The Team House - JSOC Spun Up For Gaza Hostage Rescue w/ Jack Murphy | EYES ON | Ep. 5

Episode Date: February 14, 2024

Introducing a new podcast called Eyes On with Andy Milburn & Jason Lyons, where we talk about geopolitics and international news.Today we talk to our dear leader Jack Murphy about some of the investigative journalism he's done over the years.Jack & Sean Naylor's substack where you can find all their articles:https://thehighside.substack.com/Check out Andy Milburn here:https://twitter.com/i/flow/login?redirect_after_login=%2Fandymilburn8https://amilburn.substack.com/Support the show here:https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse#jsoc #gazaBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

Hey guys, it's Jack. I just wanted to talk to you today about a way that you can help support the podcast if you're not already. We would really appreciate it if you guys went and reviewed us on Apple or Spotify. Those reviews really help people find the podcast and help it get recognized. And, you know, if you've been enjoying the show, we really appreciate your support. Another thing that you can do to support the channel is to become a Patreon member. So we have Patreon memberships that start at just $5 a month. And when you sign up, you get access to all of our episodes ad-free. That's the big bonus for that. I mean, we also do some Patreon bonus episodes for our subscribers. But this is the biggest and best way that you can support the Teamhouse channel and podcast if you'd like to. And we really appreciate that. So go and check us out at patreon.com slash the team house. Hello, everyone.

Welcome to another episode of Aizan. I'm Andy Milburn. Jay over to you. I'm Jason Lyons. Over to you. Dee. I'm Demetri. I'm the producer of this in the team house. And I like to welcome our dear leader, Jack Murphy, here to the show. Jack, thanks for coming.

My Unabomber Tideye today. Yeah, really showing up. We're having a snow day. We're having a snow day here in New York. So kids home from school. Just chilling at home. But thank you guys for having me on the show. Jack, I, you know, at the risk of sounding sycophantic here, of course, this is a big deal for us on eyes on to everyone.

So we're going to make the absolute most of you, all right, and not bore our listeners with my specific questions. But I'm anxious, anxious to hear what has been going on in your life. Followers of the team house will, of course, be familiar with your on the target questions. but are also aware that you have an alter life with the high side, Sean Naylor, your work as an investigated, investigated journalist, and a fan base that rivals Taylor Swift. I'm reading from your own publicity release in. So let's hear it.

Yeah, I mean, well, I mean, we've been keeping busy with the Team House interviews. As you guys know, we just interviewed a Ranger, J-Tack last night. This guy Eddie Chavez is super awesome. But I mean, yeah, super busy with that. And then you guys are a part of it now, which is the cool thing, doing eyes on. And, you know, we're really happy to have you doing this and excited to see where it goes. The other stuff I've been working on is, yeah, I have a small news outlet, small but growing with Sean Naylor, a colleague of mine, where we publish a lot of news about espionage and special operations and done a handful of stories.

I mean, the kind of criteria for the stuff we publish on there is it's got to be breaking news. It's got to be investigative. Mostly it's like long-form stuff, like between 8 to 10 to 12,000 words. Not all of it, but a lot of it is. So for a serious audience, right, not. suggesting for a moment that you ever have an audience that is not serious. But I mean, you know, the type of person who is, who wants to do a deep dive on,

on the topics that you, and recognizes, I mean, how, how critical, how fundamental they are to, you know, to kind of, the community that we've been involved in. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's, it's been a lot of fun. And, I mean, working with Sean has been great. Some of the stories we've published on there have been, you know, kind of, ideas that have kicked around in the back of my mind for 10 years. And I mean, Jason has probably heard me talk about this stuff.

It's probably tired of hearing me talk about it. Not at all. So like the CIA J.Socke Omega teams in Afghanistan, something that's been in the back of my mind for a long time. And we wrote a huge piece about that program. Can you give us a quick run now? Yes. So, I mean, it has a convoluted, complicated history of how it came together.

but, you know, the CIA was doing paramilitary operations in Afghanistan and J-Soc was doing special operations in Afghanistan in, you know, 2002. And they ended up coming together. Initially, it was because the J-Soc guys like to hang out on CIA bases where they had alcohol and it helped get them out on missions. I mean, honestly, that's that's the truth. Okay. Yeah, yeah. I think a lot of people know you're not But it was a way to, it was a way for them to get out on missions. I mean, seriously, it was a way to get them in, get themselves into the game. But that developed and was formalized into a more serious relationship that utilized JASOC assets and CIA title authorities. So meaning that the CIA could conduct covert operations in Afghanistan going out against foreign fighters, against, you know, Al-Qaeda. Um, but J-Soc had, I mean, they, they're the muscle. So they have the assaulters. They have commo guys. They have medics. They have J-TACs. They have all these air assets and medical assets that they can call in that the CIA could not call in or that or was very difficult for them to call in. Like,

they could call in ECAS like emergency close air support, but not, you know, they couldn't do what a J-TAC does. Yeah. And so that's what this fusion was. Um, there were still ground branch contractors acting as like the platoon sergeants and platoon leaders for the indage. And some of these indage forces were like 5,000 strong in some places like in Kandahar being run by 12 guys or 15 guys, right? But then J-Sach would come in and initially it was a lot of dev group guys. But as the years went on, it became a lot of Ranger regiment guys running it. And they brought in, you know, some additional, assaulters or recon guys to act as like ground force.

