The Team House - Bin Laden Sighted in 2005 in Pakistan with Jack Murphy & Sean Naylor

Episode Date: December 4, 2025

In this episode, Dee, Jack Murphy, and Sean Naylor delve into a significant story about a sighting of Osama Bin Laden that was captured on camera by a CIA contractor. They discuss the backstory of how the information was gathered, the analysis of the photographs, and the implications of the CIA's findings. The conversation also explores the complex relationship between the CIA and the ISI, the aftermath of Bin Laden's death, and the enigma surrounding his movements. The episode concludes with insights into future investigations and projects.Get The High Side here:https://thehighside.substack.com/Grab Jack's book "We Defy: The Lost Chapters of Special Forces History"https://a.co/d/eRxKBleGrab Sean's book "Relentless Strike: The Secret History of Joint Special Operations Command"https://a.co/d/4fqAInCSupport the show on Patreon here:https://www.patreon.com/c/TheTeamHouse00:00 Introduction to the High Side Story01:19 The Backstory of the CIA Sighting03:46 The Photographic Evidence and Analysis07:35 The Investigation into the Lookalike12:35 The CIA's Response and Actions16:43 The Controversial Relationship with ISI20:07 The Aftermath of the Abbottabad Raid24:58 Theories on Bin Laden's Movements28:30 The CIA's Methods and Operations29:29 The Reporting Legacy of Steve Cole30:52 CIA and ISI Connections: Unraveling the Truth32:28 Upcoming Investigations: Havana Syndrome and More34:59 The Fallout of the Global War on Terror40:32 Future Stories and Collaborations"Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio"Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

Hey guys, welcome to another episode of Aizond Geopolitics, a special one with Jack Murphy, Sean Naler. They have the high side substack. You should check it out. That link is in the description. They do stories that most news outlets don't do or don't have the sourcing to do. Usually what happens is they'll do a story about something like zero units and Omega Teams. And then like big, big publications will rip them off and do stories about it to like six months a year later. At least that's my observation.

So if you want, yeah, if you want the news. like really cool espionage special operation stories go to the high side substack that link is in the description it's well worth it the story we're talking about today is pretty crazy because I've been waiting for this to happen for like years now like three four years now when jack told me about this it's about a sighting that the CIA initially thought was Osama bin Laden in the Shintral Valley is that how you say it since the central control Central in Pakistan, you know, some CIA contractor spotted this guy, took video of it. I mean, you guys know the story better than I do, and it's on the high side right now, so check out the high side.

Jack, where do you want to start with this? Because this has been a story that's been in the making for like a decade. Yeah, yeah. I'll kind of flesh out a little bit of like the backstory. Some people might be interested in how sort of this story came about. And I, you know, sometimes reporters have to sit on a story for a certain amount of time. And there's a few different reasons why you might have to do that. But long story short, the source in this case wasn't comfortable coming forward with it just yet.

So I basically had to wait a little over a decade, I think, before we could really do the story. But for me, on my side, it started, like I said, probably over a decade ago at this point. where I was told that somebody would like to meet with me and, you know, but you got to go talk to him in person. It was all kind of like what? I, so I got on a train to a undisclosed location. And I remember I was on the train all day, got off the train. I met the station and meet this guy. And yeah, I won't give any identifying details. I said, I met this gentleman. And, you know, We were going to go out to a diner and eat. And he's like, hey, before we go in there in front of all those people, I want to talk to you privately.

And we sit in his car. So I'm sitting in the passenger seat of his car. And he's telling me his whole story, which is what this article became. And he hands me a manila envelope, like a manila folder. And I folded out. And inside is pictures he took of Osama bin Laden in 2005. And I'm like, holy shit. This is crazy.

So he tells me the whole story. We go and have lunch. And I think I may have stayed the night there and then took the train back the next day. But he wasn't comfortable going forward with the story just yet. So I, you know, had to hold on and wait until he was comfortable with it because it is his pictures, you know, and it's his story. And I wasn't going to go forward and put him in an uncomfortable position, of course. So just in the last couple months, you know, we started earnestly working on the story. And Sean started, you know, Sean pretty much wrote this story.

