Kitbag Conversations - Episode 28: Spycraft 101

Episode Date: October 17, 2022

Hey all, Spycraft 101 (@spycraft101) came on the podcast this week and we talked about: -History of espionage  -The average person giving up their information for comfort  -Famous spies -and modern intelligence collection methods and threats  P.s. I pulled a muscle in my neck the day I recorded this so there may be a few spots where I sound off cause I was playing through the pain. 

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the podcast. This week, we are joined by a heavily requested guest, Spycraft 101. I'm sure you've seen him running around talking about history of espionage. He's left some challenge coins in multiple places along the east coast of the United States. He talks a lot about multiple intelligence agencies and how they impacted global operations to this day in the past and probably in the future as well. But hey, man, how are you doing today? Hey, I'm great. Thank you for inviting me on. I appreciate it. Oh, absolutely. So, uh, I mean, Spycraft, just to kind of give the listeners who may or may not know who you are, like, what is your reasoning background and for creating this type of platform?

Sure. Well, it's, it's always been an interest of mine going back about 15 years or so. It started with me back in about 2007. I think I picked up a book off the bookshelf at Books a Million, if any of you still remember that place. And I honestly picked it up because of the cover. It had a cool cover and you're not supposed to judge books on the cover, but I do it anyway. And this one was called The Killer Elite by Michael Smith. And he is a British author, British historian, but the book itself was about the Army Special Missions Unit known as the Activity. Now, and they've had a number of different names over the years, but that's kind of the one that they're most known for. And I didn't really know anything back in 2007 about intelligence other than, you know, I like

the James Bond and the Mission Impossible films. And that book totally opened my eyes to a lot of things that I had never even heard of, just as one example, American service members and ex-service members going back into Vietnam and Laos in the 1980s to search for POWs who were still remaining, you know, 10 years after the war had ended. I had no idea that that had actually happened. I thought that was just the plot of a Rambo movie or, you know, a Gene Hackman movie or something like that. So I really dove into that book and I kept reading and reading and reading. And I really got deeply into that history in a big way. And then just a couple of years ago, the opportunity came up for me to kind of start to share some of those stories that I had collected

on social media, which of course didn't exist in 2007, not in the way that we know it now. And I've been very fortunate in that those stories have really blown up in a big way. My degrees are in history and history-related fields. So I felt pretty comfortable with the research and the writing aspects of all that. But it's also been a real journey of learning for me the past couple of years, because the more I get into it, the more I learn. And the more these little side notes turn into hours and hours of research on a whole story, a whole organization, a whole event, you know, that I was not familiar with before. So it's been a lot of fun for me. And it's really kind of drawn back the curtain on a lot of things

that most people, especially my younger social media followers, were not aware of at all. Maybe the older guys, 50, 60 years old, they kind of recall it from the news. But it's been a lot of fun kind of re-investigating a lot of things that have been forgotten by more recent generations. So what would you say? I know you just said the book, but did you immediately just latch on to American intelligence operations, or did you kind of pull the thread, go to like British and Malaya or Chinese and against the Civil War there, or kind of dip into the KGB? Like was there a linear path, or was there something more like kind of jumping around? I have jumped around a little bit. I mean, you know, as an American, I have that cultural bias

where I knew already a fair amount about the Cold War and World War II. And those also had the added advantages, well, two added advantages. Number one, that they've been written about enough by the participants that there's plenty of material to draw from. And number two, most of that writing is in English language, which helps me find that stuff a lot more quickly. I have dived into foreign language sources frequently now on a weekly basis. I'm diving into foreign language sources, but that always adds a huge amount of time and complexity. And it's also treading into somewhat unfamiliar waters where I don't really know the background of the authors or the sites, you know, and that sort of thing. So I'm a little bit less comfortable

trying to share those types of sources from a, you know, I don't know if I call it expertise, but a position of knowledge anyway. But there is at the same time, there's a absolute treasure trove of information out there that is not really available in English language texts that I'm trying to get into. So I've been getting into Korean Peninsula stuff a lot lately, if you've been following my page. And I've been doing that with the help of a Korean speaker as well, who and just I'm not going to name this person yet. I don't know if they want me to, but this guy, he kind of activated his family network back home in a way. And he's actually had people paging through old bundles of newspapers for me to find the details and stuff that is not easily,

you know, accessible on YouTube or an English language book on my bookshelf or anything like that, which has really paid dividends. And I certainly appreciate that kind of assistance. Especially when it comes to something as the Korean War, we call that America, the Forgotten War. Once you bring that up, somebody always goes, did we really fight the Koreans? Is that why we're still sending soldiers to South Korea and the DMZ? And especially for you, I have been tracking what you've been up to. And yeah, the Korean War is definitely a highlight for anybody in the younger generations, because that was definitely a three year long conflict. And not only we're Americans, but Brits, Turks, Australians, you know, not Poles, Germans, everybody was there from NATO,

like that was the first NATO push for a coalition, or what do you call it, a coalition of forces. So yeah, yeah, I mean, the United Nations guys got in there in a big way. And they were still, you know, steamrolled initially by the Chinese, of course, and the North Koreans. But I've been able to cover that, the Korean War in a couple of episodes. And lately, I've been getting more into what was going on in the 70s, 80s and 90s. And it was truly wild stuff. It is still truly wild stuff that's going on between the two in the North and the South. Honestly, it's absolutely amazing the level of conflict and murder and betrayal and espionage that's going on. It's, you know, kind of similar to me. It's similar to the East Berlin and West Berlin before the

wall went up. Because, you know, Soviets could go back and forth pretty easily. Soviets and East Germans could go back and forth pretty easily before the wall went up. And even though the East Germans built it, you know, it's still kind of hampered their operations a little bit in the other districts. So I see some real echoes of that kind of stuff, like 1950s, early 1960s stuff in East Berlin happening for decades and decades in the Korean Peninsula with the easy crossing the border and the, you know, the submarines that go south, the little mini-subs and that sort of thing and ships all over the place. Really fascinating stuff, honestly. And I'm going to continue to dig into that. Well, I do know that there was a what they call the Second

Korean War or the DMZ conflict in the late 60s, where there was open combat between the North and the South and a few Americans got caught in the crossfire. And is that something you're digging into? Yeah, I mean, I still have tons of stories to tell. I know that you're talking about that axe murder incident. I'd have to pull up the name of it right now. It kind of escapes me. But that turned in, I mean, that turned into very, very close to a World War Three kind of situation, I think. I mean, whole battalions of troops were deployed to the DMZ, all to cut down a single tree. And if you guys who are listening, if you don't know what I'm talking about, check out the axe murder incident on the DMZ. It's really fascinating stuff. But a couple of Americans were bludgeoned

to death or chopped up on the border by some North Koreans. And all they were doing was going out there to chop down a tree that limited visibility over the DMZ, which was a serious issue with all the saboteurs going back and forth and that sort of thing. And it very closely turned into a reignition of the entire ground conflict, honestly. It's amazing stuff. Well, you'd think the North Koreans would be happy that they cut down the tree. Now I can see what's going on in the South. Yeah, I would agree. And there's some interesting stuff that I would like to continue looking more into, but tremendous amount of psychological operations are happening right there on the DMZ, like with loudspeakers and propaganda posters on

