Pod Save the World - Flynnocent After Proven Guilty

Episode Date: May 13, 2020

The political fallout from the failed coup attempt in Venezuela. General Flynn and the administration’s attempt to undercut the Mueller probe and punish Trump’s political enemies. The coronavirus weakens Putin’s strongman image. Peace slips further away in Afghanistan. The ongoing, escalating war of words between the US and China and much more. Then Wind of Change host Patrick Radden Keefe joins to discuss spies, propaganda, and how music and culture became weapons in the Cold War.Follow Wind of Change on Spotify to binge all 8 episodes now: https://spoti.fi/WindOfChange

Welcome back to Pots Save the World. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben Rhodes. Ben, we got a lot to cover today on the show. So last week we talked a whole bunch about this crazy Venezuelan coup attempt. So today we got some political fallout from that. Then there's this ongoing administration attempt to undo the Mueller probe and punish Trump's political enemies. We're going to touch on some pieces of that. There's an effort in Congress right now to expand domestic surveillance powers. Got to some. updates out of Russia and Afghanistan, and then more pieces of this constant ongoing rhetorical fight between the U.S. and China over the coronavirus. And then my interview today is with Patrick Radin Keith, who's the host of Wind of Change, our brand new show. And we're going to talk about the history of Cold War propaganda, what it's like trying to put together a show like this when your interviews are with ex-spies who are trained to lie to you. And when you're making reporting trips to places like Moscow, Ben, imagine being an American. reporter walking around Moscow asking lots of questions about the CIA. It's like not a not an

insignificant risk there. So very, very cool the way Patrick and the team reported this thing out and made just an incredible show that everyone should check out on Spotify right now if they have not. I love this show. Tommy, it's my favorite podcast I've listened to in a really long time. I'm kind of happy with you're binging it. And I have to say it filled me with deep regret, though, because, you know, for eight years, I was, let's just say, read into a lot of our influence efforts. And I think I could have solved this question with asking for one briefing. So I wish I'd heard this rumor about the scorpions in the end of the Cold War before. I know. It's so, it's so painful to know that we once had access to all this cool information

and we never will again. And then it's a little sad. But yeah, I mean, Listen, I'm not going to spoil the ending for anybody, but the coolest part about the show is you just get this incredible history of cultural campaigns as a part of these propaganda efforts in the Cold War. Like one example that we talked about in the show is like the CIA sponsored the Boston Symphony Orchestra to go to Paris to play at a cultural conference because a bunch of, you know, Yale graduate eggheads thought that that was some way to project soft power. It's just this incredible history. It's creative. It's interesting. Who knows if it was a good idea then or now? But it's like a fascinating topic to me.

Yeah, you know, both, I got into reading about this stuff too. And both sides, the U.S. and the Soviets funded literary journals, arts exhibitions, what have you. And what it kind of reminds you, right, is that the Russian operation on social media in our election is actually just the extension of a history of covert influence operations. is just using social media instead of print. You know, I mean, so it's a reminder that the mediums have changed, but the intent of governments is not.

Totally, man. Yeah, I mean, the 2016 election interference is sort of a backdrop in every piece of this story, and it's always there and kind of looming large. So fascinating. Okay, do you want to talk a little Venezuela? Always. Okay, so last week we talked about this story, these mercenaries who tried to invade Venezuela,

and overthrow president Nicholas Maduro. The plan failed spectacularly. There's been a lot of amazing, like, TikTok reporting about it since that I highly recommend. Someone will make a great movie or documentary about this someday. Two Americans are in Venezuelan custody, which is not funny, is a very serious thing. And now we're starting to see political fallout in a bunch of places. So on Monday, Bloomberg News reported that two aides to Juan Guaido, who is the Venezuelan opposition leader that the U.S. and, you know, 50 or so other countries officially recognized as the president of Venezuela.

These two guys resigned. These are staffers who had been in touch with a former U.S. Green Beret named Jordan Gudrow, who runs a private security company in the U.S. called Silver Corp, and he was sort of the leader of this B-Team Bay of Pigs operation. So apparently Guido staffers who resigned signed a contract with Gujaro outlining the scheme. And so, Ben, like, I'm not an expert in coups, but you think you might not want to all that stuff in writing? Like the contract literally says, quote, an operation to capture, detain, remove Nicholas Maduro, remove the current regime and install the recognized Venezuela and

President Juan Guaido. So pretty caught red-handed there. So Guido is trying to distance himself from this whole mess despite the fact that, you know, he might have signed this contract too, and there's a video of him speaking with Gujaro at least once. It also seems pretty clear, Ben, that like, you know, there's the questions early on, like, was Gujar row, like a naive freedom fighter or a mercenary. It seems pretty clear he was just doing this for the money and that he lied to the guys that he actually sent in to do this fighting and told them, you know, he was connected to the CIA and that he would get them air cover weapons, et cetera, from the U.S. that just never materialized. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was

asked about the plot and he said there was, quote, no U.S. government direct involvement, end quote, in the operation, which is odd phrasing. But he added, if we had been involved, it would have gone differently. So Mike needed to add a dash of arrogance when discussing what has been, you know, just a total failure of a policy. But then, you know, as we anticipated, Pompeo also said the U.S. would use every tool available to get the release of these two Americans who are now being held in Venezuela. So, you know, look, I'm eager to see what this means for Guido's political future. I mean, you know, there's some concern that Maduro could arrest him over this, you know, kind of understandably. And like, you know,

best, Guido's team showed like catastrophically bad judgment. So probably concerning to all involved that this is the guy that the U.S. and many other countries have had bet on. Yeah. I mean, the contract might as well said, you know, we are here to do the coup. And there's a lot to unpack here. You know, the first thing is the U.S. involvement. And I think we speculated a while back on this show that when you had Elliott Abrams as the envoy, responsible for this policy, someone with the history of, you know, using unsaved reactors, you know, death squads in Central America, proxies to affect policy changes that you might have this kind of freelancing. And it kind of connects back to what we're saying about winds of change

in a way, Tommy, because if the U.S. has covert operations in this part of the world, any manner of things could be happening underneath the umbrella of those covert operations, meetings with people like Gudro, contacts with people in the Venezuelan opposition, and it can be denied. It can be, you know, you can deny a COVID operation. When I look at Pompeo's language, direct involvement, that is so legalistic. It sounds like it was written in anticipation of like a congressional hearing or something. To me, it's a tell. that there was involvement, you know, that there may have been in formal contacts that the, the U.S. intelligence community may, at a minimum, have had knowledge that this was happening,

that the relationships that we have may have contributed to what transpired here. So I think there's, you know, for Guido, it's devastating because you're basically playing right into type of, you know, the American-backed guy using Americans to overthrow a government. for the U.S., it's incredibly embarrassing because I think most people looking at this around the world are probably assuming that we had a hand in something like this if the guy we backed is using former Green Berets and Mike Pompeo is saying we had no quote-unquote direct involvement. And they have no answer other than to kind of posture and, oh, well, if it was us, it would have been different. Well, it's like a soundbite written for, you know, the boosters of Mike Pompeo and right-wing media in the U.S.

that has no, you know, travels nowhere in the actual real world here. So I think, you know, the threads are going to be pulled on this for a long time. And probably the picture is going to get worse and worse for both Guido and the Trump administration as that threat is pulled. Yeah, I agree with you. I mean, this feels like something that will be difficult for Guido to deal with domestically in terms of his political situation.

I hope there are hearings on this. I hope someone scrutinizes Mike Pompeo's language because those are the biggest weasel words I've ever heard. I can't believe that he didn't get press more. Yeah, no, there's not a lot of pressing that's happening. You know, and I will say that I've been very disappointed in the kind of Democratic Party's approach to Venezuela in Congress, not uniformly, but I think in general that Trump administration has been given a little bit of a pass here off Venezuela. I think Democrats look like they're more afraid of the issue being demagogued in Florida than they are interested in actually holding the administration accountable. for what, again, a policy that by its own metrics has failed.

Like, you know, Maduro is still there. He's more entrenched than ever. Russia and China have more influence. Guido's discredited. Part of the reason that there's maybe not more pressure on the administration is that, frankly, Democrats, with some notable exceptions, like Chris Murphy or Rokana, you know, have not really been willing to take them on on this. Yeah, you know, I, too, would like to see the Democratic Party push back a little harder

on this one because not going well down there. Let's turn to an imaginary coup, a coup in Donald Trump's mind only. So the Wall Street Journal reported that Rick Grinnell, who is the unqualified Twitter troll currently serving as the acting director of national intelligence, has declassified and may subsequently release the names of Obama administration officials who, quote, unmassed the identity of Trump's disgraced National Security Advisor, former national security advisor, Mike Flynn in intelligence reports back in 2017. So quick explanation of what unmasking means. We haven't talked about this in a while. Let's just say hypothetically, the NSA intercepts a phone call between a top Iranian general and some American citizen. If the target of that collection is the Iranian, then by default, the identity of the U.S. person he's talking to would be redacted to protect that person's privacy. But there's a process where senior national security officials can request to learn the U.S. person's identity if it's key to understanding the content. text of the intelligence or, you know, some other reason. So it's a fairly standard practice, but it's one that's hard to do. There's some safeguard there because we're talking about a U.S. citizen. So Grinnell wants to declassify and release the names of these former Obama officials as part of this Trump administration ongoing effort to undercut the Mueller probe and, you know, really paint General Flynn as some sort of victim rather than the truth, which is, you know,

a guy who lied to the FBI and was secretly getting paid by foreign governments that he didn't disclose that work. The Trump people want to suggest that the unmasking process itself is sort of inherently wrong or political or nefarious. But Ben, here's some stats for you. So in 2016, the NSA unmasked an American's identity about 9,200 times. In 2017, it was 9,500 times. In 2018, it was 17,000 times. And in 2019, 10,000 times. So if unmasking is wrong, the Trump folks have drastically increased the practice. So it seems clear like that Rick Grinnell wants to find a way to smear former Obama officials.

