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Speaker 1: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is

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Speaker 1: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or

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Speaker 1: learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A

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Speaker 1: production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 2: Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,

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Speaker 2: my name is Noah.

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Speaker 3: They call me Ben. We were joined with our guest

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Speaker 3: super producer JJ. The main way, pause way. Most importantly,

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Speaker 3: you are you. You are here. That makes this the

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Speaker 3: stuff they don't want you to know. Fellow conspiracy realists,

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Speaker 3: Tonight's episode has been I would say a few years

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Speaker 3: in the making, decades arguably for sure.

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Speaker 4: No question, Oh man, spies, a bridge of spies, a

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Speaker 4: bridge too far of spies?

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Speaker 3: Perhaps what is the collective group name for spies in English?

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Speaker 3: And how there's a pride of lines, of flock of geese,

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Speaker 3: a murder of us and unkindness of ravens. Maybe it's

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Speaker 3: a conspiracy of spies.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, that's good, that's good. Or maybe uh holdan no, no, Matt,

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Speaker 4: I think you got on.

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Speaker 2: An anonymous you go an anonymity of smitties.

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Speaker 3: I like all of these answers. Here's the thing that

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Speaker 3: happened in twenty nineteen. The news hit the US public

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Speaker 3: in a way it doesn't usually with a prominence it

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Speaker 3: doesn't often attain. And the argument from the press was,

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Speaker 3: not only did it appear multiple spies were getting their

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Speaker 3: cover blown, but something untoward had been happening to these

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Speaker 3: assets or these operators or these agents for years. One

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Speaker 3: by what, people were arrested, some were murdered, others, according

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Speaker 3: to official sources, simply disappeared. And as we record this evening, observers,

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Speaker 3: including former government officials, will tell you this compromise, whatever

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Speaker 3: it is, continues today. We've talked about this off air.

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Speaker 3: Opinions differ on how this is occurring, why this is occurring,

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Speaker 3: what role government US government institutions play, and what this

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Speaker 3: strange conflict between competing conspiracies means for the future. So

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Speaker 3: before we go on and ask what's happening, do you

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Speaker 3: guys remember these stories like they popped in the news

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Speaker 3: and then they sort of popped out of the zeitgeist.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, it's rather strange because it's kind of just how

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Speaker 2: that world works. Spies go missing, because when an asset

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Speaker 2: disappears or is killed, nobody is really supposed to acknowledge

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Speaker 2: that that occurs. Really, Yeah, unless it's being you know,

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Speaker 2: disclosed for a purpose. Right. You don't say, oh, yes,

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Speaker 2: our asset was taken out, like, you don't say that

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Speaker 2: publicly unless you're doing it for a reason.

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Speaker 4: That's true, unless it's some sort of political maneuver. But

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Speaker 4: I guess is it fair to say that we've been

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Speaker 4: seeing more stories in the press where we kind of

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Speaker 4: do get some of that information like weirdly, like in

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Speaker 4: terms of you know, spies being discovered and their covers

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Speaker 4: being blown.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, it is true. That's why it's not normal. At least,

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Speaker 3: the disclosure is abnormal. And the purported rate of attrition

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Speaker 3: there's always a rate of attrition baked in. The reported

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Speaker 3: or purported rate of attrition is much higher than would

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Speaker 3: have been permitted ostensibly during the days of the Cold War,

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Speaker 3: which our Russian friends don't believe ever ended. That's the question.

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Speaker 3: What is happening here? Is it a bunch of sound

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Speaker 3: and fury signify nothing or is there something more through

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Speaker 3: the story?

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Speaker 4: Well, we'll get right into it after a tiny, tiny

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Speaker 4: word from our sponsor.

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Speaker 3: Here are the facts. This is so dumb, but just

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Speaker 3: real quick, can we play a number station just for fun,

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Speaker 3: just to set the movie.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, we still have those left over, the ones

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Speaker 4: we didn't get to in our live show at the

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Speaker 4: National Sawdust in Brooklyn. Here we go.

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Speaker 3: Ah, Yes, the old school trade. As we explored in

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Speaker 3: a previous series on the history and Future of espionage,

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Speaker 3: a lot of the intelligence or trade work you see

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Speaker 3: in film and read and fiction, it's based on older

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Speaker 3: collection methods, you know, dead drops, handlers, aliases.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, whatever. The spy who is, you know, oftentimes depicted

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Speaker 4: a little bit stereotypically as a dashing hero, some sort

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Speaker 4: of brilliant, you know, quick on their feet, punchy character

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Speaker 4: who is fighting against some sort of shadowy super villain,

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Speaker 4: you know, or the spy themselves is the super villain.

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Speaker 4: As we've seen in you know again, pretty cliche depictions

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Speaker 4: of say, like Russian spies, like like Boris and Natasha

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Speaker 4: from Rocky and Bullwinkle.

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Speaker 3: Sure, or like Carla in the excellent I think was

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Speaker 3: John Lecuerr novels adapted into The most famous one would

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Speaker 3: be Tinker Taylor's Soldier Spy. Yeah right.

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Speaker 2: But you know, as we've learned over the years in

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Speaker 2: our explorations of human or you know, human intelligence, human

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Speaker 2: derived intelligence, we found that the most effective spy is

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Speaker 2: not someone who's secretive and you could look at in

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Speaker 2: a crowd and go, that guy seems like a spy.

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Speaker 3: Fella.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, it's just it's somebody that just looks like nobody

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Speaker 2: the exists in a crowd.

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Speaker 3: Like the gray Man in the Wheel of Time series

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Speaker 3: by Robert Jordan. Right, you want someone who is not,

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Speaker 3: you know, too short, not too tall, not too outside

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Speaker 3: of like one specific genre. You don't want them too attractive.

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Speaker 4: Well, but I'm sure you don't remember the name of

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Speaker 4: this character. It is totally escaping me. But the guy

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Speaker 4: that Gary Oldman plays in Slow Horses the schlubby, alcoholic,

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Speaker 4: but like part of that, you know, unkempt. The look

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Speaker 4: of his and the way he carries himself in the

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Speaker 4: most low key way imaginable is what makes him really

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Speaker 4: good at what he does. What's that guy's name, Ben

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Speaker 4: Jackson Lamb Jackson Lamb, what a character? Love that show?

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Speaker 4: And I need to read the books.

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Speaker 3: They're pretty great, honestly, but it might ruin the next

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Speaker 3: seasons for you. You know. Again, obviously, if you were

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Speaker 3: the head of an intelligence agency, you would want to

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Speaker 3: have read the books so that you could see what

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Speaker 3: was coming up next.

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Speaker 4: Well, Ben to that point, I'm wondering if a lot

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Speaker 4: of this news that we're talking about maybe has created

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Speaker 4: a resurgence and fascination with spies. There's a lot of

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Speaker 4: big spy shows right now that are very successful.

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Speaker 3: Black Bag is upcoming.

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Speaker 4: Black Doves is another one, really good one.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, there's a proliferation, right, and that goes into the

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Speaker 3: question of how much art and reality inform each other

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Speaker 3: and what the chicken in the egg situation is there.

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Speaker 3: We do have to tell you, folks, we cannot recommend

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Speaker 3: our earlier series enough, but check it out if you can.

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Speaker 3: Simply put, you can learn all about the history of

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Speaker 3: espionage in our previous series. But right now these evenings,

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Speaker 3: there aren't a lot of James Bond types, by which

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Speaker 3: we mean there aren't a ton of specific individuals going

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Speaker 3: country to country, region to region, mission with secret identities,

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Speaker 3: doing acts of intrigue and bravado and daring do people

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Speaker 3: doing right? Yeah, these people do exist, They do exist,

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Speaker 3: but there are far fewer now because they're less effective.

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Speaker 3: You know, think of all the technology that occurred since

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Speaker 3: he and Fleming was inspired to write Bond.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, and if you want to find out about a

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Speaker 4: real life spy type individual, dashing, daring, do kind of guy.

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Speaker 4: Check out the Ridiculous History episode on Roll Dahl, who

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Speaker 4: weirdly was very much that thing and may well have

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Speaker 4: been the inspiration for James Bond.

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Speaker 3: And what's that guy? I always bring him up with

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Speaker 3: these who did the Oh he played sorrowmon Christopher Christopher

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Speaker 3: Lee Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, also had some also had

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Speaker 3: some dirt on his jacket. As they say. The thing is,

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Speaker 3: you know, if you're looking at the world now, you're

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Speaker 3: at widespread facial recognition, right, and you're looking at biometrics,

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Speaker 3: you're looking at big data algorithms, the bread crumbing of

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Speaker 3: activity in ways that ordinary like previous governments couldn't couldn't

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Speaker 3: have done. And you're looking at government hacks, intelligence sharing

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Speaker 3: like five Eyes long term wasn't super great for some operations.

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Speaker 3: And so each of these factors makes our sort of

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Speaker 3: old school roll doll h James Bond approach a little

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Speaker 3: less tenable but human. As you mentioned there, Matt is

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Speaker 3: far from a relic of the past. The game doesn't end.

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Speaker 3: The game shifts, you know, like when you're in like

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Speaker 3: when you beat a boss at the first act of

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Speaker 3: a final fight and then all of a sudden there's

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Speaker 3: a crazy animation and they recharge face too damnable.

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Speaker 4: Elden ring bosses. Who's that one at the end, Matt

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Speaker 4: with the with the striking red hair and the knife arms, Millennia.

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Speaker 2: Something like that.

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Speaker 4: You know I'm talking about Matt. You probably beat her

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Speaker 4: in one pass, you monster.

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Speaker 3: No one beats her one past.

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Speaker 4: No, No, you got.

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Speaker 3: To learn the pattern. What was her name though it

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Speaker 3: was Melina, meant some with it.

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Speaker 2: Characters confused, But that game, uh famously, at the very

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Speaker 2: end you fight a pretty tough boss and then a

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Speaker 2: very tough boss after that. It's like the second phase the.

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Speaker 3: Eld and Beast right right, the game doesn't end, the

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Speaker 3: game changes. So while our idea in fiction of a

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Speaker 3: living action figure is it's pretty great, you know, if

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Speaker 3: you're if you're making a script, a real human asset

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Speaker 3: is going to be a careful, long term investment, not

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Speaker 3: to too extraordinary. You want the infamous Deeper Agents of

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Speaker 3: Russia check out our upcoming episode on Operation ghost Stories.

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Speaker 3: Or you want someone like the Cambridge five asterisk because

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Speaker 3: we don't know how many there were.

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Speaker 4: Or you want socialites the Cambridge plus or minus five.

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Speaker 3: We'll get We'll get to them at just a second,

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Speaker 3: because they're a great example. There are socialites that can

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Speaker 3: also get pulled, people who already exist in the upper

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Speaker 3: echelons of some kind of political economics structure, people who

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Speaker 3: have that access.

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Speaker 2: I like your Glain Maxwell's sure.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a great example, your gallains. Maybe as the

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Speaker 3: Os put it back in the day, your glorious amateurs.

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Speaker 3: It's it's pretty nuts, and it is all positioned toward

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Speaker 3: the idea of getting an edge of mitigating information asymmetry

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Speaker 3: on your side while propagating information asymmetry on the side

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Speaker 3: of the enemy. And these folks who are who are

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Speaker 3: real human, they're often they're not going to be doing

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Speaker 3: like a single mission or a paramilitary thing would be

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Speaker 3: very rare for this genre of person. We're talking years

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Speaker 3: and decades, quiet small moves, you know, getting that.

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Speaker 4: Promotion, laying on the groundwork, getting other assets in place,

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Speaker 4: you know, informats, things like that, establishing networks, contacts, all

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Speaker 4: of that kind of stuff. That's that's again pretty well

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Speaker 4: depicted in Slow Horses. I think a lot of that

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Speaker 4: stuff is relatively on the mark.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, and the weird thing is if we exercise empathy

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Speaker 3: for these people deep in hostile territory, they're making small

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Speaker 3: moves and they themselves have very limited information and somewhat ironic. Right,

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Speaker 3: they know a handler, they might know another couple people

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Speaker 3: like since we referenced a wheel of time, it's like

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Speaker 3: how the Black Asia is organized into what they call hearts.

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Speaker 3: I'm not going to go too deep into it. It's sorry,

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Speaker 3: that's already a spoiler. But the big things like having

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Speaker 3: someone in place to foil ironian nuclear activities, you know,

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Speaker 3: or Jimmy up there centrifuges.