both sides and that sort of thing. That's a really fascinating thing. That's probably worth an entire episode by itself, honestly. But some of the stuff that I've read indicates that just broadcasting weather reports from the South across to the North gives them more accurate information than they're actually getting from their own government and, you know, state sponsored media. So it starts to slowly train the North Korean guards on the DMZ to trust South Korean news broadcasts, because when they say it's going to rain, it does rain the next day. And that little nudge starts to help. Interesting. Now, I've always heard about the South Koreans blasting propaganda across the DMZ into the North, just essentially say, lay down your arms, you're not going to win,

you don't have any food, your government's corrupt, you know, the standard is accused, but I had no idea about weather reports. That is, like if I was an intel analyst inside the North Korean Army, I would say, yeah, we don't know what we're doing and or we have limited funds. Let's just trust the guys to the South who can power the entire country at night. So yeah, well, I think that you can probably totally understand that the truth is a valuable commodity in North Korea, you know what I mean? So if you start to get any element of that from elsewhere, you're going to kind of, I can see how someone anyway, would kind of grab onto that, you know what I mean? And start to wonder what else. And certainly, there's other propaganda

broadcasts going on, I'm sure it's not just the news that they're sending across the border with the loudspeakers. But, you know, if that is accurate, then what else might be accurate? You know, it's really cool stuff, honestly. Exactly. When it comes to, and I don't want to deviate too much from the central theme here, but when it comes to say propaganda and or psyops, have you ever thought about interviewing people from the America or say the West who have gone into North Korea willingly and came back just to kind of honestly for touring, but like a great example is Henry Rollins, the punk rock singer from the 1970s and 80s and 90s. And once North Korea just because and no one in Korea knew who he was until they saw him on TV. And all of their language barriers

broke. They're like, what are you doing here? Is there a reason you're spying around under country? And they thought he was a spy. And he's like, no, I'm just here to look around. And then the North Koreans started pushing out this propaganda that America was embedding sleeper agents inside their own country to, you know, sway public opinion against the government. So the crazy things like that. Yeah, I would I would love to talk to those people. I do one thing I try to do is kind of niche down in a big way with my with my show and with my content, because there's a lot more subjects out there. There's a broad swath of subjects that are fascinating to me. But I'm also trying to give people what I kind of say I'm

giving them, you know what I mean and not branch out too much, because there are a lot of fantastic accounts and publishers out there, including yourself, you know, guys that get into current events kind of stuff. And I try to kind of leave the floor to them and that. And so I would love to talk to somebody who has been to North Korea or who defected from North Korea. For example, it hasn't happened yet, but I also haven't made a huge effort to do that yet. But if I do find the right person, I will definitely reach out and try to get them on. Absolutely. There's a Have you ever heard of the book Nothing to Envy? Nothing to Envy. No, it's not ringing a bell right now, I don't think. So it's written by a North Korean defector in the early 2000s, where

if you've ever read the book A Night by Eli Wessel, where he was a Jew occupied by the Germans, and he escaped concentration camps that describes what happened during the Holocaust. But then he writes a book here in the early mid 2000s about what goes on in North Korea. And it's almost like the West brushed it off because, number one, when North Koreans defect to the South, they're immediately ostracized because they're not South Korean, they're traders. And so they kind of like congregate together. And number two, he's like, North Korea is disgusting. And it's very abusive, very intense. And he's one of those individuals where he wrote everything he ever wanted to say about his time in North Korea. He's like, never ask me ever again. But there's been

a lot of people who have started mingling with him for North Korean defectors. So it might just be like I start a thread to pull or something. But Yeah, yeah, that's that's fascinating stuff. I have read up on some of the defectors. One of the most interesting subjects to me at all. And it's, you know, just be kind of kind of segue so much into like the military history that I get into is some of the Americans that served on the DMZ and then defected and lived in North Korea for many years afterwards. And those guys, there's not been very many of them, of course, but they have some wild stories to tell. One of those guys, he just passed away a couple of years ago. And, you know, if I started this thing a little bit

earlier, I certainly would have made every effort to get him get an interview with him. I think he died in 2019. One of the guys who went over in like 65, if I recall correctly, and lived there until about 2005. And he had like a North Korean wife and like two or three kids and well, he had two or three kids family kind of kind of paraded him around like, look, they want to join us. Yes. Yeah. Oh, he was definitely paraded around. He acted in films as one of the evil Americans, you know, in propaganda films they made. His wife, however, is not North Korean. She was Japanese and she was also kidnapped, if I recall. Really? And she is still alive. I'm not sure how good her English is. I think she lives in Japan now with

their children. And I'm not sure I would, you know, certainly want to reach out and get a hold of them, but I'm not sure how willing they are to talk. But the, you know, the half white, half Japanese kids who grew up in North Korea, I mean, you know, what a story they've got to tell if they're willing to tell it. Oh, of course. I mean, just look at North Korean propaganda today. It's pretty insane. Let's dial it back 30 years where it's pretty on the nose about who they like and who they don't like. So I guess pivoting away from the, I don't want to say pivoting away because I definitely want to come back to this one. But we have something like, you mentioned the Berlin Wall, how it went up, split that iron curtain down central and Eastern Europe. And if we look at

like a cultural map of Germany today, be it religious lines, be it politically active lines, anything west of the old Berlin Wall is very liberal, democratic, Christian, one of those things. But I think what east of the old Berlin Wall or the old Eastern Germany is like very hard line pro Russia, atheist, nihilistic. And it's like, I know that the Stasi were running around back in the day, kind of rounding up political enemies, I guess is a good way to put it. But just something like that, where there was 50 or so years of occupation in that region. And then to see that to this day, 30 plus years later, that East Germany is still kind of in this weird gray area. Yeah, you know, that's, that's a great point. And I think I just saw

an infographic about that the other day. So maybe you saw the same one that I did about how they are. There's like a very, very distinct line, especially for religious beliefs, I think a huge amount of like atheism and agnosticism in old East Berlin, excuse me, East Germany, and West Berlin is significantly more, or maybe I've got to mix it up, sorry, but there's a significant cultural demarcation line, exactly where the border, the actual national border used to exist. And it's amazing how something like that, that geopolitical event leaves a scar on the people in a very real way in their psyche in the generations to come, despite all the, you know, the money and the effort and the diplomacy that went into reuniting the two Germanies into one.

And yet some things have not, you know, been fully reunified. Very. I'm not sure if you have entered East Berlin, I certainly have not, but I know a lot of people who have and they always go, if you're trying to buy property in Germany, buy it in East Berlin, because it's really shitty, it's really cheap, it's really rundown, it's still essentially, what do they call it, a time capsule from 1970, where the plumbing's bad, it's too expensive to reinforce it, to replace it, so they just kind of keep running with that old Soviet architecture. And in one way, you could say, sigh up where the East Germans essentially are kind of stuck, where, well, we've been integrated for 30 years, and our government doesn't really seem to want

to help us out. And that's why we can see those pro Russia protests in Berlin today. On the other hand, it's, and I don't know if you've seen these kind of things, I know you say kind of like, pivot away from the more current events or anything, but there was a pro Russia protest in Berlin a few days ago, where thousands of people came out waving Russian flags and the old Soviet flag, and they were very gung-ho about what Russia was doing in Ukraine. And, which is interesting, because essentially, if you look at a religious line, all right, number one, communist Russia was very atheist and agnostic. Number two, they very much bred with the German people. And number three, it's only been 30 years, one generation. So a lot of the older folks

probably really still like what the Russians are doing. Right, right. Yeah, that's, that's fascinating. I had not seen specifically about that, that protest, but that doesn't surprise me. I mean, you know, not everyone is going to be anti Russian anywhere. And it's funny, though, that people that lived in an area that so clearly had some negative ramifications for the being under Soviet control for many years, that they can either overlook or explain away, or, you know, just kind of continue to focus on what they consider to be the positives of that experience, or that, you know, political system, or whatever, because it's hard for me to see any positives for East Germany or for everything, you know, east of the Iron Curtain. But clearly, that's not