He wants to generate Fox News headlines. He wants to fire up their base about General Flynn. So, you know, Ben, I'm just curious what you think of this story because, you know, you were at the White House during this period of time. and also just want to know your broader reaction to, you know, DOJ suddenly deciding that General Flynn is innocent, despite pleading guilty twice. Well, there's a real twist of logic here that we have to kind of unravel to understand the fever dream that we're dealing with and the problems with it. So here's the first problem. If you accept their kind of conspiracy theory at face value, right, their conspiracy theory is that Obama people unmasked, Trump officials,

to reveal their association, coordination, collusion, what have you, with Russia, then the Trump people did something wrong in the first place, right? So, so, so, you know, in other words, unmasking wouldn't matter if the Trump people weren't doing something that they thought was wrong. So there's kind of a logic that collapses at first interaction with this theory. The second problem with this is they've yet to demonstrate, any irresponsible or unnecessary unmasking. And I'll give you an example, Tommy, which is that I was a part of this original unmasking scandal back in 2017.

Suddenly my name was back on Fox News, Susan Rice, Ben Rhodes, Devin Nunes is outraged about this, the normal outrage machine kicks into gear in right-wing media. I was hauled in front of the House Intelligence Committee, then chaired by Devin Nunes. to testify for hours about this, here's the problem. I never unmasked a single Trump official, not once. So there was this kind of absurdity to it where they needed me to be like a character in their conspiracy theory. And yet they knew, because they have access to these records, that I had not done what they were, you know, yelling that I had done on Fox News, right? And so as usual, like, the absence of logic here is in play because, again, they're not

disputing that there were any, you know, actual things of concern in terms of why was Mike Flynn talking to the Russian ambassador or what have you. They're targeting Obama people for having, quote, unquote, amassed it. But then also, they haven't even demonstrated that this unmasking was abused in any way. And in some cases, like, as with me, they were just kind of inventing that this took place. And so it goes to show the kind of original sin of both dimensions of their quote-unquote Obamagate scandal. One is the reality of Russian intervention in our election is clear and well-established and supported by reams of evidence. And so they can't undo the truth of that fact. And then second, their allegations of this out-of-control deep state

don't make any sense either. Because by the way, Tommy, if we were engaged in some massive deed-saped conspiracy to make up Russian interference in the election to help Hillary Clinton, why would we have kept that a secret until after the election itself? You'd think that we would have put that out

before the election in some manner that would have helped Hillary Clinton. So the whole thing kind of falls apart on scrutiny. But I mean, I think what's worrying is if you look at the fact that the Director of National intelligence is spending his time doing this. It just shows you how corrupted and polluted the intelligence community is. And when you look at this insane, you know, a boutface on Flynn, someone who pled guilty to a crime. Like he admitted that he committed the crime of lying to the

government and DOJ is twisting itself in knots to exonerate him. It shows you that basically the independence of the Justice Department has collapsed. And if there's a second Trump administration, I would basically expect there to be complete impunity for anyone who's aligned with Trump to commit whatever crimes they want because they know that they're going to get a pass from the Justice Department and then politically motivated prosecutions of opponents of Trumps, like perhaps some of our colleagues in the Obama administration, which is what happens in authoritarian systems in banana republics. And that's part of the stakes in the election. Yeah. I mean, look, they somebody, presumably Rick Grinnell and his

his little minions, leaked to Fox News that Rick was planning to walk over to DOJ a bunch of documents relevant to this declassification process. And so that meant that Fox had a camera in place to get B-roll of him walking seriously with some folder, right? Like this is a made-for-TV movie. They are trying to criminalize the act of just doing your job when you're a national security official who was worried about blatant Russian interference in our election. You're trying to figure out why Mike Flynn is calling Sergei Kisliak, the U.S. ambassador to Russia, but then lying to the vice president and to Sean Spicer about it and then to the American people. Like, obviously, like, I think it would have been a dereliction of duty not to try to figure out what was going on there.

I'm not saying that Flynn's a Russian agent. I'm not saying that he's, you know, like some terrible guy, but you can certainly understand why in that moment, uh, Flynn's lies to a whole bunch of people, including the Vice President of United States, which led to him getting fired, would concern people who had seen the transcript of this call between Flynn and Kislyak. Yeah, I mean, you know, there's two political effects that they're trying to have here, right? They, the Trump people. One is, obviously, to get their people all stirred up, their people all ginned up, and frothing

at the mouth about how terrible Obama is, you know, whenever this stuff happens, you know, my Twitter mentions explode with a bunch of. lunatics ranging from like Q and on conspiracy theorists to prominent right-wing talk radio hosts, you're trolling me about this this gate that I was apparently part of, you know. So part of it is to energize their people. But the other part of it, Tommy, is to kind of not just distract the press from the pandemic. Sure, that's absolutely part of it. But it's also to kind of demoralize anybody else from caring about this. I mean, I imagine that some people listening to us even talk about Mike Flynn and Russia are probably sitting home and thinking like, oh, God, like, can we just move on

from this? No, it feels so old. I know. But that's the objective. You know, the objective is, is to make it so mind-numbingly and annoyingly toxic to raise these issues that an apathy sets in about criminal conduct from the most, I mean, the national security advisors, the most senior person in the U.S. government. And again, we're talking to covert operations, someone who can be read into every single covert operation that the U.S. government is engaged in. And what we know is he pled guilty to committing a crime. He also had this bizarre relationship with Russia that would led him to call Sergei Kiesliak before he sat down, even with the national security advisor at the time, Susan Rice, you know, to be paid by the Turkish government and potentially involved in schemes to

render someone from the United States to Turkey. This is really, we've never seen this at this level. the U.S. government. And part of what they're trying to do is make you so tired of Mueller and Russia and all of this stuff that you don't want to talk about it. And I will say, you know, the Mueller investigation in general is not aging well, you know, because Bob Mueller's decision to essentially offer no comment on the things that he found left the information space wide open for Trump to create the dynamic that he has. Yeah. And that's a lesson for us to not just think that the obvious truth will prevail in the court of public opinion because we're up against a massive disinformation machine

that can pulverize that kind of dispassionate approach that Mueller embodied beyond recognition. Yeah. Well, so let me give folks a policy reason that pulls this whole story forward and makes it even more relevant. So the Daily Beast reported that Mitch McConnell is preparing to expand the Justice Department's surveillance authorities

under the Patriot Act. So there's two parts to this. There's an amendment that will let the FBI warrantlessly collect records on web browsing and search histories of Americans. Then there's another that gives the Attorney General more visibility into FISA application. So FISA, as folks recall, is the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. That court signs off on surveillance of suspected spies in the U.S. So what's notable about all of this is that Trump and Barr and his cronies, they're trying

to paint a picture of the Mueller probe. It's like fundamentally unfair or dishonest. And they're talking about what they call like errors. and misrepresentations in the FISA application of Carter Page, right? That's been a big issue. But like this I think lays bare that this is not about FISA reform, right, or fixing the process because they are simultaneously expanding the government's surveillance powers and giving the attorney general who has proven himself to be a political henchman. They're giving him more power. And Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, who's been a champion on these issues for a long time,

he pointed out that McConnell's amendment would let Barr like go through the web browsing history of any American without a warrant, even if you're just a journalist or if you're if you're a political opponent of Trump. So, you know, I think that sort of lays bare that this is a PR strategy for them and not a policy concern. But also like Ben, you know, you've written a lot about like the need to sort of get off post-9-11 foreign policy footing. Like, we were in the White House, like the Patriot Act was reauthorized a bunch of times. I'm not acting like, you know, like we fix the thing or perfect on these issues. But like, do you think there's a chance of getting rid of the Patriot Act and starting over? Is that not necessary? It's that go too far. Like, how should folks think about this bill that we've been, you know, it's just been sort of looming in the background since 2001 and very few people really know what it does anymore. Well, I think that, yeah, it lays bare the hypocrisy of them, you know, suggesting there was FISA overreach with Carter Page when what they want to give themselves is a complete blank

check to abuse FISA. I think it should also worry Americans. Again, a Trump reelection scenario, are you comfortable with Bill Barr and Donald Trump and Rick Grinnell and people like that having essentially kind of Chinese level capacity to probe your digital footprint without a warned. And this gets your question, Tommy, which is it's absolutely time to revisit these authorities. You know, having been in government and having lived through the Snowden disclosures and the reforms after that, the idea that there's somehow in 2020 some greater terrorist threat than 2001 that he compels us to expand these authorities rather than winding them back is insane to me. And also, it's not borne out by, I think, the history of how terrorism cases go.

