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Swallowed up in Russiagate - Sam Patten · Nightmare Success In and Out

• 0:01
  What happens when your worst fear becomes your reality?
• 0:04
  Hi, I'm Brent Cassidy. Welcome to the Nightmare Success
• 0:07
  In and Out podcast, where we explore how to overcome your
• 0:10
  fears and nightmares and set yourself free.
• 0:13
  We're going to be exploring this topic with guys that was in
• 0:15
  Leavenworth with and others who survived their own nightmare.
• 0:20
  These stories can be inspiring, sometimes.
• 0:22
  Sad. There's some humor, but
• 0:25
  hopefully you can come away with a nugget of something that'll
• 0:27
  help you knock down some of the prisons you built up in your own
• 0:30
  mind. Welcome back, nightmare success
• 0:35
  listeners. You guys come here for the good
• 0:38
  stuff, with what happens when your worst fear becomes your
• 0:41
  reality. How do you adapt?
• 0:42
  Survive. Overcome, Set yourself free?
• 0:45
  Well man, do I have something. I'm thrilled to be doing this
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  interview. I was, I was telling Sam
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  Patton's my guest today and I was telling my my political
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  science degree is on hyper OverDrive today.
• 1:02
  As all of you know, because you have all been in this world
• 1:06
  since 2016. You had the Robert Mueller
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  investigation. The special Russia gate had all
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  that going on and and one of these, there's a few of them,
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  but Sam Patton was one of the guys that got wrapped up and
• 1:25
  really a charge that he had to eat really was, which was part
• 1:30
  of this investigation. But his his resume is
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  fascinating. He's got a new book that's
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  coming out. I just want to read just a piece
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  of this, just because I was just looking at how they were
• 1:42
  promoting the book. But I, I, I can't wait to read
• 1:45
  it, it says, pulsating with action from the first page to
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  the last. Dangerous Company, Misadventures
• 1:50
  of a Foreign Agent is a memoir that reads like a thriller.
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  Sam Patton left US politics behind when he went overseas to
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  promote a democracy during George W Bush's first
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  administration. Then he became an advisor to
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  political leaders in countries like Iraq, Georgia, Ukraine, the
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  Congo, Nigeria, and Mexico. When Washington went look.
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  When Washington went looking for anyone who could have helped the
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  Russians elect Donald Trump as U.S.
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  President, Patton was a usual suspect.
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  Says that he ended up, as I just mentioned, a rarely enforced,
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  seldom enforced statue of 1938 which was the foreign agent
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  register actually called FARA. But it's Foreign Agent
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  Registration Act and it's he he I mean we were just talking.
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  He went he worked for three of the senators in Maine.
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  William Cohen who became Secretary of Defense senator at
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  the first senator. Susan Collins.
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  Senator Olympus Snowe, he worked with, ran the George W Bush
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  campaign in Maine, worked in the State Department in 2008 and 9,
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  and then he went and and did all these things overseas.
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  When he was in Ukraine, Paul Manafort was over there.
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  That's something that people a name that everybody knows, but I
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  if you get a chance, his column that he writes in the Main wire
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  is is very topical, right on what's going on right now.
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  And he's got an opinion because he's a been a part of all of it.
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  Can't wait to unpack all this. Before we do that, I want to
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  Tell them the Brent from nightmare success since you, Sam
• 4:14
  Patton, Welcome Ed, how are you? Pleasure to be here.
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  Thanks for having me, Brent. I can see your books in the back
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  there. When do those come out?
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  It officially launches on October 3rd, but I've already
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  got about 700 of them sitting in my dining room just to get rid
• 4:32
  of. That's the world of publishing
• 4:35
  your book. I love it.
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  I can't wait to see you out there promoting it too.
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  So Sam, when did? Well, let's go back a little bit
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  because we were just talking about you.
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  You lived a fascinating life from from Maine to Washington,
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  DC What was like life for you as a kid growing up?
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  Well, I grew up in Maine, but I was born in Washington, DC, so I
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  had some some roots there that kept me kind of focused on
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  politics from an early age. My, my grandparents were very
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  involved in public life in DC My step grandfather was a columnist
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  stopped writing after Vietnam. And my grandmother was was sort
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  of a society figure in Washington, DC for a number of
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  years from the Kennedy administration until her death
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  in 2004. And she, you know, Washington
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  Post called her the grand Dame of the Washington elite society.
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  And and we we were talking about you know when you were going to
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  school at Georgetown and and you were able to be part of some of
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  those I guess those dinners and cocktail parties and what would
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  that have been like for you in that?
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  World, yeah, I know. It gave me a, gave me a certain
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  perspective and insight that. You know, as we say here in
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  Maine, you know, say I'm just a boy from Maine.
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  While I was, you know, I was just a boy from Maine, kind of
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  put into a very fancy world in Washington, DC, and had to learn
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  at an early age how to make dinner, dinner, party
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  conversation, how to be interesting, the worst possible
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  thing. Was to be boring exactly that,
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  that that was something that there was a party found.
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  Yeah, that. That haunted me throughout my
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  life. But no, it gave me exposure to
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  some fascinating people, some sort of historical people.
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  Like, you know, when I was studying American foreign policy
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  in college, I got to listen to Dick Helms, who was a former
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  director of Central Intelligence Agency.
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  Talk to Frank Wisner. Who was the?
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  Son of a sort of an epic foreign foreign service.
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  I mean foreign intelligence figure in the United States talk
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  about what really happened in Tehran in the 1950s during the
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  most of day coup. So I mean, you know, these,
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  these were sort of live real time conversations that were
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  kind of sinking in my head and probably playing some role in
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  determining my future, I'm sure. I mean you were, you were in the
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  thick of it. Who do you think was the most
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  interesting person you got to be around in that time period?
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  Gosh, there were a lot of different people.
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  But I just, I remember after working on the Bush campaign in
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  2000, I was the fall guy for when the news about Bush's DWI
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  came out several days before the election.
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  I was the guy they dropped that on.
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  And so, after the election, I was having a quiet dinner in DC
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  with my grandmother and Jim Lehrer, who was the host of The
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  News Hour on PBS, and his wife. And I was explaining that Jim
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  Lehrer, what that was like. And he in fact had just hosted
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  that he had moderated the debate between Bush and war.
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  And he, he shared what it was like when George W Bush was
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  staring at him like do something.
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  Because War wasn't playing by the rules, was was being very
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  sort of supercilious, you know, was what was sort of acting,
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  acting out a little bit. And he talked about what the
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  pressure was like to be the moderator in the debate.
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  And I told him what it was like to have that.
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  Soft on me and you know it was, it was, it was interesting.
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  That was a memorable conversation but certainly there
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  have been many. Another Paul Nitzo, who was a
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  long time senior diplomat and chief US arms negotiator and
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  National Security Advisor. I think for President Truman.
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  He asked me, who are your heroes?
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  And I didn't have an answer. And it troubled me that I didn't
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  have an answer. Nothing quickly came to mine and
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  this would have been 199092 today if you asked me that
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  question. Wow, I really didn't know.
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  Yeah, 92. That would have been Bush, HW
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  Bush and Bill Clinton. But.
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  You know, I just. I couldn't.
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  No one sprung to mine. I think that's a little bit
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  about the dissolution of our age, I mean.
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  I grew up in the latchkey generation.
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  Yep, Generation X through the funk of the 70s.
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  So there is a, I mean, there is this idea of the hero is a
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  little distant. Yeah, it gets diluted and people
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  get cynical and they think it's not cool to have a hero people,
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  right? It's a it's an unusual place
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  that we sit now with that because I think that's part of
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  what made our country great was we had heroes to aspire to and
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  and you know from handing the baton off from one generation to
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  the next of of who, who's going to be the next great.
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  When you were growing up, were your high school year, Did you
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  have siblings? I have two younger sisters, one
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  of whom lives in Berkeley and the other in Brooklyn.
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  Okay and Pretty normal growing up high school time period cuz
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  you got into working with the senators fairly young.
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  I assume that was was that during college or out of
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  college? My father published a weekly
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  newspaper in our hometown. Yeah, so my first job after
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  school, I went to university down in Georgetown, Washington,
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  DC. And that's where I got an
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  internship working for Bill Cohen, who is our senior senator
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  at the time. So, you know, that got me
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  involved in politics. My first job out of school was
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  as a newspaper reporter, and that got me, you know, focused,
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  you know, more on politics. And I met a woman who was
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  running for governor in 1994 and went to work for her as her
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  press secretary. So that was my first statewide
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  political campaign. Was it We were the only
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  Republican campaign in 1994 that didn't win?
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  That's interesting. Did did it seem odd to to, or
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  was it a great learning ground to go from being in journalism
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  to basically writing and and doing speeches for the political
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  sect? Or was it just a natural plugin
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  for you? I think journalism was more of a
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  default, something that I could do based on, you know, what my
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  skills were at that point. And I like to write, but I think
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  I was more naturally drawn to politics even before that.
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  So I've always been My journalism has always been
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  political, in fact. Last year I got cancelled from
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  three newspapers I was writing for in mid Coast, Maine.
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  For being too partisan, I was a columnist.
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  I mean, that's what you're supposed to do.
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  Should be allowed to have an opinion.
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  But it was the wrong opinion, right?
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  It was critical for our congresswoman who was quite
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  beloved and and and and and a touch precious.
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  So yeah, that's always plagued me in journalism.
