The Team House - CIA Secrets & Subterfuge: An Unauthorized History | Tim Weiner | Ep. 193

Episode Date: February 20, 2023

Tim Weiner joins us for a second episode. Following on his seminal history of the CIA "Legacy of Ashes" Weiner has turned his attention to writing a post-9/11 history of the same agency. In this episode we will discuss the spectacular successes, stunning failures, and ongoing crisis that the CIA faces today. Grab Tim's books here:⬇️ https://www.amazon.com/stores/Tim-Weiner/author/B000APILF6?ref=ap_rdr&store_ref=ap_rdr&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true Today's Sponsors: BetterHelp ⬇️ ● If you want to live a more empowered life, therapy can get you there. ● Visit https://BetterHelp.com/TEAMHOUSE today to get 10% off your first month. PIA VPN⬇️ So, if you want to enjoy all the benefits of Private Internet Access, now's the time to subscribe. Head to https://PIAVPN.com/TEAMHOUSE and get an 83% discount! Seriously… 83%! That's just $2.03 a month, and you also get 4 extra months completely for free! But you MUST go to https://PIAVPN.com/TEAMHOUSE for a truly private digital life!  Thank you for supporting the companies that support the show ! To help support the show and for all bonus content including: -AD FREE AUDIO -AD FREE VIDEO -Access to ALL bonus segments with our guests Subscribe to our Patreon! ⬇️ https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse Team House merch: ⬇️ https://teespring.com/stores/my-store-10474963 Social Media: ⬇️ The Team House Instagram: https://instagram.com/the.team.house?utm_medium=copy_link The Team House Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheTeamHousePod Jack’s Instagram: https://instagram.com/jackmcmurph?utm_medium=copy_link Jack’s Twitter:  https://twitter.com/jackmurphyrgr?s=21 Dave’s Twitter:  https://twitter.com/dave_parke?s=21 Team House Discord: ⬇️ https://discord.gg/wHFHYM6 SubReddit: ⬇️ https://www.reddit.com/r/TheTeamHouse/ Jack Murphy's memoir "Murphy's Law" can be found here:⬇️  https://www.amazon.com/Murphys-Law-Journey-Investigative-Journalist/dp/1501191241 The Team Room Reading Room (Amazon Affiliate links):⬇️  https://jackmurphywrites.com/the-team-room-reading-room/ Intro music by https://www.youtube.com/user/RemixSample Want to sponsor the show? Email: ⬇️ [e-mail] #cia #espionagem #theteamhouseBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

Hey, folks, I just want to take a minute to ask you to go in rate this podcast, let the Teamhouse know how you think we're doing, go and rate us on whatever platform you're listening to this on, whether it's iTunes or Spotify or whatever else. Those ratings really help us out, and we really appreciate the feedback to let us know what you like and what you don't like. And if you do like the Team House and you'd like to support us, go check out our Patreon page and you can actually support the stream and well as get access to our team house. and you'd like to support us, go check out our Patreon page, and you can actually support the stream and well as get access to our bonus segments and bonus episodes. Yeah, if you're going to give us a great review, please do. And if you're going to give us a not-so-good review,

why don't you just send us an email and we'll talk about it. Special Operations, Covert Ops, espionage, The Team House, with your hosts, Jack Murphy, and David Park. And joining us in studio for a second time is our guest tonight, Tim Weiner. Tim wrote for The New York Times, other publications. He is the author of Legacy of Ashes, which is sort of a seminal history of the Central Intelligence Agency. He's also the author of a book, The History of the FBI.

The book on Nixon. Nixon. Well, your latest is about... It's called The Folly and the Glory. It's about political warfare. which is war without war, right, between Russia and America, from the end of World War II until 2020. And the book Tim is working on right now

is a sequel to Legacy of Ashes. So this book basically covers, you know, the first 65 years. It goes up until the government broke up the CIA after 9-11 in 2005, 2006. The CIA itself remained, but the director of Central Intelligence had always, since 1947, been not just the guy who ran the CIA, but he was the CEO of the entire U.S. intelligence community. They took that. And created the DNI.

So the sequel of your book is basically going to be the post-9-11 history. No, the book opens up in January 2001. Because we now know, as historians always say, now we know a great deal more about what happened immediately before and immediately after the 9-11 attacks, a great deal more. And, you know, the book's also going to cover, you spoke with me about some other big themes, Russia, China, counterterrorism, counterintelligence, and, you know, sort of the future of espionage in a way. world where there's biometrics and 24-7 surveillance on everything. So there's a lot to get into, but also some pretty specific topics to talk about. So thank you for coming in again. Always. Love it here. Our man cave. Beautiful place. Our living room setting where we invite people to drink hard liquor. It beats MSNBC. I'm telling you that right now.

Demark that. We're clipping that. Some of those, yeah, big television. and news networks have kind of wobbly sets actually when you get on them. Well, you know they look good on camera. Yeah, yeah. All right, but they're attempting villages, Jen. We offer you a cigar. Sure.

There's those ones, there's also the orange A's are down below. Well, what do you recommend? None of these, by the way. We got Rocky Patel. If you're out there in TV land, none of these are Fidel's finest. Here's some Cuban coronas. They're empty. Down below. Down below. Romeo and Jewelio Lugietas. Yeah, that's a good one.

No, that is not a cigar clipper. No, that's right. This is what you're looking for. Just church key. It's open, Dave. Oh, is it? Yes. Yes, sir.

Rado. Thank you, sir. They don't do this on MSNBC either, by the way. You fucking ain't right. You don't know. None of that. So, yeah, as I was saying earlier, we kind of were, we have the one box of R&J's left, but I ordered some new one, three more boxes.

of sticks. So we should be good to go. Well, when the new book's done, maybe I'll go on book tour and get through Judy Fried. That's someone Fidel's finest. So, Tim, we're mostly going to talk about contemporary intelligence and things, controversies in the intelligence community. But there is one thing that keeps coming up in the press every, maybe every three years or so.

It seems like it becomes an issue again. And I just want to query you about it, since you've written this you know, extensive history of the CIA is the JFK assassination. And there continues to be a conversation around what is the CIA still keeping secret to this day? What are these files that are still classified? Was Lee Harvey Oswald, the CIA asset? Was he a KGBB asset? Maybe. What was going on there? So, I mean, I'd like to hear your take. This is the black hole of American history. Yes. okay we're never going to know but first you have to frame the question here you go where do our lighter and our ashtray go i leave you guys to your own devices for 10 minutes

now we have the jet lighters up here yeah right there okay so uh in case anyone out there is forgotten lee harvey oswald was the united states marine trained as a marksman uh and uh he In Mexico. No, not in Mexico. He defected the Soviet Union. Mexico was the last time he had contact with the Soviets, the Soviet embassy in Mexico City shortly before the assassination. So he defacts. That didn't happen a lot during the Cold War. he winds up in Minsk

marries a Russian and then he redefacts comes back home and he's agitating after the Bay of Pigs he's agitating in New Orleans with a fair play for Cuba committee

like hands off Cuba, right? Well, you know, the FBI had a passing interest in the guy. CIA had a file on them, obviously, is a Marine who had defected to Russia. But the FBI lost track of them. Total incompetence. Jay Edgar Hoover, after the assassination,

in-house condemned the FBI's performance here. It's disgraceful. Of course, the American people didn't know that because Hoover and Alan Dulles, the former director of Center of Intelligence, were on the Warren Commission. So the disgraceful, conduct of the FBI and losing track of Oswald.

That never became public. So here's a guy who had lived in the Soviet Union, who was agitating for Vidal, and he gets a $17 mail order rifle, and he goes up to the Texas school book depository on the president's motorcade route in Dallas, and he gets off a million to one shot. there's never been any evidence, no matter what, you might have heard, that there was a second gunman. That's all bullshit. But Oswald, prior to the assassination, had gone down to the Soviet embassy in Mexico City, trying to re-defect.

Interesting. And, of course, the CIA had the Soviet embassy in Mexico. Mexico City wired, the Interior Minister of Mexico and the Director of Central Intelligence were always asshole buddies. In fact, it was a tradition back then on New Year's Day that the Director of Central Intelligence would fly down to Mexico City on New Year's Day and have a comida, a long luncheon with the President of Mexico and the Interior Minister who was at the CIA, they had the secret police, the chief motherfucker that was in charge of everything.

The Mukabur. And it was traditional that the Interior Minister of Mexico would succeed the president. So Oswald is sort of hammering on the door of the Soviet embassy in Mexico City like six weeks before the assassination. And the guy he eventually gets to talk to as it develops is a KGB officer who had had responsibility for wet affairs. Okay. Okay. Up to this point, we have a pattern of conspiracy.

One thing I've learned after nearly 40 years in this business is that you should never attribute to conspiracy, what you can reliably chalk up to stupidity or accident. Conspiracy is really hard, man. It comes from the Latin, conspire, to breathe together. Conspiracy is hard. So that is the pattern of facts. Those are all known facts. And then the motherfucker goes up and close the president's head off. Conspiracy?

And then Jack Ruby silences the shooter forever. That's a separate story. So I once had the chance to put this question to Richard Helms, who had run the clandestine service of the Central Intelligence Agency. and served as the director of Central Intelligence from 1966 until 1973. And I said, what do you think? I mean, he was there. Right.

He was in the building. The director at the time was a guy named John McCone, who had been the undersec of the Air Force under Eisenhower, was a millionaire shipbuilder, Republican, and a reverent Catholic. And he knew Bobby Kennedy really well. And Bobby lived in Hickory Hill just like maybe a quarter of a mile

from CIA headquarters out in Langley. And when the president was shot, McCone, the director of Central Intelligence, rushed over to Hickory Hill to try and comfort Bobby. And Bobby turned to McCone. They were really devout Catholics. They went to the same church together.

And as Bobby said, in an oral history, a few months later, he said, I made him swear to me in a way in which he could not lie to me based on their faith, that the CI had nothing to do with this. And McCone so swore. And Bobby believed him. So 25 years later, in the late 1980s, I was talking to Richard Helms. I said, what do you think? I mean, he lived through all this. Did he act alone? or is part of conspiracy? And Helm said, I'm paraphrasing, but the conversation is in legacy of ashes.

He said, well, we came to a fork in the road. Either Oswald got off a million to one shot and had to the loan. Or the intelligence services of the Soviet Union and or Cuba inspired to decapitate the government of the United States. And he said, we'll never know. So those theories just persisted inside the building. That's all we got at this point.

That's all we got. And I mean, I happen to believe that Oswald Act below. And the documents that the CIA still has not be classified. There's nothing. I guarantee you that this, there will be no revelation. But based on your reporting, or maybe what you know through sources, do you have any inkling of maybe why those documents

are still considered sensitive? I mean, do they involve, like, intelligence operations in Cuba? There's something that we don't want to... I'm sure they involve the many and sundry attempts by the CIA to kill Fidel Castro. Or they involve the intelligence service of an ally, and that ally has equities... Right, right.

And doesn't want them revealed. Even all these years later, it's amazing. I've got a book review coming out on the cover of the Sunday book review two days from now. Okay. Which is about a book called The Declassification Engine. And it's about the absolutely mind-boggling cluster fuck of classification in this country. you all have dealt with classified missions and classified events

okay the system has completely broken down there are laws and presidential orders that govern the declassification of the history of this country of the documents of the CIA and the Pentagon and the State Department

they have been abrogated by the insistence of primarily the CIA and the Pentagon and nothing really should ever be declassified if they say so. And this has created a profound crisis for people like me who write histories like that. Right. Right. That book is entirely on the record and is based on declassified documents and interviews entirely.