Because, frankly, you can get the information you need by seeking a warrant. You know, in other words, you don't need to just go fishing through people's browser histories. If there are people who raise red flags that they might be in touch with certain terrorist actors, you can treat it like a criminal procedure where, you know, you get the approvals you need to go look through their records here. So this is, you don't need this kind of extrajudicial power granted to the government to conduct necessary counterterrorism investigations. To me, the government has, from 9-11 on, stacked authority on top of authority, on top of authority, in things that now go well beyond the realm of counterterrorism and even beyond what is needed for effective counterterrorism.

Yeah. This one really worries me. And it's also just, you know, It's so complicated, and it's happening in Congress at a time when we're all focused on the coronavirus. Like, I just worry about this going completely under the radar. You know, there are some good senators, even like Republicans like Mike Lee are trying to stand up and push back. But, you know, it's just somehow they seem to find a way to reauthorize this thing. Yeah, I mean, to offer like some hope, you know, this is one of those issues where there's this kind of left-right alliance between the libertarian Republicans and Democrats who are concerned about government overreach. hopefully that's enough to slow this down now, but hopefully it's also enough that if the Democrats, if Joe Biden wins, that a real reform of these authorities can go forward, just like you need,

you know, repeal of the authorization to use military force, which has kept us at war for two decades as well. Okay, let's switch from our own authoritarian leader to another one over in Russia. So, you know, Ben, the coronavirus keeps sneaking its way into the heart of powerful government. So British Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, nearly died from the coronavirus. Several White House aides have tested positive. And now there are reports that Dmitri Peskov, who is a spokesman for and a top AIDS of Vladimir Putin, has been hospitalized with COVID-19.

So previously, there were three other Russian ministers that caught the virus. But I think Peskov is like one of Putin's closest guys, right? Yeah, no, he's been around the inner circle for a while. Yeah. So isn't he also the guy that Michael Cohen, like, cold email to trying to get a meeting. Oh, yeah, yeah, I think that's it. Hey, I would like to collude.

Blast from the past there. So look, you know, it doesn't sound like Putin is at risk of catching the disease. He's been teleworking from home at a place in Moscow and reportedly hasn't seen Peskov in a month. But, you know, the Russian response generally has been really bad. I mean, probably second only two hours. They have over 230,000 confirmed cases. Thousands are dead.

The official numbers are garbage. there's dramatic undercounting. Healthcare workers, there's these reports of them mysteriously falling out of windows. Like, I don't know if these are being chalked up as suicide attempts. There's at least three incidents I know of or something more sinister, but it's very weird. There's reports of Russian ventilators catching on fire in putting victim, like people at risk. So it's very bad. And, you know, for Putin, Putin likes to look strong and active.

He rides horses. He fucks around with tigers, right? this crisis has sidelined him to be, you know, a leadership via Zoom call like the rest of us. And while most leaders saw a bounce and they're polling from this crisis, Putin's numbers have actually dropped according to news reports. So, you know, the flip side of this is that opposition leaders can't organize rallies or protests. So, you know, it's harder for them to catch momentum. But I don't know, Ben, like, do you think it's wishful thinking to hope that an event like this might undercut Putin's narrative politically and maybe help lead to some change? Or am I just,

I'm looking for silver linings and clouds where there aren't any? No, I mean, I think there's no question that that's something to watch because, you know, the Russians have handled this incredibly poorly. I think they're now after us, the country of the second most cases. You know, what a coincidence that countries governed by people like Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin don't prioritize preparedness around the health of their citizens. And Boris Johnson. Yeah, it goes to show you what kind of corrupt nationalism gets in a crisis. At the same time, look, Putin was already, you know, somewhat vulnerable. I mean, there was some, you know, a polling that demonstrated that United Russia, his party, was deep

underwater, under 50 percent. The economy has not been going well. Sanctions have had an impact there. I think there was already, if you talk to the opposition, which, you know, I've had occasion to interview some of them, like there was a sense that Putin's adventurism and Ukraine and Syria people were beginning to get tired of that. Like, why is he spending all this money in Syria when the economy is so shitty here? That was the case before the coronavirus. And now you have a case where not only is he mismanaging this,

but, you know, he can't distract people with, you know, he was going to have a big kind of parade and show of Russian nationalism around the anniversary of the end of World War II. You know, as you said, he's kind of holed up. He can't be out, you know, staging his hockey games or whatever it is he does. to feed the people.

So I think, you know, look, it's not going to be this kind of collapse of the Russian government, but the idea that there's going to be a real blowback for some of these more nationalist leaders that we talk about in the show, I think it's going to be a real part of the landscape for the next couple of years. And, you know, it's going to be hard for when you have a story that everybody in a country is feeling, you know. So this is not the kind of thing where it's like, oh, there's something. bad that, you know, Putin or Trump did. But, you know, it's just something on the news. No, like,

Russians are, you know, dealing with this every day. His capacity to distract them from how this has been mismanaged or to push the blame onto local officials, I think is going to be quite limited. So I think you could see some real cracks in the sense of the inevitability of Putinism in Russia. Have you ever seen the video of the time Putin played in one of those hockey games? And he's literally taking a victory lap at the end. And he doesn't. notice that a red carpet is when brought out and he just fucking eats it so hard and like it's so funny but that I also kept thinking about the poor bastard who brought that thing out there and is like you know in a gulag somewhere now but I don't know it's a good YouTube the funniest thing

of that video is if you watch it and people should Google this the players right they're they're all watching and smiling and kind of clapping for Putin and then you can see on some of them some of them can tell it's going to happen so like Putin's closing it on this carpet but he's looking up and waving. And you see some of these players be like, what do we do? Do we try to stop him? Do we, you know, and it's like, it's the slow motion catastrophe.

Oh, fantastic. Okay, let's turn to a subject that is terrible. So today I want to give out the first annual Ponce of the World Worst People in the World Award to the Militants who stormed a hospital in Kabul on Tuesday, killed at least 16 people, including two children. So this facility was right. run by Doctors Without Borders. And if you want to look for a great charity to give to highly recommend them, they are literal

heroes. But this facility includes a maternity ward. So, yes, these monsters attacked a maternity ward, and they murdered a mother and a newborn. The Taliban denied responsibility, so I don't know who exactly did it, but I don't take anything they say at face value. ISIS has been staging attacks in Afghanistan as well, so it could have been them. They all suck. But look, you know, this comes as troops are withdrawing.

as peace talks between the Taliban and the Afghan government have not even started, right? They were supposed to start months ago. They've just been on ice. On Sunday, you know, the Taliban killed 27 Afghan soldiers at an army outposts. So like this violence is constant. It's ongoing. And, you know, remember that back in February, Pompeo announced this big peace deal with the Taliban. There was a signing ceremony.

Trump actually called a Taliban leader on the phone, right? And he later gave a readout. And he said, we've agreed there is no violence. we don't want violence. So that hasn't happened. You know, later after that, Pompeo flew to Afghanistan. He threatened the elected government, said he'd cut off aid if they didn't solve their political problems. So things are unraveling quickly. And so look, look, I'm curious what you think about the policy, Ben, but it's really notable to me that there is no pressure or at least no public pressure from the Republican Party to reverse his decision and keep troops there. I'm not saying

that's what I want to see. But, you know, I'm just noting that, like, the first press conference Lindsey Graham will hold at Joe Biden's wins will be about Afghanistan. And it's just, it's just always bizarre to me that Trump faces no pressure from the right to stay in these places. Yeah. I mean, I think there is something, there's something about the arc of this show we've even had here today, Tommy, which is it like, you know, we've got, you know, this unraveling in Afghanistan, We've got Venezuela, which we've talked about, you know, any number of issues around the world. And how much attention do they get from our media relative to Obamagate, you know? Yeah.

Obamagate, which is about nothing. And everybody knows it's about it. Literally. Trump couldn't articulate it. I mean, Trump couldn't even say what it was. And yet, think of how much, you know, if you just digest the news on television or in the newspaper, how much you're going to read about Obamagate versus the fact that a few months after the Taliban's a peace deal, they've launched a new offensive against Afghan government and may have been

involved in shooting up a maternity ward, or this crazy coup in Venezuela, or this massive expansion of surveillance powers. So there is an imbalance, I guess, that we're trying to correct on Pazade of the world in the information environment, as you say. In terms of what I wish was happening, you know, Afghanistan also has a real serious outbreak of COVID-19 and an already obviously overburdened country, that could lead to not just deaths from the disease, but to famine and other outcomes. I wish that we were trying to essentially just say, look, ceasefire, everybody, you know, Taliban, government, us, like ceasefire to fight this disease and use the ceasefire to fight the disease as maybe a basis for coming back at this, you know, quote-unquote peace

agreement, because the context has changed. both in terms of the Taliban's actions and because of the pandemic. So then that's something concrete that I think could be done differently of just trying to put all this on hold and use the pandemic as something that can bring, hopefully, parties together to get something positive done and build from that because the current status quo is not good for the Afghan people. Yeah, no, no, it is not at all. Speaking of ceasefires, like I would like to see a rhetorical ceasefire with China, and I want to walk through a couple stories that kind of outline why that would be helpful.

