The Team House - The CIA’s Havana Syndrome Cover-Up | Marc P & Adam | Ep. 397

Episode Date: February 14, 2026

We break down the Havana Syndrome scandal with CIA veterans Marc Polymeropoulos and “Adam,” two of the earliest victims of the mysterious attacks that left U.S. personnel with traumatic brain injuries. We dig into the science behind directed energy weapons, the CIA’s internal response, the NIH and Walter Reed controversy, and why multiple administrations may have failed — or covered up — the truth.Today's Sponsors:MANDO ⬇️https://shopmando.comPromo code "TEAMHOUSE" for 40% off your starter pack.Miracle Made Sheets ⬇️Go to https://TryMiracle.com/HOUSE to try Miracle Made sheets today. You’ll save over 40%, and when you use promo code HOUSE, you’ll get an extra 20% off plus a FREE 3-piece towel set.GhostBed⬇️https://www.ghostbed.com/houseFOR 25% off! -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------For ad free video and audio and access to live streams and Eyes On Geopolitics...JOIN OUR PATREON! https://www.patreon.com/c/TheTeamHouseTo help support the show and for all bonus content including:-live shows and asking guest questions -ad free audio and video-early access to shows-Access to ALL bonus segments with our guestsSubscribe to our Patreon! ⬇️https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouseSupport the show here:⬇️https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse___________________________________________________Subscribe to the new EYES ON podcast here:⬇️https://www.youtube.com/@EyesOnGeopoliticsPod/featured__________________________________Jack Murphy's new book "We Defy: The Lost Chapters of Special Forces History" ⬇️https://www.amazon.com/We-Defy-Chapters-Special-History-ebook/dp/B0DCGC1N1N/——————————————————————Or make a one time donation at: ⬇️https://ko-fi.com/theteamhouseSocial Media: ⬇️The Team House Instagram:https://instagram.com/the.team.house?utm_medium=copy_linkThe Team House Twitter:https://twitter.com/TheTeamHousePodJack’s Instagram:https://instagram.com/jackmcmurph?utm_medium=copy_linkJack’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/jackmurphyrgr?s=21Dave’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/dave_parke?s=21Team House Discord: ⬇️https://discord.gg/wHFHYM6SubReddit: ⬇️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/1501191241The Team Room Reading Room (Amazon Affiliate links):⬇️ https://jackmurphywrites.com/the-team-room-reading-room/Intro music by https://www.youtube.com/user/RemixSample"Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio"00:00 Start02:14 The Technical Aspects of Directed Energy Weapons12:01 The NIH Study and Ethical Concerns19:19 The Early Biden Administration: Hope and Betrayal24:39 The CIA's Resistance to Acknowledging the Truth42:06 The Cover-Up: A Historical Perspective44:46 The Agency's Response and the Role of Analysts48:04 The Havana Act and Its Implications51:00 The Agency's Disinformation Tactics01:02:20 The National Security Council Meeting: A Turning Point01:10:04 Betrayal and the Agency's Stance01:25:24 The Role of Technology in Warfare01:36:10 The Future of Directed Energy Weapons01:50:42 Media Coverage and Public AwarenessBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

We've kind of found the secret sauce in this is that this is not just us complaining in the media. It's we actually have evidence. There's actual details. There are emails. There are cables. And everything that we're going to say tonight is backed up not only by hard evidence, but evidence that the congressional oversight committees have. And of course, the agency knows as well. And so, you know, this is, you know, I would not wish our experiences on anybody.

but I will quote a good friend of ours who also was hit and this has to do with both Adam and I is that they fucked with the wrong people here. I have no more shits to give. I don't care anymore. Hey folks, this is the team house. I am Jack Murphy here with our guests today, Mark Polymeropolis and Adam, which is not his real name, but that is the name the CIA will let us use on this podcast. both of these gentlemen are victims of what has become known as Havana syndrome, then called anomalous health incidents, A-HIs. Adam is known as patient zero in some circles. He may have been the first or at least a very early victim of what became known as Havana

syndrome in Cuba. I interviewed him and some of his teammates pretty extensively for an article on the high side with Sean Naylor. Mark got hit a little bit later on, also during his career in the CIA when he was on a sort of an official visit to Moscow. So they knew he was a CIA guy. He was there for a liaison job. And he got hit in his hotel room.

And so Havana syndrome has been one of the, I mean, just from my perspective as an outsider, the hardest story I've probably worked on because it is a medical mystery hidden behind, classification and covert action and completely wrapped up in partisan politics, unfortunately. And it's incredibly technical as well. So this is a tough one to unravel. We're not going to go into Mark and Adams' kind of origin story with this topic because we've had Mark on the podcast numerous times to talk about it. Adam's story is told in that high side article extensively. So we're going to jump into sort of the middle. It's jump into during the Biden administration.

If the Havana cases sort of started or really picked up around 2016, 2017, during the Biden administration was kind of when you started to see an institutional response to it. And then we'll walk into what has gone on in this administration. So Mark and Adam, thanks for bearing with me through that prelude. appreciate you guys coming on the show. Thanks for having us. You guys have been with us from the beginning in terms of, you know, one of the few honest journalists. Dee, I'm considering you a journalist as well, our intrepid producer who is, of course, a Greek background, so we love him.

But honestly, you know, you have been with us. And I think that, you know, the search for the truth, obviously, you know, I'm not very much a part of this as victims. but you all as journalists have led the way. And so I know not going to speak for Adam, but I am deeply appreciative of everything you've done. And also, frankly, the friendship that we've all kind of developed years. Yeah, you know, just from my point of view, you know, years ago, I read this book called the e-bomb.

You can find a copy out there, but it's all about directed energy weapons. It's written by a guy who's like a government scientist, microwaves, lasers, all this sort of stuff. So when the story about Havana syndrome broke, and I hadn't met either of you guys yet, and there were people in the press saying that what's being described isn't technically or scientifically feasible. And I was like, well, wait a second. I read in this book that we had systems like this in the 1970s.

It's just a question of the technology being miniaturized. So for me, I mean, I took it at least seriously from the beginning. I mean, it's a possibility. And since speaking, you know, to Adam and some of his colleagues, I mean, beyond a shadow of a doubt, something is happening here. You know, there's no question at this. I think, you know, I'll jump in here. But just to piggyback on what Mark said that, you know, you guys have been honest brokers and honestly supportive of us this entire time. And we found that generally across the spectrum with the press.

You know, it's funny because inside you're taught press evil that. Congress, evil, bad, oversight, evil bad. Like, you know, only we can manage inside. And then you get outside and you start developing these relationships. And you guys want the truth. And as to all the press, you know, I can't say I've had a bad experience yet with folks going after this. So, you know, we're incredibly thankful for you guys raising this, despite, you know, what the government is trying to do to it. But, you know, to speak to the technical side of things, I don't think most people realize that,

A lot of this goes back even to the 50s. That's when Russia really started to understand that RF microwaves can impact biological bodies. And so they haven't stopped, you know, where 76 plus years passed when they really started to discover this. And they spent billions and billions and billions of dollars. They understand this issue better than anyone else in the world. They are the leaders in the understanding of RF technology, RF weaponry, the biological results of those things. And so, you know, I like to go back to the GWAT. Like, we were trying to figure out how to kill guys in caves.

They were in their labs working on this stuff, as are the Chinese. The Chinese have a massive RF microwave weapons program. You know, we kind of have the bravado of the U.S. of, we know we can't, you know, it's not possible. Sorry guys, like we're behind the eight ball on this one by a long way. Yeah, I mean, there's that, but we do have certain systems that I wrote about one of them recently. A system that is not the same as the system that you guys got hit with. The one we have is more to make people very uncomfortable, give them like a high-end sunburn, maybe make them feel dizzy, basically to blow people out of safe houses if you wanted to do something like that.

It's going to make them very uncomfortable. But what you guys were struck with, I suspect, is something fairly different because of the permanent brain damage that it did. And from talking to people like Dr. Relman, who described basically how the technology works, he thinks it's rapidly pulsed microwaves that create sort of a cumulative effect inside the human brain. Yeah. So I think what you're describing is the active denial system, right, the millimeter wave that. That's one thing it's being called. But it's an element of that. There's a miniaturized one.

The dish is like this big that's classified. Yeah, yeah. No, and I think so, so when you're dealing with, like, microwave weapon systems, you're dealing with radio frequency spectrum issues, right? So what you're describing is RF that creates a thermal heating in the body. That's what the U.S. sets their standards for. You have to feel heat for it could cause biodamage. What we were hit with was,

an RF system that had non-thermal heating. And that's what the U.S. has long believed was not possible, and the Russians and the Chinese have known is possible for a very long time. And so the fight on getting this tech understood out there, this topic out there and understood, is more than just, hey, these weapons we didn't think exist do exist. It's now, hey, our understanding of physics and biology now has to shift too. And that's the heavy list. in this issue. So let's pick it up from sort of an institutional standpoint. Both of you guys, I think, left the CIA in a way that neither of you wanted to, you know, essentially, am I wrong to say it's medically retired, essentially?

Yeah. What about you, Mark? Yeah, so I know. So I kind of, I was non-functional at work. And so I just kind of waited out, you know, a year and a half until I turned 50. when I could retire because it made just sense in terms of kind of my benefits and things like that. But I was only going to work for about two, three hours a day. I was a vegetable. I mean, I was an absolute mess.

And I mean, it wasn't even an option. I was just trying to make it through the day. So you guys left the agency. Were you both enrolled in the NHI study that was being done at the time? I mean, do you want to kind of pick it up there? because that's sort of like the next step after you guys left, right? I think that, so I left in July of 2019, and I was, at that point, I'd been battling with the agency's medical staff

just to get me health care to send me anywhere. Frankly, it was to send me the University of Pennsylvania or to NIH, and because NIH had started this research study. And again, I didn't know much about it. It was just kind of out there. And by the time I left in July of 19, after the operations directorate and the DDO at the time really battled the medical staff, they finally allowed me to go to NIH.

So in May of 19, I went for a one-week kind of stay at NIH, which turned out to be a complete waste of time because it was a research study. It wasn't designed to make me feel better. In fact, you end up just being a lab rat, and I was very frustrated with that. And then I retired, and then I started kind of this whole kind of struggle, again, on the outside, working with the operations director to try to get me to Walter Reed, which had started accepting patients. I ended up being patient one. Patient Zero was another officer who was affected. And the way this really kind of blew up, and obviously some people know this, is that I went

public in October 2020, an article in GQ, written by Julia Eafie. I told her my story. And interesting, right before I went to tell her my story, I actually went to the current deputy director of operations. And I said, I'm going to go public. And her answer was, good, fuck them. Because we're so tired of dealing with the intransigence of our medical staff on our seventh floor. And that was the end of the Trump administration. Gina Haspel is the director. They were livid with me. They filed crimes reports against me. But the pressure from the outside got me to Walter Reed. And so January of 21, I finally went to Walter Reed. But it was just, you know, this battle. And of course, Adam knows this very well.

You know, I think, you know, a way to frame this overall. And we'll pick up in the Biden administration for sure. But this is just an awful kind of case of an agency that professes to take care of its people. You know, there are stupid slogans that they always have. And I hate this bullshit. But, you know, it's mission first. People always. I don't know who comes up with this stuff.