Okay. Well, you know, 50 years from now. So someone wants to write a book like that, they're not going to be able to unless something changes. Because of the overclassification. Because of the over classification of everything and the civil disobedience of the government in observing the laws on declassification. Yeah, FOIA, in my experience, is next to useless unless you're willing to sue the government, unless you have a lawyer or you are a lawyer. I mean, you really need a lawsuit to force those documents out. Well, if anybody gets the New York Times out there, read this book review in the Sunday, New York Times.

It'll curl your hair. I bet. Yeah. So on that note, I wanted to move into this other subject. We've talked on this show before with Milt Bearden and others about this theory of the fourth man that there was a fourth spy in CIA. Well, you better say who the first three are. Okay, so Ames, Hanson, and who's the third that I'm missing? Okay, let's rewind this.

Sure. Okay. So I was covering the CIA for the New York Times back in the 90s. And one great day in the morning, it was back on President's Day. February 21st, I believe, of 1994. The FBI arrested Aldrich Ames. Aldrich Ames had worked. He was a CIA officer.

He was the son of a CIA officer. He had worked back in the mid-80s as the branch chief of counterintelligence in the Soviet division of the clandestine service. And in that job, he had access to the true names of the roughly dozen KGB and Soviet bloc officers. The third one was the guy who's an alcoholic and was read on to all the

Soviet embassy programs but then quit before he actually deployed. Yeah, you're Edward Lee Howard. Thank you. So before that, thank you very much. In 1983, a young drunk named Edward Lee Howard had been trained to go to Moscow, defected, went to Moscow. And the story of how he alluded the FBI is a tragedy of errors. Cluster fuck? Is the word you're looking for? That would be an appropriate word. So that was 83. Howard, trained by the CIA to go to Moscow,

defects to Moscow. 85, Alder James, sells out the identities of near, nearly every one of the Soviet and Soviet bloc intelligence officers who were working for the United States, for the CIA or the FBI or both. Ames is not detected for nine years. When he is arrested and it is revealed what a complete... There were a warning signs. Warning signs. Yeah. This guy was...

was this guy, he did everything, but walked through the corridors of the Central Intelligence Agency with a sandwich board, a sign around his neck saying, I am the spy. But the agency knew it was penetrated. Yes. Because all these recruited agents, these were the crown jewels, roughly a dozen people.

11, 12, it's a little shady on the 12th one. who had been recruited over the course of two decades, and were the only soda straws through which the CIA and the United States could try and understand the intentions and the capabilities of Soviet intelligence and the Soviet military and the Politbuhr. One by one by one in 85 and 86,

these guys blink out. They're gone. They're dead. and the CIA knows this but they cannot believe it's one of them it must have been a tap it must have been a bug

it must have been a penetration of their classified communication systems it couldn't have been one of us inconceivable that it could be one of us Ames tells the KGB that this is what the CIA is thinking and they're like great

We're going to tell them it was a penetration of their classified communication switchboard out in Warrington, Virginia, right? And then they send dangles. Right. Okay. They send guys who say, donors, America, I want to work for you. I know many secrets. Okay. And they start feeding disinformation into the CIA to mystify and misleading surprise, not only the counterintelligence.

investigation. But everything about the Soviet Union, these guys are controlled agents of Moscow, and they're the only CIA sources in the late 1990s. Sorry, the late 1980s.

We had no idea what was going on because we were being fed a ton of crap by these controlled agents. And this crap winds up in 95 top secret reports with the blue slashes. on him. It's like, this is the good shit.

They go to the White House and the Pentagon during Bush 41 and Clinton administrations. So, okay, now it's 94. Ames is arrested. The shame and humiliation of the fact that,

A, what this guy had done, B, that they didn't get him, is profound. So then, a guy named Rich Haver, who was a very skillful, telecrat, intelligence bureaucrat, who worked for tenant and had worked for Dick Cheney in the Pentagon, he leads the damage assessment report. And is this the beginning of where they start to realize that these three spies could not have done it alone, that there must have been another guy.

Now, there are only two guys at this point. But now they think some of the people we lost, some of the Soviet Russia agents, we lost, Ames didn't have access to it to those guys so there must be a third man so now the FBI has sort of taken over the counterintelligence operations

of the CIA like the conquerors of a sacked Louis Free was the head of the FBI back then you ever run into Louis Free I haven't met him you know who he was yeah this guy's an asshole I had a lot of truck

with Louis Free so the FBI driven by free and driven by the counterintelligence agents who had now essentially eaten the CI's lunch, are convinced that there's a third guy and it's in the CIA. Well, they ransacked the place. Okay, there was like yellow crime tape all over the CIA at this point. And they ruined, ruined the careers. of more than one

top CIA officers in the Russia House of CIA. Brian Kelly was the guy they really destroyed. He was one of their top officers. With suspicions that they were compromised?

You're it, motherfucker. Yeah. Okay? You go stand in the corner and he wasn't the only guy they destroyed. So at this point, the agency's kind of eating itself a lot. The FBI is eating the CIA alive. This is throughout the late 90s.

And then the CIA, led by Paul Redmond, who was their chief of counterintelligence and helped catch Ames, says, no, motherfucker, you're wrong. On, I can't remember the date. In February 2001, the FBI arrests one of its own. Robert Hansen, who has been sponsored. off and on for Moscow for 22 fucking years and has sold

the crown jewels of American intelligence. Hansen was a weirdo. It was also a, you know, a computer techie in an FBI that didn't know a computer from a chainsaw. So with his computer expertise, he hacked into everything that the counterintelligence branches of FBI had. His tradecraft with the Russians was very good.

They never knew his name. He was an Opus Day Catholic. I think he had seven kids, and he took a lot of the money in, like, the diamonds that the KGB was, and the SVR was giving him, and gave it to a stripper that he was really involved. Like, really in love with. And so, okay, Hansen is arrested because of the CIA's counterintelligence officers.

Because now the shoes is on the foot. The FBI didn't believe it could have been one of them, just as the CIA couldn't believe that it had been one of them. So that's the third man. Ever since, this is now 22 years ago this month, there's been a cottage industry of, former CIA officers and a journalist or two who have written books, theorizing there must be a fourth man. Yeah. Just very recently, a very former, like he was out in the 90s,

CIA officer named Bob Bear, C-I veteran, a Bob Bear, B-A-E-R, whom I had some truck with back in the 90s. and he made quite a reputation for himself inventing a heroic career. He was a complete fuck-up. He wrote a book about his exploits, All Invented, called Cino Eagle. It was made into a movie, a good movie, called Siriana,

back in, I think, 2009. Anyway, Bear has now written a book, positing that the fourth man was Paul Redmond, the chief of counterintelligence of the CIA in the 90s. Which is almost reminiscent of, you know, James Jesus Angleton, who kind of gutted the CIA back in the day. And some of his Eicholites believed he was the mole, fingered the head of counterintelligence in the agency.

All right. Falsely, I should just point out. So let me just say in brief before we go deep down the rabbit hole here, that this is bullshit. Bear's book is bullshit. Paul Redmond has very effectively refuted it in an online article of a very reputable

intelligence journal. And this is nonsense. But let's go back a minute. What is counterintelligence? I mean, there's many different manners of it, right? But you're trying to stop the enemy from stealing your secrets. Counterintelligence is broadly defined

as the business of catching spies, enemy spies. protecting your own service from penetration and protecting your government from being misled, deceived, mystified surprise by the political warfare and information operations of unfriendly governments. Okay. It is a business where investigations can go on for many years and decades without any resolution. it requires deep patience an ability to accept defeat a deep understanding

of the past which are rare qualities and a certain amount of paranoia too like that it's a good quality to have in that kind of field Richard Helms, who I've mentioned before, who was the director of central intelligence under Johnson and Nixon, before he died in 2002, he was the gray eminence of American intelligence. And every CI director after him came to him for advice and counsel. And the principal advice that he gave to them is never go home, never go to sleep, without worrying where they're the mole is.

We had a James Olson on. He is one of the greatest practitioners. Yeah. And, you know, and he talks about how it will just burn you out because you start seeing compromises everywhere. You start suspecting everything. And, you know, and you have to have that, I imagine, in order to be good of the job, but also you can't live your life that way.

This problem has been with us since before the end of World War II. Soviet espionage in the United States began the moment that President Franklin D. Roosevelt recognized the Soviet Union in 1933 and allowed them to open embassies and consulates in the United States. and by the end of World War II, 12 years later, the Soviets, Soviet spies and their American agents had penetrated not only the Manhattan Project to build the atomic bomb, but the State Department, the Justice Department, the Treasury Department, and the Congress.

There was a United States congressman from the Lower East Side here in New York, name, the unfortunate name is Samuel Dixstein. And Dixstein, whose KGB code name was crook, walked into the Soviet embassy in Washington and said, yo, you know, what can I do for you? And they said, well, Congressman, we would very much like you to make propaganda against fascism, which was rampant in the United States and 30s,

and support, you know, loyal Soviet anti-Fathe. Russiaists in hearings. Dixstein was on the committee that was the precursor to the House on American Activities Committee. Okay. So for three years before the start of World War II, before the Hitler's Stalin Pact, excuse me, he was like he was the KGB's guy in Congress. And if you go down the Lower East Side, there's a street, a plaza called Samuel Dixon

Plaza, named after him. ever caught him. So but by the end of World War II, Hoover was kind of on to the scent of Soviet espionage in America. A Soviet spy, a code clerk in Canada had defected. And, you know, by 1950, they were aware of all the things I said. Not only the atomic spies, the Rosenbergs, but Alger Hiss at the State Department, a kind of Harry Dexter White, big official at the Treasury Department, a woman named Judith Copeland, at the just Department handling the FBI's mail and telephone calls. Before we go deeper down the rabbit hole, do you want to shout out the sponsor?

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It's for your safety. Get PIA VPN. Our next sponsor, we appreciate them, is BetterHelp. That's H-E-L-P, Better Help. Look, we have a lot of veterans on the show. We talk a lot about post-traumatic stress, but veterans aren't the only people who have you know, things that they need to get off their chest,

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Refram. Sum up. There are several ground truths that you can say about the business of counterintelligence, American counterintelligence. One, there is an actuarial certainty that as we speak, that Russian and Chinese spies are embedded in the government of the United States. the history of the last 75 years makes us a moral certainty to pour one out for counterintelligence officers at the CIA and the FBI

because if they're not catching spies they're not doing their job and if they are catching spies the public says you stupid motherfuckers why didn't you catch the spies 10 years ago right okay So if they, if counterintelligence officers drink too much or doubt the existence of a just God, okay?

You may have some sympathy for them. Yeah. Okay. Because there is no shield strong enough to guard against the sword of espionage. Especially in a society like ours. We're an open society. Yeah. We're Americans.

We're friendly. Yeah. You know? Yeah. It is easier to spy on the United States than it is to spy against the Russians and God knows the Chinese. Right. Although, I have to say, we'll end this theme on an upnote. In the last year, we have seen what I believe to be the greatest triumph of American counterintelligence.

