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Blockers | A Preview of Michael Lewis's New Audiobook · What's Your Problem?

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Speaker 1: Hey, it's Jacob. I am here today with a preview
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Speaker 1: from a new book by Michael Lewis. You probably know
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Speaker 1: Michael Lewis is one of the greatest nonfiction writers around.
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Speaker 1: He wrote Liar's Poker, Moneyball, The Big Short, among many others.
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Speaker 1: The new book is called Blockers. It's about a handful
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Speaker 1: of civil servants who dedicated their careers to government work
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Speaker 1: until the Department of Government Efficiency, aka Doge, came along.
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Speaker 1: The book is called Blockers. I hope you like the excerpt,
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Speaker 1: and if you want to buy the whole audiobook, you
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Speaker 1: can do so at blockers.fm. Again, blockers.fm. Here's the preview.
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Speaker 2: I do solemnly swear that I will support and defend
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Speaker 2: the Constitution of the United States.
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Speaker 3: Against all enemies, foreign and domestic, that I will bear
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Speaker 3: true faith and allegiance to the same.
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Speaker 4: That I take this obligation freely without any mental reservation
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Speaker 4: or purpose of evasion.
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Speaker 1: And that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties
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Speaker 1: of the office on which I am about to enter.
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Speaker 3: So help me God.
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Speaker 1: Civil Service Oath of Office, Title V, U.S. Code, Section 3331.
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Speaker 3: From at MU's, Doge. The Doge team fought for days
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Speaker 3: to gain access to the United States Institute of Peace. Eventually,
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Speaker 3: with help from the FBI and Metro Police... Doge was
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Speaker 3: able to access the agency and discovered massive fraud, waste,
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Speaker 3: and abuse, including payments to Taliban and Iraq.
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Speaker 5: Elon Musk. Any government institution is most likely to be
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Speaker 5: the opposite of its name. Elon Musk. They deleted a
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Speaker 5: terabyte of financial data to cover their crimes. But they
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Speaker 5: don't understand technology, so we recovered it.
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Speaker 4: Prologue, The Guns Colin O'Brien was the chief security officer
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Speaker 4: at the United States Institute of Peace. Mostly that meant
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Speaker 4: keeping the Institute's 400 employees scattered across 28 difficult countries,
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Speaker 4: safe from harm. Mostly, it succeeded. There'd been close calls
2:19
Speaker 4: in Haiti, and Colin himself had been with a group
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Speaker 4: that had come under rocket fire in Kiev. But no
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Speaker 4: one had been killed. No new doves to add to
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Speaker 4: the five already on the Wall of the Fallen. Now,
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Speaker 4: on this late afternoon of March 14, 2025, the threat
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Speaker 4: was right here, in Washington, D.C. Three young men from
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Speaker 4: the Department of Government Efficiency were trying to argue their
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Speaker 4: way into the Institute building. Once inside, it was game over.
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Speaker 4: Just as it had been at the U.S. Agency for
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Speaker 4: International Development, USAID, and the African Development Foundation, and a
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Speaker 4: bunch of other places. During the presidential campaign, he hadn't
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Speaker 4: taken Doge seriously. Trump's promise to create a Department of
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Speaker 4: Government Efficiency, run by Elon Musk, felt, to Colin, like
3:06
Speaker 4: his promise to make Mexico pay for the wall, or
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Speaker 4: to end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours. It
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Speaker 4: was not something that would ever survive contact with reality,
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Speaker 4: said Colin. Watching Musk do various weird things on various
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Speaker 4: political stages only reinforced his sense that Doge was pure theater.
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Speaker 4: His views had changed only after they'd busted into federal
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Speaker 4: agencies to shut them down, and Congress had failed to respond.
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Speaker 4: If that could happen in broad daylight with no response,
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Speaker 4: then no organization was safe, he said. He'd left work
3:38
Speaker 4: early on the 14th, a Friday. His daughter needed help
3:42
Speaker 4: with her math homework, and he assumed nothing would happen
3:45
Speaker 4: late in the afternoon before a holiday weekend. Then came
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Speaker 4: the call from one of his guys, saying that these
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Speaker 4: Doge kids were out on the sidewalk and asking to
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Speaker 4: be let in. Colin immediately sent a text to his
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Speaker 4: IT people that said simply, shut it down, and they'd
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Speaker 4: instantly thrown the building into lockdown. After the magnetic lock
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Speaker 4: snapped shut, no one on the inside could get out,
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Speaker 4: and no one on the outside could get in. By
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Speaker 4: the time Colin arrived to spring the staff from the building,
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Speaker 4: the three Doge guys had given up and left. Two
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Speaker 4: hours later, they returned with reinforcements, a rare Doge female,
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Speaker 4: and two FBI agents. This time, Colin went out to
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Speaker 4: meet them. He'd been tracking Doge's movements through the federal bureaucracy.
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Speaker 4: He'd created files on each member. The security guys who
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Speaker 4: had called Colin had spotted them from the photos Colin
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Speaker 4: had provided. But this was the first time Colin had
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Speaker 4: seen any of them in the flesh. Skinny jeans, T-shirts,
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Speaker 4: and little backpacks. Tech bro wear. The FBI agents, like Colin,
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Speaker 4: wore suits to work and were clearly uneasy in their
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Speaker 4: new role as Doge Muscle. The Doge trio didn't have
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Speaker 4: a warrant or a court order or really anything else
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Speaker 4: except attitudes. One of the FBI men told Colin that
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Speaker 4: he was just hoping to facilitate a cordial conversation. But
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Speaker 4: the lead Doge guy, Nate Cavanaugh, was not cordial. He
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Speaker 4: was expecting me to jump too, said Colin. Colin wasn't
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Speaker 4: really built to jump too. His appearance was deceptive. He
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Speaker 4: looked like the sort of guy who could fix your car,
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Speaker 4: but he was more like the guy who noticed what
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Speaker 4: your choice of car said about you. He was big
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Speaker 4: and broad like an offensive tackle, with an army haircut
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Speaker 4: and a polite attentiveness that suggested he was just here
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Speaker 4: to take orders. What he was really doing was watching
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Speaker 4: you closely and figuring out just how full of shit
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Speaker 4: you were. He knew what little was public about Nate Kavanaugh,
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Speaker 4: that he'd dropped out of Indiana University to start some
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Speaker 4: not-obviously-world-changing tech company in Los Angeles. His authority came entirely
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Speaker 4: from his personal association with Elon Musk, whose own came
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Speaker 4: from his personal association with Donald Trump. By night, he
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Speaker 4: and some other 20-something Doge guys were bunking with Musk
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Speaker 4: on the sixth floor of the Government Services Administration, like
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Speaker 4: it was another tech startup. By day, he was marching
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Speaker 4: into other executive office buildings and telling everyone that he
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Speaker 4: was now in charge. And they were fired. While the
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Speaker 4: young Doge guys tried to talk their way past Colin
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Speaker 4: and into the front of the building, The young Doge woman,
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Speaker 4: Laken Rapier, ran around to the back and pounded on
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Speaker 4: the door and asked to be let in to use
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Speaker 4: the bathroom. When the guards refused to open the door,
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Speaker 4: she shouted at them that as she was a government
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Speaker 4: employee and this was a government building, she had a
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Speaker 4: right to relieve herself inside of it. She didn't seem
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Speaker 4: to understand that the Institute wasn't a government building. Even
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Speaker 4: the FBI agents seemed to get that point. Eventually, they
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Speaker 4: gave up and left. Colin unlocked the building, let out
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Speaker 4: the few employees who remained inside the U.S. Institute of Peace,
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Speaker 4: then waited for Doge to return. You never know what's
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Speaker 4: going to catch your eye and become a story. Back
7:04
Speaker 4: in 2016, the first time Donald Trump collided with the U.S. government,
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Speaker 4: it was a throwaway line, something Trump said. In the
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Speaker 4: months before the election, well-meaning people tried to prepare Trump
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Speaker 4: to govern. Chris Christie, former New Jersey governor and close
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Speaker 4: Trump ally, assembled a transition team of 500 or so people,
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Speaker 4: many of them with government experience. The idea was that
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Speaker 4: if Trump won, his team would rush into the federal government,
7:30
Speaker 4: not just into the White House, but into all the
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Speaker 4: federal agencies, from the CIA to the Department of Agriculture,
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Speaker 4: and figure out what was going on. They'd teach the
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Speaker 4: president-elect whatever he needed to know about, say, the Iran
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Speaker 4: nuclear deal. or the plight of the American farmer. Trump
7:48
Speaker 4: might not know or even really care about this complicated machine,
7:52
Speaker 4: but all was still well. Chris Christie's transition team would
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Speaker 4: study the machine and teach him how it worked. That
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Speaker 4: never happened. Instead, right after the 2016 election, Trump fired
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Speaker 4: his entire transition team. Chris, you and I are so
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Speaker 4: smart that we can leave the victory party two hours
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Speaker 4: early and do the transition ourselves, he'd told Christie. That
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Speaker 4: was the throwaway line that caught my eye and invited
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Speaker 4: me to reach out and pull on it until a
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Speaker 4: story unspooled. The United States government was arguably the most
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Speaker 4: complex and powerful machine ever designed by man. Trump had
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Speaker 4: no personal experience inside it and had made no effort
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Speaker 4: to educate himself. Handed the task of managing it, he
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Speaker 4: was just going to wing it. And that's what he did.