Of course it is. You know, you know, as a CIA officer, of course you take care of your people first. And the mission is something we dedicate our lives to. but that people always part as crap because they treated us like garbage. And I think the underlying theme now that we are through multiple administrations, Trump one, Biden one, Trump two is the betrayal that the U.S. government has kind of what they've done to the victims. And it's, you know, there's a moral injury part of this, Jack, you are a member of good standing always in the special operations world. I'm not going to speak for Adam, but I've been diagnosed with not only with a traumatic brain injury,

but also with post-traumatic stress from the moral injury of working for an organization that I love dearly. And to this day, I still strangely have an affinity for the place and for the mission. But that betrayed us in such a spectacular fashion. And even individuals that Adam and I know and worked with have betrayed us. That's really tough to take. It's a really bad story when it comes. if you kind of boil it down and, you know, your listeners get this because there's so many people who are veterans, you know, organizations that you dedicate your lives to, you make a pact with

to do really some crazy shit. And both Adam and I did, when they, when they don't come through on that other end of the pact, it is, it is, there's a mental health challenge that is absolutely immense. Adam, what was your experience with the NIH study? Yeah, so, and to piggyback on what Mark said, I always joked that I kind of, I knew the Cubans were going to stab me in the front down there. That was kind of part of this planned execution of what we were doing. I just didn't think all the knives were going to come in the back from my own organization after the fact. So for me, just as a, to predate NIH, I ended up at Miami. I was the first one to go down to Miami.

That was all very hush-hush. They didn't want anyone to know I was there, what we were doing, anything. They just wanted to look into it. that was when the first diagnosis of traumatic brain injury came from this whole thing down in Havana. Miami, Dr. Hoffer is down in Miami, who is a military, I don't know if he's a veteran or if he's still actually in. That's my mistake for not knowing that, but wonderful doctor. And he was just looking at all of these people that were coming out of Havana and was just appalled. I mean, he got to the place where he was ready to go to the press.

any threat in the agency that if you don't take care of these folks and do the right thing I'm going to go to the press about it he was that impassioned by what he was seeing and they were telling him to change diagnoses they were telling him to do all these sort of things so eventually he got a knife in the back

and we weren't really permitted to go down there anymore and that's when they found Penn a little bit later I think we had a lot of skepticism about Penn because the agency found him right? We saw what they did to Miami when they didn't like what he said, which was the truth. We kind of expected the same out of pen, and I'll admit,

I went in there very hostile. You know, and I'll never forget at the end of the first round of testing up there, my doc looked at me, and I believe his words, excuse my language, were what the fuck happened to you? And that started the pen pushback. And I call that kind of the golden era, where everyone listened, everyone looked at the medical, everyone looked at the FDA-approved testing, everyone looked, then the brain scan started seeing the damage. I think at the time I was looking back at old notes, I'd lost about 5% of my brain mass in this whole thing. So that was real.

But then the agency kind of turned towards the end there, and they started pushing this NIH thing. Now, the irony of NIH, they went to NIH before Penn and said, hey, do you want to take this study? Like, can you look at these guys? Can you help us? They said no. they didn't want it.

And so once Penn had all the stuff, found the success, and did these papers, and I said, okay, we'll take it. And so I was kind of in the early stage of folks that went over there. I will say to piggyback on Mark, I was not pleased with how that whole thing went down. I didn't go back. I just did the one time. But I was also facing a lot of, you know, as you wrote in the last highside article, a lot of stuff domestically with kind of getting hunted by the Russians and all that stuff. So I had to

stay on the secure campus, which is not ideal for what they had for housing and stuff. So just the whole thing was not really that positive. And then you could start seeing the writing on the wall by how things, people were being treated by how it was being managed. It just didn't feel like they had our best interests at heart. And it felt like it was kind of, at the time running through the motions, but also felt like there was something more underhanded going on. And so I never went back after the first time. What about, I mean, describe some of the ethical issues that they were sharing private medical information with the CIA.

There are some pretty profound ethical violations, as I recall. Yeah, I mean, they took my info because they pulled my blood and there's a few other people as well. but they found blood biomarkers, and they double blind you, right? It's a research study. They're doing the right thing. Well, I get a message from a doctor at work, and then one of my bosses going, hey, they found XYZ blood biomarkers in your blood. And they're going, well, how, like, what do you mean they found it?

Like, how does anyone know that? They go, well, they unmasked your data. They found these levels, and they unmasked it, and now they came into work to talk about it. That goes against, like, all of the rules. of doing a study. And, you know, that's just one of many incidents where they did things like that, but they would actively go and talk to the agency about the guys they were seeing. And even things we were talking to them in confidence as doctors, as, you know, psychiatrists, whatever, would make its way not just back to the doctors in the building, but would inevitably

filter out into the general population. And we would have bosses, other people in our career structure telling us about our medical findings that they wouldn't even tell us about. So it was kind of fucked up from day one, honestly, the way the whole thing was managed. Hey guys, it's Jack. I want to tell you guys about the sponsor for today's show. It's Mando. Mando makes a whole series of male grooming products. They are unique in that there are a deodorant that you can use all over your body on armpits, if you like, but also wherever else you may deem necessary. And And I have been using these products for about three months now. I've been using the body wash.

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House to get an extra 20% off plus a free three-piece towel set. Thanks, guys. And there's a key portion on this that I think Adam and I learned after the fact is that when Walter Reed then opened up and just said, I know we've talked about this before, but Walter Reed's National Intrepid Center of Excellence, that's the U.S. military's leading traumatic brain injury program, Jack, many of your audience has been there. I know that because when I've been on before, I've gotten messages from people who have gone there. But what Adam and I didn't realize is that actually the agency was forcing people to go to NIH as a prerequisite to then go to Walter Reed.

So literally, and this is a terrible headline, but it's accurate that, you know, the CIA was forcing you to become a lab rat to experiment on you in order as a, it's a barrier to entry into a program that then treats you. And the difference between NIH, it's a research study. There was no one there who offered any kind of medical assistance, any kind of rehabilitation. Walter Reed is where you get that. But we had to go to it to become a lab rat in order to get there. And that, I think when Adam and I certainly, you know, when we found out about that, that was deeply upsetting. I think it's probably illegal. And we certainly talked to the Inspector General staff, investigators at NIH, who then subsequently shut down the study because of all the kind of the stink that we made correctly.

But I think that, you know, as you go through and you kind of take a look at some of these seminal events about, agency bad like bad dealings that are actually that we kind of catch them on that by the way the hill congressional oversight committees have all of this information that really kind of stood out for me was as a as a moment in which like holy crap these people really do not have our best interests and then you know it it has continued and you know perhaps we can jump in and talk about you know the beginnings of the Biden administration when adam and i actually had at least i don't want to speak for adam that i had some hope which did not last.

Yeah, no, let's do that. Can I interrupt here? Just to go back on what Mark said, after the famous MK Ultra experiments, right, that the agency did back in the day, they had all the commissions. I can never remember if it's Church or Warren. One was JFK, one was the MK Ultra stuff.

Church. Church, thank you. But Congress passed it, made it illegal for the CIA to run human studies, but also to run human. studies by proxy. That's exactly what this study was. They were running it by proxy. And then when NIH pushed this paper out, despite all of these ethical and legal concerns, there's nowhere in the byline that the CIA was part of any of this. So they didn't even disclose that they were the ones

controlling who went, who the control group was. Like one of my good friends, his wife was smoked and injured with him abroad, like when they were hit. And they said, In order for your wife to get care, you go to NIH. So they held his wife's medical hostage by making him be part of a research study that he didn't want to do. And so these are all the many complaints that got forwarded to NIH and like the Hill has. So, yeah, the whole thing is this is just scratching the surface of how deep and ugly. Yeah. My understanding is also, and I'm not a lawyer, but my understanding is that there's a department of labor law that says that the government,

cannot direct care. Yeah, so in this instance, you know, what we would be talking about is the CIA cannot tell you, hey, Adam, you can only go and see this one doctor that we approve of. That would be the violation. Right. And so instead, what happened was we were up at Penn and we had the U.S. government, mostly the State Department at the time, was dictating to the Penn doctors what procedures and tests they could and could not do on us. So at one point, I was supposed to go in for an annual

brain scan to see, like, how things have changed over the year of being in full-time rehab, and my brain scan was canceled by the State Department for no reason that anyone could tell me. Why the State Department had justification or reason or jurisdiction over me, I don't know, but they did a lot of meddling with who we could see, what tests we could have done, where we went, what they would support, what they wouldn't. And you have to remember, during all of this, you're dealing with a bunch of brain damage people that are struggling to function in your daily life.

I can't walk in the dark. I fall over. So you're getting migraines. You can't focus. I was definitely a safety hazard on the road and shouldn't be driving. Like, you're trying to navigate your new life, and all you're trying to do is go and do what people tell you to do to be a good soldier, but they don't have your best interests at home.

And so, yeah, it was a compounding factor. Like, in hindsight, you can look back and go, hmm, that doesn't make sense. But when you're just trying to figure out remembering to put pants on before you leave for the day, which is literally like part of a concern of a checklist I had next to the door at one point, like, you don't have the bandwidth to figure out if you're being sent to the right place to do the right thing. It's all, you know, above board.

You know, hindsight is 2020, but, you know, that it's important to remember that. a lot of us were in a real rough and dark place while we were being kind of shuffled around. And there's a key part of this too, Jack, I just want people to kind of know, this is not Adam and I just kind of giving you this verbally. You know, we had receipts. And, you know, NIH shut down the study because when the inspector general asked us stuff, people, you know, this not only the victims but others, came with emails that showed the agency actually forcing us to go to this study as a prerequisite for care. And so, you know, one of the things I think that the theme in tonight's episode should also be, this is not just Adam and I spitballing. We have, you know, this has been, you know, eight years for me, I think nine years for Adam and, you know, battling not only the symptoms in our care, but also the government. But we've kind of found the secret sauce in this is that this is not just us complaining in the media. It's we actually have evidence.

There's actual details. There are emails. There are cables. and everything that we're going to say tonight is backed up not only by hard evidence, but evidence that the congressional oversight committees have. And of course, the agency knows as well. And so, you know, this is, you know,

I would not wish our experiences on anybody. But I will quote a good friend of ours who also was hit, and this has to do with both Adam and I, is that, you know, they fucked with the wrong people here. I have no more shits to give. I don't care anymore. And again, you know, this is not kind of blowing up the agency on this. This is blowing up the issue. We're going to come with receipts and we're going to expose what happened. And it's not just our word. There's actual, you know, there's actual details. Some of Jack,

that which you know, some of which we can't even talk about that is still classified, but I think the congressional committees at some point will put it out. But that's just good for people to know that this is not just us spitballing this. This is based on actual hard data and evidence. of the government's wrongdoing. So take us then to the early Biden administration. How did things start to change for the Havana syndrome victims? So let me just jump in here because I and no, there's another great theme here is that Adam and I have actually, you know, worked on this issue over multiple administrations and each of us had different inroads. You know, whether you're kind of friendlier with the Republican crowd or the Democratic crowd. Now for the Biden administration,

Bill Burns was my ambassador in an overseas posting. So this was for me personally, and I thought for all of us, the victims, this was going to be kind of the saving grace. He, you know, before he, when he was nominated, before he even got was confirmed, I went to see him and I talked to him. I went to see him at his office right when he got confirmed. I would have go have personal, you know, personal one-on-one meetings with him about this issue. And as Adam knows, because I would brief him on this all the time,

when I came back is, you know, we were excited that somehow this was things were going to change. Burns promised multiple things to us. One is that he would kind of, you know, get rid of some of the people involved who had done us wrong. And in the beginning, he did. He replaced the director of medical services at CIA based on our request. We also told him about senior officers who had done us wrong. And he did not take action on that. Let's be clear on that.

