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A Bunch of Questions For the CIA · Conspiracy! The Show

• 0:11
  Speaker 1: Insurance.
• 0:12
  Speaker 2: True, I'm a Checktuturance Getrue.
• 0:15
  Speaker 3: Thanks. Hey, everybody, welcome to Conspiracy The Show. I'm your host,
• 0:36
  Speaker 3: Adam Todd Brown joining me as co host this week. Ooh,
• 0:39
  Speaker 3: my favorite co host of all no co hosts. But
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  Speaker 3: I do have a couple of fantastic guests joining me
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  Speaker 3: this week, former CIA agents current hosts of the Mission
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  Speaker 3: Implausible podcast, Jerry O'sha and John Cipher.
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: How's it going?
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  Speaker 4: Good?
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  Speaker 2: Good? I want to start by correcting you and our arguing.
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: Let's get this Donnybrook.
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  Speaker 1: Going, I'm into it.
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  Speaker 2: We are CIA officers, oh okay, not agents. Yes, and
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  Speaker 2: we can explain that later. And of course you've got
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  Speaker 2: us instead of interesting guests.
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  Speaker 4: But yes, the FBI agents are the people who work
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  Speaker 4: at the FBI. The people who work at the CIA
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  Speaker 4: are officers, and then the spies that we might run
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  Speaker 4: overseas we call agents.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, that makes sense.
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  Speaker 3: So this will be a pretty lighthearted episode, just a
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  Speaker 3: sort of Q and A thing.
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  Speaker 1: I have some questions.
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  Speaker 3: We put some questions out to our rowdy audience and
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  Speaker 3: they came back with some stuff.
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  Speaker 1: I guess I'll just sort of trade off.
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  Speaker 3: I'll just direct one question to Jerry then a question
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  Speaker 3: to John, then you don't have to fight.
• 1:50
  Speaker 4: Over who we like to fight over?
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, before we get started, John, you must hear
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  Speaker 3: this all the time, but John Ceipher is the perfect
• 2:00
  Speaker 3: name for someone working in intelligence.
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  Speaker 4: I suppose, so I don't like it. Doesn't that mean
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  Speaker 4: saber to mean zero? That's sort of like a I
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  Speaker 4: don't know, but isn't it also yeah for something or whatever?
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  Speaker 2: All right?
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, for breaking codes and enigmas. Your name might as
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  Speaker 3: well be Jimmy secret.
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  Speaker 4: The last math class I took was like in eleventh grade,
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  Speaker 4: so I don't know.
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  Speaker 2: They weren't going to let him into the agency and
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  Speaker 2: then somebody looked at his name and said, how can
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  Speaker 2: we not? Right?
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: Exactly?
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  Speaker 3: So with that all the way, let's get into some questions.
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  Speaker 3: The first one, this one is for me. In the
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  Speaker 3: description of your show, it's mentioned that you were both
• 2:37
  Speaker 3: part of creating conspiracy theories at the CIA.
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  Speaker 1: Can you explain that a little bit?
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  Speaker 2: Okay, I'll start so again, I'm gonna disagree with you.
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  Speaker 2: It's not so much we created conspiracy theories. It's that
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  Speaker 2: we dealt in small, like small c conspiracies, like basic
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  Speaker 2: things like I'm under you know, you can't go to
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  Speaker 2: a North Korean and say, Hi, I'm in this CIA
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: you want to talk to you, you have to say, oh,
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  Speaker 2: I'm a you know, I'm a businessman and would like
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  Speaker 2: to talk to you. So cover would be or you know, covering.
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  Speaker 2: So we don't say that we're CIA, so we're not
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  Speaker 2: killed or kidnapped. So these are small conspiracies, and actually
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  Speaker 2: the show is to deconstructor debunk big conspiracy theories, which
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  Speaker 2: we know from doing small conspiracies are really hard to
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  Speaker 2: do when buy and large don't really work. So some
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  Speaker 2: conspiracies but not really conspiracy theories.
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  Speaker 3: Oh okay, yeah, can you give me an example of
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  Speaker 3: anything or would you have to what I have to
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  Speaker 3: be killed if you told.
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  Speaker 2: Me you and your audience, yeah, you.
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  Speaker 4: Won't have to be killed. No, I mean, in fact,
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  Speaker 4: I'm trying to think too. Like, for example, we sort
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  Speaker 4: of use it as a predicate for the show, but
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  Speaker 4: it isn't because I think a lot of the public
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  Speaker 4: thinks that one of the things that CIA does is
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  Speaker 4: these big sort of conspiracies to try to But we
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  Speaker 4: do use small conspiracy in the sense that Jerry said,
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  Speaker 4: for example, cover, Like so if we're trying to you know,
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  Speaker 4: get into an Alcata is doing. And there's no Americans
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  Speaker 4: in the tribal areas of Pakistan where bin Laden was
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  Speaker 4: or where Okada is. We might have to send a
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  Speaker 4: CI officer with I don't know, Pakistani background or Arab
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  Speaker 4: background or something, pretending to be a businessman or to
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  Speaker 4: you know, go out there to you know, like if
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  Speaker 4: you saw the movie Argo, right, So we sent people
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  Speaker 4: to Iran pretending to be there to shoot a movie.
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  Speaker 4: So that's a you know, creating a little mini conspiracy
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  Speaker 4: to fool the people that we're trying to operate against.
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  Speaker 4: And so we and like Jerry said, most of these
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  Speaker 4: conspiracies that we would do would be very small because
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  Speaker 4: you know, the more moving pieces you try to put together,
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  Speaker 4: the more chance of failure, the more chance something will
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  Speaker 4: go wrong. And so you know, we've learned that if
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  Speaker 4: we're going to try to trick someone, if you will,
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  Speaker 4: the simpler the better. You know, if I'm going to
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  Speaker 4: use a fake name, it's better to use my real
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  Speaker 4: first name in a fake last name, so I can
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  Speaker 4: answer to John or something like that.
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  Speaker 1: So little things like that, Yeah, that makes sense.
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  Speaker 3: Well, speaking of conspiracy theories, I guess, Jerry, First, are
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  Speaker 3: there any of the really big conspiracy theories that you believe?
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  Speaker 3: Do you have a pet conspiracy theory that is your
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  Speaker 3: favorite that you think might be real, might be real?
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  Speaker 2: Okay? So yeah, but these I think, I don't think
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  Speaker 2: it's conspiracy theory. If you believe it's real, it's not
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  Speaker 2: a conspiracy theory, right, just that it becomes just our conspiracy.
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  Speaker 2: So yeah, I think there's a lot of them. So
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  Speaker 2: for example, and I'll preface it by saying, for years, decades,
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: big tobacco, right, was investing in junk science to tell
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  Speaker 2: you that you know, it's okay to smoke cigarettes, right,
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  Speaker 2: and all the evidence that was coming up that cigarettes
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  Speaker 2: kill you, and cigarettes killed my father, right, he died
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  Speaker 2: of emphysema. There was a conspiracy to throttle that information,
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  Speaker 2: that health information. And right now, I think I would
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  Speaker 2: say that there is a conspiracy amongst I'd be at
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  Speaker 2: a loss to tell you exactly how it works and
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  Speaker 2: so forth. But I think there's a conspiracy to throttle
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  Speaker 2: climate science, right. I mean, twenty nine percent of scientists
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  Speaker 2: are saying, look, man made climate change is a real thing,
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  Speaker 2: and in fact, in this current administration, they are both
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  Speaker 2: claiming that because of climate change, we have to have
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  Speaker 2: greenland because the polar ice is melting and ships are
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  Speaker 2: going through it, it's more important. But at the same
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  Speaker 2: time they call it the climate hoax, so they're trying
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  Speaker 2: to have it both ways. So it is clearly, clearly
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  Speaker 2: a conspiracy to avoid the science. So yeah, I think
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  Speaker 2: there's a conspiracy by this administration and a number of
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  Speaker 2: big tech bros and others to stop the reality of
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  Speaker 2: climate science and climate change. So there we go.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, that is a fantastic answer, John, How about you?
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  Speaker 2: I got the easy one.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah, I agree with during on the climate change thing.
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  Speaker 4: I think the destroying the EPA and business leaders would
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  Speaker 4: tell you that, you know, they see their business changing
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  Speaker 4: because of what's happening and with climate change, but the
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  Speaker 4: government pretend like it isn't so they can invest more
• 7:02
  Speaker 4: and things hurt the climate. But yeah, I guess a
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  Speaker 4: couple would be for me is is there life outside
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  Speaker 4: of the world?
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  Speaker 2: Right?
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  Speaker 4: So we talked about a little bit on our podcast,
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  Speaker 4: and I would they put that together with religion. So
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  Speaker 4: those two things to me are things that I think
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  Speaker 4: are sort of conspiracy. Most people talk about them in
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  Speaker 4: a conspiratorial way. They pretend like they know that there
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  Speaker 4: are aliens that have come to Earth, or there's UFOs
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  Speaker 4: that can be explained Jerry, and I talk to you
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  Speaker 4: about it like, I don't see any evidence really of that.
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  Speaker 4: But I do believe that given just the massive nature
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  Speaker 4: of the cosmos, that there is some form of life
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  Speaker 4: out there. You know, it would be wrong to think
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  Speaker 4: that us on this little teeny dot are the only
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  Speaker 4: important thing going on. And it's the same with religion
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  Speaker 4: to me, in a sense that the notion that you know,
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  Speaker 4: some people in the past decided that they know exactly
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  Speaker 4: how humans were made and how our minds work, and
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  Speaker 4: how you know there's a God and the one God
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  Speaker 4: does this, and the fact that there's so many religions.
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  Speaker 4: I think, you know, religion in many ways, for most
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  Speaker 4: are like a conspiracy theory, and it's comforting and important
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  Speaker 4: to believe it, and some of the things that religions
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  Speaker 4: say are really important for humanity. But I think it's
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  Speaker 4: arrogant to suggest that I know the right answer to everything.
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  Speaker 4: I know what God does and what he says, and
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  Speaker 4: i'm you know, pushed by him. So I think there
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  Speaker 4: is something that animates us that we don't understand. And
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  Speaker 4: so I think, like I said, aliens and God are
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  Speaker 4: two things that I think in some fashion exist. But
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  Speaker 4: it's wrong for us to pretend like we know, and
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  Speaker 4: the people who pretend like we know are conspiracy theorists.
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  Speaker 4: Might be.
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  Speaker 2: And if John is struck by a lightning bolt in
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  Speaker 2: the next few minutes, I will continue the podcast.
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  Speaker 3: About that all the views we would get if that happens.
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  Speaker 3: Not a video podcast, I might pivot.
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  Speaker 4: I don't think I'd been hit by worse things.
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  Speaker 2: Yes, that's another conspiracy.
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  Speaker 4: And other Russian stuff. Here we go.
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  Speaker 3: So along the same lines as the last quest question,
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  Speaker 3: this is a listener question Norm from Cheers.
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  Speaker 1: I doubt that's his real name.
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  Speaker 4: I love Norm.
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  Speaker 2: I thought he.
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  Speaker 3: Wants to know who really killed JFK. I love a
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  Speaker 3: lot of these questions imply that you two are going
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  Speaker 3: to know everything that has ever happened with the government.
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  Speaker 4: Well, luckily my wife was not around to quickly.
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  Speaker 1: Listeners.
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  Speaker 2: I was three when that happened or four? Actually, yeah, yeah,
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  Speaker 2: I was in on it.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, we're on the grassy knoll.
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  Speaker 3: Do either of you have any suspicions that the JFK
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  Speaker 3: assassination is anything other than what the official version of
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  Speaker 3: events are, though.
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  Speaker 4: I don't that's the problem the official version of events.
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  Speaker 4: And I think like any investigation that's in a politically
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  Speaker 4: charged atmosphere when a president is killed and the Cold
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  Speaker 4: War is going on, we're taking the Soviets in Cuba,
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  Speaker 4: it's created problems around that make people work that you're
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  Speaker 4: not getting the whole answer, and that the investigation there's
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  Speaker 4: pieces of it that are shut off and stuff like that.
