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Speaker 1: I'm John Cipher and I'm Jerry O'Shea. I was a

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Speaker 1: CIA officer stationed around the world in high threat posts

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Speaker 1: in Europe, Russia, and in Asia.

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Speaker 2: And I served in Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East

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Speaker 2: and in war zones. We sometimes created conspiracies to deceive

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Speaker 2: our adversaries.

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Speaker 1: Now we're going to use our expertise to deconstruct conspiracy

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Speaker 1: theories large and small.

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Speaker 2: Could they be true? Or are we being manipulated?

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Speaker 1: This is mission implausible. Today's guest is David McCluskey. He's

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Speaker 1: actually a friend and a former colleague, and he is

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Speaker 1: now best known for his best selling spy novels Damasca, Station,

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Speaker 1: Moscow X and The Seventh Floor, all worth reading. We'll

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Speaker 1: probably talk about him in the podcast, but he's probably

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Speaker 1: even better known nowadays, especially in England, for his well

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Speaker 1: regarded podcast The Rest Is Classified with British security journalist

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Speaker 1: Gordon Carrera.

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Speaker 2: It's good.

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Speaker 1: David previously worked at the CIA on issues related to

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Speaker 1: the Middle East and worked in embassies abroad, but he

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Speaker 1: was in the sort of snotty, whimpy side of the agency.

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Speaker 1: Jully and I who were busy saving the world so

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Speaker 1: that it could be destroyed later. So sorry about that.

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Speaker 2: So I can't be friends, you know, Manars and Venus

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Speaker 2: can d O and d I people. We'll explore that.

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Speaker 2: I'm sorry over here, you go.

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Speaker 3: I was I was trying to translate all the garbage

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Speaker 3: you were writing up in the field so the people

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Speaker 3: making the decisions in DC would know what the hell

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Speaker 3: you were talking about.

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Speaker 1: I have lots of questions, but here's where I'd like

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Speaker 1: to start off with. What is it like now to

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Speaker 1: be making a living off of our exploits?

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Speaker 3: I like I like to I like to say John

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Speaker 3: that you know, I was certainly not a I was

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Speaker 3: certainly not a case officer like you out there saving

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Speaker 3: the world regularly day by day. But but you know

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Speaker 3: every day. Yeah, what better person to actually be able

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Speaker 3: to write down on paper those exploits than an analyst, right?

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Speaker 3: I mean, this is this It's just a continuation of

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Speaker 3: my sort of prior career right now. Now I get

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Speaker 3: to write more fantastical stories and UH and occasionally you know,

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Speaker 3: poke fun at you guys, and UH and some of

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Speaker 3: my analysts friends as well. So it's not too bad.

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Speaker 3: It's not too bad.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I have to say as we start that when

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Speaker 2: I entered the agency the first couple of tours, I

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Speaker 2: was like the agency version of hermaphrodite, sort of a

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Speaker 2: I was because I was between I was between the

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Speaker 2: d I, the intelligence guys, the analysts, guys, intelligence folk,

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Speaker 2: the analysts, and the operations officer, tough guys like John

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Speaker 2: and both of you, the DI analyst and the do

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Speaker 2: O operators. Both of you gave me noggies and swirlies

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Speaker 2: right and looked good.

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Speaker 3: Point, this is a real besmirching of our reports, officer friends,

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Speaker 3: isn't it. It is. It's terrible.

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Speaker 1: I all of us deserve a besmirching, So that's not

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Speaker 1: that's true. I was trying to go on offense til

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Speaker 1: that my besmirching is a little further down the pike.

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Speaker 3: That's true. That's true. Yeah, No, I mean, uh, I

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Speaker 3: mean analysts, though I don't think they were analysts, weren't

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Speaker 3: the type to be given out like noggi's and swirlies. Jerry,

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Speaker 3: and I feel like it was very much a heads down,

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Speaker 3: eating lunch at your desk crowd for the most part, right,

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Speaker 3: That's what I remember.

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Speaker 2: Mostly I got like eye rolls and like oh yeah,

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Speaker 2: you got oh And then I get use a big

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Speaker 2: word and I have to go look it up and

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Speaker 2: realize I've been besmirched.

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Speaker 3: But this is an influencing thing. We were talking, We

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Speaker 3: were talking about this before we even hit record, that

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Speaker 3: what Jerry just did is a classic case officer influencing

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Speaker 3: tactic for analysts, which is, when you're sitting down in

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Speaker 3: a briefing, they tell you, they the case officers, tell

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Speaker 3: you how smart you are and how they don't know anything,

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Speaker 3: and how they're just desperate for your knowledge, and then

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Speaker 3: use the analyst. You know, even if you kind of

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Speaker 3: know what's happening, you feel good when the briefing starts

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Speaker 3: right and it's just a classic I swear that they

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Speaker 3: taught you that somewhere along the line, because I got

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Speaker 3: every case officer I sat down with ever period.