But overall, he also privately stated to us. And I think, Adam, you were at one meeting when we were both there, that, you know, he believed the Russians were involved. He created a task force in which there was going to be an investigation. He promised to uphold what the congressional legislation that Adam actually was a hero in working on, the Havana Act and actually, you know, to make sure that President Biden signed it, which he did. And so there was a time period in which things looked to be going relatively well. Now, that came to a crashing halt, but Adam, I don't want to speak for you,

but I think in the beginning of the Biden administration, we thought, wait a second, you know, this might be really, really good. And let me just tell you, and there's a key part in this. I know Bill Burns. I feel completely betrayed by him. We don't speak anymore. And so again, back to the moral injury, someone who I thought would help us turned on us. And we're going to talk about the Trump administration, the second Trump administration,

later because we're starting to feel that same way. People make promises and they don't uphold them. I think I was less optimistic. So Mark and I have flip-flopped on the Biden administration and the Trump administration. I was skeptical of Burns. He flew, I had retired at that point, but he flew me and a bunch of the others, which is where Mark and I, the meeting we were at together, all back into D.C. and we sat there with him and his deputy, which I don't know if we can even say his name at this time,

but I'll defer to Mark if we're talking about Cohen? Not on recover. Dave Cohen was a deputy. Okay, yeah, here's the deputy. So he was up there with Bill and, you know, said a lot of great things. We're kind of somewhat hopeful, but we gave him a list of like all of the issues we had faced, all of the roadblocks, anything that he could help to like grease the skids on,

like really simple tasks. and asked. Like, nothing that was going to, you know, be too heavy of a lift for him. And I'll say that when Pompeo was director of the CIA, and we finally got to Pompeo, literally anything we asked for, Mike snapped his fingers, and it happened. It was like this golden period of, like, a couple months. Mike Pompeo by far has been the best standalone director for us on this issue, bar none, not even close. But Barnes, we gave this list to, and he said, I'll get back to you. Let me work on it. You know, he's got all of his staff

taking notes, and he's like, I promise, like, I'll get all these things to you. That was the last I heard from Bill Burns. And so... He actually, did you... He would have Dave Cohen call you, right? He would never call me because I'm the hostile one of the group. So, like, Mark would get called by Bill Burns and everyone

else, and then whenever they're about to do something awful to us in the press, David Cohen would call me, and then we'd inevitably kind of have it out on the phone with each other, But the deputy director is always like the vice principal of a high school. Yeah, I was the problem child. So I got I got David. And he comes out really poorly in this. Let me just say, Dave Cohen is someone who has treated the victims in a truly awful fashion. And I think, you know, hopefully that comes out with some investigations. But he is someone who I think has garnered correctly the ire of a lot of us.

But I think, but going back to that actual, that session with Burns on the seventh floor when Cohen was there, even then actually, and I'm surprised I'm actually looking back at this as a positive time. I guess it was more so than later. But we had some doubts about Cohen because we were starting to hear that the number three at the agency, a guy by the name of Andy McCreedys, he's not undercover. We can use his name, the chief operating officer. He was working against us as well. So there were start, there were inklings at the beginning of the administration, even Even with Burns saying a lot of positive things and starting this task force, that things were not on the up and up, and that kind of the old guard was still kind of going shields up. You'll remember that in that meeting, when we went around the room, I actually thanked Burns for his commitment to us on this. And I said, my worry, though, is that you're going to become Secretary of State and we're single-threaded at the leadership level. And Dave Cohen was right there. And Burns said, what are you talking about? My deputies here.

Dave Cohen, he's going to be fine. said, yes, we're single-threaded. And I remember looking at the chief to Cohen and who I knew very well. And he looked at me like, like, are you out of your fucking mind? You just insulted the deputy director in front of 50 people in a room. Well, I guess, you know, so Adam, I guess going back there, we still had, some of our doubts were creeping in. But again, there were promises that were made. And so we were going to hold them to it. And, you know, then the wheels fell off. Yeah. I mean, I always like to tell people. That was the only time I ever had any engagement with Director Burns on this.

You didn't rate it. That's why. Well, I like to joke that he spent more time with Jeffrey Epstein than he ever did with me. That's right. Yeah, that's two meetings, verse one. Not bad. That's a good quip. But, you know, but Jack, there's a, you know, there's a part of this again, just to kind of put things in perspective is the roller coaster of emotions that we go through on this. And, you know, so, you know, Adam and I were not in government, more. And so we're relying on friends who are still inside, you know, occasional correspondence from this, this team inside the agency, they're kind of their task force. And so, you know, you put in a request for something that gets denied, then it gets approved, and you go through these emotions.

On top of, you know, you're trying to help in your recovery, which, you know, is taken years out of our lives. That was tough. And then, and so, but it does kind of give build. you more kind of steely resolve and character. So frankly, you know, when the CI director calls me, the deputy director calls Adam, that's a relatively big deal. If you kind of think about it in perspective, it wasn't anymore because, you know, that was who we were relying on for our care and to get to the bottom of this issue. And then everything fell apart completely, I think. Yeah. Yeah, tell us how the wheels fell off. When they made their first assessment. And let's let me, let's go back. So the, the analytic unit that was It was the unit that was created to investigate this.

And I kicked myself for this as well because Burns called me and he said, hey, who do you? And he put someone in charge of it. And we can't tell this person's name because they're still undercover, although it's ridiculous that they are. But it was an analyst and they put this person under cover. And he said, what do you think? And I said, well, you know, it's a good idea. I know this person. I worked with him for years.

Turned out to be a rather massive mistake in judgment on my part. And so the unit that was created, it turns out, and again, this is, in hindsight, boy, we should have fought this, and I blame myself for this, it was not an operational unit. It was not a unit that was designed and tasked to go find a device. It was not a unit that you would use counterintelligence techniques to try to catch the Russians in the act. It was an analytic unit staffed by analysts. And so I think that's where things really went awry. And then kind of the first reports that were analytic reports were coming out from the agency, which were a shock to the point where Bill Burns called me.

And he said, you're not going to like what we have to say. And I was taken aback by this. And that's when I think, you know, kind of the, you know, the next battle we started having. I remember there was also like a fair amount of like grooming of the press where they would bring in like the Washington Post reporters and get them briefed up on the classified version. And then the day after the classified version comes out, like, it's there on the Washington Post. Like, hey, nothing to see here, folks. Go ahead. Go ahead, Adam. I'm not going to touch that one. There's, there's, okay, so this is my, this is my complaint about, you know, national security

media. And of course, I'm an MSN, MSNNNNNNNNNNNNN contributor. So I'm in this national security space now. And Jack, you, you very much are as well. There are those reporters who are lazy who will get, a quote, source would be the deputy director or someone of that ilk calling them on signal and giving them a heads up. That's actually not a source. That's not a deep dive and it's not multiple sourcing, the way you're actually supposed to do things. Jack, when you write your stuff, what do you need? You need more than one source. You got a lot of tips. I mean, and it's also the deal with sources is that the higher up they are on the pyramid, the more political of an answer you're going to get. So it was clear that very senior people at the agency were leaking stuff to the press,

which were kind of poo-pooing this whole thing, saying that there's no there-there-there. And in fact, the first assessments were so preposterous because they included things like there's no evidence that these weapons ever existed. Everything's psychos. You know, all these things which were immediately, you know, we said this is crazy. And then, of course, they started on background kind of denigrating us as well. And this is, I mean, my anger on this started kind of growing exponentially when in one of these press briefings, again, and Adam and I have established relationships, I think, well, literally with the entirety of the, anyone who covers the intelligence community in America, we know at this point. And they'd come back and they said, hey, the briefer actually, you know, one, one MSNBC correspondence came back and he said, hey, the briefer that I talked to, I asked him about your case. And he said, well, Mark had a preexisting condition. And I went. went fucking crazy. And I called the 7th floor. And I said, what the hell? You guys are denigrating me. And they said, that's not true. We don't know what happened to you. And I said, well,

your briefers are now going after the victims. And this is messed up. And, you know, that started the process of the gaslighting. And again, this is the moral injury. This is the whole idea why, you know, I was at Walter Reed, myself and some other patients. You know, in our therapy, we painted this picture called the gunshot. And it was a, you know, you took a canvas, you painted it black, and then we splash some red on it, which was the equivalent of what we hoped would be blood if we had an injury that people could see, but no one fucking believed us.

And so, you know, this caused severe mental health distress. I mean, the agency that we work for is now gaslighting us behind our backs. And that was, you know, to me, absolutely egregious. And also, like, to keep a... Mark and I were... have been vocal, obviously, about this whole issue and happened for a while, but, like, we were getting reports from the seventh floor that they had us on a list that they talked about.

Remember that, Mark? Every week, every bi-weekly, we were on the troublemakers list. They were looking at what we were doing, what we were saying. They followed me in front of course, when I found out about this, I kind of liked it. But they're following me on Twitter. What in the fuck is the CIA doing with the world on fire following, you know, me on Twitter? Now, of course, that only emboldens me to be more of an asshole. It's the vice principal of the high school.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, so like it, you know, and they would actually, and the famous quote that we all have is from the deputy of that group who said, our job is to disprove everything that comes into this office. That was their job, and they were promised promotions to find nothing, and as soon as that the whole thing was dead in the water per their final ICA report, what happened? the director and deputy director of that group got moved up to the seventh floor, became the director of analysis, and the deputy director of analysis. The people who were fucking us were promoted, which again is beyond egregious. And of course, the Hill and Oversight knows. And the current administration knows.

And to fast forward, current CIA director Ratcliffe and deputy director Ellis have done nothing on this. These people who screwed us over, who we have book on, the congressional oversight has book on, the DNI has book on, are still in positions of power. And that is unconscionable to me. This time of year, the pace doesn't slow down, but you still need to. The calendar's packed, the weather's changing, and your body's reminding you that it's time to rest and reset. That's where Ghost Bed can help. It's a family-run company founded by a team with over 20 years of mattress-making expertise.

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Let me take just one small step back because I think something I'd like to clarify. And this is a point of confusion for me. And I think it may be for the public as well. Why in the hell was the CIA so resistant to this? Why is even the group that's supposed to uncover the truth so dedicated to squashing the truth and hiding it? Like, what is the CIA's, you know, motive in this case? You know, that's the, not even a million dollar question. That's the $10 million question.

You know, there was a time where I went, you know, is there? And I reached in. And here's the thing. We have eyes and ears everywhere at this point, right? from the seventh floor of everywhere, from the inner circle of Hexoth to, you name it. Like, we're pretty well tied in to understand what people are doing and saying. We wouldn't be good at our jobs if we didn't have that. But this is the one question that I still cannot get a straight answer to.

And I think there are many things at play here. Do I think there's an element of bad actors involved with into influence? Yeah, I do. unfortunately. Will CEG, the counter-operin-Arge group, will any of those guys, the CI investigators? Will any of them do anything? Probably not.

But generally speaking, I think that you're dealing more with ego. People that once they've made their mind and said, this isn't real, we can't let it be real. Even in the very early days, right, when Havana just started, there was one of the seniors in OMS said, oh, we can't let this be another Moscow situation, referring back to the embassy.

