The President's Daily Brief - Special Weekend Edition: What Are Sleeper Cells?

Episode Date: November 12, 2023

On this Special Weekend Edition of the PDB, Mike Baker Speaks to First TV host Mike Slater about how our Intelligence Agencies Protect U.S. From Terror Threats. Plus, what exactly are sleeper cells? This interview was part of The First TV Special - America On Alert: Imminent Threat Watch the full special here --> https://www.thefirsttv.com/america-on-alert-imminent-threat/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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I'm your host, Mike Baker. Today, we're doing something a bit different. Instead of the usual format, I'll be sitting down with the first TV's Mike Slater. We spent about 10 minutes this week doing a deep dive into the current risk of terrorist attacks on American soil and what the U.S. government should be doing to protect us.

All right, let's get right into it. Mike, how you doing it? I'm doing good, man. Thank you very much. Appreciate you. how high would you rate our risk of a terrorist attack here in America? Well, I've never been a fan of the color coding to tell you the truth. I think there's too much of a range in there. And besides people, people, you know, they get kind of immune to, you know, the terrorist threat level.

Everybody came out of the global war on terror and people are frankly just fatigued. And so I think a lot of folks are surprised by the fact that we're talking about. this again. But the reality is a terrorist threat never goes away. So at a certain point, if you want to think about it on a scale of, say, one to five, then we have elevated, say, we're at, you know, a two. You can never stay at a high level, right? People just can't do it. But from a local law enforcement state and federal law enforcement perspective and the intel community, if say we were at a two, you know, no, no obvious chatter, no real indications out there. We're not picking up anything, but you know the threat always exists. We're elevated now to a three

because we've got a significant issue, right? And anytime you've got chaos like what's going on in the Middle East right now, that chaos is exactly what terror groups are looking for. And they're always looking to maximize those opportunities. What is a sleeper cell? We've heard this term, and I think we all have a vision in our brain, like we're making a movie in our head about what a sleeper cell looks like. How should we visualize that? Yeah, you know what, it depends. It has different connotations when you are talking about, you know, different concerns. So like when you're talking about counterintelligence, right, espionage, then people can, maybe they saw the TV show the Americans, right?

That's an example of a sleeper cell. And the Russians, you know, over the years, Chinese, others have done that very well. You basically are putting people in to the fabric of society in another country that you're targeting. and those people are basically with very little, you know, condensed time frame. You could be talking about decades. They establish themselves. They're just your neighbors. They're getting a job.

Maybe they get another job eventually. Maybe they get a job at an interesting company, meaning that they're producing something. It doesn't have to be a government-based company. It could be doing anything. Pharmaceuticals, new formula for material science. It could be anything. So that's one type of sleeper. So when you're talking about the terror threat, it's a, it's a,

little bit different, but what they're still doing is they're looking for those cooperative contacts within a community where they already exist and they live and they're part of that fabric and they're in the country, right? That's what you want. You want somebody who isn't on anybody's radar. And then what you do is if they're not already cooperative or sympathetic, right, and maybe you've learned as a terror group, they're sympathetic because you've been paying attention to their social media, you know, then you draw them in. And, you know, That depends on how heavy a lift that is. It depends on how sympathetic they are to that particular terror group's, you know, cause.

We've seen a lot of sympathy in these last couple weeks and months towards the terrorism. Yeah, yeah, a shocking amount. I didn't know there were so many Palestinian flags in my country. How many discounts does USA auto insurance offer? Too many to say here. Multi-vehicle discount. Safe driver discount. New vehicle discount. Storage discount.

How many discounts will you stack up? Tap the banner or visit USAA. com slash auto discounts, restrictions apply. What are the capabilities of the CIA? And what is the CIA not capable of doing? I don't mean critical. It's just like, we just can't do this or don't know. Or these are unknown things that we can't do,

just humans can't do. So what are we on top of and what can't we be on top of as a CIA officer? Right. Well, and look, the focus for the agency is always overseas. Right. And so you have to think about this as sort of this task force that exists. And now after 9-11, look, before 9-11, that task force concept wasn't necessarily as efficient, obviously, as it should have been, in terms of the Bureau, NSA, the agency, and others working together, sharing information. Over the years since 9-11, we've had a lot more experience doing that, we've become much better at not siloing our information.