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Speaker 2: I have to get this out, so they get this

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Speaker 2: out early. We had a a an analyst, a very

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Speaker 2: senior analyst woman. She came to Manila and we were

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Speaker 2: talking and you know, around the table, and we were

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Speaker 2: giving a briefing. And at the time, one of the

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Speaker 2: terrorist groups, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, was something we

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Speaker 2: were concerned with. And so the reports officer says, well, well,

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Speaker 2: there's no way around this, you know. He says that

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Speaker 2: it's called the MILF, And everybody smiles around the table

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Speaker 2: except for the analyst, and she's like yeah, and he's

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Speaker 2: like the mill and uh, she's like and she's like

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Speaker 2: smart enough to pick up that's supposed to mean something.

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Speaker 2: He says, well, maybe you should look it up later,

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Speaker 2: but don't use a government computer.

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Speaker 3: Well it was abbreviated milf in' that's the name.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, the MILF. Yeah. Yeah, we're going down. We're

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Speaker 2: already sort of launching down a path, and conspiracy theories

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Speaker 2: come out of like the CIA, And David, I was

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Speaker 2: wondering if you could talk a little bit about maybe

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Speaker 2: some of the tribes inside of CIA really briefly, and

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Speaker 2: then discuss what the DII the analysts do, and then

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Speaker 2: we can sort of talk about conspiracy theories and conspiracies

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Speaker 2: both within the agency and who gets blamed for conspiracy

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Speaker 2: theories and so forth. So why don't you why don't

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Speaker 2: I kick it over to you?

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Speaker 3: I'm sure you're well, yeah, I mean, and the most

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Speaker 3: important tribe is the analyst, because they're the ones writing

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Speaker 3: and stuff that goes goes to the policymakers, right, that's

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Speaker 3: what the CIA is there to do. For the most part.

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Speaker 3: Occasionally we'll spin up some covered action stuff which usually

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Speaker 3: doesn't go that well. But you know, the analysts are

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Speaker 3: sort of we're holding the flame. I mean, so the

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Speaker 3: analysts is certainly one tribe, right, your your case officer

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Speaker 3: brethren are another.

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Speaker 2: Relations officers.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, that's right.

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Speaker 3: There's there's a whole host of like teers and ness

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Speaker 3: in tiers. Yeah, yeah, the support guys. But like even

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Speaker 3: within like the d O, right, there's a bunch of

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Speaker 3: different sort of you know, there's like a sort of hierarchy.

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Speaker 4: Right, And how do you see the hierarchy? That's that's all.

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Speaker 4: How do I see it in the operations side?

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Speaker 2: Yeah?

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Speaker 3: Well I was thinking that, Yeah, there's there's reports officers,

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Speaker 3: there's cmos, there's there's sues, right, and I always forgot

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Speaker 3: what that stood for, essentially, like essentially like an analyst.

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Speaker 1: In the d O.

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Speaker 3: Is that right? Okay? There were targeting officers, which I

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Speaker 3: guess could be in either the d I or the

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Speaker 3: d O, as I recall, you know, interestingly enough, the

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Speaker 3: last time I went into Langley up in the newly

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Speaker 3: renovated museum. There is a wall that has a list

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Speaker 3: of every or what seems like every possible job title

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Speaker 3: you could have at the CIA, and it is an

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Speaker 3: entire wall. Have you seen this. It's well, let us in.

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Speaker 4: There anymore to be clear.

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Speaker 2: And you still have pictures in me on a horse

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Speaker 2: in Afghanistan. Those are all going we didn't go real

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Speaker 2: well yeah, yeah, I mean.

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Speaker 3: My perception was always the case. Officers believed themselves to

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Speaker 3: be the reason the entire place existed, and thus the

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Speaker 3: most important people there thatived believed, yes, believed themselves to

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Speaker 3: be the most important Who I mean, who else there was?

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Speaker 3: You know, a variety of techie type roles. There were

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Speaker 3: those guys in the green jackets who monitored the uh,

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Speaker 3: the contractors who came in who I always like to

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Speaker 3: include them in any kind of book, if I could

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Speaker 3: just randomly throw a reference at them.

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Speaker 2: I don't know.

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Speaker 4: You've done a good job with your books. You've thrown

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Speaker 4: in that you had the hot dog machine, and the hot.

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Speaker 3: Dog machine in there, sadly was it was ripped out

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Speaker 3: at some point in the past decade, probably for like

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Speaker 3: code violations. I tried to get a reference to the

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Speaker 3: you know, the gift shop in there as much as

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Speaker 3: I can, and I used I think John, I actually

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Speaker 3: took this line from you with permission, of course, because

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Speaker 3: at one point in some conversation you said that we

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Speaker 3: stopped being a real spy service as soon as the

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Speaker 3: gift shop went in. You know, we put that. Put

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Speaker 3: that in the mouth of.

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Speaker 4: The CIA on it the end.

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Speaker 3: Yeah.

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Speaker 2: But David, so there's there's the analysts and the operator,

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Speaker 2: so the two core tribes. But there's another split, another

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Speaker 2: schism inside of the agency. And I want to know

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Speaker 2: which side you fall on. Were you dunkin Donuts or

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Speaker 2: were you Starbucks? There's two places to get coffee.

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Speaker 3: That's right, That's right. You know what I I migrated

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Speaker 3: over the course of my career. I began as a

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Speaker 3: dunkin Donuts.

