DeProgram with John Kiriakou and Ted Rall - Epstein Exposed (with Murtaza Hussain) | DeProgram with Ted Rall and John Kiriakou

Episode Date: February 4, 2026

Political cartoonist Ted Rall and CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou deprogram you from mainstream media every weekday at 9 AM EST. Today we discuss: • National Security and Foreign Affairs Correspondent at Dropsitenews Murtaza Hussain joins Ted and John to discuss the Epstein Files and the disgraced financier’s links to foreign intelligence. Among the latest Epstein stories: Who sent Epstein cloth pieces from the Kaaba? How did he leverage the collectible art market? • Trump threatens to nationalize elections by taking them away from Democratic states. • A collision between a Greek Coast Guard patrol boat and a migrant boat leaves 15 people dead.• Israeli border goons terrorize some of the first Palestinian women to return to Gaza via Rafah.JOIN US LIVE ON RUMBLE!https://rumble.com/c/DeProgramShowFOLLOW TED:https://rall.com/https://x.com/tedrallFOLLOW JOHN:https://www.instagram.com/realjohnkiriakouhttps://x.com/JohnKiriakouLISTEN ON SPOTIFY:https://open.spotify.com/show/2kdFlw2w8sSPhKI8NRx8ZuLISTEN ON APPLE MUSIC:https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/deprogram-with-john-kiriakou-and-ted-rall

Good morning. It's Wednesday, February 4th, and I have a frog in my throat. I'm Ted Raul. That's John Kariaku. Hey, everybody. Program with Ted Raul and John Kirooku. Thanks for joining us this morning. Good morning, John. Good morning, Ted. In just a few minutes, joining us will be National Security and Foreign Affairs correspondent, Mertaza Hussein, from Dropsite News. And we'll be talking about the latest out of the Epstein files. And I'm sure it's going to be a wide-ranging and interesting conversation. He'll be with us for just shy of half an hour. So as usual, if you have your questions, comments, and anything else you want to say, please put it live in the Rumble or the YouTube chat.

John and I will feed it up to Murtaza and we'll talk about it. And of course, after that, we'll be talking about other news that's interesting. We think you need to know about and anything you guys want to talk about as well. Trump, we didn't really get to this yesterday, but in any meaningful way. But Trump is floating the idea. of taking away the elections from the states, well, at least the democratic states. And you could see that one coming five million miles away. We'll see what the Constitution has to say about that. I would be remiss, John, if I didn't want to talk to you about this Greek Coast Guard tragedy,

15 migrants at least killed in this collision. And last but not least, this Israeli-backed militia is basically terrorized, terrorizing some of the first women, probably I would imagine some of the first men too, but some of the first women to return back to Gaza. I guess they basically left Gaza via Rafa for a day trip or two and went back very quickly and immediately got treated and harangued and harassed and detained in the horrible way. We'll talk about that.

Before we forget everything else, don't forget Robbie Aide, we are at about. $700 out of $1,000 needed. Let's go ahead and put up the banner that's the GoFundMe. I just go to GoFundMe.com and search for D-Program. Robbie, I will go ahead and put the URL up there if I can find it. But it's like Streamyard is acting funny. But anyway, just go to D-program.com and it will, here we go. Okay, that was very strange.

And I will go ahead and put that up. we please please stay tuned and I guess we'll go we should what do you think John if you're amenable we'll just go ahead and bring in Murtaza looking forward to it and we'll talk about it okay here we go without further ado joining us for this segment is Mertaza Hussein he's the national security and foreign affairs correspondent at DropSight News and he's a very well-followed and well-informed fellow and it's a pleasure to have you joining us Thanks, John. It's great to be on with you. Welcome.

So obviously the media is pouring through, and journalists are pouring through, the three million or so documents that have been released, some in highly redacted, some in somewhat redacted form as a result of the Epstein data dump. There's about three million more that we haven't seen and we don't know if we're ever going to get to see. There's a lot of questions about this. couple stories related to the Epstein story that just sort of broke over night. Oddly, Epstein, we knew he was an art collector and we know that he was monetizing the collectible art market, but inexplicably he apparently got the UA, someone from the UAE sent him cloth pieces from the Kaaba, which is, of course, the shrine in Mecca in Saudi Arabia. Insane. I can't believe it when I read it.

Yeah, I mean, what's up with that? What's up with that? Yeah, well, first of all, thanks for having me out to discuss the subject because, you know, you would think that there would be a greater appetite to talk about some of these disclosures, but it's actually been relatively muted, I would say, in the last few years. We started getting some information and granular detail information about Epstein's activities. So, you know, for context, myself and my colleagues at Dropside News have been doing a series stories based on Epstein's intelligence activities.

And we've been doing that for maybe about six, seven months now. And those stories were based not primarily on government disclosures, but on two sets of hacked emails that were released separately and just happened to contain Epstein's correspondence. One was with a former Israeli Prime Minister Ehubarak, who was known to be an Epstein associate, but he had several thousands of emails with Epstein, which were in this hack inbox, which posted on a site called it, distributed to the president. denial of secrets. And then there's another actual inbox, which was actually Epstein himself, partially his Yahoo inbox, which we had, and Bloomberg had a similar inbox from him as well, too.

So we did about maybe almost a dozen stories based on those emails, which were quite limited, really. There were only, you know, several thousand messages, but we got tremendous information out there about his ties with global leaders, about his intelligence connections, about his financial interests, many, many different things about his life. And, you know, that was a pretty limited, you know, as I said, set of data. So this new dump, three million files is so tremendous. It's really a lot to go through. So when people have asked me, what are my takeaways and so forth,

I would say I don't exactly know yet because, you know, many people are jumping into many quick conclusions about it, both to dismiss it all, which I find more problematic, or even to make a firm conclusion. But I think that, you know, it was so laborious. It took so much time for us to figure out what was going on in that smaller set. That thing is going to take us quite a lot of time to get digestible information out of this.