You know, I did a lot of the reporting and investigating, but, you know, Sean pretty much wrote and edited this whole piece. Yeah. I mean, I was sort of kind of like you were, Dee, but a bit later on. I mean, when Jack described this to me a few months ago, you know, my reaction was like, wait, what? You know, at first, you know, part of me was like, okay, so some CIA guy or CIA contractor guy thinks he saw Osama bin Laden in, you know, remote part of Pakistan. I'm okay. And then, you know, but the killer was Jack said, and he took photographs. I'm like, okay, interesting.

And then Jack's like, and we have the photographs. And then I was like, okay, why, you know, let's publish this story as soon as possible. Now that we've gotten the green light from the original source. And I do think it's important to say that, well, at the, When we started working on the story, we were of the opinion, because as we explain in the article, when these photographs got sent back to Langley, to CIA headquarters, their photo analysts determined that the figure in the photographs, who looked like Osama bin Laden, almost certainly was Osama bin Laden.

Now, the reporting that we've done in the last sort of six weeks or so indicates that that probably isn't true. And it was probably a doppelganger. Well, the Pakistani government supposedly tracked this guy down after being given a sort of a heads up on it by the CIA. And as we mentioned in the article, it probably wasn't too hard for the Pakistanis to track this guy down because even though it's the middle of nowhere in Pakistan,

the still images from the video that the CIA contractor took have the vehicles that the Osama lookalike character is riding in, license plate clearly visible. on them. So I would imagine. Yeah, there's signages of like, you know, like there's signages of like the market and stuff like that. So I would assume analysts could figure that out. Yeah.

But yeah, I would imagine not for me to tell police state intelligence organizations how to do their job, but I would imagine if the director general of the ISI, Pakistan's sort of leading intelligence agency,

gets a photograph like that. He, you know, quickly goes down the chain of command and somebody probably hot-footed up to Chitral to figure out who's got that vehicle with that license plate. And, you know, once they find that out, I would imagine it would be pretty easy to figure out who his passenger was. And we explain who the passenger was in all likelihood, because the CIA themselves then sent individuals into a remote part of Afghanistan to track this guy down

and they managed to do that. And they confirmed that it was a guy who looked exactly like Osama bin Laden, but was not Osama bin Laden. Just to back up a little bit and tell people what we're talking about, how it came about, this story is fundamentally about three people all working for the CIA, a case officer, a contractor, and a interpreter slash driver that went up into a very remote valley in Afghanistan. Not that they had any reporting, but they sort of had a hunch. Like this is a valley south of Kunar, Torabora, where bin Laden was last known sort of in that area. Some people suspect he came across the border from a town called Barracote.

So it kind of makes sense that he could be in the Chitral Valley system. So they drive up there to take photographs. And, you know, one of them is a member of a organization in the Counterterrorism Center that was kind of just called the surveillance group. As I understand, it was started by Billy Waugh. and those guys, you know, they were contractors, and they were nicknamed the Marco Polos sometimes. You might hear that name thrown about. And what he was doing, you know, this surveillance job, they were going into, you know, recon this valley and, you know, see maybe if this is a place where bin Laden could possibly be hiding. Instead of taking pictures, because obviously you're just walking around taking pictures all day, he found it easier to just have a camcorder.

and just make recordings. And at the time this incident happened, they were pulled off on the side of the road. And he was holding the camera right here. Like he'd be doing that as they're driving around recording. And so while they're on the side of the road doing like a map check, this vehicle comes down on the opposing lane of traffic. And it's like a Jeep with a driver, a passenger,

and a couple kids in the bed of the truck. And the passenger, I mean, when you look at the photograph, which are in this story, you'll be like, holy shit, that's bin Laden like that. And that's exactly what these CIA personnel thought. They're like, oh, my God. And then you get into the question of, well, we didn't write about this in the article, but, well, if they saw bin Laden, why didn't they just take them out right then? They had pistols.