Moscow in the 70s. That was their first reaction, like three weeks into finding out that we were getting brain injuries from this stuff. So there had been this effort from day one to play down, hide, make it go away. So some of it is I think people tied their ship

to this isn't real. So they can't admit that they were wrong because the agency can never be wrong. See all the analytical pieces about Iraq and the invasion of Ukraine. I mean, we can go on on about how we're never wrong about anything.

And the other piece of it is that they had retention problems. So people started getting hit around the world, everywhere, everywhere. And, you know, we joke, like we say, I'm patient zero. First off, I was never the, I wasn't the first one hit in Cuba, and there were a ton of people hit before me going back, you know, Frankfurt through parts of Europe, through, I mean, even like that crew just passed recently was hit in the 90s. So, like, we, this whole issue very much predates me. I was just kind of the biggest pain in the ass about it.

But, you know, there was genuine retention issues where people did not want to go to these places anymore when people are coming out. Well, part of that's on them, right? If you, if, Jack, you're, you know from this, if you're about to go out on a mission and they're like, hey, those guys might kill you. They want to kill you. you still want to go? You're like, fuck yeah, I want to go. Like, that's what I trained for.

That's what I want to do. I could say the same to Mark, be like, hey, you go to Moscow. They might fuck you up. Like, you still want to play games? I'm like, I guarantee you, everyone would say yes, that is trained that wants to go to these places

to do the things that we were doing. It doesn't matter. With the caveat, take care of us if something happens. And if I die, take care of my family. Those are the two rules that we play by to go and do the things that you ask us to do, right? They spend millions upon millions of dollars training us,

at least take care of us if we get fucked up. Well, they didn't honor that. So all of my friends watched me get hurt, and they were going out to hard target places and doing all this crazy stuff, and they went, because I would CC them on all the emails. And they're going, oh, I've fucked that, I'm out. The wives, too, were getting to the point

where they're like, no, no, we're not going there. Yeah, 100%. Yeah, people were having to go single, turn out to some of these places and leave their families behind and they're like, well, I don't want to do two years out here. So they had a major, major retention issue. And so it was in their interest to make this a non-issue. Well, in my mind, by doing that, they have the blood of hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of guys on their hands at this point. At one point, the deputy director of operations at the time, someone, not the individual who helped me with my case, actually two separate DDOs. But there,

The DDO at one time got up in the bubble, which is kind of the, that's where the CIA Auditorium. And he told it in all hands, he said, look, we got to get back to work. We got to put this behind us. It's too much of a distraction. I mean, openly saying it. And so, you know, as we kind of search for the reason is why the cover-up. And let me just go back and say, this, I think, is going to come out in history is one of the greatest cover-ups in CIA's history, but really in U.S. government history. Because what's happening now, and we'll get to that maybe later on.

the evidence that is coming out now. You know, look, I live in D.C., you know, this is the kind of the foreign policy blob. And so in my circles, whether it's retirees or people on the Hill, like, nobody doubts this anymore. I talked to someone the other day and they said, look, the Hill knows. I talked to people from CNN the other day, as well as, you know, MS now and other places like that, Fox, Jen Griffin, Fox. I mean, there's nobody who reports on our world who actually doubts this now, except the CIA, who's kind of, sticking to its gun. So it's getting a little preposterous. Two quick points I want to make that I think is important. One is the people you're talking about now, and again, this is a great audience because

these are, you know, so many people here who are going to listen to this, were members of not only the military, but perhaps the special operations world. You know, people like Adam, people like our friends, who was a chief of station out in Asia, other friends of ours who were hit were at top physical and mental condition. You know, Adam was former law enforcement. He had gone through for his assignment in Cuba, the most advanced surveillance training, denied area tradecraft training that exists on the planet. You know, these are legitimate badasses who, when this happened to them,

overnight were changed forever. Their mental and physical conditions deteriorated in such a fashion is, and that's why, and the operation side of the house, and the operations director, you know, who, and it's a small tribe. And so it's rare to find someone from the director of operations who doesn't believe us, because everybody knows somebody who's like, hey man, that dude used to run fucking ultra-marathons. Like, well, shit, like, Mark was benching fucking in Afghanistan, 350. Like, he was a fucking badass.

I wasn't, I was benching that. I wasn't a badass. But I'm saying, and all of a sudden, you look like a fucking vegetable. And so it's, you know, in some ways, you know, again, I think the audience will understand that because there's going to be people who are listening who are in, top physical, you know, mental conditions in their lives and then something happened with, you know, blast injuries or something, you know, with, with, in the 20-year G-WAT. And that's what, that's what this is now.

This is people who are at the top of their game and then were taken off the playing field. These are not, you know, you know, people who are kind of sitting at the CIA library. These are people on the front line, the tip of the spear. And so I think that's, that's worth knowing. One other thing on this that, that I think you got to put in perspective. at how CIA has gone wrong here. Again, Director Burns takes the helm, and I went to see him. And as we're talking about this issue, and he tells me, and I remember this now exactly,

he said, there's going to be an analytic report, you're not going to like it. He goes, we're still going to push for compensation for you for the Havana Act, which of course makes no sense because we got compensated for a line of work injury that Walter Reid, the U.S. military, says happened, but the CIA said didn't happen, but they're paying us essentially. But he said, you're not going to like this. And I said, to the director, I said, Bill, why are you making any kind of judgment now? You know, it took us 10 years to find bin Laden. And he said, I know, but, you know, this is a, and I said, and I said, here's the other thing. And I said, look, I worked in counterterrorism my whole career. I said, the CIA has gotten

everything wrong analytically. You know, we fucked up, you know, in terms of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the Soviet Union collapsing. We didn't get that right. The Arab Spring, the famous, you know, political movements that thought, you know, that were kind of enveloping the Arab world, we blew that as well. Iraq WMD, it was a fiasco. Analytic calls we are terrible at, but we are really good at one thing, and that's killing people. And that's what you tasked us to do, those of myself in the Counterterrorism Center in the Near East Division, and we got expert at manhunting, along with JASC, the fine fix and finish missions, but we're really not good at other stuff. So why are you putting the credibility of the building behind

this analytic report, which is so decisive. I said, just leave it open. And literally what I said to him was I said, you've got to be able to drive a Mac truck through whatever you say. Just fucking say, we don't know. But no, they started going down with these assessments. And again, that's when Adam and I were like, oh, shit, the tide is totally turned. By the way, as we're getting compensated for a line of work injury that the U.S. military and the doctors, based on imaging, based on everything your doctors who fucking look at you from, your, you know, your anal sphincter to the fucking to your head, you know, is saying what happened to you. Something happened, yet the agency is saying it didn't, but Bill Burns is signing off that we're to be compensated. That's like, you know, I'm a Greek. So it's the Aristotle's law of contradiction. Like, these two things can't be happening.

I think this was Burns way of actually dealing with this. And I think that it's important. So to have an act, I wrote with Senator Collins. And the way it's, it's worded is a brain. brain injury via hostile act. Right. Literally, the qualifying pieces to get the payment in order to not violate law that Congress has passed is you must have a brain injury and it must be by hostile act. So we have now paid out.

God knows how many people, spouses, children, people in the United States that have worked this issue that magically start getting smoked in the D.C. area. we have so many people that have been here. And this is the one thing the CIA stands on. This isn't real, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Then why are you breaking the law of paying us? Right. We're laughing at this because it's fucking crazy. And this has been so much, I mean, you know, with the agency, at the end of the Biden administration,

the agency put out their last analytic statement. I know I'm jumping a little forward. But even then, I mean, literally people, I got a call from someone inside. And this person had just spoken with an individual who has a position in the director of operations who sees everything. Every piece of intelligence, every DOD sap, every, we call it restricted handling cables. You know, that's a, that's a CIA sap, essentially. It's every single piece of sensitive signals intelligence, the most, you know, with all the bigoted NSA stuff. And they literally said, I don't see how with the evidence that I've seen,

with my eyes that the agency's analysts can still stick to their guns that nothing happened. The evidence is right there. These are senior director of operations people saying this. And so, you know, there are these things that just, it's very frustrating for the victim is because there's, I mean, there's much less of a mystery now. I mean, CNN just had an incredible report. Actually, I think Sasha Ingber is the first one who put this out, independent journalist, who's been awesome on this.

And Jack, I know you've heard this through the great fine, too, about the existence of a device. You know, that's a really big deal because that contradicts everything that the agency has stood their grounds on. You mean the story that the United States government has captured one of these devices? Yep. And so paid for, paid for. But by the way, that just that notion in itself invalidates the entire assessments that the CIA has ever done. Yet they're sticking to it. And again, so, you know, it's like Sisyphus.

You're pushing a rock up a hill. I'm going to throw all my Greek shit out here. So let's jump into the second half of the Biden administration then. After this assessment comes out, a lot of bullshit, what is sort of the next step as far as your journey here? So there's, I mean, we were playing a whack-and-wall game with the agency at that time. So every time that we knew that they were going to put something out, we would fight. back. Or, for instance, when 60 Minutes came out and with the insider and Michael Weiss and Der Spiegel and presented with this whole 29155, the Russians are doing it, they've been at attack

locations and etc., etc., well, the agency pushed out this massive report, kind of semi-unfinished right before it to try and undermine it. And so, like, every time something was about to come out in our favor, the OD&I put together an experts panel. I don't want to name names and I just don't want to out them. But, you know, these guys are very well-versed in all of this science. This isn't the National Academies of Science. This is the ODNI expert panel, which Avril Haynes put together. And they put found, basically, and Jack, I think you've seen this,

is that the unclassified version is, yeah, some cases probably can be explained. But there's a bunch of others we can explain and is likely RF microwave weapons. That's their takeaway. But meanwhile, right before that came out, Burns and the agency sent out an agency-wide email saying, oh, yeah, the ODNI expert panel agrees with us. There's nothing there. It's not possible. So they lied to the staff and a big email.

And then the OD&I expert panel came out with their thing. Well, then the State Department pushed on the Jason's report, which they had finished a few years prior, to be like, there's nothing there, which was outdated information material. So then they sandwiched it to try and be like, see, not real. and the thing that is the craziest, most infuriating piece of this to me is that there is an actual disinformation campaign being run in the press, not just by the CIA, but we've seen it from the Cubans. We've tied it back into the Cuban service,

some of these folks that are pushing this counter-narrative. The agency takes those lines and puts them into their reporting or stands on those lines. We are literally using the disinformation by our foreign adversaries as our own to try and make this issue go away. Like, it is, I don't know how it's not criminal. Like, it drives me absolutely insane because we know that it's tied back to these sources.

And so they stand on them, they push them to the press. One of these guys was listed in the NIH paper as a reason why this, we're all bullshit and crazy. We know that this person ties back to the Cuban intelligence service. Yep. What are we doing? And this is not based on inside information. us looking to see where these individuals have gone and studied and done their research.

Yeah, you could, it doesn't take a rocket scientist. Right. So, Jack, one of the amazing things on this is that, you know, Adam and I are extremely careful in honoring our secrecy agreements. Everything that we're going to say here today essentially has been cleared because we're very careful on this. And the CIA has amazingly, you know, and all the, all our public stuff has allowed us to actually speak about this, about this issue because we're careful not to use any classified

information. First of all, both of our brains are so fucking fried. I can't remember anything classified anymore. I'm being serious. I make a terrible spy for someone. I can't remember anything I did over 26 year career. But so much of what we're talking about now is just based on our own open source collection. And then, as Adam noted, you know, when 60 minutes along with the insider, you know, and Christo Gosrev, and these are people who kind of, you know, are master hack. And when they went to town, this is the old Bellingcat crowd. When they went to town, they started focusing on this Russian GRU unit, 29155, and they found extraordinary links, which it's hard to refute.

