WEBVTT - How Easy Is It for Our Government to Pull off More Conspiracies (with Tim Weiner) 0:00:00.400 --> 0:00:03.520 I'm John Cipher and I'm Jerry O'sha. I was a 0:00:03.560 --> 0:00:06.840 CIA officer stationed around the world in high threat posts 0:00:06.880 --> 0:00:08.600 in Europe, Russia, and in Asia. 0:00:08.640 --> 0:00:11.720 And I served in Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East 0:00:11.840 --> 0:00:15.920 and in war zones. We sometimes created conspiracies to deceive 0:00:15.960 --> 0:00:16.880 our adversaries. 0:00:17.120 --> 0:00:20.800 Now we're going to use our expertise to deconstruct conspiracy 0:00:20.840 --> 0:00:22.599 theories large and small. 0:00:22.880 --> 0:00:25.360 Could they be true or are we being manipulated? 0:00:25.880 --> 0:00:27.920 This is mission implausible. 0:00:31.040 --> 0:00:33.680 We now returned with part two of our interview with 0:00:33.840 --> 0:00:37.120 author and Policerprise within the journalist Tim Wyner. 0:00:38.159 --> 0:00:42.279 You guys spent decades of your life at CIA, and 0:00:42.560 --> 0:00:45.840 you were there when Porter Goss came in in two 0:00:45.840 --> 0:00:48.720 thousand and four. The President was not happy with CIA 0:00:48.840 --> 0:00:52.680 for several reasons. The invasion of Iraq, which CI contributed to, 0:00:52.960 --> 0:00:56.640 might stay with faulty analysis of saddamis Arsenal alb A. 0:00:56.720 --> 0:00:59.279 Bush was going to invade iraqany way, you know, if 0:00:59.280 --> 0:01:01.320 they had a paper clip and a rubber band to 0:01:01.320 --> 0:01:04.280 put your eye out right, And he wanted Porter Goss, 0:01:04.280 --> 0:01:06.720 who was the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and 0:01:06.760 --> 0:01:10.040 a former CIA officer, to come in there and basically 0:01:10.160 --> 0:01:14.600 clean house and impose loyalty oaths and ideological tests on people. 0:01:14.840 --> 0:01:18.080 And what happened next The leadership of the Clandestine Service 0:01:18.480 --> 0:01:21.960 headed for the parking Lot ads did the top analysis, 0:01:22.000 --> 0:01:26.160 and the whole place was in turmoil. Mike Morell, who 0:01:26.160 --> 0:01:29.679 spent thirty three years at the CIA and Weiss deputy 0:01:29.680 --> 0:01:33.040 director twice acting director, said it was the worst nineteen 0:01:33.080 --> 0:01:34.800 months of his thirty three year career. 0:01:35.160 --> 0:01:37.480 What some people may not realize is that Porter Goss 0:01:37.560 --> 0:01:37.920 came in. 0:01:37.959 --> 0:01:38.080 Well. 0:01:38.080 --> 0:01:39.679 First of all, he didn't want to work hard. He 0:01:39.760 --> 0:01:41.840 complained publicly that he had to put in more than 0:01:41.880 --> 0:01:44.800 eight hours and had to work on weekends, harder than 0:01:44.840 --> 0:01:48.000 I thought it would be. That's right, this is hard. Tenants, 0:01:48.000 --> 0:01:49.960 say what you will. He worked seven days a week, 0:01:50.200 --> 0:01:53.440 of course, seventeen hours a day. But Porter Goss brought 0:01:53.480 --> 0:01:57.040 in what we called on the inside, the Goslings. And 0:01:57.080 --> 0:02:02.160 these were a group of disgruntled form agency officers, almost 0:02:02.240 --> 0:02:06.080 all of whom had been fired or let go for cause, 0:02:06.640 --> 0:02:09.840 with chips on their shoulder, who thought things were easy 0:02:09.880 --> 0:02:11.880 and simple and black and white. They had been his 0:02:11.960 --> 0:02:14.320 staff at the House Intelligence Committee. And this was like 0:02:14.400 --> 0:02:17.040 seei's a great plane, Like, let's fire these guys because 0:02:17.040 --> 0:02:19.480 they're incompetent. But they're all good. They still keep their 0:02:19.520 --> 0:02:21.560 clearances and they're all going to go work for Congress 0:02:21.600 --> 0:02:23.600 and be our bosses. And then they came back and yeah, 0:02:23.600 --> 0:02:24.359 that didn't work out. 0:02:24.520 --> 0:02:26.920 Now, But the key here, I think is not the 0:02:26.919 --> 0:02:31.880 Goslings or personality disputes or anything like