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Speaker 4: Man, made more money, went to Starbucks.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly. And then once I made gs ten I started,

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Speaker 3: I went to Starbucks. It was Duncan to start, and

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Speaker 3: then it became Starbucks. Although I heard a rumor, I

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Speaker 3: wasn't there. A director at some point wanted to like

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Speaker 3: rip out the coffee stands, right, I don't know which one.

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Speaker 4: Our friends Rob Danberg wanted to do that.

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Speaker 3: He oh, Okay, yeah, yeah, get rid of them. But yeah, no,

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Speaker 3: I'm I became a Starbucks man as it went on,

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Speaker 3: and there were plenty of my analyst friends who probably

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Speaker 3: spent good portions of their days kind of like just

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Speaker 3: milling around the Starbucks writer having various like ostensible work

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Speaker 3: chats in the cafeteria or at the Starbucks that were

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Speaker 3: that were not.

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Speaker 4: That's why he wanted to rip them out, because.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly exactly the strength.

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Speaker 1: Let's talk about you for a second. I mean, really,

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Speaker 1: you have become quite popular both for your books, which

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Speaker 1: are high praise, but also this podcast, which is newer.

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Speaker 1: So which do you like better nowadays? The writing or

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Speaker 1: the podcasting.

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Speaker 3: Oh that's hard. I mean I enjoy both of them.

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Speaker 3: I think the writing is the central thing that that

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Speaker 3: I don't know, I will never I will never stop writing,

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Speaker 3: and I hope the podcast never stops. But kind of

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Speaker 3: the central piece of all of it's the books. But

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Speaker 3: Gordon and I having a ton of fun on the podcast,

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Speaker 3: and I see it as very like symbiotic with the

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Speaker 3: writing because it's an opportunity to go into spy stories

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Speaker 3: that I know some thing about and then actually go

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Speaker 3: deep and do the research to come up with kind of,

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Speaker 3: you know, the arc for a tour or four six

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Speaker 3: part series and and learn a whole bunch of stuff

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Speaker 3: that I don't I didn't otherwise know, and then frankly,

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Speaker 3: you know, try to find ways to work some of

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Speaker 3: that material into books if I can. And so kind

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Speaker 3: of going into real stuff and finding interesting characters or

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Speaker 3: situations is really fruitful. So I think the two things

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Speaker 3: really work well.

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Speaker 2: Again, fiction and John's war stories are pretty much the

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Speaker 2: same thing.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, there I was. It does be an igor.

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Speaker 4: Let's take a break. We'll be right back.

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Speaker 2: So I want to I'm gonna endeavor to say something

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Speaker 2: good about.

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Speaker 3: Analysts, okay, And I know it's gonna be hard for you.

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Speaker 2: And it's and I'm going I want to get down

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Speaker 2: this rabbit hole. And this gets into conspiracies and conspiracy theories.

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Speaker 2: So one of the bigger ones is IRAQ w WEMD

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Speaker 2: and it's something that I have an indirect insight into,

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Speaker 2: and I imagine also you indirect through hearsay and so forth.

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Speaker 2: But my sense was it is billed as and on

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Speaker 2: permission to swear, because this is a big one. This

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Speaker 2: is like a huge agency fuck up. And I think

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Speaker 2: I'm not going to shy away from that, but I

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Speaker 2: think the real for me, in any case, the real

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Speaker 2: conspiracy here is that the Bush administration basically had decided

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Speaker 2: to go to war, and they built their own with

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Speaker 2: Doug Fife, they built their own intelligence service in the

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Speaker 2: Pentagon for a little while for two years to basically

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Speaker 2: prove that case and to throw out any evidence that

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Speaker 2: didn't support it. And then of course they went down

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Speaker 2: the road of Saddam and al Qaeda were very close,

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Speaker 2: which was completely untrue. And then they said that, you know,

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Speaker 2: they hooked into a whole host of scammers that claimed

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Speaker 2: that Saddam had this you know, curveball and all the

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Speaker 2: rest of this. And my understanding is that the analysts

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Speaker 2: who wouldn't go along with this were systematically weeded out,

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Speaker 2: you know, sort of pushed off to the side or

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Speaker 2: demoted or asked to move off, and that the analyst

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Speaker 2: at the end said, the evidence that we have indicates

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Speaker 2: that they likely do. There was sort of probability, I

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Speaker 2: don't know as high, medium, low, and the White I

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Speaker 2: said that's not good enough. And George Tennant, who I

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Speaker 2: think highly uncaved is my understanding, and he said, look,

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Speaker 2: it's it's yes or no. There's no maybe's here. We're

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Speaker 2: going to war. Say yes or no, and you'd better

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Speaker 2: be friggin yes, right, And so they did they said yes.

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Speaker 2: And so the agency, through a conspiracy, has been stuck

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Speaker 2: with this has been pinned to us as a one

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Speaker 2: of our great failures. And I think it's you know,

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Speaker 2: the analysts are sort of at the center of this,

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Speaker 2: the pressures on them. So I'm wondering from where you sat,

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Speaker 2: from what you heard, you weren't involved in this. It's

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Speaker 2: your sense of pressure on analysts. And this goes today

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Speaker 2: with this administration to all sorts of things like you know,

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Speaker 2: where COVID came from and so forth. So I wonder

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Speaker 2: wonder if you could go into that.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, that's my understanding as well. The rock WMD story

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Speaker 3: is that it's a it is in some sense a

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Speaker 3: story about analytic failure, because at the time there wasn't

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Speaker 3: I actually don't think that there were embedded across the DII.