But that said, you know, there are some things in there which were, you know, low-hanging fruit, you could say. They're very obvious, egregious, kind of shocking episodes, interactions he had with individuals, things related to people's, you know, if not involvement, but at least, you know, sharing like sexual encounters with Epstein or, you know, photos and things like that, which do relate to his sex crimes potentially. That's all in there. You know, John, you mentioned his interactions with the Emirates and Saudis and Qataris and so forth. He had very intimate interactions with them, actually. And this was the basis of security that the dropside did in mid-January about his ties with the general name Sultan Saleem, who is one of the most powerful people in the UAE, and he's the chief of this company called Dubai Ports World,

which owns and operates ports all of the world. And EFSI has a very close relationship with him. you can read more detail in the story, but I was actually reading more emails when the new dump between him and Saleem they would routinely share kind of like sophomoric vulgar emails

in between, you know, talking about arranging meetings with powerful people and business and so forth. They're very close. And so, you know, when he's mentioned that he would sense this religious relics by these Emirates and Saudis and so forth, I think it was reflective of the tremendous

importance and ways that they put on their relationship with Epstein. And they viewed him as somebody who was integral to their political interests in the United States and then beyond that as well too in Europe and Russia and elsewhere. And someone who they really had intimate close, you know, fondness for and like him. And, you know, I'll say it's very funny.

You know, they sent him the clock at the Qaba. This was many, many years after he'd already become notorious as a SEPA. So it was like they didn't even care. And if you look at other emails with him that the woman who sent it arranged the shipment to him we know where these relics are now by the way that i don't know but uh in according to email it was sent to his island like the island where you know decepts island so forth so it was like layers upon layers of uh you know kind of irony and uh kind of grotesquess but you know i think the the issue is that act is strata socioeconomically and

politically of people's power the ethnic religious uh you know racial sort of uh divisions which are so pronounced, maybe at the general public's level, they almost kind of dissipate. They all view themselves sort of on the same team or part of the same club. And I think that's also one of the subtext of this rare glimpse into elite activities and communications afforded by these emails. Murta, one of the weasel words in journalism is ties. And I'm not accusing you of weaselry, but, you know, so-and-to has ties. Because that can mean anything, right? Like someone sends an email to someone one time, that's a tie. When you say that Epstein, let's say he had ties with, for example, the Emirates,

I mean, you got into it a little bit, but I mean, like, kind of like, how would this, what degree of intimacy or coziness would you, like on a scale from one to ten, you know, at elite levels, would you put this at? Yeah, and, you know, people, this is part of one of the problems with the dump, is that people are going through the email, and the, the, and they're seeing like, you know, one or two emails, but that he had with some individuals some point and positing that that means that that individual

must have been involved in his sex crimes, they're knowledgeable about them and so forth, where that's not necessarily the case. There are a lot of people whose names show up in there once or twice just because they happen in the same circles, and even meeting with them, actually, it's not necessarily indicative of a wrongdoing per se. So, you know, but I think in this case is interesting.

This part of what we talked about in our story is that there was a very long-term, years-long relationship, relationship, you know, almost like regular daily contact, if not weekly and so forth. And also very crucially, involvement in meetings, business deals, you know, investments together, in introduction as to powerful people as well, too for purposes of making business with them and making deals with them. So that was all taking place. And I think with Epstein, in the case of the Emirates, you know, Epstein was very open

about his interest with others, kind of laying the groundwork for World later become the Abraham Accords. And the Abraham Accord was signed in 2020 a year after Epstein died. But he would actually set up meetings between Emirati and Israeli elites for the purpose of building connections with them

that they could use to make business, but also could be used for the groundwork of later political reconciliation, which actually did come to pass shortly after Epstein passed away. In the case of him in Salam, it's very interesting, there was a Rolling Stone article some years ago that quoted Epstein kind of boasting about the fact that he basically was so close with the owner of a port in the East Africa, the port of Berbera,

which is now a territory called Somaliland, and that he said he basically owned the port because of his relationship with this individual. And no one really knew what he was talking about at that time. It sounded like an empty boast and maybe, you know, excessive sort of comment. But I think the emails do show that he did have an extremely close relationship with the salem. He wasn't lying about that. And whether that meant he owned the poor and that's how he got rich off it, maybe that we don't really care safe in the country. There's certainly something that's valid. I'm sorry to interrupt you.

What would somebody like Soleiman get from a relationship like this? If you're already rich and you're already connected and you know that Jeffrey Epstein is a convicted pedophile, why even cultivate a relationship like this? Is there any indication of these documents, what was the quid pro quo, what he got out of it? Well, you know, it's, so the funny thing is we have so many of their emails in this case, going back many, many years that we can actually reconstruct at least some of the relationship and the motivations behind it. But, you know, the emails actually start, and then that's when they first met, but they,

the correspondence because they're very extensive around 2006. In 2006, there was the event which happened, which many people don't remember today, but But it was the failed purchase of some ports in the United States by Dubai World. Yes. Yeah. So at that time, it was the height of the Iraq War. In 9-11 just happened. There was a lot of suspicion of the idea that a Middle Eastern Arab or Muslim country would own critical infrastructure in the United States.