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  Speaker 4: So I tend to believe that, you know, sadly, you
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  Speaker 4: want to believe a conspiracy here that some little jerk
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  Speaker 4: shouldn't be able to kill the president of the United States. Yeah,
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  Speaker 4: but I think in this case that's what happened. But
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  Speaker 4: I do think there was so much stuff moving around
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  Speaker 4: that that it's allowed us to create these stories, many
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  Speaker 4: of which are far more interesting than probably the real story,
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  Speaker 4: and that's why it continues to this day.
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  Speaker 2: Right. The thing with conspiracies having, again like John having
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  Speaker 2: done small, is the more byzantine it gets, right, the
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  Speaker 2: more moving pieces, the more unlikely it's going to be.
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  Speaker 2: So the answer is, I assume it's Lee Harvey Oswald.
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  Speaker 2: The real question is who's behind him and the grassy
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  Speaker 2: knoll and right, Okay, so I mean we did a
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  Speaker 2: great episode with Phil Robinson, right, writer and producer to
• 10:48
  Speaker 2: feel the dreams and stinkers and all these things. And
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  Speaker 2: he's like, look, if you're going to create a conspiracy,
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  Speaker 2: it's like you're gonna get a nebbish like Oswald, right,
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  Speaker 2: who's going to talk if they catch them? And you know,
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  Speaker 2: the plan is to let the police hold them for
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  Speaker 2: three or four days and then get some criminal to
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: come in and shoot him, and of course the shot
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  Speaker 2: will kill him, and then of course Ruby's never gonna talk.
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  Speaker 2: And of course, you know, mafia guys never talk amongst themselves.
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  Speaker 2: They never brag. And then of course there's the ludicrousness.
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  Speaker 2: If let's just and I'm saying, I don't think it's
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  Speaker 2: true at all, but at least there's no evidence to
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  Speaker 2: put it that way. If people in Cia were somehow involved,
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: which I don't think they were, they wouldn't frig it,
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  Speaker 2: write it down right and put it in let's file
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: that away that conversation, right, they wouldn't do it. So
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: this thing about WHOA, there's got to be one more file.
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  Speaker 2: It's like, you know, if you're gonna shoot the president
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  Speaker 2: of the United States. I'm just thinking you don't sit
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  Speaker 2: down and say, let's protocol this and stick it in
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  Speaker 2: the file with the secretary to type it up right,
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  Speaker 2: So I think it's you know, just like use your
• 11:51
  Speaker 2: naggin man.
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  Speaker 4: Well, I don't know, Jerry, I disagree if you are
• 11:55
  Speaker 4: trying to do the byzantine like you're saying. In fact,
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  Speaker 4: that's a really interesting episode of ours with Phil Robinson
• 12:00
  Speaker 4: on jfk Assassination. I would suggest people listening to that
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  Speaker 4: our Mission Implausible podcast. But if you're going to do
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  Speaker 4: all these things that is all going to work together.
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  Speaker 4: He's gonna you know that he's going to be able
• 12:10
  Speaker 4: to get into the building by himself and get a
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  Speaker 4: gun in there, and be able to buy a gun,
• 12:13
  Speaker 4: and be able to get away and be able to
• 12:15
  Speaker 4: take a bus, and then you know someone's got all
• 12:18
  Speaker 4: those things. I think you'd have to write some of
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  Speaker 4: that down. You couldn't have a meeting with people and
• 12:22
  Speaker 4: be able for everybody to remember every part for the
• 12:25
  Speaker 4: minute to be able to do it. So if there
• 12:27
  Speaker 4: is a conspiracy, I do think is somewhere it was
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  Speaker 4: written out.
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: I'm going to grant you that, but then I would
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  Speaker 2: burn it. Well that makes sense, I wouldn't stick it
• 12:35
  Speaker 2: in the file.
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  Speaker 4: But the old shredders weren't as good as the new shudders.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, they didn't have those Watergate shredders.
• 12:44
  Speaker 4: In fact, if you remember that, I brought up the
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  Speaker 4: movie Argo before, but Argo, that was one of the
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  Speaker 4: things that when the Iranians in nineteen seventy nine took
• 12:51
  Speaker 4: over our embassy, which was what led to you know,
• 12:53
  Speaker 4: the RGO team going in to try to get out
• 12:55
  Speaker 4: the hostages. What happened is the CIA station there shredded
• 12:59
  Speaker 4: many or most of their documents and then fled. But
• 13:02
  Speaker 4: then the Iranians went in and those old shredders essentially
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  Speaker 4: just made little strips of paper, and they hired students
• 13:07
  Speaker 4: to come in and spend hours and hours and days
• 13:09
  Speaker 4: and days to re paste it all back together. And
• 13:11
  Speaker 4: they were there's a buy a book of all the
• 13:14
  Speaker 4: CIA cables that have been reput together from shredded documents.
• 13:18
  Speaker 4: Can get it on the internet somewhere.
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  Speaker 2: And I'll run with this just a little bit further,
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  Speaker 2: and I'm gonna say John's right, when we do do
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  Speaker 2: a conspiracy, a small conspiracy like how are we going
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: to approach this Iranian nuclear scientist? Right, let's say he's
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: in Europe and we want to approach him in some way.
• 13:34
  Speaker 2: We would to a fare thee. Well, think through all
• 13:38
  Speaker 2: the different scenarios and then we would sit up and
• 13:41
  Speaker 2: there would be dozens at least dozens of people involved,
• 13:44
  Speaker 2: and then people would have to like okay it right,
• 13:47
  Speaker 2: So there'd be all this. There would be probably be
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: hundreds of people involved, and everything is John's right. Everything
• 13:52
  Speaker 2: would have to be typed out because in Cia, we
• 13:55
  Speaker 2: know if you have to have approvals, like some where's
• 13:58
  Speaker 2: the money coming from to fly everybody in? And it's like,
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: well you know, so well, okay, you get a BLI
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: number and so yeah. The uncool thing about cool operations
• 14:07
  Speaker 2: is nobody ever looks at the logistics of it, like
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: mission impossible. When they peel off those rubber masks, right,
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: you don't ever have the guy who like makes the
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: masks or you know, who's who's going to pay for them.
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: You're going to get the upscale kind of the downscale kind.
• 14:20
  Speaker 2: You know. It's like do you get too you know,
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: it's like all these decisions are made and they all
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: got to be paid for and you've got all these
• 14:27
  Speaker 2: people like you know, but you never see that because
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: you shouldn't, because it's boring.
• 14:31
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I'll tell you my favorite JFK theory. There's a
• 14:34
  Speaker 3: documentary out there called JFK The Smoking Gun, and there
• 14:38
  Speaker 3: was this guy. There's a very famous CBS recreation where
• 14:42
  Speaker 3: they tried to see if anyone could pull off the
• 14:45
  Speaker 3: number of shots Lee Harvey Oswald pulled off, and there
• 14:48
  Speaker 3: was one guy who was able to do it, and
• 14:51
  Speaker 3: people point to that as well, Look, Lee Harvey Oswald
• 14:54
  Speaker 3: could have done it, but this guy was a ballistics
• 14:57
  Speaker 3: expert and a marksman. I think he was military. And
• 15:00
  Speaker 3: he came away from that being like, no, no, no, only
• 15:03
  Speaker 3: I could have done that. There's no way most people
• 15:06
  Speaker 3: could have done that. And he spent the next thirty
• 15:09
  Speaker 3: years of his life just examining the ballistics evidence from
• 15:13
  Speaker 3: the JFK assassination and what he is convinced happened is
• 15:18
  Speaker 3: Lee Harvey Oswald was there, he was shooting, but that
• 15:23
  Speaker 3: in one of the motorcade cars behind JFK, a Secret
• 15:27
  Speaker 3: Service agent heard those shots and stood up to start
• 15:31
  Speaker 3: looking around to see where he was supposed to shoot,
• 15:33
  Speaker 3: and at that point, the car accelerated, he falls and
• 15:38
  Speaker 3: fires accidentally and uh oh hits JFK in the head.
• 15:43
  Speaker 3: And what I love about that theory is everyone's right,
• 15:47
  Speaker 3: Lee Harvey Oswald was there, he was the only shooter.
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: He was acting alone.
• 15:52
  Speaker 3: But yes, the government, in theory killed JFK, and of
• 15:57
  Speaker 3: course they would have reason to cover it up.
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: It's such a plausible idea to me.
• 16:02
  Speaker 3: I mean, sure, the like accidentally hitting JFK with that bullet,
• 16:05
  Speaker 3: that's a one in a million thing, But it makes
• 16:07
  Speaker 3: more sense than like his driver shot him with a
• 16:09
  Speaker 3: shellfish tocsin gun or something, which was I think one
• 16:13
  Speaker 3: of that was one of the like og JFK theories
• 16:16
  Speaker 3: was look, his driver turns around and shoots him in
• 16:19
  Speaker 3: the face, like he could have just done that anytime.
• 16:22
  Speaker 2: That's maybe maybe what we saw in Minneapolis, right with Preddy.
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: You know, they ten guys wrestle under the ground, you know,
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: they're like gun gun and the one ice thug guy
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: you know, pulls the gun away and then the rest
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: of them open up on him and two guys shoot
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: him ten times. It was but you know it could
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: have I mean, I don't know, but I watched the
• 16:44
  Speaker 2: and there's your conspiracy that you know he's a domestic terrorist.
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: He started it, you know, just like don't believe your eyes,
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: believe the conspiracy of what you know people in DHS
• 16:54
  Speaker 2: are telling you. Right, it was like that's a bad
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: conspiracy because like you can just you don't need to
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: there's a Brooder film from JFK. It's just like there
• 17:03
  Speaker 2: it is, man, you know, it's.
• 17:04
  Speaker 4: Like would have been five hundred video cameras from people's
• 17:09
  Speaker 4: phones on.
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: The Yeah, cameras. Yeah, that's a good point.
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Lee, Harvey Oswald would have live streamed it. That
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: would help helped a lot.
• 17:20
  Speaker 4: Yeah, but his previous Twitter would let us know about
• 17:22
  Speaker 4: his time in Cuba.
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: And right, that's right, that's right, that's right. But if
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: anybody had a reason, really, I mean, Kennedy didn't have
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: a problem with CIA, you know, his friends ranted, and
• 17:32
  Speaker 2: I think that, you know, if there was anybody, if
• 17:35
  Speaker 2: I had to and I don't think it's true, but
• 17:36
  Speaker 2: if there's anybody who really had reason to do it,
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: it would be Castro because you know, Kennedy was trying
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: to bump him off, right.
• 17:43
  Speaker 4: Or Moscow they looked into those things too.
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm not saying that's true. I'm just saying that
• 17:49
  Speaker 2: a reason to do it.
• 17:50
  Speaker 3: So let's switch gears a little bit and talk about
• 17:53
  Speaker 3: the CIA itself. This is a question from Bob Grenville
• 17:58
  Speaker 3: that might be real. Name how much of what the
• 18:00
  Speaker 3: CIA does involves human data collection versus electronic signal intelligence?
• 18:07
  Speaker 4: Good question, Go ahead, Jerry, go if you want.
• 18:09
  Speaker 2: Well, we do. Our focus is human collection, right, and
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: human sources generally they are the best because we're gathering
• 18:17
  Speaker 2: not just information but plans and intentions, right, the most important.
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: So you can steal a piece of paper, you can
• 18:23
  Speaker 2: listen into a telephone call, but you don't know if
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: they're lying to you. What you really want to do is,
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: you know, have somebody in the meeting, says well, I
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: wrote that, But this is what we're going to do.
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: So plans, attentions human although small, is really the APEX.
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: And then there's a codicil to that, which is human
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: enabled technical collection. John, you want to cover that because
• 18:43
  Speaker 2: that's a really big one too.