So there was a report in the New York Times this week that the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security are preparing to issue a warning about Chinese government efforts to steal research on coronavirus vaccines and treatments. This comes after the White House has repeatedly accused China of allowing the coronavirus to escape from a research lab. We've talked about this a bunch. This accusation isn't supported by U.S. intelligence. Scientists don't think that's what happened, but it's a lot. still asserted over and over. So according to the Times, you know, this isn't unique to China. A bunch of countries have refocused. They're hacking and they're spying on coronavirus-related information. So that's, you know, generally depressing to think that that's what people are doing in response to a global pandemic. But look, you know, the U.S. has a longstanding and very well-founded

concern about Chinese intellectual property theft. But I guess what I find so dispiriting about this article is that like it makes clear that we're not looking to be part of a global effort to come together to try to create the cure because like I'm not an expert. I'm not a scientist. I don't work at a drug company. But why wouldn't the government say to all these drug companies like none of you get a patent on any of these treatments or cures? We will however give you a ton of funding and you have to share your results like open source medical research. And if you don't like it, we ramp up the Defense Production Act and we force you, right? Like, what's the downside here to leading some global effort that other countries are trying to do on R&D and just getting these treatments done as fast as

possible? Like, this pissing match is killing me. So, yeah, I truly don't understand it because, you know, if you were essentially, if from January when the scale of this outbreak was beginning to become clear, if you would basically use the Defense Production Act, which allows the government to kind of compel manufacturers to produce certain things, to surge testing kits, to surge health equipment, and then to surge the pursuit of a vaccine, I think that would be very popular with the American people. Oh, my God, yeah. I don't know what the constituency is that would be against that.

And the only reason I can think of that they're not doing this is because they have some, you know, fear of socialism or something, or they don't want to look. I mean, I honestly can't think of any reason why you wouldn't be doing that. in terms of the global effort too, like we are sitting here at home. I don't know when we can go back to an office. I don't know when my kids are going to be able to go back to school. What I do know is nothing will fully resume to normal until there's a vaccine, even if we did everything else right, which we're not doing. So I don't know why, you know, use what analogy you want, a moonshot, what have you. I don't know why the U.S. government isn't trying to work with every other country in

the world with any capability in the space to surge every capacity, possible to share whatever information is necessary to get a vaccine developed and built to scale. Because we also know, by the way, that if there's not global dissemination of this vaccine, this thing is going to keep popping up in different places, right? So I wish I saw that kind of effort from the government and leadership on the national stage. And I also know that the very real concerns we have about China and other things that they're doing, intellectual property theft to something you mentioned, are being kind of debased by this kind of throw everything at China. In other words, it's like the boy who cried wolf.

We're accusing China now of like everything, you know, all the way to potentially producing this disease in a lab. That is going to make our legitimate charges of Chinese bad behavior, overreach, what have you, less credible. Yeah, for sure. And let me give listeners a specific example of why this political demagoguery around the lab has been so dangerous. So 60 minutes to this segment over the weekend about an organization called the EcoHealth

Alliance. So this group, the EcoHealth Alliance studies, viruses that jump from the world. from animals, the humans, especially viruses and bats. And they specifically have worked with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which is one of the labs Trump keeps blaming for the outbreak, because Wuhan is close to these caves where these bats live and it's where SARS emerged and other things. So the eco-health research was critical in the development of remdesivir, which is one of the antiviral treatments that seems to be working.

This body of research that they do is essential just generally to preventing pandemics. But this sentient beer bong, Congressman Matt Gaitz, went on Fox News and he just lied. He made up information where he said that the NIH under Obama had given millions of dollars in grants to the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Now, that is flat wrong. This grant went to the group I've been talking about earlier, this U.S.-based alliance, the EcoHealth Alliance, which had been working with the Wuhan Lab. But here's what happens. Trump gets asked about Matt Geitz's bullshit at a press briefing. He gets pissed off.

And days later, this EcoHealth Alliance's grant was killed. So they're no longer able to do this research on the bats that created the coronavirus. The net effect is that one of the few people in the field every day doing this potentially life-saving research on coronaviruses is being punished to advance this anti-China narrative. And so I just recommend folks, watch this segment on 60 Minutes. it will make your blood boil. And just also, by the way, as our president tells us that, like, testing isn't the answer. The city of Wuhan is planning to test all 11 million residents because they had six new cases in two days. So you tell me who is behind the curve on this shit. Yeah, well, you can get testing if you're in Wuhan or in the White House, but the rest of us are fucked, you know. And I think that the basic core point that you make, that, you know, that anecdote illustrates is it for a lot of these people from Trump, to Matt Gates, human frat paddle, to, you know, a lot of people, unfortunately, on Fox and in the Republican Party, like, weirdly, their prism for how to manage the current crisis we're in is not

to solve the crisis, it's to just perpetuate their narrative, false narrative, too, about who's to blame. It's a weird thing to be in government and to wake up every day and not think, like, how can I go to work and, like, solve this really big problem that's a defining problem of my lifetime? But rather, how can I wake up and find some way to punish a lab? Because that might advance, like, the China narrative and get me booked on Fox. Yeah, it shows you how, yeah, it shows you how distorted the kind of collective brain of the American right wing is. Yeah. So last quick China thing I just want to mention, which is, you know, you and I've talked about this before. We've been engaged in this back and forth with China, where each.

side has expelled journalists. So in the U.S. case, the United States government kicked out some Chinese state-run media employees because they were better described as spies than journalists. China has booted out reporters who basically wrote pieces they didn't like for major news outlets. And so the latest like tit in the tit for tat here is that the Department of Homeland Security announced that Chinese journalists working for non-American news outlets can only get 90-day work visas instead of sort of like, you know, longer-term ones. So they have to constantly reapply to stay in the country. And U.S. officials said that these restrictions were necessary to, quote,

counterbalance the suppression of independent journalism in China. And, you know, it's just worth noting, like Trump's deputy national security advisor as a former journalist used to cover China. He was harassed by the Chinese government while reporting on SARS, among other things. So, like, this is very personal for him. But, you know, Ben, I'm curious what you make of this latest move. I mean, I just, I worry about these little escalations we see all day, every day. I don't see a lot of diplomacy cooling things off.

Also, like, we're a country that cares about the First Amendment. China does not. So I'm not sure this is good messaging or even, like, a punishment that makes sense. But I don't know. What do you make of all this? You're right. It just feels like another and a whole series of escalations that are happening across the board with China disconnected from any broader strategy, you know.

And so, like, look, if the administration had some broad coherent China strategy that this is a part of that be one thing, but they don't. If they had a broad global commitment to the freedom of the press, this would be a much more credible and worthy fight for them to be in. But frankly, when you call the press the enemy of the state at home and you don't stand up for a journalist when they're chopped up and killed by your friend in Saudi Arabia, your credibility to get into, you know, on your high horse and get in a fight with the Chinese, but this stuff is, is diminished. And I say that being sympathetic to some of the problems they're trying to

solve. What to me, it demonstrates, and again, this is all tied to our election, but like, if there's a change in administration, we need to sit down and have a conversation across a whole bunch of areas with the Chinese, including this one. Because just having this escalate in isolation, all that's going to do over time is close off our ability to see what's happening inside of China, you know, and to what end? And it's not clear these guys have thought through what the endgame is. No, no, they have not. Okay, so put this story on the list of things that I just wanted to put a pin in for us to kind of watch. So there's a city in Western Ukraine called Colomaya. In February, Ukraine's national to police department demanded of a person in the town a list of all

Jews in the area, including their addresses and phone numbers. The demand was made to the head of the town's Jewish community. And I don't know if that's an official, like, formal organization or how that works, but it was ostensibly in the name of stopping transnational crime. They refused the demand. It's blatant anti-Semitism. President Zelensky, who we all remember from impeachment, is Ukraine's first Jewish president. So hopefully he will take this very seriously. But, you know, like I just noticed a story and I've noticed reports of an uptick in rhetoric blaming Jews for the coronavirus. So I do think it's like it's worth calling this stuff out because there is a tendency to, you know, blame historically discriminated against groups for every new problem that pops up. And in

Europe, that often means Jews. Yeah. And, you know, there's been this growing trend of anti-Semitism. And unfortunately, tragically, that should not be surprising because there's been this growing, trend of far-right nationalism that we talked about a lot. And in the West, in Europe and the United States, there's just no history of there being resurgent far-right nationalism that hasn't led to anti-Semitism. And by the way, what's so strange about the debate about any semitism in this country is it's always about, you know, the BDS movement or something. That's not this, you know, this is the same kind of mentality, I think, that led that lunatic to shoot up the Tree of Life synagogue in Pennsylvania. This is far-right stuff, you know, Jews as connected to crime,

Jews as an enemy within, you know, Jews as a sinister foreign force controlling our politics, some of the anti-George Soros conspiracy theories that we see in Europe and the U.S. So, yeah, put a pin in this as indicative of, you know, really dangerous historical echoes that come along with this kind of far-right garbage. Yeah, in a fraught, fraught region given history. Okay, happy story. This was cool, I thought. So Taiwan's vice president, Chen Chien-Gen is a Johns Hopkins trained epidemiologist.