The indictments have gone way up. Ooh. Okay. So basically, after the Russian assault on the 2016 presidential election, and after God help them, the ascendance of Donald Trump to the White House, the guys at CIA's Russia House got together. And in consideration of what the Russians had done to us, which is to rat fuck. American democracy. They said, okay, two can play this game. And they issued a call to arms. And they got a lot of the guys who had been doing counterterrorism for the last 15 years. This is 2017 now. Okay. They said, take your targeting skills, not for lethal operations, but for identifying people and turn them on the Russians, because this will not stand. proximate result of that four years later was the CI's penetration of the Kremlin and the foreign ministry of Russia

and their triumphant theft of Putin's war plans against Ukraine and his disinformation plots to create a pretext for war with fake videos of Ukrainian atrocities and so forth and so on. Well done, lads. Then, first, this all started with the expulsion of 12 Russian spies from the Russian mission to the United Nations. In the past year, and it's been just less than a year since the Russian invasion of the Ukraine, the CIA, assisted by the FBI, linked up with every Allied intelligence service in Europe and beyond. to identify Russian intelligence officers working under diplomatic cover in embassies all over the world.

And in the last year, more than 400, it's going on 500 now. Russian intelligence officers have been fingered in PNGed and expelled. That is the greatest counterintelligence operation that I know of in American history. Like, we've never hit them this hard before. Never.

not in those kind of numbers and that has had a serious impact on the ability of Russian intelligence to screw democratic countries you know westward of Russia out to Los Angeles and beyond I think we may have spoken about this a little bit

the last time you were here but has the war in Ukraine and Russian dissatisfaction with the war perhaps has that opened up a lot of doors for further penetration for walk-ins. I mean, has it created a pretty fertile ground for our intelligence gathering? Well, first of all, these PNG'd,

quote, diplomats, unquote. If they're hanging around in Oslo or Copenhagen or Berlin or Tirana, Albania, they're like, I need some fucking money. I mean,

what am I going to do here? I don't want to go back to Russia. So, safe to say the shingle has been hung out in American embassies all over the world. And they're like, Demetri, let's have a drink. These sleazy son of a bitch. And let's talk. Yeah, I would say, you know, what I'm hearing, and I don't know this for a fact, but what I'm hearing is that recruitment is good. It's been very good hunting, and that bodes very badly for Vladimir Putin in both the short and long run. So that is a triumph of American counterintelligence. It's amazing. But back to this accusation against Paul Redmond, this cottage industry, as you called it, of the theory that there was a fourth man, a fourth spy. It's horseshitman.

I read his rebuttal that he wrote in the intelligence journal the other day. And, well, first off, to accuse a person of treason, you really have to have your shit together. You have to have your facts together before you do something like that. That's about as bad a crime as there is next to, you know, murder. And what Paul was saying in the piece that he wrote was that Bob Bear wrote about meetings that he says I was in that I didn't never recall taking place that my coworkers who you say were in the room. also don't recall these meetings. I've had some experience with Bob Bear. The truth is not in him.

Not in him. Why do you think he wrote this book then? For money. Yeah. There have been not many, but some CIA veterans who leave the agency in a state of dissatisfaction or frustration. And they don't have enough evil or bile or madness in them to actually work for the other side.

Yeah, yeah. Okay. But they do want revenge. I mean, I wouldn't compare bear with Philip A.G., you know, the CIA trader who worked for the enemy for many years and died in Cuba. But he's a defector. Do you think there is any validity, though, to the theory that there may have been another spy? Not Paul, but somebody else.

Yeah. But I will tell you as a matter of moral certitude, it's not Paul Redmond. Yeah. I think that, you know, going back to James Olson's interview, talking with him, like, he thinks that there probably was. Just nobody knows who it was. They might be out. They might be dead. Like nobody knows.

Like I said, it is an actuarial cert. certainty that the national security state is penetrated by the enemy. Right. At any given time. Right. Like Helms said, never go to sleep without wondering where the mole is. The mole is there. Right.

The mole is not Paul Redden. Right. Absolutely. Yeah. How was, I mean, I have to ask. I mean, and I will reach out to him and, you know, even see if he's interested in coming on this show. But, I mean, how is Paul bearing and kind of dealing with all of this? Redmond?

Yeah. I don't know him personally. Okay. I know many people who know him and work with him. I would say with amusement. So he's taken it pretty well, then. Well, if you read the piece of road. In stride.

Yeah. With his colleagues. It is a master of, it is a masterful work of logic. Yeah, he sticks to the facts. Well, at the end of it, Bob Baer and his book are a smoking, radiating ruin. Wow. Let us leave the wilderness of mirrors that is counterintention. Go on to more pleasant subjects.

The subject that you touched on a bit about Ukraine, and I wanted to kind of query you a little bit more on that. you know that we spoke previously about the sort of unprecedented declassification that preempted his invasion. I mean, it didn't prevent the invasion, but it prevented some of his battle plans, for sure. You pointed out to me that they successfully did that, but they failed in really understanding his order of battle and how that attack would occur. I'd be interested in kind of probing the thoughts on that. Well, you know, again, just to underline this, the ability of the security of the to steal Putin's war plans and the disinformation pretexts. Predicting the future is very difficult, to be clear.

It was a triumph. Okay. On the other hand, and there's always another hand, as far as I can tell, the agency misread the ability of Ukraine to resist. a Russian onslaught. And grossly, and this is kind of astonishing to me, overestimated the strength

of the Russian army. The CIA estimate of the Russian army has been a point of contention going back to the 1950s. And the preponderance, preponderance of the evidence from declassified reports is that, for the most part,

they reported that they were 10 feet tall when they were 5 foot 9. The only person who has a contrarian view on that was milk. I'm aware of. No. Is Donald Rumsfeld. Oh, really? Rest in peace. And this is the beginning of a story that,

goes to the performance of the United States military and the CIA after 9-11. So anybody who knows Don Rumsfeld knows a little bit about his personality. A resputin-type fellow. Richard Nixon, for whom Rumsfeld worked during the Nixon administration, called him, and I quote, a ruthless little bastard. he meant it as a compliment. Okay. Henry Kissinger,

who was Nixon's National Security Advisor and Secretary of State, went a little beyond that. And Kissinger, was an expert on bath surgery, called Rumsfeld, the single most ruthless person

I have ever met in my entire life. Okay. Rumsfeld was a cunning, bureaucrat, and a cutthroat. Okay. Rumsfeld served first as President Ford's chief of staff after Nixon fell, and then as the Secretary of Defense under Ford, a position to which he returned under Bush 43. He got in right after the fall of Saigon and the defeat of the United States in the war in Vietnam.

In his position as Secretary of Defense in the mid-70s, Rumsfeld became a president of the United States. Rumsfeld became convinced as a matter of moral certitude that the CIA had somehow missed the development of the Soviet Union into a military superpower during the Vietnam War years in the 60s and 70s. He held this animus for a very long time. Very long time. So let's flash forward. It's January 2001. The Supreme Court has just a few weeks before declared George Bush and Dick Cheney, the victors in the hotly disputed presidential election of 2000.

The transition has been very foreshortened. Transitions are always perilous times. So it's now early January 2001. George Tennant, the Director of Central Intelligence, is relaxing. A rare day, relaxing at home on New Year's Day of 2001. George had been director of Central Intelligence for four years at that point. And he gets a call from his executive secretary.

And says, so Rich Haver, who had worked for Tenet, done the damage assessment on the Ames case, Haynes now working for Cheney. he's running the national security transition for the new administration. And George Chen's secretary calls him up and says, Rich Haver has been in your office. And he's measuring the drapes of Donald Rumsfeld for Donald Rumsfeld. Because Rumsfeld is going to be the next director of central intelligence.

George is like, what the fuck? Really? Donald Rumsfeld, he hates the CIA. And he did. What the hell kind of grown-ass man gives a shit about the drapes? No, when I say measuring the drapes, I mean, he's like, metaphorically. Scouting out.

Right. The very, very nice, I've been in it many times, director's office on the seventh floor of the Central Intelligence. It's a little weird. It's a really nice office. I mean, it's not like super fancy, but it looks out an unbroken vista of Woodland, of Virginia Woodland. untouched by the hand of man.

It's very, very nice. It's floor to ceiling windows. So anyway, so here we are. It's like two weeks before Bush's inauguration. And Rumsfeld's going to be the head of the CIA. It would have been an unspeakable problem. He hated the CIA. In the event, Adéos X Machina descended.

Okay. To convince Bush 43, the president-elect, that this would be a really bad idea. It was Bush 41. Dad. He said, no, son, don't fucking do that. That's a really bad idea. Bush 41 loved George Tenet.

Tenet had renamed CIA headquarters, the George Bush Center for Intelligence. In 1999, did do this in a manipulated way. Bush 41 had been the director of central intelligence under Ford. Right. All right. And Ronsfeld and Cheney, Ronsfeld was Secretary of Defense, he had been Ford's chief of staff.

Cheney succeeded him as Ford's chief of staff. Ford had to run for election in his own right in 76. and so there were rivals. Rundsfeld wanted to be the vice president. There were political rivals, and one of them was George H.W. Bush. So he said, let's fuck this guy. Let's make him director of Central Intelligence. This was during the church committee hearings,

and the CIA's reputation was Moe, like underwater. Because all the stories about, you know, the assassination plots and the coups. Heart attack guns. you know, dosing, unsuspecting American guinea pigs with LSD and God had won it was like that. I mean, you know, had come tumbling out of the closet. This is all true, dude.

Yeah. All right, okay, let's fuck George H.W. Bush, our potential rival. We'll make him director of Central Intelligence. And George, actually, George H.W. Bush wrote in his diary, it's like, they're going to bury me over here.

That's the end of my political career. But George loved the... He loved it. He loved it. He loved it. He loved it. games. He loved it and they loved him. Yeah. George H.W. Bush loved the CIA. It was like skull and bones with a

billion dollar budget. Yeah. This is great. Yeah. I don't love it here. But you're right. It was at a time when... And then, Jimmy Carter wins. Right? And Carter on the campaign trail in the wake of the church committee hearings about the coups and the assassination plots and what have you

had called the CI a national disgrace. Quote, unquote. All right, so like George George H.W. Bush goes out to Plain Georgia, right, to plead for his job. And Jimmy Carter says, no. Not you. And I interviewed Carter about this

a long time ago. And he said, isn't that a great story? He said, if I had done that, if I had reappointed, if I had reappointed George Bush, He never would have been president of the United States, which is true. Yeah. And neither would his son have become president of the United States. Because he wouldn't have had the WASTA from his father's administration.

Well, and Carter was not a, I mean, not just because of like the church commissions, but Carter believed, you can correct me if I'm wrong, please. But my understanding is Carter believed that he was sold by the NSA. He believed that tech was the future of Svian. It's a whole different thing. Forget about Stan Turner. Okay. Okay. Jimmy Carter signed more covert action orders than Nixon and Ford combined.

Really? That's right. I once talked to Bob Gates about this. Bob Gates was, of course, Director of Central Intelligence and later Secretary of Defense. Bob Gates said that Jimmy Carter was the only president since Truman, who used the CIA to fuck the Soviet Union. And that's a fact. I think it's worth pointing out as well that Carter also began the process of setting up special operations command during his administration because of Eagle Claw. But he did something even more important that, in my opinion, was a central element in the collapse of the Soviet Union.