that. Ordered Goss's 0:02:32.000 --> 0:02:34.480 marching orders from the President of the United States, where 0:02:34.840 --> 0:02:38.680 I want loyalty. I need the CI to fall into line, 0:02:39.160 --> 0:02:43.160 and I don't want any analysts criticizing the course of 0:02:43.200 --> 0:02:47.760 the war in Iraq. And people were leaking, It's true, 0:02:48.240 --> 0:02:51.000 but every ship of state leaks from the top, and 0:02:51.639 --> 0:02:54.440 it didn't go well. And the one thing we know 0:02:54.520 --> 0:02:57.440 about Donald Trump is that he wants loyalty like a 0:02:57.440 --> 0:03:00.680 mob boss. What's going to happen would you say, based 0:03:00.720 --> 0:03:04.640 on your decades of experience, if a new director comes 0:03:04.639 --> 0:03:08.720 in at CIA and starts saying, I want you, I 0:03:08.760 --> 0:03:11.280 need you to sign an loyal I'm going to impose 0:03:11.320 --> 0:03:14.600 ideological betting on you people, and are you modo or not? 0:03:14.840 --> 0:03:15.840 What's going to happen. 0:03:15.720 --> 0:03:18.440 If that happens at DoD or in the intelligence community, 0:03:18.760 --> 0:03:21.680 it just we take very seriously our focus on the mission, 0:03:21.800 --> 0:03:24.519 our focus, and we take it oath to the Constitution. 0:03:24.720 --> 0:03:27.400 We're not loyal to individuals, and in fact, we take 0:03:27.440 --> 0:03:30.799 great pride in providing truth to power, which sometimes means 0:03:31.080 --> 0:03:32.720 telling them stuff they don't want to hear. So this 0:03:32.800 --> 0:03:35.080 is it goes just against every part of our culture. 0:03:35.280 --> 0:03:37.800 CIA at its best is when we do our job, 0:03:38.080 --> 0:03:40.960 we try to find the truth and we provide it 0:03:40.960 --> 0:03:44.640 to policy makers. We're at our worst when we become 0:03:45.080 --> 0:03:48.920 an instrument of policy that we do specifically what the 0:03:48.920 --> 0:03:53.720 President says, irregardless of what the laws are or what's ethical. 0:03:54.040 --> 0:03:56.160 Where we've done it worse it things like around contrary. Well, 0:03:56.200 --> 0:03:59.080 actually CA may have done all right by refusing to 0:03:59.120 --> 0:04:01.880 get involved in it. Where we've done our worst is 0:04:02.640 --> 0:04:06.120 when Higgs, when we were told to do these things, 0:04:06.160 --> 0:04:08.720 and we take the hit, not the guy who orders it. 0:04:08.760 --> 0:04:12.160 But two things here. When I was brand new on 0:04:12.240 --> 0:04:15.520 the CI, I went to learn at the feet of 0:04:15.600 --> 0:04:19.040 Richard Helms, who was the gray eminence of American intelligence 0:04:19.080 --> 0:04:21.479 at the time. Mike Holder joined the CI as a 0:04:21.520 --> 0:04:24.760 charter member in forty seven and its director from sixty 0:04:24.800 --> 0:04:28.240 six to seventy three. Until Nixon fired him for refusing 0:04:28.240 --> 0:04:30.480 to help him cover up the Watergate breaking. And one 0:04:30.520 --> 0:04:33.440 of the things Helms told me about CI was if 0:04:33.480 --> 0:04:36.920 we are not believed by the President of the United States, 0:04:37.160 --> 0:04:39.720 if we are not believed, we have no purpose. People 0:04:40.040 --> 0:04:43.840 run great risks to dig up secrets of state, analysts 0:04:44.000 --> 0:04:47.320 work hard to figure out the big picture, and all 0:04:47.360 --> 0:04:50.360 of this goes into reporting that the president on not 0:04:50.400 --> 0:04:53.880 only the present day, but threats over the horizon. One 0:04:53.880 --> 0:04:56.280 of the things that we know about Donald Trump is 0:04:56.320 --> 0:05:00.240 that one, he never took intelligence briefings very seriously. Two, 0:05:00.720 --> 0:05:05.280 he's an ideologue, and ideology is the enemy of intelligence. 0:05:06.000 --> 0:05:10.560 If you're an ideologue, your mind is made up. My fear, guys, 0:05:11.080 --> 0:05:13.720 is that people are really going to head for the exits. 