And the New York Times had a great profile on him that explored the ways he's navigating the need to play a political and scientific role in their government. So like by day, you know, he's like delivering a message, criticizing the Chinese government. At night, this guy is literally hunkered down with like granular data about treatments and transmission trends and just like in the weeds on health care. And so he was a top health official during the SARS outbreak in 2003. So he's worked on pandemic prevention for a very long time. And, you know, Taiwan is an amazing coronavirus successory. I mean, when you think about where they are geographically in relation to China and where the outbreak started, and the fact that they've only reported 400 cases and six deaths, I mean, that is incredible.

So I thought it was a cool profile. It's worth reading. But also, what really jumped out at me is that what enabled his election and his success is a culture of respect for scientists that allows you to kind of be nonpartisan and to rise to this position in the first place. And it's just an area where U.S. politics has a lot of work to do, especially coming off our conversation about Matt Geitz a minute ago. Yeah. And what's so interesting is if you look at the, if you were giving out awards for the best responses, you know, Taiwan and South Korea would be at the top of that list. You know, I think in Japan, another country that we haven't talked about a lot, you know, has given its proximity to China, you know, has also had some successes. And, you know, part of it that speaks to what's sad about your comment on the U.S. is, you know, we should take some pride. You know, there are few countries in the world that the U.S. didn't invest more resources in and time and resources kind of post-World War II than Japan and South Korea and Taiwan, which we don't recognize as an independent country, but obviously has been independently autonomous.

And, you know, something went wrong in America along the way, because clearly we helped instill in these countries a sense of the interconnection between government and expertise and science. I'm not saying we should take credit for it. I'm just saying it's how interesting that countries that really were, you know, the closest partners and allies of the United States and Asia for the last 75 years are getting this so right. And something has happened in the U.S. that has broken that interconnection between. innovation and science and technology and government that used to be central in the Cold War, right?

I mean, NASA, the moonshot, the U.S. is the leading edge. I think the other thing that's just kind of an interesting side note is that these countries also, in part because of SARS, have kind of a mask culture. So people don't think it's weird to wear a mask outside in Japan or in Taiwan or in South Korea. And lo and behold, they're not getting anywhere near the same outbreaks. So, you know, we should learn from them as countries that have been close to, outbreaks before over the last couple decades that, you know what, like we have to get a little bit more used to masks over here. Yeah, for sure. Two more quick things before we go to the interview

with Patrick Raden-Keefe. So Iran's military was involved in another deadly friendly fire incident. You guys probably remember back in January when we talked about, you know, IRGC forces shot down a Ukrainian passenger plane and it killed 176 people. They initially tried to cover it up, but later admitted it. This was in the midst of the military conflict. with the U.S. after Trump ordered the assassination of an Iranian general named Qasem Soleimani. This week, an Iranian Navy boat shot another Iranian Navy boat with an anti-ship missile during a training exercise. It killed 19 people, wounded 15. I'm sure there are a lot of folks who dislike Iran in the IRGC who hear this and sort of laugh at their incompetence. But there's also, you know,

the concern that this incompetence increases the risk to other navies, like in the Persian. Gulf. Clearly, Iran was staging this test as some sort of show of force to the West in the midst of the maximum pressure campaign from Donald Trump. Last month, Trump randomly threatened to shoot, you know, Iranian small boats operating in the area. So tensions are high. So it's just, you know, another story that I kind of want to put a pin in because, you know, when you have a country that like Iran that has also completely failed in their response to the coronavirus, you have a leadership whose pride is wounded, who's probably worried about, you know, their, their control. of a population, and that's when things I think can get a little dicey.

Yeah, and, you know, again, it points to the incompetence of the Iranian government, which, you know, when you listen to Trump and Netanyahu and the Saudis, it's like they can't decide, you know, in their telling, right, some days Iran is like the most capable military power in history of the world, you know. And if we, you know, if we're not, you know, rallying the entire world against the threat of Iran, they're going to take over the whole world. This is not the case. Their capacities are very high when it comes to stirring up proxies and stuff. But in terms of a conventional military threat, I think this underscores that they are not, you know, an adversary that,

let's say, is as big as they've been painted out to be. At the same time, you know, part of what worries me too is that precisely because of that understanding, we focused on the nuclear threat. Because what does a country do when they are not able to compete in terms of conventional military? They might try to get a nuclear weapon as a hedge, right? And so this takes us all the way back to the initial logic, which is you've got this country, you've got a bad regime that feels defensive, that can't build up its conventional military capabilities sufficiently to feel secure, so they reach for the nuclear weapon. And so, again, at the risk of being repetitive, I think that underscores the need to try to deal with the nuclear issue diplomatically. Yeah, I mean,

unfortunately, the last sort of diplomatic overture we heard about was Mike Pompeo trying to say he was getting back in the Iran deal, just to sanction the Iranians again. So I'm not sure we have a lot of hope there. But final story, I just wanted to raise here, is just, it's a headline that made me laugh. So the AFP tweeted the other day, breaking Russia accuses U.S. of downplaying Soviet role in World War II, which given the subject matter, I thought was a creative and kind of hilarious use of breaking. Now, there was actually some news behind it. So they were celebrating the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II. Mike Pompeo marked that anniversary with this very harsh statement that was co-signed by a bunch of countries in the region that criticized the post-war. occupation of central and eastern Europe. And this statement and vision clashes with Putin's vision of history that he wants to put forward to his people that makes Russia central to the military defeat of Hitler. But, you know, like this is a constant like rhetorical back and forth here because in 2019, the European Parliament put forward a resolution blaming the 1939 Nazi Soviet

pact for the war ever happening. So, Ben, like, I admit I need to watch a few more episodes of World War II in color on Netflix before I have any idea what I'm talking about on this subject. But I thought it was interesting. I'm glad we're relitigating all the old battles in the midst of a pandemic. And your thoughts. I think that, you know, look, we find much to criticize about the Russians on this program. And obviously there's much to criticize about the post-war Soviet policies in Eastern Europe. All of that said, tens of millions of Russians died fighting Nazism and fascism. You know, don't at me, but the idea that we could have defeated Nazis on our own

without that support from the Russians and the then Soviet Union, let's just say at a minimum it would have been a much more difficult task. I think that the day that marks the end of the war in Europe is a day to recognize those Russian sacrifices. You know, just for one day. The next, you know, we can go back to fighting about what happened after the day after. It is so central to the Russian sense of identity and the Russian national experience. What happened in that war?

It's such a, it cuts so deep that I just think it's not the time and place to take these shots at them. And you can pay tribute to the sacrifices of the Russian people without. agreeing with, you know, Stalin's other policies. And, you know, I think that's a finding some basis to be able to deal with history without it kind of mirroring the conflicts of today is ultimately, frankly, going to be important to being able to resolve the conflicts of today as well. So, so to me, you know, it's a disappointing headline to see. Yeah. Breaking news. World War II. Over. It's like the CNN did the breaking news. The Titanic has sunk.

Well, one of my favorite speeches, Tommy, is John F. Kenny gave this amazing speech at American University. Every should look at it in which he kind of asked people to rethink the Cold War. And he was one of the first American presidents to really go out and make this point that, like, hey, like, we have to recognize the suffering and the losses that they had. And that was kind of, he was extending that Olive Ranch as a basis for cooperation on arms control, you know? And again, I think it's just a sign that, like, leaders can be big enough to recognize, you know, the achievements of us. other countries, even when you have other things that you would find a lot of fault with. Agreed. Totally agreed with that. Okay, when we come back, we'll hear a lot more about the Cold War, about Russia's national identity, and the history of propaganda campaigns from the U.S.

and the Soviet Union from our guest, Patrick Radin-Keefe, who's going to talk all about our brand-new podcast, Wind of Change, so you don't want to miss it. It's one of my favorite shows I've ever heard. So stick around. I'm Patrick Radden-Keefe, a reporter at The New Yorker magazine. On my new podcast, Wind of Change, I investigate a rumor I haven't been able to shake since I first heard it years ago. It came from someone inside the CIA, and the story was that the agency had written one of the best-selling rock songs of all time, a song that changed the world. So that was the tip that started me on this story, and it only got crazier from there. Listen to all eight episodes of Wind of Change for free on Spotify, a new original series from Pineapple Street Studios, Crooked Media, and Spotify.

