Stuff You Should Know - How the National Security Council Works

Episode Date: April 25, 2017

Until recently, most people probably never paid much attention to the National Security Council. It's been around a long time though, and the president has quite a bit of leeway as to who sits at the table. Learn all about this important group of individuals in today's episode. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass

and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, ya everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say. Bye, bye, bye.

Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Cloak and Dagger,

Dabby Coleman Bryant. Ooh, you remember that movie? Yeah, man, that was so good. It was, that was a good movie for boys our age, I think. Yeah, it was so good, it managed to make the San Antonio Riverwalk look interesting. Man, you've been begging on that since you walked it. Well, I think it was built up in my mind by that movie.

You know what I mean? Yeah, I don't remember that being in the movie, but I don't think I've seen that since I was 13. There's a big chase scene that involved the Riverwalk. Well, maybe that was a problem. And also, there is Jerry Leslie Nielsen Rowland. Yes. From Spyhard, and this is Stuff You Should Know.

Yes. This is a, this could be a good one. It could also be extraordinarily confusing. Uh-huh. Maybe a little dry. Maybe. And, but brother, if you love bureaucracies, you are gonna love this one.

Yeah, boy, that really came through, huh? Yeah, if you're into orgs and flowcharts and directors, but not directorates, you're gonna just love this kind of stuff. Yeah, and I apologize about my squinting. I lost my glasses. Oh no. And it takes, and it had become, you know,

had grown to depend on them, to be honest. You're like Velma. I am. That's terrible. I mean, like, like lost them, lost them, or they're just like on your bedside, you forgot them. You wanna know what happened? Yeah.

I was on, in my bed, on my laptop, wearing my glasses last week. I said, I gotta go get something out of the car. I put the laptop down and the glasses down on the bed, and went and got something out of my car, came back, and they were gone. Wow, that's bizarre. And I think of my new puppy,

like, grabbed them and did something with them. Oh, that's gonna be a treat to find later on. I mean, dude, I've looked everywhere. Wow. And it literally vanished. But the puppy left your laptop. Yeah. Huh. Well, that's weird.

Yeah, I know. Well, are you- So anyway, I'm waiting. Are you getting some new ones? Yeah. Did you go to Eckerd, or CVS, or Duane Reader, whatever? I probably should have just gotten some little cheapy readers,

because that's kind of all I need them for, you know? Right. Or did you use your monocle? Oh, man, I should have brought my monocle. That's a great idea. Mm-hmm. All right, well- I'm full of them.

I did not, so I'm just waiting for new glasses, and they don't have the frames that I've had, so I had to pick out new ones, which always stinks. Yeah. Because I did just none of them look, you know, good. Well, if you can kind of recreate the last ones, they look good. Well, I'm trying.

Well, I guess one more quick question on this. How is driving here? Reckless, dangerous? Oh, no, no, no, I just need them for reading. I'm not going with anything else. Oh, okay, I got you. Okay, good, good, good. I don't read while I drive anymore.

That's smart, too, even though you could with your glasses. That's correct. So, Chuck, we're talking today about the National Security Council, and up until I started researching this, I thought that that was specifically an American thing, but it turns out most countries have their own National Security Council,

and they fairly closely resemble this kind of thing. Sure, I would guess that. But I also realized I really had no idea what the National Security Council did, but it's a pretty genius idea, and it was one that was implemented by the US Congress, I should say the American one was, back in 1947, and it was basically like,

hey, you've got competing groups here that are all trying to shape American foreign policy, whether it's through diplomacy with the State Department, or through military with the Department of Defense, or the military itself, or by... CIA? Yeah, the CIA, by snooping, or even groups as disparate as the Department of Energy

or the Department of the Treasury. All of these groups have their own objectives in shaping policy or responding to a crisis as far as foreign policy goes, right? For sure. And if you take all these people and put them in a room together and say, fight it out, and the President gets to watch and laugh

and then pick what he or eventually she thinks is the best option, then you have basically the best ideal version of hashing something out through a group that you could possibly hope for. And that's the point of the National Security Council. Yeah, but one thing, and we're gonna talk about the situation room specifically,

but one thing I learned in researching that part of it was this kind of, well, not chilling quote, very sensible quote, but still a little chilling, is there's always more intelligence information available than there is time for senior decision makers to read. Right, yeah. So basically, there's more than they even have. So you need committees and staffs of people

that can distill the most important stuff down to its most important core. Right, and the way to do this, the way that it has generally been done through the National Security Council is by decentralizing responsibility for watching over these different things, whether it be like a specific policy,

like energy policy and the way it relates to foreign countries or like territories, like say some groups responsible for the Middle East. You have all these different groups that are responsible for keeping an eye on this stuff, thinking about American policy, thinking about how state and American policy is changing or evolving as say a situation

or a new leader emerges in a different area. And then as crises or needs for decisions arise, then the need to talk about this policy bubbles up and up and up through the hierarchy until finally it gets to the point where there's like secretaries, cabinet level secretaries, who are saying, Mr. again, or eventually Madam President, we need a decision on this, here are our options.

