Speaker 1: You remember when Trump came in and he thought the generals
Speaker 1: in the Pentagon were making millions of dollars. They told
Speaker 1: him like, they make one hundred and fifty thousand dollars
Speaker 1: a year, and He's like, what, why would he do that?
Speaker 2: I'm John Cipher and I'm Jerry O'Shea.
Speaker 1: I served in the CIA's Clandestine Service for twenty eight years,
Speaker 1: living undercover all around the.
Speaker 2: World, and in my thirty three years with the CIA,
Speaker 2: I served in Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East.
Speaker 1: Although we don't usually look at it this way, we
Speaker 1: created conspiracies.
Speaker 2: In our operations. We got people to believe things that
Speaker 2: weren't true.
Speaker 1: Now we're investigating the conspiracy theories we see in the
Speaker 1: news almost every day.
Speaker 2: Will break them down for you to determine whether they
Speaker 2: could be real or whether we're being manipulated.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Mission Implausible, Adam.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of discussion about the deep state and
Speaker 2: what it is and so forth. Why don't you now
Speaker 2: that you know John and I, why don't you tell
Speaker 2: us just how impressed you are with the deep state
Speaker 2: and you know who were in it?
Speaker 3: Sure?
Speaker 4: I mean, I've gotten to know two guys in particular.
Speaker 4: I mean, here's how it works. You have a sort
Speaker 4: of questionable background, You're somehow attracted to this large bureaucracy,
Speaker 4: and apparently if you stick around long enough, you keep
Speaker 4: getting promotions, and if anyone's like, well, did you accomplish anything,
Speaker 4: you get to say, oh, yes, but it's top secret.
Speaker 4: I can't really tell you the specific things I accomplished.
Speaker 4: So that's my impression of the deep state.
Speaker 2: Dude, you nailed it.
Speaker 4: I can't argue with You're there pretty accurate.
Speaker 2: The deep state. It is sort of weird though, because
Speaker 2: on the one hand people would portray us as incompetent
Speaker 2: bureaucradits and on the other were like capable of anything.
Speaker 2: Which is it?
Speaker 1: I'll just say I think a lot of it came
Speaker 1: because people who don't have an experience in government or
Speaker 1: in their security. Things came in and then they just
Speaker 1: wondered when they would say things at a whim, whether
Speaker 1: they made sense or not, didn't just happen. And so
Speaker 1: they said to themselves, well, there must be people there
Speaker 1: that are purposely trying to stall and stop the thing
Speaker 1: that I'm saying should happen. Now, there is a large
Speaker 1: group of professionals in Washington who have laws and regulations
Speaker 1: and policies that have been built up over years, and
Speaker 1: so it isn't possible when someone just says do this
Speaker 1: for it to happen until it's gone through lawyers and
Speaker 1: just make sure it's legal and make sure you know
Speaker 1: everybody has input into whether it makes sense, because different
Speaker 1: organizations and different partner people in the political process have
Speaker 1: different opinions on things.
Speaker 2: Teach state people are people who follow the rules and
Speaker 2: know what the rules are. And the rules were given
Speaker 2: to us by Congress, right, and they're complicate called laws. Laws. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so we follow the laws and then we're damned because
Speaker 2: we can't ignore the laws.
Speaker 4: If there's a sort of term like bureaucrat or deep state,
Speaker 4: or jew or financial elite or whatever it is, a
Speaker 4: lot of these are predicated on the idea that they're
Speaker 4: all thinking the exact same thing. They're all aligned and unified,
Speaker 4: and they're goals and be there like actively working together.
Speaker 4: And if you happen to be a member, like I'm
Speaker 4: a member of the Jews, I'm a member of the
Speaker 4: media elite. I think I'm now officially a member of
Speaker 4: the intelligence community, right because I have a podcasts with
Speaker 4: you guys, you realize really quickly, like the two of
Speaker 4: you don't agree on a lot of stuff. The idea
Speaker 4: of there being this not even the same title, but
Speaker 4: sort of this a similar kind of title we must
Speaker 4: all be working together is I mean it just as absurd.