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  In writing has been my my political views which I
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  sometimes find hard to to hide. How did you evolve from from
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  that into I know you you you stepped also into the State
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  Department and how did you get from where you were with this
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  with the the senators and and working your way through that to
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  getting in the State Department. But then and I think I read in
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  one of your things that you were interviews is you were you were
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  bored with US politics and you you thought the excitement at
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  the adventure was was overseas did How did that come to you?
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  Well, I was a student at in university in the early, late
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  80s and early 90s. So I was taking a course in
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  Soviet foreign policy in the political science faculty 1
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  semester and then the same course shifted to the history
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  faculty the next semester. So there was a sense we also had
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  the goal, first Gulf War happen while I was in school.
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  So you know, these things were happening in the world.
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  The Cold War was ending. There were new threats and new
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  forces. That America would have to
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  contend with. And this seemed like it was the
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  interesting story. You know, at home, everyone was
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  talking about what was on Friends, and I didn't really
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  care about Friends, right. Well, but I mean, it's you have
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  to be wired a certain way, Sam. Wouldn't you agree?
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  I mean, I, you know, I know a lot of people that talk politics
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  and and have opinions about politics, but I don't have any
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  friends that have gone overseas and worked in elections in
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  Nigeria or the Congo or the Ukraine or or, you know, speak
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  Russian and and were have the ability to move around Moscow.
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  I mean that is a different gear for someone to get into.
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  Were you? Was it?
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  Was the feeling excitement? Was it nervousness?
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  How? What were your connections to
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  get into that? Well, I think it was a little
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  natural too, just in terms of bringing different worlds
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  together. And that's been something that
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  I've always been interested in, kind of by necessity since I was
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  a little kid, coming from, you know, privilege on one side and
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  then living, you know, Maine's one of the poorest states in the
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  country. Alabama's ahead of us in terms.
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  I did not know that. So yeah, I mean, you have the
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  fancy people who come on the coast in the summer, but you
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  know, it's a, it's a rural state that struggles economically.
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  So, you know, the realities of where I grew up were certainly
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  not lost on me. And so bridging those two worlds
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  is something I did from an early age.
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  I think my family has long been focused on foreign affairs and
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  diplomacy. And I noticed growing up that
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  the smartest, most sensitive kids that I encountered were the
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  children of diplomats, because they they were quiet, they paid
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  attention, they were more sophisticated, they understood
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  what was going on and they were intellectually curious in a way
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  that other people weren't. So all of that was very
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  attractive to me. And I think the combination of
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  the historical forces that were in play and you know my my love
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  of history and. Desire to be part of that is
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  what brought me overseas. So, Sam, how does it happen when
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  you decide, hey, I've got, I've been in this world, this
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  political world, I wanna go and create change abroad.
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  You don't just give your resume to somebody, do you?
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  Yeah, No, you don't. It's the very bespoke, very
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  narrow niche. It happened.
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  Two ways I'd I'd I'd say the first way was a failed political
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  campaign. In 1994, I was working for a
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  woman named Susan Collins was running for governor of Maine
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  that year. She was not elected.
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  It was my first statewide campaign.
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  Losing was hard, particularly as it was like my second job out of
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  school and I was looking for something very different.
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  And I found an opportunity in Kazakhstan.
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  To go to the former Soviet Republic of Kazakhstan and teach
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  English and help manage graduates at a Business School
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  in Kazakhstan that had just been set up with foreign donor money.
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  And it was fascinating. It was, it was the wild E it was
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  what the Wild West would have been for young Americans 100 and
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  120 years ago. So that was that was one way
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  that that got me into the area and you spoke Russian, correct?
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  Well, I learned. Did you learn it?
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  I. Don't think you went Russian,
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  but I learned sort of pigeon rush how to get along in that
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  process. And I also met my first wife in
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  Kazakhstan, so that that that linked me to that part of the
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  world. And our son is half Kazakh.
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  So, you know, I've always been, you know, sensitive to the need
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  for him to be in touch with his that side of his heritage and so
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  forth. What was life like in that world
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  that you were in? Because people don't know much
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  about that region, like living there as an American.
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  Was it primitive? Was it it?
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  Was exotic. It was like, you know not far
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  from Mongolia. Big step in Almaty, where I was
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  near China. It's up in the mountains, very
• 17:23
  pretty, and it's almost it's it's almost like a movie because
• 17:29
  it's so different from our reality.
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  And you know, it changed over that period of time that was in
• 17:36
  the early 90s. And then oil well, the country
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  sits on a tremendous amount of oil, you know, started changing
• 17:43
  the country as well as other forces too, but and it became in
• 17:48
  some ways more Westernized. But it's, you know, between East
• 17:51
  and West. But I read you got involved with
• 17:53
  Kazakhstan oil in some form or fashion, Is that correct?
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  I worked for a couple oil companies.
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  I worked for Chevron, the US major out of California, first
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  doing PR and then my boss. Chevron left and went to run a
• 18:09
  Wildcat operation or a small small oil company run by
• 18:13
  Canadians, which was a more interesting assignment in the
• 18:18
  way because you saw the full. Operation Chevron, obviously a
• 18:21
  global corporation. This was a much smaller show and
• 18:25
  he was the president and I was his aide to camp.
• 18:27
  So we were solving problems as varied as what to do with camel
• 18:31
  meat. So it doesn't spoil because we
• 18:33
  had a camel farm, vodka distillery.
• 18:36
  Hey, you know this is this is how right we had we had to get
• 18:42
  rid of all these assets and pay the workers 5000 workers.
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  So you know hadn't been paid years.
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  So it was a challenge and it was it was fascinating.
• 18:51
  Well and the interesting thing is too is that while you were
• 18:53
  there, you know you had Boris Yeltsin.
• 18:58
  You know they were they were wanting to be he wanted to be
• 19:00
  like America the red white and blue and and things things went
• 19:04
  awry and and you know. Well, this, yeah.
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  The second, this is I. This is just the first thing
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  just got me to that part of the world.
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  The second sort of the 2nd. Kind of change point I guess
• 19:18
  would have been when I was I went back to work for Susan
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  Collins again. She ran for Senate for Owen seat
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  one. She was elected and I went to
• 19:25
  work for her eventually in Washington.
• 19:27
  And you know, the the, the, the life of a Senate aid wasn't
• 19:31
  really what I was cut out for, I don't think, as the future will
• 19:36
  later show, but. I would, I would try and hide
• 19:39
  from the office whenever I could because you'd be chained to your
• 19:42
  desk and you'd be sitting there watching CSPAN and waiting for
• 19:45
  somebody to call you up and tell you what to do.
• 19:48
  And so I'd go down to the Barber shop and get my shoes shined
• 19:52
  when I needed a little stretch, stretch the legs, get some fresh
• 19:55
  air. And I was waiting to get my
• 19:56
  shoes shined. And there are two guys ahead of
• 19:58
  me and they were talking about democracy building in Mongolia.
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  And having been in Kazakhstan, you know, this got my attention.
• 20:06
  I was actively eavesdropping until finally I just interrupted
• 20:11
  them. And I'm like, what are you
• 20:12
  talking about? And one of them was the clerk on
• 20:16
  the Senate Appropriations Committee.
• 20:17
  And he had, he had worked for a nonprofit that did this kind of
• 20:20
  work. And they told me about the
• 20:23
  International Republican Institute.
• 20:26
  There's also a National Democratic Institute, both
• 20:28
  funded by the US taxpayer that trained political parties
• 20:31
  overseas and that seemed incredibly interesting to me And
• 20:37
  so I contacted IRI and they hired me as their Russia program
• 20:41
  officer initially in DC, which was nice.
• 20:47
  It was it was fun to you know have an issue focused single
• 20:51
  issue this job in DC And then I ended up being their country
• 20:54
  director in Moscow. You know speaking Russian my
• 20:58
  with my wife speaking fluent Russian.
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  It, you know, it made sense and we lived in Russia for the first
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  three years of the Putin administration, which were.
• 21:08
  You got to tell me about that because the way that I see that
• 21:13
  is that maybe the United States missed an opportunity in the 90s
• 21:19
  to really help the way that we, you know, when, you know when,
• 21:24
  when, when the USSR fell. And they said it was the end of
• 21:29
  the Cold War. We often times with Japan or
• 21:32
  Germany or whomever will go in and and help that country become
• 21:36
  what it needed to be to be able to thrive.
• 21:39
  We didn't really do that with Russia as much as we would or
• 21:44
  could have. And I, you know, when I think
• 21:46
  about what happened in 99 with with Putin, I think that the
• 21:51
  population got scared. You know what?
• 21:53
  Where they get to eat. What are they going to do?
• 21:55
  How are they going to live and? We I My personal opinion is, is
• 22:01
  that possibly we missed a gigantic opportunity to become
• 22:05
  part of what they needed and maybe they wouldn't have run
• 22:09
  into the arms of of an old K GB guy.
• 22:13
  You're right in that there was no Marshall Plan.
• 22:16
  There was no massive reconstruction.
• 22:19
  Instead, we sent them some halfbaked advisors from Harvard
• 22:24
  who told them to do a mass privatization program.
• 22:27
  And the result of that mass privatization program was the
• 22:30
  birth of the class of oligarchs. And you know, the Russians get
• 22:35
  credit. My my late friend who was later
• 22:37
  murdered, Boris Nemtsov, coined the phrase oligarch.
• 22:40
  It's a Greek term. We have our oligarchs.
• 22:43
  Every country has oligarchs, this, this class of ultra rich,
• 22:47
  ultra influential people. And so Russia's class of
• 22:51
  oligarchs was born in the early 90s out of the corruption that
• 22:56
  that grew out of this process that we told them to do.