They weren't the ground force commander. The CIA was, but they helped with that command and control piece and that coordination element with other military assets that needed to be brought in for some of these operations. So, I mean, there were, the teams went by 10. So there's Omega 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, all the way up to 70. there's stories about a organization that was informally known as Omega 80 that was a SAS project. I don't think I even wrote about that in the article actually. But that's the thumbnail sketch of what the Omega program was.

You know what's intriguing about that, Jack, is we're so pissed poor at capturing our own lessons learned, right, institutionally. And to include in the soft community. and yet, you know, a prevailing lesson learned Afghanistan, Iraq, actually a number of cases of irregular warfare coin. And so this comes up in, oh, damn, I forget the book. There was an irregular warfare compedium. I forget the name of the author. She's going to be mad at me. That came out a couple of years ago.

He's an SF guy, doctor, I think probably you'll remember the, the name. But one thing it concludes in there is a light footprint of, you know, carefully, no surprise here, but carefully selected guys, but the key part is a light footprint. So you're not, you know, you're not taking over that, that effort, right? And it seems to me what you're talking about is exactly the sort of footprint that's going to be useful going ahead that, you know, and that easy, the way that, the easy integration, and it only happens, it happens best in J-Sov, easy integration between all of those assets, right, to include EMO. There's definitely a case to be made that Omega was a template that should have been used across

Afghanistan. Yeah. Because you had, yeah, like, you know, maybe 10 CIA employees, contractors, five, six J-Soc guys, maybe some agency support people, like some analysts and some. reports officers. But long story short, I mean, there were times where you had like 12 to 15 people running a paramilitary Indage force of, you know, 500 to 5,000, depending on the, on the location. But I think I think J-Soc is really the element that brings in all the, you know, when they

come to town, they bring all the tents, they bring all the aircraft. Like people have complained to me, we still can't run an op without deploying. half of the damn air force. But the CIA really does keep that light footprint and that at least quasi-deniable presence. I think they do that really well, much better than the military does. But in Omega was the fusion of the capabilities. It brought in the best of both worlds. And that's through the system, the formal system is, it's called D-Triple-S, I believe.

It's the defense sensitive support system. And so that's the system that allows the military to request CIA assets or the CIA to request military assets. And so that's what you saw in Omega. That's what that program really represented, I think. Yeah, I think the problem is that once you put big U.S. military in charge, things go down the tube on that kind of initiative. It was like West Morgan's book points out, I mean, you know, not that these soldiers weren't

brave but I mean the more Americans you deploy there the more targets the enemy has to shoot that's right right yeah yeah you look at where things have gone relatively well i mean Colombia and you know i mean you did not have the lead but we certainly played a key role but primarily with small teams right the philippines soft or yeah philippines same way oh given the uh the scope of or the the environment that Omega was used in. Do you see, I mean, you kind of alluded to it, do you see it being used on a scale against a enemy like China

or, you know, even in Europe if it had to be used, those kind of matchups? Yeah, well, I mean, as far as a program that's actually called Omega, I don't know, I don't think the Omega program per se has spread out to other parts of the world, right? That's like the, that would be the sensationalist story about, you know, CIA J-Socq hit squads running around the world. I don't believe that's happening. But that template and that idea, that concept has been used subsequently.

For instance, in Somalia, there's an organization called the Puntlean Strike Force that was looking for American hostages. And that very much utilized like a small footprint of CIA personnel and J-Soc personnel. and JSOC personnel, like there are actually some RRC guys and some dev group guys who were on that one. Yemen is another example where Marsoc actually trained up in a organization. They were called the Alamo Scouts, or I'm sorry, the Yukon Scouts. And the Yukon Scouts were trained up in Saudi Arabia, as I recall. And then they were inserted into Yemen to do intelligence collection. And that was a very effective program from what I know before it was shut down, which is one of the other frustrations with some of these programs is once we get them up and running and working, then someone in Congress decides to shut it down.