I am so excited to talk to my guest today. It's Patrick Radden-Keefe. Patrick is a New Yorker staff writer. He's the author of the New York Times bestselling book, Say Nothing, which we've talked about on this show before, which has been called the best nonfiction book of 2019 and one of the best nonfiction books of the decade, no big deal. Patrick, it's great to have you back and see your face from this COVID nightmare. Great to be back with you. So I just want to say, so we're here today to talk about this amazing new show, of change. And before we get to questions, I just want to sort of tell listeners that, like, I literally remember where I was in my office the first time we talked about this show and the tip you got about the song, Wind of Change. There was something about it, the distinctive song, like the mystery, that period of time, the nostalgia. And it just put this like big shit eating grin on my face. And that smile was still there when I listened to the last episode a couple weeks ago. So here's my pitch to listeners.

If you want to immerse yourself into eight episodes of mystery, of fascinating history, and music and rock stars and just like pure joy that will escape this pandemic nightmare, this is your show. So check it out on Spotify. You can binge the whole show there. And this is important. You don't have to pay for Spotify to binge it. You can get it for free on Spotify and binge the whole series.

So it's 2020. Get With the program. Download Spotify. Subscribe to Wind of Change. and you will feel joy for the first time in months. End of speech from me. So first question for you, Patrick. So, like, at the New Yorker, you've written about the Sackler family,

who are these monsters that pushed OxyContin, like it was Tylenol and helped create the nation's opioid crisis. You've covered terrorists. You covered the hunt for El Chapo. You wrote a book about the IRA and the troubles in Northern Ireland and immersed yourself in that history. But your white whale, your Moby Dick, was a 90s power ballad called Wind of Change. Can you talk about like the genesis of this story that led you on a decade long journey that got us to today?

Yeah, absolutely. So I have this friend and he's a character in the podcast, this guy Michael Schender Auerbach, who I've known for years. We first met, I think, in 2006. And he's one of these people. I'm sure you know people like this too. He's just, it feels like he's kind of a almost a sort of where's Waldo. So, like, he pops up in all kinds of different places. He knows all sorts of different people.

So he now works for Madeline Albright at Albright, Stonebridge, her company. But he's been in business intelligence and he's had startups and he's been in the think tank world and he's involved in Middle East peace stuff. And he has been a dear friend of mine for years, but also a source. And so over the years at the New Yorker, he would tip me off to things, crazy stories. and just became one of those people who always had wild ideas that nobody else was talking about and seemed to be able to kind of sort of see around the corner a little bit and sometimes just tip me off to something that maybe was going to be a big thing in a few months' time. And so anytime he comes to me with a tip, I take it seriously.

And the way this whole thing started is in 2011, he sent me an email. And he said, I had dinner last night with this guy who was a friend of mine who used to work at the CIA. And he told me that there's this song by the 1980s German hair metal band, The Scorpions, called Wind of Change, which is this big song. More in Europe. It's one of the biggest rock songs ever, less so in the U.S., but in Europe it's just huge, ubiquitous. Nearly a billion views on YouTube. Yeah, yeah.

I mean, I think it's something like in terms of singles in the pre-digital era, it's like the 13th biggest selling single of all time. I got it. And it's this metal ballad all about the end of the Cold War. It came out right around the time the Berlin Wall fell. And it's all about reconciliation and the end of communism and tyranny. And it was kind of the soundtrack to the collapse of the Soviet Union. And the tip that I got from Michael in 2011 was he said,

so this guy last night told me that that song was written by the CIA. And that set me off down this rabbit hole. My shit eating grin is back. I'm telling you. And I didn't even, it's funny because I wasn't really all that familiar with the song. You know, I was not a metal kid growing up. I was, certainly that was my era. You know, I was a kid and very into music in those years, but not metal.

But there's just something about this story. And that kind of set me off on this path, which all these years, literally almost a decade later, has turned into this podcast. It's the spring of 2019. And I'm sitting in a big loft apartment in lower Manhattan. It's late at night. and I'm a little giddy, a little nervous. I'm here with my friend Michael. It's his place, and he's letting me eavesdrop on his end of a phone call.

Michael has just called a guy he knows, a former clandestine officer from the CIA. The guy's just talking to Michael, but he doesn't realize I'm here, listening to Michael's end of the conversation. So do you remember the story you told me like 10 years ago? Yeah, you know that Patrick and I have been utterly obsessed with this story for the past 10 years? And so we've been chasing down leads, asking people. We have a full-on map of multiple different relationships trying to figure out the veracity of the story that you told. And so what we're going to do is we're going to do it in the form of a podcast.

And I know that it would be difficult for you to tell it on the record, but I'm wondering if you would do it with like, you know, a different name, and a scratchy voice and be interviewed. Right, of course. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. No, that's true. Understood.

Don't want that to happen. I do not want you to go to jail. I do not want you to be arrested under felony charges, or even worse. Okay. Good chatting. What happened? He was just like, it's a felony. There's no fucking way I can tell you.

The story on the record with my voice, anything. Like, I'll go to jail for this. So let's, I guess, start by going back in time. And I think, you know, the reason I imagine that, you know, you heard that tip and didn't think it was ridiculous on its face is because this kind of thing has happened in the past. So the CIA has sponsored, concerts, arts festivals, books, films as part of this like cultural cold war against communism against the Soviet Union. And one of my favorite episodes in this series is when you dig into that history. Can you talk a little bit about Louis Armstrong and Nina Simone and their relationship with the CIA? Yeah, so this to me was all new. I mean, I vaguely knew that the CIA had kind of dabbled in the world of culture, particularly early in the Cold War, that there were certain books and films and, like, literary journals that they'd promoted, that they literally promoted abstract expressionism. You know, you had this period of time.

I think some of this is the kind of agency of CIA guys, it's all guys, who are these white guys who come out of Yale. And so there's this period of time where they're like, Jackson Pollock is the answer. Yes. They have this notion that kind of promoting certain kinds of high art will win the ideological battle with the Soviets. But one of the things that we delved into in the podcast is that you get this amazing moment in the 50s and 60s when Eisenhower comes into office. And Eisenhower says explicitly, we quote him, the CIA should be dabbling in the world of culture. It's one thing to have a propaganda leaflet dropped out of an airplane, but nobody's going to trust something if it looks like propaganda.

So what he says is we should be kind of messing around in the sphere of culture. And Eisenhower's quote was, the hand of government must be carefully concealed. And so you have this point where, you know, America's holding itself out there against the Soviets as this like bastion of freedom and liberty. But at the same time, it's Jim Crow America in the 1950s. And the Soviets, actually a big part of their propaganda about the U.S. is about race relations in this country. And so you then get this moment where initially it's the State Department starts approaching black jazz musicians and saying we want you to go on a goodwill tour abroad. We want you to go to the Middle East. We want you to go to Africa.

In some instances, we want you to go to the Soviet Union and tour around and play. And we tell the story of Louis Armstrong in particular because he ends up incredibly conflicted where the State Department is coming in. and asking him to be this roving ambassador. And at the same time, he's deeply uncomfortable being kind of put out there as this black American prop, effectively, who's sort of vouching for the American way. At the same time as domestically, he has obviously deep misgivings

about the nature of the political system and segregation. And we found out this other amazing story that I hadn't known. And this one kind of hit me particularly hard because it's about an artist that I just grew up loving. I've listened to her since I was a kid. So Louis Armstrong actually goes to Africa on tour, and he knows what he's doing. The State Department sends him,

and he's uncomfortable about it, but he goes. In 1961, we tell this story about how Nina Simone, the high precess of Seoul, goes to Africa, goes to Nigeria on a tour. And Nina Simone was actually politically pretty radical, not the kind of person who would ever have gone anywhere if the State Department asked her to. So she goes, there's a foundation in D.C.,

the American Society of African Culture, which sends her there on this tour. And one of the stories we tell in this podcast is we found out, through talking to her historian who'd been through the archives of this organization, that the American Society of African Culture was a front for the CIA. The CIA was secretly funding this group. They send Nina Simone to Nigeria. She performs. It's this, like, important experience for her.

And she died not knowing that she'd been used. Man. it's a heartbreaking story in so many ways, especially given her eventual split with the country. Well, she leaves the country. Yeah, she moved abroad. It didn't want anything to do with the United States. But it just opened my eyes to this idea. You know, when I first got started on this and heard the squirpane story, I was like, that's ridiculous. What would the CIA have to do with music? And then you push into it and the podcast explores this at great length with a bunch of different genres and in different periods during the Cold War. But the answer is a lot. Yeah. I mean, look, the minute after we talked about this story for the first time, this show, for the first time. I ran home and I bought a book about exactly this subject. And since we're both

Boston guys, I'm obligated to read this quote, which is that in 1952, the CIA sponsored an arts festival in Paris that included a concert by the Boston Symphony Orchestra. And Thomas Braden, a senior member of the CIA said of that concert, the Boston Symphony Orchestra won more acclaim for the U.S. in Paris than John Foster Dulles or Dwight D. Eisenhower could have brought with a hundred speeches. So certainly that speaks to their belief in the efficacy of this kind of cultural effort. Yeah, and you talk to former CIA people, and we interviewed a bunch of them for the podcast, and, you know, this would be a kind of a covert operation, but it would be described as an

influence operation, right? It's essentially propaganda, but you're out there trying to win parts and minds, and it's connected in interesting ways. So, like, one thing that some CIA people would tell you is our bread and butter is being in a foreign country and trying to persuade people to betray their country. and secretly share information with us. And the way you lay the foundation for that is to have messages and ideas out there

that reflect well on the United States. So the kind of hearts and minds thing is like a broad, popular approach, but it's also a very kind of specific, targeted, how do we persuade key individuals to back our horse in this thing? And they did it. They did it for years.