0:05:14.000 --> 0:05:16.440 And the last time that happened, like in a major way, 0:05:16.520 --> 0:05:19.760 not just people on the seventh floor, but throughout the 0:05:19.880 --> 0:05:22.599 rank was in the nineties after the Cold War was over. 0:05:23.160 --> 0:05:25.760 You guys were young and coming up in the nineties, 0:05:26.080 --> 0:05:29.080 The guys with fifteen twenty twenty five years in were 0:05:29.120 --> 0:05:33.760 headed out because they were like, Okay, mission accomplished. We 0:05:33.920 --> 0:05:39.000 beat the goddamn Russians. Cold War's over. I'm done. People 0:05:39.400 --> 0:05:42.960 will leave now because they feel they cannot accomplish the 0:05:43.040 --> 0:05:48.479 mission under this president, whether it's analytical or operational, and 0:05:48.560 --> 0:05:52.040 the ranks will be depleted. And the depletion of the 0:05:52.040 --> 0:05:55.800 CIA during the decade of the nineties was one of 0:05:55.880 --> 0:05:58.839 the proximate reasons for the success of al Qaeda's attack 0:05:58.880 --> 0:05:59.600 on nine to eleven. 0:06:00.200 --> 0:06:03.760 I share your concern, certainly, having been there caring about 0:06:03.800 --> 0:06:05.920 it too. But one thing to add to the helms thing, 0:06:05.960 --> 0:06:08.560 just a little nuance, is I think it is true 0:06:08.640 --> 0:06:11.279 if the president isn't interested in what the CIA has 0:06:11.279 --> 0:06:13.680 to say, what is the purpose. But the one thing 0:06:13.720 --> 0:06:16.560 I've learned from working in CIA, and I suspect under 0:06:16.560 --> 0:06:18.720 Trump it was very much like this at least Trump won, 0:06:19.279 --> 0:06:21.800 is we provide intelligence not just to the President, but 0:06:21.880 --> 0:06:25.000 to the Secretary of State, ambassadors around the world, to 0:06:25.440 --> 0:06:28.600 people in the Pentagon generals. So there is a process 0:06:28.640 --> 0:06:31.719 there that kept going even if Trump was in La 0:06:31.839 --> 0:06:35.040 La Land or not interested in issues. We continue to 0:06:35.040 --> 0:06:37.000 provide information on what was happening in Russia. 0:06:37.000 --> 0:06:40.120 And then you what does the station chief do when 0:06:40.160 --> 0:06:44.200 the ambassador is an idiot or convicted fellas herschall walkers, 0:06:44.480 --> 0:06:47.240 Herschel Walker, a convicted felon. That's in the case of 0:06:47.760 --> 0:06:52.560 Jared Kushner's father, who's going to France or just a bosa. Furthermore, 0:06:53.040 --> 0:06:56.680 what does the CI do with the Director of National Intelligence? 0:06:57.080 --> 0:06:59.080 I can answer that one for you, because you, as 0:06:59.120 --> 0:07:03.080 a journalist, rightly hold the CIA to high standards and 0:07:03.080 --> 0:07:05.960 therefore when we make mistakes. But the CIA, in a 0:07:06.120 --> 0:07:09.320 genius move, created this thing called the DNI, which is 0:07:09.360 --> 0:07:12.680 a fake organization to protect the CIA. 0:07:12.800 --> 0:07:17.360 So John in Fairnessress created the di Congress. 0:07:17.360 --> 0:07:21.160 Oh please, Congress wouldn't know. It's we manipulated Congress to 0:07:21.160 --> 0:07:23.160 create this thing so that when they can put the 0:07:23.200 --> 0:07:25.720 morons over there and they can do almost no damage 0:07:25.760 --> 0:07:27.120 to what's actually happening in the CIA. 0:07:27.160 --> 0:07:31.280 Now that is a conspiracy theory right there. There you go. No, 0:07:31.320 --> 0:07:35.040 but okay, but in serious Chelsea Gabbard is the titular 0:07:35.080 --> 0:07:39.280 head of the American intelligence community. God forbid, correct me 0:07:39.320 --> 0:07:44.040 if I'm wrong. But CIA relies to a largely unappreciated 0:07:44.240 --> 0:07:49.360 extent on liaison and intelligence sharing with friendly and not 0:07:49.480 --> 0:07:53.360 so friendly intelligence services around the world, in countries you 0:07:53.440 --> 0:07:57.280 might immediately think of, and some countries you couldn't possibly 0:07:57.280 --> 0:07:58.760 imagine fair statement. 