true for some of the people that actually live there. So, you know, I'm an outsider. I wasn't there during that time period. So they must know something that I don't, at least a few of them. I mean, of course, like you and I could sit up and watch Christmas vacation all day long and think, like, yeah, that's West Germany. But it's, it's, you know, one of those interesting situations where I mean, historically, if you dial the clock back, probably about 100 years, about a third of Germany was very pro what happened in the Soviet Union, where they had a revolution against the old czar, the old government. And it was the government of the people. And it's, I'm not going to say it's a lingering thought within the German psyche, but

it's almost eerily similar to, you know, 30, 50 years of occupation. But then now this is 100 years later, and they're still kind of leaning pretty, pretty pro Russian. And is Russia the answer for them? No, it doesn't make any sense, because I don't want to start talking about gas or anything like that. But it's, they've really put themselves in a corner. And it's almost a completely divided society. And with something like the remnants of the Stasi running around, like, you're very familiar with how much I'm sure you are, right? They're still running around in East Germany, probably West Germany too, outside of American bases and like Ramstein or something like that. So it's, yeah, I agree. That was one of the interesting things to me, you know,

when you have to reunify, well, you know, this is practically one of the only cases in modern history, you know, where a divided country is officially reunited, you know, by outside forces in so many ways. But you do, there has to be a level of forgiving and forgetting and moving on. You know, you can't punish every single person on the other side that did something because that's not reunification, that's retribution. You know what I mean? So a lot of people that were involved in the very heavy handed East German government in a wide variety of ways, you know, they kind of got away with it in some ways, you know, the Stasi guys, they maintain their pensions. For example, they maintain their East German pensions that they had earned, you know, through

the Eastern and Soviet government. And so, you know, there needs to be some moving on, but how do you move on from that kind of thing? How do you move on from the kidnappings and the torture and the constant surveillance and all of that, you know, that's, that's, they've had to try to do it. And it's been an imperfect process to say the least. It's one of those where you could just easily say, let's just round them up. And that's absolutely not the answer. And then number two, you could just say, let them go and we'll feel this in 25 years, 30 years. And then plus or minus, I'm sure they have, I'm not really super dialed into the German economic or political situation outside of Angela Merkel and all them. But it's,

it's interesting, obviously, you know, the Putin was stationed in East, East Germany. And I mean, we can go way into the weeds without one because when he, or I guess for the listeners here, when East Germany started to collapse and they started to tear down the wall, the Soviet Union told the KGB to, hey, burn everything. We're leaving. But Putin spent a few years there, made a lot of good friends and told him to sit tight because he's coming back. And it's not a farfetched idea to say that Putin said, like, Hey, man, just wait like 10, 15 years, I would give you a phone call, start to enslave us on some people, start collecting information because I know the Americans are coming and nobody likes the Elton and we're

going to be in the same situation we are. Or we were five years ago. So it's like Putin is that the ultimate outside of like probably what George Bush senior of intelligence asset all the way to the top. So yeah, yeah, certainly. He, I mean, well, Russians play the long game in a way that the US doesn't. In fact, I was just reading today and I'd seen it before, but it just coincidentally came up in something I was reading today that, for example, when they get an asset such as a US asset, one of their people that they have a handler that's attached, the handler and the assets stay together regardless of what happens in their careers, like the handler will fly in to see the asset 10 years, 15 years later, something like that. Whereas with, you know, US case officers and

that sort of thing, they rotate rotate out every three years, four years, what have you and a new handler rotates in even for a long term asset. So the Russians play that long game. And I can I could totally see the idea that he still has people that were either not caught or maybe they were caught. Now they're out, you know, of prison or out of the spotlight at the very least. And they're still waiting for a call or maybe to take a maybe willing to take action. I think absolutely. I think that I read that. I believe he said in interviews in the past, I don't want to quote it directly because I haven't looked at it in a while. But, you know, he said that basically his whole network was rolled up at the time. Because of course, they had access to all the

Stasi files, which were not destroyed. Very famously, you know, there's like mountains and mountains and mountains of Stasi files that were gone through after the collapse of the East German government. So his whole network was pretty much rolled up all of his former coworkers, like his East German contacts and all that, they were, you know, arrested or they were defamed or whatever you I think his closest East German liaison slash good friend committed suicide, like the same week that the Berlin Wall came down, if I recall correctly. So really just kind of watched everything that he had built for years crumble behind him. And that's not the kind of thing that you forget, assuming that he's telling the truth in all these

interviews, which is something that could be discussed. But it seems to have left a lasting impression on him to say the very least. So one thing I do want to touch on is Putin is fluent in German, because he was an officer, he had to go there and sit down with the government. And if you watch interviews with Putin with German officials, he kind of holds his head down, he speaks fluent German with no whisper accent or anything. But he plays the very passive reserved, I don't know what I'm doing role. And so I think that's why over the last 22 years or 21 or rather, he kind of worked his way to the top because they thought, Oh, this German guy who's very passive and submissive. Yeah, we could trust this guy. Yeah, let's open a oil line or whatever.

But then we have something where he sits down in 2014 with what then Chancellor Angela Merkel, and he found out that she was afraid of dogs. So what he did is he found the biggest dog in Russia that he could find and brought it with him and made her terrified. So we're talking about economy. We're talking about the economy, right? Ukraine is not joining NATO, right? And I think it was two or three weeks after he invaded Crimea. He was like, this is what we're talking about. And so it's like a night and day flip. And so it's, everyone always goes back to that classic. He only swings, I want to say his right arm, not his left arm, because he would have his weapon on his left left hip. But it's that is just KGB mindset at work. And it's really easy for people in the

West to go, Oh, yeah, he's a KGB agent. He knows what he's doing. But then it's another thing to go. No, he knows what he's doing. Yeah, he is, he's really something else. And I mean, he's left a tremendous mark on on the world. And we're going to be talking about him for 50 years after his death, at the very least. And I'm really curious how this current situation is going to play out, as is everyone, of course. But it's the rubber has kind of met the road in a lot of ways. And so we are learning how far he can be pushed and how far he's willing to push himself, I think, but he's given master classes on diplomacy in the past and, you know, projecting strength and gaining the concessions that you want and all that. I mean, he has really played a lot of world leaders

in exactly the way that he wanted to. And I'm certain that a lot of that goes back to his training as an experience in the 70s and 80s. Of course, I don't know if you ever heard the story of right after 9 11. Putin invited George Bush Jr. to a fishing trip in the Black Sea. And George Bush Jr. calls his dad and went, Hey, can I go fishing with this guy? And his dad was like, No, I don't trust him. Because for the listeners who don't know, George Bush Sr. or George H W Bush was the director of the CIA, I believe. And 100% did not trust the Russians. And so he was very skeptical that his son wanted to invite except an invitation from an ex KGB agent who he definitely was tracking before the wall came down. And then

knowing how the government works, they probably dropped all their files and moved on to something else. But yeah, makes you wonder what could have happened, you know, what could have potentially spun off from that trip, whether a positive relationship formed or some sort of, you know, blackmail material gained or who knows what, honestly. Oh, yes, of course. It's, and I've talked about this in the podcast way before, I think it was one of the first episodes. But the Soviet Soviets, the Russians came out and offered military aid to the Americans to go into Afghanistan. But then knowing something like Putin went, you guys are walking right into a trap. Go ahead, go right ahead. Give you everything you need. Just you want some planes, we'll give

you some planes. You want some mafia material, we'll give some of that. It's so it's one of those where, again, like I just said, it's really easy to say he's a KGB man, he knows what he's doing. But then it's another to realize, no, he knows what he's doing. He's not doing this because this is 20 plus years in the planning. Yeah, yeah, I agree. So I guess pivoting away from the Russians. Massad, always crazy. Everyone always asked me on Instagram DMs of if Israel is going to strike Iran or Syria or Hamas or Hezbollah or something like that. And I've read a few Massad books, and especially those with like Munich and whatnot focusing on that entire situation.

