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Speaker 1: Hey, it's Jacob. I am here today with a preview

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Speaker 1: from a new book by Michael Lewis. You probably know

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Speaker 1: Michael Lewis is one of the greatest nonfiction writers around.

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Speaker 1: He wrote Liar's Poker, Moneyball, The Big Short, among many others.

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Speaker 1: The new book is called Blockers. It's about a handful

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Speaker 1: of civil servants who dedicated their careers to government work

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Speaker 1: until the Department of Government Efficiency, aka Doge, came along.

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Speaker 1: The book is called Blockers. I hope you like the excerpt,

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Speaker 1: and if you want to buy the whole audiobook, you

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Speaker 1: can do so at blockers.fm. Again, blockers.fm. Here's the preview.

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Speaker 2: I do solemnly swear that I will support and defend

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Speaker 2: the Constitution of the United States.

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Speaker 3: Against all enemies, foreign and domestic, that I will bear

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Speaker 3: true faith and allegiance to the same.

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Speaker 4: That I take this obligation freely without any mental reservation

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Speaker 4: or purpose of evasion.

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Speaker 1: And that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties

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Speaker 1: of the office on which I am about to enter.

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Speaker 3: So help me God.

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Speaker 1: Civil Service Oath of Office, Title V, U.S. Code, Section 3331.

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Speaker 3: From at MU's, Doge. The Doge team fought for days

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Speaker 3: to gain access to the United States Institute of Peace. Eventually,

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Speaker 3: with help from the FBI and Metro Police... Doge was

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Speaker 3: able to access the agency and discovered massive fraud, waste,

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Speaker 3: and abuse, including payments to Taliban and Iraq.

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Speaker 5: Elon Musk. Any government institution is most likely to be

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Speaker 5: the opposite of its name. Elon Musk. They deleted a

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Speaker 5: terabyte of financial data to cover their crimes. But they

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Speaker 5: don't understand technology, so we recovered it.

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Speaker 4: Prologue, The Guns Colin O'Brien was the chief security officer

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Speaker 4: at the United States Institute of Peace. Mostly that meant

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Speaker 4: keeping the Institute's 400 employees scattered across 28 difficult countries,

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Speaker 4: safe from harm. Mostly, it succeeded. There'd been close calls

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Speaker 4: in Haiti, and Colin himself had been with a group

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Speaker 4: that had come under rocket fire in Kiev. But no

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Speaker 4: one had been killed. No new doves to add to

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Speaker 4: the five already on the Wall of the Fallen. Now,

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Speaker 4: on this late afternoon of March 14, 2025, the threat

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Speaker 4: was right here, in Washington, D.C. Three young men from

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Speaker 4: the Department of Government Efficiency were trying to argue their

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Speaker 4: way into the Institute building. Once inside, it was game over.

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Speaker 4: Just as it had been at the U.S. Agency for

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Speaker 4: International Development, USAID, and the African Development Foundation, and a

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Speaker 4: bunch of other places. During the presidential campaign, he hadn't

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Speaker 4: taken Doge seriously. Trump's promise to create a Department of

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Speaker 4: Government Efficiency, run by Elon Musk, felt, to Colin, like

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Speaker 4: his promise to make Mexico pay for the wall, or

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Speaker 4: to end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours. It

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Speaker 4: was not something that would ever survive contact with reality,

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Speaker 4: said Colin. Watching Musk do various weird things on various

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Speaker 4: political stages only reinforced his sense that Doge was pure theater.

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Speaker 4: His views had changed only after they'd busted into federal

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Speaker 4: agencies to shut them down, and Congress had failed to respond.

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Speaker 4: If that could happen in broad daylight with no response,

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Speaker 4: then no organization was safe, he said. He'd left work

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Speaker 4: early on the 14th, a Friday. His daughter needed help

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Speaker 4: with her math homework, and he assumed nothing would happen

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Speaker 4: late in the afternoon before a holiday weekend. Then came

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Speaker 4: the call from one of his guys, saying that these

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Speaker 4: Doge kids were out on the sidewalk and asking to

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Speaker 4: be let in. Colin immediately sent a text to his

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Speaker 4: IT people that said simply, shut it down, and they'd

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Speaker 4: instantly thrown the building into lockdown. After the magnetic lock

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Speaker 4: snapped shut, no one on the inside could get out,

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Speaker 4: and no one on the outside could get in. By

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Speaker 4: the time Colin arrived to spring the staff from the building,

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Speaker 4: the three Doge guys had given up and left. Two

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Speaker 4: hours later, they returned with reinforcements, a rare Doge female,

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Speaker 4: and two FBI agents. This time, Colin went out to

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Speaker 4: meet them. He'd been tracking Doge's movements through the federal bureaucracy.

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Speaker 4: He'd created files on each member. The security guys who

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Speaker 4: had called Colin had spotted them from the photos Colin

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Speaker 4: had provided. But this was the first time Colin had

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Speaker 4: seen any of them in the flesh. Skinny jeans, T-shirts,

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Speaker 4: and little backpacks. Tech bro wear. The FBI agents, like Colin,

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Speaker 4: wore suits to work and were clearly uneasy in their

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Speaker 4: new role as Doge Muscle. The Doge trio didn't have

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Speaker 4: a warrant or a court order or really anything else

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Speaker 4: except attitudes. One of the FBI men told Colin that

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Speaker 4: he was just hoping to facilitate a cordial conversation. But

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Speaker 4: the lead Doge guy, Nate Cavanaugh, was not cordial. He

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Speaker 4: was expecting me to jump too, said Colin. Colin wasn't

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Speaker 4: really built to jump too. His appearance was deceptive. He

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Speaker 4: looked like the sort of guy who could fix your car,

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Speaker 4: but he was more like the guy who noticed what

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Speaker 4: your choice of car said about you. He was big

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Speaker 4: and broad like an offensive tackle, with an army haircut

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Speaker 4: and a polite attentiveness that suggested he was just here

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Speaker 4: to take orders. What he was really doing was watching

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Speaker 4: you closely and figuring out just how full of shit

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Speaker 4: you were. He knew what little was public about Nate Kavanaugh,

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Speaker 4: that he'd dropped out of Indiana University to start some

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Speaker 4: not-obviously-world-changing tech company in Los Angeles. His authority came entirely

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Speaker 4: from his personal association with Elon Musk, whose own came

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Speaker 4: from his personal association with Donald Trump. By night, he

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Speaker 4: and some other 20-something Doge guys were bunking with Musk

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Speaker 4: on the sixth floor of the Government Services Administration, like

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Speaker 4: it was another tech startup. By day, he was marching

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Speaker 4: into other executive office buildings and telling everyone that he

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Speaker 4: was now in charge. And they were fired. While the

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Speaker 4: young Doge guys tried to talk their way past Colin

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Speaker 4: and into the front of the building, The young Doge woman,

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Speaker 4: Laken Rapier, ran around to the back and pounded on

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Speaker 4: the door and asked to be let in to use

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Speaker 4: the bathroom. When the guards refused to open the door,

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Speaker 4: she shouted at them that as she was a government

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Speaker 4: employee and this was a government building, she had a