0:07:59.040 --> 0:08:02.480 Yes, we get in the clandestine service side of the organization, 0:08:02.840 --> 0:08:05.960 we get the bulk of our intelligence from partners and 0:08:06.000 --> 0:08:08.520 not just allies, from partners around the world. Now it's 0:08:08.560 --> 0:08:10.920 different with the NSA. It's going to be harder for 0:08:10.960 --> 0:08:13.320 the NSA because it's much more integrated with the Brits 0:08:13.320 --> 0:08:15.960 and Australians and stuff. Where I think you're going you're 0:08:16.000 --> 0:08:18.720 saying is some of these organizations that partners we deal with, 0:08:18.760 --> 0:08:20.560 they are going to be hesitant to share their secrets 0:08:20.560 --> 0:08:22.360 with us, and I agree with that, but it's going 0:08:22.400 --> 0:08:25.760 to be harder for them on the SINGANT side because 0:08:25.920 --> 0:08:26.720 they're integrated. 0:08:27.240 --> 0:08:31.600 Is great stuff. But human intelligence, when it succeeds, gets 0:08:31.600 --> 0:08:35.160 you the information that Singant cannot. Ten analysts can listen 0:08:35.200 --> 0:08:38.520 to the same Singant transcript and come up with ten 0:08:38.600 --> 0:08:42.760 different analyzes, whereas when you're actually in the room with 0:08:42.840 --> 0:08:45.920 the person who's talking, you get a sense of the reality. 0:08:46.400 --> 0:08:46.839 Is that fair? 0:08:47.200 --> 0:08:50.920 And an inordinate amount of is human enabled? Right, The 0:08:51.000 --> 0:08:53.360 reason you have the Singen is because of a human 0:08:53.400 --> 0:08:58.240 being interacting with the technology and so recruiting that human being. 0:08:58.360 --> 0:09:01.079 Is actually that a lot of the SIGANS, huge amount 0:09:01.080 --> 0:09:02.880 of Sycains streams are based on people. 0:09:03.320 --> 0:09:06.160 The point I'm trying to make is if particular head 0:09:06.200 --> 0:09:12.000 of American intelligence is a longtime PULP member who has 0:09:12.040 --> 0:09:16.320 shown strange affinities with people like Bashar al Asad and 0:09:16.440 --> 0:09:19.520 Vladimir V. Putin and on the head of oh, I 0:09:19.520 --> 0:09:24.040 don't know the Jordanian Intelligence Service or the Ukrainian Intelligence Service? 0:09:24.440 --> 0:09:26.160 Am I going to play foot seat with that person? 0:09:26.480 --> 0:09:29.400 So when I was in a rock senior officer there 0:09:29.640 --> 0:09:32.280 and back in fourteen fifteen, we had a group of 0:09:32.480 --> 0:09:35.800 congressmen and senators come in. Now we live in Iraq, 0:09:35.960 --> 0:09:39.200 we go out into the Red Zone. We've got assets 0:09:39.200 --> 0:09:41.840 who were both in Isis. We have a lot of 0:09:41.880 --> 0:09:45.319 Arabic speakers. We live there. And we had this group 0:09:45.320 --> 0:09:47.200 of lawmakers come in and I'm not gonna see who 0:09:47.240 --> 0:09:49.840 it was, and there were like seven or eight of 0:09:49.880 --> 0:09:53.240 them with their staffs there, and we were giving them 0:09:53.240 --> 0:09:55.959 a briefing about what's going on in Iraq. Right now, 0:09:55.960 --> 0:09:59.520 we're surrounded on three sides. Isis is ascended, Moses has fallen, 0:10:00.040 --> 0:10:03.760 they're just after Mosa felt And one guy takes his 0:10:03.880 --> 0:10:08.600 loafers off and picking his toenails while we're briefing. So 0:10:08.679 --> 0:10:12.280 this is incredible disrespect to the officers who are risking 0:10:12.320 --> 0:10:16.719 their lives to be there. And when they finish, he says, basically, 0:10:17.160 --> 0:10:19.800 this is a lot of hohoi. And he says they're 0:10:19.840 --> 0:10:23.040 only in it for the money. And one of my 0:10:23.160 --> 0:10:27.240 officers couldn't help themselves and says, you can't offer them 0:10:27.240 --> 0:10:30.120 like an extra hundred dollars to blow themselves up. Now, 0:10:30.160 --> 0:10:34.320 the other lawmakers around it were clearly embarrassed at this guy. 0:10:34.640 --> 0:10:37.800 But what happens if like they they're all picking their 0:10:37.840 --> 0:10:39.719 toes right, and they look at the people who live 0:10:39.760 --> 0:10:42.439 there and say, I know you understand that you live there. 