeah, not since George Marshall. Yeah. I always thought that was very strange you know there's been some there's been some very fucked up cabinet picks

but I don't know maybe in the aggregate I don't know it's hard to say I mean the American presidency is definitely a study in entropy and a lot of those real clowns you know that we know from the Bush years you know they originated in the Gerald Ford administration like Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld Yeah, they came of age with Ford.

That's true. So I don't know if you, technically we would call them unqualified, but also this one's a soft ball for you from Myra Gomez. Any news on the book release, Mr. John? So I texted my publisher yesterday. Let me find it. Yeah, here it is. I said, dude, don't forget about me.

You promised me a contract by Wednesday. Today is Wednesday. This was yesterday. and he says, here it is, his response, he said, I haven't forgotten back shortly working on it today. So I want to believe him, but I don't know. You're like Mulder. You want to believe.

Exactly. All right, guys, we're going to have to call enough de-programming for today. But the good news is we'll be back tomorrow at 5 o'clock Eastern time, as we are Monday through Friday every week. now thanks so much for joining us uh this is please like follow and share the show thanks for all of your generous donations and we'll see you tomorrow