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Speaker 4: right to relieve herself inside of it. She didn't seem

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Speaker 4: to understand that the Institute wasn't a government building. Even

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Speaker 4: the FBI agents seemed to get that point. Eventually, they

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Speaker 4: gave up and left. Colin unlocked the building, let out

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Speaker 4: the few employees who remained inside the U.S. Institute of Peace,

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Speaker 4: then waited for Doge to return. You never know what's

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Speaker 4: going to catch your eye and become a story. Back

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Speaker 4: in 2016, the first time Donald Trump collided with the U.S. government,

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Speaker 4: it was a throwaway line, something Trump said. In the

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Speaker 4: months before the election, well-meaning people tried to prepare Trump

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Speaker 4: to govern. Chris Christie, former New Jersey governor and close

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Speaker 4: Trump ally, assembled a transition team of 500 or so people,

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Speaker 4: many of them with government experience. The idea was that

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Speaker 4: if Trump won, his team would rush into the federal government,

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Speaker 4: not just into the White House, but into all the

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Speaker 4: federal agencies, from the CIA to the Department of Agriculture,

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Speaker 4: and figure out what was going on. They'd teach the

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Speaker 4: president-elect whatever he needed to know about, say, the Iran

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Speaker 4: nuclear deal. or the plight of the American farmer. Trump

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Speaker 4: might not know or even really care about this complicated machine,

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Speaker 4: but all was still well. Chris Christie's transition team would

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Speaker 4: study the machine and teach him how it worked. That

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Speaker 4: never happened. Instead, right after the 2016 election, Trump fired

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Speaker 4: his entire transition team. Chris, you and I are so

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Speaker 4: smart that we can leave the victory party two hours

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Speaker 4: early and do the transition ourselves, he'd told Christie. That

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Speaker 4: was the throwaway line that caught my eye and invited

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Speaker 4: me to reach out and pull on it until a

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Speaker 4: story unspooled. The United States government was arguably the most

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Speaker 4: complex and powerful machine ever designed by man. Trump had

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Speaker 4: no personal experience inside it and had made no effort

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Speaker 4: to educate himself. Handed the task of managing it, he

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Speaker 4: was just going to wing it. And that's what he did.

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Speaker 4: Right after the election, all these experts across the federal

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Speaker 4: government people who managed the nuclear stockpile in the Department

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Speaker 4: of Energy, people who ran pandemic preparedness at the Centers

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Speaker 4: for Disease Control and Prevention, people who ran the National

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Speaker 4: Weather Service in the Department of Commerce, and on and

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Speaker 4: on and on, put out finger sandwiches and sparkling water

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Speaker 4: and sat around waiting for someone from the Trump administration

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Speaker 4: to turn up just to let them know what they

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Speaker 4: were working on and what they might need to do

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Speaker 4: to prevent various horrible things from happening. In most agencies,

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Speaker 4: no one showed. or they showed up months late, without questions. But,

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Speaker 4: and here was the happy news, mostly that didn't seem

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Speaker 4: to matter much. Or, if it mattered, it was hard

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Speaker 4: to see why. Total neglect didn't result in immediate catastrophe.

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Speaker 4: I wound up writing a short book called The Fifth Risk,

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Speaker 4: the gist of which was that inside the federal government,

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Speaker 4: there were lots of public-spirited people dealing with an insane

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Speaker 4: number of big problems that the private sector would never address.

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Speaker 4: The entire system was screwed up, budgets changing wildly year

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Speaker 4: to year, bosses coming and going like Tinder dates. But

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Speaker 4: the people working in it often were not. Their stories

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Speaker 4: were often inspiring. But those stories were seldom told. American

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Speaker 4: civil servants, as a group, have learned that any attention

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Speaker 4: they receive tends to be negative attention. And in any case,

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Speaker 4: the sort of person who goes to work for the

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Speaker 4: government isn't usually looking to be the life of the party.

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Speaker 4: The federal bureaucracy wasn't exactly out of touch with the

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Speaker 4: society it served, but its society was out of touch

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Speaker 4: with it. But that, too, seemed okay. For better and worse,

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Speaker 4: the United States government has a crude autopilot feature that,

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Speaker 4: like a Tesla's, works well enough to lull you into

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Speaker 4: a stupor. You can play the Battle of Polytopia while

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Speaker 4: doing 75 on the interstate and after a while feel

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Speaker 4: that you don't even need to look up. But there

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Speaker 4: will come a moment when something happens that requires your attention.

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Speaker 4: And in that moment, if you are wholly absorbed with

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Speaker 4: the decision of whether to attack to kill or attack

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Speaker 4: to wound, you'll wind up not only dead, but trending

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Speaker 4: on X. That's sort of what happened at the end

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Speaker 4: of 2019, when a virus in China leapt from either

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Speaker 4: a lab or an animal and raced towards an unprepared

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Speaker 4: American population. The United States government's shockingly poor performance in

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Speaker 4: the global pandemic is another story. I wrote a book

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Speaker 4: about that, too. though it may partly explain why Trump's

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Speaker 4: second collision with the U.S. government felt so different from

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Speaker 4: the first. This time, Trump kept at least one eye

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Speaker 4: on the road. Instead of firing his transition team after

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Speaker 4: the election, he created the most energetic and empowered transition

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Speaker 4: team in history and put the world's most famous businessman

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Speaker 4: in charge of it. The stated ambition of the Department

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Speaker 4: of Government Efficiency was huge, from annual federal spending just

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Speaker 4: shy of $ 7 trillion to Elon Musk claimed he could

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Speaker 4: cut $ 2 trillion. And from the moment his minions began

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Speaker 4: their hunt for waste, fraud, and abuse, his tweets, subtweets,

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Speaker 4: and reposts came thick and fast. In his first two

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Speaker 4: months on the job, Musk averaged more than 100 posts

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Speaker 4: every day on X. And every day, he generated new

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Speaker 4: material to tweet about. In just the first couple of months,

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Speaker 4: his team had either closed or shrunk beyond recognition entire

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Speaker 4: federal agencies. the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Department of Education, USAID,

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Speaker 4: and more. Then, in mid-March, they invaded the U.S. Institute

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Speaker 4: of Peace. Odd as it might sound, that's what finally

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Speaker 4: grabbed my attention this time. In the year I'd spent

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Speaker 4: wandering around the first Trump administration, I thought I'd seen

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Speaker 4: or at least heard about most of our government. I'd

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Speaker 4: spent weeks wrestling with what seemed at the time like

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Speaker 4: pressing questions. Which is inherently more thrilling, the Department of

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Speaker 4: Energy or the Department of the Interior? Or, why is

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Speaker 4: an agency that spends three-fifths of its budget collecting and

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Speaker 4: analyzing and disseminating weather data called the Department of Commerce?

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Speaker 4: I carried around with me a U.S. government org chart

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Speaker 4: and reduced every federal agency to a file on the

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Speaker 4: floor of my office. And yet, I'd never even heard

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Speaker 4: of the U.S.

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Speaker 3: Institute of Peace.