Yeah, it is incredibly complex. Like you said, it's not just like, what bad leader in the world is doing something today. It's that plus about 1,000 other things from like, you know, like you said, it could be as something as simple as, or not as simple, but as like non-threatening is an energy policy with a country with a new leader,

like you said, there's something that needs attention outside of our borders. Right, and by making it bubble up through these levels of hierarchy, you have people who have increasing levels of responsibility, and as each level of responsibility starts saying, yeah, this is worth kicking up to the next higher level,

because we really do need some sort of decision on this, it takes on further and further credence, right? Yeah. Until it reaches that highest level, the actual, what's actually called the National Security Council. And when it reaches that level, hopefully a decision will be made,

but that's not necessarily the cases we'll see. Should we talk about history? Let's talk history, man, you know I love to. So our article on this was okay, and once supplemented with others, supplemented, I'm gonna, I like that. I like it too. I'm gonna keep that.

Once supplemented with other things. Pissed getty. I had a friend grow up who said that. And it was one of those things where I would say, say spaghetti, and he'd say spaghetti, I would say spaghetti, and he'd say spaghetti. Yeah. You need to pinch the bridge of your nose

and shake your head. Basically. As a four year old? No, this is like early teens. That's not good. All right, so throughout history, we have not historically had the National Security Council, because I think in the earlier days,

presidents had their sort of inner circle that kind of acted like what eventually the National Security Council, how they would counsel and advise, but they were just known as sort of like, you know, the bros of the president. They're pretty much, you know? Yeah, it was like who do you trust, or specifically who has the expertise needed

to help guide your decision on this, right? Right. And I think one of the reasons why there wasn't a National Security Council for most of history is because most presidents kind of bristle at the idea of having a bureaucracy hoisted or foisted on them, right? Where they're just like, no, no, no, I got this. I just, I need to ask who I need to ask

at any given point in time. And some presidents were historically known for, even the people that they asked advice from, they'd be like, thank you for your advice. I'm rejecting it outright. Right. Like Lincoln was apparently famous for that. Yeah, I mean, Lincoln was a smart fellow.

He probably had good ideas on his own. Well, he did. He also had, he was famous for having that team of rivals, right? Where not only were people in his cabinet rivals with one another, they were rivals with him as well. Right. And it really challenged him to keep people in check,

like his secretary of state, Seward, William Seward. Sure. He was big time against the Civil War from happening. He did not, he didn't want it to happen. He was just like, okay, South Sea, it was nice you guys being a part of the union, but we'll figure it out. We shouldn't go to war.

And he was like opening lines of communication with the Confederacy, going around Lincoln and trying to subvert Lincoln's basically wishes that the South not secede. And Lincoln said, you better watch your step. Yeah, that was a good day to take Lewis. It wasn't at all. No, but you're right.

He famously kind of, you know, would listen to a device, even if Seward and say, no, you know, I'm the president and this is my choice. Yeah, he said, quote, if this must be done, I must do it. And that was kind of the way that the presidents, I mean, it takes a certain kind of person to be a president, right? Sure.

And usually, if you are elected president, you're not the kind of person who's like, what do you guys think? Hey, over there, what's your opinion? What should I do? It's like, go do this. I'm the president, the end, do it. Right, but as the United States grew

and the world grew, a little more complexities were brought out, obviously, especially in terms of foreign policy. And especially after World War II, Congress was not thrilled with the way FDR kind of ran things. And they said, you know what, I think we need, and the president needs help in the form of an official body, sanctioned body surrounding him to help him make decisions.

And so eventually in 1947 is when the National Security Act was passed and this council was created to, quote, advise the president with respect to the integration of domestic, foreign, and military policies relating to national security and other stuff. And again, this is a significant act, because it's saying, Mr. President, here's a bureaucracy that you didn't ask for and you don't

want, but we're putting on you on your shoulders, because this stuff is just too big now. We're a superpower and we can't just leave it up to you in your informal management style of ad hoc working groups that you just pull into the Oval Office whenever you need some advice. We need something far more structured than that. So we're going to pass a congressional act

that we're going to force you to sign into law. And Truman actually signed it into law in 1947. And from that point on, there was a structure that the president was expected to use when making foreign policy decisions so that he would have all of the options, all of the opinions, all of the varying factors in any given situation before him

so that he could say, option D, I like it. Yeah, and like you said before, different presidents over the years have had different, there's a lot of leeway within how you want to run your National Security Council, how it's structured. It's not completely set in stone as we've seen recently and we'll talk a little bit about what's going on now.