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Speaker 4: Uh, it's a great expression that I gotta say, Jimmy

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Speaker 4: up a centrifuge. It's got to be the the whole back.

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Speaker 3: Well, we serve at the pleasure of Dylan Fagan, who

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Speaker 3: is our handler. So that kind of stuff is there

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Speaker 3: is the culmination of many other things that take a

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Speaker 3: lot longer. And if you are you know, if you're

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Speaker 3: like Noel Matton and JJ and Ben and you're you're

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Speaker 3: evaluating how to how to exercise intelligence or counterintelligence in

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Speaker 3: an enemy regime, the first question that occurs to you

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Speaker 3: when you're talking human is not how do I put

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Speaker 3: one of my my own outsiders on the inside. It's like,

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Speaker 3: why don't I find someone who's already on the inside,

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Speaker 3: you know, and just get them over to my cause

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Speaker 3: you save so much money, you save so much time.

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Speaker 2: Right oh yeah, yeah, But to do that you have

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Speaker 2: to either be extremely likable or extremely good at quietly

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Speaker 2: blackmailing someone.

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Speaker 3: Right. Yeah, This, this idea of turning someone to an

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Speaker 3: informant can happen through all sorts of means blackmail. Like

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Speaker 3: you said, financial compensation, appeal to ideology, or appeal to romance.

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Speaker 3: I would say romance is itself an ideology, you know,

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Speaker 3: but each avenue has their own sets of pros and

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Speaker 3: cons and strengths and weaknesses.

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Speaker 4: Yep. And every intelligence agency that you've ever heard of

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Speaker 4: works very, very, very astigiously, to to borrow word from

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Speaker 4: Ben's lovely vocabulary, towards acquiring high value informants. And once

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Speaker 4: you have one of those, to your point been that

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Speaker 4: rate of attrition can be high here because these are investments,

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Speaker 4: these are human capital. These are long term, long game

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Speaker 4: assets that are very expensive to maintain and also very

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Speaker 4: costly to lose.

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Speaker 3: Oh yeah, they're loath to let them go. Imagine you

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Speaker 3: have a car. Like imagine you bought a beat up car, right,

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Speaker 3: and you restored it yourself, and now you want to

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Speaker 3: drive it forever, right, you want to maybe the car

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Speaker 3: can take you to places you couldn't reach earlier. Sure,

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Speaker 3: that's a very bad comparison, but somewhat Well.

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Speaker 4: The car also requires maintenance. The car also requires you know,

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Speaker 4: checking in on from time to time to make sure

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Speaker 4: everything's running as it's supposed to, that all that work

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Speaker 4: you did isn't being damaged by something that you can't see.

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Speaker 2: Well, you also have to spy on and all of

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Speaker 2: your spies, right, that's the like, one of the biggest

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Speaker 2: jobs you have as an intelligence agency is to keep

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Speaker 2: tabs on absolutely everything each individual human does. It is

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Speaker 2: just sounds like a horrifying existence.

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Speaker 3: I don't think the quality of life is super great

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Speaker 3: if I'm being honest that I mean, yeah, the handlers

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Speaker 3: have handlers, right, the assets have handlers, The handlers have handlers.

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Speaker 3: The people at the top are fucking Orwellian.

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Speaker 2: Everybody in there is like you're an enemy. You're an enemy.

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Speaker 2: You're an enemy. You're an enemy, You're an enemy. I mean,

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Speaker 2: you're just like Jesus just just go have some ice cream.

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Speaker 2: Lay down.

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Speaker 3: Yes, the issue is sometimes they're right, but whole cloth.

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Speaker 2: They're right about they're right about their own fears.

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Speaker 4: Well that's the problem. I mean, all this stuff is

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Speaker 4: very very much at play, and you know, to your

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Speaker 4: point about keeping tabs on all the spies, it's so

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Speaker 4: important too, because when one of your assets flips, especially

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Speaker 4: one that you've invested all that time and energy and

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Speaker 4: information intelligence into, how much they know can directly impact

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Speaker 4: you if they are turned, you know, to the enemy

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Speaker 4: or an enemy.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, it was an interesting comment just a second ago

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Speaker 3: that reminded me of that line from Incubus, don't let

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Speaker 3: fear take the wheel and steer.

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Speaker 4: Wow, that's that's a good okay from the band to

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Speaker 4: use Incubus in conspiracy sense. No, it's true. That is

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Speaker 4: the seminal two thousands Classic Drive from the album Make

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Speaker 4: Yourself by Incubus.

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Speaker 3: References are so.

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Speaker 2: Fresh because fear is what drives all this stuff, right,

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Speaker 2: Fear that somebody else's ideologies are going to overtake my ideology,

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Speaker 2: and then that world is going to change, and then

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Speaker 2: all the you know, all this stuff is going to

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Speaker 2: change because I'm so afraid that's ultimately what it is.

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Speaker 3: I don't know if I could agree with that, Like

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Speaker 3: I hear you in some in some aspects, but would

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Speaker 3: we not also say there's ambition in there as well.

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Speaker 3: I don't.

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Speaker 4: Like it can be wrapped up in fear though. That's

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Speaker 4: a really good point, Ben, and that distinction I think

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Speaker 4: is important. But to me too, part of ambition is

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Speaker 4: fear that someone's gonna be better than you.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, I guess it, just don't I personally am not

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Speaker 3: comfortable putting a broad brush on on this, but I

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Speaker 3: do hear you fair enough.

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Speaker 2: I'm cool with it.

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Speaker 3: But well, let's go to uh, let's go to Cambridge.

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Speaker 3: Let's start to get a sense of scale here with

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Speaker 3: the story of the Cambridge Spies. Cambridge is one of

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Speaker 3: the world's most prestigious universities, and the Cambridge five asterisk

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Speaker 3: or a group of spies that were turned by the

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Speaker 3: Soviet Union and pulled purposely from the upper crust of

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Speaker 3: British society.

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Speaker 4: Sounds like bad news exactly. The Cambridge plus or minus

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Speaker 4: five they they you know, took time for this to

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Speaker 4: take place, this turn to the Soviets. They were active

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Speaker 4: from about the nineteen thirties until at least the early fifties.

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Speaker 4: This process took decades. The general public knew nothing about

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Speaker 4: the conspiracy until nineteen fifty one, and we still don't

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Speaker 4: really know entirely how many people were turned. Hence the

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Speaker 4: asterisk the plus or minus. Originally the group was the

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Speaker 4: Cambridge four, which sounds kind of like a do wop group,

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Speaker 4: and then they found a fifth person. Then they called

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Speaker 4: it the Cambridge five, and at some point just the

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Speaker 4: count kind of ended, right.

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Speaker 3: That's an editorial thought. Yeah, it feels like at some

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Speaker 3: point they just stopped adding to the name. In a

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Speaker 3: couple of cases, these guys attained very high positions in government.

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Speaker 3: As we record today, there's still standing allegations against other

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Speaker 3: possible members of the group, pretty much all of whom

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Speaker 3: are dead at this point, which is often, you know,

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Speaker 3: one of the most shore fire ways for an operative

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Speaker 3: like this to escape. Funny story because partially because of

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Speaker 3: their socioeconomic position, none of the confirmed members were ever prosecuted.

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Speaker 3: This is a multi decade operation, and if we exercise

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Speaker 3: empathy then we can see that this had two very

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Speaker 3: different meanings to people on the other side of the

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Speaker 3: board from the UK Allied perspective, there's fear, right they

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Speaker 3: are damaged. From the Soviet perspective, there's ambition. It's a

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Speaker 3: huge win over multiple decades, like it changed the course

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Speaker 3: of the Cold War in some ways.

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Speaker 2: But I guess, I guess what I'm trying to figure

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Speaker 2: out is how did it change anything if they had

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Speaker 2: these high level people, you know in the nineteen fifties,

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Speaker 2: But then the Cold War ends and the Soviet Union

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Speaker 2: is like collapses, So like, what did they actually win?

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Speaker 4: What did they accomplish? Yeah, by turning these folks, that

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Speaker 4: is a good point. They didn't win, and they didn't make.

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Speaker 3: The big win, right. They didn't win the war, they

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Speaker 3: would say, but they won battles, right, And we are

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Speaker 3: coming to you with the benefit of retrospect, so we

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Speaker 3: have the spoilers. We know how things worked out well.

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Speaker 4: And one could argue that the Soviet Union in Russia

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Speaker 4: have been playing a much longer game than just this

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Speaker 4: period of time and not doing too bad at it

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Speaker 4: by today's measure.

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Speaker 3: Right, going back to the earlier point, did the Cold

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Speaker 3: War ever end? A lot of us in the US

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Speaker 3: will say, yeah, immediately there's no more Soviet Union, But

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Speaker 3: then we have to realize a lot of people putin

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Speaker 3: among them don't believe the Cold War ended. And I

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Speaker 3: think we did an episode about that a few years back.

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Speaker 3: That's right, okay, Well, without getting into the weeds of it,

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Speaker 3: we could argue the story of the Cambridge five asterisk

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Speaker 3: teaches us a crucial lesson matter how long it takes

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Speaker 3: to build something, to place an asset, to leverage an informant.

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Speaker 3: Even the oldest operations are kind of a house of cards.

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Speaker 3: Hashtag no Kevin Spacey. You know, the wind can come

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Speaker 3: from any direction, and when things go wrong, they can

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Speaker 3: go south quickly.

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Speaker 4: And we'll see just how quickly that southern path can

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Speaker 4: be traversed, you know, going south quickly. I'll here worthmore

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Speaker 4: sponsor and be right back to it.

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Speaker 3: Here's where it gets crazy, all right, we teased at

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Speaker 3: the top right. Twenty nineteen, different US media outlets reveal

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Speaker 3: stunning news. They say, it turns out that a few

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Speaker 3: years back, US intelligence officials were so worried the White

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Speaker 3: House might accidentally expose a covert assets identity that they

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Speaker 3: secretly extracted this person from Russia and say this happened,

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Speaker 3: And in twenty seventeen, this is during the first Trump administration.

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Speaker 3: Other news outlets do pick up the story Washington Post,

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Speaker 3: New York Times, et cetera. But they start spending entirely

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Speaker 3: different reasons for this extraction, like what motivated someone to

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Speaker 3: pull such a precious asset. It's a wild story, but

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Speaker 3: I think it's a good example.

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Speaker 2: And from what we know and from what was reported. Again,

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Speaker 2: we're looking back at this from twenty twenty five. It

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Speaker 2: wasn't as though they were worried that any specific person

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Speaker 2: within the Trump administration or the current State Department would

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Speaker 2: be exposing any assets like purposefully, right, just doxing somebody.

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Speaker 2: They were worried about the state of overall security as

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Speaker 2: it was being handled by that new administration and everybody

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Speaker 2: coming in.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, they were concerned things had grown so lax for

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Speaker 3: one or another that it was not only possible, but

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Speaker 3: plausible for operations even this level to get compromised. This

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Speaker 3: will give you more background on this Russian asset in

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Speaker 3: a second, but just so you know, during the previous

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Speaker 3: Obama administration, fellow conspiracy realist, these activities were secret enough

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Speaker 3: that intelligence heads were not putting it in the President's

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Speaker 3: daily brief. Instead, they were sending secret sealed envelopes just

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Speaker 3: in case the daily brief was somehow compromised. But we

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Speaker 3: do know a little bit about the background of this,

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Speaker 3: and it kind of follows the story of the Cambridge

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Speaker 3: five and other similar you know, hangout session for sure.

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Speaker 4: Decades ago, the CIA recruited a particularly ambitious Russian official

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Speaker 4: who was guided to an ascension through the ranks of

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Speaker 4: government functioning just as any you know, young upstart might.

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Speaker 4: He wasn't breaking any laws. You know, he wasn't doing

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Speaker 4: any you know, saboteur type behavior, sabotaging nukes, any of

401
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Speaker 4: that kind of stuff. However, the CIA was waiting for

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Speaker 4: him to get in the right position. They're playing some

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Speaker 4: serious forty chess here.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, and helping him suddenly become better at his job

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Speaker 3: than he was by you know, one way or another.

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Speaker 3: And he might not have even known the methods deployed.