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Speaker 4: Not so much as a faint whisper about it. That's

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Speaker 4: why what might seem in context like a trivial event

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Speaker 4: pulled me up short. I couldn't begin to guess what

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Speaker 4: the U.S. Institute of Peace actually did. It sounded like

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Speaker 4: a front for a drug operation. And so I asked

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Speaker 4: around and learned that the reason it never wound up

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Speaker 4: in a file on my office floor with the federal

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Speaker 4: agencies is that it wasn't a federal agency. It was

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Speaker 4: a private corporation. Its employees weren't civil servants, but ordinary workers.

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Speaker 5: The U.S.

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Speaker 4: Institute of Peace wasn't a thing the president was supposed

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Speaker 4: to control. Donald Trump had gone from paying no attention

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Speaker 4: at all to the federal government to paying more attention

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Speaker 4: than any president ever. He had become so interested in

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Speaker 4: running the federal government that he was now trying to

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Speaker 4: run even the parts of it that he wasn't meant to.

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Speaker 4: The effect was to create a kind of negative space.

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Speaker 4: The story to tell about Trump's first term was all

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Speaker 4: about the price of ignorance and the risk of radical neglect.

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Speaker 4: The story to tell about his second term was different.

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Speaker 4: It was about all those people in roles— in and

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Speaker 4: around the United States government, once taken for granted, that

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Speaker 4: were now gone. The second Trump administration was a bit

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Speaker 4: like a meteor strike or some other massive environmental shift.

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Speaker 4: It killed off entire species and made room for new ones.

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Speaker 4: That different species had died in different ways and for

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Speaker 4: different reasons only heightened the story's interest. It enabled you

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Speaker 4: to cobble together the various wiped-out species into a portrait

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Speaker 4: of the new environment. That new environment needed to be

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Speaker 4: understood not merely by the new life forms it sustained,

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Speaker 4: but by the old ones that it didn't. If you

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Speaker 4: asked Colin O'Brien what made a person a good security officer,

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Speaker 4: he'd start by telling you what didn't. The problem in

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Speaker 4: the security field is that there are so many asshats

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Speaker 4: in it, he'd say. Either they're Paul Blart the mall

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Speaker 4: cop and just mailing it in, or they're the Navy

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Speaker 4: SEAL who wants to tell you what a badass Navy

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Speaker 4: SEAL they were. If you pressed him a bit, he'd

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Speaker 4: tell you that when he was hiring someone for a

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Speaker 4: security job, he looked not just for the protective instincts

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Speaker 4: of an offensive lineman and a taste for work, those

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Speaker 4: were a given, but for an extreme sensitivity to the environment.

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Speaker 4: To be any good, you had to notice things that

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Speaker 4: most people didn't. It might be that the landscaping or

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Speaker 4: the lighting created possibilities for concealment, or that the wrong

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Speaker 4: type of screw in a door frame caused it to

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Speaker 4: fail faster under force. You have to see all the

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Speaker 4: little things, said Colin. And you have to have a

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Speaker 4: passion for it. The other quality Colin looked for was

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Speaker 4: an ability to improvise. You can't war game out whatever

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Speaker 4: shit is going to happen, he said. There's no checklist.

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Speaker 4: When shit happens, nothing you think you know is going

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Speaker 4: to work in the moment. Interviewing people for security work,

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Speaker 4: he'd always try to surprise them. Have it come out

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Speaker 4: of left field and see how they respond. How did

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Speaker 4: they adapt to an uncomfortable situation? One time, after an

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Speaker 4: applicant had sat down for what he assumed would be

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Speaker 4: the conventional interview, Colin had simply tossed a tourniquet at

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Speaker 4: him and said, What is this and how do you

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Speaker 4: use it? I didn't care if he knew how to

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Speaker 4: use a tourniquet, said Colin. I just wanted to see

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Speaker 4: how he'd respond. For as long as Colin could remember,

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Speaker 4: he'd wanted to be a cop. It is such a

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Speaker 4: badass job. I love the idea of law enforcement. I

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Speaker 4: love the idea of serving something bigger than myself, and

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Speaker 4: I love catching bad guys. His parents hated the idea.

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Speaker 4: They thought it was too dangerous. If you would have

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Speaker 4: asked my parents, they would have told you I was

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Speaker 4: going to grow out of it, said Colin. He didn't

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Speaker 4: grow out of it. As he approached his high school graduation,

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Speaker 4: his mother insisted he go on to college. Colin loved

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Speaker 4: playing for his high school football team, offensive line and linebacker,

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Speaker 4: but hated the classrooms. He thought college would be a

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Speaker 4: waste of money, and he didn't want to spend another minute,

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Speaker 4: much less the rest of his life, behind a desk.

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Speaker 4: He cut a deal with his mom. If she signed

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Speaker 4: the papers that allowed him to enlist in the U.S.

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Speaker 4: Army at the age of 17, he'd serve on active

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Speaker 4: duty only the required five years. After that, if she

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Speaker 4: still wanted him to go to college, he'd go to college.

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Speaker 4: And then, this part he didn't tell her, he'd become

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Speaker 4: a cop. He loved his mom and dad, but he

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Speaker 4: was always his own guy. And in any case, the

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Speaker 4: best way to show you loved your mom and dad

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Speaker 4: was to insist on being who you were. He'd scored

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Speaker 4: so high on the aptitude test that they told him

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Speaker 4: he could pick his first assignment. He chose the place

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Speaker 4: he knew the least about, South Korea. There he wound

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Speaker 4: up assigned to the elite SWAT team as a sniper.

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Speaker 4: He did well enough that they pulled him to work

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Speaker 4: on the security detail of Leon Laporte, the four-star general

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Speaker 4: who ran the region. I loved it, said Colin. When

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Speaker 4: his five years were up, Laporte's successor, Burwell Baxter B.B.

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Speaker 4: Bell III, another four-star general, called him into his office

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Speaker 4: and told him that if he agreed to reenlist, he

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Speaker 4: could have most any other job at his pay grade

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Speaker 4: that he wanted in the U.S.

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Speaker 2: Army.

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Speaker 4: Colin found himself nervously explaining to General B.B. Bell how

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Speaker 4: his mom had raised him to keep his promises and

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Speaker 4: that he had made a promise to his mom. But

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Speaker 4: he'd never lost his original ambition. After studying constitutional law

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Speaker 4: and graduating from the University of Maryland, he joined the

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Speaker 4: Montgomery County Police Force. He was as suited to the

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Speaker 4: job as he'd imagined, but it beat the hell out

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Speaker 4: of him. In a police boxing class, they tossed him

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Speaker 4: into a ring with a guy even bigger than him,

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Speaker 4: who with a single punch broke Collins' neck. Another time,

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Speaker 4: he found himself racing after four kids, speeding in a

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Speaker 4: stolen car. The kids ran the car off the road

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Speaker 4: and into a tree, where it caught fire. As Colin

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Speaker 4: sprinted into the wreck to yank the kids out, the

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Speaker 4: car exploded into flames ten feet high. He extracted the

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Speaker 4: driver before grabbing a second kid who was on fire.