But throughout, since 1947 basically, each president has sort of had their own reasons for leaning on it a lot or not leaning on it that much. Initially Truman, kind of right after it was passed through, was kind of, he didn't go to meetings a lot until after the Korean War. And then he was like, oh, wait a minute. I think there's a lot of value here.

Eisenhower being former military was sort of used to that system of committees and bureaucracy and he kind of took to it right away and was like, no, this is great. I'm gonna even kind of expand the NSC and create these special boards and I'm actually gonna create someone called the National Security Advisor.

Yeah, which is a huge thing, huge contribution to the National Security Council that Eisenhower made. And yeah, since he was used to the military, he's like, yeah, let's make this even more regimented than Congress wanted and he put it to good work. But since then it's been typically more pared down than what Eisenhower had.

I think he had probably the most hierarchical and decentralized and spread out National Security Council of any president. Ethan, more than Obama even? Yeah, Obama had I think a huge bloated one, but I think it didn't have as many say like departments or committees or that kind of thing as Eisenhower's. Gotcha, cause Obama received a lot of criticism for that.

And from what I read rightly so, that it was basically a huge stalling mechanism that Obama used to put off foreign policy decisions or to make them outside of his own cabinet. Well, and even if it wasn't purposeful, it's just, you know how it is with bureaucracy, the more bloated an organization gets, just the slower everything is gonna move

and the harder it's gonna be to get anything done. Yeah, that's just kind of how it works. So Kennedy comes along and had a kind of a disaster on his hands with the Bay of Pigs, which we should do a show on at some point. And so he looked to his National Security Advisor, McGeorge Bundy, the man with two last names, and said, we need a chill room to hang out and make decisions.

And he said, how about that bowling alley? Yeah, it was FDR's bowling alley and FDR sat up from his grave and said, not my bowling alley. Right, and that's when the situation room was created, which I thought this was really neat. I didn't know much about the situation room. I thought it was the room.

I didn't know that it was 5,000 square feet of different rooms on the ground floor of the West Wing, the woodshed. Yeah, that's the nickname for it, which I didn't get why they call it that, because here in the States, the woodsheds typically used in, take them out behind the woodshed,

usually that means getting a spanking. Well, maybe that's what happens in the situation room. They watch people get spanked on closed circuit TV. I guarantee they do. Should we take a break and then talk about the situation room a little more? Yeah, yeah, let's. All right.

On the podcast, HeyDude, the 90s called David Lasher, and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, HeyDude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use HeyDude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends

to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and nonstop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting frosted tips? Was that a cereal?

No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper, because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy,

blowing on it, and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to HeyDude, the 90s, called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to

when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place, because I'm here to help.

This, I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS, because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so will my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me.

Yep, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life, step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody

about my new podcast and make sure to listen. So we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. So Chuck, we're talking about Situation Room. And not with Wolf Blitzer. No, never.

And it was started with Kennedy, right? And did you see the picture in one of the articles you sent me of the Situation Room? I think it was the woodshed one. One of them had like dozens and dozens of pictures, which kind of surprised me. That one, that one. But there was a picture in there.

And I think it was the original Situation Room that they, that Kennedy had set up. And basically it was a bunch of chairs and like a huge map of the world on the wall. Yeah. That was some Situation Room. It's like the war room from Strange Love. They'd call in like a 98-year-old civil servant

to come in and move a tack from, you know, Ecuador to Guatemala. Right. Yeah. And then he'd just shuffle back out. This thing apparently used to be, I mean, it went under a big renovation in 2006. And apparently before that was a,

I don't get the idea that it was necessarily antiquated. But it wasn't certainly up to the kind of modern technological level that it needed to be. Let's just say that. Yeah. I also have the impression that it was a lot more luxurious originally. But that things like the mahogany paneling actually

made it hard to hear people on speakerphone. Right. So they kind of just updated it to probably much more in line of what people thought it looked like all along. Right. That's what it looks like now. Yeah. That main room where you've probably seen the most photos of

has six flat screens, very secure, obviously, for video conferencing with whoever you want around the world. It links directly to Air Force One, which is kind of neat. They have private meeting rooms, private phone booths, rooms, secure video rooms. It's like, it's kind of like what you would expect. You can't text from there.

You can't like, they don't want things leaking out of there. So it's just, and it is not a bunker like a lot of people might think. But yeah, there's some windows to the exterior of the White House. Yeah. But it feels like a bunker in that all these kind of very private and secure areas.

But it's not like deep underground or anything like that. Right. Yeah. I think the room where there's that famous photo of everybody in the Obama National Security Council watching the Bin Laden raid. The Bin Laden spanking. Yeah.