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Speaker 4: Right after the election, all these experts across the federal
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Speaker 4: government people who managed the nuclear stockpile in the Department
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Speaker 4: of Energy, people who ran pandemic preparedness at the Centers
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Speaker 4: for Disease Control and Prevention, people who ran the National
8:54
Speaker 4: Weather Service in the Department of Commerce, and on and
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Speaker 4: on and on, put out finger sandwiches and sparkling water
9:01
Speaker 4: and sat around waiting for someone from the Trump administration
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Speaker 4: to turn up just to let them know what they
9:07
Speaker 4: were working on and what they might need to do
9:10
Speaker 4: to prevent various horrible things from happening. In most agencies,
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Speaker 4: no one showed. or they showed up months late, without questions. But,
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Speaker 4: and here was the happy news, mostly that didn't seem
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Speaker 4: to matter much. Or, if it mattered, it was hard
9:27
Speaker 4: to see why. Total neglect didn't result in immediate catastrophe.
9:34
Speaker 4: I wound up writing a short book called The Fifth Risk,
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Speaker 4: the gist of which was that inside the federal government,
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Speaker 4: there were lots of public-spirited people dealing with an insane
9:44
Speaker 4: number of big problems that the private sector would never address.
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Speaker 4: The entire system was screwed up, budgets changing wildly year
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Speaker 4: to year, bosses coming and going like Tinder dates. But
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Speaker 4: the people working in it often were not. Their stories
10:00
Speaker 4: were often inspiring. But those stories were seldom told. American
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Speaker 4: civil servants, as a group, have learned that any attention
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Speaker 4: they receive tends to be negative attention. And in any case,
10:12
Speaker 4: the sort of person who goes to work for the
10:14
Speaker 4: government isn't usually looking to be the life of the party.
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Speaker 4: The federal bureaucracy wasn't exactly out of touch with the
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Speaker 4: society it served, but its society was out of touch
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Speaker 4: with it. But that, too, seemed okay. For better and worse,
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Speaker 4: the United States government has a crude autopilot feature that,
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Speaker 4: like a Tesla's, works well enough to lull you into
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Speaker 4: a stupor. You can play the Battle of Polytopia while
10:39
Speaker 4: doing 75 on the interstate and after a while feel
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Speaker 4: that you don't even need to look up. But there
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Speaker 4: will come a moment when something happens that requires your attention.
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Speaker 4: And in that moment, if you are wholly absorbed with
10:52
Speaker 4: the decision of whether to attack to kill or attack
10:55
Speaker 4: to wound, you'll wind up not only dead, but trending
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Speaker 4: on X. That's sort of what happened at the end
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Speaker 4: of 2019, when a virus in China leapt from either
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Speaker 4: a lab or an animal and raced towards an unprepared
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Speaker 4: American population. The United States government's shockingly poor performance in
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Speaker 4: the global pandemic is another story. I wrote a book
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Speaker 4: about that, too. though it may partly explain why Trump's
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Speaker 4: second collision with the U.S. government felt so different from
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Speaker 4: the first. This time, Trump kept at least one eye
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Speaker 4: on the road. Instead of firing his transition team after
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Speaker 4: the election, he created the most energetic and empowered transition
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Speaker 4: team in history and put the world's most famous businessman
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Speaker 4: in charge of it. The stated ambition of the Department
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Speaker 4: of Government Efficiency was huge, from annual federal spending just
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Speaker 4: shy of $ 7 trillion to Elon Musk claimed he could
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Speaker 4: cut $ 2 trillion. And from the moment his minions began
11:51
Speaker 4: their hunt for waste, fraud, and abuse, his tweets, subtweets,
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Speaker 4: and reposts came thick and fast. In his first two
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Speaker 4: months on the job, Musk averaged more than 100 posts
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Speaker 4: every day on X. And every day, he generated new
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Speaker 4: material to tweet about. In just the first couple of months,
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Speaker 4: his team had either closed or shrunk beyond recognition entire
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Speaker 4: federal agencies. the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Department of Education, USAID,
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Speaker 4: and more. Then, in mid-March, they invaded the U.S. Institute
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Speaker 4: of Peace. Odd as it might sound, that's what finally
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Speaker 4: grabbed my attention this time. In the year I'd spent
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Speaker 4: wandering around the first Trump administration, I thought I'd seen
12:33
Speaker 4: or at least heard about most of our government. I'd
12:36
Speaker 4: spent weeks wrestling with what seemed at the time like
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Speaker 4: pressing questions. Which is inherently more thrilling, the Department of
12:43
Speaker 4: Energy or the Department of the Interior? Or, why is
12:47
Speaker 4: an agency that spends three-fifths of its budget collecting and
12:50
Speaker 4: analyzing and disseminating weather data called the Department of Commerce?
12:55
Speaker 4: I carried around with me a U.S. government org chart
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Speaker 4: and reduced every federal agency to a file on the
13:00
Speaker 4: floor of my office. And yet, I'd never even heard
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Speaker 4: of the U.S.
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Speaker 3: Institute of Peace.