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Speaker 4: I had one of those weird moments, said Colin. I

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Speaker 4: just remembered the phrase, drop and roll. I dropped on

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Speaker 4: top of him and rolled him down the street, and

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Speaker 4: the flames went out. That boy survived. The other two

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Speaker 4: burned to death before he could get to them. The

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Speaker 4: driver died later in the hospital. Colin emerged with burns

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Speaker 4: and a broken shoulder that never again felt right. He'd

337
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Speaker 4: spent eight years as a cop before leaving in 2016

338
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Speaker 4: when his body couldn't take it anymore. He'd gone from

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Speaker 4: wearing a gun every day to reaching down only to

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Speaker 4: realize he didn't have one. It took me a little

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Speaker 4: bit before I was like, I don't have to have

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Speaker 4: a gun to be safe. He'd gone from chasing down

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Speaker 4: people who had done bad things to preventing the bad

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Speaker 4: things from happening in the first place. You can't really

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Speaker 4: measure prevention, he said. When something bad does not happen,

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Speaker 4: there's no clear way to prove why. Did it not

347
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Speaker 4: occur because you noticed and fixed a problem no one

348
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Speaker 4: else saw? Because you were good at your job? Because

349
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Speaker 4: you were lucky? Or because nothing was ever going to

350
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Speaker 4: happen in the first place? That ambiguity is part of

351
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Speaker 4: the work. It's about noticing small details, understanding human behavior,

352
00:20:24,240 --> 00:20:27,119
Speaker 4: and acting on things that feel just slightly out of place.

353
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Speaker 4: When it works, nothing happens. His first encounter with Doge

354
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Speaker 4: on that Friday in March in 2025 had felt mostly

355
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Speaker 4: like luck. They were the Keystone cops, he said. They'd

356
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Speaker 4: shown up with a dubious-looking document on Institute of Peace

357
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Speaker 4: letterhead signed by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Secretary of

358
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Speaker 4: State Marco Rubio, and Pete Garvin, head of the National

359
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Speaker 4: Defense University, the three ex-officio members of the Institute's board.

360
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Speaker 4: It announced that they were firing the Institute's acting president,

361
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Speaker 4: George Moose, and replacing him with a Doge guy. but

362
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Speaker 4: they didn't have the legal authority to do it. Colin,

363
00:21:09,980 --> 00:21:12,219
Speaker 4: and for that matter, the FBI agents, could see the

364
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Speaker 4: document was fake. The letterhead had been photocopied from some

365
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Speaker 4: genuine institute stationary, probably from the letter George Moose himself

366
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Speaker 4: had sent to the Doge people to explain the law.

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Speaker 4: That law wasn't complicated.

368
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Speaker 2: It is the purpose of this title to establish an independent, non-profit,

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Speaker 2: national institute to serve the people and the government through

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Speaker 2: the widest possible range of education and training, basic and

371
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Speaker 2: applied research opportunities, and peace information services on the means

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Speaker 2: to promote international peace and the resolution of conflicts among

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Speaker 2: the nations and peoples of the world without recourse to violence.

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Speaker 4: That was one of its nine big bullet points. Passed

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Speaker 4: by Congress and signed by Ronald Reagan in 1984, the

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Speaker 4: law stipulated that the U.S. Institute of Peace would be

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Speaker 4: run by a board of 15 people, only eight of

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Speaker 4: whom could belong to a single political party. All served

379
00:22:16,250 --> 00:22:19,810
Speaker 4: longer terms than the president. The president could appoint board

380
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Speaker 4: members but not remove them, except for extreme malfeasance. The

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00:22:24,950 --> 00:22:28,730
Speaker 4: White House had no control over its spending. The money

382
00:22:28,770 --> 00:22:31,129
Speaker 4: for the new institute would come from both Congress and

383
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Speaker 4: private donations. The land for its building would be leased

384
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Speaker 4: to the institute for free in perpetuity. The building wound

385
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Speaker 4: up being paid for with $ 100 million from Congress and

386
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Speaker 4: $ 70 million in private donations, but it was wholly owned

387
00:22:48,310 --> 00:22:52,390
Speaker 4: by the private corporation. The whole point of the structure

388
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Speaker 4: was to remove the U.S. Institute of Peace from day-to-day politics.

389
00:22:57,000 --> 00:22:59,800
Speaker 4: There was a long history of these congressionally bred mongrels,

390
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Speaker 4: institutions that both received help from and gave help to

391
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Speaker 4: the federal government while remaining privately controlled, the first of

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Speaker 4: which had been the Red Cross back in 1900. In 1935,

393
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Speaker 4: the Supreme Court upheld, by unanimous vote, the right of

394
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Speaker 4: Congress to breed mongrel institutions, and Congress had since bred

395
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Speaker 4: more of them. But in a funny way, the U.S.

396
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Speaker 4: Institute of Peace predated them all, even the Red Cross.

397
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Speaker 4: In his final address to Congress in 1796, George Washington

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Speaker 4: had proposed creating two private but national colleges, one to

399
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Speaker 4: train warriors, the other to train peacemakers. Six years later,

400
00:23:42,859 --> 00:23:46,219
Speaker 4: Congress agreed to fund West Point, but not the Peace College,

401
00:23:46,830 --> 00:23:49,850
Speaker 4: whose merits were the subject of an on-again, off-again debate

402
00:23:50,210 --> 00:23:54,240
Speaker 4: for the next 188 years. The idea got a massive

403
00:23:54,340 --> 00:23:57,200
Speaker 4: push after the Vietnam War from a handful of United

404
00:23:57,240 --> 00:24:00,919
Speaker 4: States senators who'd served in combat and emerged from the

405
00:24:00,980 --> 00:24:04,240
Speaker 4: experience with a conviction that the best war was the

406
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Speaker 4: war that never happened, and that one way to prevent

407
00:24:07,530 --> 00:24:10,729
Speaker 4: war was to invest a bit more in the art

408
00:24:10,770 --> 00:24:13,630
Speaker 4: of peace. Yeah, you can have a Department of War,

409
00:24:14,050 --> 00:24:15,649
Speaker 4: but what you really want to do is stay out

410
00:24:15,670 --> 00:24:18,469
Speaker 4: of war, said Colin. How do you stop people from

411
00:24:18,510 --> 00:24:21,910
Speaker 4: blowing other people up? These were people who genuinely want

412
00:24:21,950 --> 00:24:25,330
Speaker 4: to make the world a less shitty place. Of all

413
00:24:25,369 --> 00:24:29,100
Speaker 4: the mongrel institutions created by Congress, the Federal Trade Commission,

414
00:24:29,400 --> 00:24:34,480
Speaker 4: the Inter-American Foundation, the Legal Services Corporation, and others, the U.S.

415
00:24:34,520 --> 00:24:38,820
Speaker 4: Institute of Peace was legally the most removed from presidential control.

416
00:24:38,840 --> 00:24:43,380
Speaker 4: If Elon Musk, acting on behalf of Donald Trump, could

417
00:24:43,420 --> 00:24:46,330
Speaker 4: send Nate Kavanaugh in to just take the building away

418
00:24:46,590 --> 00:24:52,540
Speaker 4: and fire everyone inside... He could take anything and fire anyone.