Yeah. Behind the woodshed. And I think that that is, it's an enclosed windowless room that is cut off, that has kind of bunker-like qualities. But the whole interior itself is not a bunker. It's not underground, like you said. Correct. They have a staff, the Situation Room staff.

It's about 30 people in general. And they're organized into what's called watch teams. And these watch teams do, well, they don't take the night off. There's 24-7 monitoring of everything, basically. And it says there's usually three duty officers, a communications assistant, and an intelligence analyst on each watch team. Right.

And presidents throughout the years have used the Situation Room sparingly sometimes. I think in the case of Kennedy, he liked to be in the Oval Office a little more. And they say Lyndon Johnson was in the Situation Room so much that he even moved his Oval Office chair down there. Oh, really? Yeah.

Nixon and Ford apparently never used the room. H.W. Bush and Clinton used it a lot. And in that 2006 expansion, they included offices for Homeland Security Council now and the White House Chief of Staff's office is down there now, which is pretty interesting. But apparently, you get nominated to be part of the personnel? Oh, yeah.

I'm quite sure it is a highly prestigious tour. They're two-year tours. And I'm sure it's just absolutely grueling because basically, they make you watch cable news from around the world all day long. There's also tons of cables coming in from various embassies around the country. All of the raw intelligence is coming through this room.

So apparently, after the Bay of Pigs, Kennedy was like, I think he felt cut off from actual raw intelligence that he hadn't been presented with the correct actual intelligence. So he created this situation room to basically circumvent the intelligence community and to have his hands on raw intelligence. So you've got intelligence coming from around the world going to the various intelligence agencies.

But each intelligence agency is also commanded to send their raw intelligence to the situation room. And then it's up to the situation room staff to say, this seems important. This isn't important. This is pretty important. And then they compile it all into different briefings that the president gets daily, usually in the morning and in

the evening as well. Yeah. And if you're part of this staff, you're, like we said, hand-picked for that two-year thing. And they said, it's a very big deal. You have to have an even temperament. You have to be cool under pressure. You have to be able to have these spur-of-the-moment,

coherent, intelligent conversations like with the president on a moment's notice. You can't be like, the president can't believe it's you. And apparently this article said, I think this from the CIA, it said, you need to check your ego at the door at this job. One director, situation room director, said to an incoming duty officer, just remember there are many important people

who work in the White House and you're not one of them. I love that quote. I do too. So it varies with the presidents. But basically every day, the watch team puts together something called the morning book for the president, the vice president, and whoever on the White House staff is, I guess, authorized to get this.

And in this morning book is the, well, it's a daily affirmation, probably. It's the first thing. You're worth it. The National Intelligence Daily is in there. The State Department's morning summary is in there. Any kind of intelligence reports. And then I think a family circus cartoon.

Right. Just to keep things light, right? And in it, PJ says, Pascetti. And then the morning book is, this is in the car of the National Security Advisor when they're picked up. And they also have the president's daily brief. That's the CIA's daily prepared briefing, basically. And this is every day.

These are these briefs and reports that these senior people and staff get every single morning of every single day of every year. Right. And just to give you an idea of how much information is coming into these poor saps 24 hours a day, if something does happen, if there's a crisis somewhere around the world, there's a revolution breaking out, you would

have all of the people who are involved in that crisis, say that area, or it's related to, again, energy, or say it's like an Ebola outbreak that's suddenly sweeping. So you'd have all the people involved in that coming into the situation room, right? And just being like, give us all the information you got. Keep us updated. Tell us what's going on every five seconds.

But if you're the situation room staff, you're like, that's great. I understand you're having a crisis right now, but we're still trying to pay attention to the rest of the world too. Right. Like a crisis is obviously it's not meaningless to these people, but it's all relative because they can't just stop paying attention to China because there's an Ebola

outbreak in Africa. Correct. You know? Yeah. So my hat's off to them for being able to keep up with all of this stuff. Yeah, and obviously certain times are a little more calm, relatively speaking than others, but...

Yeah, I don't think I'd be very good at this. But there's never a day where there's not something going on in the world that at least whoever in that region is going to feel is super important to catch the president's eye. Right. You know? You've got to put something in those intelligence briefings.

Like, you know, there's a Russian plane in this airspace, and we don't know why. Right. You know, there's one thing I've learned from researching this episode, Chuck. It's that the United States is very nosy. Yeah. Yeah.

So that's the situation, Chuck, and it's almost kind of like its own thing, right? It's like one of those old-timey tenement clothes lines directly between it and the president if the president so chooses, or at least the National Security Council staff, which makes the National Security Council kind of its own thing. Yeah.