And it generated this huge backlash and the deal was ultimately run-end upon. So, you know, for the UAE, that was a very eye-opening sort of event because they thought that they had already aggraciated themselves with American elites. and we couldn't believe that this happened and they were sort of pushed back upon. And in their view, they needed to redouble their sort of information and influence buying in the United States to make sure that never happened again and that they could do whatever they want in the United States. They basically saw the U.S. as like an open market that they want to participate in and buy whatever they want. And to do that, they needed to build ties of the American elites who could advocate for them. And there was also perception, which I think is still to the state that the pro-Israel American

elites are a very, very, you know, fertile ground to buy and seed influence in the United States. So Epstein was seen as somebody like this. He was like a pro-Israel American elite who, if you develop ties with, he could make sure that your relationship or your reputation in the U.S. is good. You're listening to the U.S. policymakers and the press is good. And Salam sort of built his relationship with Epstein around that time. They started visiting him, going to the island, so for him being in regular contact with him, drawing upon his advice for many many different things. And over the course of a decade, and our story reconstructs this, it goes all the way to his death in 2019, just a few months before he was arrested and died, actually.

Epstein and Salaman become very intimate. And he relied upon Epstein to help sort of position Dubai and position the UAE in a PR sense in the U.S. But I think at that point, they also became very good friends. They had shared economic interests and they had shared geopolitical interest in the region, too. I was a two-part question. Why wasn't the pedophilia conviction and the previous jail term toxic to these people? And could you possibly go to the island and not know the sorted occurrences that were happening? Right.

Yeah. Well, that's a really amazing question. I think we all have that question looking at these correspondents because it's not even that people are different. In some of these emails, some of the messages and so forth, people are congratulating him on his, you know, skills with the quote-unquote the ladies. And this is years after he was well known for the pedophilia and sex trafficking and so forth. It was almost treated as a subject of levity and irony and so forth that he was engaged in this. In his birthday book, if you look at some of the pages, people have written messages and drawn pictures. They're congratulating him on being such a good. a good pedophile. That's actually what's going on in this.

They don't only not care. They think it's funny. The thing is funny. They want to continue visiting the island. They're still talking about their own sexual encounters in their emails with asking me for advice and so forth. So I think that basically what is indicative of is this was a class of people who had enjoyed tremendous impunity. And to be honest, they still enjoy impunity because nothing has really happened per se to For the most part, a few people there are there, but for a vast majority, that nothing really happened.

So they viewed it as sort of something that they were above laws and above common morality and so forth. So the whole idea, this is wrong or they should be worried about it, never seemed to immerse to them as it would so obviously to us. And they didn't think, oh, someday this could bite me in the ass. Right. Well, you know, this is also the thing which I wonder, because, you know, a lot of these emails, you know, this actually takes place these communities, communications over a very long stretch of time during which the technological environment has changed in that time as well, too. There wasn't signal chat or WhatsApp

back in 2006 or even 2011 and so forth necessarily. So they were treating email the way we might treat text messages today. So they were communicating a lot there. And I think the whole understanding that this is something which could come out. It's more like a record of the communications. Maybe was not as imprinted upon everyone's mind at that time. But that said, they continue up for 2019, which is way beyond that point. Maybe it's also something that people got into habit. And maybe these communications, where they exist today, they would not take place in email that take place in a format, which is more ephemeral or more easy to conceal at least. Mertes, we're going to talk a little bit later on after we lose you later in the show about the latest from Gaza, as you heard. How do you, and this is purely speculative,

but how do you think Epstein's role as a connector in sort of the Malcolm Gladwell sort of vein, how would that have played out if he hadn't gone to prison and, you know, committed suicide given the Gaza war? Yeah, you know, I think that he was somebody who was sort of this individual who bridged the world between the U.S., the Gulf Arab countries, and the Israelis. And there are other people like this who you can perceptibly see play a similar role, like the Jared Kushner's and the, even Steve Wickhawks of the world, many, many other individuals like that who are less prominent, who are sort of this Abraham Accordists.

And by Abraham Accordists, I mean, there are people who were sort of, yeah, there's kind of the interstitial individuals between who kind of made these ties possible. So I think he would probably be seen as a mediator in some sense informally. I think he would help navigate the PR concerns of these countries. Globally, he would help try to build business connections between elites in these countries, that would thereafter foster, perhaps, the political agreement. I think that's something which is an extremely important subtext to the Epstein story, is that he wasn't a public official, obviously. He wasn't associated with any individual.

People often ask after reading our stories about his Israel ties, was he a Mossade, Asian? Absolutely not. I don't think that that was any the way to describe his relationship. He was somebody who was kind of a product of the post-Cold War world where institutions were sort of downgraded in favor of, you know, powerful transnational individuals and networks of people. Yeah, and what he was doing was actually more important

than what the states were doing in the way, and he actually opened the door for the states to make moves later on. So if he was alive today, I would imagine he would be starting pitching, you know, investment opportunities in Gaza or, you know, pushing business deals between Saudis and Israelis or Qataris and Israelis, as a means of greasing the wheels for a later diplomatic encounter. So, yeah, I think he'd be very active at this time,

Have he not met his unfortunate end in some way of Jersey? Mortaza, we have a question from one of our listeners, but I want to add to it. He says, do you know if the Epstein files are a topic of media coverage and public interest in the Gulf countries or in the Middle East more broadly? And the reason why I want to highlight that question is I'm, I was just in Kuwait a couple of weeks ago. I'm going to go back, I think, around the first of April, but not just Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the UAE, Oman. and the people that I'm going to speak to specifically told me to arrive smart about the Epstein files because that's what people wanted to talk to me about. Are you getting that kind of feedback from the Gulf countries?

Are they as interested in this issue as we are? You know, it's interesting. You know, I've done interviews with Egyptian television and Lebanese television and so forth. And Al Jazeera, obviously, which is based in Qatar, also reached out to talk about it. But it's been sort of interesting because, you know, Every country in the region, they kind of view this in terms of their own elite interests and their relationships with one another as well, too. So, you know, I think that it's kind of funny. Like, this is a completely false, but I think that they often view a story which comes out.