And these are, you know, these are top-notch open source investigators. And so, you know, as you start kind of gathering that information, you start realizing that there is a there and that the agency's kind of denials on this. are getting to be rather ridiculous. And so, you know, that's kind of been the story of this and how certainly Adam and I, we haven't manipulated the press at all, but have kind of worked through the press in that you have, you know, we've tried to drive the narrative on this

against all the agency's bullshit. They are very often behind us and responding to things that we have kind of, you know, not, you know, certainly helped push out. nothing classified, but from open source investigators who are doing an incredible job. This unit, 29155, has been mapped out by the open source world better than the secret world. You know, we know so much about the old kind of Soviet directed energy weapons program because they found it in open source material. You know, a good journalist can go travel to places like Ukraine and talk to actual researchers and scientists who work.

on this program in the past. This isn't rocket science at the end of the day. And so, you know, good on these kind of this kind of open source warriors who have taken it upon themselves to really push this narrative. And I know you and Jack, you and Sean have really pushed stuff too. The open source world can actually do tremendous good on this issue. And I think they really have. And just to go on to that, like, the amount of times that I've sat in briefings by the various task forces and all these other things that inevitably wrap up and say, well, there's nothing there. And you go, well, what about XYZ issue?

They go, oh, we don't know about that. I'm like, I Googled that last night. Well, what about this weapon system that was patented and da-da-da-da-da. Well, we don't know about that. Okay, well, I googled that two nights ago. So, like, you come in with a stack of paperwork to these analysts that are supposed to be the best at all this open source. I'm like, did you not try Google?

because like I'm ripping your entire many, God knows how much it costs you over the last two years to come to these conclusions. I've torn it apart in 15 seconds with a fucking Google search. Like what are we doing? Like if this is the best and brightest for the analysts that we have at the agency, we don't need them. Because you can flip a coin and have better results than we've had lately. I think we should jump in and, you know, at some point

and talk about this kind of this National Security Council meeting that Adam and I attended at the end of the Biden administration. I think is one of those kind of seminal events. You know, Adam, of course, did sit in the president's chair in the sit room. But this is a four-hour meeting in the situation room. And it was called by the Biden and SCE staff. And, you know, we've talked about this. Both of us have been quoted in the press on this.

At least I have. I don't know. I'm not sure if you have. Maybe you have. And it was an unclassified meeting. but it was at the end of the administration in which we had become incredibly frustrated. But, you know, I think that, you know, and this is kind of going as an aside, as I've been kind of, you know, attacked in the media from other stuff about, you know, my background. I think one right-wing outlet said that, you know, Mark made seven trips to the NSCs, and he was talking about, you know, the deep state and conspiring with the Biden.

Actually, no, I was talking about this issue. So I think I'd gone seven times the National Security Council, and it was becoming clear that the National Security Council saw the agency as the problem. And the Biden-NSC, while they certainly recognized that the CIA was at best being intransigent, at worst, I think, doing illegal things. They never did anything about it. And so this is a ding on them. But this meeting at the sit room, I think it was November 12th or 14th, I think at the end of the administration, something like that. And there was six of us, I believe, six victims there, some still in the organization, some not, all of whom were cornerstone cases. Some of us had received a van act compensation, but the victims were carefully chosen because these were these were, we were the kind of no doubt cases. Right, right.

And they said very clearly, well, first of all, the Maharbatar, who is the director of intelligence programs at the NSC, I think actually he had been gone up a level above. And I've talked to him and he's okay if I kind of reveal all this. He basically said, we believe you. Pretty shocking statement from an administration from a CIA that says we don't. We believe you. And then Dr. Paul Friedrich, I believe was his name, the head of the president. of kind of infectious disease and pandemic response for the entire NSC gets up there.

And he says, I've never in 35 years of military medicine. And he actually was the doctor for the Joint Chiefs. He said, I've never seen victims treated in such a horrible fashion. And he said, I'm sorry. We are apologizing to you. David, whoops, that was my wife, Braden's everything okay? David Relman, who, you know, a senior doctor from Stanford, who was on the NSC staff, was at that meeting as well.

He's written an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal about this, in essence saying that, you know, we believe them. And so an extraordinary moment. Now, frustrating for us for a variety of reasons. But, of course, the bottom line was, okay, you believe us, but you allowed the CIA to run all over us. And so that's not a good reflection on you, White House, NSC. And then they said they want to kind of leave a blueprint for the next Trump administration, which, of course, I don't think there was any follow-up on that, just because it's just that there was such hostility.

But one thing that they promised they would do is that they, you know, they wrote an op-ed, an opinion piece that was going to be published in the Washington Post with Jake Sullivan's name on it as well, saying, we believe you. And they did not do that in the very end. And so that was kind of disappointing. But what that meeting told me, and I defer to Adam on his thoughts, I walked away from that saying, well, first of all, it was unclassified. So we got a whole lot of fucking ammo because it's all about that. Sorry, it's, you know. But number two is it was an admission that the CIA, again, at best, was blocking this issue and at worst engaged in criminal behavior.

And I remember asking the director of counterintelligence, I won't name his name. I said, so this is a CIA cover-up, and he kind of just looked at me, which was to me at acknowledgement. And that's extraordinary. Let's just go over that. In fact, it was then written about, I think Shane Harris and the Atlantic actually wrote a paper on that, said, hold on a second. The Biden NSC is actually saying they believe the victims. And wait a second, aren't they supposed to oversee the intelligence community? Like, what has happened here? And that's then the transition into the Trump administration. So a kind of strange ending to the Biden time. and then Adam can pick up kind of the dealings with the Trump group, of course, I don't really have great relations with.

I'm surprised they haven't locked you up yet, Mark. Well, maybe this is the one issue that's saving me. Adam, you want to pick it up? Sure. So, I mean, we've had some good allies. So generally speaking, this issue has been completely bipartisan outside of the CIA. So on the Hill, Mark and I testified to the Senate Intelligence Committee to assist you together, packed house, both sides of the aisle. You're saying with it?

No. Including our current Secretary of State. Yeah, Mark, Senator Rubio was there. Well, then Senator Rubio at the time who came up and spoke to us afterwards. And I've dealt with Senator Rubio's office for years, years and years and years. Same as Senator Collins and some others. And Senator Shaheen has also been wonderful. So we've had this strong, strong bipartisan support, especially behind closed doors.

That's really where we see it. I testified to Hipsy in April of this past year. And honestly, Chairman Rick Crawford has been phenomenal behind the scenes for us. It's like unbelievable champion for us behind the scenes. But even in that Hipsy brief, I went with one of the other survivors. Both sides were there. Both supply sides came up. What can we do?

We're so sorry. Like all of the things you would hope to see a functional Congress do. So we've always tried to run it down the middle because this is not a partisan issue. So with this incoming administration, we've have some good contacts. I'm not going to name names at this point. But we're able to get a one-pager into the transition team about this issue. Basically, to get it into the briefing books for Tulsi for, I mean, Marco didn't even need it, obviously, because he's so well. versed in this whole issue.

But to Ratcliffe, so we were able to get our issue into their briefing books so that they would know about it, so they could understand it. And what you saw then, when they went through their confirmation hearings, is questions were pointedly asked

about this topic. You know, I know Senator Shaheen did it, Collins did it, Jill Brand did it. They were all put on record for what they're going to do on this issue moving forward, given that it's a priority. for a lot of these guys in Congress. And I will say, of all of the folks that has actually followed through, up until recently, to do what they said they were going to do, Tulsi Gabbard is the only one that followed through

on all of the things she said she was going to do on this issue. And we can get into what's happened lately. But up until about a month or so ago, the last several weeks, she was on track to hold people accountable, to uncover the dirt, to look under every rock. I will say I'm sorely disappointed with what the CIA has done. All of those answers, I actually just read them the other day. They've done nothing. Run us through the other agencies because there's also, as I recall, a bit of a split between CIA and DOD and always kind of has been.

If you want to talk about second Trump administration, DOD and CIA, how were they looking at this issue? Yeah, so that's balanced. basically we and now I will say there's a difference between big DoD and DIA. Like, although they sit under this and the fort, right, NSA has always been on sides. They've been amazing. They've always been pushing this topic forward. Because they know. Yeah, they know the science.

I mean, are you kidding me? Because they have fucking intercepts. Clearly, if NSA is on our side, it's not because they like us. It's because they've collected information that says this. Shit is real. Sorry. I mean, if Christo can do it from his closet, like, the NSA should be able to do it from what they have, right? And so we've had some support. DIA, we had Director Cruz, who was a real problem.

And basically, like, people came in and there's two teams. There's CIA covered up, make it go away, because even in the agency, we had a lot of the old guard that was there. Like, the only thing that changed the agency was Burns and Cohen left, right? everyone else stayed in place. But DOD had this cross-functional team, which was mandated by Congress, to look at this issue. Now, their purview is from A to Z. They look at who did it, how did they do it, what's the tech, how do we care for people, how do we stop it? That is their whole thing.

And so DoD had this team, and as we found out from CNN recently, clearly they've had a system that they've been tinkering with. And so they've been on sides this entire time. Like that team has been the hope of all of us, truly. Especially like the recent director that's been there for the latest stint is just, I mean, she's a hero to me and to many of us, because we've not had zero hope in the U.S. government until this person came along. And so, D.O.D., like, they've always kind of taken the lead on this. Since the CIA started doing this, we're making it go away, we don't believe it.

DoD picked it up quietly in the corner and goes, we'll take it. And so all of the injured agency people, I mean, and I don't think, just because Mark and I are always popping up, you know, like these assholes on TV all the time on this issue, there's so, so, so many DOD impacted folks, way more than in the IC, and especially special forces guys, guys that are out doing stuff in places that we don't, they're not doing things, they're coming back injured. Like, people are bumping into these guys at Walter Reed. Like, I've heard J-Soc took this pretty seriously.

Yeah, because they keep getting, they keep losing guys to this whole thing. So, I mean, and this issue hasn't stopped, right? Like, in the last several months, there's been many, many, many people that have come out injured. Like, this issue is still ongoing right now. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, 100%. Holy shit. So, and this is, and most of those that I know of are DOD, or DOD folks that are coming from abroad. That's why DOD has typically taken the lead on this and has been really, really good on this.

I will say that I went with one of the other guys' survivors to meet with Deputy Director Ellis early last year. And we sat down, we're just like, hey, we had such a confrontational relationship with the last administration. Please don't do that. Please don't take us down this road. This is the situation. This is how things have played out. And in the end, we go, Don't take our word for it. Here are all of the people that you should get briefs from. The teams that, you know, at that point we didn't know, but like the teams that had a weapon system, apparently, that we had no idea about. Teams that were inside that had been trodden on and made to go away, but had the inside line on what was going on and who was doing what and all these things.