0:10:42.440 --> 0:10:44.280 But none of this is true because we have our 0:10:44.320 --> 0:10:47.120 own reality. But as to who will stay and who 0:10:47.160 --> 0:10:51.000 will go, I think a lot of people with integrity 0:10:51.040 --> 0:10:53.960 will leave, people with options will leave. People who will 0:10:54.000 --> 0:10:56.920 stay will fall into a couple different categories. One will 0:10:56.920 --> 0:10:59.320 be career quizzlings who are like, yeah, I'll do it 0:11:00.000 --> 0:11:02.080 if you or you give me a big promotion. I'll 0:11:02.080 --> 0:11:04.640 say whatever you want. We saw that during the gospeling time. 0:11:05.000 --> 0:11:07.560 Other people will basically just put their heads down and 0:11:07.600 --> 0:11:11.360 do what bureaucrats everywhere in the world always do. They'll 0:11:11.360 --> 0:11:13.600 just try to do their job and wait it out. 0:11:14.040 --> 0:11:16.560 In any large organization, I could talk about the New 0:11:16.640 --> 0:11:19.720 York Times, which is about maybe eight percent the size 0:11:19.720 --> 0:11:22.680 of the CIA. But in any large organization, you have 0:11:22.720 --> 0:11:26.440 the talented tenth okay, and the talented tenth at the 0:11:26.480 --> 0:11:30.600 top of intellect, at the top of experience, at the 0:11:30.640 --> 0:11:34.280 top of expertise are going to bring you ninety percent 0:11:34.320 --> 0:11:37.319 of your successes. And if the talented tenth head for 0:11:37.400 --> 0:11:41.280 the door, that's bad news. I hate to be a 0:11:41.360 --> 0:11:45.480 harbinger of doom. In many ways, the situation we're about 0:11:45.480 --> 0:11:51.480 to be and is absurd and orderline hilarious until stuff happened. 0:11:51.640 --> 0:11:54.760 It's a mean old world out there, gentlemen. The Russians 0:11:55.120 --> 0:11:59.679 and the Chinese are each through their intelligence services, coming 0:11:59.720 --> 0:12:03.240 out of it with ill intent. That Chinese, it seems to me, 0:12:03.960 --> 0:12:06.320 love to have your take on this. Want to know us. 0:12:06.559 --> 0:12:10.520 They want information dominance. They want to know everything about 0:12:10.840 --> 0:12:13.760 the United States government. They want to tap our phones, 0:12:13.840 --> 0:12:16.920 they want to rate our computers, they want our personnel files, 0:12:17.120 --> 0:12:19.080 and they got it. They want to know us. So 0:12:19.360 --> 0:12:22.360 if the balloon goes up in twenty or thirty forty years, 0:12:22.840 --> 0:12:26.360 they have information dominance. The Russians just want to screw us. 0:12:26.720 --> 0:12:29.480 They don't want to know us. They want to subvert 0:12:29.520 --> 0:12:33.640 and sabotage our form of government. And they have achieved 0:12:33.720 --> 0:12:37.040 more than Marginal's success over the last eight ten years. 0:12:37.480 --> 0:12:41.199 You have a real crisis, and it is almost inevitable 0:12:41.440 --> 0:12:44.240 that there will be one. What are these knuckleheads going 0:12:44.280 --> 0:12:45.680 to do to protect our country? 0:12:46.559 --> 0:12:47.400 We'll be right back. 0:12:53.800 --> 0:12:57.679 In the last year of his first term, Trump installed 0:12:57.920 --> 0:13:01.560 John Ratcliff and Cash betent Well at the very top 0:13:01.640 --> 0:13:05.840 of the Directorate of Natural Intelligence. Were they there to 0:13:05.920 --> 0:13:09.720 make sure that big pieces on whither China were going 0:13:09.800 --> 0:13:12.800 to be like expertly thought out and edited. No, they 0:13:12.800 --> 0:13:15.679 were there to raid the files Russia House where you 0:13:15.960 --> 0:13:19.040 used to work, John, to try and dig up dirt 0:13:19.320 --> 0:13:23.040 on the president's political enemies and to try and find 0:13:23.080 --> 0:13:26.439 a smoking gun that would magically absolve him of his 0:13:26.679 --> 0:13:30.720 and his campaign and his teams plussy footing with Vladimir Poot. 0:13:30.920 --> 0:13:33.679 It's a conspiracy theory, but it's one I'm open to. 0:13:34.280 --> 0:13:37.400 Is that another reason he's so interested in Russia and 0:13:37.440 --> 0:13:40.319 Cia