Yeah. So can we talk about the official story of wind of change? I think it involves Ozzy Osbourne, Motley crew, Bon Jovi in a big concert. I mean, this is the story that the CIA wants us to believe, right? Yeah, and the, and the, and the, and the, and the, and the, and the, and other people involved. Yeah, so the, I mean, it's such a wild story. And I didn't, I had never heard of any of this stuff before I dug into it. So rock and roll had basically been banned in the USSR.

There was a sense that it was very closely associated with the United States. but also that the whole ethos of rock, this kind of rebel ethos of individualism and and sort of free expression, was inimical to the kind of totalitarian rule that the Kremlin counted on. So it basically banned rock. You couldn't buy records. If you wanted to have a rock band in the Soviet Union, there was a whole weird thing where you could, they did have some what they called official bands, but what that meant is like you could only perform when they wanted you to perform and they had to censor your lyrics.

And I mean, the whole thing is not very rock and roll. You know, it was a state organ. So in 1989, there's this concert. It's a music festival in Moscow. And summer of 1989, things are just starting to kind of ease up and loosen up a little bit. And there's this festival called the Moscow Music Peace Festival. And it's the first rock festival in Russian history. And it's all of these heavy men.

metal acts. It's like Ozzy Osbourne, Motley Crew was there, Skid Row, John von Jovi was there, and the Scorpions are there. And they do this crazy two-day concert. The bands also got out into the city, strolling Moscow's big avenues, talking to people. They were shocked and bemused by the spectacle of Russians waiting in line. It's a beautiful country, it really is. It's just the people that are so miserable, I mean. This is Ozzy. I've got nothing. What it does? make me appreciate is what we have in the West. I mean, you can't get toilet paper here,

you can't get toothbrushes here, you can't buy soap. I saw a great big line of people yesterday as we were driving him for a cabbage, you know? I mean, that's ridiculous. And the story goes that Klaus Mina, the lead singer of the Scorpions, goes and performs in this concert, and he takes a boat ride on the Moscow River. And he's so inspired by all the change he's seen. happening around him, that he writes this song, Wind of Change. And there's a few things about this that are weird. So the Berlin Wall hasn't fallen yet at the point where he writes the song. He actually writes it.

It was released just after the wall comes down, but he writes it before. He also never wrote songs before that. So there was another guy in the band who wrote all the songs up to this point, but he writes this song. He'd done lyrics before. But this time it's like the music and the lyrics and he basically shows up and he's like, look, guys, I got a song. And they released the song and it becomes this.

huge, huge hit. By the way, this is what this show does to you is every episode you end thinking, this is bullshit or, oh my God, this actually happened. It's like constantly jerking you back and forth until the end, which we will not spoil in the process of this interview. But I'm glad you said that though, because for me, it's those switchbacks along the way that made it such a kind of fun but also maddening experience for me. And so part of the reason I wanted to do it as a podcast was this idea in a way that

you wouldn't really do in a in like a new yorker article i wanted to create a situation in which you're you're basically sort of riding shotgun with me as i go through those moments of do i believe this and is this thing what it at first appears and trying to kind of capture some of those twists and turns along the way yeah and it makes it just so much fun so in the process of reporting out this story you talk to all these ex-spies how did those conversations go like were they wary of you Did you ever worry that, you know, you're trying to extract information from people who are trained to lie to you and deceive you? Yeah, it was a weird one.

I mean, I've written, I've certainly written about espionage before and had sources who were ex-spies and friends who were former spies. This one was especially weird because of the nature of the thing I wanted to ask about, right? So if it happened, if the CIA was involved. which is certainly what I knew from the start is like that's a story that's told inside the CIA. The one thing I knew for sure was that it's still highly, highly classified. And so then it becomes this weird thing where you're talking to people who in some instances takes some coaxing to talk at all.

And then you're asking them about something that, you know, if they do know about it, it would probably be illegal for them to tell you about it. And we had a few crazy instances in the podcast of people really freaking out. And there's one instance where there's a woman who was a former clandestine officer who, in terms of the level of precaution, it's like we used a pseudonym, I interviewed her, we transcribed the whole interview, we used the audio from me talking, and then we had an actress read her audio, and we cut them back together. And it sounds great, but this will give you a sense of the level of opsec associated with this thing.

Yeah. And what I love about that particular interview is the interviewee who is transcribed and then her words are handed to an actor who then reads it, kind of talk shit to you a couple times. Totally. And it comes through quite well. I know the part you're referring to. And I think that was part of what, again, that we were trying to capture is there are some people along the line who basically said, you shouldn't be doing this. Right. And they had their reasons.

But it was important for me that the listener hear that, right? that I not try and hide the ball in terms of that kind of critique of the whole enterprise we're engaged in. You know, along those lines, I mean, I imagine that if the CIA helped write a rock song that helped bring down the USSR that would be viewed as a great success within the agency, but there's also this dark history of supporting coups, propping up dictators, otherwise meddling in the affairs of sovereign nations, do you get the sense that those kind of activities are looked at with pride, or is that a bygone era of things that shouldn't have been done and no

longer are done? It's a great question. And we talked to a whole bunch of people who had different points of view. Some of it, I think, is a question of when people come into the agency. So it's fascinating because there's a big generational divide where a ton of people flooded into the agency post 9-11. And for those folks, they talk about the bad old days. you know, of the 50s and 60s, as though that's ancient history and we don't do that stuff anymore, as though there's like a turned page and there were lessons learned. But then we talked to some folks who were around in those days, and it's like, hell yeah, I was involved in the I-N-A operation. You know, I mean, they're not, not particularly apologetic. There were some of these

interviews that didn't even end up in the podcast. But where I was sort of surprised at the degree to which people were willing to defend that kind of thing now, in terms of songs and propaganda, this was another really interesting thing, is that we interviewed a bunch of ex-spies, ex-CIA people. And I don't think we encountered anybody who, first of all, whether they knew about the story or not, nobody blinked an eye as to the question of, like, could the CIA have written a pop song? Would they have done it? Everybody was like, oh yeah, absolutely. You know, wouldn't necessarily be that we wrote it in-house. We would have somebody outside do it. But that certainly is within the realm of the possible. We also didn't encounter anybody.

who said, yeah, and that would be pretty fucked up if we did that. There was a sort of general sense that that would be fair game. The flip side, though, is, you know, we went to Ukraine, we went to Moscow, we went to St. Petersburg. We interviewed fans. I went to a Scorpions concert in Kiev. We talked to people for whom that music means a lot, and that song means a lot. And there are these weird moments along the way where I would kind of be like. laughing as if it's all a big goof to me.

And you talk to someone for whom the song, Wind of Change, is this, like, transformational political moment in their youth. And you tell them it might have been written by the CIA. And I had these, I mean, we have them on tape, but these moments where people are basically like,

fuck you, don't tell me that. Yeah. You know? This is Sergey and his friend Yuri. Two beefy guys with bleary eyes and shaved heads. They look like bouncers, or guys who may be freelance for the mob. But they're wearing Scorpions T-shirts and big smiles and arguing about the origins of wind of change. This song that, according to this story I heard, may have actually been written by the CIA.

What do you say? He said the wind of change, they created the song as far as he remembered because of the Soviet Union was about to apart. And it was like wind of change that blows into something like empire of evil. That's my friend Roman, a Ukrainian journalist who's translating. Burling Wall, at that time, Scorpons make the... Window change, it's a press a serpices. Now they haven't argued because he said it was because of Burling Wall and he was about like, oh, it was about USSR.

It was about Paul Fusar. I think it was about both. Well, I'm glad you talked about the travel because, I mean, this wasn't an episode of Pod Save America. This wasn't you sitting in a studio just talking to people. This was like big budget, lots of reporting. You know, you mentioned you went to Moscow, Kiev, which will we now say Kiev, I believe, Dayton, Ohio, for reasons I won't explain, but very fun episode. L.A. maybe for interviews in the music industry.

Let's start with the Moscow trip because, look, you know, we've spent the last three or four years talking about Russian interference in our elections. You guys are traipsing around Moscow asking a bunch of questions about the CIA. Did that make you nervous? Because that's some real shit for them. And, you know, how did the current climate of relations with Russia, like, inform your thinking and reporting on this story? Yeah, it's a great question. And we thought about this a lot all the way along.