We're getting kind of heavy into foreign policy here. Is that okay? Yeah. We love deep. All right. So Jimmy Carter had a national security advisor named Jivignis Bershinsky. Yeah, Zibig. Brishen, yep. Who was Polish.

And as a Polish patriot, hated the fucking Soviet Union with a passion, a deep burning passion. And so the CIA was in terrible condition after the fall of Vietnam, after the church committee hearings. I mean, it was in Pissons. poor shape. Carter at Brzezinski's urging mobilized the CIA to penetrate the Soviet Union with books and information and printing presses and the tools of a free press. And then they turned to Poland where Przinski had a special interest and the CIA had a very important spy in Rizsaint, there was a labor movement in Poland that preceded solidarity and they started funding it, financing it.

It was not just a labor trade. It was an underground resistance army with the cover of a trade union before solidarity. And the AFL-CIO, AFL-CIA, you called them in your book. The AFL-CIA is pumping money into this. And this grew into a fairly, important covert operation.

Have you read this one, Tim? That's the one. This is a good book if you guys find it. From Warsaw with love. The groundwork that Carter and Brzeinski laid grew into a covert operation under Reagan called QR. That was the

crypt for Poland. Helpful. Helpful. And what helpful did building on what Carter and Brzezinski and the CI had laid was to pump the tools of a free press into Poland underground to keep solidarity alive at a time when martial law had been declared in solidarity had been driven underground and its leaders jailed. First it was ink and paper and this brand new invention called the fax machine. And then it became covert radio transmitters that you could put in the trunk of

your car and drive around. And then it became covert television transmitters. And by 1985, this is just, this is documented. There was a New York Times reporter named Mike Kaufman who saw this happen in Warsaw. So this is 1985. And this is the beginning of the end of the Soviet Union right here in Warsaw in 1985. So the 7 o'clock news is coming on in Warsaw. In Warsaw. and there's a gray man in a gray suit, right? They're saying, today the tractor production figures have come in, and they have exceeded the five-year plan. And in, you know, the coal mine production, freeze.

Over the television screen comes a superimposed banner from the CI's transmitters. It says, Solonarity lives. tune in at this frequency to your Soledary radio in a half an hour. Oooka, who go! The secret police are going all over like, where is the fucking transmitter?

They can't find it. Three years after, Soledary had not only lived but thrived and become an above-ground political party, Brezhnev, the Soviet leader, let this happen. In early 1989,

they won a not terribly fair election. shared power with the Soviet dominated government that was it they had taken what they had learned with the help

of the CIA on how to organize a free press and the freedom of information and they spread it all over Eastern Europe they were organizing strikes in the coal mines of the Soviet Union in 1989

so when the Burlington Wall finally came down at the end of 1989. Didn't come to that down of its own accord. Right. The force that brought it down started in Poland, and that force had a small but significant element that had come from the covert operations that Carter had begun and the Reagan administration.

Plus us cock blocking them in Afghanistan and Angola. Different issue. But it was all anti-Soviet. This is Europe. This is what's happening in Europe. Okay. So back to Donald Rumsfeld. Okay.

Thank you for reminding me of that. So anyway, so yeah, it's like January 2001, right? And Rumsfeld's going to be the guy that takes over to CIA, except Bush 41 says, no, don't do that. And George Tenet gets to stay on. He has like George and his covert operations chief. Jim Pavett, of whom more later. Did you ever know Pavett? Yeah.

You know who he is. Pavett ran the clandestine service from 99 until 2004. It was not widely loved. Anyway, so George Shannon and Jim Pavett, his clandestine service chief, have like a job interview with Bush and Cheney at Blair House. which is the president's guest house across the street from the White House. The date is January 11th, 2001. And so they've got an hour.

It's like, let's figure out what's happening. I'm sorry. I got you. They've got an hour. It's like, let's convince him that we got this. So they only have an hour. So what are they going to talk about, right? This is the Director of Central Intelligence and the Chief of the Clan Service,

talking with Bush and Cheney. Bush doesn't know fuck all, okay, with all due respect. About anything, he doesn't even know why he's president going to become president, okay? You know how much time George W. Bush had spent overseas before he became president? he'd been on several trips to Mexico in his drunken waster no in his drunken wastrel day God only knows what happened

okay he'd been to Israel once and then his longest trip overseas had been when his father was the American envoy in Beijing he was 29 back in 1975 and he spent the entire time, you know, like trying to get laid by Chinese women and failing. Damn. He didn't actually, like, become a man until he was 40.

And he sobered up. Okay, that was 1986. All right. So we're in Blair House, George Tenet, Jim Pavitt, Chief of the Clan as a Service. They're like, we're going to tell them what's up. Here are our priorities. Priority one is not al-Qaeda. That's not Iraq.

Rat was not on their radar. Priority one is we've got an amazing operation going on. And I think Jim Lawler talked about this operation to you, right? Yeah, the AQCon network. Right. So since that's already in your library, it's like, we got this operation going on where we are going to take down the world's biggest nuclear proliferator.

Okay. How are we going to do it? Did Jim tell you about how he did it? No. He didn't go, not in detail. All right, I'm going to tell you how he did it. All right. All right, just for background. Okay. So for the better part of 30 years, a Pakistani engineer slash scientist named Abdul Khadir Khan

has been gathering covertly the technology, the equipment, the hardware, the methodologies, how to build a nuclear bomb. And in 1999, after the Indians tested their bomb, an event the CIA missed, the Pakistanis test their bomb. Okay, this was a very dangerous moment. countries that hate each other. They both have nuclear weapons. And they've already gone to war three times. This is a bad shit. Something worse happened. Khan had been an importer. After the successful test, he flipped the switch and became an exporter. Nuclear technologies. And North Korea. North Korea. He was working with Libya. Shady characters.

Shady characters. Starting it in 96, Jim Lawler and someone else. In the agency that he worked with. A woman who is a very good person who I know very well. Said, how are we going to do this? How are we going to stop AQCon? This is a great story. Do you mind if I go into it?

I want to hear an exacting detail. Jim Lawler didn't tell you about how. he ran the AQCon take down operation? No. He really didn't take credit. He, like in the broadest sense. Yeah, I think he's very humble about it. No, he's just not allowed to talk about it.

That could be too. All right, let me think about this. Well, they can't stop you, Tim. Well, let me think about this, though. I'm not going to put words in his mouth. Sure. Or break a conference. Okay.

So, did you ever see the movie called The Sting? Mm-hmm. I don't think I have. No, really? Yeah, Paul Newman wrote. All right. What is this thing about? It's a con.

It is a con to, yeah. How does this thing work? Basically, I haven't seen it in a few years, but they set up like a sports book in a way, and they report in that the whole thing? But it's two con men, a senior and a junior, and they set up a con. and convince the people that are running the scene against that something is happening real time, but it's actually on delay, right?

Am I right? Nope. Okay. Okay, let's go back. Okay. Here's a little bit of intelligence history that's extremely useful that will help explain the AQA take-down operation, which is one of the greatest achievements of the CIA in the 21st century.

And Jim Lawler and his partner who must go nameless, a woman, did it all. They did it all. And the cool thing was, just a precursor, after tenant tells Bush about this and wins his job back,

you know, he got re-uped. He was on probation, right? Why don't you come by the CIA? I'll introduce you to Jim Long. Right? And your audience must remember Jim Long. Yeah, of course. He's, he's, look, get a Texas guy.

Just talks like George Bush. He's got the big Texas plane. So Tenet introduces the president of the United States to Jim Lawler. He didn't tell you this story? No. Okay. He said, this is Jim Lawler. He's running the AQCon takedown operation, which was still three years away from fruition.

And, you know, Bush. loves you know this Texas twang and he's got his White House counsel Alberta Gonzalez well then we also as Texas twang so they're they're talking texts and and the president of United States says tell me about this operation you got going here and Lawler said to him I'm paraphrasing mr. president with the technology we have collected the CIA could today become its own nuclear state because they confiscated so much fizzile material that they could build the bomb.

They didn't confiscate it. They had become part of the AQCon network. And I'm not revealing any secret. So they co-opted the network. Here's how it worked. Okay. So officers like many officers, including Jim Lawler, went to lectures.

at the CIA in the 1990s from people who had been doing intelligence works like since the Korean War. Okay. So one great day in the morning, around 1996, an FBI guy that I met him, I interviewed him, I interviewed him, named Dave Major shows up. Yeah. Ever heard Dave? Yeah, yeah. Dave had run operations against the Soviets for many, many, many years. Is he in this book?

I can't remember. I feel like his name. So Dave Major is schooling CI officers about sort of the history of intelligence in the same way that I try to do in legacy of ashes. Because we don't know our own history, do we? I mean, we're the United States of amnesia. So Dave starts schooling all these CI officers, not kids, like people in their 30s and 40s and 50s, about the greatest intelligence operation that the Soviets ever ran. It was 100 years ago in the early days of the Soviet Union just after the Bolshevik revolution. And it was run by Felix Dersinsky.

Is that a name that Not offhand? Dershensky founded the Cheka. The Cheka was the first Soviet intelligence organization, the precursor of the KGB. Putin is a Czechist. He has re-established

Cheka Day, December 20th, as a national holiday in Russia. He has rehabilitated Felix Dersinski. After Dersinski's statue, which stood 20 or 30 feet in front of KGB headquarters and Moscow was toppled when the Soviet Union fell.

Felix Dershinsky is a very important figure in modern-day Russian intelligence history. He's the hero. Felix Dersinski said, in the name of the Czechos of the Soviet intelligence, we work in the name of terror. Jesus Christ. Putin is a Czechist.

Okay, going back. Dave Major, this is like 96, 1996, is schooling the CIA about Dersinski's most brilliant intelligence operations. So it's 100 years ago the Bolshevik revolution has just happened. And there are hundreds and about thousands of Russian emigres who don't want to be part of the Bolshevik revolution. and they have fled throughout Europe and also the British Intelligence Service in the name of Sidney Riley, Ace of Spies, a famous historical figure,

are saying, how can we like fuck the Bolshevik revolution? How can we be counter-revolutionaries? Dersinski conceives an operation. Right, right. The operation is known as the trust.

Right. He makes a fake revolutionary organization. The trust sets up a fake counter-revolutionary network in the nations of Europe. It says, come, Tovary, come to our organization, we will help fuck Stalin and Lenin. Come, join us. They join. Not only the counter-revolutionaries of Russia, but important British spies. like Sidney Riley, Ace of Spice.

They come like maws to the flame. They are captured and they are killed. So anyway, Jim Lawler, a member of the Special Activities Unit of the Counter-Proliferation Division of the clandescent service of the Central Intelligence Agency. Jim is kind of a scary guy.

He's not the type of person I would want coming after me, like at all. Anyway, Jim says, well shit down if the Russians can do that why can't we so Jim

and his right hand woman so I can't sure I won't you have to wait for the book sure they

they mimic the front and they set up a number of businesses in Europe and in Dubai. Dubai being the ultimate free trade port. There are no rules. And they capture the AQCon network piece by piece by piece until they own them.