But then arguably, you could say that the CIA is also using this sort of a similar template in Ukraine today. And I don't know everything that SAD or ground branch is doing in Ukraine, but I know that they are very active over there. So I think, yeah, now could you use that template against like major peer actors like China? I think the answer is yes. If a war did break out with China, there were for sure. I mean, the definite special operations moved to play there is to stir up a rear guard action, to stir up a war in China's rear areas in places like Tibet and Xinjiang. and that's where maybe you would see special forces teams

or blended teams like Omega going in and working with local forces. I think, yeah, I mean, that's obviously a great point. It kind of all blends into the discussion we had last week about Ukraine and the fact that they've reconfigured their squads to 12, 16 men, half of whom are drone operators. You know, like, task all. orienting these small teams.

So, for instance, in peer-on-peer conflict, as against China, you know, the capabilities that are all important are joint fires, right, long-range precision, but joint fires and joint ISR. So you can figure your teams to support those two missions, and they become absolutely relevant more so than any infantry squad, Marine Infantry Squad, at current team. and TE. Well, I mean, imagine, you know, you've got a small, sorry, go ahead, Jen. I was just going to say, we were talking about it even towards the tail end of my own time in the

military, which is a ways back now, like almost 15 years ago, about how enablers are becoming more important than shooters. And I think that's a theme that has continued over the last 10 years. Yeah, very much. So such that you get missions and I can think of several cases where, you know, down at the team level, you have operators, and I hate using, I hate that term anyway, but operators supporting, for instance, the SIGGIN guys within that same team and muscle lay down. And yeah, so, you know, configuration going ahead, key thing would be no longer having these guys who can lug 80-pound rucksacks up and down the beach, but people who are adept at drones, a debt at, you know, at all source analysis at that level and collection.

And the operators use, you know, they focus on long range precision strike with whatever, you know, whatever system and portable system they have. So you're talking about a little bit about Gaza, Jack, before, before came in this and brought up some really fascinating stuff, I felt. Yeah. Yeah. for another article that that Sean and I worked on for the high side was about the J-Soc deployment to Gaza and how after the October 7th attack happened that we deployed a large

J-Soc task force to the island of Cyprus and the Mediterranean off the coast to stage for contingency operations largely potentially hostage rescue operations in Gaza itself. And this turned into a huge, huge deal. for J-Soc, multiple, multiple planning cells working on this problem. And I mean, it really was a problem. I mean, they were trying to figure out how to get in there, get these hostages, and get out. And getting out turned out to be the biggest hiccup. Because I mean, Gaza is essentially a fortress.

Then you're dealing with all the rubble. How do you get helicopters in there? How do you get operators in there without, you know, losing, you know, birds shot out of the sky. And, you know, the, the planning process evolved into them using everything. I mean, there were going to be helicopters flying off of aircraft carriers. There are going to be guys coming in on boats. There are going to be non-standard vehicles being used, you know, as well as military vehicles being used.

The intelligence piece on it was also incredibly difficult. We had so much drones in the air. I mean, it was insane. if I told you, you know, the number of tails or the number of orbits that were involved. You're talking over the ground. Over Gaza itself. And I mean, I almost don't believe the numbers I've heard as well. I mean, there's so many, like how do you get that many birds in the air over such a small. Yeah, I was going to say that. But you know, but you know, this is good news. This is good news. It finally, it looks as though the U.S. military is finally capable of swarming UAVs, even if it's inadvertent.

in a rush for information. They came from like two or three combatant commands because there was like Centcom, Afrocom and Yurcom all contributing to this thing. Like they were flooding everything. Can you imagine? Can you imagine setting up the ROS on that or doing the air traffic control? Yeah, deconfliction's got to be horrible. Yeah.

And, you know, I was able to talk to some folks and hear a little bit about, you know, some of the technologies that are brought to bear. We have stuff that can see through concrete to a certain depth that I won't say what depth it is, but to see through concrete, to see under the ground. It's radon, like a LiDAR? A form of it or a LiDAR, probably. There's other technologies that we gave to the Israelis to use on the ground. I was just going to mention that, the Sagan stuff that you told me about anyway.

They are pretty naughty. AI enabled SIGAN. We do, can I just say we've got a no classified information policy here on, on, these are these are, I'm not, I won't get into like any, like specifics, but this is, these are definitely highly classified systems that we've never shared with any foreign partner ever. No kidding. This is like the most cutting edge stuff we have.

And we lent it to the Israelis to enable them to collect intelligence on the ground. We also had J-Soc or I'm sorry J-TAC guys, TFO guys, other operators on the ground in Israel, not in Gaza, but in Israel helping them out. So that's sort of the gist of the story that I wrote about Gaza. But I mean, obviously the hostage rescue operations that were planned did not come to fruition. And I think there's probably a lot of frustration there for everyone involved.

Where is that that story is up on the high side? Yeah. Can you explain what the high side is real quick? Yeah, the high side. We're giving you a golden opportunity, Jack. You can pay me on the back end. The high side is a substack, which is substack is just a platform that, you know, journalists and writers can use to publish their work on.