And if you want, you could elaborate on that one. But it's someone like the Massad is such a wild card when it comes to any operation because there's the West, there's the East, and there's kind of Israel who does whatever they want, they ask for forgiveness instead of permission. So it's kind of a different beast. Yeah, they really do. No question. I mean, that's a country that divides people in a way that hardly any other does in the United States. And there are plenty of people that are very, very pro-Israel on religious grounds or on political grounds, or maybe they're just pro-Israel because they're anti all of Israel's enemies. You know what I mean? And Israel, number one, they will do whatever they want

whenever they want. I think they've proven that time and time again. They won't always pull it off flawlessly, but they will do what they want. And they will defy the United States while being one of our beneficiaries, one of our biggest beneficiaries of military spending and defense equipment and all that. At the same time, they are not just going to march to the beat of our drum just because there's so much American equipment that heads over there one way or the other over the past few years. So I would not put anything past them. I mean, they've been killing Iranian scientists for years. I mean, every year, I think they kill at least one for as long as I can remember. At least one. Yeah. I guess for the listeners,

so back in the day, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, the West and the East were really killing it with putting satellites into space. And for Iran, the ying to their yang essentially is Saudi Arabia. And Saudi Arabia put a satellite into space and the Iranians didn't have the technology, so they got a cannon and just blasted it into space. They're like, oh, yeah, it's very primitive. We'll just shoot this as high as we can. Hope he catches orbit. If it falls down, whatever, at least it's in the Black Sea or Turkey, and then we'll just try to get it. And Israel went in there and smoke checked every single scientist assigned to that operation. And everyone knew it was them, but Israel played the, I don't know anything about that.

Yeah, I'm trying to think of his name right now. I've written about him in the past, but it's been a while. So his name is escaping me at the moment, but it was the Canadian scientist, wasn't it? Or was he American? I want to say he was American. He was a Westerner that went over there and helped out the Iranians. Yeah, it was Gerald Bull. Gerald Bull. That's what I had to look it up. But I talked about him and he was selling a lot of stuff to Iraq as well, and they were getting big and trying to launch satellites via cannon rather than rocket. And in some ways, it makes sense. But it's also kind of a crazy contraption in so many ways,

but he was closer than anybody was to making that realistic. But if you can launch a satellite into space, you can launch a projectile from Iraq over Jordan and Syria and into Israel, which was what everybody's real fear was. And probably what Saddam was going to do with it anyway. And some of the other customers, of course, had some non-satellite-related goals for a giant cannon like that. So Israel, they tried to warn him off. They were not in a diplomatic sense. I mean, they were calling his house and calling his co-workers and threatening to kill them. And he didn't wave off. He continued to support Iraq. And then one day, he was shot multiple times in the head, either outside of his office or outside of his apartment. I don't

recall which, which is a hallmark of theirs. And I believe that they also took photos of his body, and then they mailed those to everyone else that was working on the project with him. And that was clear enough sign to everybody else. And all right, we're not continuing. That is, so earlier mentioned, PSYOPS. And there's something I've noticed that popped up a lot recently with the American Right is the US Liberty incident. And are you familiar with that one? Yeah, I am. Not all the details of it. And I know that people have looked into it a lot more than I have. I think there's a really good podcast episode now from Murder Made. And I like that guy, but I haven't listened to all of his episodes, including that one. So I am a little bit behind

the curve on that. But from what I understand, basically, it does appear that the, that, you know, Israel deliberately attacked a US Navy ship, killed many sailors, and pretty much got away with it afterwards. But beyond that, I couldn't really speak to the particulars of it right now. So as the story goes, it was during the 67 Six Day War, and the USS Liberty caught wind of, essentially, Israeli is just attacking civilians and like being harsh to unarmed combatants. And Israel got wind of the USS Liberty, learning about this and sunk it. And so that's like a conspiracy theory that's, I don't know who's propagating this kind of information, but it's really popped up a lot in the last few years where kind of those fringe groups of the American

right just go like, because earlier, you and I just said like, some Americans, they're very divided, either they support Israel because of religious beliefs, or they support Israel because they support every, or they hate every enemy that we hate or something like that. But for some reason, this really fringe group of American right really latched onto the fact that Israel attacked us and got away with it. Yeah. Yeah, I have seen it, Papa. I would say probably the last 10 years, I would say after I've seen something about it. And it's one of those things that I've always got a million things that I want to dive more into. And it's on the list, but I haven't gotten into it too much yet. But I have seen it popping up a lot. And more and more lately, yeah, you're

right. But Israel is, you know, it used to be, I thought anyway of Israel as being more of a right centric favorite, favorite child, you know, especially because of like religious reasons. And that seems to be less the case these days, certainly from what you're saying. When it comes to some right, get louder. Yeah, it's those fringe groups, the ones making the battle call for it. But when it comes to, and I'm not sure if you're in the military or not, and if you don't want to disclose that, it's completely fine. But it's when it comes to like military jurisdiction over Europe, Africa, the Middle East, you know, there's different cocoms. So there's you come set,

Africa, Israel is qualified is Europe. And so it kind of separates that. So it's a different way of thinking as for if you're an 18 year old soldier, you join and go, Oh, it's us with them. It's Israel's part of us. So it's, again, that's that might, I have no idea why that it came down to that decision. But I mean, I don't want to spend too much time in Israel or the Middle East or anything. But it's one of those issues where, I mean, yeah, it's really easy to get scyopt on that. Yeah, yeah, I agree. There's there's so many things. And, you know, history, especially that history in the Middle East is so insanely complex, that I don't believe that anybody has a total lock on it, you know, professors of Middle Eastern studies, who have been doing it for 30 years,

they don't not every single thing that they think is accurate, you know, for that reason. So it's very hard to really get a lock on anything, especially like the multi ethnic multi religious conflicts that that go back millennia. But, you know, people, nevertheless, they pick sides and they often see it in black and white terms. And that's one thing I've certainly learned is that absolutely nothing is black and white. You know, our our best allies try to take advantage of us in many ways and push back against us in many ways. And we do the same things to them, oftentimes. And, you know, for everything that, you know, for every negative that you could find about Israel, that, you know, someone there would point out something negative about the United States,

some unprovoked attack or something like that, you know, in our past. And so it's, it's tit for tat and it's going to continue. And there's a lot of truth to all of those accusations on all sides, I think. So it's it's complex stuff. And it's kind of what keeps me coming back to these stories over and over again, honestly, which, you know, I mean, I was in the military and when you shoot a weapon, it's and you miss it's, you know, that's, that's an anomaly, that's nothing crazy. But if you do it two or three times, like that's a pattern, there's definitely something going on here. So it's for a rightful man, you got to correct your fire and go like, Oh, is it your reticle? Is your weapon? Is it you? One of those things. But I mean,