Speaker 4: I mean that seems to be the cornerstone of a
Speaker 4: lot of conspiracy.
Speaker 1: There's sort of assumption, like, you know, if you're a
Speaker 1: Republican president and you want certain policies that miss mean
Speaker 1: the whole deep Stater is all Democrats right and want
Speaker 1: of democrats in they must be all Whereas essentially there's
Speaker 1: Democrats and Republicans inside all of this deep state. So
Speaker 1: the notion that somehow we would all agree on whatever
Speaker 1: this political thing is. The thing we agree on is
Speaker 1: on the mission of our organization. Our mission of organization was,
Speaker 1: you know, to keep Americans safe, but we didn't agree
Speaker 1: on the policy of how to do that.
Speaker 4: From things you've told me, it CIA seems filled with
Speaker 4: a lot of different pretty left wing people, right wing people,
Speaker 4: pretty centrist people, pretty a political people right.
Speaker 2: And today we're going to be taking a look at
Speaker 2: conspiracy theories around what some people term is the deep
Speaker 2: state and how conspiracies around that have become part and
Speaker 2: parcel of our political culture and central to it.
Speaker 1: Our guest is Mark Zaid, a well known lawyer in Washington.
Speaker 1: He's an attorney. He's focused on national security issues. He
Speaker 1: deals with law, whistleblowers, freedom of speech issues, and he
Speaker 1: has some connections to Jerry and I. He went to
Speaker 1: the University of Rochester and Jerry's a Rochester native. So Mark,
Speaker 1: it's really great to have you here. Thanks for being
Speaker 1: with us.
Speaker 3: Oh, it is a pleasure to be with both of
Speaker 3: you guys.
Speaker 1: So let me ask the first question. At least these
Speaker 1: days and some of the things that I see you
Speaker 1: getting involved with. You're a lawyer, You're preparing cases, you
Speaker 1: might even have to go to court, and in being
Speaker 1: a lawyer is about, you know, following the facts where
Speaker 1: they may lead. But so much of what we're seeing
Speaker 1: nowadays is politicians sort of spewing and things that just
Speaker 1: don't have any relation to reality. And how do you
Speaker 1: square those things? How do you defend people when the
Speaker 1: chargers are just sort of crazy?
Speaker 3: Yeah, it is always difficult in that sphere, and anyone
Speaker 3: who has spent a good amount of time in DC
Speaker 3: will tell you how things have changed. I've been here
Speaker 3: now for thirty years, and it is a very different
Speaker 3: world in DC in politics than it has ever been before,
Speaker 3: which has fed a lot of the conspiracy theories. Now
Speaker 3: some of it is because of ideology and jerry mandering.
Speaker 3: There's a lot more divisiveness in the country in the
Speaker 3: political parties because so many seats in politics are safe,
Speaker 3: which has led politicians to be more extreme because they
Speaker 3: get elected. Now that is really fundamentally important because you
Speaker 3: talk to the sort of old timers who were in office,
Speaker 3: and Democrats and Republican members of Congress used to share
Speaker 3: apartments together because it was expensive to have residents here
Speaker 3: in DC. It was also harder to go back home,
Speaker 3: more expensive to go back home out of the area,
Speaker 3: and you didn't have communication capabilities the way we do now.
Speaker 3: So the Internet and the minimization of transportation costs also
Speaker 3: has actually fed into these problems that we have today.