And Sean Naylor, Sean is a been a military journalist far longer than I have since the 19, 90s. He wrote the history book about J-Soc Relentless Strike. Him and I really met, well, I mean, we had met previously, but we really got to talking at a OSS gala in D.C. a couple years back about all the stories we had on the back burner that we weren't working on. And so we decided to create our own news outlet and start publishing these stories. And so this is the stuff we've been working on, Gaza, the Omega program. We wrote a history about the commanders in extremist force, the special forces SIF teams. Right now defunct. Yeah, defunct. We wrote about the greenlight program, which was the guys

who would jump in with the backpack nukes. The SF teams did a really deep dive on that subject more so than has ever been written before. And I mean, I'll tell you right now, Sean is working on a story about a special forces and CIA legend. Jason knows who I'm talking about. This guy's a special forces hall of famer was in the agency for decades. Dude is definitely the real deal. What was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross in Vietnam,

which might be upgraded. There's an effort to have it upgraded to a Medal of Honor. And that's going to be like probably a three-part story because Sean is, you know, writing like 30, 40,000 words. about this person. So it's been a lot of fun. Looking forward to that one.

That should be published as like a book. I mean, hopefully it is at some point. I mean, if not by us, I mean, somebody else, you know, takes the ball and writes the story or makes the movie. What were the repercussions for Sean after publication of relentless strike? I mean, were there any from the DoD go after him? in any way or I don't know anything of

you'd have to ask Sean but I don't think DOD went after him I mean I can just speak to what I what I do know is I mean I do know it was controversial in in the military there were people freaking out about it Oh yeah I remember that yeah But at the same time that book is now

I've heard that when they do like in briefs for like people who are coming like onboarding into J-Soc that people will hold up that book and tell them this is the one you need to read to understand this organization. Which is ultimately the ultimate accolade, right? I mean, kind of, yeah. I mean, I think that's also the push and pull or the tug of war with all the work that Sean and I do. Sean and I do. I mean, sometimes it's begrudged.

Sometimes it's held up as, you know, exemplary journalists. And I mean, a lot of that really depends. I mean, are you talking about good things that they did or bad things that they did? Yeah. But as a journalist, you can't really play favorites. You have to write both. And I mean, but we're happy to write both sides of it, I think. And I mean, to talk about all the good things people do in the military.

It's funny. I laugh when people tell me, how come you never write about all the good things that we're doing? It's like, well, I do. The problem is you don't read them. It kind of misses the point about journalism being, you know, in an open society being the watchdog of democracy, right? And the watchdog of democracy doesn't help things by constantly throwing accolades. Yeah. And these commands don't want to acknowledge sometimes that it's a double-edged sword.

Like they want to use the press to put out like positive PR about themselves. But then they don't want to deal with the repercussions when, you know, know, hey, that guy who sexually assaulted a woman in your command and then you glossed it over, like, that's bad. You probably shouldn't do that. So yeah, there's definitely two sides to it. So, Jack, do you find that when you're writing these stories, whatever the topic is, that you get more, gain more ground with military versus Intel, CIA, DIA, whatever, and along those lines, from the lower ranks rather than the, you know, general officers, or is it just depend on what the topic is, whether they're willing to cooperate or not? Yeah, when you say gain ground,

I mean, is that what you mean, like get some traction with like people talking to me? Yes. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, people talk to you for all types of different reasons. I think that, you know, what separates a lot of my work from so much of what else is out there, is that the people I talk to primarily are not like generals or retired generals. I talked to enlisted guys because that's what I was and that's what I know. And I know those guys are the ones that have boots on the ground. And I don't think that it's important to talk to the officer side too. The last article I wrote, I interviewed two retired generals.

they were you know young officers when when I when I, as far as the events that I was interviewing them about. But I think definitely a different sort of quality comes out when you're talking to, you know, the E6, the E7, the E8. That was that's, you know, you know, I know it's a cliche, but boots on the ground. Yeah. And I think with some of the stories, sorry, some of the stories that you've written, some of the more controversial ones, it's not just.

on the ground, but it's boots in the barracks. You know, if it's like sexual assault stuff or, you know, in the case of the Marine Corps, the state of the, you know, barracks on some of these bases, these are the kids, these E3s, E4s that are living in this stuff. So why would you want to talk to an old stick. Pits, I might add. Yes. Yeah, it's, you know, it's, I always have to be careful about talking about sources,

but I'll say this and I mean, this is open. in some cases, especially when it comes like the barracks and the on-post housing stuff, some of my best sources on these topics, those types of topics, have been women, and particularly the wives. And I sometimes find that the wives have bigger balls than their husbands, that they're less trusting of the system, and they're more apt to talk to a journalist. I mean, I once, this was actually an important story that I haven't published yet, but I will.