They had rifles in the trunk. And the source told me, interestingly, he was like, I had never, even in 2005, seen a lethal finding on bin Laden. So he's like, if I got out of the car and shot him, I could have gone to jail. You know, he could have gotten charged. Now, realistically, I don't think that ever would happen. But, you know, there was that. And then the other factor was, okay, great, you killed bin Laden.

But good luck getting out of that valley, bro. Yeah. You ain't you're not going to admit. There's only one way in and out. So that's a one way trip for you. He wasn't traveling with like a, you know, 30 guy, 30 men. No, no. It defied some of the expectations.

You know, that he was traveling around in the open, that he didn't have a security detail around him. These were kind of surprises. And they took those, they, after they got that footage, they took it back to their base. And they took still photographs from the video, I think 26 stills, sent it back to CTC in the surveillance group, and they did an analysis. And the analysis that came back positively identified. identified bin Laden somewhere above the 90th percentile. I mean, they were, this was considered the best evidence we had on bin Laden on his location

since, you know, 2002. And then from there, there's a whole unwinding of this story, which, which Sean got into a little bit. Yeah. And I think, obviously it's, I wanted it to be bin Laden. I wanted this to be like some crazy thing, you know, because there isn't much talked about, about where he was between, you know, 2001 and 2011. Well, it could be. You know, I still, I think it's plausible that it was not bin Laden,

but I think there's also a chance that it could have been. And I think that even if we had access to all of the CIA's secret documents and files, I don't think you could ever, at this point, prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that it is or it isn't. I don't think you're going to get that close to the truth. But there is, you know, as Sean got into a little bit, you know, one of the big breaks, I guess, or one of the surprising hits I had as I was canvassing people for more information about this. And I'm sure all of the former agency people that I send these canvas emails out to really appreciate my prying. But I did find, I did find somebody who, um,

was actually sent up into Kunar in Afghanistan because they thought that this bin Laden, quote, unquote, you know, in air quotes at this point, might be up there. And they sent him up to confirm or deny. I don't know. Maybe you want to take it from there, Sean. Yeah. I mean, that was a, you know, testament to your source network, but also still a lucky break that. that you reached out to a guy who happened to have been someone who had the sort of knowledge of the eyes-on mission to check out basically what the Pakistanis had told the Americans about, oh, you know, it's not bin Laden, it's really this other guy, don't worry about it. And I think the CIA was like, you know, trust but verify, you know, when it came to when it came to that. So they sent their own team up to Kunar.

There was a sort of a cover for action, if you like, for that mission where they went up with some Navy SEALs and some of their Afghan militia men to do a, a med cap, which is basically a, it's when you bring medical personnel into the hinterland and offer, you know, first aid and basic medical care to the locals who may not have had access to that previously. And there were a couple of agency officers on that, on those helos going up into Kunar and they sort of, I guess, peeled off from the medcap and tracked down the chief of police and the local Afghan intelligence representative and said, hey, we're looking for this guy and he looks just like Osama bin Laden. And the police chief apparently was like, I know who you're talking about. Yeah, he does look like bin Laden. You know, come with me.

Well, we'll go meet him. You know, very shortly thereafter, the the CIA officer was face to face with the bin Laden lookalike. Ben Laden cosplayer. Guy who was photographed in in Chitral. And I, you know, I don't have any reason to doubt that. As Jack said, any time you're involved with such a strategic level, issue, particularly if it was really bin Laden in Chitral, you know, the Pakistanis would have been looking very suspicious. And I quote somebody in the article, you know, somebody who'd been posted

to the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad, saying that as far as they were concerned, while they don't think that this individual was Osama bin Laden, they are. convinced that the Pakistanis were managing bin Laden, that the ISI had, you know, probably a small compartmented team that was managing bin Laden. Yeah, it's like it's reverse Alex station. Yeah. I think one of the most, you know, interesting parts of the story, especially for people who get into the sort of spy versus spy business and who are interested in the way, the controversial way,

I think that the U.S. government has handled its relations with Pakistan since 9-11, is that the the station chief, the CIA station chief in Islamabad, the senior CIA officer in Pakistan, was back in Washington at around this time, well, just after this mission into Chitral, where they caught the bin Laden-looking character on camera, because the head of the ISI, then Lieutenant General Kayani, who went on to become the head of the entire Pakistani army.