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Speaker 3: But eventually, to your point, now, the four D chess

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Speaker 3: or whatever what I call it, it pays off. They

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Speaker 3: hit a milestone achievement. This guy gets promoted to a

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Speaker 3: position that doesn't put him in the inner circle of

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Speaker 3: the Kremlin, but it gives him high level access to

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Speaker 3: several sensitive things. This would be akin to Israel's Mosad

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Speaker 3: controlling a guy who reads, who doesn't get in meetings

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Speaker 3: with the Supreme leader, but reads all the notes from

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Speaker 3: those meetings.

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Speaker 4: Nice.

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Speaker 2: And then there's people on the CIA side, just a

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Speaker 2: handful of them, who go into their own dark rooms

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Speaker 2: and then read the notes that were brought from the

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Speaker 2: guy that got to see the notes, and they're just like, oh,

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Speaker 2: look I can see their stuff. Yeah, that's getting off

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Speaker 2: in the dark as art.

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Speaker 3: Yeah. Fast forward. You know twenty sixteen, there's an election

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Speaker 3: in the US, right, we all remember that one, and

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Speaker 3: the Western intelligence community, not just the US, is increasingly

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Speaker 3: concerned that Russian operatives are attempting to compromise the election.

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Speaker 3: If that is true, then this, you know, young up

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Speaker 3: and coming level Russian bureaucrat has now become our golden goose.

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Speaker 3: Right if he can, as he said, Matt, go off

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Speaker 3: in the dark and read some notes, then he might

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Speaker 3: be and send some notes. Then he might be giving

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Speaker 3: the US, which often sees itself as the world entire,

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Speaker 3: a heck of an edge in a game.

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Speaker 4: But again, if done correctly, this is something that we

435
00:27:26,880 --> 00:27:32,040
Speaker 4: let alone. The American people should know nothing about.

436
00:27:32,760 --> 00:27:36,119
Speaker 3: Yeah, the problem is the streets are watching so like,

437
00:27:36,200 --> 00:27:41,840
Speaker 3: for instance, if this guy got promoted too fast, if

438
00:27:41,840 --> 00:27:44,920
Speaker 3: he was too good when he was on the way

439
00:27:44,920 --> 00:27:49,280
Speaker 3: to the Kremlin, he probably would have gotten caught. If

440
00:27:49,320 --> 00:27:52,159
Speaker 3: something seems too good to be true, or if the

441
00:27:52,200 --> 00:27:55,720
Speaker 3: pattern seems to not have a certain amount of guesswork

442
00:27:55,720 --> 00:27:58,800
Speaker 3: and mistake, then you have to wonder why someone is

443
00:27:58,880 --> 00:28:01,960
Speaker 3: right all the time, you know what I mean. Where

444
00:28:02,880 --> 00:28:06,639
Speaker 3: that's where we see this narrative unfolding. Something about Uncle

445
00:28:06,680 --> 00:28:11,320
Speaker 3: Sam's new confidence in their claims of election interference, coupled

446
00:28:11,359 --> 00:28:15,320
Speaker 3: with the timelines of their announcements, the specificity of some

447
00:28:15,359 --> 00:28:19,720
Speaker 3: of these claims, it triggers suspicion. What does suspicion always

448
00:28:19,800 --> 00:28:22,959
Speaker 3: lead to investigation, at least in this sphere.

449
00:28:23,560 --> 00:28:25,720
Speaker 4: So here again shouldn't be the case, but yet there

450
00:28:25,800 --> 00:28:29,480
Speaker 4: it was making the rounds in the news that the

451
00:28:29,600 --> 00:28:34,400
Speaker 4: US had somehow put an operative a person inside of

452
00:28:34,560 --> 00:28:35,320
Speaker 4: the Kremlin.

453
00:28:36,040 --> 00:28:36,240
Speaker 3: Yeah.

454
00:28:36,280 --> 00:28:40,320
Speaker 2: I remember back to just how confident like major news

455
00:28:40,320 --> 00:28:43,320
Speaker 2: outlets in the US were saying, yes, there was definitely

456
00:28:43,680 --> 00:28:48,040
Speaker 2: some election stuff going on, and I do recall just

457
00:28:48,080 --> 00:28:50,560
Speaker 2: feeling okay, well, they must have some evidence, like they

458
00:28:50,600 --> 00:28:53,400
Speaker 2: definitely have evidence if they can come forward and say that,

459
00:28:53,760 --> 00:28:56,880
Speaker 2: even if they're anonymous officials or whatever, they're close to

460
00:28:56,920 --> 00:29:00,920
Speaker 2: the investigation and from the State Department or whatever. You

461
00:29:01,040 --> 00:29:03,600
Speaker 2: just you know that somebody somewhere has evidence or you

462
00:29:03,600 --> 00:29:07,800
Speaker 2: can't make a claim like that against another country, at

463
00:29:07,880 --> 00:29:11,920
Speaker 2: least publicly like that unless you've got something exact. So

464
00:29:11,960 --> 00:29:14,600
Speaker 2: it does make sense. You know that there would be

465
00:29:14,680 --> 00:29:19,320
Speaker 2: rumors at least swirling around that somebody somewhere very close

466
00:29:19,360 --> 00:29:21,040
Speaker 2: to this thing has eyes.

467
00:29:20,840 --> 00:29:27,280
Speaker 3: On a source familiar with the events, right, something like that. Yeah,

468
00:29:27,360 --> 00:29:31,160
Speaker 3: and this is this guess work two of the motivation

469
00:29:31,400 --> 00:29:36,080
Speaker 3: behind a public statement is key to the conversation and conspiracy. Here,

470
00:29:36,400 --> 00:29:40,680
Speaker 3: the CIA, whatever the narrative may be, felt they had

471
00:29:40,720 --> 00:29:43,840
Speaker 3: no choice. In twenty sixteen, they came to this guy

472
00:29:44,200 --> 00:29:46,760
Speaker 3: and they said, look, the s is going to hit

473
00:29:46,800 --> 00:29:50,200
Speaker 3: the f We can get you out. If we don't

474
00:29:50,240 --> 00:29:53,800
Speaker 3: get you out, you're going to be screwed over. And

475
00:29:53,880 --> 00:29:59,800
Speaker 3: at first this guy said, nah, thank you, pass thank you,

476
00:29:59,800 --> 00:30:02,840
Speaker 3: but I'm all right, And then I think as the

477
00:30:02,880 --> 00:30:06,080
Speaker 3: wind picked up, he did agree to be extracted. This

478
00:30:06,200 --> 00:30:10,920
Speaker 3: extraction occurs in twenty seventeen. Uncle Sam is reluctant to

479
00:30:10,960 --> 00:30:14,600
Speaker 3: pull this guy out because it's awesome. It's awesome to

480
00:30:14,640 --> 00:30:18,720
Speaker 3: have that inside. Look. This person had sent secrets of

481
00:30:18,760 --> 00:30:22,520
Speaker 3: some sort to DC for decades. They were able to

482
00:30:22,600 --> 00:30:27,320
Speaker 3: read papers from Vladimir Putin that were not you know,

483
00:30:27,400 --> 00:30:30,040
Speaker 3: public to the Russian people or even outside of that

484
00:30:30,120 --> 00:30:32,480
Speaker 3: inner circle. So this is a huge l for the

485
00:30:32,600 --> 00:30:35,840
Speaker 3: United States. But there is a happy ending. The exfiltration

486
00:30:36,040 --> 00:30:41,360
Speaker 3: is successful and as of twenty late twenty nineteen, this

487
00:30:41,440 --> 00:30:46,000
Speaker 3: individual is living safely in the metro area of Washington,

488
00:30:46,120 --> 00:30:49,480
Speaker 3: d C. May he live life well, hopefully in a

489
00:30:49,560 --> 00:30:51,840
Speaker 3: one story ranch style house.

490
00:30:51,960 --> 00:30:53,880
Speaker 4: Do we know? Do we know the style of his house?

491
00:30:54,480 --> 00:30:57,560
Speaker 3: Well? Because you know, third stories winds got Russia?

492
00:30:57,760 --> 00:31:00,800
Speaker 4: Ah, okay, good call, good call, Ben.

493
00:31:01,000 --> 00:31:04,360
Speaker 2: Just put really bouncy bushes down.

494
00:31:04,160 --> 00:31:07,480
Speaker 4: Below a bouncy castle. Perhaps just keep it there year round,

495
00:31:07,720 --> 00:31:08,000
Speaker 4: you know.

496
00:31:08,720 --> 00:31:10,400
Speaker 3: Long enough for it to be normalized.

497
00:31:10,720 --> 00:31:13,600
Speaker 2: So that would be really Yeah, that would be really funny.

498
00:31:14,720 --> 00:31:20,720
Speaker 2: I X Russian assets x CIA assets functioning in Russia.

499
00:31:20,840 --> 00:31:24,360
Speaker 2: Then got third story mansions. But there's there's like a

500
00:31:24,400 --> 00:31:26,000
Speaker 2: trampoline mote all around it.

501
00:31:26,120 --> 00:31:26,400
Speaker 3: Love it?

502
00:31:26,560 --> 00:31:27,400
Speaker 4: Yeah yeah.

503
00:31:27,680 --> 00:31:31,160
Speaker 3: Also, yeah, if we're teaching people to fish, maybe that's

504
00:31:31,160 --> 00:31:34,880
Speaker 3: a great cover. A guy retires from the private import

505
00:31:34,920 --> 00:31:39,320
Speaker 3: export business. And now he just sells bouncies and inflatables,

506
00:31:40,240 --> 00:31:42,920
Speaker 3: and he's on the road. So sometimes he shows up

507
00:31:42,920 --> 00:31:46,120
Speaker 3: in Arizona, right in Tempe or something, and he just

508
00:31:46,520 --> 00:31:47,680
Speaker 3: installs some bouncies.

509
00:31:47,760 --> 00:31:50,560
Speaker 4: I want to see a bouncy house shaped like Vladimir Putin,

510
00:31:52,240 --> 00:31:55,080
Speaker 4: all right, Like you did, you bounce within his giant

511
00:31:55,080 --> 00:31:56,920
Speaker 4: outstretched arms in his lap.

512
00:31:57,160 --> 00:32:00,080
Speaker 3: Oh okay, I like that propaganda. So he's holding you,

513
00:32:00,720 --> 00:32:05,360
Speaker 3: catch like he's catching you. Okay, nice, all right. I

514
00:32:05,360 --> 00:32:10,880
Speaker 3: can't wait till this gets translated to Russian. Maybe it'll

515
00:32:10,920 --> 00:32:13,520
Speaker 3: be a good idea. It's a good idea, and I

516
00:32:13,520 --> 00:32:16,840
Speaker 3: hope they keep it now. Like the Cambridge five, we

517
00:32:16,920 --> 00:32:20,120
Speaker 3: could say this one example again from just a few

518
00:32:20,200 --> 00:32:25,040
Speaker 3: years ago, is it's yet World War footnote about how

519
00:32:25,120 --> 00:32:28,200
Speaker 3: quickly things can go wrong? Or as you said, Noel

520
00:32:28,240 --> 00:32:32,440
Speaker 3: traverse the southern direction. But the story adds a few

521
00:32:32,520 --> 00:32:38,120
Speaker 3: more factors of conspiracy worth considering. First off, they are

522
00:32:38,160 --> 00:32:42,880
Speaker 3: two competing claims for the ex filtration. The first is

523
00:32:42,920 --> 00:32:46,800
Speaker 3: that journalist got too close to the truth. The second

524
00:32:47,120 --> 00:32:51,200
Speaker 3: is that one way or another, the US spilled the

525
00:32:51,200 --> 00:32:55,080
Speaker 3: beans on itself. So why are there competing claims.

526
00:32:54,760 --> 00:32:57,520
Speaker 4: What just spill your beans.

527
00:32:57,920 --> 00:33:04,600
Speaker 2: Well, it's an interesting idea of the United States telling

528
00:33:04,680 --> 00:33:08,200
Speaker 2: on itself. When it kind of goes back to some

529
00:33:08,200 --> 00:33:09,720
Speaker 2: stuff we're going to talk about at the end of

530
00:33:09,720 --> 00:33:15,760
Speaker 2: the episode, it makes you wonder what the motivation. Oh gosh,

531
00:33:15,760 --> 00:33:19,680
Speaker 2: this is hard to talk about without spoil it. There

532
00:33:19,760 --> 00:33:24,640
Speaker 2: are questions about perhaps the loyalties of some of the

533
00:33:24,720 --> 00:33:28,200
Speaker 2: new administration that came in in twenty sixteen, and how

534
00:33:28,400 --> 00:33:33,800
Speaker 2: some of that election engineering went, and why they wanted

535
00:33:33,840 --> 00:33:37,560
Speaker 2: a specific person in the White House who ended up there, right.