This was a murder case. And I talked to a special forces wife about her. She was instrumental in making sure that justice was served in this particular case. And she agreed to talk to me. I met her in a coffee shop and we talked and she told me, my husband is at home right now seething because I'm here talking to you. So, I mean, sometimes it's the women who ante up, who soldier up and are willing to, you know, choose the hard right over the easy wrong.

unfortunately. And do these, I'm sorry, sorry. Just to follow up, do you, how often, more often than not, do you approach a source, vice, someone hearing you're writing this story and someone coming to you or even initially saying, hey, you need to write about this? I mean, I would say 99% of the time it's me approaching sources. Like, yes, people, people try to like cold pitch me sometimes and very rarely would I say, would say, would I say something comes out of that once in a while, once in a while.

But once in a while I might have someone come to me like, hey, Jack, I see that, you know, you're willing to run stories about this or that. You know, I was involved in this. Thought you might be interested. Once in a while that might happen. But yeah, it takes a bit more work than that usually. I've seen the cold emails because some of them come to the team house podcast about like I got a tip for you, Jack. and I'm like, holy shit.

Yeah, you can imagine some of the people that reach out. I mean, awesome people sometimes, but also, I mean, literally like schizophrenics and people who are going through some things. I mean, that happens as well. Yeah. So the same out of the week from the chaff. Yeah. It's a challenge.

Yeah. Absolutely. Man. The one recent story on the high side that, you know, I slight was, you know, the J-Soc State Department kind of, you know. clash about trying to, you know, I guess not to save, but like figure out where to bring this like Codell that was going around. They were supposed to be in Israel when October 7th happened. Are they were heading there?

No. So it was Senator Joni Ernst was in Saudi Arabia when the attack happened. And they were scheduled to visit Israel next. And then this is this was Sean Naylor's story that he published on the high side. This one was really, really had nothing to do with me. He did this one this week or within the last week. And the State Department did not want this congressional delegation going to Israel in the aftermath of this attack and security situation was pretty messed up. And that was when J.Sach stepped in and said, hey, we'll support you and we'll take you over there.

And then suddenly the State Department changed their tune and was like, oh, no, we support this. we support this. They didn't, they didn't want J-Soc to be in the lead, which I thought was interesting. And, you know, J-Soc is very good at building these relationships. Building relationships with politicians, decision makers, policy makers. There's one relationship that I know that J-Soc cultivated with, oh, yeah, I'm just going to go ahead and say it. they cultivated a relationship with Henry Kissinger before he passed on. That was much deeper, I think, than people realize. So, I mean, yeah, they're good at that.

And they successfully, you know, helped, you know, Senator Ernst get into, into Israel for that visit. Awesome. Yeah, it's interesting. What lies ahead? What do you plan? I mean, any changes in store with the team house, aside from the exciting new launch of a podcast. And of course, and of course, and we've got to answer some of the fan mail on our inbox.

So anything you can tell us about your personal life to be very welcome. Yeah, you guys are the business now. You are the news, literally and figuratively. You're the new thing that we've been working on. You know, the team house continues on. We're going to continue interviewing great people. Our next interview is with Jack Devine, who was the head of the National Clandestine Service at CIA.

Had like a 32-year career there. With the high side, I mean, the one article, the big one is what I mentioned previously, the Special Forces Hall of Famer. That's the next one. Then we have some other stories that we'll be working on. more espionage-themed stories. Oh, and then we have a piece that I've already written that I need, Sean's going to go over the draft pretty soon about Columbia.

And this is the effort to rescue our four hostages. Yeah. Or I'm sorry, three hostages that were held down in Columbia for like seven years. And so I did a lot of interviews with Special Forces guys. I interviewed one of the hostages. Who's the Greenbrae 06 who does a, who was there at the time? I don't know if he was an 06 at the time. I forget his name, good dude.

But he does, he regularly does kind of a roadshow talk of, of that particular. Oh, yes, I do know who you're talking about. He briefs the, the operation. Yeah. Yeah, his name's on the tip of my tongue. Someone, someone will call in. I mean, I have, I have a folder here on my desktop. of stuff he gave me actually.

I literally I have a PowerPoint that he from here. Somewhere here. Oh, Wilson. Yeah. Yeah. So, Colonel Greg Wilson. That's, that's him. It's another example of how shitty we are at propagating. I hate using that term, but I just did. Lessons learned, right? I mean, that was a good news story. Yeah. But it isn't something that I study at any point when I'm, in the military, I just happened to, you know, be in the audience when, when that brief was given and, you know, made a beeline for him afterwards to hear more. Those, those guys were held for like

five years and like a lot of stuff happened in that process. I mean, CIA, FBI, J-Soc, Special Forces, all, I mean, everyone got their hands in it at various times. Um, so that's probably going to be a series. that might end, I mean, that we plan to come back to and write more and more on because it's such like a long kind of epic story. So that's another one. That's another one that's on the back burner. Excellent. I got one more question for Jack.