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Speaker 4: Not so much as a faint whisper about it. That's
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Speaker 4: why what might seem in context like a trivial event
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Speaker 4: pulled me up short. I couldn't begin to guess what
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Speaker 4: the U.S. Institute of Peace actually did. It sounded like
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Speaker 4: a front for a drug operation. And so I asked
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Speaker 4: around and learned that the reason it never wound up
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Speaker 4: in a file on my office floor with the federal
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Speaker 4: agencies is that it wasn't a federal agency. It was
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Speaker 4: a private corporation. Its employees weren't civil servants, but ordinary workers.
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Speaker 5: The U.S.
13:39
Speaker 4: Institute of Peace wasn't a thing the president was supposed
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Speaker 4: to control. Donald Trump had gone from paying no attention
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Speaker 4: at all to the federal government to paying more attention
13:48
Speaker 4: than any president ever. He had become so interested in
13:51
Speaker 4: running the federal government that he was now trying to
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Speaker 4: run even the parts of it that he wasn't meant to.
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Speaker 4: The effect was to create a kind of negative space.
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Speaker 4: The story to tell about Trump's first term was all
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Speaker 4: about the price of ignorance and the risk of radical neglect.
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Speaker 4: The story to tell about his second term was different.
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Speaker 4: It was about all those people in roles— in and
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Speaker 4: around the United States government, once taken for granted, that
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Speaker 4: were now gone. The second Trump administration was a bit
14:19
Speaker 4: like a meteor strike or some other massive environmental shift.
14:24
Speaker 4: It killed off entire species and made room for new ones.
14:28
Speaker 4: That different species had died in different ways and for
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Speaker 4: different reasons only heightened the story's interest. It enabled you
14:35
Speaker 4: to cobble together the various wiped-out species into a portrait
14:40
Speaker 4: of the new environment. That new environment needed to be
14:42
Speaker 4: understood not merely by the new life forms it sustained,
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Speaker 4: but by the old ones that it didn't. If you
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Speaker 4: asked Colin O'Brien what made a person a good security officer,
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Speaker 4: he'd start by telling you what didn't. The problem in
15:00
Speaker 4: the security field is that there are so many asshats
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Speaker 4: in it, he'd say. Either they're Paul Blart the mall
15:07
Speaker 4: cop and just mailing it in, or they're the Navy
15:10
Speaker 4: SEAL who wants to tell you what a badass Navy
15:13
Speaker 4: SEAL they were. If you pressed him a bit, he'd
15:16
Speaker 4: tell you that when he was hiring someone for a
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Speaker 4: security job, he looked not just for the protective instincts
15:21
Speaker 4: of an offensive lineman and a taste for work, those
15:24
Speaker 4: were a given, but for an extreme sensitivity to the environment.
15:28
Speaker 4: To be any good, you had to notice things that
15:30
Speaker 4: most people didn't. It might be that the landscaping or
15:34
Speaker 4: the lighting created possibilities for concealment, or that the wrong
15:38
Speaker 4: type of screw in a door frame caused it to
15:40
Speaker 4: fail faster under force. You have to see all the
15:43
Speaker 4: little things, said Colin. And you have to have a
15:46
Speaker 4: passion for it. The other quality Colin looked for was
15:50
Speaker 4: an ability to improvise. You can't war game out whatever
15:54
Speaker 4: shit is going to happen, he said. There's no checklist.
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Speaker 4: When shit happens, nothing you think you know is going
16:00
Speaker 4: to work in the moment. Interviewing people for security work,
16:03
Speaker 4: he'd always try to surprise them. Have it come out
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Speaker 4: of left field and see how they respond. How did
16:09
Speaker 4: they adapt to an uncomfortable situation? One time, after an
16:13
Speaker 4: applicant had sat down for what he assumed would be
16:15
Speaker 4: the conventional interview, Colin had simply tossed a tourniquet at
16:19
Speaker 4: him and said, What is this and how do you
16:21
Speaker 4: use it? I didn't care if he knew how to
16:23
Speaker 4: use a tourniquet, said Colin. I just wanted to see
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Speaker 4: how he'd respond. For as long as Colin could remember,
16:30
Speaker 4: he'd wanted to be a cop. It is such a
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Speaker 4: badass job. I love the idea of law enforcement. I
16:37
Speaker 4: love the idea of serving something bigger than myself, and
16:40
Speaker 4: I love catching bad guys. His parents hated the idea.
16:45
Speaker 4: They thought it was too dangerous. If you would have
16:48
Speaker 4: asked my parents, they would have told you I was
16:50
Speaker 4: going to grow out of it, said Colin. He didn't
16:53
Speaker 4: grow out of it. As he approached his high school graduation,
16:57
Speaker 4: his mother insisted he go on to college. Colin loved
17:00
Speaker 4: playing for his high school football team, offensive line and linebacker,
17:04
Speaker 4: but hated the classrooms. He thought college would be a
17:08
Speaker 4: waste of money, and he didn't want to spend another minute,
17:10
Speaker 4: much less the rest of his life, behind a desk.
17:14
Speaker 4: He cut a deal with his mom. If she signed
17:16
Speaker 4: the papers that allowed him to enlist in the U.S.
17:18
Speaker 4: Army at the age of 17, he'd serve on active
17:21
Speaker 4: duty only the required five years. After that, if she
17:25
Speaker 4: still wanted him to go to college, he'd go to college.
17:29
Speaker 4: And then, this part he didn't tell her, he'd become
17:32
Speaker 4: a cop. He loved his mom and dad, but he
17:35
Speaker 4: was always his own guy. And in any case, the
17:38
Speaker 4: best way to show you loved your mom and dad
17:41
Speaker 4: was to insist on being who you were. He'd scored
17:44
Speaker 4: so high on the aptitude test that they told him
17:47
Speaker 4: he could pick his first assignment. He chose the place
17:50
Speaker 4: he knew the least about, South Korea. There he wound
17:53
Speaker 4: up assigned to the elite SWAT team as a sniper.
17:57
Speaker 4: He did well enough that they pulled him to work
17:59
Speaker 4: on the security detail of Leon Laporte, the four-star general
18:02
Speaker 4: who ran the region. I loved it, said Colin. When
18:06
Speaker 4: his five years were up, Laporte's successor, Burwell Baxter B.B.
18:10
Speaker 4: Bell III, another four-star general, called him into his office
18:14
Speaker 4: and told him that if he agreed to reenlist, he
18:17
Speaker 4: could have most any other job at his pay grade
18:19
Speaker 4: that he wanted in the U.S.
18:20
Speaker 2: Army.
18:21
Speaker 4: Colin found himself nervously explaining to General B.B. Bell how
18:25
Speaker 4: his mom had raised him to keep his promises and
18:27
Speaker 4: that he had made a promise to his mom. But
18:30
Speaker 4: he'd never lost his original ambition. After studying constitutional law
18:35
Speaker 4: and graduating from the University of Maryland, he joined the
18:38
Speaker 4: Montgomery County Police Force. He was as suited to the
18:41
Speaker 4: job as he'd imagined, but it beat the hell out
18:44
Speaker 4: of him. In a police boxing class, they tossed him
18:47
Speaker 4: into a ring with a guy even bigger than him,
18:50
Speaker 4: who with a single punch broke Collins' neck. Another time,
18:54
Speaker 4: he found himself racing after four kids, speeding in a
18:57
Speaker 4: stolen car. The kids ran the car off the road
19:00
Speaker 4: and into a tree, where it caught fire. As Colin
19:03
Speaker 4: sprinted into the wreck to yank the kids out, the
19:06
Speaker 4: car exploded into flames ten feet high. He extracted the
19:10
Speaker 4: driver before grabbing a second kid who was on fire.