He was at the Bethesda Naval Hospital, the U.S. Bethesda Naval Hospital in Bethesda, Maryland, just a 10-minute drive from where I am right now, getting treatment, which is the sort of thing that apparently the U.S. government offered a lot of senior Pakistani military and intelligence folks if there was a belief that they could at some point be of use to the United States.

And so the station chief takes it upon himself to go to, supposedly to go into Kayani's hospital room and and kind of boast to him almost to say, hey, you know, we've got photographic proof that bin Laden is in Pakistan, you know, and sort of here it is. And so supposedly Kayani took that in stride and said, okay, well, you know, we'll look into it. And then the story transpired, as we've discussed all already. The individual that is the supposed person who was photographed and who the CIA officers met up in Kunar was actually an Afghan lumber merchant who frequently crossed the border from Kunar and sort of that part of Afghanistan, the sort of northeastern part of Afghanistan, across the border into Pakistan, into Pakistan. to the Chitral Valley.

And he was on one of those trips when he got, when he got photographed. I mean, I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but the conspiracy theorist in me is like, if they really were managing bin Laden, right? Why not, you know, get a double. And you know what I mean? Yeah, right.

I mean, yeah, I mean, if it really was him, they would go in there and really manage him and get him under thumb at that point and try to redirect attention elsewhere. But I don't know that that's the case. Sure, no, that's like a conspiracy. Obviously a conspiracy. Like, that's a reach.

There's no evidence of that. And what was quite clear from our interviews was that the act of the CIA station chief divulging this information to the head of the ISI made a lot of people in the CIA very upset. Yeah, I put it right here. I put that, like, highly controversial in the CIA in my notes right here, because I'm sure he did it on his own, no, like, talking with whoever you need to talk to, to be like, maybe this is a move or something like that. Well, how, why is this beneficial for us?

Yeah, I'm sure people were not happy. Yeah. There's a long-running sort of, I don't know how to describe it, cleft in the CIA or certainly, you know, controversy, certainly back then as to whether the Islamabad station was too friendly with the ISI. You know, the ISI essentially had created virtually the Taliban. or at least the Taliban would never have been able to take over Afghanistan the first time without the ISI's support. And the ISI only reluctantly sort of half-dropped them as clients after 9-11 when the United States was in full sort of blood and thunder mode in the wake of 9-11.

but they pretty quickly picked them up again and you had this absurd situation where the United States would sometimes describe Pakistan as an ally but the whole reason in the end that the United States was bogged down in a war in Afghanistan was because of the Taliban which the ISI was supporting you know, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the shura that ran the Taliban, the Quetta Shura, was based in Quetta, which is a garrison town in, in, in, in, in Pakistan. So, you know, it became a, it became very frustrating. And there was a real feeling right after 9-11 that, um, that the, amongst some of the CIA officers who were working with,

with the Northern Alliance, that the Islamabad station had sort of essentially been captured by the ISI. I'm not saying that that was the case. I'm just saying that that perception existed amongst some in the agency. I mean, is that an effort on the, on the Islamabad station to, like, cooperate better with, like, your, the country's intelligence service? There are always these sorts of accusations of like source capture that you know you want to appease the liaison that you're working with and you know there's you probably have heard these complaints about the state department too that they you know especially the political appointees they forget who they're working for because they get so close to the host nation yeah yeah i mean the CIA guys are no the difference so

yeah it's just the in a lot of these countries um the liaison relationship is is key to how the CIA operates. And in in a lot of the countries, it makes obvious sense. Okay. I mean, obviously in other Western countries, you know, the, the London Station Chief, you would expect to have, you know, incredibly close relations with MI6 and so forth. Even in the more authoritarian but generally pro-Western Arab capitals, like in Morocco or somewhere like that, you'd expect to have a close liaison relationship. In Pakistan, it just becomes more controversial because the ISI so often has seemed to be working against.