And I don't know if he's going to be willing to talk about this. The Ukraine article, the CIA sabotage Ukraine article that got punted, not even punted, like you got fucked over, in my opinion anyway. And you wrote a little blurb about it at that bottom of your article and stuff about what went down. You know, would you be open to talking about that a little bit more? I mean, I published it. I ran it. So, I mean, I'm certainly open to talk about it.

And so, yeah, I wrote an article about how the CIA working through liaison, it has orchestrated a series of sabotage attacks within Russia itself. and these were attacks that targeted infrastructure, oil refineries, ammo depots, propaganda mills, I mean, all sorts of different things that could be considered legitimate targets. And it was done with, you know, using old school techniques, sleeper cells working out of cache site locations, taking demo, and hitting these targets. some of some of them were done with with some military support uh but a lot of it was you know deep behind enemy lines old school like OSS style operations um so yeah I wrote the article about that um I mean that that subject is touchy and it's not necessarily well received either either on

the American government side or or even amongst other journalists I mean I received received criticism for it. But I mean, it is what it is. I mean, I definitely certainly stand by the story I wrote. I think it's more important now than ever. And I mean, it's a huge story. Yeah. And the thing is like you have several sources.

What several mean? More than three, more than four? That's several. There were as as far as off the, you know, anonymous sources in that story, I mean, there were six of them. So let me ask you something. The New York Times or the Washington Post or Wall Street Journal, journalists there, if they have one or two sources, they're running shit.

And they will cite, you know, an official familiar or a source familiar with, you know. So, I mean, their sourcing is often even more vague. And again, I mean, I'm not necessarily out to throw shade, but a lot of those publications are reliant on their Pentagon Press Corps, White House Press Corps. They're reliant on the controlled leaks that come out of the CIA. I mean, I can tell you specifically in the CIA who leaks these stories to the New York Times. And leaks needs to be like air quotes because it's an official leaks. Yeah, an unofficial press release.

Yeah. Jack, I got to ask you. Andy, I have one more question about the story. It's a little bit more inside baseball. Would you be willing to talk about like what went down in terms of like the editing process and the fact checking process and like what the agency did to kind of like body block you? That was that was that was that was quite a wake up call. So yeah, I wrote I wrote this story. I was working with a major publication to run it.

I had a fact checker that was working with me. She went through everything. I mean, it was quite a, quite a drag, but a necessary one, you know, for for something like that, for a story like that. We got right up to the finish line. We had a publication plan. The plan was to call up, because you have to, it's responsible as a journalist, call up the agency and ask for their official comment on the story. We're going to give them about 48 hours to comment if they want to, and then we're going to run the story.

That was the publication plan. The way it went down was that we asked for comment. The deputy director wanted to talk to my editor, like right away. My editor said, when are you available for this call? I said any time but 2 p.m. because I have to pick up my daughter from school. That phone call between my editor and the deputy director took place at 2 p.m. as I was picking up my daughter. Whatever they hashed out in private, he completely denied the story, said it's not us, said that it's all the Ukrainians.

they've gone rogue, they're out of control doing whatever they want. And we have no supervision over anything. So by the time I came back home from picking up my daughter at school, the entire tone and tenor of that story and my working relationship with that publication had changed. And now we're doing a fire drill and we're having to go back to sources and we're having to go talk to former CIA lawyers about this and that. And I mean, it got bizarre. And all the sourcing that we had done was now kind of thrown out the window because the deputy director who is obligated to deny covert operations by the way. Like that is a lawful. Yeah, but is he obligated to call up an editor of a publication and deny a story?

Is that somebody else's job? You could delegate that. Right. The deputy director is like the assistant principal at school. So you get all the dirty jobs. Yeah. And yes, it is their job to deny, lawfully deny. And they can look you dead in the eye and deny and lie to you about a covert operation. It's not unlawful or unethical for them to do so. And that was the point I kept trying to make. I was like, look, this guy, we've put him in a position where kind of he has to lie at this point. Yeah. And it's not, it's not really his fault. But my problem was that we were now taking that way. one person's word, that one person's comment,

his off the record comment by the way, he was not on the record. But I never had an off the record relationship with this individual. So I don't mind talking about it. And my problem was that we are now taking his one off the record comment at face value as opposed to these six sources that I was bringing to the table. And now my article was suddenly being edited all of the meat of the article was being edited out. I told my editor, this looks like a high school kids book