I think the trick for me was how do you allow that to inform what we're doing without allowing it to get into the – how do you keep it subtext, 95% of the time? Because my feeling was, this is a great story. It's somewhat escapist. It's funny. It's about a very different time and place and set of issues. I didn't want it to become about U.S.-Russia relations and Russian interference. And yet at the same time, inevitably, that's everywhere, right? What we're talking about is an alleged U.S. CIA-led influence operation, covert influence operation,

to help bring down the Soviet Union in 1990. to go to Russia and talk to people about that. There's no way that's not colored by, or to go to Ukraine. There's no way that's not colored by things that Russia is doing today. We also interviewed some former spies. There's a great interview in episode seven

with this guy, John Seifer, who worked Russia operations at the end of the Cold War and retired from the CIA, I think, in 2014, but is still very actively looking at these questions of propaganda and influence operations and how they played out, you know, vis-a-vis the 2016 election. So we were thinking about that stuff all the time. It did make for some awkward conversations in Russia. I didn't worry too much about it because the get out of jail free card for us is like,

this is a totally ridiculous story, right? It's about heavy metal. It's about hair metal. It's about guys like in spandex with flying V guitars. And so it wasn't a situation where it worried me, but it definitely informed the whole process. It made me think that there's a kind of a, there's like a deeper history to some of this stuff that we're experiencing today, a kind of analog history of this type of fight that goes back a long way.

Yeah, there really is. And now it's funny how overt it is now. Now it's like, okay, well, let's launch a Russian TV station in English called RT, and that's our very overt propaganda means, and here we go. And then, you know, all this clandestine stuff seems like a bygone era. Yeah, no, I agree. And I feel as though, I mean, I won't go into too much detail. but there's some instances we talk about in the show where the CIA similarly is engaged in

kind of propaganda in the realm of culture in a much less covert way than than you would have seen decades ago. Yes, indeed they are. Much to my chagrin at times when I was at the White House still. So you went to a Scorpion's concert in Kiev in Kiev. What was that like? Were these guys just rocking out? Is it like, you know, 60-year-old just shredding on stage?

And can you just, like, give people a sense of, like, how popular and enduring this band in this song is? Because it's just wild to me that these guys are still touring. Like, it's like the Rolling Stones. Yeah. So this, I mean, so the Scorpions got together 50 years ago. What? About 5-0? Yeah.

And the biggest surprise for me was we always knew, oh, we got to go see them play. And they had this kind of jammed schedule. Like, it was amazing. We had our pick in terms of where we wanted to go because they still travel all around the world. I mean, another. thing about the Scorpions that was kind of fascinating from the, you know, were they, were they clandestine operatives point of view, is that really early on they're this German band, they're singing all their songs in English, they play in Germany, they didn't really

build up an audience in Germany, but they start playing abroad. And that was where they first found their big audiences, like going to Japan and places like that. And they always wanted to play behind the Iron Curtain. And so they're one of the first bands that starts pushing through and actually getting to play gigs, you know, in Hungary and 86. They go to Leningrad in 88. They're actually shut out of Moscow in 88. It was only in 89 that they were allowed in. But so they're kind of at the, you know, like the avant-garde of Western pop culture,

you know, pushing into that part of the world. And they still do that. They play all over the place. We picked Keeve because it worked with our schedule and because it worked with our schedule and because it just seemed really interesting to me, if you think thematically about what wind of change is all about, I thought going to a concert in Ukraine in 2019 would be pretty interesting. And it was.

We showed up, it was at this Soviet-era venue, the Sports Palace. And we got there and it's like hundreds of people tailgating, everybody with these big, like, sucking on these big two-liter bottles of Pepsi that they spiked with vodka. It was cold. and so we kind of just hung out outside with the fans and that was just super fun for me in part because at that point I've been working on this for a while

and some Americans are big Scorpions fans but a lot of Americans are just kind of only vaguely or they know the song Rock like a Hurricane they don't know anything more than that and here I am suddenly surrounded by all these crazy Ukrainians who were like drunk and psyched and like singing every Scorpion song with me that's so fun yeah I mean what I would like pitch the show

So people, I would load the YouTube, play the whistling intro to wind of change, and then kind of do it with my own little soundtrack. Oh, also, big shout out to Henry Molloski and the team at Pineapple Street Studios, who just did an incredible job producing the show. And I think Henry was your ride or die buddy at some of these venues, right? At all of them, yeah. I mean, we traveled all over the place together. And it was so fun.

I mean, for me, particularly having been a, you know, print journalist all these years, it's like there's all these toys with audio. that you can, and Henry's a genius with this stuff, but so the ability to, particularly to use music, which is obviously itself kind of a character in the show, the ways in which Henry was able to weave that stuff in with what I was doing, which is super exciting for me. Yeah, the archival is brilliant. So this show inspired me personally to do a little investigative journalism in my own life. And it was weird, actually, how many touchpoints I have to wind of change. So my alma mater Kenyan college has this very well-respected literary journal called the Kenyan

Review that was indirectly funded by the CIA during the period of time we were talking about in the 50s they were actually distributed so that's weird my grandfather was in the OSS so this inspired me to request his records from the OSS Foundation and you know as you'll know when you do these things it's like mundane bullshit about housing and payroll and his kid at a temperature and he needs leave and whatever But it was a fun little time capsule into this like propaganda world that occurred. And, you know, he was exactly what you were talking about. Like a Yale guy who went to the OSS and, you know, became part of this propaganda effort. So this question was just a very roundabout way of letting me talk about myself, but also ask you, what's the story for season two?

Oh, God. You know what's so funny is the, we've only kind of gone public with this thing just got, I guess, maybe 10 days ago. There was a, there was a story in deadline. And it's been really funny hearing from people Because we had a series of There's a million stories we tell on the podcast And the, but there are also a bunch we left out And some of them are these kind of intriguing

Again, at this like strange intersection of pop culture and espionage These stories that I feel like you could blow up But then also we've had, There are just people writing to me on Twitter Hasselhoff, man, what about Hasselhoff? You know? Or like Jesus Jones is another big one

who everybody seems to think, yeah, they're like high time. Somebody investigated Jesus Jones. Who else have we gotten? I mean, privately, it was funny because we, the kind of core crew of about six of us who spent the last year working on this thing day and night, we had like a little bit of a running joke. It's like, I'd say 80% a joke about John Bon Jovi. Interesting.

I mean, the guy just keeps popping up. Which side is he on? Yeah. He's like, you know, he wrapped himself in an American, flag, Tommy, come on. Look, I mean, what's funny is, you know, you have a story in this series about a German singer who recorded music for the OSS thinking it might make Russian soldiers lay down their arms, right?

So, like, this cuts both ways. Totally. And she was, I think she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Yeah. I mean, it does. It absolutely does. Unbelievable. I mean, well, again, this was the most fun series to just get to hear over time and watch

the incredible work you guys did and just be. in some way associated with. So I'm so glad to talk with you about it. And everyone, again, subscribe to Window Change on Spotify. You can binge the whole thing. You're not going to want to wait a fucking week to get to the next episode. Just trust me here. It's free.

Don't whine at me that you don't have Spotify. Just download it for God's sake. Patrick, great talking to you. Hey, you too, man. Thank you. Thanks to Patrick for joining the show. Ben, I just want to let listeners know that you have gotten a haircut. and I am, my wife calls me Jimmy Neutron.

She says I, she won't look at me. Because I spend, I tend to spend my day, like, pushing it up, right? And, like, kind of just, like, getting, like, weird looking. And she, she tells me, like, to get away from her. Well, it turns out, Tommy, that a pandemic is a good time to be balding. Because all I need is, like, you know, I ordered it off Amazon, one of these clippers that you just buzz over your head. The problem with it, though, is the first time I did this,

I wasn't doing it at the right angle. Oh, yeah. So I ended up having these weird patches all over my head. And I had to go on television like an hour later. And so I had a massive panic attack that ensued. But then, you know, with the help of some YouTube videos, which have saved my life more than once, I was able to get the close shave all around.

What do people do before YouTube? I mean, look, I realize it radicalizes lots of people into the far right. And so, you know, al-Qaeda and stuff. But it also helped my wife fix our dishwasher and, you know, these, you know, how to do something videos on YouTube or lifesavers, man. Oh my God. I would never have been once able to tie a bow tie. Yeah.

You can learn like any song you ever want to learn from somebody on YouTube on like guitar or piano or something like that. It's a treasure. Along with the disinformation, there's good stuff. Along with the Q&ON, Crazy Conspiracy series. Have you been listening to The New York Times pod on this subject? The Q and on. It's about conspiracy theory.

series. It's Kevin Roos's show. It's fantastic. Everybody check it out. Anyway, we're in the outro now. Missy Man. Hopefully we'll be back in the office soon. Someday. Talk soon. See ya. Pot Save the World is a product of crooked media. The executive producer is Michael Martinez. Our assistant producer is Jordan Waller. It's mixed and edited by Chris Basil. Kyle Seiglin is our sound engineer. Special thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Nar Malkonian, and Milo Kim, who film and share our episodes as videos every week.