419
00:24:53,660 --> 00:24:58,359
Speaker 4: The Federal Reserve, for example, or the Kennedy Center. Plus,

420
00:24:58,400 --> 00:25:03,760
Speaker 4: of course, the entire two-million-person civil service. This attempt to

421
00:25:03,800 --> 00:25:06,850
Speaker 4: strip a building from its rightful owner was a pure

422
00:25:07,050 --> 00:25:10,129
Speaker 4: assertion of power, an attempt to change the way the

423
00:25:10,170 --> 00:25:13,270
Speaker 4: government had been run for more than a century, to

424
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Speaker 4: reduce it to nothing more or less than a servant

425
00:25:16,830 --> 00:25:20,400
Speaker 4: of whoever happens to be president. Holding the building meant

426
00:25:20,440 --> 00:25:24,600
Speaker 4: more to Colin than just holding the building. I knew

427
00:25:24,619 --> 00:25:27,280
Speaker 4: what I was fighting for, he said. I knew what

428
00:25:27,300 --> 00:25:30,300
Speaker 4: I was trying to protect. By the time he ushered

429
00:25:30,340 --> 00:25:33,379
Speaker 4: Nate Cavanaugh back into his big black car, Colin had

430
00:25:33,420 --> 00:25:38,030
Speaker 4: a fully formed opinion of him. It wasn't favorable. He

431
00:25:38,050 --> 00:25:40,149
Speaker 4: had these white Converse sneakers that make you want to

432
00:25:40,210 --> 00:25:42,970
Speaker 4: scuff them with whatever you have, said Colin. Had this

433
00:25:43,330 --> 00:25:46,909
Speaker 4: air of superiority. You could feel him looking down on you.

434
00:25:48,030 --> 00:25:51,070
Speaker 4: Whatever he was up to, Colin could see. It wasn't

435
00:25:51,210 --> 00:25:55,250
Speaker 4: deficit reduction. More than 80% of federal spending went to

436
00:25:55,310 --> 00:25:59,070
Speaker 4: national defense, entitlement programs, and interest payments on the federal debt.

437
00:25:59,690 --> 00:26:03,050
Speaker 4: Doge wasn't even pretending to touch any of that. Anyway,

438
00:26:03,310 --> 00:26:07,369
Speaker 4: Congress controlled federal spending. And Doge was making no effort

439
00:26:07,530 --> 00:26:11,060
Speaker 4: to engage Congress. What was happening felt to Colin less

440
00:26:11,100 --> 00:26:15,660
Speaker 4: like cost-cutting than total destruction. The people who ran the U.S.

441
00:26:15,700 --> 00:26:19,109
Speaker 4: Institute of Peace were less fatalistic than Colin. They believed

442
00:26:19,130 --> 00:26:21,750
Speaker 4: they could survive. They thought they could hide in the

443
00:26:21,790 --> 00:26:25,189
Speaker 4: tall grass, said Colin. He heard them talk about the

444
00:26:25,230 --> 00:26:29,640
Speaker 4: traits that the Institute possessed, lacked by other quasi-government institutions,

445
00:26:30,000 --> 00:26:35,179
Speaker 4: that enhanced its likelihood of survival. Number one, they were tiny.

446
00:26:36,040 --> 00:26:37,699
Speaker 4: The Institute's $ 55 million annual budget was. 0007857 % of

447
00:26:37,740 --> 00:26:48,350
Speaker 4: the federal budget. Number two, They had nothing inside it

448
00:26:48,410 --> 00:26:53,449
Speaker 4: labeled diversity, equity, and inclusion. Their workforce was diverse, but

449
00:26:53,470 --> 00:26:55,340
Speaker 4: they came by that without making a point of it.

450
00:26:56,470 --> 00:27:00,930
Speaker 4: Number three, people close to Trump, Marco Rubio, Lindsey Graham,

451
00:27:01,369 --> 00:27:07,149
Speaker 4: had long supported the Institute's work. Number four, Trump's obsession

452
00:27:07,330 --> 00:27:11,169
Speaker 4: with the Nobel Peace Prize. Destroying something called the United

453
00:27:11,230 --> 00:27:14,980
Speaker 4: States Institute of Peace would look bad on his application.

454
00:27:16,119 --> 00:27:20,960
Speaker 4: Number five, the actual importance of their work. Though how

455
00:27:21,040 --> 00:27:24,620
Speaker 4: many Americans, let alone the Americans who had just moved

456
00:27:24,640 --> 00:27:27,180
Speaker 4: into the White House, could tell you what they did?

457
00:27:28,520 --> 00:27:33,859
Speaker 4: Number six, their legal independence. Even as the Doge people

458
00:27:33,920 --> 00:27:37,540
Speaker 4: drove off, and even as his bosses made hopeful noises,

459
00:27:38,540 --> 00:27:42,640
Speaker 4: Colin was almost sure that the Institute was doomed. These

460
00:27:42,680 --> 00:27:46,270
Speaker 4: people I work for are eternal optimists. and they believe

461
00:27:46,290 --> 00:27:49,869
Speaker 4: in the rule of law, he said. I'm thinking, you

462
00:27:49,910 --> 00:27:52,810
Speaker 4: can't fight an army with a piece of paper. His

463
00:27:52,850 --> 00:27:56,990
Speaker 4: goal was now simple. As he said, to keep possession

464
00:27:57,010 --> 00:27:59,230
Speaker 4: of the building until we can get in front of

465
00:27:59,270 --> 00:28:05,120
Speaker 4: a judge. But the situation was moving fast. The next day, Saturday,

466
00:28:05,170 --> 00:28:08,940
Speaker 4: March 15th, Colin received a phone call from a retired

467
00:28:09,020 --> 00:28:13,700
Speaker 4: former employee of the private company, Intercon, that the Institute

468
00:28:13,720 --> 00:28:17,450
Speaker 4: of Peace hired to guard the building. The guy told

469
00:28:17,510 --> 00:28:20,530
Speaker 4: Colin he'd just gotten this weird call from the FBI,

470
00:28:21,030 --> 00:28:23,230
Speaker 4: asking him if he was still in charge of the

471
00:28:23,310 --> 00:28:28,150
Speaker 4: Institute's security guards. These fucking kids just ran it through grok,

472
00:28:28,350 --> 00:28:31,730
Speaker 4: said Colin, and they think he's still in charge of security.

473
00:28:32,830 --> 00:28:34,570
Speaker 4: That's when the light bulb went off in my head.

474
00:28:35,470 --> 00:28:37,910
Speaker 4: They're going to use Intercon to get into the building.

475
00:28:39,070 --> 00:28:39,490
Speaker 3: The U.S.