• 18:45
  Speaker 4: Yeah. So you know, our job in the CIA, like
• 18:48
  Speaker 4: Jerry says, it's the espionage part of the agency, and
• 18:51
  Speaker 4: espionage is human to human running a spy. But there's
• 18:54
  Speaker 4: two pieces to that. There's one is you can use
• 18:57
  Speaker 4: technical things to figure out who might be the best
• 18:59
  Speaker 4: person to go after, because to run a spy, you
• 19:01
  Speaker 4: want someone who has access to secrets that you need,
• 19:04
  Speaker 4: and you have to know something about them so that
• 19:06
  Speaker 4: you know what motivates them and how you might be
• 19:08
  Speaker 4: able to recruit them as a spy. And so we
• 19:10
  Speaker 4: might use technical collection and big data to try to
• 19:13
  Speaker 4: figure out who is it, what does he have access to,
• 19:16
  Speaker 4: what do we know about this person within was family?
• 19:18
  Speaker 4: What do you know, what it's beliefs, And you might
• 19:19
  Speaker 4: use technical things there separately. One of the best ways
• 19:23
  Speaker 4: to collect big data to big electronics and cyber attacks
• 19:28
  Speaker 4: and everything is a human So if Jerry can recruit
• 19:31
  Speaker 4: a spy who works inside the name your thing, the
• 19:34
  Speaker 4: Iranian nuclear program, that spy might be able to put
• 19:38
  Speaker 4: something in his computer system that then allows our much
• 19:41
  Speaker 4: larger NSA, which in the United States that is the
• 19:44
  Speaker 4: organization that does signals intelligence. We do human intelligence. They
• 19:48
  Speaker 4: do signals intelligence. Their job is to focus on foreigners
• 19:51
  Speaker 4: and use whatever they can do to listen to phone calls,
• 19:55
  Speaker 4: collect information from computers. You know, massive big data, translate,
• 19:59
  Speaker 4: you know, things that they get coming on signals over
• 20:01
  Speaker 4: the air, and so what helps that is a human
• 20:04
  Speaker 4: can help us get into it. So if the computer
• 20:07
  Speaker 4: system of the Iranian nuclear program is tight and held
• 20:10
  Speaker 4: together and there's no connection to the outside internet, maybe
• 20:13
  Speaker 4: this spy that Jerry's running can put something in their
• 20:16
  Speaker 4: computer that allows the NSA to then extract that information
• 20:20
  Speaker 4: and get those things. So these things work together. So
• 20:22
  Speaker 4: human intelligence and the spy and the CIA is actually
• 20:25
  Speaker 4: very small organization. There's only a couple thousand people worldwide
• 20:28
  Speaker 4: that do that type of thing. Then there's a bunch
• 20:30
  Speaker 4: larger group of people who work on technical things and
• 20:33
  Speaker 4: cyber attacks and computer and big data analysis and all
• 20:36
  Speaker 4: of that type of stuff. So what it works right,
• 20:38
  Speaker 4: they work together. The human spy might help the technical
• 20:41
  Speaker 4: spy to collect.
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: Something along sort of the same lines. This is a
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: question for me.
• 20:46
  Speaker 3: How worried should the American public be that the CIA
• 20:51
  Speaker 3: has a venture capital wing that is investing in social
• 20:56
  Speaker 3: media and various technologies. I think Google Earth was a
• 21:00
  Speaker 3: big thing that CIA had a hand in at least funding.
• 21:04
  Speaker 3: Is that a thing people should be concerned about? Or
• 21:07
  Speaker 3: is do you think it's all on the up and
• 21:09
  Speaker 3: up not anymore.
• 21:10
  Speaker 2: I don't think it's actually doing all that well, right,
• 21:13
  Speaker 2: I don't know. I've been out for a while, I guess,
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: but I've heard that, like it was a thing for
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: a while. We're cutting edge, but the tech bros they
• 21:19
  Speaker 2: don't really need us anymore.
• 21:21
  Speaker 4: What do you think, Director Tenant? Back in the late nineties,
• 21:24
  Speaker 4: I think started in q TEL, which was a piece
• 21:27
  Speaker 4: of the CIA. They would look at technology you say
• 21:30
  Speaker 4: Google Earth for example, and they would look at startups
• 21:32
  Speaker 4: and these type of things, and they would see, you know,
• 21:34
  Speaker 4: they had a little bit of money that they could
• 21:36
  Speaker 4: invest to sort of support the ones that might be
• 21:38
  Speaker 4: So there might be a gaming platform that might be
• 21:41
  Speaker 4: useful to a part of the CIA that was going
• 21:44
  Speaker 4: to try to you know, they're collecting all this information.
• 21:46
  Speaker 4: Maybe we can use this gaming system to try to
• 21:48
  Speaker 4: figure out, if we put it together, what options might
• 21:51
  Speaker 4: be in the future, so that we can tell our
• 21:53
  Speaker 4: policymakers what's happening, or you know, let's try to help
• 21:56
  Speaker 4: some of these private sector companies that are doing some
• 21:59
  Speaker 4: of this research that we can then use. I think
• 22:01
  Speaker 4: Pallanteer might have been one of those. I'm not one
• 22:03
  Speaker 4: hundred percent sure where they gave money to this, and
• 22:06
  Speaker 4: that that technology proved to be very useful to the
• 22:09
  Speaker 4: CIA and FBI and others to help, you know, when
• 22:11
  Speaker 4: we were going after al Kaeda and terrorist networks, it
• 22:14
  Speaker 4: was able to we started to collect data from terrorists
• 22:17
  Speaker 4: that we caught and their computers and things. It allowed
• 22:19
  Speaker 4: us to put together, you know, very large data sets
• 22:22
  Speaker 4: that would connect and help tell us who are the
• 22:25
  Speaker 4: most key players and who to go after and where
• 22:27
  Speaker 4: they were and all those type of things. So that
• 22:29
  Speaker 4: technology actually really helped the CIA. But I think that
• 22:31
  Speaker 4: was the point. It was to find technologies that the
• 22:34
  Speaker 4: CIA could use inside, you know, to make our systems
• 22:37
  Speaker 4: work better, to be to help us, you know, spy better.
• 22:41
  Speaker 4: I don't think it's you know, the CIA is a
• 22:44
  Speaker 4: foreign intelligence age. It doesn't collect on American citizens, and
• 22:48
  Speaker 4: we're quite careful about that. That's why I worry about
• 22:51
  Speaker 4: this new administration is, you know, they tend to want
• 22:53
  Speaker 4: to weaponize these very powerful intelligence agencies they are foreign
• 22:57
  Speaker 4: facing to maybe for their own purposes, go after American citizens. So,
• 23:01
  Speaker 4: like Jared, I don't know if they're still doing that
• 23:03
  Speaker 4: supporting technology. There seems to me that there's enough money
• 23:07
  Speaker 4: in the AI world and all these big people in
• 23:09
  Speaker 4: Silicon Valley that they don't need, you know, small bits
• 23:11
  Speaker 4: of money from the CIA to help them.
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: I want to underline what John said because I think
• 23:15
  Speaker 2: it's really important. It's not you know, it's like the CIA.
• 23:19
  Speaker 2: You know this or that. It's really not the CIA.
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: It's who runs it. It's like the administration who's in
• 23:25
  Speaker 2: charge of it? And what is it? You know, CIA
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: is just like Department of Defense or and I say,
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: these are just simply tools. So it's really like, how
• 23:35
  Speaker 2: are these tools being used? Right? They can be used
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: for so like you know famously DARPA defense. I'm not
• 23:42
  Speaker 2: going to call it Department of War, but a Department
• 23:44
  Speaker 2: of defense element. You know, got the Internet started, right,
• 23:48
  Speaker 2: I mean it was you know, so so is the
• 23:50
  Speaker 2: internet good or big? Well? It depends on how you
• 23:52
  Speaker 2: use it, right, and so things like and I'll start
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: a conspiracy here because I have no information, but I
• 23:58
  Speaker 2: don't like the look of it. What is Tulci Gambert
• 24:01
  Speaker 2: d and I right had a you know, foreign and
• 24:05
  Speaker 2: foreign intelligence nothing to do with this. What is she
• 24:08
  Speaker 2: doing when the FBI is seizing voter records in Georgia yesterday?
• 24:13
  Speaker 2: What the fuck is that? What the fuck is the
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: foreign intelligence person skulking around the building for something that
• 24:20
  Speaker 2: is internal? What explains that? Why is she there? So
• 24:24
  Speaker 2: it's like, you know, she supposedly she's not in charge,
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: but she has great influence over the CIA, So what's
• 24:30
  Speaker 2: her role there? And why is she like sneaking around
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: on a telephone? So, you know, the D and I's
• 24:36
  Speaker 2: office I think can be benign or good, or you know,
• 24:39
  Speaker 2: it could be bad. What the fuck is she doing there?
• 24:43
  Speaker 2: I think that's a conspiracy that I would like to
• 24:45
  Speaker 2: run with right.
• 24:46
  Speaker 4: Well, and then many of the people you know who
• 24:49
  Speaker 4: believe the CIA is sort of all powerful, and we
• 24:51
  Speaker 4: were talking about the GfK sass nation and the potential
• 24:53
  Speaker 4: CIA roll a while ago, talk about a lot of
• 24:55
  Speaker 4: the things that happened in the early years of the CI,
• 24:57
  Speaker 4: when presidents it was sort of there secret weapon. There
• 25:01
  Speaker 4: wasn't oversight, there wasn't congressional oversight, there wasn't legal means
• 25:04
  Speaker 4: by which the CIA works, so it was sort of
• 25:06
  Speaker 4: free to do what it wanted to do. And so
• 25:08
  Speaker 4: if President Eisenhower would say, you know, I'm sort of
• 25:11
  Speaker 4: I'm frustrated with that guy down in Guatemala. You know,
• 25:14
  Speaker 4: I have a friend who has a business down there,
• 25:16
  Speaker 4: and the president Guatemala is threatening to take over his business. CI,
• 25:20
  Speaker 4: see what you can do, and then we overthrew the
• 25:21
  Speaker 4: government of Guatemala. And so in the early years, the
• 25:25
  Speaker 4: CI was again, like Jerry said, you know, it would
• 25:28
  Speaker 4: do what the president told it to do. And then
• 25:30
  Speaker 4: in the nineteen seventies there was a series of reforms,
• 25:32
  Speaker 4: you know, often based on things that the CIA had
• 25:34
  Speaker 4: done or had been threaten to do that did seem
• 25:37
  Speaker 4: even to me who worked there, like bad, you know,
• 25:38
  Speaker 4: trying to kill Castro or overthrowing some of these governments
• 25:42
  Speaker 4: and things. There were reforms put in after the Church
• 25:45
  Speaker 4: and Pike committees and the Senate and the Congress, the
• 25:48
  Speaker 4: Rockefeller Commission looked at the CIA and said, you know,
• 25:51
  Speaker 4: there needs to be rules around what the CIA does.
• 25:55
  Speaker 4: There needs to be Congressional oversight of the Intelligence Committee.
• 25:58
  Speaker 4: There needs to be if the president is going to
• 26:00
  Speaker 4: ask the CIA to take action to overthrow our government,
• 26:03
  Speaker 4: for example, it needs to be clearly in writing and
• 26:06
  Speaker 4: sent to the Congress. And so this is something that's
• 26:08
  Speaker 4: not We're not winging it anymore. And so, yeah, you know,
• 26:10
  Speaker 4: a lot of times what people like you and others
• 26:13
  Speaker 4: talk to us about what the cis power and what's done.
• 26:15
  Speaker 4: A lot of it is that period of time before
• 26:17
  Speaker 4: the reforms, when presidents would just use it, as you know,
• 26:20
  Speaker 4: rather than going through the hard work of trying to
• 26:23
  Speaker 4: work with the American people and build a policy that
• 26:25
  Speaker 4: you know, to try to decide whether we're going to
• 26:28
  Speaker 4: invade Chile or something, he would just secretly send the
• 26:31
  Speaker 4: CIA to do it. And those days are largely over.