and having it is he doesn't want evidence coming 0:13:40.360 --> 0:13:45.640 out of collusion. Right, there was collusion. It's like there was. 0:13:46.280 --> 0:13:48.319 I'm not sure they could prove it in a criminal 0:13:48.320 --> 0:13:51.480 court of law, but certainly man Afford, his campaign manager 0:13:51.520 --> 0:13:53.720 was dealing with the Russians. His own son was talking 0:13:53.760 --> 0:13:55.679 to the Russians in line of the FBI about it. 0:13:56.040 --> 0:14:00.120 His campaign advisor was lying to the FBI about and 0:14:00.160 --> 0:14:04.600 destroying evidence and his relationship with the Russians. So there's Russia, 0:14:04.640 --> 0:14:06.440 Russa Russia. There was a lot of it. There is 0:14:06.480 --> 0:14:09.480 a smoking gun someplace, and they need to make sure 0:14:09.520 --> 0:14:11.760 that it doesn't come out, that we don't find it. 0:14:11.880 --> 0:14:13.720 I don't know how you feel, Jerry John. I know 0:14:13.760 --> 0:14:17.120 you have mixed feelings about Federal Bureau of Investigation events 0:14:17.880 --> 0:14:23.720 counter counterintelligence capacities. But in American counterintelligence, which is spycatching 0:14:23.800 --> 0:14:26.680 among other things, you can't do it without the FBI 0:14:26.760 --> 0:14:29.720 in this country. CEEI has no police powers in this country. 0:14:29.840 --> 0:14:32.760 Yet cash Betel says, do you guys go play cops 0:14:32.800 --> 0:14:37.360 and robbers? I would disestablish the national security of the FBI. 0:14:37.440 --> 0:14:37.960 They ain't good. 0:14:38.360 --> 0:14:41.000 No, In fact, I think yeah, the danger Keshpertel, the 0:14:41.040 --> 0:14:44.600 FBI is more dangerous than Tulsea Gabbert at DNI for 0:14:44.640 --> 0:14:47.920 the American public. Obviously partners are on the world and 0:14:47.920 --> 0:14:50.520 the things we need to worry about incredibly important, and 0:14:50.560 --> 0:14:52.960 the D A and I just doesn't control a lot 0:14:52.960 --> 0:14:56.400 of the actual collection and processing of intelligence. 0:14:56.560 --> 0:14:58.360 There's a lot of the lists talk going around about 0:14:58.400 --> 0:15:02.800 the deep state, and the deep state, which does not exist, 0:15:03.160 --> 0:15:08.840 is supposedly this nefarious conspiracy of spies and soldiers and 0:15:09.600 --> 0:15:14.400 bureaucrats who are have dedicated their professional and personal lives 0:15:14.520 --> 0:15:18.200 to undermining Donald Trump. Once upon a time, way back 0:15:18.200 --> 0:15:20.800 in the twentieth century, there was a deep state in 0:15:20.840 --> 0:15:22.920 who it was embodied in one man, and that man 0:15:23.000 --> 0:15:27.480 was Jaegar Hoover. JEdgar Hoover, an unelected bureaucrat who ruled 0:15:27.480 --> 0:15:31.400 the FBI for forty eight years, used his powers to 0:15:31.800 --> 0:15:34.800 spy on people without warrants, to break into their homes, 0:15:34.840 --> 0:15:40.320 to rifle through their papers, to conduct wiretapping, to destroy 0:15:40.360 --> 0:15:45.560 people for political purposes. That was political warfare. And presidents 0:15:45.640 --> 0:15:49.040 never said no to Hoover. Attorneys general never said no too, 0:15:49.280 --> 0:15:52.080 And it wasn't until he died in nineteen seventy two, 0:15:52.200 --> 0:15:55.880 six weeks before the Watergate breaking. That never would have happened. 0:15:55.880 --> 0:15:59.280 If Hoover was around. And then two things happened. When 0:15:59.400 --> 0:16:03.480 Jaeger who were died literally the next week, the Supreme 0:16:03.520 --> 0:16:07.240 Court outlawed wartless wire tapping this country. And then the 0:16:07.280 --> 0:16:10.880 Watergate break can happen. Okay, and the whole panoply of 0:16:10.960 --> 0:16:14.720 Cold War national security began to break down. Helms got 0:16:14.720 --> 0:16:18.200 fired because he wouldn't cover up Watergate for Nixon, and 0:16:18.800 --> 0:16:22.840 the old national security state that had existed since the 0:16:22.920 --> 0:16:26.480 end of World War Two began to break down. Okay, 0:16:27.040 --> 0:16:31.600 we run the risk under this president his nominees for 0:16:31.720 --> 0:16:36.760 national security position of the return of a national security 0:16:36.840 --> 0:16:41.640 state in which the powers of American intelligence and national 0:16:41.680 --> 0:16:46.120 security are turned on Americans for political purposes. I think 0:16:46.160 --> 0:16:47.240 that's a real danger. 