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Speaker 3: There weren't sort of the the confidence statements and all

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Speaker 3: these kind of other and frankly, a lot of the

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Speaker 3: clarity around how good or bad or fragmentary or otherwise

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Speaker 3: the sourcing was like those were not as consistently embedded

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Speaker 3: in the assessments, and so it was easier in some ways,

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Speaker 3: I think, to sort of handwave maybe or for consumers

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Speaker 3: of the intel to take away different stories from what

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Speaker 3: they were reading. And a lot of the changes made,

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Speaker 3: like just as I was joining, were to try to

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Speaker 3: like systematize the way that we communicated INTEL assessments and

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Speaker 3: to be very clear about what we knew and what

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Speaker 3: we didn't know and things like that.

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Speaker 2: You know.

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Speaker 3: The art of the story you told on Rock WMD,

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Speaker 3: I think is a that's a particularly egregious example of

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Speaker 3: the politics kind of dipping in and dictating or really

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Speaker 3: influencing what the CIA puts down on paper. I think

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Speaker 3: the politicization of analysis, though it's rarely that easy. I

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Speaker 3: think to sort of go back and say that's exactly

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Speaker 3: what happened, I think a Rock WMD, because I mean

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Speaker 3: my understanding is that sometimes like there were NSC or

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Speaker 3: Pentagon or White House officials who would literally I mean

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Speaker 3: it came out to Langley on multiple occasions to like

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Speaker 3: basically sit with the analysts right and right and like

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Speaker 3: so I mean that's a lot of pressure right, and

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Speaker 3: to your point, like, if the decision has already been

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Speaker 3: made to do this, to go to war, I guess

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Speaker 3: becomes more of a political question for you know, the

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Speaker 3: director for the seventh floor to figure out how do

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Speaker 3: you not lose the trust of the White House, right

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Speaker 3: if they've already made the decision. But but yeah, I

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Speaker 3: mean the politicization pressure and sort of I guess the

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Speaker 3: risk is real and it is really I think hard

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Speaker 3: to it's not It shouldn't be hard for the line

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Speaker 3: analysts to navigate because they're the ones that are looking

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Speaker 3: at the stuff, and ideally they're being backed up the

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Speaker 3: chain by people who have an interest in like maybe corny,

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Speaker 3: but like, yeah, speaking the truth regardless of what the

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Speaker 3: politics are. But there's really many different ways that the

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Speaker 3: analysis can get politicized at different parts of the chain.

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Speaker 3: A lot of different people are touching it, and frankly,

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Speaker 3: stuff can get politicized by what's not written or what's

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Speaker 3: not reported into the White House or what doesn't get

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Speaker 3: read in the PDB. So brief yeah, yeah, so you know,

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Speaker 3: it's a really and it's really subtle, I think, because frankly,

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Speaker 3: the politicization could start with you know, someone who's editing

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Speaker 3: one of those pdbs just kind of softening some stuff

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Speaker 3: a little bit, or saying, is this really a moderate

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Speaker 3: confidence judgment? This seems more like a low confidence judgment

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Speaker 3: to me based on this definition, And that's more art

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Speaker 3: than science. And if something's a low confidence judgment, then

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Speaker 3: maybe it's you know, maybe it's not worth actually briefing

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Speaker 3: to the president period. And so it never makes, you know,

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Speaker 3: it never makes it into any kind of higher level

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Speaker 3: conversation down in the oval. So there's lots of different ways.

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Speaker 3: I mean, frankly, i'd be curious for your guys thoughts

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Speaker 3: on this, And you know, on the collection side, I'd

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Speaker 3: imagine there's plenty of ways that someone on the seventh

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Speaker 3: floor in the DdO shop could say on these three

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Speaker 3: or four topics, I want to see the stuff before

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Speaker 3: it gets descemnded. And you could decide, for any reason,

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Speaker 3: you kind of cook up maybe we don't descend this

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Speaker 3: kind of thing, and because it's gonna set off fireworks downtown,

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Speaker 3: and maybe I make up some stuff about how the

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Speaker 3: sourcing's bogus or whatever in order to justify it. So

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Speaker 3: there's a lot of different ways you could play around

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Speaker 3: with it. I think throughout the chain, right, I.

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Speaker 2: Think it's important to discuss what descend means, right. People

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Speaker 2: that may not realize this. So people like John and I,

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Speaker 2: we would collect the information from a source what it

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Speaker 2: just putatively get a human source. He gives us the information.