• 26:34
  Speaker 4: But this new administration, I'm worried that they don't seem
• 26:37
  Speaker 4: to care about those legal restrictions and the things that
• 26:39
  Speaker 4: we've built up to try to make our intelligence services
• 26:42
  Speaker 4: that are very powerful focused overseas and following strict regulations
• 26:46
  Speaker 4: and rules and laws.
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: And there's one more thing I just want to throw
• 26:49
  Speaker 2: in for their listeners and thinking about conspiracy theories and
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: conspiracies is okay. So CIA roughly has three functions, right.
• 26:56
  Speaker 2: It collects foreign intelligence, you know, generally through recruiting agents
• 27:00
  Speaker 2: and like John and I driving around in our Austin
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: Martins with machine guns on this on the sides, like
• 27:06
  Speaker 2: as we do, you know, mine was for everybody out
• 27:09
  Speaker 2: there for the most part when I was like a CEO,
• 27:12
  Speaker 2: so I drove a Toyota mini van with car seats
• 27:15
  Speaker 2: in the back and with like fruit loops on the floor, right,
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: I mean, that's that was the spyway. But so we
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: collect that, we do covert action and sort of talk
• 27:23
  Speaker 2: about that sort of things that are deniable to use.
• 27:26
  Speaker 2: But the third thing, and in a lot of ways,
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: the most important thing, weirdly, is we're the whipping boy.
• 27:32
  Speaker 2: When shit goes wrong, we get blamed. So, you know,
• 27:36
  Speaker 2: the president he says, we are going to invade a rock,
• 27:40
  Speaker 2: tell the CIA to get me the you know the reason, right,
• 27:43
  Speaker 2: I don't give a shit what it is, because they
• 27:45
  Speaker 2: were working on it as well. So no one says,
• 27:48
  Speaker 2: you know, I don't want to get on this rabbit hole.
• 27:50
  Speaker 2: But with you know, the torture tactics as people sometimes
• 27:53
  Speaker 2: call them, right, Oh it's the CIA. Well who the
• 27:56
  Speaker 2: fuck put those together? Who agreed to this, who made
• 27:59
  Speaker 2: it legal? Who said this was okay? It was the president?
• 28:02
  Speaker 2: In fact, for like water boarding, the president of the
• 28:05
  Speaker 2: United States has okay. But it's not like, oh, the
• 28:07
  Speaker 2: president did that, because everybody knows, we'll just blame the CIA,
• 28:12
  Speaker 2: And I don't actually think we did engage in torture.
• 28:14
  Speaker 2: That's another question. But our job is to basically if
• 28:17
  Speaker 2: things go bad, is to take the blame.
• 28:19
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I feel like CIA has kind of become a
• 28:23
  Speaker 3: term like Kleenex a little bit, or it's just to
• 28:28
  Speaker 3: catch all for intelligence agencies. My thought is always, well, yeah,
• 28:33
  Speaker 3: the CIA just operates overseas.
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: We don't need them to operate here. We have sixteen
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: other intelligence agencies.
• 28:40
  Speaker 2: That's right, it's illegal.
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah, what are they doing? Right?
• 28:44
  Speaker 4: And CI is actually pretty small compared to you know,
• 28:47
  Speaker 4: the eighty percent of the intelligent community belongs to the
• 28:50
  Speaker 4: Defense Department. So you know NSA is a joint intelligence
• 28:53
  Speaker 4: community Defense Department organization, and then the Army, Navy, Air Force,
• 28:58
  Speaker 4: Marines all have an intelligence and there's the Defense Intelligence Agency,
• 29:02
  Speaker 4: and there's the NRO that does satellites, which is largely
• 29:04
  Speaker 4: run by military as well as intelligence community people. So
• 29:08
  Speaker 4: I mean it's a big community that all sort of
• 29:10
  Speaker 4: does pieces of this and works together. And let me
• 29:13
  Speaker 4: just add one thing that Jerry said, but the CIA
• 29:15
  Speaker 4: does one thing he didn't say, which is I think
• 29:17
  Speaker 4: also one of the most important things is it does
• 29:19
  Speaker 4: all sorts of analysis it's where the big brains that
• 29:22
  Speaker 4: are that collect when all of US intelligence comes together
• 29:25
  Speaker 4: from the satellites and from the NSA, and from the CIA,
• 29:28
  Speaker 4: and from our spies and from diplomats. You know, there's
• 29:31
  Speaker 4: an analyst who's an expert on whatever that you know,
• 29:34
  Speaker 4: on Egypt or on South Africa or China or whatever,
• 29:37
  Speaker 4: who then puts it all together and either briefs or
• 29:40
  Speaker 4: sends it to Secretary of State, the president, people who
• 29:43
  Speaker 4: need that information.
• 29:44
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that reminds me of a story I bring up
• 29:49
  Speaker 3: all the time. The only outlet that covered it was Newsweek.
• 29:53
  Speaker 3: To this day, I feel like that's the only place
• 29:55
  Speaker 3: I've seen it covered. But it was a story about how,
• 29:59
  Speaker 3: for the past ten years or so, the Department of
• 30:01
  Speaker 3: Defense has been building a network of American intelligence agents
• 30:08
  Speaker 3: whose whole role is to just go out into Like
• 30:11
  Speaker 3: I'm an La comedian, I guarantee one of them is
• 30:14
  Speaker 3: in the LA comedy community.
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: That's what they do.
• 30:16
  Speaker 3: They just go out and sort of infiltrate communities and
• 30:20
  Speaker 3: movement like what we heard. You know, cointelpro was with
• 30:23
  Speaker 3: the FBI, and according to this report, there's something like
• 30:27
  Speaker 3: forty or fifty thousand of them and it said in
• 30:30
  Speaker 3: this story that's more than there are undercover CIA agents.
• 30:34
  Speaker 4: If that's true by a lot. The Defense Partment is
• 30:36
  Speaker 4: massive and it's got so many different pieces and things going.
• 30:39
  Speaker 4: I hope that that's not true. I hope that the
• 30:41
  Speaker 4: Defense Partment shouldn't be go out into American communities doing
• 30:44
  Speaker 4: anything unless they're trying to work with companies to help
• 30:47
  Speaker 4: them make better things for government. And the FBI does
• 30:49
  Speaker 4: have that role. The FBI's role is a law enforcement
• 30:52
  Speaker 4: entered encounter intelligence role, and they're the ones that can
• 30:54
  Speaker 4: deal with American citizens and look into American citizens if
• 30:57
  Speaker 4: they have a legal predicate that goes through a judge
• 31:00
  Speaker 4: and all that type of stuff. That's why this thing
• 31:01
  Speaker 4: that Jerry brought up about going after voter rules in
• 31:04
  Speaker 4: Georgia is scary. I don't know how. Yeah, maybe we'll
• 31:07
  Speaker 4: learn that that's not as awful sounding as it is,
• 31:09
  Speaker 4: but if it is what we think it is, that's
• 31:12
  Speaker 4: really we're in a dangerous place, right And also, I.
• 31:14
  Speaker 2: Mean, I don't know the answer to what you said,
• 31:17
  Speaker 2: but I would gently push back on that only inso
• 31:20
  Speaker 2: far as Murphy. You know people, you know, John and
• 31:24
  Speaker 2: I we were in a people. Business people are fuck ups,
• 31:27
  Speaker 2: like including us sometimes. Right. One of the biggest problems
• 31:30
  Speaker 2: with running an agent is they always got to tell somebody.
• 31:34
  Speaker 2: They got to tell their wife, they got to tell
• 31:36
  Speaker 2: their best friends, they drink, they tell somebody else. Nobody
• 31:39
  Speaker 2: can fucking keep a secret, right. So if there's forty
• 31:42
  Speaker 2: thousand people spying on people in the United States, I
• 31:46
  Speaker 2: guarantee you three fourths of them are sitting in a bar,
• 31:50
  Speaker 2: and they're going to be like, no, shit, man. You know,
• 31:53
  Speaker 2: the benefits are great. I get dental and I get
• 31:56
  Speaker 2: to do this cool shit, you know, and then there's
• 31:58
  Speaker 2: just like, how do you report that your takes is
• 32:00
  Speaker 2: to the I R S, you know, like the secret
• 32:03
  Speaker 2: spy and shit. So I'm not saying it's not true,
• 32:05
  Speaker 2: but I'm saying, like, you know, shit, shit like that
• 32:08
  Speaker 2: is really really difficult to do, which is why big
• 32:11
  Speaker 2: conspiracy theory CIA just doesn't do it because we can't.
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: You mentioned the benefits.
• 32:16
  Speaker 3: Another listener question, This one's probably a little out of
• 32:22
  Speaker 3: left field.
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: What's the catering at Langley?
• 32:24
  Speaker 4: Like, Oh, it's a good question. It's over our time.
• 32:29
  Speaker 4: It changed quite a bit. When I first started to
• 32:31
  Speaker 4: go in, they had a you know, typical government cafeteria
• 32:35
  Speaker 4: which had kind of crappy food, and when you went
• 32:37
  Speaker 4: down to your training center, the same kind of thing.
• 32:40
  Speaker 4: By the time we left, there was a dunkin Donuts
• 32:43
  Speaker 4: and a Starbucks, and then there was a food court
• 32:46
  Speaker 4: with a bunch of like pizza places and sub places
• 32:48
  Speaker 4: and Chinese and you know Middle Eastern kind of food,
• 32:51
  Speaker 4: as well as actually pretty nice central cafeteria that had
• 32:55
  Speaker 4: salad bars and all of this kind of thing. So
• 32:57
  Speaker 4: much better it used to be. There was sort of
• 32:59
  Speaker 4: a crappy cafeteria and in the basement there was a
• 33:01
  Speaker 4: hot dog machine that actually.
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: Machineund it's sort.
• 33:09
  Speaker 4: Of like seven eleven, you know, the hot dog that
• 33:10
  Speaker 4: rolls around in there and gets comes like leather. It's
• 33:13
  Speaker 4: like one of those kinds of things. And so, yeah,
• 33:15
  Speaker 4: food's pretty good now, I think.
• 33:17
  Speaker 2: But the word catering is like all those places, the
• 33:20
  Speaker 2: Middle East place, the pizza place. You pay right, you
• 33:22
  Speaker 2: get in line and they get you know, they give
• 33:24
  Speaker 2: you a slam a pizza and you know, the people
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: who work in there, I don't know. It was like,
• 33:28
  Speaker 2: you know, the baristas are not CIA officers, they're like
• 33:31
  Speaker 2: just regular They.
• 33:33
  Speaker 4: Do have to get cleared. They have some they do
• 33:36
  Speaker 4: in the c I oh wow. And then there's also
• 33:39
  Speaker 4: a separate seventh floor is what we call where the
• 33:42
  Speaker 4: director and the top people sit. The seventh floor. There's
• 33:44
  Speaker 4: also a sort of a little restaurant for the seventh
• 33:47
  Speaker 4: floor people that like if some big shot was coming over,
• 33:50
  Speaker 4: the President of Paraguay was coming to talk to the director,
• 33:53
  Speaker 4: there's a little restaurant there. They eat with nice windows
• 33:56
  Speaker 4: looking over the river.
• 33:57
  Speaker 2: And we also have little parties like somebody he's leaving
• 34:00
  Speaker 2: or a birthday, and so you can almost grade. You
• 34:03
  Speaker 2: can walk into a place, like at one o'clock into
• 34:06
  Speaker 2: one of the big rooms and there'll still be left
• 34:09
  Speaker 2: over bagels and shit, and you can like just walk
• 34:11
  Speaker 2: in and like dunking donuts.
• 34:13
  Speaker 4: What are those little donut holes? Are like a donut us.
• 34:18
  Speaker 4: And then at every office there's you know, a coffee maker,
• 34:21
  Speaker 4: so you had just.
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: Regular coffee, right.
• 34:23
  Speaker 2: And not only is there a coffee maker, there is
• 34:25
  Speaker 2: the guy who puts his fish in the microwave right
• 34:28
  Speaker 2: in the kitchen. Right. I got those two. Most people
• 34:33
  Speaker 2: I think bring their lunches, right. I mean we're not
• 34:35
  Speaker 2: so in the you know, the big money at CIA.