especially when it comes to intelligence analysis reporting, where you can't just have single source reporting of, you know, a bombing in, I don't know, Kabul, you're like, there was one, no one else talked about this. That's pretty crazy. But if there was seven, you're like, all right, that probably happened. So, but I guess pivoting away from those guys, let's talk about China. Have you done any, and I haven't listened to anything if you have on China, if you have any information about like the CCP and the way they kind of orchestrate their government or intelligence analysis? Yeah, I've only done one episode so far. And, you know, that's another subject that's deserving of a lot more, certainly. But the one that I did so far was primarily focused

around their infiltration of American universities and the tremendous amount of tech transfer that goes on from West to East in that sense. And we talked about some other stuff as well during that episode. So it was more university specific than China specific, but that was a big one, certainly. And they are certainly very, very good at taking advantage of the West in that way while they're building up, continuing to build up militarily. And they're using our own research and development dollars and man hours and innovations, you know, against us. And I'm totally shocked that there are there is anybody out there who is blind to that at this point. But I guess that's what I get for focusing on all this stuff so much. Yeah, man, when it comes to

how the Chinese infiltrate governments, I live in the DC area. And people who usually in Instagram ask me like, Oh, where are the spies at? I'm like taking selfies in front of the Pentagon. They're right there. Yeah, they'll pose as a Hong Kong, you know, internship with Washington state or something. But it's that's not it at all. Or you'll get a you may have gotten them these random zero followers, zero following accounts created 14 minutes ago of a Bitcoin enthusiast based out of Hong Kong that really wants you to get involved with the whole program. And you're like, Yeah, I understand that you're from the CCP. I understand that you're an Asian because they always go with Hong Kong, because that's what everyone thinks. Hong Kong, it's British,

it's West, it's good. But yeah, I've gotten a little bit of that. I get so many scam followers, unfortunately, I would say it's a daily basis. It's one type or another. Unfortunately, I have, I don't recall immediately seeing some specific like, Hong Kong based Bitcoin account, but quite frankly, I'm certain that I've gotten a few of those at one point. But usually, I'm pretty good at this point of sniffing them out and not engaging with them and getting rid of them if they have a problem. But yeah, they're everywhere. And there's one dude running 150 counts at one time, I'm sure. And there's a room full of those dudes out there somewhere, probably a lot of rooms full of them actually. So yeah, they're everywhere. They have the manpower, they have the time,

and they have the experience and the willingness to do all of that. Do you follow Laohai86 on Instagram? Laohai86? It's not ringing a bell. No, I don't think so. Yeah. So he's a YouTuber who was an American in China for 10 years, I want to say, and left in 2012 and the regime changed. And they really started going against, they really got xenophobic. And he's the one who starts doxing what Chinese psyops look like, where they'll message you on Telegram or WhatsApp or any of those other kind of like texting apps and say like, Oh, I'm a Hong Kong based female who is moving to Melbourne Australia. And I'm really jumping on this Bitcoin or some weird kind of cryptocurrency. And they're

like, we really want you to get involved. Can you give me your IP address? And you know, people follow it because they use attractive Chinese women. And the big target, and you just talked about American universities is Australian universities, where they have quotas. I want to say, I don't know if quota is the right word. But because China is the largest country in that region, they just flood into Northern Australia for education. But you and I both know that the only way you could leave China willingly is if you're a government agent. So they just cozy up to the nearest guy who seems like he knows what he's doing or with a clean cut haircut and goes, Oh, you're in the Australian army, please tell me what you do. They just get right back to the

Chinese government. Yeah, yeah, I can I can believe it certainly. They are totally willing to do that. I have gotten a couple of messages that I think we're going down that path. But I'm so I don't know if I'd use the word paranoid because it's actually real. It's not something for the figment of my imagination. But you know, I'm so Alex Jones territory, it's like in your face. So yeah, exactly. I mean, I've gotten a couple of messages like on what's up, I think you mentioned and it was an attractive female profile picture. And it said, Hi, how are you? And I was like block immediately just don't even start. I mean, I know exactly what you're going to try to do. So let me just actually right there. There's a few times that I've received just a random

text from like Kansas like area code to Kansas or some Midwest region where it's like, Oh, I met you at a bar last night. By the way, can I get can we like continue the conversation? And most American guys probably would because they'll probably send like a very provocative picture with it. And then actually, you know, you're especially in the DC area, because everyone out here works for them. It's, you know, like, yeah, that's an easy way to start doxing people and then blackmailing and it gets really messy from there. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Well, they keep doing that stuff because it works quite frankly, guys are pretty dumb. Let all of our defenses down when it comes to that sort of thing. Unfortunately. Yeah, that's why I always say like if you ever

want to know what a spy looks like, go to Pentagon City, just across from the Pentagon, they they flood there and they pretend they're tourists or students and they're like, I understand that you're 47 years old, like you can't fool me, but you know, it's going to fool somebody else. But one thing I do want to talk about is, and we talked about this right before we started is Harold Kim Filby, the greatest defector from the British government. Yeah. And for the listeners, he was a correspondent for was it BBC or something in the 30s, and got picked up for MI5 against the Germans and went to Spain to kind of root out like report on fascism there and then got recruited in MI6 and worked his way all the way to the top. And

the reason that he got all the way to the top was he was the most British person anyone met. He loved the Queen. He loved the King. He loved everything about the empire. He loved everything about being English and everyone went, there's no way in hell this guy could be a spy. But then it turns out he was a Soviet agent for 30 years because he believed in communism. And the only person to kind of figured it out was a half Brit, half American, James Jesus Angleton, who was the first director of the CIA. And when there's something off about this guy, there's no way he should be so comfortable about jokingly disclosing information. That's that should be very on the nose and all the Brits went, Oh, yeah, this, that's just who he is. So it's he's one of those rare cases

where in America today, we have multiple Kate, like who's the big one? Damn, I just space for a second. Defected Russia works the NSA Snowden. So Edward Snowden is like the big one in the US. And he was the Edward Snowden of the Cold War period, where he was giving the Soviets everything. And yeah, man, spy craft, you want to, I know you said you're not super educated on this guy, but you want to like talk about a little bit? I mean, I really like that. Certainly, certainly. Well, that's true. I have books about him. But I've been in talks actually with his granddaughter for quite some time now. Her name is Charlotte Filby. And I've been trying to get her onto the podcast for a while now, because she has,

when she was a little girl, she went and visited him in Russia, you know, they got like the familial kind of a dispensation to go to Soviet Russia to Moscow and visit her grandfather. So she has a couple of pictures of her sitting on Kim's lap as a baby. And she wrote a book about him recently. So I've been trying to get her on the podcast, but we haven't actually gotten it recorded yet. So hopefully that's coming soon. But I want to hear the story from her, you know, certainly because she lived a portion of it. And you know, her family knows it better than anybody else. It's amazing because Kim Filby was for a long time, he and James Angleton were actually great friends. They were very serious drinking buddies in the US for a number of years. I mean, the couple

of like serious hardcore alcoholic workaholic types. And when it finally was when he finally defected, I think he hopped on a ship in like 1961, if I'm recalling correctly, and he kind of escaped to the Soviet Union, that kind of broke Angleton in a big way, like mentally broke him because if his own best friend from England, if that guy who he trusted more than any other, you know, foreigner could be one of the greatest spies all along than absolutely anybody could. And so it really hampered the agency and him as a person for many years because he was he would never, ever doubted the existence of giant Soviet conspiracies that went all the way to the top because he had firsthand seen the evidence of those in the past. So quite an amazing story.