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Speaker 2: We don't like hand it to the president. We actually

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Speaker 2: hand it to a reports office or a CMO and

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Speaker 2: they take the information, decide how it's written up. Then

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Speaker 2: it goes to headquarters where they look at it again,

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Speaker 2: and then they descem it to whomever needs it, whoever

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Speaker 2: is in need to know, so to the analysts. And

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Speaker 2: there's always a danger that if that raw disseminated report

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Speaker 2: goes directly to the White House and it's wrong, or

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Speaker 2: if it's lanted, then you've got other problems. But so

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Speaker 2: that's the way it should go. But there's lots of

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Speaker 2: places to slip TwixT the it fixed the spoon in

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Speaker 2: the lip, right I mean, and not always to influence it.

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Speaker 1: But yeah, if you go to go back to the

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Speaker 1: WMD a rock WND problem, A lot of people have

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Speaker 1: gone back after the analysts for making a bad call there,

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Speaker 1: but frankly there was no good collection then either. So

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Speaker 1: it was a real intelligence failure. We had no good sources. Really,

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Speaker 1: we had a White House that decided they needed to

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Speaker 1: go to war, and we had no Americans living in

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Speaker 1: the country. We had no good sources, and the analysts

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Speaker 1: were being pressured to come up with an analytic judgment,

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Speaker 1: and I think they tried to use what would be logical. Well,

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Speaker 1: he had WMD before and he tried to hide it,

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Speaker 1: so we must be doing so again. And so it

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Speaker 1: was a real problem. And I think we've seen even

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Speaker 1: more recently. You talked about it in one of your

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Speaker 1: podcasts recently about the twenty twenty two invasion of Ukraine.

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Speaker 4: It seems in that.

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Speaker 1: Case we actually had good collection. We had some sort

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Speaker 1: of source or sources. They were telling us that Putin

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Speaker 1: was about to invade. But some of the analysis clearly

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Speaker 1: was wrong because we had information Putin was going to invade.

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Speaker 1: But then were the decision was what's going to happen next?

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Speaker 1: And essentially our analysts in some fashion must have told

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Speaker 1: the White House, well, Ukraine's gonna lose quickly, and so

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Speaker 1: you better get Lenski out of there, and that's not

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Speaker 1: what happened.

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Speaker 4: Someone had to.

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Speaker 1: Make a decision on how were the Ukrainians willing to fight,

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Speaker 1: and we obviously did not have good intelligence on that either.

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Speaker 2: And David, so you were involved a lot with Syria

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Speaker 2: that's reflected in your book. You were there for Prog

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Speaker 2: Prog Spring, Christ dates me for the Arab Spring. Spring

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Speaker 2: springs and people tend to think, in conspiratorial thinking that

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Speaker 2: the agency is omnipotent when things surprise us. So like

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Speaker 2: the Arab Spring, people tend to think that the agency

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Speaker 2: is involved in prophesying that we've got You guys have

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Speaker 2: a crystal ball. So I was wondering if you could

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Speaker 2: give us your senses an analyst of what we could

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Speaker 2: know about the Arab Spring. Right, a fruit seller gets

386
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Speaker 2: slapped in the world falls apart and then whether and

387
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Speaker 2: then more recent is like when a sad fell, like

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Speaker 2: everybody was like holy shit, I mean nobody predicted it.

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Speaker 2: So I just wondering if you could give folks a

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Speaker 2: sense of like how you guys are just as much

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Speaker 2: at sea as the rest of us, right, and it's

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Speaker 2: not a conspiracy to hide or that we've got all

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Speaker 2: this information. Yea, this information, we have all this power

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Speaker 2: that people assume we have.

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Speaker 3: I think that The way I would maybe frame it is,

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Speaker 3: I think making a call on the eruption of mass

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Speaker 3: sort of popular uprising in the Middle East is a mystery.

398
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Speaker 3: It is a sort of mass psychological phenomenon that is

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Speaker 3: inherently unpredictable and actually nobody is capable of predicting it.

400
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Speaker 3: Whereas does Saddam possess chemical, biological weapons whatever is a secret,

401
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Speaker 3: We in theory could have collected information that would have,

402
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Speaker 3: you know, sort of proved or disproved whether or not

403
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Speaker 3: that's true, Which is why I think I would say

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Speaker 3: to your point, John, I'd never thought about WMD. Actually

405
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Speaker 3: is a doo failure, a collection failure that's also a

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Speaker 3: piece of it. The whole kind of chain failed because

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Speaker 3: the analysts we didn't have good information, and then the

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Speaker 3: analysts sort of through pressure and otherwise, you know, messed

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Speaker 3: up the call. But I think an intelligence failure involves

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Speaker 3: like are there secrets to collect that should have been

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Speaker 3: collected or analysis that should have been conducted given the

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Speaker 3: available information that wasn't right, Whereas I think predicting Syria

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Speaker 3: it's not possible, and so we certainly did not have

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Speaker 3: a crystal ball, and most of what the country analysts

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Speaker 3: were doing in those late twenty ten early twenty eleven

416
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Speaker 3: months were either writing pieces that explained sort of what

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Speaker 3: are the hurdles to a protest movement or to an

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Speaker 3: insurgency or a civil war, like what has to be

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Speaker 3: overcome to get there? So said differently, like what would

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Speaker 3: you have to believe for this to happen? Or writing

421
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Speaker 3: scenarios that lay out, you know, three or four worlds

422
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Speaker 3: or paths you could travel down should the sort of