• 34:38
  Speaker 2: So I think the deal you get when you join
• 34:42
  Speaker 2: is you take a massive pay cut, right compared to
• 34:45
  Speaker 2: what you could probably make in the outside world. So
• 34:48
  Speaker 2: my brother Steve, he has the exact same education as
• 34:51
  Speaker 2: I did, right, he went to the same grad school,
• 34:54
  Speaker 2: international business school that I did, and he probably makes twice,
• 34:57
  Speaker 2: if not more than I do as a banker, an
• 35:01
  Speaker 2: agricultural banker. But what you get in return is you
• 35:04
  Speaker 2: get a you know, you get a four oh one K,
• 35:07
  Speaker 2: you get some you know, generally you're not going to
• 35:08
  Speaker 2: get fired up until this administration, right, unless you really
• 35:12
  Speaker 2: fuck up and you get to do cool shit. So
• 35:14
  Speaker 2: you know, for people who demonize the CIA, by and large,
• 35:19
  Speaker 2: these people are taking a a big pay cut to
• 35:22
  Speaker 2: what they could be getting on the outside because they
• 35:24
  Speaker 2: want to serve and they want to do interesting information.
• 35:26
  Speaker 2: They want a mission, they want to make a difference
• 35:28
  Speaker 2: in the world. You know. But you also get like
• 35:31
  Speaker 2: benefits like not being there for when your kids are born, right,
• 35:34
  Speaker 2: or being sent away from your family because like you
• 35:38
  Speaker 2: do a year in a rock, you do a year
• 35:39
  Speaker 2: in Afghanistan, you go to like really shitty places, or
• 35:42
  Speaker 2: you bring your families to like Bangladesh where they can
• 35:46
  Speaker 2: like breathe unhealthy air and worry about Kobra's in the garden. Right.
• 35:49
  Speaker 2: There was so you know, I loved it, but it
• 35:52
  Speaker 2: is not you know, we're not like you know, people
• 35:55
  Speaker 2: are like, oh, these the deep state guys. You know,
• 35:58
  Speaker 2: they were like, what the fuck are you talking about.
• 36:01
  Speaker 2: We take real risks with ourselves and our families, not
• 36:04
  Speaker 2: for a huge amount of money, but because we actually
• 36:06
  Speaker 2: believe in the fucking constitution, right, and we're willing to serve.
• 36:10
  Speaker 2: And there's my I get off my fucking soapbox job.
• 36:17
  Speaker 2: I mean, you've got it's.
• 36:18
  Speaker 4: The doughnut holes that I like.
• 36:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 36:20
  Speaker 3: I like hearing you describe Langley as it almost sounds
• 36:24
  Speaker 3: like just any office environment in that way. It reminds
• 36:29
  Speaker 3: me I about ten twelve years ago, got a job
• 36:32
  Speaker 3: working for Playboy and at one point they sold all
• 36:36
  Speaker 3: of their digital properties to this huge porn company called
• 36:39
  Speaker 3: man Win, And they flew me out to man Win
• 36:43
  Speaker 3: to tour the offices and things, and at one point
• 36:47
  Speaker 3: I'm walking through all the cubicles and there's a column
• 36:51
  Speaker 3: in the middle of this aisle and it's just plastered
• 36:54
  Speaker 3: with kids artwork from school and then the last it's
• 36:59
  Speaker 3: just people editing breasts, and but it's like so normal.
• 37:06
  Speaker 3: I let like old women just editing.
• 37:09
  Speaker 4: That's what CI is.
• 37:10
  Speaker 2: Like.
• 37:10
  Speaker 4: What's interesting is yes, So if you wanted to come
• 37:12
  Speaker 4: there and show something this cool that really isn't very much,
• 37:17
  Speaker 4: that's cool with the But when they created in two
• 37:19
  Speaker 4: thousand and four, after all the stuff with nine to eleven,
• 37:22
  Speaker 4: they created the Director of National Intelligence, right, and the
• 37:24
  Speaker 4: idea was to coordinate the budgets and everything of all
• 37:27
  Speaker 4: the intelligent communities. So used to be the Director of
• 37:29
  Speaker 4: CIA coordinated all the community. And then after two thousand
• 37:33
  Speaker 4: and four they rewrote the law and decided they were
• 37:35
  Speaker 4: going to create this new job, director of National Intelligence.
• 37:37
  Speaker 4: So they built a new building that's not too far
• 37:39
  Speaker 4: from where the CIA building is, and they decided and
• 37:43
  Speaker 4: maybe they needed to have one place that was cool,
• 37:45
  Speaker 4: So where the counter Terrorism their version of the counter
• 37:48
  Speaker 4: Terrorism Center NCTC was created. They actually went to Disney.
• 37:52
  Speaker 4: He said, we want to create this space where there's
• 37:54
  Speaker 4: like big TVs and things, so like you can sit
• 37:57
  Speaker 4: like that you see a NASA and look at and
• 38:00
  Speaker 4: whatever whatever. So like if someone's coming and they were
• 38:02
  Speaker 4: trying to impress them. They take them over to NCTC
• 38:05
  Speaker 4: and they show them like this big room with it
• 38:06
  Speaker 4: looks like what it's supposed to do on TV. But
• 38:08
  Speaker 4: we go over to CIA, it's the same thing. There's
• 38:10
  Speaker 4: kids pictures on the walls and you know, coffee mugs.
• 38:14
  Speaker 4: But it's true. We joke about dn I that this
• 38:16
  Speaker 4: big office they created all this kind of stuff, and
• 38:19
  Speaker 4: a lot of us are very frustrated that they've It's
• 38:22
  Speaker 4: just almost breocracy for breocracy's sake.
• 38:24
  Speaker 2: They got this really cool looking room and all they
• 38:26
  Speaker 2: do there if you actually ask them, is well, the
• 38:29
  Speaker 2: CIA is doing this, or the FBI counter intelligence is
• 38:32
  Speaker 2: doing this, the NSA is doing this. Well, what do
• 38:33
  Speaker 2: you do? We got a cool room where we talk
• 38:35
  Speaker 2: about what other people do. I'm sorry, I don't think
• 38:40
  Speaker 2: the dn I should even exist, or if it is,
• 38:42
  Speaker 2: it should be like three dozen people.
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: But yeah, what administration started the DNI.
• 38:48
  Speaker 4: Well, like for a lot of things, for political reasons.
• 38:50
  Speaker 4: So after nine to eleven and after the WMD sort
• 38:54
  Speaker 4: of fiasco, there was a lot of pressure on President Bush.
• 38:58
  Speaker 4: There was a big report and a WMD report came
• 39:01
  Speaker 4: out and had these recommendations from all these experts and
• 39:03
  Speaker 4: politicians and stuff, and it said, you know, you should
• 39:05
  Speaker 4: do a you should do all these things, and one
• 39:07
  Speaker 4: of them is create a larger group to make sure
• 39:09
  Speaker 4: that you know, one of the ideas of nine eleven
• 39:11
  Speaker 4: was the FBI and CI aren't talking enough together. Now,
• 39:14
  Speaker 4: I worked with the FBI a lot before at nine
• 39:16
  Speaker 4: to eleven, so I don't necessarily buy that, but that
• 39:18
  Speaker 4: became sort of the talking point is like, these organizations
• 39:20
  Speaker 4: are working, but they're not talking to each other. Let's
• 39:22
  Speaker 4: create an organization that forces them to work together and
• 39:25
  Speaker 4: talk to each other. And then, if you remember, in
• 39:27
  Speaker 4: the lead up the two thousand and four election, John
• 39:29
  Speaker 4: Kerry was running and once that report came out literally
• 39:32
  Speaker 4: the next day, like he couldn't even have read it.
• 39:34
  Speaker 4: The next day, he said, if I'm president, I'm going
• 39:36
  Speaker 4: to make all of these things happen, you know. And
• 39:39
  Speaker 4: so then Bush said had to say, for political reasons,
• 39:42
  Speaker 4: I'm in charge, I'm going to have all these things happen.
• 39:44
  Speaker 4: And so quickly they went over to the Congress and
• 39:46
  Speaker 4: said write up a law saying we're going to make
• 39:47
  Speaker 4: this new thing. And literally within weeks or just a
• 39:50
  Speaker 4: couple of months, they put together a pretty slap dash
• 39:52
  Speaker 4: law to create this thing. So for political reasons, they
• 39:55
  Speaker 4: were essentially saying, I've now solved the problem of nine
• 39:58
  Speaker 4: to eleven. Now these places have to talk together because
• 40:00
  Speaker 4: I've created this new organization. Now, of course, they didn't
• 40:03
  Speaker 4: really a new organization. Just would they would take like
• 40:05
  Speaker 4: the office from the CIA and office from the Defense Department.
• 40:08
  Speaker 4: They would stick them in this new building. It was
• 40:09
  Speaker 4: the same people, and then over time they've added new
• 40:12
  Speaker 4: people and responsibilities and things. But for political reasons.
• 40:14
  Speaker 2: Yes, they're not talking to each other because of bureaucratic reasons,
• 40:17
  Speaker 2: So let's just create more bureaucers. That's another.
• 40:21
  Speaker 4: Government response.
• 40:23
  Speaker 3: Another listener question from PERSO. How much of what we
• 40:28
  Speaker 3: see in terms of the CIA in Hollywood is a
• 40:33
  Speaker 3: natural development of Hollywood wanting to glorify the profession, and
• 40:39
  Speaker 3: how much of it is specifically pitched by vested interests
• 40:43
  Speaker 3: like the CIA, because the CIA has a Hollywood liaison.
• 40:49
  Speaker 4: Right, that's interesting. So I'll let I'll go quick and
• 40:52
  Speaker 4: then Jerry go. So, so Jerry and I actually have
• 40:54
  Speaker 4: a company. That's what we both retired and we got together.
• 40:57
  Speaker 4: We created a company called Spycraft Entertainment and Our idea
• 41:00
  Speaker 4: was we were going to try to take content stories,
• 41:02
  Speaker 4: real stories that we knew and try to work with
• 41:04
  Speaker 4: Hollywood to make better TV shows and movies that are
• 41:06
  Speaker 4: more realistic, you know, more authentic. And so we've been
• 41:09
  Speaker 4: doing that now for almost what eight or eight years
• 41:11
  Speaker 4: or it's crazy, it takes forever in Hollywood to make shows.
• 41:15
  Speaker 4: And of course, so we meet and probably after this meeting,
• 41:17
  Speaker 4: we're going to be meeting with producers and writers and
• 41:20
  Speaker 4: things in Hollywood and talk about shows, and people talk
• 41:23
  Speaker 4: to us about, you know, which shows are realistic and
• 41:25
  Speaker 4: which aren't. So the CIA does have a public Affairs section,
• 41:29
  Speaker 4: and they're supposed to sort of pay attention to what's
• 41:31
  Speaker 4: out there publicly and if they think they should support
• 41:34
  Speaker 4: a show or movie I think reported like zero darc thirty.
• 41:37
  Speaker 4: The CIA is sort of help them with it. But
• 41:38
  Speaker 4: it's a pretty small group of people that aren't incredibly
• 41:42
  Speaker 4: integrated into the work that CIA does. We've done some
• 41:45
  Speaker 4: work with them and they're nice people, but they're not
• 41:48
  Speaker 4: coming out and saying we want you to do this,
• 41:49
  Speaker 4: we want you to do that. I don't think they
• 41:50
  Speaker 4: would even know how to do that. I think the
• 41:52
  Speaker 4: Defense Perment has a bigger role in those kind of things.
• 41:56
  Speaker 4: You know, there's a big office that like make sure
• 41:58
  Speaker 4: there's flyovers of football games all this type of stuff.