476
00:28:39,510 --> 00:28:45,150
Speaker 4: Department of State alone paid Intercon $ 460 million a year

477
00:28:45,790 --> 00:28:49,670
Speaker 4: to guard its properties. If forced to choose between that

478
00:28:50,150 --> 00:28:53,020
Speaker 4: and the $ 2. 7 million they were being paid by the

479
00:28:53,060 --> 00:28:58,100
Speaker 4: Institute of Peace, Intercon wouldn't think twice. I realize that

480
00:28:58,120 --> 00:29:00,100
Speaker 4: we need to get rid of the guards, said Colin,

481
00:29:00,680 --> 00:29:02,800
Speaker 4: that the way to make us safer is to get

482
00:29:02,880 --> 00:29:05,830
Speaker 4: rid of the people protecting us. When he was done,

483
00:29:06,150 --> 00:29:09,210
Speaker 4: there was only one outstanding key to the single mechanical

484
00:29:09,290 --> 00:29:12,989
Speaker 4: lock on the entire building, held by Kevin Simpson, who

485
00:29:13,110 --> 00:29:17,960
Speaker 4: oversaw Intercon's security guards. Colin couldn't find him. And in

486
00:29:18,040 --> 00:29:20,340
Speaker 4: any case, he was an old and trusted friend of

487
00:29:20,380 --> 00:29:23,600
Speaker 4: several people who worked for the Institute of Peace. Colin

488
00:29:23,640 --> 00:29:26,459
Speaker 4: hoped that if Doge found him, Kevin Simpson would just

489
00:29:26,520 --> 00:29:29,340
Speaker 4: keep mum about the key. Of all the people out there,

490
00:29:29,380 --> 00:29:33,870
Speaker 4: he said, Kevin is the person I can trust. On Sunday,

491
00:29:34,310 --> 00:29:36,930
Speaker 4: Colin had another phone call, this one from a senior

492
00:29:37,070 --> 00:29:41,210
Speaker 4: FBI agent named Doug Silk. Silk told Colin that he

493
00:29:41,270 --> 00:29:45,170
Speaker 4: was under investigation by the Department of Justice for the

494
00:29:45,210 --> 00:29:48,340
Speaker 4: events of March 14th and asked him to come in

495
00:29:48,380 --> 00:29:51,280
Speaker 4: that day for questioning. I said, yeah, that's not going

496
00:29:51,300 --> 00:29:54,360
Speaker 4: to happen. Then, because he was not home when he

497
00:29:54,400 --> 00:29:57,500
Speaker 4: received the threat, Colin called his wife and told her

498
00:29:57,540 --> 00:29:59,780
Speaker 4: to lock the doors to their house and not let

499
00:29:59,840 --> 00:30:03,180
Speaker 4: anyone in. no matter who they said they were. He

500
00:30:03,220 --> 00:30:05,940
Speaker 4: got to work at five the next morning, St. Patrick's Day.

501
00:30:06,700 --> 00:30:09,100
Speaker 4: They'd told the staff to stay home, so it was

502
00:30:09,140 --> 00:30:12,970
Speaker 4: just him and George Moose and their lawyers. I know

503
00:30:13,070 --> 00:30:15,709
Speaker 4: their objective was going to be to destroy us, said Colin.

504
00:30:16,550 --> 00:30:18,930
Speaker 4: And I know I was being asked to be the D.C.

505
00:30:19,010 --> 00:30:23,070
Speaker 4: version of Davy Crockett. And I know that the analogy

506
00:30:23,150 --> 00:30:26,080
Speaker 4: is not exact. He was looking out over the streets

507
00:30:26,130 --> 00:30:28,680
Speaker 4: from an upper story window when he saw them approach.

508
00:30:29,640 --> 00:30:34,680
Speaker 4: It's three vehicles. A dogemobile, a tinted-out black Tahoe or Escalade,

509
00:30:35,380 --> 00:30:36,830
Speaker 4: followed by a Tesla.

510
00:30:36,770 --> 00:30:37,250
Speaker 3: And a Jeep.

511
00:30:38,090 --> 00:30:40,630
Speaker 4: He watched as an intercom guy named Derek left one

512
00:30:40,650 --> 00:30:43,110
Speaker 4: of the cars and tried to open the front door.

513
00:30:43,950 --> 00:30:47,380
Speaker 4: His badge doesn't work, said Colin. The U.S. Institute of

514
00:30:47,420 --> 00:30:51,240
Speaker 4: Peace building hadn't been designed to repel an invading force.

515
00:30:52,120 --> 00:30:55,390
Speaker 4: It had been designed to emit light. It was all

516
00:30:55,470 --> 00:30:58,830
Speaker 4: clerestory windows topped by a roof of glass panels shaped

517
00:30:58,870 --> 00:31:02,170
Speaker 4: like the wings of a dove. The Valhalla of think

518
00:31:02,210 --> 00:31:05,940
Speaker 4: tank architecture, one critic called it. Colin had no idea

519
00:31:06,000 --> 00:31:08,720
Speaker 4: where the next assault would come from, but he knew

520
00:31:08,760 --> 00:31:12,640
Speaker 4: the most vulnerable point in his defense. The side door.

521
00:31:13,500 --> 00:31:16,980
Speaker 4: The door that still had the mechanical lock. Colin's hope

522
00:31:17,030 --> 00:31:19,890
Speaker 4: that the Doge people would never find Kevin Simpson, or

523
00:31:19,930 --> 00:31:23,830
Speaker 4: his key, faded 15 minutes after the Dogemobiles pulled up.

524
00:31:24,530 --> 00:31:29,130
Speaker 4: when Simpson himself appeared inside the building. Colin descended to

525
00:31:29,190 --> 00:31:32,270
Speaker 4: find him and three other intercom patrol people in plain

526
00:31:32,330 --> 00:31:34,480
Speaker 4: clothes just wandering around.

527
00:31:35,560 --> 00:31:35,920
Speaker 3: D.C.

528
00:31:35,960 --> 00:31:39,620
Speaker 4: Law banned the security officers who protected the courthouses and

529
00:31:39,680 --> 00:31:43,500
Speaker 4: agencies and embassies from carrying their weapons home from work.

530
00:31:44,380 --> 00:31:47,950
Speaker 4: The guns needed to be stored someplace. The only odd

531
00:31:48,030 --> 00:31:50,070
Speaker 4: fact about the gun room in the basement of the

532
00:31:50,110 --> 00:31:53,310
Speaker 4: Institute of Peace is is that neither Colin nor anyone

533
00:31:53,330 --> 00:31:55,930
Speaker 4: who actually worked for the Institute knew the code to

534
00:31:56,030 --> 00:32:00,090
Speaker 4: open the safe. The 34 9mm Glocks were owned and

535
00:32:00,130 --> 00:32:04,850
Speaker 4: controlled by Intercon. The Intercon cops headed straight to the basement.

536
00:32:05,630 --> 00:32:09,250
Speaker 4: Colin had someone call the D.C. police to report trespassers.

537
00:32:10,250 --> 00:32:10,690
Speaker 3: The D.C.

538
00:32:10,730 --> 00:32:15,050
Speaker 4: Police didn't show. After the Intercon guards secured their guns,

539
00:32:15,570 --> 00:32:18,450
Speaker 4: they toured the building like they owned it, refusing either

540
00:32:18,470 --> 00:32:23,470
Speaker 4: to answer questions or surrender Simpson's key. The Institute, out

541
00:32:23,490 --> 00:32:26,630
Speaker 4: of the kindness of its heart, was still paying their salaries.