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Speaker 3: security apparatus and general kind of pillars of stability in

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Speaker 3: a given country start to crumble, And none of us

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Speaker 3: had any eye. I mean I had friends who were

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Speaker 3: working on other you know, milliased accounts at that point

427
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Speaker 3: in time, who were literally writing essentially writing pieces that

428
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Speaker 3: had them in draft form that were like, this is

429
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Speaker 3: why it's not going to happen here, and then the

430
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Speaker 3: protest movement would start to May would be like delete these,

431
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Speaker 3: you know, So like no one saw that stuff coming, right,

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Speaker 3: I mean no more than like nobody saw the sort

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Speaker 3: of collapse of communism across Eastern Europe happening so quickly

434
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Speaker 3: in eighty nine either, right, So it's just it's not predictable.

435
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Speaker 3: Those kind of mass events.

436
00:22:44,440 --> 00:22:46,679
Speaker 2: Well, I don't know. I don't know about that. I

437
00:22:46,680 --> 00:22:51,359
Speaker 2: mean I went to West Berlin in the in April

438
00:22:51,359 --> 00:22:54,800
Speaker 2: of eighty nine, and you know, five months later it

439
00:22:54,840 --> 00:22:57,600
Speaker 2: all fell apart, the wall came down. Coincidence.

440
00:23:01,520 --> 00:23:03,280
Speaker 4: Well, I'm in analysis right there.

441
00:23:05,000 --> 00:23:05,760
Speaker 2: In my mind.

442
00:23:05,880 --> 00:23:26,720
Speaker 1: No, and more of this enlightening banter after a quick break.

443
00:23:28,880 --> 00:23:32,040
Speaker 2: Just because I was sort of involved in this. It

444
00:23:32,119 --> 00:23:35,120
Speaker 2: was also a process issue. So there was this source

445
00:23:35,320 --> 00:23:40,840
Speaker 2: called Curveball. Now Curveball, he was the main source. Singles

446
00:23:40,960 --> 00:23:43,160
Speaker 2: never do things on single source. He was the main

447
00:23:43,240 --> 00:23:47,760
Speaker 2: source that told us with great confidence and specificity about

448
00:23:47,800 --> 00:23:51,840
Speaker 2: the state of the WND programs. And Curveball was living

449
00:23:51,880 --> 00:23:55,440
Speaker 2: in Munich at the time, and German Station and I

450
00:23:55,560 --> 00:23:58,719
Speaker 2: got a pretty good view into this talked to the

451
00:23:58,760 --> 00:24:01,040
Speaker 2: Germans about him because he refus to meet the CIA,

452
00:24:01,119 --> 00:24:03,880
Speaker 2: but he did talk to the German intelligence and he said,

453
00:24:03,920 --> 00:24:06,560
Speaker 2: I won't meet the CIA, but you know, you can

454
00:24:06,600 --> 00:24:09,760
Speaker 2: give their information to HIT to them, to US intelligence.

455
00:24:10,359 --> 00:24:12,480
Speaker 2: I think the station took a look at his stuff

456
00:24:12,520 --> 00:24:15,000
Speaker 2: and said, we can't verify any of this and maybe

457
00:24:15,000 --> 00:24:16,920
Speaker 2: it's true, maybe it's not, but it's like we can't

458
00:24:17,040 --> 00:24:19,840
Speaker 2: verify it. So it's really not any good. And then

459
00:24:19,880 --> 00:24:22,760
Speaker 2: what happened is the military came in and they said, well,

460
00:24:22,760 --> 00:24:24,919
Speaker 2: we'll do it, right, but they didn't tell the station.

461
00:24:25,400 --> 00:24:29,400
Speaker 2: So all that reporting that went out went out through

462
00:24:29,480 --> 00:24:33,320
Speaker 2: the US military, and we in the station and our

463
00:24:33,359 --> 00:24:35,560
Speaker 2: analysts were getting it, but we didn't know where it

464
00:24:35,640 --> 00:24:37,600
Speaker 2: was coming from, right, I mean, we didn't have a

465
00:24:37,640 --> 00:24:39,240
Speaker 2: need to know that it was coming out of Munich.

466
00:24:39,320 --> 00:24:41,480
Speaker 2: And it only sort of at the very end did

467
00:24:41,520 --> 00:24:45,320
Speaker 2: we solve that. Yeah, it was like.

468
00:24:44,680 --> 00:24:46,240
Speaker 3: A big circular references.

469
00:24:46,400 --> 00:24:47,400
Speaker 4: This is that same guy.

470
00:24:47,880 --> 00:24:50,760
Speaker 2: There's the same guy. And I think it's been in

471
00:24:50,800 --> 00:24:54,680
Speaker 2: the press that the station chief actually wrote and said,

472
00:24:54,200 --> 00:24:58,600
Speaker 2: I hope this isn't the case, and Tyler Drumhill are famously,

473
00:24:58,640 --> 00:25:01,200
Speaker 2: again according to the media, went and said, I hope

474
00:25:01,200 --> 00:25:03,800
Speaker 2: you're not basing it and on this guy in Munich

475
00:25:04,160 --> 00:25:06,640
Speaker 2: on curveball, And by then it was sort of too late.