• 23:01
  I think, you know, we did two things.
• 23:02
  Yes, there's a little bit of benign neglect on one side, but
• 23:05
  we were also infantilizing them on the other.
• 23:08
  But the the assistance we did give them was not always useful
• 23:13
  constructive assistance. For instance, you know, Ben and
• 23:17
  Jerry's had a multimillion dollar grant to teach the
• 23:20
  Russians how to make ice cream. Well, the Russians know how to
• 23:23
  make ice cream. It's just, you know, some
• 23:26
  politically connected person at USAID thought it would be cool
• 23:29
  and groovy to have Ben and Jerry in Moscow.
• 23:32
  You know, I mean, so, you know, there were a lot of mistakes
• 23:36
  made and I don't think out of real intent necessarily, but,
• 23:40
  you know, the smartest people that we had on it, people like
• 23:42
  Strobe Talbot, you know, Bill Clinton's Oxford roommate, you
• 23:46
  know, he by his own admission, had to turn the plane around
• 23:49
  once because he got the Russians so wrong.
• 23:52
  And I think 11, you know, he was shuttling back and forth during
• 23:55
  the the war in the Balkans, in Serbia, trying to do diplomacy.
• 23:59
  And he just missed it as we often missed it with the
• 24:03
  Russians in a way we weren't paying attention.
• 24:05
  And I don't want to lay too much blame all on the Clinton
• 24:09
  administration because when the Bush administration came in,
• 24:12
  Bush got them wrong initially too.
• 24:15
  Remember, he looked into Putin's eyes and saw his soul.
• 24:18
  I think what happened then is when the Bush administration
• 24:21
  came in, they had so much going on they they just decided Russia
• 24:25
  is not a priority. So the previous administration
• 24:28
  said oh you're a big priority. Let's have the Gore Chen
• 24:32
  American working groups where we have 100 sub working groups and
• 24:35
  we have all these people frantically running back and
• 24:37
  forth talking a lot, you know, and that was the sort of
• 24:41
  assistance we were giving them. Then.
• 24:43
  Then the Bush administration came and said we're not even
• 24:45
  going to do that. Yeah, Well, no.
• 24:47
  And you know, timing is everything with foreign policy
• 24:50
  too. I mean, 911 happens.
• 24:52
  I mean, everything is focused on a whole different type of world.
• 24:55
  And then September 11th happened, and Putin was the
• 24:58
  first call which made such a big impression on Butch.
• 25:01
  Exactly right. And so that bought them a few
• 25:05
  more years of good grades until they invaded Georgia in 2008.
• 25:09
  And that's when the Bush administration finally got it.
• 25:12
  Yeah, understood what was happening.
• 25:14
  But I want to go back, though, Sam, because not too many people
• 25:18
  have lived in your, in your shoes, in your world.
• 25:23
  What was it like in in that time period when Putin's taking over
• 25:29
  the the country's becoming part of what it is, you know, 20 some
• 25:33
  odd years later now. But what was your world like?
• 25:37
  I lived in a my family and I lived in a little attic
• 25:40
  apartment and nice part of inner Moscow, right by where there's a
• 25:46
  famous novel called Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bolgakov,
• 25:49
  and right where that novel begins.
• 25:51
  And Patriarchy pludis where we live.
• 25:54
  And we were lucky to live in a, you know, very nice area of
• 25:56
  Moscow. And we had a somewhat sheltered
• 25:58
  life there. But I remember, you know, in the
• 26:01
  evenings watching Russian television.
• 26:04
  And Putin would have his cabinet meetings televised and he would
• 26:07
  be sitting at the end, as we all famously now know, a long table.
• 26:10
  And all his underlings would be around the table looking down
• 26:13
  and being quiet while he lectured them.
• 26:16
  And my wife said to me, who grew up under communists, and she
• 26:19
  said to me, she said, you know, that's really that, that's
• 26:23
  really creepy, don't you think? I mean, she was the one who
• 26:26
  pointed out to me how creepy it was.
• 26:29
  The there was a chilling effect and it was clear to me, largely
• 26:33
  because I was working with opposition parties, with Yabuka
• 26:37
  and the Union of Right Forces. So I could see what the
• 26:40
  government was doing step by step.
• 26:43
  And again, we didn't push back hard at any of these ventures,
• 26:47
  at any of these little steps. Shutting down this television
• 26:50
  station, shutting down that television station, changing
• 26:53
  this law, changing that law. It doesn't happen overnight.
• 26:56
  It's a series of different things that happen.
• 26:59
  And yeah, it was it was it was frustrating and in the end it
• 27:03
  was a little bit heartbreaking. Yeah.
• 27:05
  And generally as an American, I mean you would have been moving
• 27:11
  around in the streets. As an American, how were you
• 27:13
  accepted and your wife accepted in that world?
• 27:17
  Were you like a rock star American that?
• 27:19
  Oh my gosh, this is an American who's over here doing?
• 27:23
  Great things. Or was it the Russians?
• 27:25
  Views of Americans are not that Russians are, shall we say,
• 27:29
  somewhat skeptical of Americans in general, things they like
• 27:33
  about our culture and our society.
• 27:36
  But they are. They're also things that they
• 27:38
  don't like so much. And I've got a piece coming out
• 27:40
  in The Spectator this month on what Solzhenitsyn, the late
• 27:45
  Soviet dissident who came to the United States and was given
• 27:49
  shelter by the Americans. And then he went to Harvard in
• 27:51
  1978 and blasted us. He called us soulless and
• 27:55
  legalistic and that, you know, we don't know what to do with
• 27:59
  our freedom. And, you know, it's meaningless
• 28:02
  freedom. And some of his points actually
• 28:05
  you know they they hurt because they they.
• 28:08
  Hit a point. Yeah, they hit.
• 28:09
  Yeah, they, they hit some raw areas.
• 28:12
  And, you know, I think that would be, you know, applicable
• 28:15
  today. In my piece, I talk about
• 28:17
  legalism and, you know, are we an excessively legalistic
• 28:21
  country? Are we trusting the legal system
• 28:23
  to do too much? Are we?
• 28:25
  You know, particularly now that, you know, half of America is,
• 28:28
  is, is is chomping at the bit to indict a former president.
• 28:32
  Well, you know, the other half of America is chomping at the
• 28:34
  bit to indict the current president's son.
• 28:36
  So you have this, you know, I mean, you have this reliance on
• 28:39
  the legal system that in a way seems frighten, frighteningly
• 28:43
  undemocratic. But, you know, we'll see how
• 28:45
  that plays out. Well, it's playing out right now
• 28:48
  and it's, it's, I don't know, do you think anything historically
• 28:52
  matches anything that we're looking at right now except for
• 28:55
  the Civil War? Well, I think that's a pretty
• 28:58
  stark comparison. But I mean, if you look at the
• 29:02
  two sides, I mean, you know, you had the North fight in the South
• 29:05
  and the and the and they actually went to war over, you
• 29:08
  know, and we had a president, Abraham Lincoln, that was able
• 29:11
  to bring it all back together. But I feel like now, if you look
• 29:15
  at where we sit as a country, I know for a fact.
• 29:19
  Well, it's not a fact, it's an opinion.
• 29:21
  But I'll never live to see a president win 49 states again.
• 29:27
  It just won't. I can't imagine that happening.
• 29:29
  And and that was it. That long ago, you know, Ronald
• 29:32
  Reagan was 84, a lot more polarized.
• 29:36
  But you know, the I don't know, I mean the the question about
• 29:41
  the Civil War is, you know, what drove us take away the the moral
• 29:45
  wrong of slavery? What precipitated the Civil War?
• 29:50
  Was half of the country taking away the livelihood of the other
• 29:53
  half? And I think that's something we
• 29:57
  have to be a little bit careful about when we get preachy in the
• 30:01
  country, about things that I saw on Netflix or one of the
• 30:07
  streaming channels. A movie about a reformed hunter
• 30:12
  and I, to be fair, it was a European movie.
• 30:14
  We're not, we haven't gone that far yet.
• 30:16
  But what does that mean? What?
• 30:17
  Does that mean is hunting wrong? Are we criminalizing things like
• 30:24
  hunting? You know, we see.
• 30:26
  When it was a hunting and gathering society at one point,
• 30:29
  yeah, we see the Dutch criminalizing forming.
• 30:31
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 30:33
  So I mean, I think there are certain things we have to be
• 30:36
  careful about. And I think COVID did this to us
• 30:39
  as well, because half of America was able to sit at home on their
• 30:42
  laptops and fret, and the other half of America had to go to
• 30:45
  work. Exactly.
• 30:46
  And so, you know, there were two very different views that we
• 30:50
  saw. And one side was preaching to
• 30:52
  the other how to behave. And that continues to widen the
• 30:55
  gap. Survive.
• 30:56
  Thank you very much. Yeah.
• 30:57
  And I think that continues to widen the gap too, you know, And
• 31:00
  that's a problem. Yeah, we need to be very careful
• 31:03
  about that. I agree with that.
• 31:05
  So you're you're rolling around in in in Moscow for what, three
• 31:10
  years? What's your What's your next
• 31:13
  step? Well, we went to war in Iraq.
• 31:17
  America went to war in Iraq and Russia was always, you know,
• 31:22
  even it, particularly in the Bush administration, as I said,
• 31:24
  kind of an afterthought. You know, the organization that
• 31:28
  I work for was much more interested in Ukraine than they
• 31:30
  were Russia because the assumption was the Russians will
• 31:32
  always be autocratic, corrupt and sort of cranky.