Speaker 2: I want to come back to you being an insider.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So the first thing I have to smirk it
Speaker 3: what every time I'm called an insider, and in some
Speaker 3: ways i am, But I have never served in the
Speaker 3: federal government at all, and I have always represented individuals
Speaker 3: I'll say, against the US government, you know, representing folks
Speaker 3: like you guys when you're inside the agency and you've
Speaker 3: got a security clearance issue, a personnel dispute, an IG complaint,
Speaker 3: you're being investigated by security, whatever it might be. Conspiracy
Speaker 3: theories actually got me into the world that I work
Speaker 3: in today, But it was particularly the Kennedy assassination that
Speaker 3: brought me and interested me in dealing with the CIA
Speaker 3: and accountability. But because I've represented so many people, one
Speaker 3: hundreds thousands over the thirty years, yeah, I guess I'm
Speaker 3: part of the deep state, as President Trump would call it, well,
Speaker 3: even though that's what I fight against every day, and
Speaker 3: I'd say he's more of the deep state than what
Speaker 3: he says.
Speaker 2: The question is often cult or conspiracy. Is this like
Speaker 2: they're in a cult and this is now what they
Speaker 2: believe or is it a conspiracy and like they know
Speaker 2: it's not true.
Speaker 3: It is a fair question, you pose. There's no doubt
Speaker 3: that there are some who completely know they're spewing crap
Speaker 3: and what they're saying is absolutely false, and they're just
Speaker 3: doing it for whatever reason to get a rise out
Speaker 3: of someone to fuel fundraising, to gain strength in powers
Speaker 3: and number, whatever it might be. And then there are
Speaker 3: the others, which are probably frankly the majority, generalizing, ignorant, naive,
Speaker 3: and fall in line with what they believe. When I
Speaker 3: was a freshman in college, I took a course on
Speaker 3: the Holocaust. Their maternal grandfather was a rabbi for the
Speaker 3: US Army liberated Dacau. We had to do a paper
Speaker 3: and the paper was why Germany And thirty five years
Speaker 3: ago I had a lot of trouble understanding how this unbelievable, intellectual, cultural,
Speaker 3: westernized country, pinnacle of the pinnacle of Europe became what
Speaker 3: Hitler turned it into. And obviously it's an extreme that
Speaker 3: we thankfully don't have here. But you look at the
Speaker 3: early days of national socialism in the late nineteen twenties,
Speaker 3: in the early thirties, and I think we have I
Speaker 3: do at least a much better sense of how Germany
Speaker 3: became what it became in watching how Maga and the
Speaker 3: ultimate Trump supporters have become what they are. You know, hey,
Speaker 3: Jewish space lacers. You know Marjorie Taylor Green where she
Speaker 3: Trump's vice president. Would I have a concern for my
Speaker 3: well being as a Jew, as a lawyer, as an
Speaker 3: opponent to their beliefs.
Speaker 1: Oh, hell yeah, let's take a break.
Speaker 3: We'll be right back.
Speaker 2: And Rebecca, So, I want.
Speaker 1: To talk a little bit about one of the conspiracies
Speaker 1: that seems to be bandied about around a lot nowadays
Speaker 1: is about the deep state. And so I know you've
Speaker 1: defended whistleblowers for years. Are these people insiders that are
Speaker 1: telling us things that we should be worried about with
Speaker 1: our national security the agencies?
Speaker 3: So my understanding of what deep states somebody had said
Speaker 3: that term to me fifteen years ago. You know, you
Speaker 3: got to be careful about the deep state. You know,
Speaker 3: that brings to my mind Eisenhower's statement at the end
Speaker 3: of his tenure about the military industrial complex taking over
Speaker 3: the US government, or thinking about the Gestapo in Nazi Germany,
Speaker 3: who are sort of the secret government doing what they
Speaker 3: want without any regard to to the rule of law
Speaker 3: or the policies and procedures that were in play at
Speaker 3: the time. And somehow that term deep state has been
Speaker 3: twisted by former President Trump and his supporters to mean
Speaker 3: essentially anyone who challenges their authority, even lawfully. You know,
Speaker 3: the whole notion of representing whistleblowers and the existence of them.
Speaker 3: It is still looked at as a somewhat bad word
Speaker 3: and it is not anything I would ever wish upon
Speaker 3: someone to be a whistleblower. It is not a fun thing.