476
00:25:06,680 --> 00:25:09,440
Speaker 2: But the process, the military and you know, they they

477
00:25:09,560 --> 00:25:12,040
Speaker 2: talked to each other, but they didn't talk about sourcing

478
00:25:12,080 --> 00:25:13,920
Speaker 2: to each other, right, So it gets I don't want

479
00:25:13,920 --> 00:25:15,280
Speaker 2: to get too much into the weeds, but yeah, it

480
00:25:15,320 --> 00:25:17,400
Speaker 2: was also a process issue for sure.

481
00:25:17,400 --> 00:25:22,000
Speaker 3: And the way I remember this kind of rolling Downhill.

482
00:25:22,040 --> 00:25:23,640
Speaker 3: To me as an analyst when I joined a few

483
00:25:23,720 --> 00:25:28,440
Speaker 3: years after, this was being really really explicit. When you're

484
00:25:28,440 --> 00:25:32,000
Speaker 3: writing a finished intelligence product. You know, you're not giving

485
00:25:32,040 --> 00:25:34,120
Speaker 3: obviously the name of the source, you're not describing where

486
00:25:34,119 --> 00:25:37,680
Speaker 3: they work, but you don't cure like like extensive descriptions

487
00:25:37,720 --> 00:25:39,680
Speaker 3: of how much confidence we have in the source and

488
00:25:39,720 --> 00:25:43,080
Speaker 3: whether they actually have good access and all of that,

489
00:25:43,240 --> 00:25:45,359
Speaker 3: like have they been vetted? So there's there was a

490
00:25:45,359 --> 00:25:49,560
Speaker 3: lot more information that got included post like three oh

491
00:25:49,640 --> 00:25:52,200
Speaker 3: four oh five than if you go back and read

492
00:25:52,240 --> 00:25:56,240
Speaker 3: stuff that was written in one or two, like oftentimes

493
00:25:56,240 --> 00:25:57,880
Speaker 3: the sourcing statements were very thin.

494
00:25:58,400 --> 00:26:00,840
Speaker 2: Trust me, dude, you know that it's a sourcing statement.

495
00:26:00,880 --> 00:26:03,480
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I mean kind of yeah, that's the way

496
00:26:03,480 --> 00:26:03,840
Speaker 3: it read.

497
00:26:04,119 --> 00:26:04,639
Speaker 4: Yeah.

498
00:26:04,840 --> 00:26:06,680
Speaker 1: To go back to Syria, I think Syria is a

499
00:26:07,520 --> 00:26:09,840
Speaker 1: big deal. Like there was environmental concerns and things that

500
00:26:09,920 --> 00:26:12,200
Speaker 1: led to you know, lots of people leaving Syria, which

501
00:26:12,240 --> 00:26:15,879
Speaker 1: led to problems in Europe and political problems that related

502
00:26:15,880 --> 00:26:18,879
Speaker 1: to immigration and things that put pressure on political leaders.

503
00:26:19,520 --> 00:26:21,800
Speaker 1: What do you think is happening now? Do you think

504
00:26:22,440 --> 00:26:24,440
Speaker 1: this is a policy question not an intelligence question? Do

505
00:26:24,480 --> 00:26:26,960
Speaker 1: you think we are handling it well, we have a

506
00:26:27,000 --> 00:26:29,000
Speaker 1: new leader in Syria, and it sounds to me like,

507
00:26:29,560 --> 00:26:31,760
Speaker 1: you know, the administration wants to sort of blow him off,

508
00:26:31,800 --> 00:26:35,200
Speaker 1: and I worry that more problems in Syria are a

509
00:26:36,000 --> 00:26:38,960
Speaker 1: potential problem for outside of Syria as well.

510
00:26:39,280 --> 00:26:42,480
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm weirdly as an analyst. I'm a natural pessimist,

511
00:26:42,520 --> 00:26:44,920
Speaker 3: and I think Syria for like fifteen years, has given

512
00:26:44,960 --> 00:26:47,760
Speaker 3: me plenty of reasons to be pessimistic about pretty much everything,

513
00:26:48,600 --> 00:26:50,960
Speaker 3: a lot of reasons to continue to be pessimistic, although

514
00:26:51,000 --> 00:26:53,840
Speaker 3: strangely enough, at this point I'm sort of cautiously hopeful

515
00:26:53,920 --> 00:26:57,080
Speaker 3: or optimistic about the future. I mean, and it is.