• 31:36
  I mean that was sort of kind of Russia was considered not the
• 31:40
  the hot ticket for the future. And we had just invaded Iraq and
• 31:45
  they were about to have an election there.
• 31:47
  So it seemed like that made sense.
• 31:49
  I also, I went to Russia just after or during September 11th.
• 31:54
  So I focused while I was in Russia on outreach to the Muslim
• 31:57
  community in the country, which you'd be surprised, it's much
• 32:01
  larger than you'd think. It's 15 to 20%.
• 32:05
  And at the time, we're marrying Muslim men at an incredible
• 32:08
  rate. So the idea of Islam and
• 32:12
  democracy became fascinating. Just, you know, after September
• 32:16
  11th, and what better place to be part of that than Iraq's
• 32:20
  first free election in 50 years? And he became part of that.
• 32:25
  I went there as, yeah, there were IRI's political director
• 32:29
  and was training political parties across the Iraqi
• 32:33
  spectrum, including Hezbollah and the communists and, you
• 32:37
  know, all sorts scary, scary. Who is the Supreme Council for
• 32:41
  Islamic Revolution in Iraq, which was hanging out in Iran
• 32:45
  for a long period of time? And so, you know, there's a lot,
• 32:47
  there's a big sort of array of different political forces.
• 32:52
  And of course, the country was, you know, going through this
• 32:55
  tremendous change and gone through this horrible hardship
• 32:58
  and was, yeah, it was continuing to go through hardship.
• 33:03
  So when the election actually did happen and was able to, you
• 33:07
  know, the Iraqis were able to pull it off despite all of the
• 33:11
  security threats that were increasing and increasing, it
• 33:14
  was a wonderful feeling of accomplishment, irrespective of
• 33:18
  what would come next. No.
• 33:20
  And I would think it would be that there would be more and
• 33:23
  even better elections and. Were you optimistic at that
• 33:27
  point because at that point in time that was a big event that
• 33:32
  happened at this country. We had had Saddam Hussein and
• 33:36
  and all the things that went with that went to the polls and
• 33:39
  actually had an election. Were you in that moment feeling
• 33:44
  like this is the beginning of something that could really be
• 33:47
  because we needed allies in that region?
• 33:49
  You know, I I often look at, you know, Iraq on one side,
• 33:51
  Afghanistan on the other. What if everything would have
• 33:55
  been a way that we could have squeezed on both sides and had
• 33:58
  two allies that we had, you know, between Iran?
• 34:01
  I don't know it it could have been.
• 34:03
  It could have gone differently. Maybe.
• 34:04
  Possibly, yeah. I mean, we still view the world
• 34:07
  as a chess board, and the problem is our ability to play
• 34:11
  chess is getting worse and worse.
• 34:13
  That's true. So we're not the grand chess
• 34:18
  masters anymore. So you know that, you know, that
• 34:22
  argues for a different way of looking at the world.
• 34:24
  And you know, how do we advance peace and security?
• 34:27
  And there's the whole, you know, two countries with McDonald's
• 34:29
  have never gone to war. I don't know if that's still the
• 34:32
  case, but there's a general thought that two democracies
• 34:35
  have never gone to war. And so by spreading democracy,
• 34:39
  we are increasing, In fact that was part of the Bush national
• 34:44
  security strategy and I think other national security
• 34:47
  strategies in the past as well, that by advancing democracy,
• 34:51
  we're advancing the nation's security because it's the
• 34:55
  political instability in other countries that creates problems
• 34:59
  for us in the long. Well I think that's somewhat you
• 35:01
  know, you look at Ronald Reagan's beginnings of of you
• 35:06
  know you look at Grenada when that happened down there and and
• 35:09
  and it was a quick hit and. You know, there's there's times
• 35:13
  and places where I think what you're saying, Sam, is true,
• 35:17
  that that was the belief for a number of years that if we could
• 35:21
  just get everybody with free elections and democracy, then
• 35:25
  we're protecting everybody. And at some point it kind of
• 35:28
  looked that way. You know, when the USSR fell and
• 35:30
  it looked like it was going to fall towards, you know, our our
• 35:32
  side, That was a different feeling until it all the guys
• 35:37
  don't win. What if the guys don't win,
• 35:39
  right? Did did the non communists steal
• 35:44
  the 1996 election in Russia? And there's ample evidence to
• 35:47
  say yes they did. That the Russian people were so
• 35:51
  appalled at what they saw termed as capitalism in the first, you
• 35:56
  know, five years of of of independence that the communists
• 35:59
  had a better message. Yeah, yeah.
• 36:02
  Scared Population 1 would have won a free and fair election if
• 36:06
  it hadn't been for massive abuse of what the Russians called
• 36:09
  administrative resource or we call abuse of power.
• 36:13
  So that's, you know, that's an ordinary thing there.
• 36:17
  Or Egypt, you know, after Tahrir Square, the Islamist strong one,
• 36:23
  and suddenly Washington's confused and doesn't know what
• 36:25
  to do because those aren't the people we do business with.
• 36:28
  So, you know, that's the complication of when people
• 36:30
  vote, you know people are going to win.
• 36:32
  Who you, the current Prime Minister of of India, Mr. Modi,
• 36:35
  is somebody Washington has long looked down their nose at, but
• 36:38
  he's been Prime Minister now for 15 years and they have to deal
• 36:41
  with them. The same goes Ereyon and Turkey.
• 36:45
  So you know what what do we do or or or bond in in Hungary?
• 36:49
  Who? Mr. Soros George Soros, who is
• 36:52
  Hungarian himself, has spent tremendous amounts of money
• 36:55
  trying to change the Hungarian government, unsuccessfully since
• 36:58
  his friends and the the Socialist Social Democrats were
• 37:02
  last in power. It's a good point.
• 37:04
  It's a good point, Sam. I I love the point, though.
• 37:07
  What if the good guys don't win? You still have a democracy that
• 37:09
  you have to deal with in the foreign policy, you know?
• 37:12
  Yeah, because that's, you know what, When the government came
• 37:15
  for me, they didn't like my client.
• 37:16
  That's why. And that's that's a little bit
• 37:20
  of an issue. And that's a whole separate
• 37:22
  conversation about Ukraine and choosing they're good guys and
• 37:25
  the the bad guys. I don't think we're qualified to
• 37:27
  do that. Well, I want to get into that
• 37:29
  too, because when, when you, how long were you in Iraq?
• 37:34
  I was in Iraq for about a year. I was down in Baghdad for about
• 37:37
  a year and then I did some work up north with the Kurds for
• 37:40
  another six months or so. Did you feel like when you were
• 37:43
  in Iraq that in that year's time that things were improving?
• 37:47
  Or did you feel like you were fearing for your life and and
• 37:51
  everywhere you walked you could step on a landmine?
• 37:53
  They were steeply deteriorating our our our compound was bombed
• 37:58
  towards the end and I ended up I might the last two or three
• 38:03
  weeks in Iraq I spent living under my desk in the office
• 38:06
  because our house was blown up. So we came under friendly fire
• 38:12
  multiple times. In order to travel around
• 38:15
  Baghdad, you'd have to have a personal security detail and
• 38:18
  basically be prepared for combat all the time.
• 38:22
  On the on the upside, I developed some really good
• 38:27
  stomach muscles because we're in Kevlar vest in the Iraqi summer.
• 38:33
  Is is a workout. Well, so how do you end up in
• 38:37
  Africa? I've always, I've been
• 38:41
  interested in Africa ever since school.
• 38:43
  I studied African politics in school and so I was looking,
• 38:46
  actively looking for opportunities.
• 38:48
  I I went to Nigeria for Cambridge Analytica for a
• 38:51
  presidential campaign there in 2015 and then I spent the
• 38:56
  following year I spent some time in Congo working on a transition
• 39:01
  of power project. Is it?
• 39:06
  Do you see it as it's, you know, if you read certain articles
• 39:09
  about China with Africa, with South America, that they're just
• 39:14
  slowly but consistently penetrating and building the
• 39:19
  roads and the factories and the jobs and do you see?
• 39:23
  Yes, yes, you see that, you hear that?
• 39:28
  And we're not, you know, presidents in Africa, they were.
• 39:31
  And a Congolese explained it to me in an interesting way, a
• 39:34
  young guy who said to me, you know, we like them better and we
• 39:38
  like them better because they come up the river and they live
• 39:40
  with us. You know, when they're selling
• 39:43
  all their plastic schlock and all the things that you know
• 39:45
  made in China, they they they they paddle this stuff up the
• 39:48
  river, you know, to these villages to develop trading
• 39:51
  outposts the same way, you know, figures and Joseph Conrad novels
• 39:55
  were, you know, 150 years ago. So they're there, they're
• 39:59
  present. However, Africans also realize
• 40:03
  that the type of projects that the Chinese are foisting on them
• 40:08
  are not always in their interests and they're a form of
• 40:11
  economic colonialism. I think there's a sense of that
• 40:14
  that Africans who have been so. Stigmatized by colonialism over
• 40:18
  the last, you know 200 years are sensitive to having their
• 40:24
  resources pillaged by anyone whether they're West or Chinese.
• 40:27
  So I think that you know anyone who shows up in town with a with
• 40:31
  a fat wallet when people are hungry is going to get
• 40:34
  attention. But I think also a lot of
• 40:36
  Africans are thinking what kind of partner do they want for the
• 40:39
  long term because things are blowing Africa's way.