Speaker 3: You do not generally gain any rewards from it. There
Speaker 3: are certain types of cases where you can make a
Speaker 3: lot of money as being a whistleblower, but those are
Speaker 3: called keytam cases, and those are generally basically revealing fraud
Speaker 3: upon the US government by a contractor. That entity is
Speaker 3: fined and the whistleblower gets a percentage of that fine,
Speaker 3: which could be tens of millions of dollars. But it's
Speaker 3: been twisted now of course, the fake whistleblower. And again
Speaker 3: because I don't want to just beat up on President Trump,
Speaker 3: although there's so much to beat up on. It's both sides.
Speaker 2: The term deep state for me, I struggle with it
Speaker 2: strikes me as a meaningless, chivalous that lends itself to
Speaker 2: conspiracy theories. The deep state is made up of like
Speaker 2: tens of thousands of people who will mostly live in
Speaker 2: Northern Virginia, who are your neighbors who have struggled with
Speaker 2: mortgages and with their kids and have rules and regulations,
Speaker 2: and they're not some coherent group that like secretly rules things.
Speaker 2: And so when that term is used, it's like the Illuminati.
Speaker 2: It means everything and nothing. And let me ask you
Speaker 2: to come in on one just instance in how this
Speaker 2: would actually could work in the real world, which I
Speaker 2: don't think it does. So President Trump a while ago
Speaker 2: retweeted that bin Laden was still alive and that President
Speaker 2: Obama had murdered her assas needed all the people who
Speaker 2: would supposedly claim to have killed him on Sealed Team six.
Speaker 2: In the world that we live in, there would have
Speaker 2: to be a deep state that would I mean, think
Speaker 2: about this. There's the widows who would all have to
Speaker 2: be quiet. The people who carried this out would all
Speaker 2: have to be like incredibly loyal after all these years
Speaker 2: still to Obama, and where's Osama bin Lad and if
Speaker 2: he still kept living? And yet an idea like this
Speaker 2: can be put out and explained with two words deep state.
Speaker 2: How would you define deep state? And how do you
Speaker 2: see it defined?
Speaker 3: Yeah, So, when I first came to d C, I
Speaker 3: spent then and I still do now a lot of
Speaker 3: time on the Kennedy assassination. I was a sort of
Speaker 3: up and coming youngster as a twenty five year old
Speaker 3: inheriting the mantle from the first generation who were alive
Speaker 3: when Kennedy was killed, and I realized as a result
Speaker 3: of all that there is no way that so many
Speaker 3: of the conspiracy theories that people believe could be true,
Speaker 3: because there's no way the CIA and some of the
Speaker 3: other agencies could have pulled it off. And if they
Speaker 3: could have pulled it off, there's no way in hell
Speaker 3: they could have kept it secret for so many years.
Speaker 3: The system just doesn't work that way. Are there really
Speaker 3: really cool secrets that are still secret? Yeah? You know,
Speaker 3: the three of us know that is absolutely true. We
Speaker 3: may know the same cool ones, but for the most part,
Speaker 3: it's very seldom that something so momentous has so few
Speaker 3: people that every one of them could keep something secret.