536
00:33:37,520 --> 00:33:42,080
Speaker 3: Que bono? Who benefits and to what ends? Yeah, And

537
00:33:42,440 --> 00:33:46,000
Speaker 3: the second condition that is revealed to us in this

538
00:33:46,080 --> 00:33:50,360
Speaker 3: story is kind of day one stuff. Not everybody will agree,

539
00:33:50,480 --> 00:33:56,400
Speaker 3: but in this milieu of action, you never assume an

540
00:33:56,400 --> 00:34:00,280
Speaker 3: event exists in isolation. It's okay if an event is

541
00:34:00,320 --> 00:34:03,360
Speaker 3: a one off. It's totally fine if it exists as

542
00:34:03,440 --> 00:34:07,800
Speaker 3: a one time thing. But you can never make that assumption.

543
00:34:08,360 --> 00:34:10,759
Speaker 3: So if something goes south, we have to look at

544
00:34:10,800 --> 00:34:17,719
Speaker 3: everything related to it, however seemingly tangential, however ostensibly irrelevant.

545
00:34:18,160 --> 00:34:22,160
Speaker 3: We're not looking for just the next compromise spy. We're

546
00:34:22,200 --> 00:34:26,520
Speaker 3: looking for a pattern of how compromises occur. We're looking

547
00:34:26,600 --> 00:34:30,160
Speaker 3: for any sort of timeline that would square with this,

548
00:34:30,400 --> 00:34:33,799
Speaker 3: even if it's something this sounds dumb, but even even

549
00:34:33,840 --> 00:34:36,800
Speaker 3: if you looked back and you said, hey, every time

550
00:34:38,520 --> 00:34:43,200
Speaker 3: a World's Cup event happens, these terrible things seem to

551
00:34:43,280 --> 00:34:47,080
Speaker 3: occur in coincidence. We talked about reading tea Leaves earlier.

552
00:34:47,560 --> 00:34:50,200
Speaker 3: Reading tea Leaves gets, you know, kind of into what

553
00:34:50,239 --> 00:34:54,120
Speaker 3: intelligence folks do. And sometimes you could say they're being paranoid,

554
00:34:54,440 --> 00:34:56,880
Speaker 3: but it's not the nine times they ask crazy stuff.

555
00:34:56,880 --> 00:34:58,880
Speaker 3: It's the tenth time when they're right.

556
00:34:59,560 --> 00:35:05,680
Speaker 4: Exactly, and that seems to be precisely what is happening

557
00:35:06,040 --> 00:35:09,680
Speaker 4: right now. Little by little, by hook, or by crook,

558
00:35:09,760 --> 00:35:14,200
Speaker 4: one by one, intelligence operatives around the world are getting

559
00:35:14,480 --> 00:35:20,120
Speaker 4: blown their covers, getting forced away, or to the point

560
00:35:20,560 --> 00:35:22,200
Speaker 4: you guys were talking out at the top of the show,

561
00:35:22,360 --> 00:35:27,480
Speaker 4: just simply either being disappeared, disappearing, falling off the map,

562
00:35:28,800 --> 00:35:32,560
Speaker 4: being taken out. You know, who's to say, we're going

563
00:35:32,600 --> 00:35:35,839
Speaker 4: to talk more about all of these possibilities, and who

564
00:35:35,920 --> 00:35:38,760
Speaker 4: is to say After a quick word from our sponsor.

565
00:35:46,400 --> 00:35:50,319
Speaker 3: We've returned fast forward with us to twenty twenty one,

566
00:35:51,200 --> 00:35:56,880
Speaker 3: four years ago. Now, some of the top counter intelligence guys. Counterintelligence,

567
00:35:57,520 --> 00:36:00,239
Speaker 3: it makes sense as a word, but it's still like

568
00:36:00,320 --> 00:36:03,279
Speaker 3: when you hear it, it sounds silly. Right, we talked

569
00:36:03,280 --> 00:36:08,400
Speaker 3: about this before. Oh your intelligence, counter intelligence. It sounds

570
00:36:08,440 --> 00:36:10,279
Speaker 3: like that. Good, I'm going to fight you with the

571
00:36:10,320 --> 00:36:11,480
Speaker 3: powers of dumb.

572
00:36:11,640 --> 00:36:15,560
Speaker 4: Yep, I'm not that intelligent at all. So top counter

573
00:36:15,719 --> 00:36:19,479
Speaker 4: intel crews put out a call into the CIA into

574
00:36:19,520 --> 00:36:23,080
Speaker 4: their various stations and bases around the world, noting that

575
00:36:23,160 --> 00:36:28,600
Speaker 4: a disturbing number of informants were being captured and or killed.

576
00:36:30,600 --> 00:36:35,440
Speaker 3: Yeah, this was again to references something we mentioned earlier.

577
00:36:36,320 --> 00:36:40,920
Speaker 3: This has attributed The existence of this secret cable is

578
00:36:40,960 --> 00:36:45,680
Speaker 3: attributed to sources familiar with the situation. There were a

579
00:36:45,719 --> 00:36:49,880
Speaker 3: couple of journalists who said they have viewed the cable.

580
00:36:50,360 --> 00:36:53,680
Speaker 3: But the fact that there's not a specific person assigned

581
00:36:53,960 --> 00:36:57,520
Speaker 3: to the creation of the cable and the fact that

582
00:36:57,560 --> 00:37:01,440
Speaker 3: there are specifics missing is a whole other bag at Badgers, right.

583
00:37:01,520 --> 00:37:04,640
Speaker 3: It makes us question the motivation of allowing this thing

584
00:37:04,719 --> 00:37:07,800
Speaker 3: to go public, And for an informat just got to

585
00:37:07,840 --> 00:37:10,879
Speaker 3: say it, that's rant. It is a wide group term here.

586
00:37:11,080 --> 00:37:15,279
Speaker 3: It could describe our high level Kremlin insider. Sure, it

587
00:37:15,320 --> 00:37:18,200
Speaker 3: could also be someone who just happens to be a

588
00:37:18,239 --> 00:37:22,440
Speaker 3: grad student at the right university working with the right professor.

589
00:37:22,560 --> 00:37:26,080
Speaker 3: It could be the house chef for a fancy family

590
00:37:26,440 --> 00:37:30,640
Speaker 3: that not every year, but every few years has some

591
00:37:30,760 --> 00:37:35,360
Speaker 3: cool politicians over for like a dinner party, you know

592
00:37:35,360 --> 00:37:38,279
Speaker 3: what I mean. It could be almost anyone with very

593
00:37:38,320 --> 00:37:39,120
Speaker 3: little in common.

594
00:37:39,480 --> 00:37:41,799
Speaker 4: And just to really quickly bring it back to pop

595
00:37:41,800 --> 00:37:44,400
Speaker 4: culture for five seconds, there's a show, a Taylor Sheridan

596
00:37:44,520 --> 00:37:47,359
Speaker 4: show called Lioness that I really really enjoyed the first

597
00:37:47,400 --> 00:37:49,399
Speaker 4: season of, and I think it was the second season.

598
00:37:49,440 --> 00:37:52,400
Speaker 4: Actually one of these assets was a housekeeper, like in

599
00:37:52,520 --> 00:37:56,080
Speaker 4: a super super super high level targets home.

600
00:37:57,800 --> 00:38:03,040
Speaker 2: M Well, it could be a food delivery person that

601
00:38:03,360 --> 00:38:06,960
Speaker 2: often ends up at the American embassy in the Democratic

602
00:38:07,000 --> 00:38:11,319
Speaker 2: Republic of Congo, right, Like just somebody who every once

603
00:38:11,320 --> 00:38:13,839
Speaker 2: in a while gets eyes on an individual that's being

604
00:38:13,880 --> 00:38:14,439
Speaker 2: spied upon.

605
00:38:15,320 --> 00:38:21,640
Speaker 3: Sure, it could be someone providing nonprofit medical resources they

606
00:38:22,000 --> 00:38:26,000
Speaker 3: the right country. Yeah, it could be any of those things.

607
00:38:25,760 --> 00:38:29,920
Speaker 3: That the issue is that if you are on the

608
00:38:30,080 --> 00:38:36,480
Speaker 3: outside and looking in, these people have extremely little in common.

609
00:38:37,440 --> 00:38:40,040
Speaker 3: They have not met each other, you know what I mean.

610
00:38:40,120 --> 00:38:42,439
Speaker 3: They don't kick it. They don't have a bowling night

611
00:38:42,600 --> 00:38:48,360
Speaker 3: or something. The only way you could plausibly know what

612
00:38:48,480 --> 00:38:52,640
Speaker 3: they have in common is the single thread. They all

613
00:38:52,680 --> 00:38:57,960
Speaker 3: secretly engage knowingly or unknowingly with US intelligence And in

614
00:38:58,000 --> 00:39:00,840
Speaker 3: some cases, you know, there's Matroshka doll stuff going on.

615
00:39:01,360 --> 00:39:05,800
Speaker 3: Right our food delivery guy talks to someone. He hasn't

616
00:39:05,840 --> 00:39:08,880
Speaker 3: no that someone talks to someone, and so they are

617
00:39:09,440 --> 00:39:12,560
Speaker 3: maybe getting the short end of the stick because now

618
00:39:12,560 --> 00:39:15,760
Speaker 3: they're being held responsible even though they had no idea

619
00:39:15,800 --> 00:39:19,440
Speaker 3: what was going on. That is quite possible. So the

620
00:39:19,440 --> 00:39:21,719
Speaker 3: only way to know that secret thread is to be

621
00:39:21,800 --> 00:39:25,799
Speaker 3: on the inside, to know the inner workings of an

622
00:39:25,800 --> 00:39:30,800
Speaker 3: intelligence apparatus. The coal is coming from inside the house.

623
00:39:31,560 --> 00:39:35,879
Speaker 3: That's the accusation. Dun dun zah dun dun duh dun

624
00:39:36,000 --> 00:39:41,480
Speaker 3: du what yeah? I mean. Also, it looks like they

625
00:39:41,600 --> 00:39:46,400
Speaker 3: noticed that rival nations were becoming much better at hunting

626
00:39:46,480 --> 00:39:54,360
Speaker 3: down sources, like on an unprecedented level. The rivals in Iran,

627
00:39:54,520 --> 00:39:58,440
Speaker 3: in Russia and China and Pakistan in particular, we're getting

628
00:39:58,480 --> 00:40:02,719
Speaker 3: way better at finding people. And the CIA at the

629
00:40:02,760 --> 00:40:08,160
Speaker 3: same time was having a way tougher experience recruiting new people,

630
00:40:08,920 --> 00:40:12,920
Speaker 3: especially people that were worth it, to be.

631
00:40:12,920 --> 00:40:17,160
Speaker 2: Honest, Yeah, it is crazy. It feels like ideological illusions

632
00:40:17,200 --> 00:40:20,200
Speaker 2: are being kind of wiped out right now across the

633
00:40:20,200 --> 00:40:22,799
Speaker 2: board when it comes to, you know, especially what people

634
00:40:22,880 --> 00:40:25,839
Speaker 2: believe in with nations, with religions, with all this kind

635
00:40:25,840 --> 00:40:29,080
Speaker 2: of stuff, just the shine is gone. So it's harder

636
00:40:29,120 --> 00:40:32,040
Speaker 2: to get people to convince somebody, hey, do this for

637
00:40:32,080 --> 00:40:34,400
Speaker 2: your country or do this for God, or do you

638
00:40:34,480 --> 00:40:34,920
Speaker 2: know whatever.

639
00:40:34,960 --> 00:40:35,279
Speaker 3: It is.

640
00:40:35,719 --> 00:40:38,560
Speaker 2: Sure, it's just kind of kind of going away, and

641
00:40:38,600 --> 00:40:41,840
Speaker 2: you got to convince them in a different manner or

642
00:40:42,200 --> 00:40:44,000
Speaker 2: where there has to be a different motivation.