• 40:42
  I think for the next century they they're exploding
• 40:45
  population. They have resources, they have
• 40:48
  the resources, and they also have a certain they have an
• 40:50
  optimism that I've seen nowhere else in the world.
• 40:53
  That's interesting and it's big despite it's a big place to see
• 40:58
  poverty conflict and it's it's it's really amazing.
• 41:02
  Yeah, it's a continent. So I mean it's a it's a big
• 41:05
  place and and so you you sweep through Africa, you get involved
• 41:10
  with some of the elections there.
• 41:12
  I want to get to Ukraine. Is that what?
• 41:14
  Was that your next step? Well, I I I wish I did more work
• 41:19
  in Africa. That's sort of been a work in
• 41:21
  project progress for me. But the former Soviet Union has
• 41:24
  been. My space throughout my career
• 41:26
  had been and Ukraine. I ended up going I I did a
• 41:31
  campaign in Ukraine in 2007, and I returned in 2014 to work for
• 41:38
  the remnants of a political party that had just been thrown
• 41:40
  out of power by popular revolution.
• 41:43
  So. Sam, when you're rolling in this
• 41:45
  world, are you rolling into the same people that, you know, that
• 41:49
  guy that's doing that campaign, you're doing this campaign, You
• 41:53
  kind of go and eat at the same places.
• 41:55
  I mean, how does that world work?
• 41:58
  It's a small enough world that you know who's working on the
• 42:00
  other side. You tend not to you know get
• 42:03
  together with your opponent because it's, you know your
• 42:05
  client wouldn't be amused right, with for good reason.
• 42:08
  You know this is the the the outcome matters to them.
• 42:12
  I mean it matters to you too professionally.
• 42:13
  But you know, they, they, their clients don't tend to like that
• 42:18
  very much but. But you're over.
• 42:21
  You're over in Ukraine in O 7, but you came back and worked in
• 42:25
  the State Department in O8 through O 9, correct?
• 42:28
  Yeah. And when I went back to Ukraine,
• 42:30
  I went to work for the people I'd worked against before.
• 42:33
  It read that I thought that was interesting and it was the third
• 42:37
  country. I've done that, and I've done
• 42:38
  that in Iraq and Georgia, the former Soviet Republic of
• 42:41
  Georgia before. So it's the third country that
• 42:45
  I'd worked two sides in. And what was the vibe?
• 42:49
  What was the vibe in Ukraine when you were doing the work
• 42:54
  that you were doing? It was edgy.
• 42:58
  It was there had just had a popular revolution.
• 43:02
  The former president was living in exile in Russia.
• 43:07
  The new government was trying to legitimize itself.
• 43:10
  But you also had the same oligarchic struggles under the
• 43:15
  carpet that you know had been happening all along.
• 43:17
  So it was a question of what the perception of things were versus
• 43:21
  what was really happening. And I think now working on
• 43:27
  another side in the country, I I would get another perspective.
• 43:30
  And I think in politics that can be very useful because too often
• 43:35
  you you sort of drink your own kool-aid and you believe
• 43:39
  everything that your team, your tribe believes.
• 43:42
  And I think it's important to to to see it from the other side.
• 43:45
  Always and. And and the post.
• 43:50
  Yeah, the post might on government, we were.
• 43:53
  And I say we that the eastern Ukrainians, the southeastern
• 43:57
  Ukrainians who were our voters were having a hard time, the
• 44:00
  same way Sunnis were in Iraq after, you know, the invasion
• 44:04
  because there was a sense of collective punishment.
• 44:08
  Crimea had just been seized. And there was sort of a sense
• 44:11
  this is your fault when it wasn't their fault.
• 44:14
  And you know, sometimes we push people in the corners and it's
• 44:19
  never a wise strategy. But you had western Ukrainians
• 44:22
  standing up in parliament and calling eastern Ukrainians
• 44:25
  subhuman. And those of us who've studied
• 44:28
  genocide know that that's a real bad warning sign when one group
• 44:32
  of people starts calling judge dehumanizing another group of
• 44:35
  people. So there were legitimate
• 44:37
  interests and concerns and that the crimes that I would later
• 44:41
  commit against our country involved asking the United
• 44:45
  States to be balanced in this approach to Ukraine.
• 44:49
  In the world that you were rolling in, you know there was
• 44:51
  Paul Manafort over the obviously Hunter Biden was there with
• 44:55
  Burmizma. He was rolling a little higher
• 44:59
  than I was, I think. He was rolling in a very high
• 45:03
  area spot with what he was doing.
• 45:06
  Did you ever run into those? Did you ever run into him?
• 45:09
  No, I didn't travel in his circle.
• 45:12
  Those circles. Yeah, what Burisma was, was a
• 45:16
  company owned by somebody who was so corrupt in the view of
• 45:21
  that current Ukrainian government that they were hiding
• 45:24
  in London. So I don't know how much, you
• 45:27
  know, time they were actually spending in Ukraine, but who
• 45:31
  knows? They're all sorts of people
• 45:32
  blowing through the Ukraine. And I certainly there's there,
• 45:35
  there, there still are now. But my focus was always on the
• 45:39
  Ukrainians, not the visiting firemen.
• 45:42
  I mean, I I work for the former mayor or the current mayor of
• 45:46
  Kia, Vitali Klitschko. Before me, he had Rudy Giuliani
• 45:50
  working for him. I don't think Giuliani did him,
• 45:53
  you know, too many favors. But so you had all these
• 45:57
  characters sort of cycling through.
• 46:00
  Roger Stone was supposed to be working for the people that I
• 46:04
  ended up working for, but he got busy with something else in New
• 46:07
  York in 20/14/2015 and so that opened an opportunity for me.
• 46:14
  And it's interesting because when you're you're described as
• 46:17
  the silent stealthy guy that just gets to and from and
• 46:23
  there's a lot of people that aren't what did that play to
• 46:25
  your favor because they don't say that as a I think it comes
• 46:30
  across to me as complimentary that you were able to move in so
• 46:32
  many different worlds and effect change but not take on you know
• 46:38
  wearing the hat that I'm the guy.
• 46:41
  Well, I I think that I guess that helps you as a self
• 46:45
  promoter and may help you grow business, but it doesn't help
• 46:48
  your ability to deliver the business.
• 46:51
  Deliver the goods, Yeah, to deliver the goods.
• 46:53
  And I'd rather see my clients, you know, do well and get
• 46:58
  publicity than myself. All right, let's walk into this
• 47:02
  nightmare that you, that the whole world, especially United
• 47:05
  States, knows about. When this started happening, and
• 47:11
  as it started happening, did you feel like that you were going to
• 47:15
  be wrapped up in the storm or were you looking at it from afar
• 47:19
  thinking, wow, that's some interesting wild stuff.
• 47:23
  I don't think Russia elected the president.
• 47:25
  Elements of concern I I was pepped at my bank, which means I
• 47:31
  was designated as a politically exposed person and a target for
• 47:36
  potential corruption. I had the bank manager take me
• 47:39
  aside and tell me they didn't want my business anymore because
• 47:44
  I was getting water transfers from the Seychelles and that
• 47:47
  freaked them out. And I guess I understand with
• 47:50
  compliance and liability and all that.
• 47:55
  So yes, there were warning signs, certainly.
• 47:58
  And then when the boom started coming down on pole, Manafort,
• 48:02
  who I had worked in parallel with briefly, that was also a
• 48:07
  concern. And when the US government
• 48:08
  considered my business partner, Constantine Kilimnik, started
• 48:11
  labeling him as a Russian agent. The combination of all these
• 48:16
  things started looking really bad.
• 48:18
  And what I was worried about from the very beginning, and I
• 48:21
  just been in Washington long enough to sort of understand
• 48:24
  this, is, you know, these scandals are like wildfires.
• 48:29
  And I saw wildfire coming that was not substantiated by
• 48:35
  anything, to my knowledge, that was real.
• 48:38
  I mean, if this if if if Paul and Costia, and by extension me
• 48:43
  and some other bozos, were responsible for putting Donald
• 48:46
  Trump in the White House on behalf of Russia, then what else
• 48:51
  could be true? You know, well I mean it is it
• 48:55
  is crazy when you look at the scandals as they go through the.
• 48:57
  I mean you know Whitewater with Bill Clinton was the beginnings
• 49:00
  of and it ends up with a dress. You know it's a it's crazy how
• 49:04
  you know the but is there a common denominator, usually one
• 49:09
  particular family of of of low mortal character that came into
• 49:13
  town and anyway. That's a whole other.
• 49:17
  That's a whole other project because if you look at it right
• 49:20
  around 1990, 1/2 is when all of this hits started getting
• 49:25
  Watergate, yes. But some figures in that family
• 49:29
  were active in Watergate and got their sort of cut their teeth
• 49:32
  during that time. So anyway, we'll, we'll, we'll
• 49:36
  leave that aside because it's the task, but yes, the.
• 49:40
  So let's get back to where you were though, Sam Manafort.
• 49:45
  All of a sudden the bank says something.
• 49:48
  Your partner is is identified. Your the walls and and there's
• 49:52
  nothing like I mean you and I have both gone through and
• 49:56
  Cambridge analytical with. Cambridge Analytical That was
• 49:59
  part of implodes because of Facebook.
• 50:01
  Exactly. And, and, and you might explain,
• 50:04
  Cambridge Analytical because that is the genesis of a lot of
• 50:09
  this. Well, it isn't.