Speaker 3: One of my favorite conspiracy theories has always been the
Speaker 3: Lockness Monster, so much so that when I lived in
Speaker 3: England in the late eighties working for the British government,
Speaker 3: I went up to Lockness in Inverness, Scotland and spent
Speaker 3: hours walking around the lock just looking for NeSSI you know,
Speaker 3: turned out to be if you believe that, you know
Speaker 3: decades later where these guys came forward and said that
Speaker 3: they concocted the whole thing. They made this like paper
Speaker 3: mache dinosaur and took photos of it. And then there
Speaker 3: was another guy. He had a hippopotamus leg, real hippopoonymous
Speaker 3: leg umbrella stand that he would take and walk around
Speaker 3: the lock and put footprint in the sand that people
Speaker 3: would see. Those were theories or conspiracies that were created
Speaker 3: by a small number of people, one to three people,
Speaker 3: and usually within the same family, so that they could
Speaker 3: keep those secrets until someone's on their deathbed and set
Speaker 3: finally says what happened the stuff that we're talking about
Speaker 3: with the deep state, as you described this vast military
Speaker 3: industrial complex where everybody's involved. It's not the way our
Speaker 3: government works. Our government is so bureaucratic. The government is
Speaker 3: like an ocean liner or a freight train. It takes
Speaker 3: a mile to stop. People think the federal government is
Speaker 3: like this one monolithic entity, whereas you could have a
Speaker 3: war between one agency versus the other agency. They're not
Speaker 3: working together at all. I was them with one case,
Speaker 3: a very senior Department of Defense official within the IC agencies,
Speaker 3: all sorts of wrongdoing, all sorts of personality problems, that
Speaker 3: people didn't like this person, and there was an IG
Speaker 3: report that even found a whole bunch of stuff. So
Speaker 3: what was done. The person's not fired, they were just
Speaker 3: moved to another position.
Speaker 1: We'd call that passing the trash.
Speaker 2: It's really hard to fire someone.
Speaker 3: I have a lot of clients who might disagree with
Speaker 3: that because they got fired.
Speaker 2: But yeah, rule you know, we could talk about someone.
Speaker 2: I've tried to get some of those people fired.
Speaker 3: Hey, sometimes I got to tell you. Sometimes I agree
Speaker 3: that that my clients should be I will do my
Speaker 3: best not to have them fired. But I'm behind the
Speaker 3: scenes going, oh man, I can't I get even hired
Speaker 3: in the first place.
Speaker 2: I just went you up in and ask for some
Speaker 2: free legal advice. So what is a conspiracy legally? If
Speaker 2: what you've outlined, If someone knows something is false, a
Speaker 2: group of people know it's false, and yet they put
Speaker 2: it out there to trick other people to make money,
Speaker 2: is that a conspiracy legally?
Speaker 3: So, a conspiracy is generally two or more people who
Speaker 3: conspire to engage in an overt conduct. Give an example,
Speaker 3: and this is what's frustrating too, the recent Georgia indictment
Speaker 3: which has rico charges. You know, it was written to
Speaker 3: go after organized crime predominantly, and the notion is you
Speaker 3: can have individuals engaged in lawful conduct, but it's part
Speaker 3: of an unlawful conspiracy. And there are a lot of
Speaker 3: the paragraphs set forth in this complaint of which the
Speaker 3: conduct is completely lawful, protected by First Amendment, but it
Speaker 3: was in furtherance of an unlawful conspiracy. And you can
Speaker 3: see you just look at Twitter or you look at
Speaker 3: any right wing media will they'll seize upon the lawful
Speaker 3: conduct in the one paragraph to say, oh, now the
Speaker 3: Democrats are criminalizing the First Amendment. And no it's not.
Speaker 3: This is an established legal precedent to take lawful conduct,
Speaker 3: but to carve it into in furtherance of an unlawful conspiracy.
Speaker 3: So if you think of money laundering, I just finished
Speaker 3: watching Breaking Bad. But you know the notion of you
Speaker 3: earn all this money by cooking meth that's illegal. You
Speaker 3: take the unlawful money, and you lawfully purchase a car
Speaker 3: wash that's lawful. Running the car wash completely lawful. When
Speaker 3: the government finds out that you earned that money from
Speaker 3: a criminal enterprise. They can seize the lawful car wash
Speaker 3: because the lawful transaction relates to the unlawful conspiracy.
Speaker 2: Thanks Mark, it's always great talking to a fellow upstate
Speaker 2: New Yorker and wishing you good things in future endeavors.
Speaker 2: Now we'd like to welcome back Adam Davidson.
Speaker 4: Can't keep me away. But first we'll take a quick
Speaker 4: break and then I'm going to have a bunch of questions.