And what do they do once they own the network? They take it down. That's amazing. You take down the entire enterprise all at once. When I finish the book, in a year or two we will have you on but this is a great story

I mean it's amazing yeah people read that book legacy of ashes right and they said man fuck you a Seattle several not everybody but a few

CIA officers said this is like reading a history of aviation this is about plane crashes I may have had a few people lay on me fucked Tim Weiner yeah it may have happened

it is conceivable It is not outside the realm of reason. But you know what? Intelligence is a human endeavor. Sure. And as such, it is prone to failure. And if you read this book, if you get to the end of it, through this long veil of tears,

you will see at the end of it, it's like, we have to get this right. That's what I wrote. We need to do this better because basically the Republic depends on it. And I want, and I'm sure your audience, we want them to succeed. Okay. We want the FBI and the CIA to fuck the Russians in the eardrum. And the Chinese.

Well, now the Chinese, that's going to, that's hard. Yeah. You want to talk about the Chinese? Well, no, not yet. I do. I do, but not yet. And now, let's sell something. But we can still, no, we can still talk about the Russians because even now, like, we have mechanical, right?

Oh, God. Right? Oh, my God. Like, it's still going on. And the person who he was affiliated with is an oligarch, but. Derry Pascar. Right. But if they're an oligal.

And the oligarch in Russia, they're not just like free-willing doing their own thing, probably. I mean, I don't know. You tell me. Can you restate the question? Well, yeah, tell us what you know and what you think about Meconical. The McGonical case. Okay. For the benefit of your many and sundry, weirdo listeners. We have many.

And viewers. And host. Okay. So a couple of weeks ago, the guy. who had been the chief of FBI counterintelligence in New York. And when we're talking about the FBI in New York, it's not like a couple of dudes sitting around. It's a huge, huge endeavor.

It's like 1,200 people. Yeah. There was a time in the late 90s when the FBI in New York had more agents than the clandestine service of the CIA had officers serving at headquarters and overseas. It was about 1,200 FBI agents in New York and a thousand, give or take, members of the clandestine service of CIA at headquarters and overseas. The numbers have changed in the last 25 years, but holy shit.

Okay. So anyway, this guy McGonnell, he's the chief of counterintelligence at the FBI in New York. and he's been indicted by the Justice Department for playing fiddlestiffuck with a Russian oligart name Oleg Derepaska who is Vladimir Putin's asshole buddy and that's just one indictment and there's a second indictment at a D.C.

where he is, let me try and put this pithily, acting while he's in the FBI as a lobbyist for an Albanian politician. Now, for those of your listeners who can't find Albanian in the map, it is the most unfortunate nation of Europe that is still in a post-Soviet in gravity. They're becoming pretty tight with us, though, in the last few years. Would you want to be tight with us? or with Vladimir.

I would want to be tight with us. Anyhow, so here's, here's, like, the main man of the FBI. And he's not just that. He's also the guy as it develops. And this is, this is thanks to the work of several extremely talented journalists. He's also the guy who tried or did he to help the CIA figure out why. every single one of its recruited agents in China was arrested,

tortured, and murdered 10 years ago. This is the counterintelligence story of all time. Do you know about this? I mean, I've read what came out in the last week, but... Oh, ooh, oh. I mean, they've said it was because they've breached firewall, right? Because they...

Bullshit. You think that's a cover for... a human compromise that took place. All right, let's back up. China. Or as the former president of the United States would say, China. China.

China. So it dawned on the United States and the Central Intelligence Agency, you know, around like the turn of the century, that we needed to get a grip on what the Chinese Ministry of State Security was. As far as I know, CIA and the State Department, forget about the FBI. They don't speak Chinese, are working on the question of what is the Chinese Ministry of State Security. It is their FBI and CIA and then some. It is probably 400,000 officers strong. it has 16 divisions of which

to the best of my knowledge I may be wrong the CI knows what eight or nine of them actually are it is as Churchill said about the Soviet Union an enigma wrapped in a puzzle rather shrouded in a mystery we don't fucking know

so around the turn of this century after the Chinese had been caught running kind of influence operations, political influence operations against the Clinton White House. This was a big Michigas back then. It was like, okay, let's like get a grip on this. I mean, they are running huge political influence operations against the United States. They are running unbelievably numerous attempts to steal our shit, like our military technology.

Well, they successfully do it. Yeah, they did. Like all of our tech is China. Military technology, you know, scientific technology. And at the time, this is now going back 20 years, turn the century. So the FBI had one great source about Chinese intelligence. Her name was Katrina Leone. She was a very sort of prominent figure in the Chinese expat community in San Francisco.

She was like the FBI's best source. It's like, we got this shit. This is really... She was a dangle? Dangel! Double. Katrina Leung had been the FBI's best source on Chinese intelligence like 1990. In 2003, it developed at A.

She was working for a patient. Two, she was sleeping with her handler. It was like the FBI sack in Sanford's school. Was he the sack? I can't remember. Anyway, he was like a big wheel. in the FBI. Like, this is my source.

I'm fucking her, you know, on alternate Saturdays. Sounds kind of suss to me. And three, she was also sleeping with another FBI agent who, if I remember this correctly, correct me if I'm wrong, Internet,

had some jurisdiction over the nuclear laboratories at Livermore in Los Alamos. What could go wrong? Don't get me started on the Bureau. Yeah. There's another book out there

that you wrote about. No, I mean. Anyway, so suffice it to say, 20 years ago, we were at a disadvantage. So, CIA, quite rightly, and

and Jim Pavett, his covert operations chief, back then, said, we're going to get China. We got this. And over the next, let's say, let's see, yeah, I mean, the first decade of the 21st century, CIA did something really smart. What is you have had some truck with the CIA, am I correct?

It is said that you are not unfamiliar with the Central Intelligence Agency, and you are acquainted. Well, through your interviews, let's say that. What is the single most powerful weapon that the CIA has ever had in its covert operations overseas? The single most powerful weapon throughout history. If I were to take a stab at that, I'd say we can offer people American citizenship and a nice account in escrow. Come on. Well, we don't do honey pots. No!

So, go ahead and tell us. It's all about the Franklin's. The money. Well, I said... Frick-wrapped packages. That's how it works. Yeah. Money and... Yeah.

Money and medical care. Money, money, money, money, money, money. We got that. We're the USA. Printing press goes burr. You could weigh the flag to a recruit. You can talk about the corruption decay of his country. You can appeal to his moral sensibilities.

I'll take that C note off your hands there. Tim, thank you. I think you want to put that on the camera. Hold it out. I think you want to put that on camera. No, the Benjamin. The Benjamin. Okay.

That's American Foreign Posse. Right there, dude. And that is what... It's a nice bookmark I find. That is what the CIA uses. You know, every chance it gets. How do you think we've got influence in Afghanistan? Dudes flew in.

You know, you know something about the operations. Okay. You know, it's not like America is a wonderful country. It's like, here's a fucking cardboard box with $3 million of $100 bills in it. Now, do what? what we say. That's us. That's America. Well, we are a wonderful country. But I feel you. No, I know what you're saying. Like, white picket fence, big backyard, inground,

swimming pool. Well, no, it's a money. Yeah. Yeah. So Tim, you're saying that the agency reoriented its machinery towards China. Right. So how are we? Can I have my money back by the way? Yeah. The money's right there in the book. Thank you. And this is proof that Tim is not with the CIA. If he were, I'd be getting paid. We'd be getting paid. That's right.

So the CIA in the early odds says we need to penetrate the Chinese Politburo and their foreign ministry. And if we can, the ministry of state security, how can we do this? The way you get promoted insofar as any American knows, okay, we see this. all through a glass darkly. The way you get promoted in the Chinese Ministry of State Security

the Foreign Ministry is to pay promotion fees bribes to get promoted. So again, this is a story, this is a thinly sourced story.

but insofar as I know. You see, I said, okay, that's how they roll. Let's roll. Yeah. Let's sidle up to the princelings of China and flash a Halliburton suitcase with shrink-wrap hundred-dollar bills in it and say, dude,

here's what I, this is an actual phrase in, Mandarin I should need a megu a pangyo I'm your American friend here's your promotion fee let's talk

so by circa 2010 through this method but I'm pretty sure not only through this method but certainly through that method the CIA had recruited

somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 maybe more young, up-and-coming members who would or could ascend to prominent positions in the Chinese Politburo, the Ministry of State Security, and the foreign ministry. Good job, dudes. I mean, that's what we do. That's how we roll.

And, you know, CIA officers in China mostly, as far as I know, work out of the embassy in Beijing and the consulates in Shanghai and elsewhere. Not all of them are Chinese, obviously. So working there is very hard. And you are in constant persistence, 24-7-365 surveillance. So getting out and doing shit. We've talked to Holden Triplett about that, who was not covert at all. It was an above board liaison job, but he was like, I was being followed.

They are on you, like, if I may use this expression, white on rice. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Whereas here in the United States, like, they're in our academics. They're, you know, like Fang Fang, they're with our. Don't even. Yeah.

There's no way to. Okay. Let's say you. Let's take a look at you. Want to work doing that job. Right. Recruiting. a Chinese princeling.

Oh, I'm all about the honeypot right here. We shall close the curtain. Close the kimono. Don't open that kimono. Anyway, so by around 2010, they've got the numbers vary. They're vague. Right.

Let's say 20, give or take. Recruits, like Chinese, foreign, recruited agents who are at various levels of ascendance, see who can tell them what the fuck is going on. Who could provide not just tactical intelligence about what's going to

happen the day after Tuesday, but strategic intelligence. Like what are the intentions and not just the capabilities? And the story that came out was that we were communicating with them via some sort of software that was compromised.

I don't think we'll ever know exactly what happened, but the fact that they were all rolled up. Arrested, tortured, and executed. And one by one by one, this is what happened with the CIA's agents. In Moscow. In the 80s and 90s,

this question of what happened, extrasensory perception of what's going on in China. What are their capabilities? What are their intentions? I mean, I have a theory. Would you like to hear it? Sure.

Thought you might. We're what? Are we seriously? Yeah, 140. You want to suspend? No, keep going. You want to take five? No, I think we're good.

We're going to have to change, we're going to have to... It's, uh, I got 27. It should be going. Is that up or down? 29. That's up. Should be good right now. Yeah. It should be all right. Keep going.

Where were we? Uh, you were talking about... about your theory about China. All right. So you know how many closed circuit television cameras there are in China? Millions, I can. Take a wild guess.

20 million? 400 million. Jesus Christ. So the Chinese have established a total surveillance state. And my theory, and I need to test this for my reporting, for the book I'm writing, My theory, and maybe the balloon, factors in this, my theory is that the Chinese want to project their total surveillance state into the United States.

Well, they want to project it all over the world. That's their world view. Let's talk about it. But they're kind of already succeeding because we have people in Congress that will not vote against inhibiting. Let's not even talk about political influence. No, but what I'm saying is a lot of our. law enforcement uses Chinese drones that

can send that data back. Really? Yes. That is so clueless. And our government will not knock that off. Let's not even talk about TikTok. Right. Okay. That's a whole other subject. Let's talk

about how China, this is my theory. It is not a proven theory. It's just what I'm thinking about. China wants total information dominance over the United States. They want a God's eye view of the United States, not just from a military perspective. They want to map the human terrain. Yes.

Look, I don't think this is a theory. I think this is simply China's worldview. It's their modern day blending of communism. and the way they want to create a Panopticon state that harmonizes entire populations into one. Let's take one particular incident that happened, gosh, now eight, nine years ago and extrapolate from it. In 2014, the Chinese Ministry of State Security hacked into the United States Office of Personnel, Oh, we know we were both included in those briefs. Yeah, we got letters about it.