If it mentions an Emirati, for instance, they assume the Qatari's he did it somehow or the Saudis did it. Sure. Yeah, or vice versa. The Qatari's have a story than they think the Emirati is. And that's just not how things work in the U.S. necessarily. Sometimes it does, I guess. but generally speaking, there is more of fluidity oftentimes. And it just happens to be a coincidence that maybe one country and others mentioned

who comes up in the emails. But, you know, I think that's kind of the subtext of a lot of it. So I think that the more they talk about it is in a context that they would like to use it as a political weapon or a level or a legal tool in the current political standoffs that have taken place. So I think that's kind of the predominant view of it. And of course, it could change as time goes on, but that's my impression. And whereas some of the countries which are more outside the Gulf have been interested to talk about more just for subject of general interest. I mean, obviously state media doesn't have the kind of lock hold on people's information flow that they used to do.

But in the Gulf states, are these, is this story getting much sort of official mainstream coverage? Or is it something people have to get on their own from the Internet? I haven't seen much. There may be some stories here, but I was checking, you know, Amarati media. and so I wasn't expecting to show up there, but I didn't see very much there. Al Jazeera has covered it in English, and there are maybe some Arabic as well, too, they've covered it.

But they're a bit different because they do have covered things globally and they're sort of dispersed and so forth. So it's somewhat less lockdown in some ways, but I have not seen a tremendous amount of coverage. And normally, you know, for the magnitude of the stories, you'd expect to see most importantly television hits with people regularly talk about it. That's been relatively limited and muted.

It's not to say they're not interested in it and haven't covered at all, but I don't think it's being framed yet, at least primarily as a golf story. It's interesting, John, you mentioned that they wanted to talk about that specifically when you go there because that may change in the new future. Murtasa, we have a question from a viewer, Desert Fox. What do you make of the Pizza Gate allegations and crimes involving more occultish practices? Yeah, you know, it was funny. there are some email or some documents in the obscene releases which contain these very

extraordinary sort of allegations of yeah occult practices and murder and you're very extreme things and it's very difficult to vet them per se because you know these are allegations that were the FBI I recorded and they talked about I as far as I've seen there was not any follow-up where they verified a granular detail but it seemed like they did take it seriously enough to report. And you do have to report everything that's a report to you, but they did discuss it in a way we should not immediately dismiss it. So I don't really know what to make of that. But, you know, what I would say is that, you know, I've had to update my own priors a little bit about how I think the world works in the last few years working on these stories because a lot of things, which,

you know, not saying that everything is true that people allege, but a lot of things which were dismissed as conspiracies at one point, they did turn out to be validated by information later on. And now they're just sort of, you know, accepted as being true. So even the sex trafficking that, you know, elite sex trafficking of children that Epstein was involved in, that would sound like an insane, you know, egregious, morally unconscionable allegation to make a few years ago. And yet now we know it's very true. It's documented voluminously. So, you know, I don't really disparage anyone for having suspicions or bringing up anything about any of these subjects anymore because I think it's all worthy of investigation and looking into because it seems like pretty much

anything is potentially people were capable of at this point. It's a very, very extreme thing. Apparently so. Yeah, yeah. Speaking of which, I'm glad this question came up because if he hadn't asked it, I would have. Reynolds' reps asking, what do you think of people saying that the bigger story is that Epstein was a money launderer for intelligence agencies as his main role? Well, you know, it's very interesting.

We did a story about this at DropSites based on Epstein's, you know, longer history. It was sort of almost a rebuttal to the New York Times story. about how he made his money. It just happened to be tied in the same way. But I think that that is true. But that was one aspect of who Epstein was. I think that he actually got his start as a money lunderer for intelligence operations.

And he got his start in the world of an episode known as Iran Contra in the 1980s. And he was very close to people tied to Iran Contra. Adnan, Khashoggi, Douglas Lees, John Stanley Potter, many, many individuals you can read about their story. um and iran contra was a episode where you know not to go over in great detail people probably know a lot about it but uh you know money was generated for these black budgets you know off the books but that was the

purpose yeah that was perfect exactly so you need money which you can use for things that you don't want the public to know about and you don't want to be subject to you know congressional or a presidential oversight or whatever uh you need people who are good at laundering money and hiding money and cleaning money and he was someone who was very good at that and that became his sort of uh you know his killer in this his sort of a key competency that he had last time group went on and he became a very powerful person i think that he expanded his range he was someone who's this connector this individual who was facilitating the activities of powerful powerful people around the world including money laundering and beyond that as well too and i will say one thing very quickly as well

too. We haven't touched on the issue of the blackmail issue. You know, I think that almost, the question is almost a moot point in some ways, because people keep raising the bar in the sense of, well, is there a photo of him and standing behind the camera, filming Bill Clinton and then, you know, confronting him with a camera with the video and threatening him to, you know, race taxes or something with that. This is going to happen. I think it's actually not even necessary for that, this course of sort of blackmail take place, because what we do know is that he knew about the activities that these powerful people were doing

and was facilitating them for a very, very long period of time, and he had privileged knowledge about things that they didn't want to be public. That, by its nature, gives you leverage over people, you know, inherently, regardless when you coerced them thereafter or not, it does influence your relationship with them. So I think that, you know, he was somebody who was in his politically privileged role,

and I do hope we find more grander information about this, but yeah, I think he was somebody who, you know, he played many, many different roles, and all of them were, you know, very consequential. Rata, in the time that we have left, are we going to see the other half of the files? And if so, what would you like to find in those? You know, I hope so. It's interesting because they were quite adamant, it seemed, after this release,

to describe it as its final release. And you try to say, this is the end of the story. We heard that before, though. Yeah. Exactly, yeah. So I think there'll be a fight. And I know that Rokana and Thomas Massey have insisted upon disclosure of the final. final three million of the files.