Speaker 4: Welcome back to Mission implausible. So John and Jerry, we
Speaker 4: just learned all about the deep state. I mean, you
Speaker 4: are exactly the deep state, and.
Speaker 2: It has a great dental plan. I want to get
Speaker 2: that out there.
Speaker 4: So one thing that I find so interesting about this
Speaker 4: particular conspiracy theory is that there is a bureaucracy. There
Speaker 4: are people who work in government. I mean, it's a
Speaker 4: kind of conspiracy that's like taking a thing that exists
Speaker 4: and giving it more malign intent and coordination than it
Speaker 4: really has. But it's not inventing a thing that doesn't exist.
Speaker 1: What's interesting is it's actually a very clever conspiracy. It's
Speaker 1: weaponizing sort of concerns that what people have. So if
Speaker 1: you're a leader like former President Trump was for example,
Speaker 1: and you can't just dictate and get your ways. You
Speaker 1: can call it a deep state, but what what I
Speaker 1: would call is sort of an existing professional bureaucracy of
Speaker 1: public servants who are in phibited by laws, regulations, norms,
Speaker 1: professional standards, making sure that everything is written down, everything
Speaker 1: is put through processes to get done. You can't just
Speaker 1: say invade Syria and expect that the next day are
Speaker 1: people going to invade serious So I can imagine that
Speaker 1: if you came in from the outside you don't understand
Speaker 1: how government works, you say, well, they're not doing exactly
Speaker 1: what I said. They think different than me, Their political
Speaker 1: enemies are trying to stop what I'm trying to accomplish.
Speaker 1: Whereas those of us who worked in that space, we
Speaker 1: understand that, No, there's a lot of things. Over time,
Speaker 1: civil service rules, regulations have been put in place to
Speaker 1: make sure that when the government takes action, it's done openly.
Speaker 1: It's done with input from the necessary bureaucracies and other agencies,
Speaker 1: but it's not done for nefarious or political reasons, which
Speaker 1: is what the term deep state suggests. The US government
Speaker 1: is huge, These agencies are complex and complicated. It's so
Speaker 1: complex you can't get your head around it. It's easier
Speaker 1: just to say, oh, they're evil, or they're working against
Speaker 1: my president or what have you.
Speaker 2: And it's dehumanizing as well. It's sort of along the
Speaker 2: lines of referring to the honorable opposition as radical Marxist
Speaker 2: Democrats or fascist Republicans or Rhinos, when these are just
Speaker 2: people that view things differently and do things differently.
Speaker 4: I will say the friends of mine who've been sort
Speaker 4: of permanent civil servants, actually I find it almost annoying
Speaker 4: when they work for an administration that I know politically
Speaker 4: they're not aligned with how obsessively nonpartisan they are. I
Speaker 4: can think of one administration fairly recently.
Speaker 2: It's not the current one, but it was.
Speaker 4: Recent where I actually felt like we needed a little
Speaker 4: more deep state, We needed more of that civil servant
Speaker 4: to say this isn't okay.
Speaker 2: Right. We take an oath on the Constitution, not to
Speaker 2: a particular president or political party, and it's not like
Speaker 2: we want to have a dictator, like even for a day.
Speaker 4: What is it like when you're we don't even have
Speaker 4: to get into what your politics are, but like, have
Speaker 4: you had to support or missions that you weren't personally
Speaker 4: totally sold.
Speaker 2: On, you know, Iraq War weapons of man's destruction. I
Speaker 2: have to admit that I changed my mind on that.
Speaker 2: I believed at the time, deeply, truly that we had
Speaker 2: the evidence on there.
Speaker 1: Also with the CIA, it's a weird institution, and we
Speaker 1: take pride in sometimes actually telling administrations and things they
Speaker 1: don't want to hear. And it's our job to come
Speaker 1: in and say, well, sir, that's just actually not how
Speaker 1: it's playing out here. Your plan is not likely to
Speaker 1: work for ab and C reasons. And it allows young
Speaker 1: officers to go into very senior places in the government
Speaker 1: and tell people that we think that they're wrong or
Speaker 1: that we have information that goes against what they would
Speaker 1: like it to be.