American interests. So it starts to become a question of who is playing who in that in that relationship. Yeah. And it's funny. You guys mentioned the, there was a report that came out after bin Laden was killed by Pakistan. And in that report, there was one line talking about that valley. And another thing about that, that was very interesting that speaks to the CIA-I-S-I relationship

is like they reported in that report that after that moment, the CIA pretty much stopped cooperating with the ISI. Yeah, certainly on Bin Laden location. That supposed hospital room conversation in which the station chief divulged what the CIA thought of regarding these photographs from Chitral, According to the Abbottabad Commission, which is the commission that the Pakistani government set up in the wake of the 2011 raid on Abodabad that killed Osama bin Laden, according to the station chief, I beg a pardon, according to the head of the ISI, who was referenced in the Abodabad commission. report, that that conversation was the last time that the CIA fed any useful information to, to ISI about where they thought bin Laden might be.

So it proved, it certainly proved, I mean, that was a nice thing to find in the report because, you know, it made clear that the CIA had indeed, it backed up our sources, who said, yeah, the CIA told, told the ISI that they thought bin Laden was in Chitra. Yeah, another crazy part. You guys referenced the exile. Is that the book? You guys referenced in the article? Yeah.

Yeah. Where they think that Osama bin Laden went from Kuhnur, I want to say, to Karachi for a couple months. I mean, how does the world's most wanted guy go to a full? fucking Karachi. I mean, it's not exactly a short drive for a couple months before he ends up in Abadabah. Like that's why. How he got there, I'm not sure, but the, you know, those cities in

Pakistan are immense, densely packed. You know, it's easier to hide. You know, I would say, in a big city like that, then, you know, out in a remote valley somewhere, frankly.

They ended up, I mean, when they ended, one of the ironic things about this is that the agency, when they were sure that they found him in Chitral, they, you know, they had a rethink about, what his footprint would be like. And they were like, wow, there's no visible security detail here at all.

You know, we've sort of been barking up the wrong tree on that regard for the last few years. And then it turned out that even though that's not, that wasn't in all likelihood the real bin Laden. The actual real bin Laden also wasn't using a big security detail. Yeah. having that compound his sons the courier and there was like there's like one one armed guy i think on the ground floor if i recall right yeah and then they they also did like a uh what they called med cap right around the bottom bottom when they did the vaccines or whatever to see if they can see inside that that wasn't really a med cap per se it was uh they had a a doctor who was uh giving polio vaccine

scenes, but was also sort of helping the CIA on the side. Moodlighting, yeah. Yeah, I'm, well, I think the idea was they were trying to get DNA. That's from the compound to see if any of the kids he could get DNA from had, you know, bin Laden family DNA in them. I really would love a deep dive about the relationship. between the CIA and ISI and this 20 plus years of. It's like a story that you're never,

you're never going to get the whole story on that one. Right. I think, I mean, I, I know we're here to talk about our work, but I think Steve Cole has done a lot of, a lot of work on that if you look through his, his books. And the exile,

the book that I, that you mentioned that that we reference in the article is a very deeply reported book on the movement of Osama bin Laden and his family and the other senior al-Qaeda leaders as they were in flight after 9-11 and especially Torabora and where they went and so forth

I think it's an extraordinary work of reporting that should have gotten more publicity when it was published. Yeah, I mean, if you guys know them, I'd love to get them on either here or... I don't. We could look, though. Because I think, yeah, like the times where, you know, Bin Laden was missing for 10 years, right?

And it's just like little hits here and there that are in the public sphere, but for the most part, the story's really not super flushed out. Another bit of thing, I want to talk about the CIA and ISI connection. I spoke to a former CIA paramilitary officer who wrote, or they lied because it turns out they were the ones hiding him. That's a direct quote from a CIA PMO. Right.

And that brings up all sorts of questions. about what did Kayani really know and when did he know it. And then it gets into some other stuff that's even more controversial, you know, the Seymour Hersch article. Sure. That implies, if that says outright,

that the Pakistanis knew we were coming on some level, at a high level. And there were assurances made that keep their aircraft on the ground that night. It's one of those stories. You're never going to get the whole story on what really happened there. I read the Seymour Hirsch article. It seemed a bit crazy. Yeah, I agree that there are parts of it that I don't think are true.