542
00:32:27,350 --> 00:32:30,710
Speaker 4: They were now an obviously hostile presence, but they didn't

543
00:32:30,810 --> 00:32:34,070
Speaker 4: really know how to play the new role. At one point,

544
00:32:34,110 --> 00:32:37,490
Speaker 4: they gathered all together in one place, the portico. Colin

545
00:32:37,540 --> 00:32:41,280
Speaker 4: seized that moment to throw the portico into lockdown. The

546
00:32:41,340 --> 00:32:45,100
Speaker 4: portico was self-contained. At the press of a button, Colin

547
00:32:45,140 --> 00:32:48,680
Speaker 4: turned it into a prison cell. He couldn't forcibly eject

548
00:32:48,720 --> 00:32:51,600
Speaker 4: a battalion of armed private security guys all by himself.

549
00:32:52,160 --> 00:32:54,760
Speaker 4: but he could stop them from leaving and others from entering.

550
00:32:55,720 --> 00:32:58,040
Speaker 4: For the next two hours, he watched the intercom guys

551
00:32:58,100 --> 00:33:00,790
Speaker 4: on the security cam pushing on doors that wouldn't yield

552
00:33:01,150 --> 00:33:03,850
Speaker 4: and making phone calls to anyone they thought might rescue them.

553
00:33:04,690 --> 00:33:08,290
Speaker 4: They were pissed, said Colin. With the guards all trapped,

554
00:33:08,630 --> 00:33:12,190
Speaker 4: Colin walked outside and removed the mechanical lock cylinder from

555
00:33:12,210 --> 00:33:14,800
Speaker 4: the side door so no one else could use a

556
00:33:14,840 --> 00:33:17,960
Speaker 4: key to enter. It's not a fire code violation if

557
00:33:17,980 --> 00:33:22,150
Speaker 4: you can't get into the building, he explained. That triggered

558
00:33:22,170 --> 00:33:25,630
Speaker 4: some irate phone calls to his boss, George Moose, whom

559
00:33:25,670 --> 00:33:28,670
Speaker 4: Colin had safely locked behind roughly ten different doors on

560
00:33:28,690 --> 00:33:31,650
Speaker 4: the fifth floor of the building. The first call was

561
00:33:31,670 --> 00:33:36,100
Speaker 4: Intercon's CEO, angrily but more or less politely asking Moose

562
00:33:36,140 --> 00:33:39,160
Speaker 4: to tell Colin O'Brien that he needed to release his guards.

563
00:33:40,120 --> 00:33:43,300
Speaker 4: The final, less polite call came from the acting U.S.

564
00:33:43,340 --> 00:33:47,370
Speaker 4: attorney for the District of Columbia, Ed Martin. At length,

565
00:33:47,510 --> 00:33:50,630
Speaker 4: Colin unlocked the outside door to the portico. and the

566
00:33:50,650 --> 00:33:54,550
Speaker 4: security guards exited the building. An hour later, there came

567
00:33:54,610 --> 00:33:55,710
Speaker 4: a knock on another door.

568
00:33:56,550 --> 00:33:57,030
Speaker 3: The D.C.

569
00:33:57,070 --> 00:34:01,760
Speaker 4: Police. Finally, Colin thought, the D.C. police are doing their

570
00:34:01,800 --> 00:34:05,720
Speaker 4: fucking jobs. Someone opened the door, and in streamed an

571
00:34:05,880 --> 00:34:09,399
Speaker 4: army of cops, followed by a bunch of intercom guys, and,

572
00:34:09,780 --> 00:34:13,690
Speaker 4: trotting after them, Nate Cavanaugh, along with more Doge people.

573
00:34:14,650 --> 00:34:17,750
Speaker 4: They're ordering the D.C. cops around like their own private army,

574
00:34:17,810 --> 00:34:20,989
Speaker 4: said Colin. I didn't see that coming. I didn't see

575
00:34:21,010 --> 00:34:24,430
Speaker 4: the police taking sides. It's like the cops showing up

576
00:34:24,450 --> 00:34:26,489
Speaker 4: at your house and saying, get the fuck out, these

577
00:34:26,510 --> 00:34:30,270
Speaker 4: people live here now. As the D.C. cops escorted Colin

578
00:34:30,310 --> 00:34:34,860
Speaker 4: from the building, the senior Intercon guy approached him and

579
00:34:34,890 --> 00:34:37,160
Speaker 4: said he was sorry that it had gone down this way,

580
00:34:37,860 --> 00:34:40,960
Speaker 4: but that Doge had given him no choice. They had

581
00:34:40,980 --> 00:34:45,460
Speaker 4: indeed threatened to pull Intercon's $ 460 million State Department contract.

582
00:34:46,320 --> 00:34:49,340
Speaker 4: Doge soon selected the next president of the U.S. Institute

583
00:34:49,360 --> 00:34:54,000
Speaker 4: of Peace. Nate Kavanaugh, who until that moment had exhibited

584
00:34:54,080 --> 00:34:57,930
Speaker 4: zero interest in or knowledge of the United States government

585
00:34:58,110 --> 00:35:01,469
Speaker 4: or its foreign policy, who promptly moved the title of

586
00:35:01,510 --> 00:35:05,830
Speaker 4: the Institute's building into the General Services Administration, swept its

587
00:35:05,910 --> 00:35:10,330
Speaker 4: money into government accounts, and fired nearly its entire staff.

588
00:35:11,310 --> 00:35:14,170
Speaker 4: A mere two days, Colin couldn't help but notice, before

589
00:35:14,210 --> 00:35:17,770
Speaker 4: their health insurance was set to renew. There was intent

590
00:35:17,810 --> 00:35:21,239
Speaker 4: to hurt these families, he said. It was, Let's fuck

591
00:35:21,239 --> 00:35:25,080
Speaker 4: 400 families, and then they laughed about it. In his

592
00:35:25,140 --> 00:35:27,939
Speaker 4: time as a police officer, Colin had seen many different

593
00:35:27,980 --> 00:35:30,880
Speaker 4: kinds of anger. There was the fury of the drunk

594
00:35:30,960 --> 00:35:34,500
Speaker 4: NFL defensive lineman who bull rushed him and proved to

595
00:35:34,540 --> 00:35:38,000
Speaker 4: Colin that his taser worked. That was just the alcohol

596
00:35:38,040 --> 00:35:41,080
Speaker 4: doing its job and the lineman apologized the next day.

597
00:35:42,000 --> 00:35:44,780
Speaker 4: There was the anger of victims after the law failed

598
00:35:44,800 --> 00:35:48,940
Speaker 4: to satisfy their need for vengeance. That felt more like frustration.

599
00:35:50,239 --> 00:35:52,989
Speaker 4: There was the general hatred of the police, but that

600
00:35:53,010 --> 00:35:56,330
Speaker 4: didn't really feel personal, and Colin never took it personally.

601
00:35:57,330 --> 00:35:59,830
Speaker 4: Police rarely meet people on their best day, he said.

602
00:36:00,910 --> 00:36:03,779
Speaker 4: Whatever was animating these doge people didn't feel like any

603
00:36:03,820 --> 00:36:07,460
Speaker 4: of those. They weren't reacting to an event, said Colin.