You know what I mean? Like, it definitely is its own agency, but if you look back at the original congressional mandate, the point of it was it was supposed to be a forum, a place where the different heads of departments and cabinet members came together and said, this is what we need to do. No, this is what we need to do. Mr. President, choose, right?

But with the addition of the situation room and some other moves that presidents have made like creating the position of the National Security Advisor, it has become its own party, its own thing, to where, yes, it's responsible for coordinating policy and calling meetings and getting everybody to the table, but it also, it's bringing its own views and policies on policies now, whereas before it was just supposed to be a place where the existing cabinet

members came and talked about policy. So that was a big change. And I think that that took place beginning with Eisenhower and the creation of the National Security Advisor, but definitely also the creation of the situation room and this direct pipeline to the president for raw intelligence as well. Yeah, and like we said earlier, like each president can

kind of organize things, how they prefer to have things organized. And Johnson, he would have, Lyndon Johnson apparently had regular Tuesday working lunches where he brought together the CIA director, chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff, Secretary of State in Defense, and they all had salad wraps every Tuesday and chatted about what was going on. Ty Basil was Johnson's favorite.

Under Nixon, apparently, he obviously worked so closely with Kissinger that I get the feeling that he didn't like meetings with a large amount of people. I don't think he trusted very many people that Nixon. That's probably a good way to say it. And then of course, Ford did exactly what Nixon did. Sure. Big surprise.

And then I think you said Carter didn't use it very much? Well, our article at least says that Carter, it said that he kind of had his own ideas and that the NSC was not as much of behind the scenes managers, what they called it, is maybe with other administrations. Yeah, he used the National Security Advisor as kind of a policy mouthpiece to the country. And so this is the way the President feels.

He was like a spokesperson. And that kind of made the National Security Advisor a lot more prominent, which is actually something that had been started under the Nixon administration when he appointed Henry Kissinger. Or when he had Henry Kissinger as his National Security Advisor, because Kissinger bucked the trend in that the National Security Advisor went from somebody who is in charge

of coordinating policy, getting everybody at the table, figuring out what the President needed to know to actually formulating foreign policy, which I think is another thing that some presidents have tasked or have not tasked successive National Security Advisors with. But that was a big change. Because Kissinger was saying, this is how the US needs to respond to this kind of thing.

Or this is the way our energy policy should be. I keep going back to that well, but it's a great well. Yeah, Reagan comes along after Carter and really changes things with the NSC to the point where we decided just to do an entirely new podcast and not talk about this much on Iran-Contra. But to say that there was overreach going on under his NSC is probably a bit of an understatement.

Yeah, he turned it into like a clandestine covert operations agency. It's not what he did with it. It is. HW Bush came along and kind of restored order a bit and apparently set up a really good system, like a good working system with his flow chart and all these committees that were going on.

And apparently he was so successful in just kind of making it a truly functioning body that Bill Clinton, his little buddy, almost said little buddy, George W. Bush. Sure, I guess. His son, I guess they were buddies. They're buddies at Davos and stuff like that. And then Obama, they all kind of followed suit following HW Bush's sort of organizational flow.

Yeah. Because it worked so well. Yeah. And it's basically, well, I guess we should talk about it, huh? You want to take a break first? Yeah, and talk about these committees? Yeah.

Or charts coming up right after this. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and nonstop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster?

Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper, because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts

flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it, and popping it back in, as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s, called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast,

Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. OK, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place,

because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, god. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS, because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so will my husband, Michael.

Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life, step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general, can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Oh, just stop now.

If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. So Chuck, let's break down the National Security Council. All right. Let's break it down for him, fella.

There are committees now within the NFC. Are we going from bottom to top? Sure. Go ahead, start at the bottom. OK, fine. So you've got policy coordinating committees. The PCC. So the policy coordinating committees, right,

they basically are, they have a focus, a specific focus, whether it's on a region or a particular interest, maybe energy. And these committees are made up of people from different agencies, whether it's the intelligence community, or the Department of Energy, or whoever has a stake in that region or that particular policy.

Right. And they're made up of experts on them. But I don't want to say they're low level. Within their actual agency, they're probably pretty high up. Sure. And they come together, and they're keeping an eye on stuff, right? They're monitoring changes.

They're maybe saying, we're bored. We need to come up with a brand new policy for America to undertake in this regard or in this region, right? Yeah. And let's say a crisis comes along. And let's say that this is the Middle East policy coordinating committee. Something happens.

Oh, I don't know. There's a gas attack in Syria, right? Right. This policy committee is, obviously, there will be some other parallel thing from the raw intelligence going through the situation room. But this committee would also spring into action. And it would start bubbling up.