• 42:00
  Speaker 4: I think they know, work with top gun and make sure,
• 42:03
  Speaker 4: you know, give them equipment so they can use them
• 42:05
  Speaker 4: in the movies and stuff like that. CAA doesn't have
• 42:07
  Speaker 4: that kind of role, but I think they would be
• 42:10
  Speaker 4: mildly supportive if a movie looked positive about the CIA,
• 42:13
  Speaker 4: they would try to find a way to mildly help.
• 42:16
  Speaker 4: And so, yeah, Hollywood, one of the hardest things that
• 42:18
  Speaker 4: Jerry and I do is we work. We spend a
• 42:21
  Speaker 4: lot of time working with producers, working with writers about
• 42:24
  Speaker 4: coming up with ideas and concepts, and oftentimes the writers
• 42:27
  Speaker 4: they just fall back on what they've seen on TV before.
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: So like, sure, the.
• 42:30
  Speaker 4: View of Hollywood is you know that we yeah, we
• 42:33
  Speaker 4: drove fast cars and we have guns, and you know,
• 42:35
  Speaker 4: we go rogue and we're hiding from and there's an
• 42:38
  Speaker 4: evil bureaucrat and there's all that kind of stuff, and
• 42:40
  Speaker 4: we keep saying no, no, no, no, no, let's scale that back.
• 42:42
  Speaker 4: That's not how it works. But Hollywood loves that stuff.
• 42:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think they just ignore us. I mean we
• 42:48
  Speaker 2: sit with writers and it's not exactly like this, and
• 42:50
  Speaker 2: most of them are really nice, but they're selling a
• 42:52
  Speaker 2: product Hollywood, right, so it's like, well, what's sell sex action?
• 42:56
  Speaker 2: So you sit down in this conversations never actually happened,
• 42:59
  Speaker 2: but it's like, so John and I is like, so,
• 43:01
  Speaker 2: tell us about all the times you've been chased, you know,
• 43:04
  Speaker 2: been in the car chase. Never tell us about the
• 43:08
  Speaker 2: times you've karate chopped people. Never, you know, tell us
• 43:12
  Speaker 2: about you know, your gun collection. I don't own one,
• 43:14
  Speaker 2: you know. It's like, tell us what you know the
• 43:17
  Speaker 2: you know, it's like the times you walk into your
• 43:18
  Speaker 2: bedroom and there's some you know, beautiful woman laying in
• 43:21
  Speaker 2: bed with a foreign accent, which is actually true in
• 43:23
  Speaker 2: my case because my wife is British, right, you know,
• 43:26
  Speaker 2: but I got three kids, I've been married for forty years, right,
• 43:28
  Speaker 2: So it's not you know, it's like, oh fuck, this
• 43:32
  Speaker 2: is it. Instead of taking the cool stuff that we do,
• 43:34
  Speaker 2: which is actually pretty cool, sometimes they're like, yeah, let's
• 43:38
  Speaker 2: just have a car chase scene with guns and sex
• 43:40
  Speaker 2: and explosions, because they think that's what the audience wants,
• 43:43
  Speaker 2: and maybe the audience kind of does want that to
• 43:45
  Speaker 2: a certain extent, but I think the audiences would be
• 43:48
  Speaker 2: really interested in the human dimension of what we do
• 43:51
  Speaker 2: the drama, but it's pretty rare.
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: Drunken donut. Along those same lines, I support that.
• 43:58
  Speaker 3: Says, can you enjoy watching any of the Bond films
• 44:01
  Speaker 3: or does your personal experience make it criticize every part
• 44:05
  Speaker 3: of the story.
• 44:05
  Speaker 4: I just flew back. I was just with my family
• 44:07
  Speaker 4: in Scotland, and I make on the way back, I
• 44:09
  Speaker 4: watched two Bond films. I watch Skyfall because I has
• 44:11
  Speaker 4: a Scotland scene and stuff. Yeah, I love the Bond
• 44:13
  Speaker 4: films and I love I'd like the Boorn films, and
• 44:15
  Speaker 4: I like all those kinds of things, but not because
• 44:17
  Speaker 4: they're realistic or anything. The British like them because people
• 44:21
  Speaker 4: then think that the British Intelligence Services, you know, SI
• 44:24
  Speaker 4: S six, they're sort of like James Bond, and so
• 44:26
  Speaker 4: they sort of live off that. So when they're out
• 44:28
  Speaker 4: in the field that you know, people are like, oh,
• 44:30
  Speaker 4: the British they know spying. Let's go talk to the British.
• 44:33
  Speaker 4: And so, yeah, we like those movies too. Slow Horses
• 44:36
  Speaker 4: is a good one, but less successful British spies and
• 44:39
  Speaker 4: things like that. Yeah, so I like the Bond films.
• 44:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I like Star Trek too in superhero movies,
• 44:44
  Speaker 2: but it doesn't mean you suspend disbelief in watching it.
• 44:47
  Speaker 2: So yeah, Bond is great, everybody should watch it, but it's.
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: Not the way it is spooks Weaver.
• 44:52
  Speaker 3: Well, you just mentioned m I six and them wanting
• 44:56
  Speaker 3: to look more suave by way of James Bond. So
• 44:59
  Speaker 3: this makes for follow up question, which other nation has
• 45:02
  Speaker 3: the most boring agents you've interacted with?
• 45:05
  Speaker 4: Boring? That's a hard one.
• 45:07
  Speaker 3: It feels like it would be hard to be an
• 45:09
  Speaker 3: intelligence agent and be boring.
• 45:11
  Speaker 4: Well, Jerry's got a lot of experience in Germany and.
• 45:16
  Speaker 2: I'm sorry that and love the Germans, but yeah, they're
• 45:19
  Speaker 2: pretty dull.
• 45:19
  Speaker 4: Yeah, ah, be a professional. But there's not a lot
• 45:25
  Speaker 4: of organizations that have a worldwide presence like we do.
• 45:28
  Speaker 4: So essentially, you know, the United States has interests around
• 45:31
  Speaker 4: the world, and so we have people in Africa and
• 45:33
  Speaker 4: Asia and Europe and all over the place. And the
• 45:36
  Speaker 4: British do, but to a lesser extent, the Russians and
• 45:38
  Speaker 4: Chinese certainly do. I mean Russia is actually you know,
• 45:41
  Speaker 4: an economy the size of Portugal, but they have spies
• 45:43
  Speaker 4: everywhere because they rely on their intelligence security services for
• 45:48
  Speaker 4: not just collecting information like ours does, but also for
• 45:51
  Speaker 4: creating havoc and chaos and disinformation all those things we've
• 45:54
  Speaker 4: seen against our country even but other places have you know,
• 45:57
  Speaker 4: regional interests like so, the Israelis are really good, you know,
• 46:00
  Speaker 4: at Iran and in their area. Maybe less so on
• 46:05
  Speaker 4: things that are far away from Israel, but you know,
• 46:07
  Speaker 4: the Gypsy in intelligence service in the French have an
• 46:10
  Speaker 4: intelligence service, and the Itellians they all have, you know,
• 46:12
  Speaker 4: and Malaysians and everybody else have oftentimes internal services and
• 46:16
  Speaker 4: external services, maybe smaller than ours. All the Australians we
• 46:19
  Speaker 4: work with, but yeah, most of them are nice. They're
• 46:23
  Speaker 4: trying to do, you know, their job to support their policymakers.
• 46:26
  Speaker 2: Except I would tip that question on its head. There
• 46:29
  Speaker 2: are intelligence services and these are basically like we think
• 46:33
  Speaker 2: of I six or the b n d CIA. Our
• 46:36
  Speaker 2: job is to collect intelligence. But then there are security services,
• 46:39
  Speaker 2: which you can't say the same. So like the North Koreans,
• 46:42
  Speaker 2: the Iranians, even the Russians, you know, they have a
• 46:45
  Speaker 2: different job and their job is to you know, is
• 46:48
  Speaker 2: to support the state and they deal, and you know
• 46:51
  Speaker 2: they're very different. You know, the gru the Russian military intelligence.
• 46:55
  Speaker 2: I mean, these guys are like, yeah, we kill people,
• 46:57
  Speaker 2: we go after dissidents. We don't do that. And you
• 47:00
  Speaker 2: can kind of tell which is which by whether they're
• 47:02
  Speaker 2: afraid of their own governments. If you ever get the
• 47:05
  Speaker 2: chance to sit down with a North Korean right intelligence officer,
• 47:08
  Speaker 2: they are scared shitless. They're going to say the wrong
• 47:12
  Speaker 2: thing because like you get called back, or Russians, you know,
• 47:16
  Speaker 2: they're worried they're going to say something against Putin and
• 47:18
  Speaker 2: they're gonna get called back. And up until this administration,
• 47:21
  Speaker 2: you know, if you wanted to, you could, you know,
• 47:24
  Speaker 2: not as part of your official duties. You could say,
• 47:26
  Speaker 2: you know, fuck Obama or funk Clinton, and nothing's going
• 47:28
  Speaker 2: to happen to you because we have a democracy and
• 47:30
  Speaker 2: you're allowed to say things. But people in security services
• 47:33
  Speaker 2: aren't allowed to do that by and large. They you
• 47:35
  Speaker 2: know Chinese, one instance of I know of a Chinese
• 47:38
  Speaker 2: intelligence officer, he's like, fuck I went to church. If
• 47:41
  Speaker 2: I get caught because I went into a church, they're
• 47:44
  Speaker 2: going to pull me home and fire me. I could
• 47:46
  Speaker 2: go to jail. That's a security service, Right, he's there
• 47:50
  Speaker 2: for the Chinese Communist Party, not to just collect intelligence.
• 47:55
  Speaker 4: The way I look at it is those kind of countries,
• 47:58
  Speaker 4: Western countries, their intelligence services are about national security, right,
• 48:02
  Speaker 4: They're about security, keeping the American citizens safe. Whereas countries
• 48:05
  Speaker 4: like China, Russia, North Korea, those it's about regime security.
• 48:09
  Speaker 4: It's about keeping the leadership in power at all costs.
• 48:11
  Speaker 4: So that's why they have a big domestic role, Like
• 48:13
  Speaker 4: they don't want any political opposition, so putin security services.
• 48:17
  Speaker 4: Their main role is making sure no one there's no
• 48:19
  Speaker 4: political threat to putin inside that you know, they arrest
• 48:23
  Speaker 4: the people they need to, and then overseas they're sort
• 48:25
  Speaker 4: of the weapon of the state. So it's regime security
• 48:27
  Speaker 4: versus national security.
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: You just mentioned Russia.
• 48:32
  Speaker 3: We have a think a good listener question about Russia
• 48:35
  Speaker 3: from a listener named Barlock. Do you believe that Russia
• 48:38
  Speaker 3: has compromising information on Trump?
• 48:42
  Speaker 4: Oh? That's a good one. So yeah. I served in Moscow.
• 48:45
  Speaker 4: I speak Russian, and I worked on you know, at
• 48:48
  Speaker 4: our headquarters on worldwide Russia issues. I write on Russia
• 48:52
  Speaker 4: and those type of things. I've even written an article
• 48:54
  Speaker 4: on is Donald Trump a Russian spy? If you want
• 48:57
  Speaker 4: to read it. I think it's in just Security, which
• 48:59
  Speaker 4: is a plant that writes about those kind of things.