And I do find the excuses that they raised from not releasing them, privacy and so forth. We're not very compelling because a lot of private things were accidentally released in this disclosure and so forth. So I don't really, you know, buy that per se. But, you know, I hope you do see that. And I hope that, you know, it's released in a way which is a bit more responsible, first of all, because I think they released it. It was a disastrous Epstein file releases so far.

deliberately almost seeding confusion, chaotic, disorganized. We're trying to do our best to reorganize the files for public analysis. We have a tool called J-mail working on with some researchers, which restructures all the emails and the image of a Google inbox of Epstein. So people can go through chronologically and kind of see where things fit together, which you can extract a lot more meaning from. But I hope that if there is more releases that they do release in a way, which allows people to actually view it in a way,

in which we can green information. Last question before we let you go. Is the haphazard way that the documents have been released and the huge mistakes, for example, the unredacted naked photos of underage girls, is that a feature or is it a bug? Do you think it's just the sort of haphazard nature of this administration which didn't hire enough people,

enough professional people to handle this? Or is this an old-fashioned document dump where we dump everything on journalists and they just can't handle it, process it on time, and then they hope that the public interest moves on. Well, if people remember, they did it on Friday afternoon. So Friday afternoon, the timing, exactly, to try to specifically, you know, dull the impact of it. And, you know, I would say that in the age of, you know,

you can make an AI app to do something in a half an hour and out, to arrange things in a way which is accessible. I could only imagine that this was intentional. Because if we, a drop site, can rearrange it with researchers in a more de-dissible format. We're like eight people, a drop-site, and a few researchers.

The federal government, the Department of Justice, of course, can release this in a digestible manner. I think they try not to. Yeah, they have more money than God, if they want. Thank you so much, Murtaza Hussein, for joining us. Hope you'll come back. He's the National Security and Foreign Affairs,

correspondent at DropSight News. and I would say an expert on the Epstein files. DropsiteNews.com. If you haven't been, check it out. I'm there every day. Go check it out. Thanks so much. Thank you, Murtaza.

Have a great day. Thank you. Outstanding. You know, drop site news, this is what investigative journalism is supposed to be, right? This is what the post, the Times, the journal, the L.A. Times, what they used to do. Right. And by the way, effective today. there was a massive layoff at the Washington Post.

It's happening right now. As we're speaking, I don't even know who's still around. Yeah. Yeah. But drop site news, this is the way journalism is supposed to be. For sure. And I look, I totally agree with Mertaza, like the, you know, with AI. You know, you and I could process this stuff.

Oh, yeah. I mean, sure. It's not hard. That's right. It's not hard. You're exactly right. I mean, it used to be like, it's just like, holy shit. if you ever watched Aaron Brockovich when they do the big data dump with the bankers

remember that they like filled the law offices with boxes and they're like well now what are we going to do yeah LA Times did that to me too sure I think I have I had a storage unit with I think it was 68 bankers boxes worth of bullshit turned out to be great though they underestimated my ability to read fast you know what they did to me um they released 15,000 documents which is a lot of documents it's not three million like the Epstein files. But 15,000 documents, every single one of them, they classified top secret, even if it wasn't, including the first draft of the script for the movie Kill the Messenger that I was the script advisor on, top secret, top and bottom and twice on each side.

Gary Webb. And then they told us that the only place we were allowed to look at the documents was in their conference room in the Justice Department's conference room because it was a skiff. Oh, my gosh. thinking there's no way that these, you know, $2,000 an hour attorneys are going to go sit in a justice department skiff all day, every day going through documents. And that's exactly what happened. And that is true, right. Yeah.

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bold beans, clean fuel in a morning routine that stands for something just like Rumble does. Okay, so shall we... Ted, go ahead. Yeah, excuse me, I want to jump in. Sodan is always so good to us and kind and generous, and he's got a question. Sodan, thank you very much for the $20. He raises something that I wanted to raise with you that happened last night. He says, good morning, guys.

John, Seif al-Islam Gaddafi was killed last night in Libya by four masked gunmen. Thoughts on this? any intel agency involvement. I have lots of thoughts on this. Actually, I met him in 2008. When Moammar Gaddafi was trying to sort of rehabilitate his reputation in the United States, he reached out to McClardy Associates. I was associated with McClardy Associates.

They had a film and television division that my best friend was heading. And we were looking for somewhere to shoot. Bruno with Sasha Baron Cohen. And he insisted that it'd be in Syria. We said it's a terrible idea to shoot it in Syria. We suggested Libya. And he said, no, as a Jew, I'm terrified to go to Libya. And we said, no, seriously, they're, like, constantly in touch with us,

trying to get us to film movies there. And so I happened to be in London. And Safe was Safe. His name is Safe of Islam. It means Sword of Islam. Safe of Islam, Gaddafi was in London, specifically to try to gin up movie business. And so we met with him, perfectly nice guy, arrogant. But, you know, his father had instructed him to turn things around.

And by God, he was in London trying to turn things around. He was Gaddafi's second son. And he was the heir apparent. He was arrested in 2011 when his dad was executed. or assassinated or whatever word you want to you want to use and um he wasn't executed no he he got a dagger shoved up his butt and yeah after an american drone blew him up yeah he was hiding in a storm drain and uh and they shoved a dagger up his butt and lacerated his liver he bled to death and uh while hillary clinton famously cackled yeah we came we saw he died yeah the animal he's a beautiful

person. So safe was arrested in 2011. He was part of a general amnesty in 2017, I believe, and was living in Tirsan, which is this city south of Tripoli, where he had been arrested and put in under house arrest. So he was just in Tirson. By all accounts, just watching TV. And these four masked gunmen, they disabled the security cameras at the house, burst through the door. He was. He was just watching TV. He tried to defend himself and they murdered him. So could it have been Intel? Sure. It probably wasn't because he wasn't a direct, immediate, you know, threat to anybody.