19:12
Speaker 4: I had one of those weird moments, said Colin. I
19:16
Speaker 4: just remembered the phrase, drop and roll. I dropped on
19:19
Speaker 4: top of him and rolled him down the street, and
19:21
Speaker 4: the flames went out. That boy survived. The other two
19:25
Speaker 4: burned to death before he could get to them. The
19:28
Speaker 4: driver died later in the hospital. Colin emerged with burns
19:32
Speaker 4: and a broken shoulder that never again felt right. He'd
19:36
Speaker 4: spent eight years as a cop before leaving in 2016
19:39
Speaker 4: when his body couldn't take it anymore. He'd gone from
19:42
Speaker 4: wearing a gun every day to reaching down only to
19:45
Speaker 4: realize he didn't have one. It took me a little
19:48
Speaker 4: bit before I was like, I don't have to have
19:50
Speaker 4: a gun to be safe. He'd gone from chasing down
19:53
Speaker 4: people who had done bad things to preventing the bad
19:56
Speaker 4: things from happening in the first place. You can't really
20:00
Speaker 4: measure prevention, he said. When something bad does not happen,
20:04
Speaker 4: there's no clear way to prove why. Did it not
20:07
Speaker 4: occur because you noticed and fixed a problem no one
20:10
Speaker 4: else saw? Because you were good at your job? Because
20:13
Speaker 4: you were lucky? Or because nothing was ever going to
20:15
Speaker 4: happen in the first place? That ambiguity is part of
20:19
Speaker 4: the work. It's about noticing small details, understanding human behavior,
20:24
Speaker 4: and acting on things that feel just slightly out of place.
20:27
Speaker 4: When it works, nothing happens. His first encounter with Doge
20:33
Speaker 4: on that Friday in March in 2025 had felt mostly
20:37
Speaker 4: like luck. They were the Keystone cops, he said. They'd
20:41
Speaker 4: shown up with a dubious-looking document on Institute of Peace
20:44
Speaker 4: letterhead signed by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Secretary of
20:49
Speaker 4: State Marco Rubio, and Pete Garvin, head of the National
20:53
Speaker 4: Defense University, the three ex-officio members of the Institute's board.
20:59
Speaker 4: It announced that they were firing the Institute's acting president,
21:02
Speaker 4: George Moose, and replacing him with a Doge guy. but
21:06
Speaker 4: they didn't have the legal authority to do it. Colin,
21:09
Speaker 4: and for that matter, the FBI agents, could see the
21:12
Speaker 4: document was fake. The letterhead had been photocopied from some
21:16
Speaker 4: genuine institute stationary, probably from the letter George Moose himself
21:20
Speaker 4: had sent to the Doge people to explain the law.
21:23
Speaker 4: That law wasn't complicated.
21:27
Speaker 2: It is the purpose of this title to establish an independent, non-profit,
21:31
Speaker 2: national institute to serve the people and the government through
21:35
Speaker 2: the widest possible range of education and training, basic and
21:39
Speaker 2: applied research opportunities, and peace information services on the means
21:44
Speaker 2: to promote international peace and the resolution of conflicts among
21:48
Speaker 2: the nations and peoples of the world without recourse to violence.
21:58
Speaker 4: That was one of its nine big bullet points. Passed
22:00
Speaker 4: by Congress and signed by Ronald Reagan in 1984, the
22:05
Speaker 4: law stipulated that the U.S. Institute of Peace would be
22:08
Speaker 4: run by a board of 15 people, only eight of
22:11
Speaker 4: whom could belong to a single political party. All served
22:16
Speaker 4: longer terms than the president. The president could appoint board
22:19
Speaker 4: members but not remove them, except for extreme malfeasance. The
22:24
Speaker 4: White House had no control over its spending. The money
22:28
Speaker 4: for the new institute would come from both Congress and
22:31
Speaker 4: private donations. The land for its building would be leased
22:35
Speaker 4: to the institute for free in perpetuity. The building wound
22:40
Speaker 4: up being paid for with $ 100 million from Congress and
22:43
Speaker 4: $ 70 million in private donations, but it was wholly owned
22:48
Speaker 4: by the private corporation. The whole point of the structure
22:52
Speaker 4: was to remove the U.S. Institute of Peace from day-to-day politics.
22:57
Speaker 4: There was a long history of these congressionally bred mongrels,
23:00
Speaker 4: institutions that both received help from and gave help to
23:04
Speaker 4: the federal government while remaining privately controlled, the first of
23:08
Speaker 4: which had been the Red Cross back in 1900. In 1935,
23:12
Speaker 4: the Supreme Court upheld, by unanimous vote, the right of
23:17
Speaker 4: Congress to breed mongrel institutions, and Congress had since bred
23:21
Speaker 4: more of them. But in a funny way, the U.S.
23:24
Speaker 4: Institute of Peace predated them all, even the Red Cross.
23:28
Speaker 4: In his final address to Congress in 1796, George Washington
23:32
Speaker 4: had proposed creating two private but national colleges, one to
23:37
Speaker 4: train warriors, the other to train peacemakers. Six years later,
23:42
Speaker 4: Congress agreed to fund West Point, but not the Peace College,
23:46
Speaker 4: whose merits were the subject of an on-again, off-again debate
23:50
Speaker 4: for the next 188 years. The idea got a massive
23:54
Speaker 4: push after the Vietnam War from a handful of United
23:57
Speaker 4: States senators who'd served in combat and emerged from the
24:00
Speaker 4: experience with a conviction that the best war was the
24:04
Speaker 4: war that never happened, and that one way to prevent
24:07
Speaker 4: war was to invest a bit more in the art
24:10
Speaker 4: of peace. Yeah, you can have a Department of War,
24:14
Speaker 4: but what you really want to do is stay out
24:15
Speaker 4: of war, said Colin. How do you stop people from
24:18
Speaker 4: blowing other people up? These were people who genuinely want
24:21
Speaker 4: to make the world a less shitty place. Of all
24:25
Speaker 4: the mongrel institutions created by Congress, the Federal Trade Commission,
24:29
Speaker 4: the Inter-American Foundation, the Legal Services Corporation, and others, the U.S.
24:34
Speaker 4: Institute of Peace was legally the most removed from presidential control.
24:38
Speaker 4: If Elon Musk, acting on behalf of Donald Trump, could
24:43
Speaker 4: send Nate Kavanaugh in to just take the building away
24:46
Speaker 4: and fire everyone inside... He could take anything and fire anyone.
24:53
Speaker 4: The Federal Reserve, for example, or the Kennedy Center. Plus,
24:58
Speaker 4: of course, the entire two-million-person civil service. This attempt to
25:03
Speaker 4: strip a building from its rightful owner was a pure
25:07
Speaker 4: assertion of power, an attempt to change the way the
25:10
Speaker 4: government had been run for more than a century, to
25:13
Speaker 4: reduce it to nothing more or less than a servant
25:16
Speaker 4: of whoever happens to be president. Holding the building meant
25:20
Speaker 4: more to Colin than just holding the building. I knew
25:24
Speaker 4: what I was fighting for, he said. I knew what
25:27
Speaker 4: I was trying to protect. By the time he ushered
25:30
Speaker 4: Nate Cavanaugh back into his big black car, Colin had
25:33
Speaker 4: a fully formed opinion of him. It wasn't favorable. He
25:38
Speaker 4: had these white Converse sneakers that make you want to
25:40
Speaker 4: scuff them with whatever you have, said Colin. Had this
25:43
Speaker 4: air of superiority. You could feel him looking down on you.