• 50:12
  It isn't. Cambridge Analytical was a
• 50:13
  British consulting firm, a London-based political
• 50:16
  consulting firm that I came into contact with some years, maybe
• 50:21
  5-6 years earlier. They hired me to work on
• 50:26
  projects in a couple of different countries, and
• 50:28
  initially to try and work in the United States too.
• 50:32
  And they ended up working for Trump via Ted Cruz.
• 50:36
  And in this sort of wild hysteria to explain how Trump
• 50:42
  became president. Cambridge Analytica was another
• 50:45
  one of these strands, this dark British secretive, MI6 related
• 50:50
  political consulting firm, which was all tight.
• 50:53
  Essentially it was just a political consulting firm like
• 50:56
  any other that did data analytics like anyone else did.
• 51:00
  And there was nothing particularly nefarious about
• 51:03
  micro targeting, something that's been done in this
• 51:05
  country. It was basically to to find the
• 51:08
  dirt on the other person and make it part of that.
• 51:11
  Not even that not. And it wasn't the dirt because
• 51:13
  that's a different part of politics, opposition research.
• 51:16
  It's to make a psychological profile of the voter.
• 51:20
  That was the offer I get. That was that we could make that
• 51:25
  we had enough data that to. What does your voter look like
• 51:28
  exactly? But also, not just what do they
• 51:30
  look like demographically, but what do they look like
• 51:33
  psychographically? And what are their dominant?
• 51:37
  Sort of think of the Meyer Briggs.
• 51:38
  There's another scale called ocean.
• 51:40
  What are the dominant traits and characteristics?
• 51:43
  You know, it used to be neuroticism was something that
• 51:46
  Republicans had the lock on, right?
• 51:49
  We were all neurotic, but then that led out to everybody.
• 51:52
  Now everybody's neurotic in politics.
• 51:55
  Who's more open? You know, people in North
• 51:57
  Carolina might be more open and agreeable than people.
• 52:01
  You know, where I am in New England, where people are sort
• 52:03
  of crustier. And, you know, so there are
• 52:05
  different psychological characteristics.
• 52:08
  To pinpoint them to the individual, though, is quite
• 52:11
  challenging, no matter how much data you have.
• 52:14
  Yeah, it's an interesting intellectual exercise.
• 52:18
  But yeah, they were, they had been working in the United
• 52:21
  States. They've been working for Trump.
• 52:22
  There's been some issue about their use of Facebook data that
• 52:26
  almost crushed Facebook and it ended up creating big problems
• 52:29
  for Cambridge Analytica. And they they went out of
• 52:31
  business. But this was all happened at the
• 52:35
  same time that the FBI showed up at my house, so I didn't know
• 52:38
  what was going to fall. And I've read this account that
• 52:42
  you there's a longer article and and and you wanted let's walk
• 52:47
  through that because it had to be an odd strange thing for you
• 52:51
  that they and I think that they showed up.
• 52:54
  Previously and asked for your dad and which was odd.
• 52:59
  While I was traveling with my wife and my son answered the
• 53:02
  door. They didn't identify themselves.
• 53:04
  They asked for me and said they'd be back and my son told
• 53:08
  me I was at the airport coming home and he told me about this
• 53:11
  and I said, well can you describe them?
• 53:13
  Who do you think they were? And he said, I think they were
• 53:14
  with the government and I said why because the suits.
• 53:18
  They looked like FBI guys. They didn't leave a calling
• 53:21
  card. And then later when they came,
• 53:23
  they were very interested in my ring the doorbell with the
• 53:27
  video. Yeah.
• 53:28
  In other words, I guess they wanted to know if I had a
• 53:30
  recording of that, but. Walk us through that day.
• 53:34
  Cuz you do in the article. But yeah, I, I, I write about
• 53:40
  this in the book too. I'm I'm sitting in my, my office
• 53:43
  is in the basement and I'm working on a a piece for a
• 53:46
  client and in another part of the world.
• 53:49
  And I'm talking to somebody in in I think Jerusalem.
• 53:52
  I'm talking to somebody somewhere else.
• 53:54
  And you know I'm not necessarily focused on what's happening
• 53:57
  right there on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC and my my dog
• 54:00
  starts barking like crazy. And my wife has actually just
• 54:05
  left the FBI, where she's been working in the art crime
• 54:08
  division and she's working now from home for a financial
• 54:12
  services company. And she answers the door and
• 54:16
  there are a couple agents and the barking continues.
• 54:19
  Pepper won't stop. So then I come out from another
• 54:22
  door to see what's going on. And as we do these days, we
• 54:26
  carry our phones around with us everywhere.
• 54:29
  And they've been talking to Laura, who my exwife who had
• 54:32
  been asking them to, you know, what they wanted and so forth.
• 54:37
  And they turned and they pointed at my phone and they said that
• 54:39
  that's what we want. And they just said, no, you're
• 54:43
  not taking the phone without a warrant.
• 54:44
  And they said we've got a warrant.
• 54:46
  And so they all came inside and and and started sort of
• 54:51
  unpacking my phone, so to speak, and while we tried to make
• 54:55
  polite small talk and, you know, figure out what was going to
• 54:59
  happen then. It's going through your mind at
• 55:01
  this moment, as there's rifling through your phone in your
• 55:04
  contacts. I am.
• 55:10
  It feels exposed. It's not the first time I felt
• 55:14
  exposed, because I had already, six months before, voluntarily
• 55:18
  submitted 1000 pages of e-mail to the Senate Intelligence
• 55:21
  Committee. And then newspaper reporters
• 55:23
  started somehow knowing what was in those constant confidential
• 55:27
  productions to the Senate, I started getting phone calls,
• 55:31
  asking me about things that I had only told the Senate
• 55:34
  Intelligence Committee. So yeah, and there's a whole
• 55:38
  nother story there. Again, I want to let's stay on
• 55:40
  the positive. But yeah, I was feeling very
• 55:44
  exposed, Incredibly exposed. What happens?
• 55:49
  Other people interpret your emails.
• 55:52
  You're. Sure, and tell you what you were
• 55:54
  thinking because it suits their narrative.
• 55:56
  And there is a narrative. And by the time they get to your
• 55:59
  door, they've already constructed their narrative.
• 56:02
  Yeah, yeah, unfortunately. I mean, I was a collateral
• 56:06
  damage in a, you know, in a dump and a big dumpster fire, and
• 56:11
  they had run out of fuel. I think that already exhausted
• 56:14
  all of the false information they've been fed by the Clinton
• 56:17
  campaign, and they were desperate for anything that they
• 56:20
  could, you know, say this wasn't a complete boondoggle.
• 56:27
  Next step. What happens?
• 56:30
  So the next step is, you know, I change lawyers.
• 56:34
  My fancy corporate lawyer fires me because now I'm a grubby
• 56:39
  criminal, sure. And I hire a criminal lawyer,
• 56:45
  and that criminal lawyer goes into talks with the special
• 56:47
  counsel who Robert Mueller had signed the subpoena.
• 56:50
  And those talks continued for a while, and they said that they
• 56:55
  were going to charge me with the number of crimes, including the
• 56:59
  one that I ended up pleading guilty to the Foreign Agent
• 57:02
  Registration Act violation, but also money laundering for
• 57:07
  getting tickets to the inauguration for Trump or some
• 57:10
  Ukrainians. They made a big deal out of
• 57:12
  that. And the other one was
• 57:16
  obstruction of justice, because I did not hand over to the
• 57:19
  Senate Intelligence Committee some emails about how I bought
• 57:24
  the tickets for Ukrainians to the Senate Intelligence
• 57:27
  Committee that was investigating Russian interference.
• 57:30
  In the last election, yeah. But it doesn't matter cuz
• 57:32
  anything, you know. You know what I mean?
• 57:34
  Sure. Right.
• 57:36
  So the law is what they say it is.
• 57:38
  Basically, money laundering is what the government says money.
• 57:41
  Laundering, Well, I mean once, once you're deemed doing
• 57:45
  something illegal, anything you bought is money laundering.
• 57:47
  It's a terrible sounding word. But you know when when we when
• 57:51
  we went down that we ran a company for 30 years and
• 57:54
  everything we did was money laundering because that they
• 57:56
  deemed the the enterprise to be wrong?
• 58:00
  Going back into the personal side of it though, Sam, your
• 58:04
  wife, your kids, how how is that?
• 58:08
  Because it's such a big story, you know?
• 58:10
  And now you're you're getting wrapped up in this gigantic
• 58:14
  thing that people are watching daily and opinionated about and
• 58:18
  all those different things. How?
• 58:19
  How are you relating this back to your wife and kids and how
• 58:23
  are you getting through this? It?
• 58:26
  It was hard on different levels with different members of my
• 58:29
  family. It was hard, least hard with my
• 58:32
  son because he's because of the Soviet heritage.
• 58:38
  He knows that the law is not always right.
• 58:42
  His his, his maternal grandfather is a dissident in
• 58:47
  Kazakhstan who have been beaten up by thugs who work for the
• 58:49
  president. So you know he he he gets some
• 58:54
  history. Yeah.
• 58:56
  He he, he was the, in fact that year was his junior year.
• 59:00
  No, it's his senior year in high school.
• 59:02
  And his school project, his voluntary school project was he
• 59:05
  made a movie about Chinese interference in the school
• 59:09
  elections. Wow.
• 59:13
  So that was that was how he processed it.
• 59:15
  And I thought it was quite clever.