643
00:40:44,160 --> 00:40:50,719
Speaker 3: Now, yeah, there's also an existential aspect to this, a

644
00:40:50,760 --> 00:40:54,000
Speaker 3: matter of survival. People are not stupid. They can sense

645
00:40:54,040 --> 00:40:56,759
Speaker 3: something in the wind, especially if they're in a relatively

646
00:40:57,160 --> 00:41:01,560
Speaker 3: small group. Like let's say, and this is completely hypothetical,

647
00:41:02,600 --> 00:41:05,960
Speaker 3: Let's say you're a physics professor and you work on

648
00:41:06,040 --> 00:41:10,280
Speaker 3: something specific. And let's say a person you have never met,

649
00:41:10,520 --> 00:41:14,080
Speaker 3: but you also know of because you've read their papers,

650
00:41:14,280 --> 00:41:16,400
Speaker 3: because you're one of the few people who can understand

651
00:41:16,440 --> 00:41:19,759
Speaker 3: and respond to them. Let's say something bad happened to

652
00:41:19,800 --> 00:41:22,799
Speaker 3: that person. Let's say there are questions about it, and

653
00:41:22,840 --> 00:41:24,880
Speaker 3: then someone comes to you and says, hey, you know

654
00:41:26,200 --> 00:41:30,120
Speaker 3: it's me, your buddy from earlier. I know there are

655
00:41:30,160 --> 00:41:34,240
Speaker 3: only fifteen of you guys, excuse me, fourteen of you? Now,

656
00:41:34,880 --> 00:41:36,799
Speaker 3: would you like to you know, would you like to

657
00:41:36,840 --> 00:41:39,319
Speaker 3: hang out with us? Your answers, You're going to have

658
00:41:39,320 --> 00:41:42,200
Speaker 3: a higher likelihood of saying no unless they force you

659
00:41:42,239 --> 00:41:45,759
Speaker 3: to say us, because you don't want to be identified.

660
00:41:45,840 --> 00:41:49,080
Speaker 3: You know, there's something in the wind, and that's that's

661
00:41:49,120 --> 00:41:52,279
Speaker 3: the thing, right. Everybody looks for patterns. That's why what

662
00:41:52,440 --> 00:41:56,480
Speaker 3: is it? Paradelia is real where humans see patterns even

663
00:41:56,520 --> 00:41:57,800
Speaker 3: when none exists.

664
00:41:57,480 --> 00:41:59,960
Speaker 4: Like seeing faces on the back of like a semi truck.

665
00:42:00,080 --> 00:42:02,160
Speaker 4: Are the little hooks in the bathroom that look like

666
00:42:02,160 --> 00:42:03,560
Speaker 4: a fighting octopus?

667
00:42:04,160 --> 00:42:04,719
Speaker 3: Yeah?

668
00:42:04,840 --> 00:42:07,880
Speaker 2: Or sometimes, as we've discussed on the show, all the

669
00:42:08,000 --> 00:42:12,480
Speaker 2: other Iranian nuclear scientists are dying and you're still one

670
00:42:12,480 --> 00:42:12,759
Speaker 2: of them.

671
00:42:13,440 --> 00:42:16,560
Speaker 3: Yep, yep? Do you want? I mean, do you want

672
00:42:16,560 --> 00:42:20,360
Speaker 3: to answer that blind cold call? Are what are you

673
00:42:20,440 --> 00:42:22,799
Speaker 3: going to say to the pretty lady at the hotel bar?

674
00:42:23,960 --> 00:42:27,960
Speaker 3: I hope you say something diplomatic, careful and at arm's length.

675
00:42:29,280 --> 00:42:35,000
Speaker 3: So this is the logical conclusion if we're looking for patterns,

676
00:42:35,040 --> 00:42:39,640
Speaker 3: if a rival agency or any agency playing the home game,

677
00:42:40,320 --> 00:42:44,799
Speaker 3: playing defense, playing goalie, the rival agencies, anybody involved in this,

678
00:42:45,640 --> 00:42:51,279
Speaker 3: they must logically conclude that any source that didn't get

679
00:42:51,320 --> 00:42:55,319
Speaker 3: caught past a certain threshold may have been turned. And

680
00:42:55,320 --> 00:42:58,480
Speaker 3: that's because they all acknowledge the dirty secret. If you

681
00:42:58,520 --> 00:43:03,520
Speaker 3: are sophisticated enough, you genuinely try to not kill enemy

682
00:43:03,560 --> 00:43:07,000
Speaker 3: sources when you find them, especially if they're local informants.

683
00:43:07,040 --> 00:43:10,800
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, someone's already put it. Yeah, someone's already rebuilt

684
00:43:10,840 --> 00:43:14,240
Speaker 3: the car. Now you can just do a carjacking, little

685
00:43:14,239 --> 00:43:17,319
Speaker 3: grand theft auto and make them drive where you want

686
00:43:17,360 --> 00:43:17,759
Speaker 3: them to go.

687
00:43:18,920 --> 00:43:19,280
Speaker 4: Nice.

688
00:43:20,480 --> 00:43:23,160
Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess you just you you throw the ones

689
00:43:23,200 --> 00:43:27,320
Speaker 2: that messed up bad enough out of window. But then

690
00:43:29,040 --> 00:43:31,719
Speaker 2: the tools, yeah, you get in your toolbox somehow. I

691
00:43:31,800 --> 00:43:34,000
Speaker 2: just don't understand some of it. I guess there's enough

692
00:43:36,560 --> 00:43:38,839
Speaker 2: example making. Is that what it is? When you throw

693
00:43:38,880 --> 00:43:41,040
Speaker 2: somebody out a window, you make a quick example for

694
00:43:41,080 --> 00:43:44,000
Speaker 2: everybody else to see as an intimidation tactic.

695
00:43:44,680 --> 00:43:47,560
Speaker 3: In that case, Yeah, it's similar to polonium poisoning or

696
00:43:47,560 --> 00:43:50,600
Speaker 3: something that is sending a message. That's an example for

697
00:43:50,680 --> 00:43:52,160
Speaker 3: the class, right.

698
00:43:52,040 --> 00:43:54,399
Speaker 2: But but you aren't going to send a message when

699
00:43:54,400 --> 00:43:57,400
Speaker 2: it comes to you discover a foreign asset in your

700
00:43:57,520 --> 00:44:00,280
Speaker 2: nest and you yeah.

701
00:44:00,160 --> 00:44:03,759
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a great question. Depends upon the circumstances of

702
00:44:03,840 --> 00:44:10,399
Speaker 3: discovery and the information. Sometimes they might historically, or only

703
00:44:10,400 --> 00:44:16,359
Speaker 3: speaking historically, sometimes a person would be tortured or executed

704
00:44:16,840 --> 00:44:20,880
Speaker 3: to send the message to a domestic population, especially in

705
00:44:20,920 --> 00:44:26,520
Speaker 3: an authoritarian government. Other times, if you perhaps discover a

706
00:44:26,719 --> 00:44:29,399
Speaker 3: group of people, you don't go public, but the whole

707
00:44:29,440 --> 00:44:33,000
Speaker 3: group you find one, you make it an example for

708
00:44:33,080 --> 00:44:36,719
Speaker 3: the class and kill them, maybe in a way that

709
00:44:37,239 --> 00:44:42,160
Speaker 3: looks like a helicopter accident, for example, And then that

710
00:44:42,320 --> 00:44:46,120
Speaker 3: raises the likelihood that the survivors, who know they've already

711
00:44:46,160 --> 00:44:49,080
Speaker 3: been blown, are going to do whatever they can to

712
00:44:49,160 --> 00:44:55,680
Speaker 3: keep themselves and their families safe. Sweet dehumanizing, not treating

713
00:44:55,719 --> 00:44:57,200
Speaker 3: people like people, that's for sure.

714
00:44:57,320 --> 00:44:59,640
Speaker 4: No, but that's the name of the game on both sides,

715
00:45:00,040 --> 00:45:00,200
Speaker 4: you know.

716
00:45:01,400 --> 00:45:06,000
Speaker 3: Yeah, Well, the CIA does also in this cable, according

717
00:45:06,040 --> 00:45:09,080
Speaker 3: to reports, take it self to task and they say, look,

718
00:45:09,120 --> 00:45:12,399
Speaker 3: part of this is that the work the craft has

719
00:45:12,440 --> 00:45:16,360
Speaker 3: become sloppy. We've got people who are kind of overestimating

720
00:45:16,640 --> 00:45:22,560
Speaker 3: their abilities. There's too much trust in new sources, and

721
00:45:22,680 --> 00:45:26,759
Speaker 3: there's an underlying with that sort of arrogance. There's an

722
00:45:26,840 --> 00:45:31,359
Speaker 3: underestimation of foreign intelligence capabilities because these guys are reading

723
00:45:31,400 --> 00:45:33,640
Speaker 3: a lot of the same books, you know what I mean.

724
00:45:33,719 --> 00:45:37,880
Speaker 3: Everybody is playing a very similar game. So don't think

725
00:45:38,120 --> 00:45:40,880
Speaker 3: the person on the other side of a board doesn't

726
00:45:40,880 --> 00:45:43,200
Speaker 3: know how a rook works, you know what I mean.

727
00:45:43,239 --> 00:45:44,879
Speaker 3: That's how you lose a chess Oh.

728
00:45:45,560 --> 00:45:47,280
Speaker 4: No, never underestimate your opponent.

729
00:45:48,680 --> 00:45:52,080
Speaker 2: Rooks can go really far, but only in one direction.

730
00:45:53,400 --> 00:45:59,600
Speaker 3: Right, Brooks can move forward and vertically and horizontally.

731
00:46:00,080 --> 00:46:02,720
Speaker 4: I'm thinking of bishops. We're talking about castles.

732
00:46:02,320 --> 00:46:08,399
Speaker 3: Right, Bishops are the compliment the castles, sorry, and really

733
00:46:08,840 --> 00:46:12,040
Speaker 3: highly skilled chess player, and knights are on bath salts.

734
00:46:12,400 --> 00:46:15,560
Speaker 4: Clearly, what the hell's up with that weird wonky movement

735
00:46:15,600 --> 00:46:18,840
Speaker 4: that they do a little only move in an L shape, strange.

736
00:46:18,440 --> 00:46:21,120
Speaker 3: Just to shake it up, you know. And that's what

737
00:46:21,160 --> 00:46:23,560
Speaker 3: they've ben talking about, things like the Wazir or the

738
00:46:23,640 --> 00:46:28,360
Speaker 3: other non canonical chess pieces. All right, So part of

739
00:46:28,400 --> 00:46:32,080
Speaker 3: what the CIA is maybe suffering from per its own

740
00:46:32,160 --> 00:46:36,000
Speaker 3: cable is a thing we could call a commission issue.

741
00:46:37,440 --> 00:46:41,319
Speaker 3: We all have known someone working in sales maybe with

742
00:46:41,400 --> 00:46:45,279
Speaker 3: a commission structure. Have you guys did you guys ever

743
00:46:45,320 --> 00:46:48,440
Speaker 3: work on commission in our previous lives gracefully No?

744
00:46:48,840 --> 00:46:52,640
Speaker 4: Yeah, well I was a salesperson in a music store,

745
00:46:52,680 --> 00:46:55,480
Speaker 4: but they didn't pay me any commission. For sure, I

746
00:46:55,520 --> 00:46:57,400
Speaker 4: should have gotten some, but I did not. They were

747
00:46:57,440 --> 00:47:00,719
Speaker 4: not willing to pass on the profits.

748
00:47:01,320 --> 00:47:06,280
Speaker 2: Yes, I've worked for a weird, roundabout way of commission before.

749
00:47:07,480 --> 00:47:11,360
Speaker 3: And the commission structure we're all familiar with is the

750
00:47:11,440 --> 00:47:15,439
Speaker 3: idea that you can earn a significant portion of your

751
00:47:15,480 --> 00:47:20,959
Speaker 3: livelihood through a one time piece percentage or reward from

752
00:47:21,000 --> 00:47:26,520
Speaker 3: a transaction. And the problem with commission in some industries,

753
00:47:26,560 --> 00:47:30,680
Speaker 3: in some places is that it can encourage an individual

754
00:47:30,760 --> 00:47:36,400
Speaker 3: actor to put their own perspective of personal gain over

755
00:47:36,440 --> 00:47:40,760
Speaker 3: the larger goals of their customers, their company, or their mission.