Did you? Tell. Well, me, Dave, and every other person who ever held the security clearance got a letter from the United States government saying, oh, sorry, all your shit got hacked. Yeah. But here's some little, like, identity theft insurance.

Now, what got hacked, the OPM, the hack? It was our SF 86s, which for anybody who doesn't know, an SIF 86, Slow up. Hold up. The SF 86s of at least two million members of the American intelligence community. Military intelligence, yes.

Were hacked. What is an FSF86? What is it? Like, what is it? Like, it's a... It's more than that. It's a form you fill out with every detail of your life that they collect in order. to do a security determination to see if you qualify for a clearance. Everything about your family, all the places you've traveled overseas, every place you've lived, every foreign person you've ever been friends with, like everything that you've ever done that they would need in order to say whether you can have a secret, top secret clearance.

In addition, was information like passport information? Everything, yeah. Biometric information? Not in my case. I don't get bio-matrics. Now, I don't think... Fingerprints? Probably.

Not as part as an SF-86. The military has our fingerprints and biometrics. Right. I don't know if they got that. I don't know if that was in OPM or not. Okay, so they took all this shit. Right. Right?

Mm-hmm. Then they cross-indexed it. With who's overseas and who's doing what? With all the biometric data from every international airport in the world, which they have to know. Cross indexing it. And you know, audience, if you go through an airport today,

they take your eyeball, don't they? Fingerprints, at least, yeah. Take your eyeball. They cross indexed that with the theft from the Office of Personal Management. And they developed by 2016, 2017, a database of everybody in the American Intelligence community.

So, Jack, congratulations. You're the new station chief in Awagadou. Good luck, lad. Jack goes off to Awagahulu. He lands, gets to the airport.

He's a new station chief. Before he leaves the airport, a Chinese counterintelligence officer is bumping up against him and saying, fuck you, motherfucker. I know who you are. Get the fuck out of here. Or words to that effect.

You've heard stories about them being under harassing surveillance, like immediately like that? Uh-huh. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, from a targeting perspective, just in terms of targeting people for intelligence recruitment or whatever the case may be, this hack puts them into a totally different stratosphere than where they were before. I mean, if you have worked for the military or the intelligence community, there are certain euphemisms one uses for serious and tractable problems. And one is domain awareness or information.

Well, what's the current? Well, it was that that, that was the American thing that came out after 9-11, total information awareness that pointexter was a part of. That was, that was, that was, that was, but that was surveillance of Americans by American. Right, right. Okay. I need another drink for this conversation. section. Thank you, Dave.

Okay, total information awareness. Right. Let's take that. And let's like, pour one out for John Poindexter.

It's one of the most evil motherfuckers. I ran a contra figure. Ever rose through the military to political power. Okay, total information awareness.

Great. You're the American military. Let's spend like. And this was Rumsfeld's plan. Okay. Let's get back to Donald.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Rumsfeld, once he got to the Pentagon, after being denied the CIA, went back to the Pentagon for a second tour as Secretary of Defense. And he was like, let's do, after 9-11. when the floodgates were opened for money.

Let's do total information dominance. Let's set up because this was his vision. Robot Army, this is not a figure of speech. But it partially came into effect with drone warfare. And let's develop a God's eye view where every soldier, every commander, will have total information awareness, total dominion over the field of battle.

Well, that vision may be partially realized by the American military and the American intelligence community. I submit to you that the Chinese are way ahead of us. I was told that the Chinese have hundreds of thousands of people working on open source intelligence. And this is a few years back, but I was told the number of CIA people we have working on open source intelligence in China,

you could count on your fingers. That may have changed in recent years. Well, Jack, you raise a fundamental question. And people in the audience who've worked in the military, who've worked in intelligence, are probably familiar with this. Information.

Okay. Intelligence is like a billion dollar word for information, right? Mm-hmm. Yeah. Okay. And what crushed the CIA in its ability to absorb, collect, analyze, process, and report information was the Internet. Mm-hmm. Okay.

Let's go back 25 years. 30 years. I remember when I was a reporter at the New York Times and the Washington Bureau in 1995. And, you know, despite my youth, I'm very old school. Okay, like when I came up as a reporter, I wrote my stories on high-backed underword typewriters on triplicators. carbons, which were then edited with blue grease pencil

and set in hot lead type. And I know I'm saying... Yeah, I'm like, what the fuck? This sounds like the London of Charles Dickens, right? But here I am. It was the best. Yeah. Right. I mean, I'd been a reporter for a couple

years when a guy came in with this thing. It looked like an ironing board, and it was a fax machine. Anyway, my point, and I have one, is that open source information, the Internet fucking destroyed the ability of CIA and everybody else to analyze what the fuck is going on. How do you process all that information? It's like trying to get a drink of water out of the fire hose. We collect, we, the United States, collect, not just through the CIA, through the NSA, through all our intelligence services. We collect a shit ton of information, but we can't process it or analyze it or figure out what it means.

And this has been a problem all my life. Okay. How do you get the drink of water out of the fire? hose. Right. This has, next week I'm going to do an interview for my next book with the woman who's the chief of the intelligence director, the intelligence analytic director to the CIA. And, you know, one of the things I want to ask her is, how do you get the drink of water out of the fire hose?

Right. How, you know, she's got a thousand PhDs. working for her in any, you know, regard that you can imagine. But how do you recruit people to do that job? Right. Okay. How do you do that? Okay, we need, let's take China.

We need like 100 brilliant people who are fluent in, not just in Mandarin. Okay, but in Chinese dialects like Mandarin, Cantonese, forget about the NSA, which is like sucking up daily terabytes of information of the ether from China. Let's talk about like your Jack, congratulations. You are the new China analyst. It might be a heavy lift. Yeah. Okay. At CIA, you're fluent

in Mandarin and Cantonese. here's a fucking gigabyte of shit we have collected figure it out you need AI to even process it we can collect right right you know this

yeah from your work from not from a technical standpoint from the ground I mean talk about that no you're right that we can collect but the challenge is now even with even if you're only collecting

Let's say, legit information, right? Legit information. And you're sorting through that legit information to find the pearls. Now every government knows how to do misinformation and put out three, four times as much information to make sure that nobody really knows what's legitimate and what's not. That great political philosopher, Steve Bannon, described his and Trump's philosophy.

Flooding the zone with shit. Flood the zone with shit. Now, if I'm like Demetri, the head of disinformation in the Kremlin, I know I have a receptive audience in America because we, you know, don't get me started on this, but I will, if you wish.

It's not an intelligence issue. but it is a political issue. Let's back up. The CIA is not this like renegade organization off in the woods of Langley doing shit, you know, of its own free will and volition. The CIA is an instrument of American foreign policy. It is exquisitely sensitive

to the direction of the president of the United States. if the President of the United States to wit George W. Bush to wit Donald Trump knows everything he knows about the CIA from movies

or novels the President of the United States will not be an adept conductor of American and foreign policy through the instrument of the CIA the CIA executes American foreign policy.

If American foreign policy is directionless or incoherent, the CIA is a ship in irons, there's no wind in its sails. And throughout the 21st century, the CIA

has maneuvered through a very stormy sea with shifting winds from the president of the United States. And this is really the theme that we need to talk about. Well, I wanted you to finish the story about Don Rumsfeld

and NetCentric Warfare before then we can jump into some viewer questions that people have for you. Okay. That was really fucking profound, wasn't it? It was. Thank you. But let me get it. Before we go back to Rumsfeld, because you're on that topic. So are you saying that people like Obama and Trump and people who don't have that

deep experience with the Intel community should not become present. Dude, this is America. Anybody can grow up to be president. Okay. The problem is they have this instrument, the CIA. There have been like, okay, the only president that, no, two presidents, knew what the CIA was and what it could do for them. One was Dwight David Eisenhower, who as,

a five-star general who had commanded the D-Day invasion, knew something about intelligence, and its use in warfare. And the other was George H.W. Bush, who had been director of the Central Intelligence Agency. And I would argue that the George, sorry, the Bush 41 administration from 1989 to 1992,

masterfully handled the end of the Cold War, A, because Bush had been CIA director, Brent Scowcroft had been his National Security Advisor, had been in the business since, like, the 50s, Colin Powell was there, and Bob Gates was the CIA director, and Bob Gates had been in the CIA since, 66. That was the last time that there was like an orchestra.

Okay. With sheet music. That everybody knew the sheet music and the conductor was conducting and everybody was in tune. And that was 30 plus years ago. Netcentric warfare. Oh yeah. Okay. Wait. Okay. Total diversion. So Don comes in. Don fucking Rumsfeld. Rasputin thinks the future is robotic warfare and technology. One of the several

reasons that the United States lost Iraq. Who won the Iraq war? I mean, I think the theme you're going for here is Iran, that they flooded some of the areas of Iraq with... Yeah, Iran won the war

in Iraq. The battle for influence. Pakistan. The fucking Taliban won the war. Didn't they? Yeah. Okay.

The United States and all its majesty has lost the two great military wars of the 21st century in Iraq and Afghanistan. Do I hear dissent on this point? No. Why?

Okay. First of all, I am I'm intensely aware of who your audience is, what they know, so I want to address them. Our history is a litany of tactical success and strategic failure. I think that a lot of people would agree with you.

I agree with you. For the lay people, what is the difference between strategy and tactics? So tactics are the ground level. as the individual operations that happen on the ground. We kick ass, our soldiers kick ass, our Marines, airmen, they kick ass.

Strategic, our politicians, our generals, can't get their shit together and figure out what it takes or even means to win a war. Where do you think the weakness, the weak link is between tactics and strategy? Let's talk about presidential direction, military operations,

and intelligence support, for those operations. Well, I would say the first thing is you have to have a plan, right? You have to know what victory means. How do we know? Let's make a mental note of that. How do we know when we've won? How do we know when we've won?

Like in Japan and Germany, we knew we won when they surrendered. How do you make people in Pakistan that are flowing across the border? How do you make them surrender? Like, you have to know when you won a war. and then the intelligence the intelligence apparatus collects intelligence to help you win that war, and then the

tactical part of that is how do we gain this ground, but if nobody knows how to define a victory, then how do you ever win a war? How do you collect effective intelligence if you don't know, if the intelligence suggests this is the next person we want to kill? We're Americans. we believe that we can project power throughout the world

and bend people to our will, not just through force, but because of the power of our... Our manifest destiny? Our destiny, because of the eagle and the flag. Parenthesis. After 9-11, not long after 9-11, there was an intense debate within the White House, the Bush White House, about whether we should change the seal of the United States to change the face of the eagle

away from the college branch. Towards the arrows? Toward the arrow. This was a really intense debate. Jesus. You never heard that? No, I haven't. It reminds me of, you know, Scott Mien's play.

He's a special forces officer made this play called Blast Out. And there's a line in the play that really sticks with me where he says special forces, their motto was de oppressor liber, which was to free the oppressed. But post 9-11, it became to punish the guilty. And that touches on a cultural thing, something that's cultural to these units. So the history of, let's just take the 21st century. the history of American military force in the 21st century is a history of tactical success and strategic failure. Is that fair?

Yeah. Yeah. You said you're like Korea, Vietnam. No, but let's just take the 21st century. Why? The projection of power, of American power, depends on a coherent, foreign policy, which has to be formed by the president, the Secretary of the State, the Secretary of Defense, and the National Security Advisor.