25:48
Speaker 4: Whatever he was up to, Colin could see. It wasn't
25:51
Speaker 4: deficit reduction. More than 80% of federal spending went to
25:55
Speaker 4: national defense, entitlement programs, and interest payments on the federal debt.
25:59
Speaker 4: Doge wasn't even pretending to touch any of that. Anyway,
26:03
Speaker 4: Congress controlled federal spending. And Doge was making no effort
26:07
Speaker 4: to engage Congress. What was happening felt to Colin less
26:11
Speaker 4: like cost-cutting than total destruction. The people who ran the U.S.
26:15
Speaker 4: Institute of Peace were less fatalistic than Colin. They believed
26:19
Speaker 4: they could survive. They thought they could hide in the
26:21
Speaker 4: tall grass, said Colin. He heard them talk about the
26:25
Speaker 4: traits that the Institute possessed, lacked by other quasi-government institutions,
26:30
Speaker 4: that enhanced its likelihood of survival. Number one, they were tiny.
26:36
Speaker 4: The Institute's $ 55 million annual budget was. 0007857 % of
26:37
Speaker 4: the federal budget. Number two, They had nothing inside it
26:48
Speaker 4: labeled diversity, equity, and inclusion. Their workforce was diverse, but
26:53
Speaker 4: they came by that without making a point of it.
26:56
Speaker 4: Number three, people close to Trump, Marco Rubio, Lindsey Graham,
27:01
Speaker 4: had long supported the Institute's work. Number four, Trump's obsession
27:07
Speaker 4: with the Nobel Peace Prize. Destroying something called the United
27:11
Speaker 4: States Institute of Peace would look bad on his application.
27:16
Speaker 4: Number five, the actual importance of their work. Though how
27:21
Speaker 4: many Americans, let alone the Americans who had just moved
27:24
Speaker 4: into the White House, could tell you what they did?
27:28
Speaker 4: Number six, their legal independence. Even as the Doge people
27:33
Speaker 4: drove off, and even as his bosses made hopeful noises,
27:38
Speaker 4: Colin was almost sure that the Institute was doomed. These
27:42
Speaker 4: people I work for are eternal optimists. and they believe
27:46
Speaker 4: in the rule of law, he said. I'm thinking, you
27:49
Speaker 4: can't fight an army with a piece of paper. His
27:52
Speaker 4: goal was now simple. As he said, to keep possession
27:57
Speaker 4: of the building until we can get in front of
27:59
Speaker 4: a judge. But the situation was moving fast. The next day, Saturday,
28:05
Speaker 4: March 15th, Colin received a phone call from a retired
28:09
Speaker 4: former employee of the private company, Intercon, that the Institute
28:13
Speaker 4: of Peace hired to guard the building. The guy told
28:17
Speaker 4: Colin he'd just gotten this weird call from the FBI,
28:21
Speaker 4: asking him if he was still in charge of the
28:23
Speaker 4: Institute's security guards. These fucking kids just ran it through grok,
28:28
Speaker 4: said Colin, and they think he's still in charge of security.
28:32
Speaker 4: That's when the light bulb went off in my head.
28:35
Speaker 4: They're going to use Intercon to get into the building.
28:39
Speaker 3: The U.S.
28:39
Speaker 4: Department of State alone paid Intercon $ 460 million a year
28:45
Speaker 4: to guard its properties. If forced to choose between that
28:50
Speaker 4: and the $ 2. 7 million they were being paid by the
28:53
Speaker 4: Institute of Peace, Intercon wouldn't think twice. I realize that
28:58
Speaker 4: we need to get rid of the guards, said Colin,
29:00
Speaker 4: that the way to make us safer is to get
29:02
Speaker 4: rid of the people protecting us. When he was done,
29:06
Speaker 4: there was only one outstanding key to the single mechanical
29:09
Speaker 4: lock on the entire building, held by Kevin Simpson, who
29:13
Speaker 4: oversaw Intercon's security guards. Colin couldn't find him. And in
29:18
Speaker 4: any case, he was an old and trusted friend of
29:20
Speaker 4: several people who worked for the Institute of Peace. Colin
29:23
Speaker 4: hoped that if Doge found him, Kevin Simpson would just
29:26
Speaker 4: keep mum about the key. Of all the people out there,
29:29
Speaker 4: he said, Kevin is the person I can trust. On Sunday,
29:34
Speaker 4: Colin had another phone call, this one from a senior
29:37
Speaker 4: FBI agent named Doug Silk. Silk told Colin that he
29:41
Speaker 4: was under investigation by the Department of Justice for the
29:45
Speaker 4: events of March 14th and asked him to come in
29:48
Speaker 4: that day for questioning. I said, yeah, that's not going
29:51
Speaker 4: to happen. Then, because he was not home when he
29:54
Speaker 4: received the threat, Colin called his wife and told her
29:57
Speaker 4: to lock the doors to their house and not let
29:59
Speaker 4: anyone in. no matter who they said they were. He
30:03
Speaker 4: got to work at five the next morning, St. Patrick's Day.
30:06
Speaker 4: They'd told the staff to stay home, so it was
30:09
Speaker 4: just him and George Moose and their lawyers. I know
30:13
Speaker 4: their objective was going to be to destroy us, said Colin.
30:16
Speaker 4: And I know I was being asked to be the D.C.
30:19
Speaker 4: version of Davy Crockett. And I know that the analogy
30:23
Speaker 4: is not exact. He was looking out over the streets
30:26
Speaker 4: from an upper story window when he saw them approach.
30:29
Speaker 4: It's three vehicles. A dogemobile, a tinted-out black Tahoe or Escalade,
30:35
Speaker 4: followed by a Tesla.
30:36
Speaker 3: And a Jeep.
30:38
Speaker 4: He watched as an intercom guy named Derek left one
30:40
Speaker 4: of the cars and tried to open the front door.
30:43
Speaker 4: His badge doesn't work, said Colin. The U.S. Institute of
30:47
Speaker 4: Peace building hadn't been designed to repel an invading force.
30:52
Speaker 4: It had been designed to emit light. It was all
30:55
Speaker 4: clerestory windows topped by a roof of glass panels shaped
30:58
Speaker 4: like the wings of a dove. The Valhalla of think
31:02
Speaker 4: tank architecture, one critic called it. Colin had no idea
31:06
Speaker 4: where the next assault would come from, but he knew
31:08
Speaker 4: the most vulnerable point in his defense. The side door.
31:13
Speaker 4: The door that still had the mechanical lock. Colin's hope
31:17
Speaker 4: that the Doge people would never find Kevin Simpson, or
31:19
Speaker 4: his key, faded 15 minutes after the Dogemobiles pulled up.
31:24
Speaker 4: when Simpson himself appeared inside the building. Colin descended to
31:29
Speaker 4: find him and three other intercom patrol people in plain
31:32
Speaker 4: clothes just wandering around.