756
00:47:41,239 --> 00:47:45,759
Speaker 3: So the CIA might have a similar issue because look,

757
00:47:45,800 --> 00:47:49,640
Speaker 3: if you score a new informant, it's historically a fast

758
00:47:49,680 --> 00:47:55,080
Speaker 3: pass to increasing your odds for promotion. So if that's true,

759
00:47:55,120 --> 00:47:59,360
Speaker 3: if you are incentivized what you want a new informant

760
00:47:59,440 --> 00:48:03,000
Speaker 3: to work out, would you maybe feel that you needed

761
00:48:03,040 --> 00:48:04,000
Speaker 3: that pull to work?

762
00:48:04,640 --> 00:48:06,920
Speaker 4: Oh, I think that's entirely possible. I mean it's sort

763
00:48:06,960 --> 00:48:10,560
Speaker 4: of the same way that when we see certain benchmarks,

764
00:48:10,840 --> 00:48:14,279
Speaker 4: very high pressure benchmarks placed on testing scores, you know

765
00:48:14,320 --> 00:48:16,520
Speaker 4: in the US for example, and then that kind of

766
00:48:16,600 --> 00:48:20,560
Speaker 4: leads to some sticky situations when it comes to maybe

767
00:48:20,680 --> 00:48:23,000
Speaker 4: teaching for the test and or cheating on the test,

768
00:48:23,040 --> 00:48:27,719
Speaker 4: because these things are so crucial to meet m Yeah.

769
00:48:27,920 --> 00:48:32,760
Speaker 3: No, obviously, we have just referred to many, many things

770
00:48:33,320 --> 00:48:36,080
Speaker 3: to scope it back into talking about the CIA and

771
00:48:36,120 --> 00:48:39,920
Speaker 3: the agency in particular. The pickle of the CIA is this,

772
00:48:40,360 --> 00:48:44,520
Speaker 3: if you do things right, you can save innocent lives,

773
00:48:44,640 --> 00:48:46,920
Speaker 3: not just in the US but across the world. You

774
00:48:46,960 --> 00:48:51,400
Speaker 3: can prevent disasters, and if you do it correctly, nobody

775
00:48:51,480 --> 00:48:53,680
Speaker 3: is going to know the full extent of your efforts

776
00:48:54,080 --> 00:48:57,120
Speaker 3: and or heroism. There are some actual heroes, you know,

777
00:48:57,920 --> 00:49:03,680
Speaker 3: there are historical issues, but there are wins that go unacknowledged.

778
00:49:04,040 --> 00:49:06,799
Speaker 3: And we're going somewhere with this. The key takeaway is

779
00:49:06,840 --> 00:49:09,920
Speaker 3: somehow there's some gap in the armor. A piece of

780
00:49:10,040 --> 00:49:15,960
Speaker 3: US intelligence has been inarguably compromised. Is it technology? Has

781
00:49:16,080 --> 00:49:20,360
Speaker 3: just technology made the old game irrelevant? What do you

782
00:49:20,360 --> 00:49:20,759
Speaker 3: guys think?

783
00:49:20,840 --> 00:49:22,640
Speaker 4: Oh, that's a good point. I mean, it does seem

784
00:49:22,680 --> 00:49:24,600
Speaker 4: like a lot of this stuff we're hearing about her,

785
00:49:24,680 --> 00:49:26,719
Speaker 4: that's like you know, making the news has to do

786
00:49:26,840 --> 00:49:30,040
Speaker 4: with you know, data breaches and hacks, and you know,

787
00:49:30,120 --> 00:49:33,200
Speaker 4: while we have the names of organizations and hacker groups

788
00:49:33,200 --> 00:49:36,160
Speaker 4: and things, we sometimes don't get individual names. But maybe

789
00:49:36,160 --> 00:49:38,319
Speaker 4: that's a good point, or I think we set off

790
00:49:38,400 --> 00:49:43,160
Speaker 4: Mike for a moment, been our spies just like getting worse,

791
00:49:43,840 --> 00:49:47,520
Speaker 4: like is there are there more leaks? Like is the

792
00:49:47,640 --> 00:49:49,960
Speaker 4: is the boat leaky? Just in general, I don't know.

793
00:49:51,640 --> 00:49:55,960
Speaker 2: There are still maybe not fully but close to the

794
00:49:56,000 --> 00:49:59,719
Speaker 2: real wall facers that exist in these worlds of think

795
00:49:59,760 --> 00:50:02,840
Speaker 2: tank and where that over you know, where that crosses

796
00:50:02,880 --> 00:50:06,200
Speaker 2: over with intelligence agencies, and where that crosses over with

797
00:50:06,280 --> 00:50:10,759
Speaker 2: this with various state departments, and I don't know, advisors

798
00:50:10,760 --> 00:50:13,480
Speaker 2: people at the top levels of governments across the world,

799
00:50:13,600 --> 00:50:17,040
Speaker 2: who are the ones who don't say a lot of

800
00:50:17,080 --> 00:50:20,520
Speaker 2: stuff electronically right when we're thinking about the technology, and

801
00:50:20,600 --> 00:50:22,799
Speaker 2: could you just use that to spy on everybody at

802
00:50:22,800 --> 00:50:26,640
Speaker 2: all times? I think there are probably people who keep

803
00:50:26,680 --> 00:50:29,680
Speaker 2: stuff under wraps enough where you need a human being

804
00:50:30,280 --> 00:50:33,640
Speaker 2: to at least attempt to get as close as possible

805
00:50:33,719 --> 00:50:37,200
Speaker 2: to some of those high level targets. If your goal

806
00:50:37,280 --> 00:50:40,200
Speaker 2: is to if your goal is to just find out

807
00:50:40,239 --> 00:50:42,360
Speaker 2: what everybody's doing and make sure everybody's going to do

808
00:50:42,400 --> 00:50:44,440
Speaker 2: what you want them to do, or else their enemies.

809
00:50:47,040 --> 00:50:49,239
Speaker 3: Yeah. I would agree with the first half of that.

810
00:50:49,320 --> 00:50:54,040
Speaker 3: I think, yeah, yeah, because there are some people who

811
00:50:54,400 --> 00:50:58,080
Speaker 3: do have that lockdown opsec right, And like in the

812
00:50:58,080 --> 00:51:03,200
Speaker 3: case of China hacking the US Treasury, they were mainly

813
00:51:03,640 --> 00:51:07,719
Speaker 3: looking for signals, right, they were looking to again mitigate

814
00:51:08,480 --> 00:51:14,800
Speaker 3: information asymmetry. Yeah, it's an interesting thing to think about

815
00:51:14,920 --> 00:51:18,920
Speaker 3: with the technology. You know, speaking of China, we see

816
00:51:18,960 --> 00:51:22,960
Speaker 3: that a lot of a lot of what we would

817
00:51:22,960 --> 00:51:28,440
Speaker 3: call us spies or assets in China got busted, maybe

818
00:51:29,320 --> 00:51:33,799
Speaker 3: just because the technology is better. There was a firewall.

819
00:51:34,000 --> 00:51:37,960
Speaker 3: The official narrative is a firewall that worked very well

820
00:51:38,040 --> 00:51:41,960
Speaker 3: for Middle East North African operations was deployed in China

821
00:51:42,120 --> 00:51:45,040
Speaker 3: by the CIA, and it turns out China is a

822
00:51:45,080 --> 00:51:49,440
Speaker 3: lot better at dousing the fire on those walls. So

823
00:51:49,480 --> 00:51:52,920
Speaker 3: they compromised it. They got the folks. It took a

824
00:51:52,920 --> 00:51:56,239
Speaker 3: little time to figure it out, but eventually one of

825
00:51:56,280 --> 00:52:00,360
Speaker 3: the boffins on the US side said, hang on adding

826
00:52:00,400 --> 00:52:06,520
Speaker 3: this right. Too often, they're no longer guessing. So it

827
00:52:06,520 --> 00:52:09,560
Speaker 3: could just be tech or is this gap in the

828
00:52:09,680 --> 00:52:15,520
Speaker 3: armor more of a Darien gap references references? Is it

829
00:52:15,600 --> 00:52:21,240
Speaker 3: something meaning? Is it something fundamentally unfixable, irreparable, something inherent

830
00:52:21,320 --> 00:52:25,359
Speaker 3: to the structure as it currently stands. Perhaps it could

831
00:52:25,400 --> 00:52:29,720
Speaker 3: be as small as personal motivations within the structure. Perhaps

832
00:52:29,800 --> 00:52:34,120
Speaker 3: it could be legacy organization. Perhaps it could be you know,

833
00:52:34,280 --> 00:52:38,240
Speaker 3: incorrect assumptions about the people on the other side, saying

834
00:52:38,280 --> 00:52:40,959
Speaker 3: all these folks are motivated by this one single thing,

835
00:52:41,360 --> 00:52:44,600
Speaker 3: you know, the capital e enemy. That can also be

836
00:52:44,600 --> 00:52:48,480
Speaker 3: a stumbling block. That's the trillion dollar question, you know.

837
00:52:48,560 --> 00:52:51,839
Speaker 3: It leads us to the most the biggest question which

838
00:52:51,880 --> 00:52:54,200
Speaker 3: we've seen a lot of people asking, did the US

839
00:52:54,440 --> 00:53:00,960
Speaker 3: compromise itself? As you said, Noel, is it an own goal?

840
00:53:01,239 --> 00:53:08,959
Speaker 4: Yeah, it seems like it's certainly possible and or plausible unfortunately.

841
00:53:09,840 --> 00:53:13,080
Speaker 3: Yeah, but a self compromise, it's like informant. It can

842
00:53:13,160 --> 00:53:14,320
Speaker 3: meet a bunch of different things.

843
00:53:14,360 --> 00:53:14,960
Speaker 4: It's consent.

844
00:53:15,400 --> 00:53:20,080
Speaker 3: Yeah, a self compromise is consent.

845
00:53:20,160 --> 00:53:20,719
Speaker 4: I like that.

846
00:53:21,640 --> 00:53:26,120
Speaker 3: That's pretty clever. Well, it could be accidental disclosure, you know,

847
00:53:26,440 --> 00:53:31,000
Speaker 3: negligence rather than malice, a firewall that doesn't work in

848
00:53:31,000 --> 00:53:36,400
Speaker 3: one place. It could be sharing classified information without realizing

849
00:53:36,520 --> 00:53:39,759
Speaker 3: that could help someone else do something you don't want

850
00:53:39,800 --> 00:53:42,880
Speaker 3: them to do, like we're not going to do. I

851
00:53:42,920 --> 00:53:45,960
Speaker 3: don't think we need to serve an analogy here. We

852
00:53:46,040 --> 00:53:51,680
Speaker 3: can just say this. The Trump administration did give classified

853
00:53:51,760 --> 00:53:56,359
Speaker 3: info to Russian forces during a White House visit. This

854
00:53:56,440 --> 00:54:02,360
Speaker 3: has been confirmed. This was This was information given to

855
00:54:02,360 --> 00:54:06,680
Speaker 3: the Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, an ambassador named serge

856
00:54:06,680 --> 00:54:15,080
Speaker 3: A Kislak Kislyak. It is possible. We don't know what

857
00:54:15,239 --> 00:54:18,239
Speaker 3: was it it, We don't know the specifics, but it's

858
00:54:18,280 --> 00:54:23,839
Speaker 3: possible maybe that you accidentally give somebody information that they

859
00:54:23,840 --> 00:54:29,400
Speaker 3: can incorporate or synthesize with other information they have, and

860
00:54:29,440 --> 00:54:32,080
Speaker 3: maybe they can reach a conclusion you weren't thinking about,

861
00:54:33,080 --> 00:54:37,520
Speaker 3: you know what I mean, I do. So that's just

862
00:54:37,560 --> 00:54:40,760
Speaker 3: messing up, right. But then the other thing is maybe

863
00:54:40,800 --> 00:54:46,600
Speaker 3: people have conflicting or contradicting priorities in their own organizations.