It was probably another political faction, maybe another tribe. But that's going to be it for the Gaddafi family. There's still a bunch of them. They're scattered all around. A lot of Libyans really miss the Gaddafi. Very much so. very much. I mean, you couldn't, you couldn't stand on the street, on the street corner and say that that MoMAQadhafi was an animal, but they had the best roads in North Africa or anywhere in

Africa. They had the healthiest economy. They had the biggest oil revenue. They had a stable currency. You know, it's a heck of a lot better than the chaos that we're seeing now, the anarchy that is Libya. No doubt. People who, you know, people, it's always funny to be when people who haven't seen chaos and anarchy, you know, Yeah, but, you know, and it's like there's no yeah, but if you don't have law and order, you've got nothing. That's it. So, all right, we've got lots of questions to get through. But before we do, let me just ask you about this tragedy off the coast of Greece.

Yeah, it's terrible. The Greek Coast Guard encountered a migrant boat. There was a collision, 15 people left dead. John, there's been a history not just with the Greeks, but with other countries who've encountered. migrant boats, deliberately ramming and disabling and causing people to drown. Do you think that's what happened here? No, I don't. So what it is is everybody on this boat was Afghan, except the captain who appears to be Moroccan. And the Turkish government takes 15 billion euros a year to hold refugees in refugee camps until they can be systematically resettled. What the Turks do in order

to crash the Greek economy is they put these refugees that they're being paid to care for. They put them on boats and they allow the boats to go to Greece in the middle of the night. This happened to be just up the coast of the island of Hios, where my first wife was from, not my favorite place in Greece. The boat was, the boat had a 300 horsepower engine. It was a high speed, speed boat. When the Greek Coast Guard ship encountered it, the Greeks aren't innocence in this because they deliberately turned off the surveillance camera, right?

It would be like a cop of the body camera turning it off before he starts pounding on somebody. As they do. As they do. So they turned up the camera. But as they went to approach the boat, the boat turned and hit the coast guard boat broadside. The Greek press today is saying this one's not on us. They tried to get away. The two boats were too close.

And when the Moroccan captain turned his boat to try to escape, he broadsided. He teaboned the Greek coast guard boat. The Moroccan boat flipped through. everybody in the water. And it's cold in the Aegean right now. You know, the water temperatures. It's like it is here. And for people who aren't familiar, you know, it's, it's basically the ocean. I mean, you can have big ass waves. I mean, you know, it's not, big ones. Big ones. This isn't a little lake. And in all seriousness, it's, it's also shark infested. I mean, there's one thing about Greek waters. There are sharks absolutely everywhere. You can see sharks just standing on the, on the, on the

shore. You can see him just going back and forth. My cousin and I, when we were there a year ago, we said pictures. You can see sharks standing on the shore. I mean, yeah, well, while you're standing on the shore. Thank you for that, catching that. Yeah, so this is, this is bad. The minister of maritime affairs announced that he's doing an investigation, and it'll be a serious investigation, But the root of this problem is that the Turks forcibly push all these people onto boats and say, you're on your own and we're keeping the money. Let's try to do some questions first come first serve. Teflon money, Don, do we see credible evidence that the Lebanese Revolution of 2019 was externally engineered by the CIA or Israel? Or was it primarily a domestic uprising driven by economic collapse?

Well, they always have economic collapse. Yeah, it's almost a failed state. I would bet money that the Israelis push them over the line. I agree with that. Yeah. Matt Crambert, love the show, keep up the good work. In our opinion, what's the odds that Trump decides to strike Iran again or will the proposed talks result in a long-term solution?

That's definitely two separate questions. I think the odds are well over 50% that Trump and or Israel will strike again. Well, agreed. Agreed. And in terms of the, you know, long-term resolution, no time soon. I mean, no time soon. This administration is not good at long-term solutions. No. No, that's right. They're too spazzy. They don't stay focused on anything. That's absolutely right. Jackson Tart, John, at your time of CIA was the biggest, who was the biggest counterintelligence threat to the United States besides Israel?

Is there lots of American intelligence officers who've been recruited by foreigners? No. I mean, you can count them on two hands through history. The biggest counterintelligence threat when I was there besides Israel was China. Probably still. Probably still. And I think that now all these years later, current CIA officers would add Russia again. But in that period when I was there, we were trying hard to make nice with the Russians,

which was very easy with Boris Yeltsin in charge because we essentially controlled Yeltsin. And he was a drunk. And he and Bill Clinton just loved each other. So it was kind of easy. The Russians never will forgive us for that. And nor should they. No, we wrecked their country. Yeah, we really did.

And then we gave nothing for it in return. We had such an opportunity to just like, can you imagine. Can you imagine like we're going to help you do the soft landing to capitalism, Marshall Plan for Russia? They'd be our ally now. Yes, they would. We would have carved up the world with them, or at least half the world. John, thanks for much for the 10 bucks.

What do you make of the recent Putin video? Appealing to the West saying Russia isn't our enemy, but our leaders are, it seems to align suspiciously with the Epstein stuff, Garden Variety Propaganda? Yeah. I'd say, yeah, but he's not wrong. he's not wrong but yeah it's it's just i mean listen to make a video like that it costs you nothing right so so why not right right right uh two bucks from from anger is a gift not some baba chandler for the pittsburgh pirates yes sir got to love bubba chandler i'm

looking for for big things you know it's funny um the uh i was watching esPN the other day if anybody cares about the lowly pittsburgh pirates you know we've got paul skeins who who... Pittsburgh was the enemy of the Cincinnati Reds. Without a doubt. Yeah. When Pittsburgh was good enough to make it a rivalry. So we've got Paul Skeens who two years ago won the rookie of the year.