31:35
Speaker 3: D.C.
31:35
Speaker 4: Law banned the security officers who protected the courthouses and
31:39
Speaker 4: agencies and embassies from carrying their weapons home from work.
31:44
Speaker 4: The guns needed to be stored someplace. The only odd
31:48
Speaker 4: fact about the gun room in the basement of the
31:50
Speaker 4: Institute of Peace is is that neither Colin nor anyone
31:53
Speaker 4: who actually worked for the Institute knew the code to
31:56
Speaker 4: open the safe. The 34 9mm Glocks were owned and
32:00
Speaker 4: controlled by Intercon. The Intercon cops headed straight to the basement.
32:05
Speaker 4: Colin had someone call the D.C. police to report trespassers.
32:10
Speaker 3: The D.C.
32:10
Speaker 4: Police didn't show. After the Intercon guards secured their guns,
32:15
Speaker 4: they toured the building like they owned it, refusing either
32:18
Speaker 4: to answer questions or surrender Simpson's key. The Institute, out
32:23
Speaker 4: of the kindness of its heart, was still paying their salaries.
32:27
Speaker 4: They were now an obviously hostile presence, but they didn't
32:30
Speaker 4: really know how to play the new role. At one point,
32:34
Speaker 4: they gathered all together in one place, the portico. Colin
32:37
Speaker 4: seized that moment to throw the portico into lockdown. The
32:41
Speaker 4: portico was self-contained. At the press of a button, Colin
32:45
Speaker 4: turned it into a prison cell. He couldn't forcibly eject
32:48
Speaker 4: a battalion of armed private security guys all by himself.
32:52
Speaker 4: but he could stop them from leaving and others from entering.
32:55
Speaker 4: For the next two hours, he watched the intercom guys
32:58
Speaker 4: on the security cam pushing on doors that wouldn't yield
33:01
Speaker 4: and making phone calls to anyone they thought might rescue them.
33:04
Speaker 4: They were pissed, said Colin. With the guards all trapped,
33:08
Speaker 4: Colin walked outside and removed the mechanical lock cylinder from
33:12
Speaker 4: the side door so no one else could use a
33:14
Speaker 4: key to enter. It's not a fire code violation if
33:17
Speaker 4: you can't get into the building, he explained. That triggered
33:22
Speaker 4: some irate phone calls to his boss, George Moose, whom
33:25
Speaker 4: Colin had safely locked behind roughly ten different doors on
33:28
Speaker 4: the fifth floor of the building. The first call was
33:31
Speaker 4: Intercon's CEO, angrily but more or less politely asking Moose
33:36
Speaker 4: to tell Colin O'Brien that he needed to release his guards.
33:40
Speaker 4: The final, less polite call came from the acting U.S.
33:43
Speaker 4: attorney for the District of Columbia, Ed Martin. At length,
33:47
Speaker 4: Colin unlocked the outside door to the portico. and the
33:50
Speaker 4: security guards exited the building. An hour later, there came
33:54
Speaker 4: a knock on another door.
33:56
Speaker 3: The D.C.
33:57
Speaker 4: Police. Finally, Colin thought, the D.C. police are doing their
34:01
Speaker 4: fucking jobs. Someone opened the door, and in streamed an
34:05
Speaker 4: army of cops, followed by a bunch of intercom guys, and,
34:09
Speaker 4: trotting after them, Nate Cavanaugh, along with more Doge people.
34:14
Speaker 4: They're ordering the D.C. cops around like their own private army,
34:17
Speaker 4: said Colin. I didn't see that coming. I didn't see
34:21
Speaker 4: the police taking sides. It's like the cops showing up
34:24
Speaker 4: at your house and saying, get the fuck out, these
34:26
Speaker 4: people live here now. As the D.C. cops escorted Colin
34:30
Speaker 4: from the building, the senior Intercon guy approached him and
34:34
Speaker 4: said he was sorry that it had gone down this way,
34:37
Speaker 4: but that Doge had given him no choice. They had
34:40
Speaker 4: indeed threatened to pull Intercon's $ 460 million State Department contract.
34:46
Speaker 4: Doge soon selected the next president of the U.S. Institute
34:49
Speaker 4: of Peace. Nate Kavanaugh, who until that moment had exhibited
34:54
Speaker 4: zero interest in or knowledge of the United States government
34:58
Speaker 4: or its foreign policy, who promptly moved the title of
35:01
Speaker 4: the Institute's building into the General Services Administration, swept its
35:05
Speaker 4: money into government accounts, and fired nearly its entire staff.
35:11
Speaker 4: A mere two days, Colin couldn't help but notice, before
35:14
Speaker 4: their health insurance was set to renew. There was intent
35:17
Speaker 4: to hurt these families, he said. It was, Let's fuck
35:21
Speaker 4: 400 families, and then they laughed about it. In his
35:25
Speaker 4: time as a police officer, Colin had seen many different
35:27
Speaker 4: kinds of anger. There was the fury of the drunk
35:30
Speaker 4: NFL defensive lineman who bull rushed him and proved to
35:34
Speaker 4: Colin that his taser worked. That was just the alcohol
35:38
Speaker 4: doing its job and the lineman apologized the next day.
35:42
Speaker 4: There was the anger of victims after the law failed
35:44
Speaker 4: to satisfy their need for vengeance. That felt more like frustration.
35:50
Speaker 4: There was the general hatred of the police, but that
35:53
Speaker 4: didn't really feel personal, and Colin never took it personally.
35:57
Speaker 4: Police rarely meet people on their best day, he said.
36:00
Speaker 4: Whatever was animating these doge people didn't feel like any
36:03
Speaker 4: of those. They weren't reacting to an event, said Colin.
36:07
Speaker 4: They were on a crusade. Their hostility didn't come from fear, loss,
36:12
Speaker 4: and pain. It came from a lack of empathy and
36:16
Speaker 4: an inability to deal with complexity. It was just fundamentally
36:20
Speaker 4: different from anything I had encountered before. But in their
36:23
Speaker 4: attitude to the world around them, they did remind Colin
36:27
Speaker 4: of something that had happened back when he was a cop.
36:30
Speaker 4: He'd responded to a home invasion in a poor black neighborhood.
36:34
Speaker 4: His partner was a younger guy who had come from
36:36
Speaker 4: a well-to-do family. They had arrived at the scene to
36:40
Speaker 4: find a terrified and distraught single mother with two small children.
36:45
Speaker 4: Her next-door neighbor was a drug dealer, she explained. and
36:48
Speaker 4: these disturbed addicts kept mistaking her apartment for his. They
36:52
Speaker 4: kept breaking in to steal drugs. Colin's partner listened to
36:56
Speaker 4: her and then said matter-of-factly, why don't you just move?
37:01
Speaker 4: And Colin thought, this guy has no ability to imagine
37:05
Speaker 4: himself into her situation. Why does that happen, he asked.
37:10
Speaker 4: Because this is someone who has no worldly experience to
37:13
Speaker 4: understand that she can't move. It simply didn't occur to
37:17
Speaker 4: the guy. just as it didn't seriously occur to Nate Kavanaugh,
37:21
Speaker 4: to consider the suffering he was making possible. Once Doge
37:25
Speaker 4: had control of the building, Nate and the other guys
37:27
Speaker 4: went rooting around in the Institute's computers. Elon Musk was
37:31
Speaker 4: given first crack at the fresh material. Then the Doge
37:34
Speaker 4: account on X posted a list of their findings.