Speaker 2: Serving an administration, Republican or Democrat is more than just
Speaker 2: the executive bridge more than just the president. Right, we
Speaker 2: have congressional overlords. They control our budget, and when we
Speaker 2: deal with them off the front pages of the newspaper,
Speaker 2: when we sit down and we brief congressmen and senators
Speaker 2: in our states, or we go up to the hill
Speaker 2: and we testify in confidential circumstances, most of them are
Speaker 2: pretty reasonable folks, and they get along better than you
Speaker 2: might expect Republicans and Democrats certainly on things like national security.
Speaker 4: And as you're doing analysis, and this is true for
Speaker 4: journalism or deep state members like yourself. If you're analyzing
Speaker 4: I don't know the fighting strength of Ukraine or something
Speaker 4: like that, you might have your preferences or whatever, but
Speaker 4: if you're really dialed into like the latest talking points
Speaker 4: on whatever cable news channel, it messes you up. You
Speaker 4: get your analysis is wrong.
Speaker 2: So there's the term deep state. And if you think
Speaker 2: about it, what's a shallow state? You know? And we've
Speaker 2: served in places with shallow states that don't have deep roots,
Speaker 2: where there isn't a rule of law, and where you
Speaker 2: know a leader just by whim can change things. And
Speaker 2: we don't want to live in those places. I mean,
Speaker 2: who wants to live in Somalia or Afghanistan where you
Speaker 2: know the next dictator can commit and change everything, and
Speaker 2: where civil servants will say anything and do anything, take
Speaker 2: any bribe to just make it to the next paycheck.
Speaker 2: You know, the deep state, where things are deeply anchored
Speaker 2: in law and order and culture.
Speaker 1: That's what we want and expertise, right, So the notions
Speaker 1: of a new leader comes in everybody leaves, the intelligence officers,
Speaker 1: the diplomats, the military people, everybody leaves because the leader
Speaker 1: has his own people, and that goes back and forth
Speaker 1: and back and forth. What we've created in this country
Speaker 1: over hundreds of years is, you know, a civil service,
Speaker 1: a public service that has expertise that's meant to be
Speaker 1: there to help inform politicians when they do come in.
Speaker 1: And so we've decided that the world is complex and
Speaker 1: we need people who are experts and work on issues
Speaker 1: for decades rather than just leaving every couple of years.
Speaker 2: I remember in Okay it was it was a rock.
Speaker 2: I can say this but this because it's over. But
Speaker 2: one of the heads of their law enforcement agencies was
Speaker 2: a failed doctor who was only allowed to work on
Speaker 2: dead people. He was only allowed to do autopsies, and
Speaker 2: he was related to the right person. And so here's
Speaker 2: a guy who failed medical school, who has no background
Speaker 2: in law enforcement is now running basically one of their
Speaker 2: versions of the FBI. Do you really want this guy
Speaker 2: running the FBI who doesn't know anything and it is
Speaker 2: probably only going to be there for two years. You know,
Speaker 2: that's a shallow state, and that's you know, doesn't serve
Speaker 2: the Iraqi people, well doesn't serve us.
Speaker 1: Well, now, Betty was good at stealing money for his relative,
Speaker 1: you bet.
Speaker 2: You he was. He is two years at the troth
Speaker 2: and he was going to take it right.
Speaker 4: And I'm not going to sit here and have the
Speaker 4: Iraqi government insulted in this way.
Speaker 2: So yeah, let's coach state.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 4: Well, there's a term in political economy that comes out
Speaker 4: of analysis of Middle Eastern governments, and they use the
Speaker 4: language of strong states and weak states, and the way
Speaker 4: it's defined as a it's a little counterintuitive that a
Speaker 4: weak state like Iraq is a state where they have
Speaker 4: to continually reen force their power. So, you know, Saddam
Speaker 4: or Mubarik or whomever sort of knows they're always an
Speaker 4: uprising away from being destroyed, and so they need to
Speaker 4: constantly remind people we're big, we're strong. We're big, we're strong.