And last year won the Say Young, the guys a once in a generation phenom. And we have to build the team around him. Bubba Chandler is almost as good. And I think that he's going to show us great things this year. With that said, the pirates lost like... like 92 games last season out of 162 game season. And much to my surprise, as we're rebuilding the team this year, ESPN says we're going to lose like 106 games.

Oh, man. And I don't know how that can be because we've got two of the best pitchers in the league. That's pretty insane. I don't know. We'll see. Three very fun, thanks for the two bucks. Ted, what cartoon? We mentioned this yesterday.

Pissed off Clinton. Can I get an autographed copy? Yes, you can get an autographed copy? copy. I believe fucking Clinton got Arafat and Oslo to disarm Palestine all for lies, probably under compromise from Epstein and Netanyahu. I don't know about that last part, but yeah, the cartoon was basically depicted. I had drawn George H.W. Bush in a certain way, basically wearing a yellow leather jacket because he was like this preppy dude. Yeah. And so I have, at one point when Bill Clinton was copying Bush's policies, I had him walk into an old office in the

White House, find Bush's old jacket and put it on. That's the, and he was like, I'm not George H.W. Bush. That's, that's what he pissed him off. Yeah. Justin's for nothing. What do you guys think about Telsie Gabbard being some sort of elections are? Seems like a normalized palantier. She issued a statement yesterday saying that this is well within her purview as the director of national intelligence, that it's a, it's a threat, you know, that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump and that, that this is a threat to our way of life. And so she has to conduct her, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. That's basically like Trump's hands like talking through her through the hand puppet there. Yes. Bill Blair, with this one we could probably talk about for

hours. Can we and or should we start screening for sadistic sociopathy or sociopathy, sorry, at our various gates to power? If it were possible, that would be awesome. But on the other hand, aren't we screening in favor of it? It's those tendencies. You know, like when they said, John, don't come home from Pakistan quite yet. We want you to stop off in this other country and break into this guy's house and plant cameras in there. I was like, okay, sounds like fun. And I did. Canceled my vacation with my fianc and went and broke into a guy's house

and planted cameras all over the house. That's a sociopathic tendency. It's not normal people don't break into other people's houses and plant devices. But I happily did it. And leaders are worse. I mean, leaders are worse. Yeah. because they're on top of the pyramid that like you were you know you were in the part in the middle of there um thanks for the five bucks from

t kyle john what was the story of the analyst that who did orly did nothing but watch a road being built going to china i'd be interested in learning more about that guy i love do nothing stories there was a story years ago and i want to hear the answer to this question john about a guy who um he had a job he um monitoring he ran the dirigible docking station on top of the Empire State Building. So in case, this was an advertised job in like the Civil Service magazine, which is called the Chief in New York City. And he saw this thing. It was like, so in case he was trained to dock like a Zeppelin if one ever were to appear

and it would be able to be docked on top of the Empire State Building. He was like, this is the ultimate, I will never have to work. So he was a novelist and he just figured he'd sit up there and just wait for the Zeppelin and write novels, which is what he did. And I think he made a pretty good living. Anyway, tell us about the road guy. So this was my second line supervisor. His name was Ron. I don't think he's, I don't think he retired undercover, but just to be on the safe side, I'm just going to say Ron.

Ron was a good guy, GS-15, Deputy Division Chief. and his job as the North Vietnam Infrastructure analyst was to just watch this road being built. So he starts looking for the road or watching the road. He's examining top secret satellite photos. Every couple of days, there's another picture coming from the satellite about the road and they're building it longer and longer. And it's heading north, right, from Hanoi.

It's going north, north. And he's like, oh, my God, they're building this road. What's the road for? They're going to bring nukes from China. And then we're all screwed. And it got so serious that he was actually taken to the Oval Office to brief President Nixon about this road. Like, do we bomb the road? We're going to have to bomb the road.

So we're bombing the road. And this went on for years. You should make this into a movie treatment. Oh, yeah. By the way, send it to the Coen brothers. It's perfect for them. It's waiting for Godot, and the Coen brothers would be perfect for it. So the war ends, the North Vietnamese win.

Everything changes at the CIA. We make nice with the Vietnamese government. We start doing liaison exchanges. And Ron flies out to Hanoi to meet with the Vietnamese and do this intelligence exchange. And one day at lunch, he pulls one of these generals aside, and he said, I just have to ask you, why are you building this road? What was the road for? And he's like, oh, yeah, we just didn't have a road to China.

You had to go every which way. We just decided build a road. That was it. That was all it was. That's so great. Yeah. I mean, it's often things are really just that simple. There's nothing much to it.

Adam, John, I begged to differ. Migrants chose Greece over Turkey to access the EU. It's not true that they get pushed by the Turkish toast. Oh, yeah. It's true. opposite. They save those drifters all the time. Absolutely not true. Absolutely not true. The Turks are animals when it comes to hacking my ex account, which they

have done successfully. I'm out of it right now. And pushing refugees. They've been doing it for decades. This isn't new. This has been going on for decades. Ever since people started leaving Lebanon at the start of the Civil War and the Greek economy started to grow. The Turks are really underhanded about this, and it's a violation of international law on top of it. Let's talk about, okay, a couple more questions. Marlon Brando, why isn't the intelligence community more concerned that the Epstein files do not compromise the president? Is this not a national security issue? I don't think I understand that.

Yeah, it's sorry, it's sort of a bit of a clumsily worded question. basically, is it a national security, is Trump comp, should the intel community be looking into whether Trump was compromised by Epstein slash the Mossad? Because if he was, that would be a national security issue. I would assume that they've done that. I would assume that they've read all of these documents. Well, of course they have because they're supposed to be redacting them. Yeah, I, sure. I don't know.