But there are other parts of it, I think, likely are. And that's the confusing thing with some of Mr. Hirsch's latter works is that it comes across like a mix to me. My opinion, anyway. Yeah. He's actually getting a Netflix documentary about him. He's done incredible work in years past broke massive, massive national security stories. Yeah. So what are you guys cooking up next?

What have we got on the burner? I am trying my best to wrestle the second half, the concluding part of our, two-parter on Havana syndrome to to the ground before the end of the year I may never want to hear the freight Havana syndrome again

once I'm done with that but it's pretty interesting we've got we are going to to anybody who's watching who's a long time subscriber to the high side

you may be wondering what happened to our series on the called In the Kill Zone, the Life and Times of Willie Mercoson, which has been on a lengthy hiatus, but which I fully intend to finish up in the new year with some, you know, with a crazy story right out of the bat. Still, we left, we left Willie in cartoon in Sudan, having just helped in the evacuation of several Mossad officers in wooden crates, just one step ahead of Libyan counterintelligence operatives out of Khartoum Airport. And we're going to rejoin that story with him still in Khartoum and other crazy, crazy stuff going on. going on there.

So I'm excited to pick that up. And there's some other things on the, well, they've been on the back burner, but coming on to the front burner for 2026. Some exciting stories, I think. Yeah, I can't wait. The Willie Merkerson one is so good. The Havana syndrome part one was so good

because it's like an angle of the story that no one really talked about where it's like these victims are getting like actively harassed by either foreign intelligence or whoever else, like they're, you know, getting fucked with actively as if they were like on assignment in another non-permissible country or Israel, for lack of a better word.

Yeah. That happens to them there too. Yeah. Incredible. Also, like because of the crazy news that happened last week with the National Guardsman getting shot and the one passing away, the former Afghan...

Can I call him a CTPT? Is that okay? Is that what he was, the zero units? It was part of that? It sounds like it to me, yeah. Okay. It's likely a CTPT counterterrorism pursuit team, Omega team, which was the CIA J-Soc joint thing where they had Afghan militias a crazy way.

Yeah, I mean, it's a little convoluted, but the Omega teams were actual U.S. Army guys that were attached to the agency for these things. things. Then there was the actual CTPTs, you know, that were spread around the country. The one that this guy was a part of, I believe was the Kandahar Strike Force. I actually have a couple pictures from a friend that thinks, you know, this is the guy from Tours he was. Wow. Yeah, with over there. But then the NDS called those units like NDS 0203, hence zero units. But they were. were only like kind of like on paper NDS units like in real life they were being run and paid for by the CIA

yeah the NDS being the Afghan intelligence service that the CIA created after the invasion of Afghanistan and we had a great our last episode you know Mickey Mulroy was a former CIA paramilitary officer he was

intimately involved with those units and stuff like that And he said it. And I kind of believe it. I mean, where these guys were vetted more than like 99% of the people that they worked with, the U.S. worked with anyway. And like, listen, if you're in war perpetually for 10 to 15 years where like, you know, servicemen go home after a few months or six months, these guys are working the whole time.

I mean, you're not going to come out of it like a totally adjusted human being, I would assume. So I don't think it's out of, you know, it's brutal what happened. and he should go to jail and suffer the consequences. But I think it's like a larger conversation about kind of the fallout of the GWAT. Yeah, yeah, definitely. So, yeah, if you guys want to read about the Omega Teams and stuff, they have an incredible, incredible article with pictures that everybody else steals. They're incredible.

You have to check it out. It's the high side stuff. That link is in the description. Sorry, Sean, I caught you off. I wanted to get a plug in. no i was i i think i was about to say the same thing so if you want if you want to if you want to if you want to read a bit more about uh the zero units and the omega teams uh you know that we have a pretty in-depth article uh from a year or more ago uh on the on the site yeah i mean if

you guys to to you know hawk our wares here um if you guys go and subscribe to the high side there's enough on there to keep you busy for a few weeks at least. And some of those articles are pretty substantially long, like 10, 15,000 words and covers everything from like historical retrospectives about like the special forces teams jumping in backpack nukes, stuff that's kind of like unobsture to the public, like the commander's in extremist force. We have a whole article about that. And then things that have just been super top secret for many years like the Omega teams.