• 49:01
  Speaker 4: So that's a very complicated thing I could talk about
• 49:05
  Speaker 4: for quite a long time. So the Russians. Yeah, so
• 49:08
  Speaker 4: Jerry and I, like we were saying, we would try
• 49:10
  Speaker 4: to recruit a source that can give us the secrets
• 49:13
  Speaker 4: that our policymakers need. So if our policymakers need to
• 49:16
  Speaker 4: know what the Iranian regime is thinking, you know, we
• 49:19
  Speaker 4: got academics, we got satellites, we got diplomats, and if
• 49:23
  Speaker 4: they're not getting that answer, then they want us to
• 49:25
  Speaker 4: try to find someone that can steal that information that
• 49:27
  Speaker 4: can tell us those thoughts and intentions the leadership. But
• 49:30
  Speaker 4: the Russian intelligence services, you know, they're looking to collect information,
• 49:34
  Speaker 4: but they're also looking to take active measures to create chaos,
• 49:38
  Speaker 4: to support radical groups, to spread disinformation, to spread subversion,
• 49:44
  Speaker 4: these type of things. And so yeah, Donald Trump traveled
• 49:47
  Speaker 4: in the seventies and things to Russia. He's always had
• 49:50
  Speaker 4: sort of this fascination and interest in Russia, maybe for
• 49:52
  Speaker 4: business reasons or what have you. The notion that they
• 49:55
  Speaker 4: did not pay attention to him, They paid attention to
• 49:57
  Speaker 4: someone senior like that when they visited Russia. I think
• 50:00
  Speaker 4: they probably did. At almost any American official or businessman
• 50:04
  Speaker 4: who travels to Russia, They're gonna maybe have cameras in
• 50:07
  Speaker 4: your hotel, maybe question everybody you talk to, maybe try to,
• 50:11
  Speaker 4: you know, put someone in touch with you to try
• 50:13
  Speaker 4: to you know, we've seen them use what they call
• 50:16
  Speaker 4: swallows women to try to like have relationships with foreigners
• 50:19
  Speaker 4: so that they can report on them and these type
• 50:21
  Speaker 4: of things. So the Russians have always been interested. I
• 50:23
  Speaker 4: think in Donald Trump now had they recruited him as
• 50:27
  Speaker 4: a spy in the sense that Jerry and I are
• 50:29
  Speaker 4: talking about developing a relationship with someone seeing what their
• 50:32
  Speaker 4: motivations are, you know, getting them to agree to spy
• 50:36
  Speaker 4: secretly for the United States government, to give us information
• 50:39
  Speaker 4: and keep themselves secret and follow our directions. I don't
• 50:41
  Speaker 4: think Donald Trump could do that. I don't think he's
• 50:43
  Speaker 4: disciplined enough to meet secretly with anybody or to keep
• 50:46
  Speaker 4: his mouth shut or to you know, we need to
• 50:48
  Speaker 4: meet you on the corner of whatever and wherever it's
• 50:52
  Speaker 4: this time, and I want you to de brief on
• 50:54
  Speaker 4: these specific topics you've had, Like he would be a
• 50:57
  Speaker 4: complete nightmare. For it's all disturbed to try to run.
• 51:00
  Speaker 4: But the Russians also understand that, and they might not
• 51:03
  Speaker 4: run him as a spy like the way we're thinking
• 51:06
  Speaker 4: of Jerry and I think about in our work. But
• 51:08
  Speaker 4: they might be able to realize, Hey, this guy is
• 51:11
  Speaker 4: a loose cannon. He seems to like us. He seems
• 51:14
  Speaker 4: to spout his mouth off, he seems to believe the
• 51:17
  Speaker 4: last thing that he's heard. So let's find a way
• 51:19
  Speaker 4: to put information in front of him. Let's try to
• 51:21
  Speaker 4: get information that's useful to us to him. Let's put
• 51:24
  Speaker 4: people you know around him and meet him from time
• 51:27
  Speaker 4: to time. They're going to sort of push the pro
• 51:28
  Speaker 4: Russian view or to give bad information about you know,
• 51:32
  Speaker 4: Americans that are causing us problems, or you know, tell
• 51:35
  Speaker 4: him the CIA and the State perimeter evil things. And
• 51:37
  Speaker 4: so I think he is It depends on the word he.
• 51:41
  Speaker 4: He's an asset to the Russian state, meaning he helps
• 51:44
  Speaker 4: Russian interests Russian state. He supports and says Russian talking points.
• 51:49
  Speaker 4: He refuses to see the terrible things that the Russians
• 51:51
  Speaker 4: are doing. So he is of use to the Russians.
• 51:54
  Speaker 4: And I think they manipulate him in the way that
• 51:56
  Speaker 4: they can. Is he a spy for Russia? I don't
• 51:59
  Speaker 4: believe that to be the case. And so I tried
• 52:01
  Speaker 4: to lay that out in my article and I'll put it.
• 52:03
  Speaker 4: I'll send it to you here when yeah.
• 52:05
  Speaker 2: We'll but the specific question. Let me give you an instance,
• 52:08
  Speaker 2: and then you can decide. Your audience could decide. So
• 52:11
  Speaker 2: in twenty sixteen, Donald Trump said very specifically, I do
• 52:16
  Speaker 2: not have any business interests in Russia. I don't. But
• 52:20
  Speaker 2: he did, right, I mean, he had the letter of
• 52:22
  Speaker 2: intent signed by Rudy Giuliani has said this publicly that
• 52:26
  Speaker 2: so he was negotiating a Trump tower in Moscow did
• 52:29
  Speaker 2: not come to pass. So he had an active business
• 52:33
  Speaker 2: negotiation going on, and the Russians knew about it. Now
• 52:38
  Speaker 2: Donald Trump knew about it. The Russians knew about it.
• 52:41
  Speaker 2: So the Russians had something over him. The people who
• 52:44
  Speaker 2: didn't know that he had an active business negotiation, he
• 52:48
  Speaker 2: had this letter of intent to build was the American
• 52:50
  Speaker 2: people and the Russians kept their mouths shut, didn't they.
• 52:53
  Speaker 2: They didn't say they had a piece of paper they
• 52:56
  Speaker 2: could hold up and sink Donald Trump to show him
• 52:59
  Speaker 2: to be a liar. In twenty sixteen, they didn't use it,
• 53:02
  Speaker 2: so they in this one particular instance, Yeah, I would
• 53:07
  Speaker 2: say that is proof that they had something on Donald Trump,
• 53:10
  Speaker 2: that he was an inveterate liar on this particular point.
• 53:13
  Speaker 2: Now you could argue, well, a letter of intent, that's
• 53:15
  Speaker 2: not negotiative bullshit. He said not, I have no business
• 53:19
  Speaker 2: you know, no business relationship with russhiaws. That was clearly false.
• 53:23
  Speaker 2: So do they have anything now? And it's the question
• 53:27
  Speaker 2: is do they or did they? Or what I believe
• 53:30
  Speaker 2: in what I can prove, I can't prove it except
• 53:32
  Speaker 2: for that one point, maybe some other smaller ones. But
• 53:36
  Speaker 2: one last thing your listeners should think is why would
• 53:39
  Speaker 2: Paul Manniford. Why was again twenty sixteen, why was his
• 53:44
  Speaker 2: campaign manager meeting secretly with a Russian agent and handing
• 53:49
  Speaker 2: him over internal campaign documents polling like being observed by
• 53:53
  Speaker 2: the FBI. I can't think of any reason. And because
• 53:56
  Speaker 2: that campaign manager he was deeply in debt to a
• 54:00
  Speaker 2: pro putin oligarch. So you know, people can put two
• 54:04
  Speaker 2: and two together and get six, so they can get four.
• 54:07
  Speaker 2: What I believe or what they believe, but you know
• 54:09
  Speaker 2: I mean, and then there's a whole host of other things.
• 54:11
  Speaker 2: So Russia, Russia, Russia hoax, I don't know. You explain
• 54:14
  Speaker 2: those things to me why their hoax isn't and I'll
• 54:16
  Speaker 2: you know that, I'll you know, I'll be fine with that,
• 54:19
  Speaker 2: but I can't.
• 54:20
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that reminds me of a thing that happened recently
• 54:23
  Speaker 3: that I feel like hasn't gotten enough attention. There was
• 54:27
  Speaker 3: that I guess rumor that went around. I guess it
• 54:30
  Speaker 3: came from the Epstein files that there is an image
• 54:34
  Speaker 3: of Trump blowing Bubba, and I remember immediately went to, oh,
• 54:40
  Speaker 3: that's Bill Clinton. That's Bill Clinton's nickname. But the actual
• 54:44
  Speaker 3: speculation is, I don't remember the guy's name, but he's
• 54:46
  Speaker 3: some billionaire who lives in Texas. The speculation is it's
• 54:50
  Speaker 3: actually that guy. His nickname is Bubba. About a week
• 54:54
  Speaker 3: before that information was made public, Cash Patel took a
• 55:00
  Speaker 3: personal trip to the ranch owned by the Bubba in question,
• 55:05
  Speaker 3: And no one, I feel like, is asking, well, why
• 55:09
  Speaker 3: did the director of the FBI go to that guy's
• 55:11
  Speaker 3: ranch right before this information about Trump came out?
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: Seems like a question worth asking.
• 55:17
  Speaker 4: The Trump Russia stuff is really scary stuff, like he
• 55:21
  Speaker 4: has been consistently supporting of Russia and Ukraine. Clearly the Russians,
• 55:26
  Speaker 4: you know, invaded Ukraine, murdering Ukrainians, but he refuses to
• 55:30
  Speaker 4: see the reality of that, and then he completely attacks
• 55:34
  Speaker 4: anybody who talks about Russia. So there's an incredible amount
• 55:37
  Speaker 4: of information like what Jerry was talking about in the
• 55:39
  Speaker 4: twenty sixteen campaign and others, that the Russians were trying
• 55:42
  Speaker 4: to actively help his campaign and other things, but he
• 55:44
  Speaker 4: goes against it. But one thing that he could solve
• 55:47
  Speaker 4: this he screams about Russia, Russia, Russia, But he could
• 55:50
  Speaker 4: solve the problem of just explain why why have you
• 55:52
  Speaker 4: consistently been pro Russian? Why do you support Leary Putin?
• 55:56
  Speaker 4: Why do do you support continue to say Russian talking points?
• 55:59
  Speaker 4: Why when you're running for election in twenty fifteen in
• 56:03
  Speaker 4: places like Iowa, does your campaign to be in touch
• 56:06
  Speaker 4: with like one hundred and forty Russians? What is the
• 56:08
  Speaker 4: benefit if you're running for election to have all these Russians.
• 56:11
  Speaker 4: What's happened is he's attacked and attacked and attacked, but
• 56:14
  Speaker 4: not once has he ever just tried to say, here's
• 56:17
  Speaker 4: why I'm in touch with all these Russians. Here's why
• 56:19
  Speaker 4: I want to do business in Russia. Here's why all
• 56:21
  Speaker 4: my people in touch of Russians, Here's why I support Russia.
• 56:23
  Speaker 4: Never if you could just explain that, maybe he wouldn't
• 56:26
  Speaker 4: get attacked so much.
• 56:28
  Speaker 2: Right, there was a plank in the Republican Party platform
• 56:30
  Speaker 2: in twenty fifteen that they would strongly support Ukraine right
• 56:35
  Speaker 2: against Russian aggression. Trump wins the nomination and that plank
• 56:39
  Speaker 2: is quietly dropped. Why who ordered that? How did that happen?
• 56:43
  Speaker 2: The entire party, everybody in the party was we are
• 56:46
  Speaker 2: going to support Ukraine. He becomes in and then that's dropped.
• 56:50
  Speaker 2: Why where's the paperwork on there? Where's the meetings? Conspiracy?
• 56:53
  Speaker 2: I don't know, But as CIA officers, we don't. We
• 56:57
  Speaker 2: deal in probabilities often, right, it's more likely than not.
• 57:00
  Speaker 2: The FBI, when they bring a case to court, they
• 57:03
  Speaker 2: have to prove something, you know, beyond a shadow of
• 57:06
  Speaker 2: a doubt. They've got to convince jurors, and they have
• 57:08
  Speaker 2: to have it exactly right. In CIA, we can say,
• 57:11
  Speaker 2: you know what, I'm seventy percent convinced to this. The
• 57:15
  Speaker 2: evidence that it's true strongly outweighs the evidence that it
• 57:19
  Speaker 2: isn't true or this doesn't smell right. So as case
• 57:21
  Speaker 2: officers in the CIA, you know, we're not about building
• 57:26
  Speaker 2: It's not our job to build yeah, legal cases. So
• 57:30
  Speaker 2: so you know we can engage in this kind of
• 57:32
  Speaker 2: like speculation. You create a hypothesis, you gather information, and
• 57:36
  Speaker 2: you change your hypothesis as the information, you know, the
• 57:39
  Speaker 2: details flow in the facts. But you know these things
• 57:41
  Speaker 2: are still unexplained. So I mean that's why you know,
• 57:45
  Speaker 2: you asked in the very beginning sort of come in
• 57:47
  Speaker 2: full circle, like what what conspiracies conspiracy theories do we
• 57:51
  Speaker 2: believe in. I don't know if these are conspiracies or
• 57:53
  Speaker 2: conspiracy theories, but these are really counterintelligence red flags is
• 57:59
  Speaker 2: what we call them in the CIA, that are still
• 58:02
  Speaker 2: unexplained and make me very uneasy and should make a
• 58:04
  Speaker 2: lot of people.