I have no thoughts on this. John, let's talk about this situation. Rafah border crossing to eat between Gaza and Egypt reopened a couple of days ago. Only a few people were, have been allowed to go through. And they're all like in critical condition medically. Right. No normal. And we don't have any idea whether they'll be able to return.

I would be skeptical. 12 people, however, were waiting to get back into Gaza to reunite with their families or just go back home, and they were able to return. But it wasn't an easy trip. Three women were ordered off the bus on the way back by members of an Israeli-backed Palestinian militia named Abu Shab. They searched their bags and their bodies, called into a room. When one woman was called in, the mom went in first in her 50s. Then when the daughter went and she found her mom in her 50s kneeling on the floor, blindfolded with her hands, handcuffed behind her back, she said that the Israeli soldiers did the same to her.

And then questioned her about Hamas, things that we didn't know and had no connection to. That's, I guess, not that surprising. But they also pressured her to act as an informant for the IDF. Of course. I threatened that they will detain me and I won't return to my children. There was no beating, but there were insults, threats, and psychological pressure. pressure. The mom confirmed the report to the AP. Third woman gave a similar account. She described being handcuffed, blindfolded, and interrogated. We were humiliated. So pretty, pretty horrible.

You know, if this is, the word's going to get out very quickly. I mean, hell, the word's out. Here we are talking about it. I mean, are people going to avoid this border crossing if they can? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. they'll avoid it because well because of stories like this they'll avoid it because they'll not be allowed to come back in and they'll be permanently

separated from their families and so who's this like Israeli backed goon squad yeah I haven't heard of that just until yesterday it was the first time I had heard of it yeah me too yeah yeah I mean gross obviously on the you know there's always someone willing to sell out

and speaking of gross I want to say something. Alan Dershowitz was on Pierce Morgan yesterday again. I want to punch this guy in the face. I really do. One of the other guests who I didn't know, whom I didn't know, was talking about atrocities committed very recently by IDF troops, especially shooting children. They were on the topic of shooting children. And first, Dershowitz denied that any such thing has ever happened, no children are being shot. And then he said that, well, yeah, there were a couple of children shot, but every one of those IDF soldiers has been prosecuted. And the guy's like, you're lying. No, I'm not. I know. I know because I'm in touch with the minister of justice. It's like, no, you're just making this up.

This is what Dershowitz does. Any criticism of Israel, number one, you're anti-Semitic. Number two, you're lying. Number three, Israel is doing everything according to international law. And none of that stuff is true. No, I mean, yeah, obviously anyone with eyes completely. mainly see that. Robbie, you have something you want to say. Yeah, just real quick. Over here on Rumble, because Rumble has this really spiffy rate function, it's actually allowing us to do more than just build this show.

We're actually in the process of building an actual network. So right, as soon as this show ends, the audience from D-program will automatically move over to the TMI show with Ted Raul and Manila Chan. and what we're actually doing is working on building a real alternative network, not just one show for people who are after truth. So if that's what you want to have, come over to Rumble. Unfortunately, you two won't let us do it, but here on Rumble though, will be a seamless transition.

And please contribute to Robbie Aid. I'm putting it back up. Thank you very much, Robbie. We have time for probably one more brief. We should talk just to hit this quickly. Trump's threatening to nationalize the elections. Look, the thing is, I don't take any of these individual stories very seriously, but as a whole, they bother me, right?

I mean, there's Minneapolis had its voter records. The Trump administration tried to shake them down for those. There's been, now there's this similar attempt. Well, by the FBI, they've scooped in and raided the Fulton County, Georgia, which is Atlanta, the biggest city in the state, their voting records. And now Trump's talking about nationalizing. I mean, is this just simply as basic

as Trump's worried about the midterm elections or is this something greater? Is this something like the Democrats would say an actual attempt to try to see about overturning the results of either the midterm and or the 2028 presidential campaign? You're asking me? Yeah.

Yes, right. I mean, you know, he's just, I mean, obviously the Constitution's very clear. The state's the right election. The point is, this is something that Bruce Fine talks about all the time. He can't do it. Period. On the other hand, but then Bush v. Gore, right? Bush v. Gore, they should never have heard the case.

They shouldn't. They shouldn't have heard the case. But the Constitution says that elections are to be carried out by the states. Now, he can use his authority as, president to pressure the states. But we have 51 separate state elections for president, the 50 states and Washington, D.C. And he can't change it. Right. So the question is, I mean, I agree with that. But I mean, the thing is you can also, but nothing's actionable until you take it to court and it works its way up to the Supreme Court, which can take months or even years

sometimes. Yes. But rest assured that that federal district and appellate courts are going to put holds on anything that the White House wants to do that would take elections out of the hands of the states and put them in the hands of the feds. Is this trolling or do you think the administration actually would love to do something if they could? Without a doubt they'd love to do it. Yeah. Without a doubt.

But so this is, so this is like a, do you think they're running it up to the, running up the flagpole just to see what happens? Yes. They have nothing to lose. Like, why not? Well, I don't know. Their reputation as being protected. Please.

He's putting us. statue of Christopher Columbus in front of the White House now. Did you see that today? I did see that. That and the, I'm personally holding out for the cage match on July 4th, but that's just me. Nothing says dignity like a cage match. Thanks so much, John, joining us. We'll be back tomorrow, Thursday, as we are every weekday. 9 a.m. Easter time for D. Program with Ted Roll and John Curiacu. Please like follow and share the show. Thank you so much for watching. Thank you, everybody. for your support and your donations.

And don't forget Robbie Aid. Stay tuned for TMI with me and Manila Chan. That's coming right up. Bye down. See you tomorrow. See you tomorrow.