Like, you know, none of these folks inside tell me and Mark or any of the specific details. But they're also, if you go, they're also going to be the first ones to go, you're not making this. up. Right? Like, so we don't know specifics, but I can go, hey, go talk to that guy. He's going to tell you exactly what's happening on the ground. Go to the fort and talk to this guy. And so, we gave them all this information and we said, these are the guys that covered up in the last administration. Like, I'm sorry, like, I know they're close to you right now, but it's not good. And they didn't do anything. They did the same thing that Burns did on that first meeting, which was took the info, took the notes.

smoke up your ass. Smoke up the ass and did nothing and then actually turn around to do the opposite. There's a piece of this that really has to be kind of reinforcing. We've been betrayed again by the agency. And that to me is, you know, it is stunning because

and there's, you know, I'm not giving any excuses for any past CIA teams. But right now with the amount of information that has been collected that we know. And again, I quoted someone before saying, I've seen the preponderance of stuff. It is inconceivable that the agency can hold to their analytic line that's nothing. But they are. You know, it is so glaringly obvious that there's a there there at this point.

But Rackliff and Ellis are sticking to their guns. And I just, it is, I mean, Adam and I talk about this all the time. It's almost hard to fathom, particularly, again, when the Hill and oversight knows exactly, and the DNI as well. I mean, you know, Tulsi Gabbard is a very controversial figure. But one of the things that she did is she put a report together on this issue, actually was going to call for kind of a new assessment. But in essence, all the mistakes that were made in terms of tradecraft, because it's glaring.

Yet the current CIA team is back to that, you know, this is nothing and make it go away. And that is just inconceivable. And it leads me to think that the place is kind of wrong. gotten to its core now, and I hate to say this because I really believe in the mission. But if the institution is going to stick to its guns on this, it's not an institution that is worth saving and it should be kind of just torn down and rebuilt. I mean, it's lost all credibility, and I can't even believe I'm saying this now, but that's certainly the way I feel. It is absolutely tarnished. And again, everyone in Washington knows this. There's no secret on this.

If you talk to people on the Hill who've seen all the evidence, talk to the people, especially in the oversight committees, where we are right now with the agency sticking to its guns analytically is almost hard to fathom. This is a symptom of a bigger issue, right? If they're willing to do that on this issue, which is a niche issue, right? It's not major in the grand scheme of things. This is not like WMBs and nuclear programs, but it is still a major national security threat, not only abroad but domestically too.

Like the amount of shockingly senior people that have not been public that have been hit in the United States and Washington is eye-watering. So like this is truly a national security threat issue. But we're still, like, how are we still fighting that this is even, like, real? Like, I just, I can't fathom that that is where we're at. And so to kind of move the timeline forward, over the last year, like the CFT has finally, they feel like they were running on all cylinders.

They've got all these experts in. Like, one of the things that I've been pushing hard for, I know some of the others have as well, have talked about brain donation. Back when I was at Penn in 2017, 2018, I was like, hey, take my brain. Like, if I die, take it. Do a biopsy. I don't give shit. Like, drill a hole in there and take some. I'm like, whatever you need to do to look at it, to understand, because the scans can't get to the

granularity you need to understand the bio-damage at the cellular level. And so I was like, figure out a brain donation program. And then I was talking to the military. I'm like, you figure it out. And so one of the things we've been pushing over the last year with the CFT, one of the docs they brought in, is a brain donation program to be like, this is how we get to the bottom of what the bio-damage is it? We know there's a lot of cerebellar damage.

Is it at the brainstem? We don't know. We can't get there with scans. And so we've had all of these advancements where they're willing to listen to us and go, what do you need? Like, how can we help you? Guys that are going, I can't get care. I can't get into Walter Reed.

The CFT would step in and get them like straight in and make the calls for us. And the same, meanwhile, they're doing that. And Tulsi has this team of just phenomenal people that Mark and I are familiar with. That if you'd ask me like, who's your dream team to look at the cover up? and the situation that happened in the last administration, those are the people they picked to run this team. Like, they are phenomenal people, and they just got shut down last week.

And then the CFT group that has been phenomenal and looking at all of this, and according to CNN, like, is connected to this weapon and all this other testing shit, they got shut down yesterday. And so we're going, the CFT got moved technically. They didn't get shut down.

They got moved. to Arnie. R&E is a death blow. Everyone in that team's going to get scrapped or fired or quit and they're going to rebuild the CFT for no reason at all and set us back years. It wasn't broken. It was not broken at all. It wasn't broken.

It was great. This was just because Under Secretary Colby didn't have the balls or desire to deal with the issue. And so he wanted to scrap it realized he couldn't because it was congressionally mandated. And so then he shoved this whole shit sandwich, which is my language, onto Undersecretary

Michael at R&E, and now they're having to deal with the fallout. But, you know, it is where I started with hope with this administration, unlike Mark, for duly so, where I thought, you know, they were going to do the right things. Hegset in meetings, phenomenal, asking great questions about what was going on, the tech, all of this other stuff, you know, really understood the issue, and his takeaway has always been, take care of the warfighter, take care of the warfighter. And what I think you've seen happen is a major political play that has just happened, where his, his chief of staff is Ricky Burria, who is a Biden, Lloyd Austin holdover guy, who is now the gatekeeper to anything and everything that gets to Hegsa. And he, for whatever reason, took offense to the

current CFT, as did Colby, who didn't want anything to do with it. And then Undersecretary Hansel at INS, he then decided he wanted to jump in and start ripping the CFT out of all these mandated congressional hearings. And they all decided, let's make it go away. And this is the problem when you have a bunch of political guys that get brought in that don't understand a national security issue and only give a shit about their own political futures. And so in doing so, they've sold this bill of goods.

And I've been told by folks close to Secretary Heggzath, he thinks that he did the right thing by moving the CFT group to Arne. He thought they were going to get more resources. that it was going to accelerate the research. It was going to accelerate the, you know, pointing the finger at who did all this stuff. The reality is it couldn't have done more damage to what progress has already been in place. And no one has the balls to tell the secretary that his underlings just played him for a fool, and he ended up hurting the warfighter.

So they couldn't actually kill the program because it's congressionally mandated. So what they're doing is burying it in bureaucracy. Correct. And some of the top officials, Pete Hegseth, it sounds like, is kind of insulated by his staffers who are kind of like, I mean, brainwashing him a little bit maybe into believing that he's doing something good. What about the head of D&I, Tulsi Gabbard? What do you think her position is on this now? So I, you know, I don't want to overstep bounds here, but I'm told that behind the scenes on our issue, she said all the things that we would wish to hear.

They looked under the rock. They saw the rot and poison that had happened in the IC under the last administration. They wrote up the report. She was going to go public. And for some reason, she's not allowed to do it now. So where that blocking has come from, I have my suspicions that it's coming back from the agency because Rackcliffe has far more power than she does. But, you know, that team got disbanded and that report still exists,

but is nowhere to be seen. Now, it doesn't look good for the CIA, right? We lived it, so we know what, even at least some of it, not all the classified that's in there, but we know because of what we were involved in, that it would force a reckoning for the agency, that they would have to clean house, they would have to have a deep look internally and go,

is this how we're going to move forward on serving the American people? Well, obviously, that's dirty laundry that Ratcliffe doesn't want out there, So it is my inclination that that's been stopped by him. What kills me is this is such an easy political win. You could stand up and go, the Biden administration covered this up. The Biden administration, fuck these people, fuck the warfighter. And take your victory lap. Like that's such an easy victory lap to take.

But instead, by doing what they've done, now they own the cover up. And because there's more data and apparently a weapon system and all this testing and all this other stuff, you guys have more information than the last administration does, so it actually makes you worse than them. And the irony is, in 2017, Trump out in front of the Rose Garden before he got into a helicopter, he said, called these attacks that happened in Cuba. He's the only president that has ever called these attacks. And that CFT team that was in DOD was the only team that was actively working to prove that President Trump was right. And they just disbanded it to make it go away. By the way, let me throw one thing, Jack. You'll like this. And Adam thought this was quite amusing, how I kind of committed, you know, self-flagellation with the New York Post. New York Post, of course, is Trump's favorite newspaper. A newspaper that hates me passionately has put me in there so many times about... Tell us about the Hunter Biden laptop there, Mark.

Holy fuck. I mean, I've been on the front page there. But I agreed to an interview. with them. And I said very clearly, I said, you know, I am clearly not a fan of this administration, but, and this was before all these shenanigans of the last week or so, I said, but if, you know, if Tulsi does the right thing and if President Trump does the right thing, I'll be the first one to praise them. Obviously, my self, my exercise and self-flagellation did not work. But I think that's the reflection of how, kind of how we all, I don't care, you know, who gets credit for kind of finally doing the right thing. I think the Trump administration had to do that. a chance to, and they've botched that. Biden administration certainly botched it massively as well.

And I think the one thing that, you know, that Adam and I have to kind of fall back on is our allies are on the hill. And the fact of the matter is we talk about Rick Crawford as the chairman of Hipsy, but the vice chair on the Democratic side, Jim Himes, is also believes us totally, completely on this issue. And so now we're starting to think, okay, if Congress flips in the midterms, which is looking likely, you know, we're going to have to take another run at it this time with the Democratic staff, along with the Republicans and the minority who are, you know, agree with us on this issue. But, you know, we're just, we're trying to look for allies anywhere we can find them, which is not hard to do when you put the truth in front of them.

Again, what is incredibly frustrating is that the agency stonewalling now is based on the preponderance of information. And there's, by the way, over the next, you know, month or two, you're going to see a whole bunch more press stuff coming out, which is going to be, really damning as well. I mean, this, you know, this is not like, what was it? What's the famous thing? This is not like fine wine. It doesn't get better over time. It doesn't age better over time. And so it's just going to get worse and worse. And I know that Adam is as dedicated or even more so than I am to kind of pursuing this. I don't want to be doing this. I love coming on this show. But I would, you know, much rather be talking about, you know, current events and Iran and Venezuela and

all of the things. But this is something that we have to kind of pursue to the end. And again, for the listeners or for the viewers, Agent Orange in Vietnam, Gulf War syndrome in the first Gulf war, burn pits during the G-Wat, you know, John Stewart's thing. There is such a record of U.S. government's fuck-ups and cover-ups on these things. The idea that this is not one of them, I mean, it's, you know, I would say number one, it's, of course, plausible. And I would argue that it is actually real. Again, based on data, it's information. It's not believing Adam and I. It's based on things that you're going to find out, like the device, that breaking story. This is very real.

And I also add the 9-11 pile to that, right? When they told all the firefighters and every one pile of six. Yeah, yeah, that's right. All the 9-11 victims is solid. They do it to the domestic just as much as they do it to the war fighter. But, you know, if, Jack, if this issue had ended with Mark, we wouldn't be here. if this issue had ended two years ago, we wouldn't be here. But there's a lot of people that are in the IC, that are in the special forces, that are in the DOD, that are in these key places that are still actively getting hurt as of several weeks ago.

So these guys can't talk, won't talk. Like, they are, they are the quiet professionals that Mark and I are clearly not at this point. You know, this has long been my nightmare is to be in the press and to do this stuff. Because literally, Mark and I have nothing to gain here. We have literally, I have everything to lose because the government owns me top to bottom in terms of my retirement. But there's so many people that can't speak for themselves. And if this issue dies, I can tell you there's a lot of people in the field still. And I've talked to someone recently.

They will not come forward. They will not get help. they are suffering and our national security suffers because those people, if there are anything like I was when I was injured, cannot do this job. So we're now not fulfilling our promises to the American people. And so at the end of the day, we got to, A, take care of people, but we got to stop this. And there doesn't seem to be any appetite to do that. And so what do we do? You know, we're going to keep pushing until my dream is to go away. And I know there's other people that desperately wanted to go away to. Mark knows who they are. But acknowledge it's real,

take care of the warfighter, and take steps to stop it, and we'll go away. Like, that's, that's as easy as it comes. And I just, if more people weren't still getting hurt all the time, we, again, we'd just say it's over, whatever, we tried, but it's not going to stop. you know um while we're on this topic um and bringing this up to current events i wanted to ask you guys about some of the stuff that came out in the aftermath of the uh maduro raid and there was this a story on social media as best as i can tell it came from a ticot account originally just some random guy saying unsourced stuff that j sock blasted um people with some sort of microwave weapon on target and disabled them.