It would start writing policy papers. They would dust off old theories and hypotheses. And they would go to the people directly above them, the deputies committee. And they would say, we need to get the president moving on this, whatever this is. Yeah. And the deputies committee is headed

by the deputy national security advisor. And things are getting serious at this point. All the deputy heads of the departments are included on this committee. And I get the feeling that this is just the next level of weeding out things. Right, exactly. And eventually, if it makes its way

to the principles committee, that's just below the actual NFC. And that is headed by the national, or I guess convened, is what they say by the national security advisor, him or herself. And the national security council is actually made up of the president, the vice president, the secretary of state, secretary of defense,

secretary of energy, I believe, and the national security advisor. And then there's other what are called observers or advisors, specifically the director of national intelligence, who is the person who's in charge of the entire intelligence community, from the NSA and the CIA to Coast Guard intelligence. Everybody who's snooping on behalf of the United States, this person is the top of that whole community.

And the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who is the representative of the all armed forces of the military. So it's the military's voice in the National Security Council. And once these people are talking about an issue or a policy, it's about as high level as it gets. And the point of it reaching this committee

is that these people are all saying, this is the best option. No, no, this is the best option. We need to talk some more. No, we need to shoot some missiles off. And then the president has to decide. Yeah, and like we said, it can be organized within certain bounds of the law as the president sees fit.

And anyone who follows the news in the United States or abroad about the United States, there was quite a shake-up in earlier this year when our current president excluded the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the director of national intelligence from, they weren't like banned from the NSC. But they weren't on the list of, hey, you need to be at all these meetings all the time.

It was more like you, I think the direct quote was you shall attend where issues pertaining to your responsibilities and expertise are to be discussed. Right. And there was a big uproar in the press. And the White House downplayed it and said, this is not a real change. Like in past administrations, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs

of Staff and director of national intelligence aren't at all the meetings either. They're usually at the ones that pertain to them. So what's what gives what's the deal? Yeah, like quit making a big deal about this. And also this guy, Steve Bannon, my political strategist is a full-fledged member. That was a big deal.

For a little while. Right. Because just this week, as we're recording in real time, Mr. Bannon has been excused. And of course, the White House and Bannon tried to play it up like, you know what, he was never going to be on there permanently. He was in there to undo the work of Susan Rice, who

is Obama's national security advisor, is what Bannon said. And then officials said, no, he was actually there to monitor Michael Flynn, the first national security advisor who is already gone. And now that he's gone, we don't really need Bannon. His work is done. That's really all we kind of wanted him in there for to begin with.

Just crazy to watch this. Yeah. And I don't think anyone bought that. I don't even think Republicans bought that spin. There was clearly a, and is currently, clearly, there's an internal struggle going on with apparently Steve Bannon and the president's son-in-law, Jared Kushner. And to the point where the president was like,

you guys work this stuff out, or I'm going to solve it. And family matters to Donald Trump. And I think Bannon understands that. Yeah, it definitely looks like the knives are out for Bannon. He doesn't have a lot of friends elsewhere in the White House. So if the president is turning on him, then that's not good news for Steve Bannon. Yeah.

I mean, we'll see how this plays out. But just today where Donald Trump was quoted as kind of the quotes were very cool on his support for Bannon today. Cool. Cool as in he was kind of like, hey, I think the quote was something like, he's a good guy, but he didn't hook up with me until kind of recently. Yeah, I saw that.

That's not a ringing endorsement. So when he put Bannon on, like he gave him a permanent seat on the National Security Council, that was a big deal because presidents have had political advisors on their National Security Council that's been done before, but never like a permanent reserve seat at all the meetings. And it sent like a really big message.

And the message was the political ramifications of a decision or a policy outcome are just as important as, say, like the military or diplomatic ramifications of. They're going to be, it's going to be taken into account just as much. And I think that's why a lot of people were chilled by that because you don't want it to be political. You don't want your decisions to be, well,

how will this affect my vote or something like that down the road? That's how a lot of people took Bannon's appointment to the National Security Council. This new guy who came in after Flynn, H.R. McMaster, has apparently alleviated a lot of worry by a lot of people. He's a three star general.

He's only one of three active duty military to serve as National Security Advisor. So he's an active duty military guy. And he's apparently well respected inside and outside of the military. I think he did restore the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Director of National Intelligence. Yes, he did.

And the reason why that was a bizarre move. And apparently, George W. Bush did the same thing. But since 2001, there's not any American foreign policy issue or crisis that doesn't involve the intelligence community and the military. It's just the direction America's gone. So I mean, that kind of falls in line with Trump's stated policy of isolationism.

Just kind of saying, no, we're going to rein that back in. I think that's probably what he was doing. But I don't know that a lot of elites in Washington have faith that he has an actual plan rather than was just sending a message. You know what I mean? Well, it was short-lived. Yeah.