And it did tremendous damage not just to the British government, but to the American CIA in that way, because Angleton hampered so many operations until like 73 when he was finally pushed out. Because I was gonna say he was the Herbert Hoover of the CIA. He was there for a long time. And it's like you just said, where 20 years as the head of counterintelligence and he never as an example, like he never believed any of the Soviet defectors after that, he always thought that they were dangles. And the more believable they became, he said, well, that's just how good the Soviets are that they can send us this believable guy. And, you know, they'll sacrifice this many agents to convince us of his bona fides. And they will give up this

amount of damaging information just so this guy wins our trust. And he never believed the defectors. And, you know, the majority of them were legit, although some of them were dangles, as a matter of fact. So he was, in some ways, partially right at least. But quite a story, quite a story. Yeah, there's John LeCarris, Tinker Taylor, Soldier Spy, which could probably largely be attributed to Philby's defection. And in that book or in that movie, if you've seen it, it's just six Brits sitting in a room together, you're like, these guys love the Queen, they love the Empire, they love what they do. Someone's a spy, and it really hurts us to point them out. And so, but what I really want to point out is, there's the book called A Spy

Among Friends with written by Ben McIntyre, which is number one, my referral for any book, if anyone asked me for one, because it's about Kim Philby, Guy Burgess, James Jesus Angleton, all these guys where it's all these different spies working in different parts of the world who are, he probably takes some liberal liberties with that, where he's like, they made them all seem like they were skeptical of each other. But the greatest line in that is from Kim Philby, where he says, to betray you must first belong. And I remember when I was a young intelligence analyst in the Marine Corps, that that was a phrase thrown on us, like, that is, it's a real thing. It's the guy who seems the most there is not. So. Yeah, absolutely. I have several of Ben's

McIntyre's books here. I'm looking on my shelf actually right now as we speak to see if I have that one or not. He's in Six Eggs, a good one. It's about World War II. Yep. Yep. Let me see. I've got the spy and the traitor. I've got that one there. So I'll, yep, couple. But I have to walk away from the microphone to look at them all, unfortunately. But yeah, he's another guy I want to have on the on the podcast one day. He's one of the best, most award winning, most popular espionage history authors out there. So hopefully I can kind of wrangle an interview with him one day as well. He really writes his work like it's a James Bond spy novel by 1950 standards. And you're like, no, this is an actual, this is a biography, essentially. It's like, I deployed a

few years ago and read Agent Six Egg and Spy Among Friends and probably four or five days. It was insane that it reads like a bullet train and it was just blowing away about how intricate spy life is. And one more time about Ken Philby, as he said, the most lonely person in the planet is a spy because you're only friends to your handler and he doesn't care about you unless you give him something. So it's. Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. You cannot be your true self. Once you pick up that mantle, you cannot be your true self with anyone ever again. Exactly. Life, you know, which is amazing. And the same thing goes for the defectors. You know, they might be escaping a terribly difficult situation. They might be, you know, on paper,

improving everything for themselves and for their families. But they're also leaving their entire life behind and their culture and their, their, you know, greater familial ties and all that. And that's a very, very difficult road to, to walk for a lot of those guys, even if they've done it for the right reasons. Who was it? And this is a shot in the dark. I want to say it was Julie Caesar who said, I love spies. I don't trust them. And he was like, you can give me all the information you want, but it will never tell you anything ever again. And I mean, it's true. I don't know why you would want to trust a spy. I mean, it's, why would you confide in him

if he just defected and gave out so that all of his friends, but it's, I want to say it was Julie Caesar. You know, this might actually be wrong. I don't know, but it's, it was one of those big hats from the last 3000 years. And I'll have to look that one up. Yeah. That one's not coming to me immediately either. Yeah. It was, I want to say it was during the Golic Wars. And local chieftains were giving information about verse and get tricks. Who was the opponent to Julie Caesar? And he went, great, I love it. I love spies. I also hate them. It's like, I will never trust them a day in my life. Good job, but goddamn. But yeah, yeah, absolutely. So, um, oh, go right ahead. I was going to say there's, there's a tremendous amount of psychology that

goes into their motivations and their reasons for doing what they do. So some of them, you know, in some ways, there are some that are, I think, very trustworthy for a lot of reasons. They have the right reasons for doing it. But at the same time, there's, they're still willing to, you know, betray an organization that put bestowed trust in them for one reason or another. One of the guys that comes to mind immediately for me was this Russian engineer named Adolf Tokachev. And I've spoken about him several times in the past and done an episode on him. He was a Soviet engineer that provided a tremendous amount of valuable information, technical information like military R&D stuff during the late 1970s and mid-80s. And he's been called the billion-dollar spy,

if you've ever heard that phrase before. But his motivation was because he was an older guy, you know, he was in his 40s, I think, and his wife's family had mostly been either killed or imprisoned by Stalin's regime back in the 1930s and the 40s. Really? And because that was, they were not his family at the time, but his, basically all of his in-laws were disappeared by Stalin. So he decided, you know, many years later that, you know, any government that could do that was not worth supporting. And you had to support whoever was opposing them. And that was the United States. So from that perspective, I think his handlers in the US, once they understood his motivations, that's a guy that you can trust in many ways, because he is, you know, his family

has suffered so significantly, you know, at the hands of this government that he is betraying. So he has, you know, kind of the right reasons for doing it. But at the same time, you know, how can you trust a person that you don't have eyes on at all times? Because eventually, he could, and he did, in this case, he did get snatched back up by the KGB and interrogated. And so anything that you tell them can be drawn out of them later on, regardless of their desire to keep it to themselves. So yeah, it is, boy, talk about walking a fine line in so many ways in this in this field. Oh, of course. So I want to pivot to more like current events in the last like 30 years or so, especially American focus. And so it's a huge topic. And I really hesitate to

say it. But Oklahoma City bombing, you know, Timothy McVeigh, a lot of guys said he was an inside job. A lot of guys say he was a spy. He was, you know, sympathetic to foreign nationals. He came back from the Gulf War, maybe disillusioned. Well, in your own words, how would you interpret someone who I guess comes back from a conflict when they get very interwoven with the culture that they are fighting? And they come back and do something like Oklahoma City bombing? Is that espionage? Or is that just kind of like, you know, they're they have a little PTSD? Yeah, I mean, I wouldn't, I don't know that either of those terms fit perfectly. You know what I mean? And I haven't looked at Timothy McVeigh's case very closely at all, because, you know, it's a

terrorism. It's a homegrown terrorism kind of case, right? Exactly, espionage. But at the same time, yeah, there are people that come back and they're deeply affected by that. And they search for some kind of meaning in what they've done. And they find maybe the wrong type of meaning. You know what I mean? They kind of are drawn in the opposite direction of what we would hope for and what probably they should have been as well. So I would have to look at him a lot more closely. I've definitely heard people say that, you know, he had a lot more help than is led on. And it was really curious that I think like all the federal agents were out of the the Murrah building at the time of the explosion, people point to that as a real bizarre anomaly.