But also the investigation about Havana syndrome that you mentioned, Asaq preparing for ops in Gaza. There's all kinds of different stuff on there. CIA guys getting into trouble with the law. Our rule of thumb at the high side is it has to be substantially exclusive information. So, you know, you're not getting just hot takes from us. Right. And that's not to disparage other people that do what I would call hot tape national security websites.

But what we are is investigative reporters. And so we hear of something and we dig into it. And then, you know, if it's worth publishing, we publish it. And the rule is if, you know, one of the first things I often ask if somebody gives me a tip or says, hey, you know, I know of this story you guys should do is, have you talked to any other reporters about it? Because if you have and they're going to do it, then we're not going to do it. Because I'm not willing to invest a month of my time to just, you know, add a little bit of knowledge to what's being published already. So that's, you know, that's, that's right.

And I'm glad you mentioned how meaty the articles are. You know, we're coming into winter now. You could definitely hole up in a cabin with a couple of good bottles of whiskey and the high side. And so long as you have electricity and an internet connection, you know, you don't really need anything else to pass the time for a few days. Are you guys sniffing anything about like Venezuela? what's going on there? A little bit. Yeah.

I don't know if they will end up reporting on, well, look, if something big happens in Venezuela, I'm guarantee we'll be reporting on it sooner or later. But yeah, I don't know. It remains to be seen as far as on our end because just like Sean kind of outlined the basic protocols of the stories we go after. Like it has to be something that's newsworthy and previously unreported and properly soured. and properly sourced. So if those things come together, yeah, I mean, we'll report on it.

I think there's something real spicy with the CIA General Counsel stepping down and the deputy director appointing himself a general counsel. It's like a month ago. Yeah. I mean, you don't need me to tell you firing all these jags and all these like legal count, like, yeah. What you think is happening is what is happening. Yeah.

If the CIA is to the point where like general counsels, are resigning because like this might be too crazy what's going on like it's it's pretty alarming because uh i'm i might be right i might be wrong correct me if i'm wrong but like the general counsel the cia is also in a point of appointed position i don't think it's just it's like god it has to be um approved by congress i'm almost i've heard that from a cia guy It could be. Yeah. So for the deputy director, so it's director, deputy director, and general counsel.

Those are the three positions that are Senate confirmable. So for the deputy director to name himself interim general counsel because the general counsel who's there is like, I don't want to do this because what we're doing is fucking highly illegal. To me, there's spice there because like, you know, we're blowing up ships in the fucking Caribbean. Yeah. Well, that's that's J-Soc doing that. Sure.

You know, the CIA story right. now is how little they're actually doing perhaps. So the word is that they went to the CIA and the CIA balked, but then J-Soc picked up that but then. Yeah, there's there's something to that. And if you recall Pete Hegseth's little trip down to Damneck, Virginia and what that was about, because because Damneck bulked at it too. Shit.

Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, you're right. Yeah, I mean, your, your, your intuition on that is right that there, there is some spicy content there. Anything else, guys? Hit me with it. carte blanche, tell me. What are your deepest, darkest secrets?

Well, you know, I think Jack and I like to, you know, sit on a lot of the stuff that we get and not talk too much about it ahead of time until we know it's going to come to fruition. You know, we've got, I mean, without exaggerating, I'd say we've got. story tips, ideas that, you know, the core of a story, in several cases at the moment, in our computers, that would make Hollywood movies.

And we pretty much know are true, but proving that they're true and fleshing those stories out, with just two of us is incredibly time-consuming. And for each one that you're doing that with, the great example would be the Havana syndrome story you were referencing earlier about how some organizational organizations was taking it upon themselves to target Havana syndrome victims in the United States.