37:41
Speaker 3: Each year, the.
37:42
Speaker 5: United States Institute for Peace, UCIB, receives $ 55 million in
37:47
Speaker 5: congressional taxpayer funds. Prior management would sweep excess funds into
37:52
Speaker 5: its private endowment, zero congressional oversight. In the past 10 years,
37:58
Speaker 5: USIP has transferred about $ 13 million to its private endowment,
38:02
Speaker 5: mainly used for private events and travel. USIP contracts, now canceled,
38:07
Speaker 5: include $ 132, 000 to Mohamed Qasem Halimi, an ex-Taliban member who
38:15
Speaker 5: was Afghanistan's former chief of protocol. $ 2, 232, 500 to its outside accountant,
38:24
Speaker 5: who attempted to delete over one terabyte of accounting data,
38:28
Speaker 5: now recovered, after new leadership entered the building. $ 1, 307, 061 to
38:33
Speaker 5: the Al-Tadamun Iraqi League for Youth, $ 675, 000 for private aviation services.
38:48
Speaker 4: The list was both interesting and true, but as it
38:50
Speaker 4: turned out, the bits that were interesting weren't true, and
38:54
Speaker 4: the bits that were true weren't interesting. For instance, the
38:57
Speaker 4: law that had created the Institute required it to move
39:00
Speaker 4: any unused funds into its endowment, and so, by law,
39:04
Speaker 4: for the past 40 years, that's what they'd done. The
39:07
Speaker 4: Institute was also required by law to hire an accountant
39:11
Speaker 4: to audit its books every year, so that it might
39:13
Speaker 4: report its spending to Congress. For those services, it paid
39:18
Speaker 4: roughly $ 380, 000 a year. The amount that Doge accused the
39:23
Speaker 4: Institute of spending on its accountants corresponded not to their
39:26
Speaker 4: accountant's bill, but to a six-year contract for legal services.
39:30
Speaker 4: The actual sum paid to the Al-Tataman Iraqi League for
39:33
Speaker 4: Youth was not more than a million dollars, but less
39:36
Speaker 4: than half that. The money had funded a single project, which,
39:40
Speaker 4: because it had such obvious value, had been explicitly approved
39:44
Speaker 4: by Marco Rubio. Essentially, it was an attempt to reduce extremism,
39:49
Speaker 4: and anti-American terrorism. The collapse of the Bashar al-Assad government
39:54
Speaker 4: in December 2024 had stranded thousands of Iraqis, mostly women
39:59
Speaker 4: and children, in a camp in Syria's northeast. The Islamic
40:03
Speaker 4: State had gained some traction inside the camp, which back
40:07
Speaker 4: in 2019 had held 30,000 refugees, and the godforsaken place
40:12
Speaker 4: had become a breeding ground for future ISIS fighters. The
40:16
Speaker 4: institute's local Iraqi staff members of the League for Youth,
40:20
Speaker 4: had been working successfully with the U.S. State Department to
40:24
Speaker 4: persuade village elders in Iraq to accept the refugees in
40:27
Speaker 4: their villages and provide them a path to a peaceful life.
40:31
Speaker 4: Before they accepted anyone, the elders demanded evidence that they
40:35
Speaker 4: have no connection to ISIS or any other terrorist group.
40:39
Speaker 4: The Institute's staff arranged small conferences to walk the elders
40:42
Speaker 4: through the personal histories of the refugees. The Institute footed
40:47
Speaker 4: the bill for the venues, plus the tea and coffee,
40:49
Speaker 4: and occasionally lunch. God knows the efficiency of that particular effort.
40:55
Speaker 4: No one inside Doge seems ever to have bothered to ask.
40:58
Speaker 4: Had they dug a bit, they could have found evidence
41:00
Speaker 4: that similar sorts of programs had been wildly efficient. For example,
41:05
Speaker 4: the work the Institute of Peace had done in 2007
41:07
Speaker 4: in Iraq, in an area south of Baghdad, that had
41:11
Speaker 4: become known as the Triangle of Death. A region of
41:14
Speaker 4: a million people was riven by tribal warfare and and
41:17
Speaker 4: laced with insurgents, who had killed 54 members of the U.S.
41:22
Speaker 4: Army's 10th Mountain Division and wounded hundreds more. At the
41:26
Speaker 4: behest of the Army, the Institute had brought together 30
41:29
Speaker 4: elders of warring tribes. The Institute's structure, both an instrument
41:34
Speaker 4: of the United States and removed from its political control,
41:38
Speaker 4: created a useful ambiguity. It allowed it to facilitate conversations
41:43
Speaker 4: that official government authorities could not. Years earlier, a scholar
41:48
Speaker 4: named I. William Zartman, working on an Institute of Peace grant,
41:53
Speaker 4: had framed the idea of the hurting stalemate. His big
41:58
Speaker 4: point was the success of a peace initiative might have
42:01
Speaker 4: less to do with the specifics of the proposal than
42:04
Speaker 4: with its timing. So long as neither side saw any
42:08
Speaker 4: value in moving away from their anger and their violence,
42:11
Speaker 4: there wasn't much you could say or do to stop
42:13
Speaker 4: them fighting. But when both sensed that anger and violence
42:17
Speaker 4: weren't going to get them what they wanted, when the
42:19
Speaker 4: status quo became sufficiently painful, they became vulnerable to peace.
42:25
Speaker 4: The trick was to have trusted people on the ground
42:27
Speaker 4: who could spot these moments and seize them. The Institute's
42:31
Speaker 4: staff had started by handing out questionnaires for the warring
42:35
Speaker 4: Iraqi tribal leaders to fill out anonymously. Each made his
42:39
Speaker 4: list of grievances. The lists were then passed around for
42:42
Speaker 4: everyone to read. and something happened. The collective realization of
42:48
Speaker 4: how they'd all endured the same terrible losses took just
42:52
Speaker 4: enough steam out of the room that they began to talk.
42:56
Speaker 4: The talks led to peace that has lasted to this day.
43:00
Speaker 4: Inside the Institute's servers, the Doge guys might have found
43:04
Speaker 4: evidence of this triumph. For example, the letter of thanks
43:08
Speaker 4: from General David Petraeus. In the Pentagon's view, the Institute
43:13
Speaker 4: had saved both American lives and taxpayer dollars. Before the
43:17
Speaker 4: Institute became involved, the U.S. Army had been spending $ 150
43:21
Speaker 4: million a month to pacify the Triangle of Death. The
43:26
Speaker 4: peace talks cost a million dollars. The savings they yielded
43:31
Speaker 4: were likely greater than the entire cost up to that
43:33
Speaker 4: point of the Institute of Peace. The most disturbing item
43:37
Speaker 4: on Doge's list was the $ 132, 000 sent to Mohamed Qasem Halimi.
43:44
Speaker 4: In the 1990s, Halimi, a religious scholar, had indeed worked
43:48
Speaker 4: in the Taliban-run government as a liaison to foreign diplomats.