So this McMaster guy, though, he actually made his name by writing a dissertation criticizing Lyndon Johnson's military advisors on the National Security Council during Vietnam. He wrote his thesis, and it got turned into a best-selling book called Their Election of Duty. Oh, that's right. And a lot of people are like, man, this guy's great.

He's all about being open and upfront and honest with the president. And then other people read the book and said, oh, this guy is a military guy who's saying that you shouldn't listen to the president's wishes, and the military should just act on its own. So I think most people subscribe to the former reading of it. He actually is a pretty smart guy and is not

calling for the military to act independently of the president's wishes. More that he was indicting the president's advisors for not being forthright and upfront and clear and was just kind of going along with Johnson and telling him what he wanted to hear as far as Vietnam went. It's interesting stuff. That guy's an interesting dude McMaster is.

Yeah, it really is. The NSC themselves, like, obviously, we've kind of talked ad nauseam about the meetings and the bureaucracy, but aside from this, one of the other things that they do is if the president has a call with a foreign leader, there's going to be a senior staff member from the NSC. They're with them.

They're going to brief him beforehand and say, hey, you're about to get on a call with, let's say, the leader of North Korea. And yeah, those calls happen all the time. And they will probably want to talk about this. And this is sort of the important things that we need to cover. And they may mention this.

And you may want to respond this way. Don't talk about how much you like that Seth Rogen movie, the interview. Avoid that at all costs. Avoid that. Did you see that? Yeah. Was that any good?

Oh, you didn't see it? No. That was pretty good. It was pretty funny. Yeah. Yeah, it was, I mean, it's a Seth Rogen James Franco taking on a really pronounced opinion on a specific policy matter.

But it was pretty funny. I liked it. I was about to say maybe I'll see it, but I know I won't. I would recommend it if you're ever just sitting around, watch it. All right. So this phone call will take place. And that NSC staffer is generally there through the call

and taking notes. And then that then is super useful information to take back down to their committee or subcommittee. So that's just like another one of their duties, basically, is making sure the president has all the information on basically any meeting or call that they're going to take with any foreign leader. Yeah.

And so what I think you can sum up the National Security Council like this, right? Somebody has an idea. Let's say that they decided that it would be great for America's position in the world. If we dedicated June 1 as National Flower Power Day, and it comes up from a committee and keeps bubbling up and bubbling up and bubbling up.

And each time that passes from one committee to another, somebody's saying, yes, I think this is a good idea. And we're going to put my reputation on the line by saying it should be taken to the president. And finally, it goes all the way to the National Security Advisor, who is the gatekeeper to the president on all matters of foreign policy and national security. And he or she decides what's worth taking to the president.

And specifically, what's worth waking the president up at 3 AM. Yeah. Have you ever heard that story about Carter, Jimmy Carter's National Security Advisor? No. Are you ready to hear me drone on? Sure.

OK. So back in November of 1979, at 3 AM around then, Zbigniew Brzezinski, who is the National Security Advisor to Carter, got a call from NORAD that showed that the Soviet Union had launched 2,200 nuclear missiles at the United States, and they were on their way. And it was up to Brzezinski to decide whether this was a fluke and a glitch in NORAD's system.

Or if it was just a teenager in the Pacific Northwest. Exactly. Trying to change his grades. Right. So this guy in the middle of the night had the terrible job of, do I kick this up to the president and let the person who could launch a nuclear counter attack on the Soviet Union make that decision?

Or do I sit on this and say, this is not real. This is a fluke. This is a NORAD glitch. And he had to decide it. And he decided, no, it's a glitch. And he was right. It was a glitch. And apparently, that happened a number of times.

We came very close to launching a counter attack against a phantom strike that hadn't actually been launched during the Cold War. And Brzezinski apparently had nerves of steel when it came to stuff like that. But that's a pretty good example of what a national security advisor is meant to do. Like, you're the person, the last person,

to decide whether to take it to the president and escalate it or not. Wow. I say wow as well. Well, and because I know people of keen eye of pop culture history will point this out, I will beat you to the punch and note that that is the second Daphne Coleman reference in the show.

Oh, yeah, nice. Was not expecting that. I forgot. He was great in both movies. Yeah, so if we can just work in a 9 to 5 reference before it's all out. I think he just did. Man, he was great.

I really loved Daphne Coleman. Is he still around? I think he's still alive and doesn't act much. Oh, well good for him. He's enjoying life. Unless he's recently passed on. Yeah, I don't know. I could be thinking of that movie, Short Time,

where he was dying and tried to get himself killed so his family could get his pension. That was a good movie too. Which one? Short Time. Don't think I've seen that one either. Oh, check it out. You need to do a double feature of Short Time

in the interview. Hey, he's still alive. Confirmed. Hey, Daphne Coleman. You got anything else? I don't think so. I have one more movie recommendation. Oh, well, it's here.