But beyond that, honestly, I just don't know a whole lot about that particular case. Okay, so taking away from that one, we have someone like Edward Snowden, or that recently, within the last two weeks, I guess is a big one. There was that trigger word, I don't know, like first openly transgender army officer who was caught selling secrets and medical training to the Russians. And yeah, I did a lot of articles about that. You spent a lot of time reading about espionage and how it works. What is the right and left these days? Because back in the day, it was us versus them. But now, now today, it's very gray. And so it's because we have the extreme right who wants to go condemn this transgender officer for, you know, like, oh,

you want to be inclusive. And this is what you get. But then you also ask someone who is like, Edward Snowden, who is very patriotic and goes, no, this is wrong, and his own words. And then, again, defects and divulges information to the Russians. So where's the fine line? How do you see this kind of situation going forward? Man, that's such a broad question. It's kind of hard to give a succinct answer. Yeah, I'm sorry, I kind of overloaded you there. That's all right. I mean, in some ways, espionage will never change because primarily it exploits human weaknesses. And those are, you know, they might shift a little bit, but they're not going to change fundamentally, like, you know, sex, black male bribery, all of those things are going

to be human weaknesses, exploitable human weaknesses for, you know, millennia to come, certainly. So that comes up. But I think that I don't know a whole lot about this case with the transgender officer that you talked about. And one of the reasons that I stay away from current event stuff is because there's such limited release initially, you know, five years from now, we'll be able to read the entire case online. After all that stuff is released, and there'll be a lot of insight there. But until that happens, you know, we're not going to know everything. And not only that, what if this person is found not guilty afterwards? You know what I mean? Exactly, exactly. And the way it was painted as soon as, and you know, the first article that comes

up is the Washington Free Beacon. And I can almost assume that that's a far right and or center rights publication going, this is what you get for, you know, inclusivity or something like that. But it's when, and I'm thinking back, shit, seven, eight years, where when I was just joining the military, and you know, everyone goes, do you think Stone's a hero? Or do you think he's a criminal? And then everyone's kind of like, you know, hesitant, they don't know what to do. And they're like, well, the reason you're getting phone calls from Chinese people is because he gave up the phone number. So take your pick. So it's right. Yeah, it's one of those interesting situations where we have something like Kim Philby, who just is sympathetic. But then now

today, we have people who are not sympathetic to a foreign government, based on the last, like seven or eight cases for the last 20 years, but it's more of a, I don't like what my country's doing. And so I think that's very strange in terms of espionage. I don't know if strange is the right word, but it's, there's definitely a pivot. I see, I see. Yeah, I'll tell you what I think about. One of my thoughts about Edward Snowden is that he is someone who, regardless of what he released, what he took, where he went, any of that, he has proved to be unbelievably media savvy in a way that basically nobody before him or really since him has been because he can present himself in a very, very reasonable way. And so that I think he's able to explain away

things that are clearly, you know, felonies that are clearly, you know, that's tremendous damage to the organizations that, you know, gave him pay benefits, a security clearance, gave him a mission, that sort of thing. And he's able to explain those away while minimizing some of the other significant questions that have come up about it. But at the same time, you know, he hasn't been arrested or charged or convicted with anything. So I think even more will come out in the, in any trial, if he's ever, you know, brought back to the United States in any way, shape or form, which is probably not going to happen. But so most of what we know, yeah, I don't, I don't, I mean, I think that, you know, whether you think what he did was right or wrong, I do

think that he's gotten away with it at this point. And I think that, you know, the majority of what we know about it has come from him telling us his perspective on it, because the US government, the NSA, you know, they have not fully released, as far as I know, everything that he released, you know, they haven't given a full explanation of all the stuff. And they probably will never do that, at least not for 50 years at a minimum. So we're getting a somewhat myopic view on all of that. But at the same time, he is an extremely convincing guy, when you listen to his interviews, the same time, you're like, wow, you know, this is, oh, man, this guy's making some good points. And he's clearly shifted a lot of people toward his point of view, because there's not, but there's

also not a very significant or convincing other point of view from anybody, because government spokespeople are not going to get into the weeds with this kind of stuff. Well, then he also goes on and say Joe Rogan, and states his case, and Joe Rogan goes, yeah, I can see where you're coming from. So it's, and there's a lot of guys that listen to Joe Rogan. So it's, I mean, the other day, he just had a Tulsi Gabbard, who ran for president in 2020, lost, and now is coming out guns blazing against the Democratic Party of the United States. And let's be honest, man, like most center right guys are going to listen to Joe Rogan. And it's, they're going to see kind of someone like Snowden as a hero, or plus or minus like, yeah,

I can see where he's coming from. And like you're saying, the government will not disclose this information, because that was the NSA, that is the number one top secretive organization on the planet. And it's, I hate to use the term catch 22, but it's, it's such a difficult situation to be in, where we have, so I guess I'll like disclose a little bit like, you join the military, you go over and you get really dialed into the culture of another country. But then you really want to read about the local customs, and they're like, no, because we don't want you getting indoctrinated. You're like, all right, thanks, man. But, but then you have something like ISIS, who really bases their entire doctrine on a certain textbook called the Management of Savagery. And

you're not a lot of looked at up on a US computer unless you're on a watch list. So it's like, I don't know, man, it's, can you do your job? Can you not? And then I'm sure a lot of young guys go, well, you're hiding this from me for a reason. Let me look into it. And then I don't know. Yes, the forbidden fruit. Somebody not to look at something they just want to look even more. Yeah, exactly. So then you have like, I don't have like Timothy McVeigh is such an anomaly. But it's, yeah, man, it's the world of espionage is crazy. And yeah, I don't see it getting any less gray anytime soon. So not at all. Not at all. I mean, that's kind of one of the catch phrases or that's in the introduction of every episode as I talk about, we're going to explore

the moral and ethical gray zones. Because there's not a lot of yeah, yeah, there's not a lot of happy endings. There's not a lot of, you know, two dimensional black, white, you know, good versus bad guy stuff. There's a lot of deeply flawed human beings. There's a lot of malevolent human beings who are also extremely good at their jobs on both sides. You know, there's it's really complicated stuff. And, and I hate to say it also, but you know, trying to be I consider myself like an amateur historian, because you know, I'm not getting paid for this unless somebody, you know, buy something from my advertisers on the podcast or something. But I picked a topic that is unbelievably difficult to get to the truth of even no matter how much is written about it,

you can't always trust the sources. You can't even trust the original source documents because they're coming from a very deeply partisan intelligence organization that is choosing very carefully what it releases even a half century later. So that kind of it makes my job tough. You know what I mean? It's a lot of fun. It's very rewarding, but it's very, very tough to say, Okay, this is what really happened. And this is why it happened. Like I can't hardly confidently say that about anything, no matter how many sources I look up and how much time I spend on any particular subject. Yeah, of course, especially when it comes to something like Vietnam war era intelligence, because in China, no one talks about anything besides Vietnam.

And it's, was there a war in Laos? Oh, yes. Is there a war in Cambodia? Oh, yes. Was that all CIA driven? Oh, yes. But no one really talks about that. And occasionally, there's a book written about it of old CIA guys who are willing to actually like spill the beans before they die or something. But it's Yeah, man, you're in such a lucrative area where you're only presenting the most correct information you're provided. And like, God love you for not reading one book and saying, I want to review this book. No, it's I want to know everything about this topic before I talk about it. And as an intelligence analyst myself, like you can't make an assessment based off single source reporting where like I said earlier, if there was an explosion in Kabul,

doesn't really mean anything. But if there was seven people saying that, all right, probably happened. So it's, it's interesting things like that. And I really appreciate what you're doing, because yeah, I definitely listened to the podcast, and it's very informative. Okay, great. I appreciate it, man. Yeah. And since you mentioned the secret war in Laos, I've been very, very fortunate to get connected to a number of the guys that were there over the years. And I call them up or email them now. Yeah, I've had a couple of episodes about it. And I'm hoping to do more as well. There's a lot of stuff there that went on that these guys are now willing to talk about. Because just like you said, they're, you know, in the

the final years of their life, and they don't owe anybody anything anymore. So they've either written their books or they're going to or they'll just talk about it. One of my, one of my favorite ones recently was with Toby Scott, Randolph Toby Scott, that was just a few episodes ago, I think maybe 60, I'll have to look at what number, but he was in Laos, he was in Vietnam for about six years altogether. And he will burn some bridges, like he burned some bridges during our interview. As a matter of fact, he doesn't care at all. So really, really, really fascinating talk. And yeah, and he's willing to talk a lot more as well. So I might have to have him back on one of these days. He's a quite a character. I would definitely love to listen to that.