0:16:47.560 --> 0:16:49.880 So that no no podcast is complete without at least 0:16:49.880 --> 0:16:52.240 a couple of Nazi references. And I got two for 0:16:52.360 --> 0:16:54.840 you that I want to say that that remind me of. 0:16:54.960 --> 0:16:59.000 One is you talked about Hoover and he had the 0:16:59.040 --> 0:17:02.320 goods on everybody right. Every American president was afraid of him, 0:17:02.560 --> 0:17:07.320 politicians were afraid of him. And in Nazi Germany, Hermann Goering, 0:17:07.520 --> 0:17:11.200 despite the fact that he wasn't didn't do anything right. 0:17:11.320 --> 0:17:13.520 He didn't really have a job he ran the Lufaffe, 0:17:13.680 --> 0:17:16.719 did it poorly, and yet nobody came for him. And 0:17:16.840 --> 0:17:19.439 one of the reasons for that was because when he 0:17:19.520 --> 0:17:22.480 was head of the Prussian Police he had this new 0:17:22.520 --> 0:17:27.879 technology called telephone wire tapping act. He had been nobody 0:17:27.960 --> 0:17:30.960 knew about this and really hit it and Hermann Goering 0:17:31.200 --> 0:17:34.680 during the Nazis rose, I know, I can't help, but 0:17:34.760 --> 0:17:39.399 I speak a freaking language, a gorn. He had the 0:17:39.520 --> 0:17:43.479 goods on everybody, including Hillery. So right up until the 0:17:43.760 --> 0:17:47.480 nineteen forty five they were all afraid of Gourring, not 0:17:47.640 --> 0:17:50.760 because of his insight, but because he, like Hoover, he 0:17:50.800 --> 0:17:51.399 had the goods. 0:17:51.480 --> 0:17:54.960 He could walk up to some senior Nazi officers said, yeah, 0:17:55.080 --> 0:17:56.840 should see you'll have been a bad. 0:17:56.640 --> 0:17:59.040 Boy, your male boyfriend that you have not told us 0:17:59.080 --> 0:18:02.440 about it, he says. But the other thing, and more ominous, though, 0:18:02.600 --> 0:18:04.640 is you talked about loyalty tests. And I think this 0:18:04.720 --> 0:18:08.280 is in the air with this administration. The illustration coming 0:18:08.320 --> 0:18:12.440 in is Hitler's rise to power. When he really took 0:18:12.480 --> 0:18:15.919 power is after Hindenburg died, and one of the first 0:18:15.960 --> 0:18:20.639 things he did is he had the military swear an 0:18:20.720 --> 0:18:25.040 oath to him personally, right not to the Constitution. Right, 0:18:25.080 --> 0:18:29.639 and soon after all his deep state guys bureaucracy swear 0:18:29.720 --> 0:18:33.119 an oath to him personally, not to the country, not 0:18:33.200 --> 0:18:36.520 to the fatherland, not to the Constitution, and that was 0:18:36.560 --> 0:18:39.919 the end of their democracy, right, the last gas. And 0:18:39.960 --> 0:18:43.320 when we start going down that road where loyalty, you know, 0:18:43.720 --> 0:18:46.280 call me ran into that first the buzzsaw, Are you 0:18:46.480 --> 0:18:49.040 loyal to me? The only answer we can have as 0:18:49.040 --> 0:18:53.080 Americans is no. You should swear two oaths in your life. 0:18:53.080 --> 0:18:55.000 One is when you get married and the other is 0:18:55.040 --> 0:18:57.080 when you're when you work for the federal government or 0:18:57.160 --> 0:19:00.600 the military. Is you swear an oath to the institution 0:19:00.960 --> 0:19:04.600 and that should be your only loyalty. And for some 0:19:04.680 --> 0:19:09.840 reason United States citizens they're somehow like, okay, that's been normalized, 0:19:10.800 --> 0:19:14.160 swearing an oath to a political figure. That's really dangerous. 0:19:14.160 --> 0:19:17.120 That's not a conspiracy theory. That's a real conspiracy. When 0:19:17.119 --> 0:19:20.240 you start telling senior CIA, FBI people, you must be 0:19:20.280 --> 0:19:21.760 loyal to me, and. 0:19:21.720 --> 0:19:25.760 It is a conspiracy against the Constitution and ultimately against 0:19:25.800 --> 0:19:26.800 the American people. 