report. What is this? And yeah, so it led to a lot of consternation. And to the point that I ended up pulling the plug on it. I mean, I felt like I was put in a position where I had to pull the plug myself because I was like publishing this work would not have any integrity at this point. There's no purpose behind even being involved in this. So I was the one that that opted out at that point. And it wasn't it wasn't like a cursing each other out or anything. It was like, hey, you know, I'm going to go in a different direction with this. And they're like, yeah, we respect that. Jack, you know, good luck, you know, et cetera, et cetera. Sorry it didn't work out. And so I published, I ended up publishing it on my own. Jack, what do you think the line lines between between

what you are doing, you know, which is, as I said, I mean, it's a function of democracy, right? To have an arm that is purposefully trying to find, well, present what is happening to the public, right? That's your obligation. But is there a tension? I mean, is there a point at which you would, you would not release information? I'm not talking about the obvious one where it's going to result in death, you know, and all that. But short of that, is there a point at which you would say, okay, fellas, I got it. You know, this is potentially harmful to national security and, and I won't really say it.

And of course, I bring this up because this topic comes up time and time again, right? Yeah, I mean, I think it's a really difficult question. I mean, national security is important. and the military and the intelligence services are completely justified in keeping certain types of secrets, right? Their sources and methods, their operational TTPs or tactics, techniques, and procedures. All of that, all of that is important. So is, you know, transparency on these organizations and what they're doing. And, you know, from the military's point of view, I mean, I find that their outlook on it is always that they think they can they can operate and avoid of total secrecy

and that none of this stuff can ever come out no one should ever talk about it but i mean in a in a country where you have freedom of the press and freedom of the speech freedom of speech so well good luck with that um but as a reporter yeah you have to figure out where that line is um and the line that i choose is not a line that the department of defense would agree with um But I still have those certain limits. A lot of it has to do with, you know, getting into specifics, I mean, about, you know, military or intelligence sources, like actual intelligence sources. That's something you really got to tiptoe around because, I mean, sometimes you just say we had intelligence through a technical means or we had human intelligence, like very vague. because if you were to publish how we knew that,

that intelligence source would dry up and disappear because the enemy would adapt. Or in some cases, that source would actually be shot in the back of the head. So, I mean, you do have to be careful about that sort of stuff. It's the same with specific military TTPs. You have to be careful about, you know, the details matter, especially in war. It's very detail-oriented.

And so you try to capture as much of that as you can, but you want to be careful not to say too much about specifics of how maybe we breach and entering clear a structure or certain things like that or certain ISR capabilities or whatever the case may be. Yeah, I mean, from a reporter's point of view, I mean, you do have to kind of look at that at a case-by-case basis. I'd say also the other thing is as a reporter, you're reporting on things that have happened. And it's important not to get ahead of things that are going to happen.

So even in some of the stuff we've been talking about here, there was additional information of like contingency operations that I knew were being planned that I didn't report on because these were things that might happen. And it's not really my role to give away, let's say, J-Sox element of surprise, which is a huge part of what makes them successful. And as a reporter, I'm not working to take that away from them. I'm looking to report on the things that they've already done. And, you know, especially when there's a combat action that has already taken place, people have been shot, something got blown up. I mean, it's not realistic to expect that no one's going to talk about that, I don't think.

and that enters, as you said, into the historical record. And it's something quite different than reporting on what is maybe being happened. What is being planned for right now? Yeah. Yeah, I just remember, yeah, I mean, it's come up very, it came up in the UK where I was at the time during the Falklands War. It was a, you know, a huge deal of what reporters could. And I remember Jeremy Bowen, BBC reporter, receiving death threats for reporting after it happened, you know, the,

remember in the Gulf War, the original Gulf War, when some three to four hundred Iraqi civilians were killed in a bunker, you know, which had been struck. And there was, the release of information was not good, as is often the case with DOD. And so reporters got in first with pictures and everything, and were accused of being everything, you know, from unpatriotic through, you know,

falling in as dupes of the, are the Iraqis but yeah so good dea i know i've we brought us uh to a conclusion with that excellent question i just do want to comment and and jack was very good about not naming a publication but general mcrystal was also fucked over by the same publication uh which at least puts them in the same boat yeah i don't want to say i wanted to see how like uh what jack was comfortable That's not the only thing that Jack has in common with General McChrystal, of course. It puts them together in the same foxhole. Jack, any final thoughts?

So you're saying I fucked her too? You guys are Esquivar brothers. Damn, I knew this would come down. Hey, D. Can we get any mail? No, not that I've seen. I got to look through. Yeah.

We got to do a better job of punching it out. to get, yeah, I've been asking my friends, but even though, I'm sorry, I was thinking, I was thinking of General Petraeus in that scandal. General McChrystal didn't get, he was not involved with her. Oh, right. Yeah, I thought we were about to hear another scoop jack, and so that's why I covered up very quickly. Yeah. No, I, perhaps I don't want to hear about what, anyway. Yeah, D.I, that's, Yeah, in fact, I even got a message from a guy, Norwegian guy. So what I'll do is I'll start pushing it towards our Patreon and asking their patrons to ask questions because they're relatively good at that. The thing is, because we pre-recorded, it's when we do a live stream, like the questions come in right away.