• 59:17
  My wife, it was more difficult because she now my exwife had
• 59:21
  been, she worked as a operations officer for the CIA for 10
• 59:26
  years, and then she had been working for the FBI as an art
• 59:29
  crimes analyst literally until months before they they popped
• 59:32
  me. So I think she was a bit more
• 59:35
  conflicted. I think her whole career had
• 59:37
  been about the government being a force of good in the world,
• 59:40
  and I think she saw a different side of that.
• 59:43
  And I think that was hard and just disorienting, massively
• 59:47
  disorienting. And then my family, I come from
• 59:51
  a very liberal family. I'm a conservative by choice.
• 59:56
  I'm not a Trumper, but that shouldn't matter really.
• 59:59
  And I I felt most of my family were also split between this
• 1:00:04
  sort of TDs that was going on in the country, this Trump
• 1:00:08
  Derangement Syndrome and their love for me.
• 1:00:11
  And you know, I think that the the latter won out in the end,
• 1:00:16
  but I was always, I was always fighting against TDs.
• 1:00:19
  And the amazing thing about my mother just finished the book
• 1:00:22
  and she called me the other day. It made my day.
• 1:00:24
  She said, You know, you really worse that up.
• 1:00:27
  Yeah. But this is, this is 2024 and
• 1:00:31
  all of this happened in 2018. So it took five or six years.
• 1:00:35
  Yeah. And the book helped tell that
• 1:00:37
  story so. Yeah, it's.
• 1:00:39
  And I, you know, in writing a book, I got similar call from my
• 1:00:43
  mom and it's, you know, after you go through what you go
• 1:00:45
  through and then you have somebody that's that close that
• 1:00:47
  that. Got your message and you you
• 1:00:51
  were able to get it. What I like about what you're
• 1:00:54
  doing with your book is, is that obviously you have grown up in
• 1:00:58
  the world of the written word. But being able to put that in to
• 1:01:02
  story form so people can really follow from piece to piece,
• 1:01:06
  chapter to chapter. And you know, the more I think
• 1:01:09
  people get information and you brought this up earlier, you
• 1:01:12
  know, from the two sides, the two sides need to hear each
• 1:01:15
  other and this is an attempt I think.
• 1:01:18
  On your part to be heard so that people can make sense out of the
• 1:01:22
  craziness that we're all swimming through, Well, it's a
• 1:01:27
  struggle to do that in our country today.
• 1:01:29
  And whether or not I succeed is, you know, will be interesting
• 1:01:33
  because I'm kind of in the middle.
• 1:01:35
  I mean, obviously the quote UN quote, mainstream media wasn't
• 1:01:39
  super interested in my story because, you know, so many of
• 1:01:45
  them were vocally promoting, yeah, they took a narrative on
• 1:01:49
  the other side, right? I'm an inconvenient data point,
• 1:01:52
  so to speak. So it's better not to to focus
• 1:01:56
  on. So I get that I don't expect a
• 1:01:58
  lot of favors from the mainstream media.
• 1:02:00
  But then the conservative media will say, oh, I'm kind of a
• 1:02:02
  rhino. You know, I'm not really on
• 1:02:05
  board with the program. I think we should own the
• 1:02:07
  Ukraine. You know, I mean, these are
• 1:02:10
  things that make me somewhat suspicious to, you know, to the
• 1:02:15
  Fox News crowd. Or you're on your island.
• 1:02:18
  Yeah, so I'm in between. I'm in between these two warring
• 1:02:22
  sides. But here's the thing.
• 1:02:24
  You're kind of like an Arnold Schwarzenegger in the Kennedy
• 1:02:26
  family of events because he didn't survive in the Kennedy
• 1:02:32
  family. But but to have these, you know,
• 1:02:38
  we, I think all Americans live between these, you know, these
• 1:02:41
  two sides. And I don't think anyone really
• 1:02:44
  subscribes to one or the other. I think that both sides
• 1:02:46
  misunderstand each other. Great deal.
• 1:02:48
  I agree. I totally agree with that.
• 1:02:52
  When you start stepping into this and you now you're getting
• 1:02:55
  that they want more information from you and your attorney is
• 1:02:58
  telling you that, hey, it's probably smart to talk to these
• 1:03:01
  guys. And I'm assuming from what I
• 1:03:03
  read, he was with you. In these moments and you got to
• 1:03:09
  sit down with the main player who what I've you.
• 1:03:12
  You said that he you you expected to be mutilated by him
• 1:03:18
  and he wasn't that way. But in the Enron book that I
• 1:03:21
  have read, he was quite the I don't even know what the word
• 1:03:26
  would be, but aggressive what I guess.
• 1:03:30
  But he was. He was reprimanded by a judge
• 1:03:32
  talking about Andrew Weissman here because Robert Mueller was
• 1:03:35
  sort of a. Kind of a right hand man in the
• 1:03:38
  deal. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:03:41
  I I'm careful in the book and in general not really to get into a
• 1:03:45
  whole lot of detail about my cooperation with the special
• 1:03:47
  counsel, cuz it's part of my plea agreement not to talk about
• 1:03:51
  it. And I but I have said about
• 1:03:55
  Weissman that, you know, he surprised me in some ways.
• 1:03:58
  I'm not happy that he decided to charge me obviously, but I
• 1:04:03
  wouldn't say we had a purely adversarial relationship either.
• 1:04:08
  So you know, he's obviously a driven person.
• 1:04:13
  I don't I think that his record speaks for itself.
• 1:04:17
  I think his record on Enron and his record on Russia Gate speaks
• 1:04:21
  for itself. And you know, MSNBC doesn't, you
• 1:04:25
  know, seem to think that that matters much.
• 1:04:28
  But you know, the viewers will decide where they get their
• 1:04:30
  legal. He has been intertwined in some
• 1:04:32
  big issues in the country. We could say that we choose our
• 1:04:36
  heroes in a weird way in this country.
• 1:04:39
  And our sacred cows are Jim Comey's and and you know, people
• 1:04:43
  who owe well you. These people hate our enemies,
• 1:04:48
  therefore they must be Saints and it's a very strange way to
• 1:04:54
  to go about choosing your champions and I I hope it's just
• 1:04:57
  a phase. I do too.
• 1:05:01
  As you as you were getting towards the end of this road
• 1:05:07
  that you were on, you didn't know what they were going to do.
• 1:05:13
  Well, the most they could do was put me in prison for five years,
• 1:05:15
  but that would be extreme enough that I think they the the
• 1:05:21
  Foreign Agent Registration Act of 1938 is, as you know, you
• 1:05:25
  pointed out early on. I was the 9th person to be
• 1:05:30
  prosecuted. The The reason that Hunter
• 1:05:31
  Biden's plea deal fell apart last week was because his
• 1:05:35
  lawyers had tried to work it in such a way that he would not be
• 1:05:39
  liable for Farah prosecution, when in fact the facts strongly
• 1:05:42
  suggest that he would be the poster child for Farah
• 1:05:46
  violation, as opposed to yours truly for writing a few opeds
• 1:05:50
  and asking some friends on the hill to see his client.
• 1:05:54
  But you know it. Well, the judge asked.
• 1:05:57
  Are you are you are you looking at fair like to ask.
• 1:06:00
  Everything was upside down. And you know, I've spent a good
• 1:06:03
  chunk of my career working for political dissidents in other
• 1:06:08
  countries. So the idea that I was going to
• 1:06:10
  become a political prisoner in my own country while on a, you
• 1:06:15
  know, not an attractive idea, not something I'm like, wow,
• 1:06:18
  this is exciting. It wasn't surprising.
• 1:06:21
  I guess that's the thing, you know, a lot of other people who
• 1:06:24
  got caught up in Russia Gate, got really angry and indignant
• 1:06:27
  and sort of shrieky about it. But I figured, you know, as my
• 1:06:30
  book's title, Dangerous Company, I dealt with dangerous people.
• 1:06:33
  You know, they may not have been bug dealers and and murderers
• 1:06:36
  per se, but you know, they were. They were.
• 1:06:39
  There were some dangerous people involved in my career and I USAA
• 1:06:43
  the term insurer of the United States military.
• 1:06:46
  My wife was covered by them because she had worked for the
• 1:06:49
  government and she encouraged me because my work to get a life
• 1:06:53
  insurance policy. So I applied for a term policy
• 1:06:55
  with USAA and their response was after months I got a detailed
• 1:07:00
  letter rejecting me because of my work in Ukraine and because
• 1:07:05
  of putting myself in proximity to likely targets of
• 1:07:08
  assassination. I was an uninsurable person.
• 1:07:12
  Of course you were. Of course you were written that
• 1:07:15
  the underwriters had actually studied the issue and and and
• 1:07:18
  and. I think it kind of gives you a
• 1:07:22
  badass tag whether you wanted it or not.
• 1:07:19
  I don't think I was sort of impressed I kept the.
• 1:07:25
  Yeah, but I so I deserved some form of trouble.
• 1:07:28
  I would think so. Sure, it was a stupid law that I
• 1:07:31
  broke, and it was stupid. Break it, and it was a fairly
• 1:07:34
  harsh prosecution of me versus how the rest of the world is
• 1:07:38
  dealt with. Got it.
• 1:07:39
  But you know, it's better than getting whacked.
• 1:07:42
  It sure is. It's better than the
• 1:07:44
  alternative. Exactly.
• 1:07:45
  You gotta be, you know, you gotta be philosophical about it.
• 1:07:49
  When you got down to it and you were getting the sentencing.