Those are the four statutory members of the National Security Council. All of this, all of this failure flows from the first Bush 43 administration. All of it. All of our failures in Iraq. All of our failures in Afghanistan. And the, let's not gain, say, the successes of the war on terror. I mean, we have, we, they have eradicated al-Qaeda. They have suppressed ISIS.

We'll get back to that, the war on terror aspect. Let's talk about war. Nation building and this. No, just. The war in Afghanistan and Iraq, we get into Iraq. I mean, I assume your audience includes war fighters. Many. Who's serving in Iraq.

Is that right? Iraq and Afghanistan, yeah. Let's go to Iraq. The vision of the president was that we were going to make Iraq safe for democracy. The vision of the Secretary of Defense was that we were. We were going to go in light. The CIA told them after their fuck up on the weapons of mass destruction, which, parenthetically, it didn't matter what the CIA said about weapons of mass destruction.

They were going to do it anyway. Yeah, decision had been made. Colin Powell did an oral history interview, which I've just read or said they were going to fuck Iraq from day one when Bush got into power. Way before 9-11. and interviews I've done for my book note that the National Security Council agenda from like March 2001 onward always had Gulf Affairs on the agenda

and Gulf Affairs was let's fuck Iraq so they know they're going into Iraq and the whole controversy over the CIA's unbelievably false assessment of Iraq's possession of weapons to mass destruction, which has been well-governed. Who cared in the Bush administration? It didn't matter if the assessment said they had them or didn't have them. They were going in.

So they go in, and Rumsfeld says, we're going in light. Because I have this transcendental vision of what the war, what warfare in the 21st century is. So they get in and literally by like August or September, three or four months, everything is going to shit. And, you know, I've interviewed and read oral history interviews with kind of everybody has been in here.

Everything was going to shit. They wouldn't listen. The intelligence assessments from CIA was like, this is going to shit. They were like, no, it's not. Yeah. The State Department was like, this is really bad. And Bush and Cheney were like, we got this.

Yeah, the narrative was it's not a civil war. It's not a civil war. It's not a civil war. Literally, Bush, George W. Bush, who had the foggiest fucking idea, per Colin Powell, of why he was president before 9-11. after 9-11 believed that God

had ordained him to run a crusade his words the president's words was he really that religious yes his words he said it was a crusade and your audience may or may not know

that the crusade of Christendom against Islam has certain implications in history It means jihad, but a Christian jihad. Bush believed, and here's where we get back to, tactical success and strategic failure. The strategy of the Bush administration was that Christ had ordained the president

to create democracies in all the nations of Islam. Iraq, Iran. throughout the axis of evil, and that God Almighty was directing him in this crusade. This is not a figure of speech, dude. There were military officers, General Boykin. You want to talk to me about General Boykin, who was a very prominent person at the Pentagon doing intelligence in 03, 0404 or 5?

Talk to us about General Boykin. Oh, I don't know how much. I just know he wasn't. He just wasn't awesome. Jerry, Jerry was the commander of Special Forces Command and did some time at the agency also. But, I mean, he wasn't a particular,

I mean, he went high in the special ops community. No, he was like. But he wasn't like. No, he was huge at the Pentagon. Huge? In 03-04. Yes, sir. General Jerry Boykin.

had presided over Desert Storm Fail Grenada Fail Commanding officer At Mogadishu He wasn't the commanding officer

He was second in command He was the colonel who led the raid He was the deputy In a military battle at Mogadish in which Here are the numbers Like A dozen or more American military officers and 70-something were killed and wounded, respectively,

the worst military battle since Vietnam. He led that raid. Then he gets appointed to be the head of the Special Activities Division at CIA, and then he gets a top job in 03 running like military intelligence operations at the Pentagon. these are the people these were the true believers in the idea that this was post 9-11 a crusade that God had ordained the United States to overthrow the nations of Islam yeah it's a it's a controversial thesis and I know other authors have posited this view before and I'm not a not allergic to it but I also wonder how

much influence they had overall in the United States government and how these policies were formed. Policy was formed. We're just talking about the first Bush administration. Right, right, right. Which, in my opinion, laid the groundwork for the strategic failures in Iraq and Afghanistan. It was ideology and not strategy. Yes. Well, that was what new conservativeism was, was the injection of ideology into foreign policy. Yeah. Which obviously didn't work. So in Iraq, nothing went right until 2006, right?

Well, the invasion went right militarily. Sure. Bremer went in. Bremer fucked a lot of that. Tactical success for three months. Right. Right. And then Bremer comes in and says, we're going to disband the Iraq.

Right. The whole, the Iraqi army. Right. All of that was a disaster. Yeah. Absolutely. The whole debathification of Iraq was, was, and that was strategy of her, right?

You know, it was what? Strategy. Yeah, well, or lack thereof, yeah. Or as George W.S. would say, strategy. Strategery. Yeah. What's, let's get into some viewer questions before we run out of time here.

I mean, I'm really looking forward to reading this book that you're working on. I'm looking forward to writing it. Yeah. Where would you say you're at in the research process right now? I would say look for it in early 2025. Okay, okay. What's the working title? Help me.

titles are either really easy or really hard legacy of ashes that comes from Eisenhower that was something Eisenhower said so if you're quoting Dwight Eisenhower your right flank is protected am I right? I mean that's a great title I like Ike

yeah but this one I don't know it's also the president of Columbia so it was yeah working title viewers what do we got for Tim uh Paul Janick thank you very much I wish my friends were this enlightened after a few drinks John Ramsey

thank you very much this is one of the best channels on YouTube about the military thanks John we appreciate that Love Star thank you very much with the rise of overclassification and other transparency failures do you think we are experienced experiencing hyper normalization

with agency conduct. Agency means CIA? I assume so, yeah. Well, great question. CIA is impervious to FOIA at this point. I have been dealing with this issue since the 19-breaking 80s. The crisis here is that

we have laws and presidential directives about the declassification of the history of American foreign policy in the State Department, in the CIA, and the Pentagon. It's in ruins. The laws, the presidential policies, the presidential orders have been ignored. And the consequence of this is that we won't know our own history. I mean, in the declassification of documents, this book that I wrote, Legacy of Ashes depended heavily on declassified documents from the 60s and 70s and 80s. There are no declassified documents coming out now. 15 years after the publication of that book, the 80s and the 90s are Terra Incognita.

They won't be declassified for years or decades. There are documents that I'd like to see about intelligence, the history of intelligence, from the 1950s, they're still being held, withheld. What we're seeing is because of the enforcement of secrecy by the Pentagon and the CIA and to some extent the State Department is the end of history. We won't know our history going back to the Reagan administration. because it will never be declassified. And that is a disaster.

Because if we don't know our past, we will fuck up again. Now, do you, out of curiosity, though, because we do know more about the CIA and their activities now. Like, we know more about the CIA activities during Afghanistan than they did this far after Vietnam. Do you, I mean, do you feel... Afghanistan was over in 1989.

The reason I know about CIA and Afghanistan is that I fucking went there as a reporter in the 1980s repeatedly, and I talked to the people who did that. The CIA hasn't declassified jack shit about Afghanistan. So, you know, reporters are the last line of defense against. against the realm of government secrecy. I'm not to talk about leakers. Right. Okay. I think Julian Assange is a fucking Russian spy.

Okay. Do you have any argument? No, I don't have a counter argument. Okay. I'm not a fan. Do I need to underscore that? Okay. When I talk about leaking, I'm talking about reporting.

Uh-huh. Okay. Reporters work assiduously to find out what is going on. And the government officials and intelligence officials who talk to them, that is all based on trust. Just as every intelligence operation, everything that goes on in the CIA, is all based on trust, right? If you don't trust one another, you're dead.

And this is true in the field, does it not, In the ground branch, if you don't trust one another, you're dead. Okay. Reporters dealing with secret government agencies, I will speak for myself. Okay. I've been doing this since 1986. Okay. We talk to one another.

Reporters and spies are not that different. Okay. I was a foreign correspondent for 40 fucking. years you parachute down into Canada or Afghanistan or you know Mogadishu or Nicaragua or where's right

and you're like take me to your leader they're like oh you're a reporter okay here's my leader over here okay spies do the same thing we get each other okay the problem is that intelligence bureaucrats

and telecrats hate the idea that we, the reporters, might actually understand them. Okay, it's like this is my domain. This is my world. You don't get to understand that because that would diminish my power.

Oh, try being a former special forces soldier that covers special forces as a reporter. That's an interesting experience right there, Tim. Do you understand what I'm saying? All right, next question. KJM, thank you very much. Loving the book, Tim. Ion, what do you make of Charles McGoggin?

Is this new insider threat, the grifter threat? I think we talked about that one. Yeah, something like the beginning of accomplice. Yeah, we talked about that. Let's go on the next one. And, yeah, thanks, K Jam. And also, this is K Jam. Thanks.

Tim, the chat wants to know we're the best place to buy your book so we can maximize your cut and not Jeff Bezos. Well, that book. I mean, legacy. Any of your books? Do you have a website where people can buy your books where they... They don't have a website. It's just like, I'm sorry, Amazon rules at this point. They do rule.

They got it by the balls. They rule like... I've written six books. Yeah. They're all under my name. Like King George. Amazon has me by the balls. Yeah.

They rule like King George. But like if... There's a link in the description. Yeah. If you want to read Legacy Vashes, God bless you. When... When it was published a while back, a friend of mine said, this is the feel-bad book of the summer.

Next question for 10. HK-14-16, thank you very much. Goal! Yeah, thanks to HK-416. Wiz-Wiz, thank you very much. Do you want to talk about the Havana syndrome? They want to know if you can talk a little bit about that. Sure.

Vana syndrome. as I'm sure your audience knows. Important CIA officers and State Department diplomats were struck down. Going back, geez, six years now. Back to the 90s. Well, okay. I mean, as far as I know, have been struck down for years. Thank you for that.

The only person I know who has been struck down is an officer who I'm sure you know and your audience knows. We've had him on the show. Mark Polymeropoulos, who is now the second most famous Greek in the history of the CIA after George Tenet. Great guy, Mason guy. So I've talked to Mark about this in some detail. There is no question in my mind that a hostile intelligence service could be the Cubans, doubt that probably the Russians, used microwaves probably don't know, as a force to wound CIA officers and state department officers. Just because Vladimir Putin wants to fuck us, Vladimir Putin certainly directed these operations.

Nobody in the American government, going back 20 years, was ever dealt with him, has ever evaluated him as other than a KGB officer. Putin has directed murders, poisonings, assassinations throughout Europe and evidently throughout the Western hemisphere, there isn't any question in my mind that these are attacks directed by Putin against Americans. None. And so what these microwaves or whatever they are, directed energy weapons theoretically have done, is when you say wounded, they've created instances where they have like disness, nausea, cognitive issues, like a lot of neurological and a lot of psychological, like after effects. I've been working on this issue lately on this subject, and there's a lot I should probably not say as of yet, but I'll say this much.

Yes, it is a microwave weapon. This is like a story, it's a rabbit hole, but it's where I have to say the space aliens are real. Like, yes, this is a weapon, and there are people being hit. And within all of the cases of people who are having problems, maybe not. not all of them have been hit with a weapon. Maybe they're experiencing other, like, traumatic brain injuries from other places in life. But it's real. It's very real.