0:19:27.920 --> 0:19:35.600 Hold on just a second, Well we take a quick break. Tim. 0:19:35.680 --> 0:19:37.320 I know you're working on a new book or a 0:19:37.320 --> 0:19:39.200 new book's coming out, so can you tell us about 0:19:39.200 --> 0:19:39.760 it a little bit. 0:19:40.119 --> 0:19:44.000 The book is called The Mission the CIA in the 0:19:44.040 --> 0:19:47.000 twenty first Century. It starts in the spring of two 0:19:47.000 --> 0:19:49.679 thousand and one. It goes right up to the present day. 0:19:49.720 --> 0:19:52.600 I'm writing the epilogue right now. It is entirely on 0:19:52.640 --> 0:19:56.040 the record, as was Legacy of Ashes, my earlier history 0:19:56.040 --> 0:19:59.240 of the CIA, widely if not universally acclaimed. 0:20:01.600 --> 0:20:03.600 I was going to ask you with a very negative history, 0:20:03.640 --> 0:20:05.520 so as Wry, are you ready to take it all 0:20:05.560 --> 0:20:06.000 back now? 0:20:06.480 --> 0:20:09.720 Well, I'll tell you, John, the old book was based 0:20:09.840 --> 0:20:15.440 on literally three hundred thousand declassified documents from CIA, from State, 0:20:15.520 --> 0:20:18.560 from the Pentagon, from the White House, from the end 0:20:18.560 --> 0:20:21.680 of World War Two up to the early twenty first century. 0:20:21.960 --> 0:20:25.800 So I talked to people. I talked to an amazing 0:20:26.119 --> 0:20:31.160 array of people, including the top people on the seventh floor, 0:20:31.920 --> 0:20:38.040 including sitting chiefs of the clandestine Service, including the man 0:20:38.080 --> 0:20:42.360 who was tasked with setting up the black sites, including 0:20:42.560 --> 0:20:48.720 the three unbelievable officers who took down aq KHN, who 0:20:48.880 --> 0:20:52.480 ran the world's biggest and by far most dangerous nuclear 0:20:52.560 --> 0:20:56.480 weapons technology smuggling ring. I talked to people who were 0:20:56.520 --> 0:21:00.400 freezing their asses off in Iraqi, Curtisan before the American 0:21:00.440 --> 0:21:04.359 invasion in two thousand and three, executing a covert action 0:21:04.520 --> 0:21:07.840 plan to take down Saddam, knowing that it would take 0:21:07.880 --> 0:21:10.760 the eighty second Airborne to actually do it, but they 0:21:10.760 --> 0:21:15.280 had their marching orders. I talked to officers who served 0:21:15.280 --> 0:21:18.560 in Baghdad Station, as you did Jerry earlier in the 0:21:18.600 --> 0:21:23.359 war in Kabble, in the worst places on Earth, like 0:21:23.400 --> 0:21:26.680 the Shikin Base in Afghanistan. There's a t shirt from 0:21:26.680 --> 0:21:29.800 there that says, Ella is only skin deep. Who served 0:21:29.800 --> 0:21:32.840 in Pakistan, who served in Jordan, who served in Syria. 0:21:33.520 --> 0:21:35.919 And I listened to them and I wrote down what 0:21:35.960 --> 0:21:36.480 they said. 0:21:36.880 --> 0:21:39.960 And so had they been drinking, yeah you didn't talk 0:21:40.000 --> 0:21:41.399 to us, we would have suayed you. 0:21:41.680 --> 0:21:44.880 I did talk to Cipher, and yes you were drinking. 0:21:47.080 --> 0:21:50.080 It was a very cold, dry martini, as I recall, 0:21:50.320 --> 0:21:53.919 which is what all good intelligence officers drink. It is 0:21:54.040 --> 0:21:56.920 a human book. I think Legacy of Ashes, the book 0:21:56.920 --> 0:21:59.720 that came out now seventeen years ago, is a book 0:21:59.720 --> 0:22:02.840 about an institution, but it's a book about an institution 0:22:02.960 --> 0:22:05.600 that came out at a very dark time for the institution. 0:22:06.600 --> 0:22:10.480 Nine to eleven, the WMD reported the Iraq War going 0:22:10.600 --> 0:22:14.400 south one hundred miles an hour, the Goss regime, and 0:22:14.720 --> 0:22:18.680 at the sixtieth anniversary that took place a few months 0:22:19.320 --> 0:22:23.320 before the book came out, there was a lot of hanks. 0:22:23.320 --> 0:22:25.080