So the agency's focus is overseas. They feed intelligence on concerns, on terror groups, on individuals, on activities into this task force essentially, right? NSA is doing the same with communications intercepts that they're picking up. And, you know, the sigant that we talk about, signals intelligence. And that goes in. And then you've got the FBI and state and local law enforcement. And they're working domestically within the U.S. to act on that, right, to identify. If you do, as you pointed out, sleep or so, if you've got somebody who's in communication with

a known terrorist target overseas, say that the agency is watching, along with our liaison partners, then that individual suddenly becomes a target of interest here in the States because he's in contact with a terrorist group. You would assume, you know, that, you know, the U.S. population would want us doing that, right? Sometimes people get squirly with, you know, civil rights and everything. But at the end of the day, if you've got verifiable intelligence that shows that individual's talking to a terrorist group, then, yeah, you better be on it. The agency is very good at this. It's a human endeavor, right?

And so you never get the risk down to zero. But we, you know, I would argue, of course, I'm subjective. I would argue the agency is the best intel organization on the planet. Yeah, totally. And I just, it's a big country and it's a big world. And as you said, we're dealing with humans here. So things are going to not cross over, communicate properly, and there's going to be holes.

and I just worry that something's going to fall through one of those holes. That's how that would happen probably. Well, look, when southern Israel, with the attack on 7 October, is an example of how you can have a, well, massive intel failure. And they've been doing a hot wash on that ever since 7 October to understand how that happened, what pieces you miss and what bits and pieces of intel that at the time seemed of no consequence. But when you put them all together and you step back, And suddenly maybe you see a picture.

It's the same with 9-11, leading up to 9-11, right? There were pieces of Intel missed, not necessarily because we didn't have them in our hands, but we didn't understand the value of them, right? And we weren't adding them to other bits and pieces of intel that were coming in from a variety of sources, whether it was human intelligence, SIGN, whatever it might be. And so that's a problem. But, yeah, you never get this down to zero. But I guess going back to your original question, where are we on the alert scale?

I'll be honest with it. The intel community and law enforcement, you know, they're always up, you know, near the top of the alert scale because they understand that the threat never goes away. And that's the job, right? But, you know, from a public perception, you can't be up there. Public perception, people walking around the streets doing their daily lives, you know, pay attention, but you can't expect the general public to be at a high level of alert all the time. That's right. We got about 30 seconds. It's a tough question for 30 seconds, Mike. but the 150 or so people who have come across our border that we've caught that are on the terror watch list, how concerned about them should we be like, what is it, is it a high bar to get on the terror watch list?

Or is it just someone from Somalia that maybe has a cousin or so? I don't know. Like, what does it take to get on that list? It's something we should be very concerned about. And more than those individuals that we've encountered, we need to be concerned about an unknown number of people that we haven't encountered, right? I mean, if a conservative estimate over the past couple of years is that we've got a million and a half gotaways, right? Then in that case, you know, you imagine that within a million and a half gotaways, there's probably some people coming in here that would be considered special interest aliens or from countries that support or promote terrorism. Whether we're talking about Syria, Iran, it doesn't matter, Yemen.

So, yes, the answer to your question in 30 seconds is people should be very concerned. Yeah. Mike Baker, go listen every day to the president's Daily Brief. It's one of the top news podcasts on Spotify and everywhere else. That president's daily brief. Mike, great to talk you, brother. I appreciate it. Thank you, brother. I appreciate you. That was my interview with Mike Slater. I hope you found our discussion enlightening and informative. A huge thanks to Mike for providing his unique perspective. As always, your understanding of world events is crucial. And I'm honored to be a part of that journey with you. If you enjoyed the interview, and you'd like us to make this a regular feature of the podcast,

shoot me an email at PDB at thefirsttv.com. Thank you for tuning in to the special edition of the President's Daily Brief. I'm Mike Baker. I'll be back on Monday. Until then, stay informed. Stay safe. Stay cool.