516
00:26:57,240 --> 00:27:00,359
Speaker 3: It's not to say that I think it's possible that

517
00:27:00,400 --> 00:27:04,040
Speaker 3: we get like a flowering Jeffersonian democracy in Syria. That

518
00:27:04,200 --> 00:27:08,080
Speaker 3: seems unlikely, but I think it's also very possible, if

519
00:27:08,080 --> 00:27:12,560
Speaker 3: not even likely, that we get a better outcome than

520
00:27:12,960 --> 00:27:17,320
Speaker 3: Assad by a wide margin in terms of it is

521
00:27:17,320 --> 00:27:21,000
Speaker 3: a low bar, but I think it's it's possible that

522
00:27:21,080 --> 00:27:23,920
Speaker 3: we end up with a Syria that is at least

523
00:27:24,000 --> 00:27:28,119
Speaker 3: not sort of actively creating, you know, massive problems for

524
00:27:28,160 --> 00:27:32,280
Speaker 3: all of its neighbors, and maybe hopefully in the future

525
00:27:33,040 --> 00:27:37,679
Speaker 3: politically more stable and also more open, right than the

526
00:27:37,760 --> 00:27:41,920
Speaker 3: regime Osad Ran and frankly managing you know, it's repressive

527
00:27:41,920 --> 00:27:45,320
Speaker 3: apparatus on a much less sort of industrial horrific scale.

528
00:27:45,400 --> 00:27:47,439
Speaker 3: We will cross that bar for sure, right is that

529
00:27:47,480 --> 00:27:49,399
Speaker 3: this is going to be a far less repressive regime

530
00:27:49,400 --> 00:27:52,879
Speaker 3: than the one oside Ran. That's said, I mean, you

531
00:27:52,920 --> 00:27:57,000
Speaker 3: know where to start with the problems. And frankly, you know,

532
00:27:57,080 --> 00:28:01,080
Speaker 3: even though we still have true groups in the northeast,

533
00:28:01,200 --> 00:28:04,400
Speaker 3: I think maybe about nine hundred or so that are

534
00:28:04,400 --> 00:28:09,200
Speaker 3: there supporting our comrades in the SDF, the Syrian Democratic Forces.

535
00:28:09,320 --> 00:28:13,399
Speaker 3: You know, I don't think this administration has any Do

536
00:28:13,480 --> 00:28:16,320
Speaker 3: they have a Syria policy or an interest in developing one?

537
00:28:16,359 --> 00:28:19,000
Speaker 3: I mean, and if so, what would it even be.

538
00:28:19,280 --> 00:28:21,960
Speaker 3: You know, I think this is kind of one of

539
00:28:21,960 --> 00:28:25,439
Speaker 3: those pockets of the world that's just probably not going

540
00:28:25,480 --> 00:28:28,080
Speaker 3: to be getting a lot of interest from Trump two

541
00:28:28,119 --> 00:28:28,840
Speaker 3: point zero.

542
00:28:28,640 --> 00:28:30,120
Speaker 4: But it will be getting a lot of interest from

543
00:28:30,240 --> 00:28:31,119
Speaker 4: Israel and Turkey.

544
00:28:31,160 --> 00:28:32,840
Speaker 3: And we will be getting a lot of interest from

545
00:28:32,880 --> 00:28:35,200
Speaker 3: Israel and Turkey, and I think they're the two major

546
00:28:35,480 --> 00:28:39,360
Speaker 3: geopolitical winners here. I read that the Israeli Air Force

547
00:28:39,760 --> 00:28:44,160
Speaker 3: in the days after Osad fled flew more air sorties

548
00:28:44,560 --> 00:28:47,720
Speaker 3: over Syria than they had in any day in any

549
00:28:47,760 --> 00:28:53,040
Speaker 3: conflict since nineteen sixty seven. They essentially destroyed most of

550
00:28:53,120 --> 00:28:56,920
Speaker 3: Syria's military capacity in like about seventy two hours. And

551
00:28:56,960 --> 00:29:00,160
Speaker 3: the Turks, you know, have are probably the group with

552
00:29:00,200 --> 00:29:02,560
Speaker 3: the most influence both in the North and then with

553
00:29:03,000 --> 00:29:06,280
Speaker 3: the new new crew in Damascus, so big winners. Iran

554
00:29:07,040 --> 00:29:10,360
Speaker 3: US not so much. So we'll see.

555
00:29:10,360 --> 00:29:14,240
Speaker 2: We just need an independent Curtis stan that'll fix it exactly.

556
00:29:15,360 --> 00:29:17,880
Speaker 3: I've got an idea for the Middle East. I do

557
00:29:17,960 --> 00:29:19,800
Speaker 3: feel I mean, I do feel bad for that. It's

558
00:29:19,840 --> 00:29:23,560
Speaker 3: like the Kurds is just the constant every time, like

559
00:29:23,680 --> 00:29:25,920
Speaker 3: every time at one of these conflicts ends, it's the

560
00:29:25,960 --> 00:29:28,520
Speaker 3: Kurds end up getting screwed. So it's really tragic.

561
00:29:30,040 --> 00:29:32,840
Speaker 5: We're gonna stop here for today and continue next week

562
00:29:32,920 --> 00:29:36,160
Speaker 5: with more of our conversation with David McCloskey here on

563
00:29:36,400 --> 00:29:45,280
Speaker 5: Mission Implausible. Mission Implausible is produced by Adam Davidson, Jerry O'sha,

564
00:29:45,800 --> 00:29:50,760
Speaker 5: John Ceipher, and Jonathan Stern. The associate producer is Rachel Harner.

565
00:29:51,000 --> 00:29:54,800
Speaker 5: Mission Implausible It's a production of honorable mention and abominable

566
00:29:54,840 --> 00:29:56,760
Speaker 5: pictures for iHeart podcasts,