I've been told by multiple sources that's bullshit. They didn't do that. There's a couple of different reasons why they wouldn't do that. Hitting our own operators would be one of them. But then President Trump went on television and he was like, oh, yeah, yeah, we have a discombobulator array and you know, like, what's going on here? Like, what are we doing here? So we talked about this, Jack.

and I always, you know, I think when that was all coming out, I originally had said that, you know, this is bullshit. You know, we wouldn't do that. But then we talked about possibilities, right? Like, we know there are these systems in play. We know there's aircraft-mounted systems. It could be EW gone wrong. It could be all of these other things.

I can't overstep, but I don't think the president was all that wrong from some of the stuff I've heard. but I think it's a we have an LRAD. I mean, we have these these long range acoustical devices. I mean, there's things to incapacitate. I don't, you know, I would, I would frankly, like, it was

exciting for the press to jump a whole, you know, to kind of jump all over this, but I'm not sure it advances our issue all that much. Yeah. I will say that, I mean, it brings attention to new and novel

technologies that can be used to disable and incapacitate folks. We do, the U.S. has systems. You know, the finesse is that what happened to us is a very delicate, like it is hard to explain without going down this deep and dark rabbit hole. Are there systems that can drop you? 100%. Do we have them?

Yes. Like, is there LRAD? Is there active denial? Is there all the other things that are on the shelf that no one talks about that doesn't exist? 100%. Ours was just the most. more complicated version because of the non-thermal aspect of it.

But, you know, was something used in that Maduro rate? I would guess, yes, at this point now. Originally, I would have said no, but with time, I would say something was used. I just don't think of it's... I don't know where the discombobulator moniker can't. They had to explain it to him somehow. Right. I mean, that's, you know, so, and Jack, there's a point on that, though, is that, you know,

Adam and I have struggled for kind of for years. you know, we are not the tinfoil of hat crowd. I mean, this is not, you know, and I mean, but sometimes, I mean, you know, as you, as you kind of explain this to the layperson, people look at you like this sounds like a little kind of off and crazy. And it's really not if you know the history of direct energy weapons and just in signals intelligence and the old Moscow signal and all the shitty things the Russians have done to us. But I think sometimes, you know, when I heard discombobulated, I was like, oh my God, like somehow, you know, if we're going to be asked about this. and it's i mean it does kind of negate a little bit of the seriousness of our of our of our issue and then of course then i mean then the white house press spokesman said was was sending tweets out about directed energy weapons and you're just like i mean i got

5,000 fucking emails after that while they're telling you guys that it doesn't exist well and the irony being there too right is like two weeks later cnn breaks a story that the u.s has one of these weapons that they got abroad like oh god it's all like but at the end of the day, like, if it brings attention to it and advances things, I, you know, not the same, but similar class of what we're talking about here. So, you know, I, I, there's just, there's a long way to go, but I just, I hope that at some point someone will, will have a come to Jesus moment and go, we, we really got to face this because. There's, the other part of it, too, is the account, you know, so we talked about health care.

We talked about, um, accountability for the senior people. CIA who are still there. Again, like, do not want to emphasize, I got to emphasize this over and over again. There's senior CIA people who were involved in screwing over Adam and I who are still in positions of power. That's unconscionable. But then there's the- Not just us, everyone. Hundreds of people. But then there's the attribution piece. And so, look, the Russian, let me just say flat out. I think the Russians did this. Rick Crawford knows this. The agency knows this. The intelligence community knows this. The DNI knows this. If they do another assessment, they will go through a process and it'll be painstaken and they'll come to some

kind of mealy-mouth analytic line of medium confidence. But clearly it's the Russians who are behind this. And you're going to hear people say this shortly who were in positions of power to know this. But then, of course, what does that mean? So what do you do about it? And so I think that Jack, you asked a question before is why the reluctance in U.S. government circles? Because if it's an act of war against U.S. personnel and if the Russians didn't, what do we do? And nobody wants to kind of go through that. That's a terrible national security council meeting. What do we do about this? You sign a lethal finding is what you do. Right. But, you know, that's something that, you know, okay, you do. And not under the Biden administration who

were cowards and not under the Trump administration who love the Russians. So like, you know, so, so all of a sudden politics come into play. Yeah, yeah. On that. And so, you know, but holding people accountable means attribution. And I think that's what the agency and the intelligence community was very scared of. Look, remember the whole issue, and I was in government at the time of the Russians putting bounties via the Taliban on our forces? That was a

I'm stretching with the limits of what I can say. That was a fucking rock solid intelligence case. And nobody wanted to go to high confidence on that. It was just medium confidence because if they were doing that, then we have to retaliate. Right. And so they came up with this medium confidence bullshit assessment,

which the director of operations is like, what in the fuck is that? That is absolutely preposterous. And so, you know, is any administration then going to hold the Russians accountable for this? I mean, it's going to come out in the next year. The Russians are behind this. You know, but if I hear, we can't touch this because it's a bilateral irritant one more time. I'm going to gouge out my last good eye.

Like, this is – and at the end of the day, this was an operation that was done against us and the others in the shadows. It was their leading unit that does all the poisonings, all the other shit. Like, we know who they are. We know where they're at. We can take care of it. Just sign off. This doesn't have to be a deal breaker on a Ukraine war-stopping policy. This doesn't have to be, like, there are many lines of activities that we do against each other anyway, regardless of what's happening on the global scale.

And the research back down when you confront them. Of course they do. So, like, we are the queen, literally the queen at this point, of putting red lines in the sand and doing nothing about it. Like, Obama did it. Trump just did it in Iran. Like, and people pass over them, we don't back it up. So what are we doing here? And the Russians only respond to one thing, which is concentrated violence and which you tell them why you're doing it.

So sitting back and saying, well, we don't want to make them mad. Yeah, too late. Gives two fucks? Like, how many people have you taken out? Like, how many literally billions of dollars have you just cost the United States government? Meanwhile, we're infighting. We're creating distrust in our own U.S. government. We're literally running a covert action program for the Russians at this point because our own people can't accept that this is real.

So, like, it's just, you know, from an outside perspective, looking in, this is the most perfect covert action program. probably ever seen. Mark's been at this way longer than I have. But like to a injure people, take them off the battlefield, knock out your whole embassy in Cuba. Like amongst all these other things, kill retention, kill people that want to work for the, do this job anymore. Like, and meanwhile, no one trusts the US government because they can't own it. They can't take care of people in the way they should be. Like, this is the perfect thing. And meanwhile, because no one's done anything, they get more and more bold. They run around.

And then they, you know, we didn't do anything of Russia. We didn't do anything after Marcus started in Moscow. There's other cases out of Europe. There's ones that predated me. We did nothing. Well, then they start showing up in D.C. What do we do? Nothing.

I think the Russians see this as like the cheat code that they can use because it's not an assassination. It's sort of these invisible wounds. And in their mind, they probably figure, well, we can shut down American strategic intelligence with this. just knock them off the board one by one. Great hybrid warfare. Jack, I think back to, you know, a long time ago, early on in my career, I spent some time in New York.

And I remember talking to the old grizzled members of the FBI's Russia squad. And they were like, you know, back in the day, you know, when something happened to one of your guys out in Moscow, we just go to fucking the rush, the Soviets here, and just fucking drag one of them out and beat the shit out of them. And I was like, I was like, are you guys really being serious? They're like, oh, yeah. That's the message. And then the harassment of our people would stop somewhere else. I mean, that is what the Russians understand.

I even remember when I was in Moscow on that fateful trip talking to our embassy staff, one of the embassy officers said to me, he goes, you know, I was going for a walk with my family other day. And we have surveillance all over the play, and one of the surveillance came up and spit right in my face. And I was like, what did you do that for? And he's like, you know, and he stormed off. And the FBI in somewhere in fucking America. did something against a Russian diplomat.

And so the Russians are like, we're going to get them back. And they literally expect us to actually know. But we never do that same thing right back at them. And the old days, the FBI boys would go out and beat some fucking Soviet ass. And that would take care of the problem. And, you know, we are so far from doing anything like that. I mean, it's the only kind of, you know, saving grace, you know, I've gotten off with over the last.

couple years is just, you know, a million Russians dead or injured in Ukraine. Yeah. And so I was always happy with that. Yeah. I remember that's okay. I remember having lunch with a former CIA officer at the notorious steakhouse out in Tyson's corner. And it was just as the full scale invasion was kicking off.

And I was like, man, I kind of feel bad for these Russian soldiers, these young conscripts, you know, they didn't even know they were invading. They thought it was a training exercise. He just looks at me. He's like, fuck him. I don't feel bad. at all. No way.

Not at all. Oh, my God. After what we saw in Irpin and Buccio, the war crimes, I was on board with his point of view after that. It's a terrorist country. Yeah. Mark, you made some allusions there to like something else that's going to be disclosed, something else that's going to come out.

I mean, what's going to play out in the next couple months? I think that you're going to see other press outlets. And we're still waiting for your, I think you have something coming. a long-awaited part two. Yeah, it's coming. From you and Sean. But there's multiple press outlets working on different aspects of this story that's going to uncover more of the data we're talking about.

And again, I think that's not Adam and I yapping in the press saying it's real. It's actually, it's very similar to what the CNN story and the Sasha Inger's story about the device. You know, a well-sourced press piece saying this is what is happening right now. And why is that happening, Jack? That's the next question. It's because people are pissed. I mean, the amazing thing is whistleblowers are coming out all the time. You know, my attorney, Mark Zade, who's a great national security attorney,

you know, has had a constant stream of people he's taken down to Hipsy and Sissy on this issue. So people are pissed. People are coming forward because they're saying at this point, they, you know, they actually were relying on the Trump administration and get this right. It's clear the agency's covering this up. The DNI has been neutered. and Hipsy is, you know, while they have all the goods, you know, and Rick Crawford and his staff have been fantastic. They have not gone public about it. I wish they would.

So I think, you know, the next step is the media has really gotten a hold of this. And again, in my world where I deal with, I know everybody from the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, from New York Times, you know, CNN, Fox. Everybody is chasing these stories and everybody has a story to tell on this because people are pissed. And Jack, you know this is a journalist. when people get pissed, they talk. And because here's the thing, because this is a question of right and wrong. I mean, it really is.

Like, this shouldn't be partisan at all. Like, people are injured. The Russians did this. Like, the fucking truth's got to come out. And people have to be held accountable who screwed all the victims over. And then we have to get them health care. And then we have to go after the entity that's doing this,

which is the Russians. Sometime, this will all come out. So I think you're going to see a lot of stuff breaking in the next couple months. And that's a good thing. And, you know, people have to make that choice in going public. But there are whistleblower protections, as we've seen in history. You know, history can be written based on people being really brave and coming forward. Yeah.