864
00:54:48,640 --> 00:54:51,680
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's possible. That's the whole thing where there are

865
00:54:51,719 --> 00:54:55,359
Speaker 2: splinters within one group. We've talked about that before on

866
00:54:55,400 --> 00:55:00,160
Speaker 2: this show, about whenever anyone comes forward and says something like, oh, well,

867
00:55:00,239 --> 00:55:03,320
Speaker 2: the CIA slash the FBI allowed nine to eleven to happen,

868
00:55:03,440 --> 00:55:06,680
Speaker 2: or something like that, there's always that concept that, oh,

869
00:55:06,760 --> 00:55:10,040
Speaker 2: there was perhaps a splinter group within one of those

870
00:55:10,360 --> 00:55:14,759
Speaker 2: organizations or those organizations that wanted something to occur, when

871
00:55:14,800 --> 00:55:18,000
Speaker 2: the vast majority of the organization entire didn't want something

872
00:55:18,000 --> 00:55:20,759
Speaker 2: to happen, or was attempting to stop something. It gets

873
00:55:20,880 --> 00:55:24,759
Speaker 2: very convoluted in the world of spies.

874
00:55:27,200 --> 00:55:30,839
Speaker 3: Yeah, and this can happen with any large organization, right,

875
00:55:30,920 --> 00:55:33,840
Speaker 3: But the problem is this kind of loggerhead of conflicting

876
00:55:33,960 --> 00:55:38,360
Speaker 3: goals or poor communication. It could explain at best a

877
00:55:38,480 --> 00:55:41,520
Speaker 3: few incidents, not the overall.

878
00:55:41,200 --> 00:55:46,880
Speaker 4: Pattern one hundred percent. So the third and most terrifying

879
00:55:46,880 --> 00:55:49,560
Speaker 4: option is something that I think many folks have been

880
00:55:49,560 --> 00:55:56,239
Speaker 4: thinking about lately, is the potential for a wilful collusion

881
00:55:56,320 --> 00:55:59,600
Speaker 4: of some kind. I'm not trying to be vague about it.

882
00:55:59,719 --> 00:56:01,799
Speaker 4: I think you mentioned Ben with the you know, the

883
00:56:01,800 --> 00:56:07,160
Speaker 4: the administration sharing assets, you know, openly with Russia, and

884
00:56:07,200 --> 00:56:09,560
Speaker 4: there is a sense that there's some moves being made

885
00:56:09,560 --> 00:56:14,879
Speaker 4: that could well be in cahoots with who many Americans

886
00:56:14,960 --> 00:56:19,920
Speaker 4: might see as a not an ally the idea of

887
00:56:19,920 --> 00:56:21,040
Speaker 4: willful compromise.

888
00:56:22,320 --> 00:56:27,000
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, and you're you're referring to, I think, no specifically,

889
00:56:27,080 --> 00:56:31,480
Speaker 3: the accusations and allegations regarding the current president of the

890
00:56:31,600 --> 00:56:32,240
Speaker 3: United States.

891
00:56:32,360 --> 00:56:34,360
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm sorry. I'm not trying to be like super

892
00:56:34,360 --> 00:56:36,560
Speaker 4: tiptoeing around it, but I just think there's a certain

893
00:56:36,600 --> 00:56:40,080
Speaker 4: point where you just can't ignore some of this stuff,

894
00:56:40,120 --> 00:56:42,440
Speaker 4: some of the smoke. And I don't even think it

895
00:56:42,480 --> 00:56:48,680
Speaker 4: even is super conspiratorial or conspiracy theory esque to speculate

896
00:56:48,719 --> 00:56:50,640
Speaker 4: about some of this stuff. There's just some moves that

897
00:56:50,680 --> 00:56:53,680
Speaker 4: are taking place that just don't make sense otherwise.

898
00:56:54,920 --> 00:56:59,560
Speaker 3: Right, Right, that's we have to we have to acknowledge

899
00:56:59,640 --> 00:57:03,400
Speaker 3: that there have been long standing allegations about conflicts of interest,

900
00:57:03,480 --> 00:57:10,600
Speaker 3: whether those be allegations of extortion, blackmail, financial shenanigans, you know,

901
00:57:10,680 --> 00:57:16,360
Speaker 3: shout out Krassnov. That's the mimetic version of this making

902
00:57:16,400 --> 00:57:19,800
Speaker 3: the rounds the other ass the other concept is just

903
00:57:19,960 --> 00:57:23,560
Speaker 3: a double agent. Someone got turned maybe inside the CIA,

904
00:57:23,880 --> 00:57:29,400
Speaker 3: maybe inside Langley, and they're just doing their job, right

905
00:57:29,720 --> 00:57:32,800
Speaker 3: Varius as little whispers and so on, little birds, Yeah,

906
00:57:34,520 --> 00:57:37,040
Speaker 3: which is why the people who are I was talking

907
00:57:37,080 --> 00:57:39,760
Speaker 3: about this and then that show the agency the people

908
00:57:39,840 --> 00:57:42,680
Speaker 3: who are spied on the most are often spies, at

909
00:57:42,800 --> 00:57:45,960
Speaker 3: least back in the day. So as as you had

910
00:57:46,000 --> 00:57:52,040
Speaker 3: mentioned earlier, Matt, I believe so something about this is

911
00:57:52,040 --> 00:57:54,720
Speaker 3: frightening to people. Of course, it is frightening, and it's

912
00:57:54,840 --> 00:58:01,520
Speaker 3: very politically charged now such that people are people are

913
00:58:01,560 --> 00:58:05,919
Speaker 3: hesitant sometimes to talk about that possibility. But that goes

914
00:58:06,000 --> 00:58:09,680
Speaker 3: back to what was set up earlier, the idea of

915
00:58:10,560 --> 00:58:17,600
Speaker 3: erosion of faith in not just religion, but in various institutions,

916
00:58:17,640 --> 00:58:23,320
Speaker 3: government institutions in specific. Matt, I think we had talked

917
00:58:23,320 --> 00:58:26,160
Speaker 3: a little bit off air, or we talked extensively off

918
00:58:26,200 --> 00:58:29,600
Speaker 3: air about US AID. Do you think that's familiar to

919
00:58:29,640 --> 00:58:33,320
Speaker 3: most Americans? Pretty current news cycle.

920
00:58:33,720 --> 00:58:38,000
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's everywhere. There's been a massive effort to shut down,

921
00:58:38,320 --> 00:58:42,880
Speaker 2: or at least temporarily stop most of the functionality of

922
00:58:42,920 --> 00:58:48,440
Speaker 2: the United States Agency for International Development, And it coincides

923
00:58:48,480 --> 00:58:51,120
Speaker 2: with a lot of learning we've done on this show

924
00:58:51,640 --> 00:58:56,960
Speaker 2: about NGOs, about foreign aid, about state departments from various countries,

925
00:58:57,000 --> 00:58:59,520
Speaker 2: and how they move in and offer big loans and

926
00:58:59,560 --> 00:59:01,959
Speaker 2: then those loans get paid back, and then they've got

927
00:59:02,040 --> 00:59:06,640
Speaker 2: soft or hard power over the people who control, you know, countries,

928
00:59:06,680 --> 00:59:11,040
Speaker 2: whether it's private or public. And then this agency, this

929
00:59:11,120 --> 00:59:15,640
Speaker 2: specific agency is one that appears to have had a

930
00:59:15,640 --> 00:59:18,959
Speaker 2: lot of power in other countries, right, and it's being

931
00:59:19,000 --> 00:59:20,320
Speaker 2: systematically shut down.

932
00:59:21,080 --> 00:59:22,000
Speaker 4: It just it.

933
00:59:24,480 --> 00:59:26,800
Speaker 2: I don't know, Ben, as you said in the outline,

934
00:59:26,920 --> 00:59:33,800
Speaker 2: it's something to think about because you're this organization, This

935
00:59:34,680 --> 00:59:38,640
Speaker 2: United States Department, it provided forty two percent of all

936
00:59:38,720 --> 00:59:42,280
Speaker 2: humanitarian aid that the United Nations tracked last year in

937
00:59:42,280 --> 00:59:45,640
Speaker 2: twenty twenty four has a staff of ten thousand people

938
00:59:46,120 --> 00:59:50,960
Speaker 2: for now functions with the State Department all around the world. Right,

939
00:59:51,040 --> 00:59:53,880
Speaker 2: And we know what the State Department is, what it does,

940
00:59:54,280 --> 00:59:57,520
Speaker 2: especially when it comes to tradecraft and those things. We know,

941
00:59:58,120 --> 01:00:00,560
Speaker 2: we know how those mechanisms work. And if you don't

942
01:00:00,800 --> 01:00:05,000
Speaker 2: go back and listen to episodes of our show, and specifically,

943
01:00:05,240 --> 01:00:08,600
Speaker 2: Usaidea has been accused back in twenty fourteen of doing

944
01:00:08,600 --> 01:00:11,000
Speaker 2: this weird thing in Cuba where they like set up

945
01:00:11,040 --> 01:00:17,000
Speaker 2: a whole social media social media sites zunzunio I think

946
01:00:17,200 --> 01:00:20,880
Speaker 2: zu n zu n eo. It was being accused of

947
01:00:21,600 --> 01:00:25,479
Speaker 2: basically trying to undermine the Cuban government. And Mexico also

948
01:00:26,240 --> 01:00:28,880
Speaker 2: has accused them just a couple of years ago of

949
01:00:28,920 --> 01:00:32,320
Speaker 2: trying to undermine their government by supporting specific groups that

950
01:00:32,480 --> 01:00:37,480
Speaker 2: are anti Mexican government. So you know, I'm only bringing

951
01:00:37,480 --> 01:00:40,080
Speaker 2: this up because it feels like a weird thing to

952
01:00:41,200 --> 01:00:46,800
Speaker 2: attack from within, because that's what's happening, right, This is

953
01:00:46,840 --> 01:00:51,960
Speaker 2: being shut down by the current administration. Right, Yeah, it

954
01:00:51,960 --> 01:00:54,200
Speaker 2: seems like a helpful thing for spycraft.

955
01:00:54,640 --> 01:00:58,480
Speaker 3: It seems like a helpful thing for people who don't

956
01:00:58,560 --> 01:01:02,520
Speaker 3: agree with the existence of the United States, yep, as

957
01:01:02,520 --> 01:01:04,200
Speaker 3: it currently stands, right.

958
01:01:04,040 --> 01:01:06,920
Speaker 2: And well, yeah, taking it down seems like that, right,

959
01:01:06,960 --> 01:01:09,280
Speaker 2: Having it and having it be as robust as possible

960
01:01:09,320 --> 01:01:12,440
Speaker 2: seems like a good thing for intelligence agencies.

961
01:01:12,320 --> 01:01:15,240
Speaker 3: Right, Ethics aside, you know what I mean, Just if

962
01:01:15,240 --> 01:01:21,840
Speaker 3: we're looking at it, if we're looking at the the choreography, right,

963
01:01:21,880 --> 01:01:24,800
Speaker 3: if we're looking at the dance itself, and we're not

964
01:01:24,880 --> 01:01:28,680
Speaker 3: looking at whether or not the dance involves murdering people,

965
01:01:29,040 --> 01:01:31,880
Speaker 3: then this is you know, you would want the dance

966
01:01:31,920 --> 01:01:35,880
Speaker 3: to continue. This is also right, Sorry, there's a difference

967
01:01:35,880 --> 01:01:41,640
Speaker 3: between destabilization and murdering people. Sure, Matrix dodge of that one.

968
01:01:42,280 --> 01:01:45,720
Speaker 3: So we've got I mean, there are other organizations to

969
01:01:45,800 --> 01:01:47,680
Speaker 3: What I love about The point you're bringing up here, Matt,

970
01:01:47,720 --> 01:01:50,800
Speaker 3: is that there are other similar things you don't hear about.

971
01:01:51,000 --> 01:01:56,320
Speaker 3: And is it is it illegal to to pop online?

972
01:01:57,120 --> 01:02:02,480
Speaker 3: Right and make body accounts. No, it's it's actually it's fine.

973
01:02:02,520 --> 01:02:05,960
Speaker 3: Now in the in the example you brought up of Zunzunio,

974
01:02:06,400 --> 01:02:10,520
Speaker 3: they are that was a secret platform of its own

975
01:02:10,840 --> 01:02:17,240
Speaker 3: right and the funding like it wasn't clearly USAID at first. Uh.