• 1:07:53
  What was your attorney saying? Did he think that you were going
• 1:07:55
  to serve time Did he did there was there a was there an
• 1:07:58
  understanding that that that this wasn't going to be that or
• 1:08:01
  because I know leading up in some of these articles you went
• 1:08:04
  through a variety of thoughts of you know where am I going to go.
• 1:08:08
  I'll I'll just be I'd rather go to the DC jail and hang out
• 1:08:11
  there you know and and that and that's a that's a weird time.
• 1:08:16
  Period. For anybody who's been indicted
• 1:08:19
  and has pled, and you have to figure out from that point on
• 1:08:23
  that weird limbo, what happens next.
• 1:08:27
  You know you go through your own prison before you go to prison.
• 1:08:30
  If you ever go to prison, count that time.
• 1:08:32
  If you count that time you're serving, you're serving time
• 1:08:36
  while you're waiting to serve time.
• 1:08:37
  I told you I never heard a third time.
• 1:08:39
  So that sounds like a somewhat glib thing to say.
• 1:08:42
  But that period before, you know, I think and others who
• 1:08:46
  have served, yeah, have validated this, that that period
• 1:08:50
  is worse. It's because you don't know.
• 1:08:53
  It's uncertain. Yeah.
• 1:08:55
  And I figured I, you know, maybe I do 30 days to six months, but
• 1:09:02
  I didn't, you know, and I just wanted to make sure that, you
• 1:09:04
  know, I was able to do that and come out okay on the other.
• 1:09:10
  What I think you obviously would have been able to do that
• 1:09:12
  because of all the different things that you've done
• 1:09:14
  throughout your life and and that was you know, you you
• 1:09:19
  prison is an is an is an odd thing.
• 1:09:22
  But one thing that's liberating about prison once you go through
• 1:09:25
  it is is you think, well I can do that.
• 1:09:27
  And for most people who have lived their life a certain way,
• 1:09:31
  they can do that. They they they they get, they
• 1:09:34
  willed themselves to be a survivor through it and they
• 1:09:37
  they work them their way through that.
• 1:09:40
  So you get sentenced, you find out you have probation and how.
• 1:09:49
  As far as your mindset of where you are today, Sam, you you've
• 1:09:54
  got a a great book that's getting ready to come out.
• 1:09:56
  We're probably good to see a lot of you in all different places.
• 1:10:00
  Where are you at? Sam Patton, today, right now,
• 1:10:04
  Sam Patton lives in Bath, Maine, which is about halfway up the
• 1:10:09
  coast of Maine. We're actually on the Kennebec
• 1:10:11
  River and it's a shipbuilding town, city that builds
• 1:10:15
  destroyers for the US Navy, but has been building, you know,
• 1:10:19
  been a major shipbuilding city in the country for 100 and 5200
• 1:10:23
  years. I have pretty simple life here
• 1:10:27
  really. I work as I work as a cook in a
• 1:10:29
  restaurant. I I do some freelance writing.
• 1:10:33
  You mentioned my column. It's.
• 1:10:35
  A great column by the way, Just check it out.
• 1:10:37
  The main wire, Thank you. I also occasionally work as a
• 1:10:42
  bus driver as a as a. Have you ever seen the show New
• 1:10:47
  Heart? I've seen the previews, yeah.
• 1:10:50
  I I Airbnb kind of like new heart here as well.
• 1:10:54
  So you know a number of different things while I'm I'm
• 1:10:58
  sort of finding my footing and trying to figure out what it is
• 1:11:01
  I'm going to do and what David Brooks calls the 2nd mountain of
• 1:11:05
  life. Yes.
• 1:11:06
  And do you see, because of where you're at and what your history
• 1:11:11
  has been through your life that you would get back into the
• 1:11:13
  political world that you, Scott in your DNA?
• 1:11:18
  Well, if I can be helpful in different sides, understanding
• 1:11:24
  each other better and improving the state of play, sure, I'd
• 1:11:28
  like to do that. But I have to figure out the
• 1:11:31
  right way of doing it. You know, I've been struggling
• 1:11:33
  with the American political system for years since I first
• 1:11:36
  got involved. And The funny thing about we
• 1:11:38
  talked about Cambridge Analytica, one of my hopes for
• 1:11:41
  working for a British political consulting company was to break
• 1:11:45
  into the US system via Britain and reform our system.
• 1:11:49
  You know, why did Donald Trump win in 2016?
• 1:11:52
  Aside from, you know, the The Who he was running against, the
• 1:11:56
  other reason he won in 2016 was how broken our political
• 1:12:01
  consulting class is. And it's so broken that a
• 1:12:05
  foreign company, this Cambridge Analytical was able to get some
• 1:12:09
  contracts. And I just thought that was
• 1:12:10
  great because I believe in competition, you know, and we
• 1:12:14
  have a very unimaginative, very negative, very cynical and not
• 1:12:19
  particularly good for America consulting class.
• 1:12:22
  So if we could destroy that and build something better, I
• 1:12:25
  thought that was kind of cool. So yeah, if an opportunity like
• 1:12:29
  that comes again, it's going to have to require a lot of people
• 1:12:34
  being committed to doing things a different way than you can do.
• 1:12:37
  Well, I mean, I think, you know, the reason I ask you that is you
• 1:12:40
  bring a lot to the table is experience of through the
• 1:12:45
  political world, through the criminal justice system,
• 1:12:48
  experiencing all those things, surviving, knowing the good and
• 1:12:52
  the bad and the ugly. I think you could be a lot of
• 1:12:55
  help to a lot of people and hopefully.
• 1:12:59
  Bring them ideas and things that maybe they're not thinking of,
• 1:13:03
  that you've experienced that could possibly help in the in
• 1:13:05
  the long run. You know, I always ask people
• 1:13:08
  this on the show and and your your life, you know, Sam, is
• 1:13:15
  incredibly interesting and what you've done and how you've done
• 1:13:17
  it. What do you think's your biggest
• 1:13:19
  take away through all that you've experienced up to this
• 1:13:23
  point that one shouldn't be afraid to try?
• 1:13:30
  I think that's we live with. And you talked, you mentioned
• 1:13:34
  this just a few minutes ago about prison and that feeling
• 1:13:37
  that when you've been to prison, you don't have that fear
• 1:13:41
  anymore. And it's sort of, you know, when
• 1:13:43
  people take things away from you, there's yes, it's it's
• 1:13:47
  never good to have things taken away from you and to have loss.
• 1:13:50
  But on the other side, you gain something, you gain a certain
• 1:13:54
  liberty, you gain a sense of your own strength and knowing
• 1:13:58
  what it is you can do, you know? So I didn't.
• 1:14:01
  I didn't love initially working as a line cook in a in a in a
• 1:14:05
  brew pub. But I liked the fact and I like
• 1:14:09
  the fact that I can do it. But you could do it.
• 1:14:11
  I love that. That's a great take away too.
• 1:14:14
  Being able to do, you know, to say, oh, I I shouldn't do that.
• 1:14:18
  Increasingly we live in a world of artificial fears where
• 1:14:22
  society is projecting different things and people are afraid to
• 1:14:26
  do things because they be perceived.
• 1:14:28
  You know, we all, once we know what our moral compass is and
• 1:14:31
  what what is right and wrong, that should be the end of the
• 1:14:33
  story in terms of being afraid to do things.
• 1:14:37
  And I think that, you know, the less afraid people are of what
• 1:14:41
  social media is going to say or what have you, the better things
• 1:14:45
  are going to be done. Yeah, don't be afraid to take
• 1:14:48
  action. That's that's such a powerful
• 1:14:51
  statement, because I think people get into paralysis in
• 1:14:54
  their own mind. And you know, nothing is
• 1:14:57
  perfection. You just have to take action and
• 1:15:00
  you'll evolve from that, figure it out.
• 1:15:03
  So work so far. Yes.
• 1:15:07
  And so here's the deal. You you've got it.
• 1:15:08
  You've got your book that's coming out.
• 1:15:10
  I noticed on Amazon that you can preorder that and the book is
• 1:15:14
  Dangerous Company. Misadventures of a Foreign
• 1:15:17
  agent. So I'll have that the foreign
• 1:15:19
  agent is in quotation marks. It is.
• 1:15:22
  It is in quotation marks by the way.
• 1:15:25
  You just wanted. I just saw that.
• 1:15:27
  But yeah, go check it out. I'll put it in the show notes.
• 1:15:32
  If anybody wants to get to Sam Patton, I know you have a
• 1:15:35
  website and a website for the book which is Dangerous Company
• 1:15:40
  book.com. Yes, and I believe there's a
• 1:15:43
  there's a contact feature on. There there is.
• 1:15:46
  There is. I checked that out.
• 1:15:48
  And if anybody wants another book, if you're just in the book
• 1:15:50
  reading mood, check out Nightmare Success, and that's in
• 1:15:55
  Barnes and Noble and Amazon. If you liked anything, you got
• 1:15:59
  in here today, because there's lots of Nuggets of wisdom from a
• 1:16:02
  man who's experienced it all. Go to Spotify, go to Apple,
• 1:16:07
  Leave a review if it puts the show on steroids with all that
• 1:16:11
  weird algorithm stuff. And as I used to say when I was
• 1:16:17
  writing my emails back and forth from Leavenworth, stay strong.
• 1:16:21
  I'll do the same. Sam Patton, thanks so much for
• 1:16:25
  being here today. I appreciate it.
• 1:16:27
  Thanks for having me, Brent. I've enjoyed our conversation.
• 1:16:30
  And I have our success in and out.