43:53
Speaker 4: It was the only good job I could find, he
43:55
Speaker 4: explained to ProPublica. But after the 9-11 attack and the
43:59
Speaker 4: U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in December 2001, he'd quit the
44:04
Speaker 4: Taliban and served American interests. the Taliban had tried three
44:09
Speaker 4: times to assassinate him.
44:11
Speaker 2: The U.S.
44:12
Speaker 4: Institute of Peace had paid him $ 10, 000 a month for
44:15
Speaker 4: a variety of services. Halimi had fled the country with
44:19
Speaker 4: the U.S. military, but he maintained a network that reported
44:22
Speaker 4: to him on the Taliban's treatment of women, information that
44:25
Speaker 4: the U.S. State Department was unable to gather any other way.
44:29
Speaker 4: He had earned the trust of religious scholars across the region,
44:32
Speaker 4: so that he might point out when the Taliban's behavior
44:35
Speaker 4: violated the Koran. and they, in turn, might pressure the
44:39
Speaker 4: Taliban to modify its behavior. In Trump's first term, Halimi
44:44
Speaker 4: had actually prepped U.S. negotiators for their talks with the Taliban.
44:48
Speaker 4: He wasn't exactly an American spy, but he was certainly
44:52
Speaker 4: an ally. By outing him on social media, Musk had
44:56
Speaker 4: essentially exposed a U.S. asset to enemies of America. After
45:01
Speaker 4: the tweet, the Taliban rounded up Halimi's relatives still living
45:04
Speaker 4: in Afghanistan and for beatings and imprisonment. So much of
45:09
Speaker 4: what Nate Kavanaugh and his Doge pals claimed was obviously outrageous.
45:14
Speaker 4: But what especially infuriated Colin O'Brien was the final item
45:17
Speaker 4: on their list, $ 675, 000 for private aviation services. When the
45:25
Speaker 4: United States finished pulling out of Afghanistan in the summer
45:27
Speaker 4: of 2021, it imperiled the lives of every Afghan who
45:32
Speaker 4: had helped, including the Institute of Peace's local staff and
45:36
Speaker 4: their families. The male staffers assumed that if they fell
45:40
Speaker 4: into the Taliban's hands, they'd be summarily executed. The female
45:45
Speaker 4: staffers expected to be enslaved and packed off into forced marriages.
45:50
Speaker 4: It fell to the Institute's security chief to extract what
45:53
Speaker 4: in the end amounted to 256 people. That was the
45:58
Speaker 4: only private aviation service the Institute had engaged. It was
46:03
Speaker 4: one fucking flight, said Colin. A 737 from Kabul to Qatar.
46:08
Speaker 4: To get them out before they were taken by the Taliban.
46:12
Speaker 4: You said we have private jets. Fuck you. We had
46:16
Speaker 4: a charter plane to rescue our people from a war zone.
46:19
Speaker 4: He took pride in that exercise. Their final two Afghan employees,
46:24
Speaker 4: who had been working in a remote part of the
46:26
Speaker 4: country and were unable to make the flight, Colin had
46:29
Speaker 4: arranged to be smuggled across the Pakistan border and kept
46:32
Speaker 4: hidden from the Pakistani government for three years before getting
46:36
Speaker 4: them to safety. A few weeks after the barrage of
46:40
Speaker 4: distortions and deceptions, Musk gathered his team on Fox News.
46:45
Speaker 4: The idea was to use host Jesse Waters' open sympathy
46:49
Speaker 4: for what they had done to reveal to the American
46:51
Speaker 4: people the specific waste and fraud they'd uncovered. As Exhibit A,
46:56
Speaker 4: Musk introduced Nate Kavanaugh and his work inside the U.S.
47:00
Speaker 4: Institute of Peace.
47:04
Speaker 6: What has been the biggest resistance? Is there one agency?
47:09
Speaker 2: Is there one department that when you guys walk in,
47:13
Speaker 2: they all start fighting you, start hiding things?
47:17
Speaker 3: Wait, I thought you weren't going to talk.
47:21
Speaker 5: I'm sorry.
47:22
Speaker 3: But I guess you can answer that question.
47:25
Speaker 6: Sure.
47:25
Speaker 3: I mean, yes, we've certainly had some battles.
47:29
Speaker 4: Battles?
47:29
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah.
47:31
Speaker 5: I mean, who should talk about Yusuf?
47:34
Speaker 6: Oh, Nate.
47:35
Speaker 3: Okay.
47:37
Speaker 6: The small agency called the United States Institute of Peace
47:41
Speaker 6: is definitely the agency we had the most fight at.
47:44
Speaker 6: We actually went into the agency and found that they
47:46
Speaker 6: had loaded guns inside of their headquarters. Institute for Peace.
47:50
Speaker 2: I mean, any given company, any given organizational name is
47:53
Speaker 2: going to kind of be the opposite of the title.
47:55
Speaker 5: Right.
47:56
Speaker 6: Yeah. Yeah, so it was by far the least peaceful
47:59
Speaker 6: agency that we've worked with, ironically. Of course. Additionally, we
48:03
Speaker 6: found that they were spending money on things like private jets,
48:06
Speaker 6: and they even had a $ 130, 000 contract with a former
48:09
Speaker 6: member of the Taliban. This is real. We don't encounter
48:12
Speaker 6: that at most agencies.
48:15
Speaker 4: That is how Colin O'Brien had lost the building. He'd
48:19
Speaker 4: expected to lose it, but still he was surprised by
48:22
Speaker 4: how it had gone down. It really was true that
48:26
Speaker 4: in security work, you could never war game out what
48:28
Speaker 4: eventually happened. He had lost the building to its own
48:32
Speaker 4: private security company after it was blackmailed by the Trump administration.
48:37
Speaker 4: To the D.C. police, which for some reason were now
48:41
Speaker 4: acting as a private security force for these random kids
48:44
Speaker 4: Elon Musk had empowered. To the FBI, which had somehow
48:48
Speaker 4: reconfigured itself as yet another battalion in the White House's army.
48:53
Speaker 4: Thrust into this new environment, These people and institutions had
48:57
Speaker 4: done what they needed to do to survive. All that
49:00
Speaker 4: now mattered was power. Who had physical control of a building?
49:06
Speaker 4: Who had the guns? An institution dedicated to the idea
49:10
Speaker 4: that conflict did not need to lead to violence now
49:13
Speaker 4: found itself in a society in which might meant right.
49:18
Speaker 4: Of course it had to die. Legally, the battle wasn't
49:22
Speaker 4: completely over. In mid-May, U.S. District Judge Beryl A. Howell
49:27
Speaker 4: of Washington issued a scathing ruling that required the Trump
49:32
Speaker 4: administration to vacate the building. Colin had the brief pleasure
49:36
Speaker 4: of rolling in with an army of off-duty Baltimore cops
49:39
Speaker 4: and old pals of his, and taking it back. And
49:43
Speaker 4: finding that the Institute's flags had been stolen, its logo
49:47
Speaker 4: had been ripped from the wall, and that the Doge
49:49
Speaker 4: Boys had left behind a pile of beer bottles and
49:52
Speaker 4: cheap weed. A month later, a panel of Trump-appointed judges
49:57
Speaker 4: on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit
50:00
Speaker 4: issued a stay, and the building was returned to the
50:03
Speaker 4: Trump administration. And in December 2025, it was renamed Donald J.
50:06
Speaker 4: Trump United States Institute of Peace.