Speaker 4: We're big, we're strong. And that leads to a kind
Speaker 4: of violent repression of the people. It leads to the corruption,
Speaker 4: et cetera. Because if the mentality is, look, my third
Speaker 4: cousin is prime minister now or president now, but that's
Speaker 4: not going to last forever. I better get everything I can,
Speaker 4: you know, it's like the old pre model in Mexico,
Speaker 4: where you have a six year term to make all
Speaker 4: the money you're going to make for your life, so
Speaker 4: you better use it wisely. Whereas a strong state is
Speaker 4: not a strong handed state.
Speaker 3: It's a state.
Speaker 4: Where the state itself is a functioning entity that doesn't
Speaker 4: need to be continually reinforced. Resiliency, Yeah, resiliency is built in,
Speaker 4: and we may be weirdly trying to destroy that in
Speaker 4: the US, or some people are.
Speaker 2: But let's use critical thinking on the demographics of the
Speaker 2: deep state. If you're if you are a member of
Speaker 2: the civil service, A you're never going to be rich, right,
Speaker 2: I mean, you're not going to be poor, but you're
Speaker 2: not making lots of money. You're making just enough so
Speaker 2: that you're not likely going to be tempted by bribes.
Speaker 2: Not that it doesn't happen, but you're making enough so
Speaker 2: that you know you're not going to look for like
Speaker 2: three hundred bucks to change your opinion on something like
Speaker 2: happens in Mexico and some of these other places where
Speaker 2: they don't pay their civil servants enough. These are people
Speaker 2: who have have agreed to stay in positions for decades
Speaker 2: to do the best job they can for a basic
Speaker 2: amount of pay. They basically carry out the dictates of
Speaker 2: the people in Congress who rail against them. You make
Speaker 2: a law, you say this is the way it is.
Speaker 2: You tell people this is how you're going to operate,
Speaker 2: and then you criticize them for doing so.
Speaker 1: Remember when Trump came in and he thought the generals
Speaker 1: in the Pentagon were making millions of dollars, They told
Speaker 1: him like, they make one hundred and fifty thousand dollars
Speaker 1: a year.
Speaker 3: He's like, what, why would he do that?
Speaker 1: Well, then it says these are oh, they're losers. They're
Speaker 1: losers because they could be making more money some other way.
Speaker 4: I was in China once when they happen to release
Speaker 4: like the richest fifty richest people in China list a
Speaker 4: bunch of business people, and someone I was with was like,
Speaker 4: the fifty richest people in China are a bunch of
Speaker 4: generals whose names you're never gonna hear.
Speaker 2: The same in Russia, Yeah, it's the rich guys or
Speaker 2: the guys of the intelligence community at the generals.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they take pictures of these sort of bureau meetings
Speaker 1: and then you look at their watches and they're wearing
Speaker 1: like three hundred thousand dollars watches and you know, twenty
Speaker 1: thousand dollars suits, and these guys supposedly you're making you know,
Speaker 1: sixty thousand dollars a year.
Speaker 4: All right, guys, well, thanks so much for trying to
Speaker 4: persuade people you're not part of a vast deep state.
Speaker 4: I don't think you pulled it off, but it was
Speaker 4: interesting to watch the attempt.
Speaker 2: Adam, will we be sending you an application to join
Speaker 2: the Deeps?
Speaker 3: I'd love to.
Speaker 4: I've I've been waiting to be asked.
Speaker 5: Mission Implausible is produced by Adam Davidson, Jerry Osha, John Cipher,
Speaker 5: and Jonathan Sterner. The associate producer is Rachel Harner. Mission
Speaker 5: Implausible is a production of Honorable Mention and Abominable Pictures
Speaker 5: for iHeartMedia