976
01:02:17,320 --> 01:02:22,280
Speaker 2: Yeah, these are accusations. USA ideas or USAID is has

977
01:02:22,360 --> 01:02:28,080
Speaker 2: been historically very often accused by other countries of acting,

978
01:02:28,720 --> 01:02:32,320
Speaker 2: you know, as an in some type of destabilizing way

979
01:02:32,720 --> 01:02:36,120
Speaker 2: within their country, right, and it's often just because of

980
01:02:36,120 --> 01:02:38,080
Speaker 2: the amount of dollars. And yeah, I mean you are

981
01:02:38,160 --> 01:02:42,840
Speaker 2: talking about billions of dollars fourteen point four billion dollars

982
01:02:42,880 --> 01:02:49,040
Speaker 2: from USAID to Ukraine in twenty twenty three, Yemen, Afghanistan

983
01:02:49,560 --> 01:02:51,960
Speaker 2: receiving hundreds of millions of dollars.

984
01:02:52,440 --> 01:02:55,480
Speaker 3: I don't know all the all the good ones. Yeah,

985
01:02:55,560 --> 01:02:57,640
Speaker 3: this is also one funny note we have to add

986
01:02:57,680 --> 01:03:01,880
Speaker 3: on the side forgive our accents. We're not native Spanish speakers.

987
01:03:01,920 --> 01:03:07,600
Speaker 3: But you know, zuon zunio is a pun, right, It's

988
01:03:07,640 --> 01:03:10,840
Speaker 3: it's Cuban slang for the sound of hummingbird.

989
01:03:10,920 --> 01:03:15,240
Speaker 4: Makes every time it's like it kind of like Twitter.

990
01:03:16,120 --> 01:03:18,120
Speaker 4: It's so funny, but every time you say it reminds

991
01:03:18,120 --> 01:03:23,160
Speaker 4: me of that zoom Phil Collins song Zusue studio, There

992
01:03:23,320 --> 01:03:26,440
Speaker 4: go zoon zunzuo. Maybe it's related, who knows?

993
01:03:26,960 --> 01:03:28,960
Speaker 3: Who knows? This goes all the way to the top,

994
01:03:29,040 --> 01:03:32,600
Speaker 3: by which we mean Phil Collins, Oh yeah, this is

995
01:03:32,800 --> 01:03:35,280
Speaker 3: I mean, this is an example. There is a reason

996
01:03:35,440 --> 01:03:41,320
Speaker 3: people are across the world distrustful of these various institutions,

997
01:03:41,400 --> 01:03:46,240
Speaker 3: and we're not We're not denigrating the people working for

998
01:03:46,400 --> 01:03:50,360
Speaker 3: these institutions. If you meet someone who it's like dnng

999
01:03:50,480 --> 01:03:53,680
Speaker 3: O's and the US have a really tough relationship abroad

1000
01:03:55,080 --> 01:03:59,040
Speaker 3: because of previous shenanigans. So if you should meet someone

1001
01:03:59,160 --> 01:04:04,120
Speaker 3: working for green Peace, they're probably just working for green peace,

1002
01:04:04,280 --> 01:04:05,760
Speaker 3: you know what I mean. They're not out to like

1003
01:04:05,840 --> 01:04:10,240
Speaker 3: steal your organs or overthrow your government. That happened just

1004
01:04:10,320 --> 01:04:12,760
Speaker 3: a few times, just a few times.

1005
01:04:12,800 --> 01:04:17,440
Speaker 4: Won't let them live it down.

1006
01:04:17,320 --> 01:04:20,880
Speaker 2: Isn't it pretty frustrating guys that there's that Just thinking

1007
01:04:20,880 --> 01:04:24,400
Speaker 2: about how much money gets moved around for stuff like this,

1008
01:04:24,680 --> 01:04:28,200
Speaker 2: and then it does seem like there's a whole bunch

1009
01:04:28,320 --> 01:04:33,400
Speaker 2: of time wasted, resources wasted because everybody is looking at

1010
01:04:33,400 --> 01:04:36,280
Speaker 2: everybody else as an enemy and not just helping the

1011
01:04:36,320 --> 01:04:39,440
Speaker 2: human beings and fixing the problems. I don't know. I

1012
01:04:39,480 --> 01:04:41,520
Speaker 2: know that's idealistic and blah.

1013
01:04:41,520 --> 01:04:44,760
Speaker 4: No, I mean, yeah, but it's really sometimes I think

1014
01:04:44,800 --> 01:04:47,840
Speaker 4: it's you have to have a little shread of that remaining.

1015
01:04:47,920 --> 01:04:52,360
Speaker 4: We can't be completely stripped of our humanity, you know,

1016
01:04:52,880 --> 01:04:55,280
Speaker 4: living in this world. I think that's something we all

1017
01:04:55,320 --> 01:04:57,640
Speaker 4: strive to hold on to. I would hope so.

1018
01:04:57,880 --> 01:05:02,040
Speaker 3: No, it's also an ideal that we're pretty unanimous about

1019
01:05:02,160 --> 01:05:04,800
Speaker 3: and consistent about on this show. You know, a lot

1020
01:05:04,800 --> 01:05:09,960
Speaker 3: of these problems can be solved. The decision not to

1021
01:05:10,120 --> 01:05:14,200
Speaker 3: solve those problems is very much a decision, and you

1022
01:05:14,240 --> 01:05:18,080
Speaker 3: can always make a different decision without sounding too preachy

1023
01:05:18,120 --> 01:05:20,560
Speaker 3: about it. While we're at it, we got to take

1024
01:05:20,600 --> 01:05:24,080
Speaker 3: a moment and ask all our fellow conspiracy realists to

1025
01:05:24,240 --> 01:05:30,680
Speaker 3: avoid vilifying individual members of the US Intelligence apparatus. Vilify

1026
01:05:30,800 --> 01:05:33,280
Speaker 3: politicians all you want, that's what they signed up for.

1027
01:05:33,640 --> 01:05:37,760
Speaker 3: But the intelligence apparatus, none of these agencies anywhere in

1028
01:05:37,800 --> 01:05:40,840
Speaker 3: the world, have a perfect track record. But the people

1029
01:05:40,960 --> 01:05:44,280
Speaker 3: working there, the actual facts shout out more and Vogelbaum

1030
01:05:44,440 --> 01:05:48,840
Speaker 3: human people in these positions. They're professionals. They're motivated by

1031
01:05:48,840 --> 01:05:52,520
Speaker 3: this goal of yes, doing a good job at their career,

1032
01:05:52,840 --> 01:05:55,680
Speaker 3: but also of keeping the US and the world overall

1033
01:05:55,720 --> 01:05:59,959
Speaker 3: a safer place. That's like the aim. They're not conspiring again,

1034
01:06:00,920 --> 01:06:03,520
Speaker 3: just by the nature of them existing.

1035
01:06:03,800 --> 01:06:10,479
Speaker 2: They're they're keeping the US safe for the US sake, right, Well,

1036
01:06:10,600 --> 01:06:16,040
Speaker 2: it's pursuing the national security and interest of the US.

1037
01:06:16,040 --> 01:06:19,440
Speaker 3: Sure. Yeah, so let's add an asterisk there. This is

1038
01:06:19,520 --> 01:06:24,160
Speaker 3: sometimes imperfect goal. I do think it is still important

1039
01:06:24,200 --> 01:06:28,080
Speaker 3: to defend the humanity of people involved. You know, It's

1040
01:06:28,120 --> 01:06:32,480
Speaker 3: like we said years back, there's not one group that

1041
01:06:32,600 --> 01:06:36,560
Speaker 3: runs the world. There are instead multiple groups who feel

1042
01:06:36,600 --> 01:06:39,080
Speaker 3: like the world would be a better place if they

1043
01:06:39,080 --> 01:06:42,000
Speaker 3: were in charge, and the most dangerous of those groups

1044
01:06:42,080 --> 01:06:44,360
Speaker 3: already have a lot of power. Is that something we

1045
01:06:44,400 --> 01:06:48,960
Speaker 3: could agree on? I think so, well, there's there is

1046
01:06:49,040 --> 01:06:51,760
Speaker 3: one other thing we can agree on, and simple, and

1047
01:06:51,800 --> 01:06:55,600
Speaker 3: it's kind of horrified. Around the world. Assets that were

1048
01:06:55,640 --> 01:06:59,440
Speaker 3: once safe are getting blown left and right. And the

1049
01:06:59,480 --> 01:07:03,200
Speaker 3: thing about paranoia is we may never know how many

1050
01:07:03,280 --> 01:07:07,000
Speaker 3: people or how because they are people, how many assets

1051
01:07:07,880 --> 01:07:12,840
Speaker 3: lives were ruined or ended, Because the US's own agencies

1052
01:07:13,240 --> 01:07:17,480
Speaker 3: don't disclose that information. It's a rabbit hole of smoke

1053
01:07:17,560 --> 01:07:21,600
Speaker 3: and mirrors at every turn your face forward with the

1054
01:07:21,640 --> 01:07:23,120
Speaker 3: stuff they don't want you to know.

1055
01:07:23,440 --> 01:07:25,600
Speaker 4: Matt, did you just chuckle at assets getting blown?

1056
01:07:25,920 --> 01:07:28,120
Speaker 2: We've said it so many times in this episode so far,

1057
01:07:28,560 --> 01:07:30,040
Speaker 2: people getting blown left and right.

1058
01:07:30,120 --> 01:07:35,040
Speaker 3: This is everywhere, all the way down. And with this

1059
01:07:35,440 --> 01:07:37,960
Speaker 3: we pass the torch to you. Be it yours to

1060
01:07:38,040 --> 01:07:40,400
Speaker 3: hold it high. If you break faith with those who

1061
01:07:40,480 --> 01:07:44,280
Speaker 3: die shout out to the poem Flanders Fields. I want

1062
01:07:44,320 --> 01:07:47,720
Speaker 3: to say, let us know your thoughts here, folks, let

1063
01:07:47,800 --> 01:07:51,800
Speaker 3: us know what to make of all this strange, conflicting

1064
01:07:51,960 --> 01:07:56,400
Speaker 3: conspiracy and allegations thereof. You can find us on the emails.

1065
01:07:56,480 --> 01:07:58,640
Speaker 3: You can find us on the telephones. You can find

1066
01:07:58,720 --> 01:08:02,400
Speaker 3: us on the lines, not secret cables though, public cables only.

1067
01:08:02,400 --> 01:08:05,280
Speaker 4: Yeah, only above ground cables can you reach us on.

1068
01:08:05,320 --> 01:08:07,200
Speaker 4: You can find us at the handle Conspiracy Stuff where

1069
01:08:07,240 --> 01:08:09,680
Speaker 4: we exist on Facebook with our Facebook group Here's where

1070
01:08:09,720 --> 01:08:13,840
Speaker 4: it gets crazy. On x FKA, Twitter, and on youtubee.

1071
01:08:13,880 --> 01:08:18,000
Speaker 4: We have video content galore for you to sift through

1072
01:08:18,200 --> 01:08:22,600
Speaker 4: peruse at your leisure. On TikTok and Instagram. However, you

1073
01:08:22,640 --> 01:08:25,639
Speaker 4: can find us at the handle Conspiracy Stuff Show.

1074
01:08:26,880 --> 01:08:29,160
Speaker 2: We have a phone number. It is one eight three

1075
01:08:29,240 --> 01:08:34,040
Speaker 2: three std WYTK when you call in, you've got three minutes,

1076
01:08:34,120 --> 01:08:37,080
Speaker 2: give yourself a cool nickname, and let us know within

1077
01:08:37,120 --> 01:08:38,879
Speaker 2: the message if we can use your name and message

1078
01:08:38,880 --> 01:08:40,920
Speaker 2: on the air. If you've got more to say than

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01:08:41,000 --> 01:08:43,519
Speaker 2: can fit in a three minute voicemail, why not instead

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01:08:43,600 --> 01:08:46,400
Speaker 2: send us an email. We are the.

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Speaker 3: Entities that read every piece of correspondence we receive. Be

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01:08:50,000 --> 01:08:53,960
Speaker 3: well aware, yet unafraid. The void does right back. Also,

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01:08:54,320 --> 01:08:56,160
Speaker 3: it doesn't have to be along when it could just

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01:08:56,200 --> 01:08:58,920
Speaker 3: be some thoughts that are on your mind. Don't feel

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01:08:59,160 --> 01:09:03,799
Speaker 3: don't feel limited by any men or macs of word counts.

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Speaker 3: We honestly can't wait to hear from you. You are

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Speaker 3: the most important part of the show. Join us out

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Speaker 3: here in the dark conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.

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Speaker 2: Stuff they Don't Want You to Know is a production

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Speaker 2: of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,

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Speaker 2: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.