At some point, there's going to be like a Robert Caro that comes out and does like a six-volume set about Havana syndrome because it's such a huge story and it's so incredibly complicated. You guys have been on it, though, Jack, you and Dee and Dave and and show. Sean deserve a huge amount of credit on this. Because you, I mean, you know, again, and I think there's a part about independent journalism that's really important. Yeah. You don't even hear of actually listen to say, well, that can't be the case. I mean, the stuff you do, Adam and I were talking about you the other day, your ears were burnings that, you know, you guys, when you and Sean write stuff is very well sourced. Probably some of the best source stuff we've seen, honestly.

And that's what you stand apart. A lot of time goes into that stuff. Right, right. And I think the other thing is that the media has changed, the media landscape, doing the team house right now is probably more effective than us jumping on a network television show. Yeah, sometimes. You have a shitload of viewers. How about you, Adam?

Where do you see things or how do you see things playing out over the next six months, year? I don't know. you know, it's, it's been hard to watch kind of these pieces of hope slip away. You know, like we talked about Mark, Mark with the Biden administration had all the hope in the world, and I was like, no, I don't see it happening. And so I wasn't disappointed when we got fucked by them, but I think I was the hopeful one of the group on this administration, just because it seemed like it was such an easy win for them to take. I just still don't understand.

but, you know, I don't know. I think you're going to continue to see this, like Mark said, you'll see these press pushes and disclosures. I press calling me going, hey, do you know about X, Y, Z issue? And I'm going, well, shit. Like, someone, someone talked. Like, that's, like, that's how I'm finding out that people are talking is because I get, I get the press reaching out to me going, do you know about X, Y, Z issue?

You shouldn't know. A, you shouldn't know this. B, I don't know what this is. Right, right, yeah. Like, you know, and then you call someone. and they're like, can't talk about it. And you're like, okay, that's real. Okay.

So, yeah, I think we'll see these disclosures. My hope and dream is that R&E realizes that they are not the home for the DoD team and that we can save them because there's limited time there. But, you know, and I hate to say this, but I said this to Deputy Director Ellis on the way out the door at the end of that meeting. I said, listen, we went to war with the last administration over this issue. I don't want to do it with you, but we'll do what we've got to do. And I hope that I was saying that in like, you're going to help us, please don't.

And here we are. So, I mean, I'm true to my word. I know Mark is there. The truth is the truth, right? They can hang on to whatever they want. Our stories have never changed. The facts have never changed. The circumstances have never changed.

they can keep kind of trying to make up all the excuses they want. But at some point, the truth will prevail. We'll be right. We'll probably be dead by then. But, you know, I'm not going to stop until we get there. Yeah. I mean, that's the sad thing about some of these things. I don't think you'll be dead, but it'll be a defunct issue, right? It'll be over. And it'll be too late to help so many people. Well, and that's what kills me is like, I remember when I came out of Havana, you know, I remember meeting with seniors. And I will say that, like, I look back on my behavior at that point and go, like, there is, there's something that happens with when you're hit, that, like, your executive function goes absolutely out the window and takes quite a long time to come back. But I remember, I yelled at them. I said, if you don't do something now, I'd put this back in the box and strike back

with an iron fist, this is going to go everywhere. And we refused to do it. The FBI was ready. We were ready. everyone was ready to do something, but no one wanted to pull the trigger because at the time, it was, well, we need to protect the Obama policy. Obama had the Cuba policy. So like you had the Obama holdovers that wanted to protect the Cuba policy, and they didn't want to acknowledge the reality of the situation on the ground, which was, hey, maybe that's not working out the way you thought it was going to work out. Like, take a hint, you just wiped out the entire embassy. And so we refuse to do anything. And again, the only thing that the Russians and the Cubans

everyone else would get is a message saying, we probably can't do this because it was not, the juice was not worth the squeeze, right? They take us out and we do X, Y, Z abroad, and all of a sudden, like the Maduro raid, 31 guys get shrunk into the size of a box that are Cubans coming off a plane. Like, you know, you start readjusting your equations, and maybe this doesn't spread.

We're at the place now where it's out of the box. There is a small chance to stop major, major proliferation of these systems. Small. It's already started. We know it has. We know it's not just state actors that have these things now. However, there is still a chance to put the genie back in the bottle and deal with it. But if we wait much longer, we're going to be in trouble.

And it's not just going to be intelligence. Like, you'll see these things happening. like I would I would guess at a domestic level to criminal gangs, organizations, all that. So they'll get their hands on this stuff because once you understand the science, you can make them real cheap. Anything else, guys, before we get going? I mean, I think we covered a lot of ground tonight. But is there anything we haven't talked about that you'd like to touch on?

I think the one thing, you know, and I look back kind of over the last, you know, it's eight-year struggle, nine for Adam, right? for you, Adam, right? And, you know, the allies along the way. And it really is a bipartisan issue. I mean, that's, you know, that's the thing that I cannot stress enough. There was a hearing a couple years ago. And it was at the hearing, it was Eli Crane, you know, as a former seal, who is absolutely maggot to the extreme hard right. And Eric Swalwell, who is, you know, a representative from California, certainly very progressive. And they totally both. support us. And that's a perfect encapsulation on the way and on how this issue should run. Adam kind of alludes to the times we've gone down to the hill. When you go down and you brief the hill on this, everybody shows up from both sides of the aisle. It is not a political issue. It becomes political as it has now. But I think that's kind of the key on this as well. And then the last point is, you know, when I went through Walter Reed, when I went through

NICO and my cohort, I had a couple guys, I had one, someone for Steel Team 6. I had someone, Navy EOD and one Air Force combat controller. And kind of talking through all the experiences, it's really similar what we went through. You know, to recover from traumatic brain injury, I mean, it is, in essence, you know, very similar, whether it's a blast injury in Iraq or repeated, you know, exposures over your career as an operator to what happened to Adam and I. And so, you know, one of the things is that, you know, there is, we do have commonality. And going over to Walter Reed, to Nike, for me, it was always a comforting. And still, as I still go there for some kind of some mental health counseling, but it's a very comforting place because you have

these similarities. And final point on that is, you know, some of the things that the people are trying in the, in the veteran community, in terms of PTSD and TBI with psychedelics, other things like that, that's being recommended for those of us who are exposed to this, to the director of energy issue as well. And so, you know, I just saw that there's a great documentary that just came out, um, uh, on this. It's called, what is it? When I know it's on Netflix. It's on Netflix. Of waves and war or something. It's a bunch of, uh, dev group guys. Yeah. Yeah, it's really good. And so, you know, and immediately I kind of, I've gotten in contact with people who were involved in that. Whoops, sorry. Shut this off. And so, uh, I think I'm probably going to go down that road as well, um,

in terms of trying that because very similar injuries and very similar success. See, this is all AHI-related stuff. I got to shut off my sink. Sorry. This is one of our cohort friends who are working on stuff with. But ultimately so, but going back to, you know, the kind of the use of psychedelics, the use of that kind of therapy, I think, is, you know, that might be some groundbreaking stuff for a lot of us.

About you, Adam? Yeah, I think maybe an interesting fact. to leave off is that, you know, there are multiple iterations of these weapons that are in play, right? So those were injured a while back. Like, there's kind of a first-gen system. These have gotten increasingly more advanced and complex as time has gone on, and they've been fielded. And the irony, like, if you could sit down with someone that was hit, like me or someone like, you know, if you compare Mike Beck hit in the 90s, right, versus me versus, say Mark or someone else versus someone that was injured maybe a month or so ago,

you can actually track per the experiences and actually some of the bio outcomes, although similar, have very dramatic differences. And I've talked to some of the guys that have done a lot of the research on this stuff and track this over the years inside DoD and they go, oh, I can sit down and talk to someone. I can tell you exactly which system you were hit by. Holy shit. But there are very, there's not just one type of system out there.

When you're dealing with frequencies and things like that, you're dealing with a lot of bio stuff. And they can change what they want as the bio outcome based on how they program these things. So just an interesting tidbit for people to realize, like, this tech isn't just a one and done. It's advancing quickly and it's becoming more effective and is creating different outcomes based on what they're hoping for. but you know Mark and I are often kind of the speaking heads on this there's so many people behind the scenes so so so many people behind the scenes other injured folks that have just I've really taken it like on the chin for us although they can't necessarily show their faces some are still in we've got a friend over DAA Megan like there are so many people that are working behind the scenes

connecting dots pushing things forward and They deserve so much recognition as well. Like, so it's not just us. Like, this is a force, you know, this is like a battalion of people all moving in the same direction. We're all in touch with each other. We're all helping each other. So, you know, this is not just a one or a two-man fight. This has got a lot of people behind it.

And that's kind of the message to the government, if they want to cover this up, there's a lot of intelligence officers that don't have anything to do anymore. and when you're just trying to screw us and our friends, like we have time on our hands. And so, you know, doing the right thing is not hard. Just do the right thing. We've been called very noisy. The victim's cohort is very noisy. Well, good.

Yeah. We will, I'm sure we'll put a link down the description to the high side article that Sean Naylor and I wrote, which gets into Adam's story of what happened to him in Cuba and the aftermath, very in depth. Is there anywhere that you guys would like to direct people to? Only fans, websites, social media, anything you want to throw out there for folks? Yeah, I mean, look, I mean, there's people who have really covered this, you know, whether it's The Insigner with Michael Weiss, 60 Minutes, you know, Tom Rogan at the Washington Examiner, Sasha Inberg, Independent Journalist, Miami Herald.

Nora at the Miami Herald. I mean, there's so many, you know, journalists to fight. follow. And I'm going to get, I'm going to forget someone and they'll get Olivia Gazis at CBS. I mean, people who have really kind of believed us over the years and stayed with us, even when it was clear that the agency was feeding some kind of kind of bullshit on this. And Mark Zaid, our attorney, for any of us, who has been really prominent in this as well. And so there's, you know, there's no, there's no website to go to. But if you follow any of us on social media, certainly you'll hear about it. If you want to follow me on, you know, on Twitter,

you have to deal with all the other bullshit that I spew out all the time. So sorry about that. Mostly on the Red Sox now. It's almost opening day. You're not going to find me. Yeah, I understand. You know, Jack, you know. He's in the middle of fucking nowhere.

Well, thank you both of you guys for coming on and telling your stories and bringing us up to date. And I think you are kind of speaking for a larger group. Because, again, just covering this journalistically. when I talk to a lot of people who are Havana syndrome victims, they're scared. Like, there's an actual fear of speaking out, a fear of retaliation. And if you talk to the CIA or you talk to the government, there's no retaliation. You talk to the State Department, we take care of our people. Even other journalists who I think, you know, not in all cases, as you point out, Mark,

but in some cases who I think have been gassed by the CIA and the U.S. government into believing like, oh, yeah, we take care of our people. that's not an issue anymore. So for you two guys to come out and speak to this, I know you're speaking for a larger cohort of people in the intelligence community and the Department of Defense that have experienced this. So thank you for doing that. Thanks, Jack.

Appreciate it. No, thanks for having us. Thanks for giving a platform to this because, like I say, it's not going to go away. So we might as well address it now. Yeah, yeah, anytime. I mean, we'll stay in touch and we'll do this again sometime. And for everyone else, thanks for joining us. Share this video, let people know this stuff is happening,

and maybe we can get some more congressional involvement on it. And we'll see all of you next time. Thank you. I want to tell all of you today about a new newsletter that we're launching that encompasses both the Team House podcast, the Eyes On podcast, and the high side news outlet, which I run with Sean Naylor. The newsletter is going to be once a week. It's going to come into your inbox and you're going to get the most current podcasts on Aizon and the Team House and whatever's topical or current on the high side.

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