Yep, check it out. We talked mostly about his best friend who passed away in 1982 under very, very mysterious circumstances. But Toby was there, he was in Laos, he was in Vietnam, he was a smoke jumper in Montana. With all the guys, he went to the Arctic, he flew over the Arctic Circle for Operation Cold Feet with the Skyhook, the Fulton Skyhook system. I mean, he did everything back then, man. And he is willing to talk about all of it. So I have one last question before we cut out. Sure. What is your opinion on modern intelligence? Do you believe it? Do you not? Because there's so much gray area of Twitter really getting in the way of what's true, what's not. We have something like a vice article says that Elon Musk provides

communications to Ukraine, but it's negotiating with Putin, which is very much an intelligence asset. And then, not Zelensky, Elon Musk says, no, it's not. Like, this is not true. But then all of Ukraine turns against Musk. What is your opinion on modern intelligence? Because it's not, like I said earlier, it's super gray anymore. It's black, essentially. It's just everything in one little room. Man, yeah. I mean, that's another big question that's really hard to give us. It's huge. And I know that's probably a question for a whole podcast, but it's... Well, if you're talking about open source intelligence, and it sounds like you are, you know, when you mentioned Twitter and Elon Musk and that sort of thing,

just understand that every time you log on to social media, and anytime you listen to a news report or read an article or anything, you are entering a battlefield. You are entering a 21st century battlefield, and you need to think very, very carefully about what kind of media you're consuming and what are the motivations of the person that is writing that article. Was it even written by a human being or was it AI generated, which is becoming increasingly more common these days? And there are hallmarks there. And if you are deeply concerned about that, you know, I suggest that you probably spend less time looking at current events. Not you personally, of course, but the casual listener. If you don't know who to trust or what to trust,

I mean, think hard about how much time that you want to spend with that, because it is extremely hard to know what's going on. I'm really concerned about stuff. You remember a couple of years ago, everybody was talking about deep fakes. And, you know, I haven't heard anything about deep fakes in a while now. Like, I mean, they didn't go away, for example, so it's deep fakes. Yes, yes, yes. I mean, I think it's hard to trust any kind of media at this point. That doesn't mean that true things aren't reported. But man, you've just got to be so careful about everything that you consume these days and all of the analysis that you read from just about any source. Yeah, there was a deep fake that came out right before the war in Ukraine of

Vladimir Putin, opening up a briefcase full of red buttons. And one was a red cupcake and he ate it. I haven't seen it yet. And you're like, actually, that's kind of funny. But then there's a deep fake coming out of Russia of like, Gwyneth Paltrow, Bruce Willis and Keanu Reeves in a movie together. But they're not those actors. It's a deep fake. And the Russians are very good at making deep fakes of, oh, yeah, we're just going to pretend that these guys are in the movie. And Interesting. Interesting. I haven't seen that one either. But silly Russians are going to sit down and go, yeah, it's probably a Keanu Reeves. This is speed three. But it's, yeah, man, it's the world of espionage day is so insane. And it's,

and damn, we're going really long on this one. I really don't care. It's, I'm sure if you've ever sat down and say you want a red briefcase, you're going to get an ad on your phone that says red briefcase. It's, yeah, yeah, actually, that kind of takes us back to a point I was going to make a few minutes ago before we moved on. But, you know, we talked about Snowden, for example, and Stone is actually that's 2013. That's close to 10 years ago when you think about it. I mean, it was nine years ago, basically, that he left and he revealed all that stuff publicly. Well, people were deeply upset and correctly upset, you know, right, justifiably upset about these mass surveillance programs that were revealed. And yet think about how much

mass surveillance you're willingly participating in right now. If a lot of people are probably listening to this on their phone, right now, how many times have you hit check the block? Yes, for terms and conditions on everything, every app that you've downloaded, every, you know, Wi-Fi hotspot that you've got. I can imagine everyone who listens to this, maybe 90%, it's in their phone connected to their car. Yeah. And cars have batteries now where someone like Subaru could shut off the battery because he didn't pay rent or something like that. It's crazy things. Yeah, buckle up, everybody, literally and figuratively buckle up. Literally buckle up, yeah. But I mean, you know, my point is that everything that he said that's so deeply

upset, everyone, we're willingly giving it away on a daily basis. I mean, you and I, like you and I talking right now and all the listeners, we're willingly giving away the stuff that the NSA was very secretly collecting at that time and that upset all of us so much. I mean, now they can probably just buy it, I assume they don't have to collect it with their own programs, they can just buy it. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean, we've, we've decided that privacy isn't as important to the majority of us as convenience is and you've really got to make drastic changes in your life if you don't want to be a participant in all of that. And most of us are not willing to make those totally drastic changes. Yeah, because we have something, especially in the US, there's something

like January 6 and that is such a pressure point on a lot of people. But it's, even if you joke about that, brother, it's, your phone's probably listening to what's going on. So right, it's yeah, exactly. It's, I mean, whatever you talk about, like maybe whatever gym or whatever clothing brand, it's going to show up on your Facebook recommended ads. And that's, that's where it's someone like Snowden who 10 years ago, like you just said, said this was going to happen. And it did. And so, but I think Snowden might be out of loop. It's been 10 years, he's been out of the game. Yeah. And the draft just came out for every single Russian living in the country, including Snowden. And there's all these memes about Snowden getting sent to Ukraine and which is very funny.

Like you wanted to fight a war in 2006, buckle up because you are now. So. Oh man. Yeah, boy, that would be, that would be quite a turnabout for that guy. That happened. But hey, man, I really appreciate you coming on. Like damn, dude, we've had a really good conversation. What I want to do is give you a second to plug your podcast, your page, all those things will kind of cut out. Oh, sure. Absolutely. I appreciate it. So basically, everything that I run is called Spicraft 101. So my kind of flagship account is on Instagram. And I have a podcast as well. I think we've recorded about 67 episodes so far. So if you enjoy podcasts, we generally go more

into the older history Cold War, World War Two, and earlier than that, it's not really a current events kind of show like this is. But I've been blessed to get some really, really amazing guests in the past. Like I mentioned, you know, participants in the Secret War in Laos had several Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists and authors on. I've had several CIA case officers. I've had a KGB agent come on in the past. And I've got some really cool guests lined up in the near future as well. So if you want to hear from either the people that actively participated or the people that have spent years and years researching all of this stuff, then check it out sometime. I appreciate it. It's a weekly podcast as well.

And find me on Instagram at Spicraft101. Brother, I really appreciate it. This is a very good conversation. Definitely want to reach out to you here in the next few weeks and get another one going because, I mean, the way espionage runs, it goes at a mile a minute. And I mean, there's no, you can't just wake up today and go, why did this happen? It's been years in the plan. So it's, yeah, so yeah, I'm going to cut out. And if you can hold on for a few seconds, I really appreciate it. Sure thing. All right. Great. Thank you.