It's a documentary called The Fog of War. Oh, yeah, sure. That's all I'm good. That was a good one. Oh, and I have a reading recommendation too. 1491? Of course. But have you ever read?

Yeah, have you seen Zero Dark Thirty? Oh, yeah. OK, so apparently, as far as Seymour Hirsch, the great investigative journalist says, that is all BS. It's government propaganda. Oh, yeah. And that whole official Mark Bowden Zero Dark Thirty account

of how bin Laden was found, not necessarily the raid itself, but how he was found and everything leading up to the raid, is just spin in that it actually was much simpler and less glamorous than that. And he wrote a series of essays for the London Review of Books. And specifically, the killing of Osama bin Laden, that one, kind of lays out the whole thing behind it. It's pretty interesting.

So how it really went down was they were like, we need to find where Osama bin Laden is. And someone called in and said, he's right over there. I see him. He's in a McDonald's. It went almost like that, except the first part where they said we need to find out where he is didn't happen. Somebody just walked in.

And then said, hey, he's a McDonald's. And they said, we should spank him. Yeah. Remember the time I saw John Crier at McDonald's in Los Angeles? I do remember that. The day after the Charlie Sheen freak out was going on? Yeah.

Man, that was, what a day to see John Crier. Yeah. Was he elated? Or was he? No, he was stress eating McDonald's breakfast. Yeah, because his $100,000 Mercedes. Yeah, his cash cow of a TV show was being threatened by his kooky co-star.

Didn't you pay money to go see Charlie Sheen? Did I? Yeah. No, no, no, Mike Tyson. Oh, OK. No, I've never seen Charlie Sheen. I remember when he went on tour. For some reason, I thought you went to that.

No. But I have more respect for you than to think that you actually would have paid money for that. Right. I've gotten in free, maybe. Right. If you want to know more about the National Security Council, just go to the White House and knock on the front door

and ask him to give you a tour. Right? Yep. In the meantime, actually, you probably shouldn't do that. You just type National Security Council in the search bar how stuff works, and it'll bring up this article. And since I said that, it's time for Listener Main.

My friend Tracy called Steve Bannon. She said he looks like a beach bar drunk. Yeah. Yeah, I can see that, actually. Yeah, he looks like he should be wearing flip flops in every photo. Well, he used to, and then somebody said, you need to start wearing suits.

Right. All right, I'm going to call this empathy response. Hey, guys, listen to empathy today. I had a good laugh at Chuck's impression of a doctor falling to pieces, because something similar happened to me when I was 14. I was a junior in high school, summer between junior and senior year.

My parents sent me to scout camp a few days in the trip when the other kids cast a fishing line without any bait. And I walked right behind them, and the hook lodged right into my eyeball. Not the skin around my eye, the eyeball. A few hours later, I was at Valley Children's near Fresno and for emergency surgery, waiting for them to prepare an operating room.

And the anesthesiologist came in and looked at my eye and shouted, oh my god, his eye is going to collapse. I'm transgender, so calling me he made sense at the time, by the way. Hearing a doctor say something like that about my eyeball would probably have freaked me out in any other circumstance, but they had me drugged up pretty good at the time. Still, I remember thinking the reaction was probably not

how a doctor should react to things that they want to keep their patients calm. Fortunately, I had a happy ending. The talented surgeon who took care of me got the hook out without any damage to my sight. And we've been married ever since. The only evidence that ever happened is a very faint scar on the white of my eye and pupil

that doesn't close quite as much as the one in the other eye. Aren't your mirror neurons just going berserk right now in the worst way? Well, it's funny because she said, I didn't read that part, but she said, get ready for your mirror neurons to fire at the beginning. Anyhow, thanks for all the laughs and knowledge you guys dropped on me during my commute.

Started my job, new job as a science writer for Caltech last week. Sweet. And I've been recommending stuff you should know to my very smart new coworkers. And that is from Emily Velasco. Thanks a lot, Emily. Great one.

That was terrible and horrible, but great. Yes, I'm glad it all worked out for you. And good luck as a science writer. Send us all of your interesting articles. Please. If you have some interesting articles you want us to read, maybe we'll turn it into a stuff you should know episode. Who knows?

You can tweet them to us at SYSK Podcast. You can also hang out with me on Twitter at Josh underscore um underscore Clark. You can hang out with Chuck on Facebook at Charles W. Chuck Bryant. Or you can hang out with us at Stuff You Should Know on Facebook, too. You can send us both and Jerry an email

to stuffpodcast at howstuffworks.com. And as always, you can come hang out with us at a luxurious home on the web, stuffyoushouldknow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. And now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app,

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