• 58:05
  Speaker 4: You would never get hired for a junior position, like
• 58:07
  Speaker 4: with Donald Trump's background and the people around him, they
• 58:10
  Speaker 4: would not get security cleaners, as they wouldn't get hired
• 58:13
  Speaker 4: for the most junior jobs in the Intelligent Committee, and
• 58:15
  Speaker 4: they're now in charge of the world's largest and most
• 58:18
  Speaker 4: matheles intelligence community.
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's terrifying.
• 58:22
  Speaker 2: There's a conspiracy for it. Yeah, forget Kennedy, man, what's
• 58:26
  Speaker 2: going on with it?
• 58:27
  Speaker 3: Yeah? Okay, we just have two more questions. I appreciate
• 58:30
  Speaker 3: you taking so much time. This last one is this
• 58:33
  Speaker 3: is a me question. What do you think of the
• 58:36
  Speaker 3: claims or rumors that there are intelligence connections to Jeffrey
• 58:42
  Speaker 3: Epstein and that he was perhaps running some sort of
• 58:46
  Speaker 3: blackmail operation on behalf of a government. And even if
• 58:50
  Speaker 3: you don't think he was, do you think that kind
• 58:53
  Speaker 3: of thing happens?
• 58:55
  Speaker 4: It's interesting? So Jeryed and I just did a podcast
• 58:57
  Speaker 4: with Tara Pulmry, who does a lot of research on
• 58:59
  Speaker 4: the episode and stuff, and I actually did her podcast
• 59:02
  Speaker 4: to talk about exactly that, what are the connections with
• 59:04
  Speaker 4: intelligence and stuff? Just the way we do business. I
• 59:07
  Speaker 4: cannot imagine Jeffrey Epstein being of any value or interest
• 59:11
  Speaker 4: to the US intelligence community, at least a foreign intelligence
• 59:14
  Speaker 4: part of it, ever, talking to him now, he does
• 59:16
  Speaker 4: have through Ghleanne Maxwell's family. Her father is a huge
• 59:21
  Speaker 4: influenced person in Britain and Israel and stuff like that.
• 59:24
  Speaker 4: There's certainly a possibility when you're playing with those big
• 59:27
  Speaker 4: players at big money that there's there's security services and
• 59:31
  Speaker 4: intelligence services sort of following him. And there might have
• 59:33
  Speaker 4: some connections at a high level, probably more with politicians
• 59:36
  Speaker 4: than people who are in the intelligence communities. But I
• 59:40
  Speaker 4: can't see any value why the CIA would ever talk
• 59:42
  Speaker 4: to him or talk to his people. He has no
• 59:44
  Speaker 4: foreign intelligence to pass on. He might, because of connections
• 59:48
  Speaker 4: in Israel and stuff, want to talk to some of
• 59:50
  Speaker 4: our senior politicians and one of them might say, oh,
• 59:52
  Speaker 4: this is very important, Jeffrey, maybe you should tell the
• 59:55
  Speaker 4: FBI or tell us CIA. That's certainly possible. With the
• 59:57
  Speaker 4: sense that he would be like a source doesn't make
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 4: any sense. But you know, like I said, those big
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 4: players of big money people have connections around the world,
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 4: and it's kind of thing that organizations at some level
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 4: might touch.
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think or you know, organizations like sixsad CIA
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 2: might be interested in what he has to say from
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 2: time to time. I'm not sure we would go out
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 2: and you know, we certainly would not recruit How could
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 2: we recruit him, right? I mean, you know he's for
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 2: money for but he might want to like pass things on.
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 2: I mean, just recently it came out, for example, that
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 2: he was talking to Larry Summers, Clinton's former Treasury secretary,
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 2: where he was talking about. He was talking to Anatolely Chirkin,
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 2: who was the Russian ambassador to the United States and
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 2: an intelligence officer, and he was saying, Hey, I want
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 2: to talk to the Russians about Donald Trump, right, I
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 2: want to pass to the Russian foreign Minister. I want
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 2: to talk to him about Donald Trump. And so, you know, okay,
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 2: that gets him into you know, I could see him
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 2: then going to CIA and said, oh, I you know,
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 2: I talked to the Russian fore minister Ivano. Do you
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 2: want to know what he had to say? And we
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 2: would probably say yeah, But there's a big difference between Sure,
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 2: we'll send a you know, we'll send an analyst to
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 2: like take notes where you tell us about, you know,
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 2: your meeting with senior Russians or whatever, and the Israelis
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 2: might do the same or something like that. But that's
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 2: not you know, he's not part of the CIA. He's
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 2: a guy with it, maybe with some information. I don't
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 2: even know if he did that, but I'm saying I
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 2: wouldn't be surprised if he tried to, you know, if
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 2: he tried to get into that world. Now I'm running
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 2: like the sex operations, you know, the Russians do that.
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 2: I mean they do CIA, doesn't you know listeners in
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 2: Hollywood are going to be really sorry to hear this.
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 2: We just don't use sex, right, it doesn't work. It's
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 2: a you know, you know the people who do this,
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 2: you got families. You know, we're we have to bude
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 2: by US laws and CIA. You know, we're normal people.
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 2: We're not going to be doing this to US citizens.
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 2: And lastly, it just doesn't work. Sex is not something
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 2: by and large that because we're looking for agents who
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 2: are going to be around for the next twenty years,
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 2: who want to work with us. And if you've blackmailed
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 2: a guy because you've got pictures of him with some hooker,
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 2: he's a probably not gonna be telling you the truth.
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 2: B he's going to be looking to betray you, or
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 2: he's going to be looking to stick a shiv between
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 2: your ribs first chance he gets right. Those are not
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 2: the kind of agents we want to be running January.
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 4: That makes sense.
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, last question, this is from a listener, Chris Murphy.
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 3: What are the odds I'm on a federal watch list
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 3: for sharing or posting things critical of the US government?
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 3: Are most people being monitored or is it just the
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 3: people who open call things like assassination.
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 4: If Chris is on that list, Jerry and I are
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 4: on the list too, because I was on Twitter for
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 4: a long time. I finally got off because I just
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 4: can't stand, you know, on musk and I had a
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 4: lot of followers, and I was pretty critical the government.
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 4: Now I'm in Blue Sky and I'm still very critical.
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 4: And you know, we have First Amendment rights where Americans
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 4: we can say what we want, and we should criticize
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 4: our government when it's doing the things that it's doing now,
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 4: and especially based on our experience and what we learned
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 4: from working inside the government, I see real dangers, real
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 4: you know, presidents really helping China, really hurt helping our adversaries,
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 4: and really hurting our ally in our allies are incredibly
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 4: powerful and help us in so many ways in wars
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 4: and intelligence and all these type of things. So yeah,
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 4: watchless the Secret Service and the FBI. Their job is
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 4: to make sure there are not threats to the government.
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 4: So yeah, So if Chris gets on and says that
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 4: I want to kill Trump, there may be someone who's
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 4: going to watch that and reach out to him and say,
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 4: what's that about or put him on some sort of list.
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 4: I guess is what you say. We've seen this in Minneapolis.
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 4: They talk about ice guys with the gy Predie was shot.
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 4: He was on some list of there. So law enforcement organizations,
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 4: not intelligence ories, but law enforcement organizations are probably people
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 4: that they think are some sort of physical threat or threat.
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 4: Certainly may you know, collect on Americans. And nowadays it's
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 4: pretty easy because we're all online in terms of like
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 4: if you're just critical of the government, you know, at
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 4: least prior to this administration this time, absolutely not. But Trump,
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 4: you know, sees he doesn't see the Chinese and Russians enemies.
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 4: He sees Americans that don't support him as the enemies,
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 4: and therefore he wants he's using his Department of Justice
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 4: and under that the FBI and Parmer to Homeland Security
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 4: to do these things that are pretty pretty radical and
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 4: pretty scary.
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there's talk, and you know, in the next week
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 2: or so, I think we'll go to see what this is.
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 2: But there's you know, Homan is talking about the guy
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 2: who took fifty thousand dollars in cash and a frigging
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 2: bag right in a plastic in a paper bag and
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 2: he won't tell you what he did with it, whether
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 2: he paid taxes on it. This is the guy you're
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 2: going to trust. But he said, we are collecting signal
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 2: group chats where people are organizing to protest ice. You know,
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 2: that's a First Amendment right, not just to express your opinion,
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 2: but to organize to do that, right. So I don't
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 2: see unless people are organizing to like kill people organizing
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 2: to you know, keeping lists of people who organize to
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 2: protest government actions, that's something pretty scary. So I think,
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 2: you know, yeah, John is exactly right. Up until now,
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 2: it's never been a problem. But I think things are changing.
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 4: Man, Like the FBI if they wanted to, if they
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 4: say Adams for example, if they wanted to they saw
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 4: something about you they thought was threatening me. FBI can
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 4: go to a judge and get a warrant to like
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 4: look at your phone or look at your computer. Stuff.
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 4: They have to in a long written you know, justify
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 4: here's why, here's what we think, here's why you think
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 4: he's a threat. That judge has to look at that
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 4: and say we agree, and then the judge oftentimes will
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 4: give them a specific and they'll say, okay, you have
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 4: you know, one week to collect his things to see
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 4: if there's something there, and then you have to turn
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 4: off that collection. And if you wanted to continue, you
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 4: have to come back to me, the judge, and show
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 4: that you've collected information that shows that Adam is a threat.
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 4: And so there's very strong regulations around what you can
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 4: do and how you can do it. You can't just say,
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 4: you know, I'm in the FBI. I think I'm just
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 4: gonna look at what Adam is writing and what he's doing.
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 4: And now this is very structured, has to be predicated,
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 4: written legal warrant, you know, and then they and then
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 4: you turn off that collection as soon as you realize
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 4: there's nothing there.
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 2: But those are the rules and the regulations and the laws.
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 2: But if the people don't enforce them or just push
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 2: them aside, that it doesn't fucking matter anymore, right.
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 4: Tis true?
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 3: What a great job that would be if you were
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 3: in the FBI. You just got to sign to listen
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 3: to my podcasts. Exactly good day of work. So John Jerry,
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 3: thank you both so much for doing the pod. I
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 3: really appreciate it. This was great our pleasure. Where can
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 3: people listen to your podcast and check out your other work.
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 4: So our podcast on conspiracy theories not as good as yours,
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 4: but it's called implausible. It's with Jerry and I and
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 4: Adam Davidson, who is a writer for The New Yorker
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 4: and PR and a number of other places do that.
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 4: I put stuff on Blue skyt since I left Twitter,
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 4: and I write sometimes for different you know, you have
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 4: Times and wash Posts and places like that, mostly on
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 4: Russia things. But that's and then Jerry and I are
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 4: both working for this company, Spycraft, in the effort to
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 4: make good espionage TV and movies.
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 1: Nice Jerry, anything you want at.
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 4: Jerry stays away from social media. He's wise.
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 1: That's very smart.
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 3: Well again, and thank you both. I appreciate it, and
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 3: thank you to everyone who listened to the pod. We
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 3: appreciate you also, and goodbye everybody.
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 4: We love it.
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 2: And Adam, we're going to keep your secret that you're
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 2: our agent. You know, we're not going to let the audience.
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 2: Hopefully the audience isn't picking this up.
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 1: But yeah, man, yeah, we're not recording anymore.
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 4: It's fine.