So I'll get on the Patreon and hit it more. And I'll get on like the Twitter too and get it more. And if you're listening right now and you have a question, feel free. There's another thing that comes to mind on the, on the, on the sabotage story and the whole thing that went on with that outlet. So remember I said we were going to give them 48 hours to comment. Yeah, I was going to say something. Yeah.

Well, we didn't because now it turned into this fire drill and like, oh, how do we react to this? And while we were twiddling our thumbs, the CIA leaked a story to the New York Times all about this particular topic. basically to blunt it, right, to get their official denial out there. And a lot of it actually had to do with the assassination of Dugina. And my article had nothing to do with her. But the agency decided, I mean, it shows you what they were afraid of. It was literally like five days later after they were asked for comment. This article ends up in the New York Times.

Thanks for, I wanted to say something, but I didn't want to like, I wanted you to say it. I'm sure it's a coincidence. It was a very deliberate attempt. to see him. To sabotage my sabotage article. Yeah. But hey, I mean, listen, the CIA played the game and arguably they won that one.

I mean, give it to them. I mean, good for them, I guess. Yeah, but where's that editor now? He, uh, he, he just resigned. Yeah. Poor guy.

Feel terrible. Interesting. I mean, I don't know. Life's, I mean, I don't think I would, I would work with that person again, but life's too short to hold a grudge. I mean, me and Sean are moving forward with our own work, and that's what's important. I hold Jack's grudges for him. Well, you're right about that.

Life is too short to hold a grudge, which is why I'm back under the purview of the team house, even though thanks to Max Lewis. You splash down in the New York Times as well because of the team house. Everywhere. Yeah. And I got you a mention in the New York Times, by the way. Thank you. We have that hung up.

somewhere. Jew and Tully to me. Okay. Cool. Yeah. Yeah. The New York Times said that the team house is a podcast where guests are invited into a living room setting to drink hard alcohol with the hosts.

Yeah. I noticed you changed your policy on that. And after that, it became less of a hardcore press to get guests to drink. No, in studio. Those were the halcy and days. Unfortunately, Jack and me and Dave brought it. to its not so much Dave, but certainly Jack at different times, different occasions, brought the concept to its Nedaia and say, hey, I do have something actually because we didn't get regular

mail. I did get follow-up. Do you remember we're talking last week about Russian glide bombs? Watch this, okay? I can demonstrate this very quickly. I'm not a pilot, but I'm doing my best. Right. So here's an SU 35. It comes along behind the Ukrainian lines. My note, this is Ukrainian lines. it lobs a glide bomb, right? And the problem is that patriots, like the high asset, ADA assets, you know, that can intercept glide bombs are high-value targets, so the Ukrainians keep them behind lines, right? And they can't reach the Russian aircraft. What they've started to do is conduct Patriot raids, all right?

They fix, you know, they get a beat on the incoming, um, uh, U-35, I mean, they can tell when it takes off, right? No kidding. And they get everything lined up. And then what they do is they just, they push the Patriots up. Literally, it's like a thunder run. Then they fire, and as soon as those missiles are in the air, they pull back to their previous position. I mean, they're going right up on the line to do that to extend the range of Patriots. So you see what I'm saying about using U.S. assets to really, I mean, to change doctrine. It's pretty. I thought that's a nerd.

All right. Do you want me to, I'll wrap up, but any. Jack, do you have anything else? You want to talk about? No, no, not really. I mean, thank you guys for having me on the show. Yeah, Jack, great, a great pleasure. You know, I'm sorry that we didn't have bourbon to offer you.

but this is a, this is a, nine a show. Yeah. Do you got anything? No, nothing. I just want everyone to like, subscribe. If you're listening to us on audio, rate and review at five stars, it helps us big time.

Any questions you can hit up the Teamhouse podcast at gmail.com. Yeah, and tell your friends about it. It's important. It helps us out a lot. That's what I got. Yeah, I just, thanks, man, for coming on. Jack's a good friend. I've known him for years.

We've had some pretty awesome talk. So some of the things that he bought up as he started, I was like, I remember this one. So it's just, if you want the good stories, that's the one of the man to go to, just bring a cigar. You are Jack's mentor. You're the man to blame.

Yes. When that note, I will wrap up. And please, dear audience, send in questions, or comments, good comments. especially you can send them directly to Jack or the regular team house podcast until we get our own our own communications infrastructure established and we will see you again in three days talking about topic unknown at this point all the best thanks everybody