Agreed. And the government is sort of like the Gulf War Syndrome and Agent Orange and everything else like that, where the government really tried to deny it for a long time. You know, this is, this gets into the way the government of the United States deals with, problems. Yeah. Yeah. It doesn't understand. It's not like a conspiracy to suppress

the fact. It's like you can't imagine how lame bureaucracies are. Yeah. It's one of those things where you could just like rip the

Band-Aid off in one go and fix it. But instead they drag it out for years and years and years. Anybody who has tried to file a health insurance claim in any way, shape, or form might

understand this. Right. Questions? I think that is it for our viewer questions. Can we have you on Patreon now? We might have some Patreon questions. Do you want to ask them, Dee? I saw one that wanted to ask your take on the balloon warfare currently happening in the skies over America.

Yeah. So, to the best of my knowledge, the balloon, the famous balloon, the Chinese surveillance, Chinese Ministry of State Security balloon, which wanted to take a look at, like, Guam and Pearl Harbor at Hawaii. The current Scott, And the wind, again, this goes back to our theme. Conspiracy is hard.

Stupidity is easy. And it's just like a stupid thing. And the American reaction is like shooting down space trash. That's the cause of how many tens of millions of dollars? Right? And by the way, like American war planes? Not so great. It's like, it's not like the Cuban Missile Crisis, okay?

It's just a fuck up. As so many incidences of American military intelligence history, it's a fuck-up. But it does, you know, it might raise Americans' awareness the fact that... We're being watched. The Chinese do want to create total information dominance over America,

but the fucking balloon was, you know, just like a lame. Yeah. Just a lame fuck up. We have one more question that just came in. Thank you very much, AK416. Are you aware of CIA Operation Zipper? The plan to assassinate JFK for high treason.

there were two shooters CIA marks Charles Nicoletti and James Files James fired the first shot from the grassy knolle Okay my response to that might be one or two words Horse okay Dee you got anything for us? Yeah, we have one okay Does Tim believe the demystification of the CIA over the past decades is a trend that will continue in the future? Is it a good thing or a bad? thing for the agency and its public perspective. That's a great question.

The question was, is demystification of the CIA a good thing or a bad thing for, I guess, the nation, the CIA in the world? That's a great question. Okay. So one of the many problems, the, you know, infinite. number of problems that the CI has faced over the years is that presidents have no freaking idea what the CIA is and what it does now let's go through you know the lineage Truman Harry Truman set up the CIA but he really didn't have

any visibility into it Dwight Eisenhower really understood intelligence because he, after all, had run the D-Day invasion. John Kennedy got fucked because as soon as he got into office, the Bay of Pigs invasion happened, and that undermined him. Lyndon Johnson used the CIA to help him win the war in Vietnam. and that didn't work out too well. Richard Nixon hated! Hated!

and mistrusted the CIA. Ford, you know, inherited... They were the deep state. Exactly. Ford inherited the destruction of the CIA during the church committee and the revelations of its sins. Jimmy Carter was the first president.

Very counterintuitive. Jimmy Carter was the first president who sort of organized the CIA to actually fuck the Soviet Union in the asshole. And we talked about that earlier. Ronald Reagan put the wily and deceptive Bill Casey in charge of the CIA and told him to destroy communism. Certain problems ensued. Casey ran a, not only did he run a secret war in Central America, using CIA officers to fight communism. Fine, fuck communism.

But when Congress outlawed financing for his secret war in America, he decided to sell America. American weapons to the Iranian Revolution Guard and then skim the profits and then give them to his counter-revolutionaries in Central America. And that didn't work out at all. That became the Iran-Contra conspiracy. Okay. Do you think the CIA's antics in the 1950s through the 70s Air America, Barry Pigs, the 73 Chalank, who M.K. Ultra were actually a net positive. for America's security.

Boy, that's a big question. Excellent question. Okay. Run that by me again? Can you read that back to me? Sure. Because that's a huge question. Do you think the CIA's antics in the 1950s through the 70s, Air America,

Bay of Pigs, the 73 Chilean coup, were actually a net positive for American security? What you say? NK Ultra also, yeah. Yeah. All right. So the question is, the huge revelations.

Right. Like if you separated, if you separated the morality from it, right? Okay. So let's organize this. So in December of 1974, Seymour Hirsch, then a reporter for the New York Times,

published a story that the headline was, Huge CIA operation to spy on Americans, anti-war Americans, revealed. And Hirsch had gone to the director of Central Intelligence, Bill Colby, run it by him, and Colby couldn't deny it. So the CIA has and never has had police powers to spy on Americans. You want to spy on Americans? Call the FBI.

Right. right unfortunately jade or humber just died but yeah i mean that's their job you want to spy on americans see i can't do that they're foreign intelligence organization so si hirsch's story saying the c i had spied on anti-war americans who were opposed to the war in vietnam in in December of 1974, right after Richard Nixon fell, that was a seismic event. Millions of Americans in the wake of the Nixon administration, he did their government. I mean, I'm so old that I remember every day of the Nixon administration, and he was, you know, not a good guy. So when that story came out, President Ford, who had succeeded President Nixon, his vice president,

you know, called in Henry Kissinger, the senator of estate, Bill Colby, the head of CIA, and said, the fuck are we going to do about this? What are we going to do? I mean, what else is going to come out? and Colby told the president, well, what's going to come out is that the assassination plots. And Ford said, this is true. I mean, Ford said, the what? The head of the CIA said, well, Mr. President, I mean, presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy, you know,

launched assassination plots against Fidel Castro of Cuba, Patrice Lumumba of the Congo and Raphael Trujillo of the Dominican Republic and Ford said, oh fuck Oh my God That's going to come out Then what happened

Was okay so there's a big crisis And so Ford And Dick Chady Of course who was his chief of staff and Don Rumsfeld were all there on Smitty Ann Kissinger and the new head of the CIA

George H.W. Bush because Kobe was fired. It was like, what the fuck are we going to do about this? So Ford now has the presence of the United States now has guilty knowledge. Carnal knowledge.

Guilty knowledge about the assassination plots, the coups, because Bill Colby, the head of the CIA, he has told him this is what's going to come out. I mean, if they ever get into this. This is a great story. So Ford knows. Jerry Ford, the president of the United States,

the accidental president. He has a meeting with a guy really knew who, the head of the New York Times, back then. and the New York Times editors are having a meeting with Ford and he was like, well, I mean, if this actually happens, if there is a disclosure,

meaning if the church committee of the Senate is formed, well, it would blacken the reputations of every president since Truman. And of course, the New York Times editors think, like what? Yeah, what are you talking about?

And Ford, God bless him. Jerry Ford. Anybody remember Jerry Ford? No. Yeah, I do. I was born in 83, guys. Okay. Jerry Ford, like the accidental president of the United States.

Yes, very much so. Right. Like a football player from Michigan. Nice guy. Not the president. Not, not, yeah. So, you know, the reporters from the New Times and the editors saying, like what?

Like, what do they? tell you. And Ford says, like assassination, happening. I mean, this is like actually happening in the White House. The president is telling the reporters like, assassination. They're like, what?

The report is saying, and then Ford says, that's off the record. Fucking idiot. This is like word for word. The president is like, oh, yeah, the The other presidents wanted to kill Fidel Castro. That's off the record.

And the report is like, is it actually off the record? Holy fuck. What is you with this? Long story short. The CIA, okay, the assassinations. Yeah, the coups. The assassinations back in the day. This is before 9-11.

After 9-11, the CIA has been assassinations. sending people right left and center with presidential authorization. They've been killing people all over the world with drone strikes. That's a whole other issue that we need to address here in the team house. Political assassination on the authority of the president of the United States. Back then, in the 20th century, the CIA had been authorized by presidents to kill Castro, Patrice Lumumba, the president, the duly elected leader of the Congo,

and Raphael Trujell in the Dominican Republic. Not for want of presidents wanting to kill them, they never killed anybody. Since 9-11, we should do this like another two. hours. Yeah, yeah. Since 9-11, the CIA with presidential authority has conducted political assassinations against hundreds of targets. Well, we're talking about terrorism at that point. It's not really, it's not the heads of state. Are we? Which heads of state have we taken out? What is the difference? Okay.

What is the difference if you are assassinating people? This is a subtle but important question. Yeah, there was a prohibition against political assassination, heads of state. After 9-11, the CIA had never assassinated anybody, head of state, or otherwise, before 9-11. The CIA never killed anybody before 9-11. After 9-11, the president says, kill. You're the CIA. Kill people.

Political or not? What is the legal and fuck morals? Morals are not the issue. On what theory does the president instruct the CIA to kill people? Well, are you talking about drone strikes? Are you talking about? Because the CIA did kill people in Vietnam, you know, you had the Phoenix program, but I mean, look, I don't care if it's...

No, they didn't in the Phoenix program. Well, I wasn't talking about the Phoenix program because, you know, we've had people on the Phoenix program who said that it was more of a political... I'm not talking about the Phoenix program, but I'm talking about... The president of the United States is instructing the CIA to kill people. Well, we're talking about non-state actors like Al-Qaeda that are, you know, launching external operations. Right, is that political?

Before 9-11. Everything is political. I mean, yeah. But are they a political leader? Dude, before 9-11. Didn't build... After, after... After the embassy bombings in Africa.

Yeah. In 1998. George Tennant is the head of CIA. It's like, let's kill the motherfucker. It would have been so much easier in capturing him. I mean, didn't Clinton sign a finding for Slobodan Milosevic? No, not a lethal finding. Where regime changed?

There were no lethal findings in the Clinton administration. None, not a one. So, tenant, the head of the CIA, goes to the President of the United States and says, you know, and Clinton is doing this whole Talas Abbeka. like who will rid me of this troublesome priest. Right. And the series, like, give, give me the fucking gun. Give me the order to kill him after the embassy bombings.

There was never any legal, there was never any order, no legal order to kill Osama bin Laden. And the implement, I mean, Janet Reno, who is the Attorney General under Clinton, literally told George Tenet that the head of CIA, if you people kill him without a specific order from the president to kill him, a finding, your people would be indicted for murder. You can't indict someone for murder overseas. Your people are literally going to be liable for murder. I don't...

You doubt me. Under American law. Under American law, under American law. The Attorney General of the United States told the director of central intelligence if your people kill Osama bin Laden without a specific presidential finding... Yeah. theoretically. No, not theoretically.

No, Janet Reno, it's a peach. She was only for the execution of U.S. citizens. I don't know if that's a fair characterized. So you're the CIA director. The fuck am I going to do?

The president says, who will rid me of this troublesome priest? Right. Right. Even after 9-11, I mean, I've spoken to people who didn't see a finding. And I don't want my fingerprints on an assassination order because I have

an order dating back to President Ford saying you can't do that. It was only after the expansive but politically flawed authorization of military force. After 9-11, that were like, kill them all like God sort of them out. That's what happened, right? Before that, it's like, oh, well, the lawyers say that maybe you can't. can't do that. And then after 9-11, it's like, fuck! Destroy the beasts. All right, fellas. Let's start wrapping this one up. Last question.

All right, Dee, do we have any more from Patreon? That was it. All right, guys. We will see you guys again next week. We have a guy who served the Ranger Regiment and then the CIA be on here next Friday. And until then, I hope you guys will give legacy of ashes read and some of Tim's other books, super good and so many. The sequel is coming out. It's in the works.

Yeah. Early 2025 is the word? Probably. All right. Well, we'll see all you next Friday. Tim, thanks for coming in, man. Really appreciate it. It's been a great conversation. Always our pleasure. And we'll see you.