I mean, that takes months and months of digging and drafting the story before it's ready to go. And so these other ones would be, too, but I'm excited to get to them because, you know, blow some people's minds, blow a lot of people's minds. Yeah, I'm totally excited. And I can totally understand. You guys have to triage stuff. It's only two of you. I wish I could read and write.

I would help. but, uh, I'm, I'm excited for what's to come for sure. Um, there's some wild stuff. And I look like, and frankly, you know, most reporters would probably run with the shit that they have just to like get it out there and get clicks and like not be well sourced and not be well researched. Um, that's what I think cuts you guys above the rest. Um, and that's why they all literally rip off your stuff. Um, you know, so get it at the high side. It's not expensive. You know, it's five bucks a month.

And you get like hardcore investigative stuff where like you're not reading anywhere else. I would say you guys are two of the best source reporters probably on this beat. I'm sure there are others that are great too that have it. But it's a very small short list, I'd say. Yeah. There's not a lot of people in this field. And, you know, I hope I'm not making promises I can't keep. But in 2026, we hope to, you know, have some collaborations with friends of ours and, you know, who are outstanding national security reporters.

There's one story I hope to get to, which will probably have four of us working on at the same time. So it's going to be interesting. How do you Four of you guys We have not written it yet So I'm just saying How does Ourself here

Four investigative reporters Which are like Everybody Everybody will bring something to the table on it You know something different Probably And all of that will have to be combined Into one holistic

piece I can't wait And guess what Everybody who's listening are watching right now, I am a subscriber, paid subscriber at the high side. So if I could do it, you could do it, because I can get these articles for free if I really want. So do yourself a favor and get the high side. That link is in the description.

Also, Jack Murphy, we defy the secret history of special forces. Out now. Out now on Amazon. That link will be in the description. Sean Naylor, if you guys don't know, I mean, people are watching this, no. But he literally wrote the book on J-Suck, Relentless Strike. incredible book one of like the four books

I've ever read in my life so really really good no bullshit that link is in the description as well and I think that Willie Merkerson book that Willie Merkerson series is a book yeah I've told Sean that it should be a book

it is a book and honestly if Willie Merkerson's cool with it and they're like his family and stuff self-publish it don't even wait for a fucking publisher yeah and say that that book or the honestly the stuff that was happening in Sudan while he was there.

It could be a book in and of itself. I mean, that's just, because it's, that's tight in terms of the timeline. It's just a few years. There's incredible drama there, and it's, you know, it's in a sort of a very, you know, Hollywood friendly sort of exotic locale. The hottest Khartoum is the hottest capital city in the world, statistically. Yeah, I won't be visiting. Yeah.

I'll read about it in the book. I won't be visiting. Guys, as always, this is awesome. Of course, the Teamhouse podcast. Check that out. Check out all the other guys stuff to those links are in the description. The best place to support the show, these show and Teamhouse is patreon.com slash the teamhouse. You get both eyes on geopolitics and team house episodes ad free early.

You can message us telling us how handsome we are. And high side, check out their substack. It's down in the description. Do yourself a favor. If you're interested in national security, espionage, all the things we're interested in and you watch the show for, that's the one substack you should subscribe to. Thanks, guys.

Yeah, thanks, Steve. Appreciate it. Hey guys, I want to tell all of you today about a new newsletter that we're launching that encompasses both the Team House podcast, the Eyes On podcast, and the High Side News outlet, which I run with Sean Naylor. The newsletter is going to be once a week. It's going to come into your inbox and you're going to get the most current podcasts on Aizon and the Team House and whatever's topical or current on the high side. So it's another way for us to get the information out to you as social media algorithms are pretty iffy and you never really know what you're going to get. So this is a once a week email. It'll slide into your inbox and it will have, you know, the greatest hits of that week. It's really good, man.

Checking it out. The website for it is teamhousepodcast.com.com slash join. Teamhousepodcast.com.com slash join. you go there and you enter into your email list or you enter your email into the little thing on the website and you're good to go and that'll be it. So we really appreciate your support and hope you'll consider signing up. Where's the link? The link will also be down the description if you're looking for it there. And that's teamhousepodcast.com.kittkiloindia tango.com backslash join.