604
00:36:07,900 --> 00:36:12,600
Speaker 4: They were on a crusade. Their hostility didn't come from fear, loss,

605
00:36:12,739 --> 00:36:16,390
Speaker 4: and pain. It came from a lack of empathy and

606
00:36:16,430 --> 00:36:20,030
Speaker 4: an inability to deal with complexity. It was just fundamentally

607
00:36:20,110 --> 00:36:23,890
Speaker 4: different from anything I had encountered before. But in their

608
00:36:23,950 --> 00:36:27,120
Speaker 4: attitude to the world around them, they did remind Colin

609
00:36:27,140 --> 00:36:29,160
Speaker 4: of something that had happened back when he was a cop.

610
00:36:30,219 --> 00:36:33,100
Speaker 4: He'd responded to a home invasion in a poor black neighborhood.

611
00:36:34,180 --> 00:36:36,700
Speaker 4: His partner was a younger guy who had come from

612
00:36:36,739 --> 00:36:40,069
Speaker 4: a well-to-do family. They had arrived at the scene to

613
00:36:40,110 --> 00:36:44,090
Speaker 4: find a terrified and distraught single mother with two small children.

614
00:36:45,430 --> 00:36:48,509
Speaker 4: Her next-door neighbor was a drug dealer, she explained. and

615
00:36:48,530 --> 00:36:52,910
Speaker 4: these disturbed addicts kept mistaking her apartment for his. They

616
00:36:52,950 --> 00:36:56,520
Speaker 4: kept breaking in to steal drugs. Colin's partner listened to

617
00:36:56,580 --> 00:36:59,980
Speaker 4: her and then said matter-of-factly, why don't you just move?

618
00:37:01,360 --> 00:37:05,000
Speaker 4: And Colin thought, this guy has no ability to imagine

619
00:37:05,040 --> 00:37:09,310
Speaker 4: himself into her situation. Why does that happen, he asked.

620
00:37:10,350 --> 00:37:13,650
Speaker 4: Because this is someone who has no worldly experience to

621
00:37:13,750 --> 00:37:17,450
Speaker 4: understand that she can't move. It simply didn't occur to

622
00:37:17,469 --> 00:37:21,029
Speaker 4: the guy. just as it didn't seriously occur to Nate Kavanaugh,

623
00:37:21,550 --> 00:37:25,630
Speaker 4: to consider the suffering he was making possible. Once Doge

624
00:37:25,650 --> 00:37:27,870
Speaker 4: had control of the building, Nate and the other guys

625
00:37:27,910 --> 00:37:31,430
Speaker 4: went rooting around in the Institute's computers. Elon Musk was

626
00:37:31,450 --> 00:37:34,880
Speaker 4: given first crack at the fresh material. Then the Doge

627
00:37:34,920 --> 00:37:37,400
Speaker 4: account on X posted a list of their findings.

628
00:37:41,200 --> 00:37:42,259
Speaker 3: Each year, the.

629
00:37:42,219 --> 00:37:47,239
Speaker 5: United States Institute for Peace, UCIB, receives $ 55 million in

630
00:37:47,280 --> 00:37:52,170
Speaker 5: congressional taxpayer funds. Prior management would sweep excess funds into

631
00:37:52,210 --> 00:37:57,410
Speaker 5: its private endowment, zero congressional oversight. In the past 10 years,

632
00:37:58,130 --> 00:38:01,550
Speaker 5: USIP has transferred about $ 13 million to its private endowment,

633
00:38:02,330 --> 00:38:07,380
Speaker 5: mainly used for private events and travel. USIP contracts, now canceled,

634
00:38:07,960 --> 00:38:15,690
Speaker 5: include $ 132, 000 to Mohamed Qasem Halimi, an ex-Taliban member who

635
00:38:15,730 --> 00:38:24,190
Speaker 5: was Afghanistan's former chief of protocol. $ 2, 232, 500 to its outside accountant,

636
00:38:24,910 --> 00:38:27,880
Speaker 5: who attempted to delete over one terabyte of accounting data,

637
00:38:28,480 --> 00:38:33,120
Speaker 5: now recovered, after new leadership entered the building. $ 1, 307, 061 to

638
00:38:33,140 --> 00:38:44,550
Speaker 5: the Al-Tadamun Iraqi League for Youth, $ 675, 000 for private aviation services.

639
00:38:48,510 --> 00:38:50,930
Speaker 4: The list was both interesting and true, but as it

640
00:38:50,969 --> 00:38:54,160
Speaker 4: turned out, the bits that were interesting weren't true, and

641
00:38:54,180 --> 00:38:57,940
Speaker 4: the bits that were true weren't interesting. For instance, the

642
00:38:57,980 --> 00:39:00,540
Speaker 4: law that had created the Institute required it to move

643
00:39:00,600 --> 00:39:03,899
Speaker 4: any unused funds into its endowment, and so, by law,

644
00:39:04,200 --> 00:39:07,660
Speaker 4: for the past 40 years, that's what they'd done. The

645
00:39:07,700 --> 00:39:11,020
Speaker 4: Institute was also required by law to hire an accountant

646
00:39:11,180 --> 00:39:13,819
Speaker 4: to audit its books every year, so that it might

647
00:39:13,880 --> 00:39:18,069
Speaker 4: report its spending to Congress. For those services, it paid

648
00:39:18,150 --> 00:39:22,969
Speaker 4: roughly $ 380, 000 a year. The amount that Doge accused the

649
00:39:23,010 --> 00:39:26,040
Speaker 4: Institute of spending on its accountants corresponded not to their

650
00:39:26,060 --> 00:39:29,580
Speaker 4: accountant's bill, but to a six-year contract for legal services.

651
00:39:30,719 --> 00:39:33,819
Speaker 4: The actual sum paid to the Al-Tataman Iraqi League for

652
00:39:33,860 --> 00:39:36,580
Speaker 4: Youth was not more than a million dollars, but less

653
00:39:36,600 --> 00:39:40,319
Speaker 4: than half that. The money had funded a single project, which,

654
00:39:40,460 --> 00:39:44,330
Speaker 4: because it had such obvious value, had been explicitly approved

655
00:39:44,410 --> 00:39:48,750
Speaker 4: by Marco Rubio. Essentially, it was an attempt to reduce extremism,

656
00:39:49,270 --> 00:39:53,830
Speaker 4: and anti-American terrorism. The collapse of the Bashar al-Assad government

657
00:39:54,210 --> 00:39:59,089
Speaker 4: in December 2024 had stranded thousands of Iraqis, mostly women

658
00:39:59,110 --> 00:40:03,290
Speaker 4: and children, in a camp in Syria's northeast. The Islamic

659
00:40:03,350 --> 00:40:07,310
Speaker 4: State had gained some traction inside the camp, which back

660
00:40:07,510 --> 00:40:12,380
Speaker 4: in 2019 had held 30,000 refugees, and the godforsaken place

661
00:40:12,420 --> 00:40:16,180
Speaker 4: had become a breeding ground for future ISIS fighters. The

662
00:40:16,280 --> 00:40:20,130
Speaker 4: institute's local Iraqi staff members of the League for Youth,

663
00:40:20,830 --> 00:40:23,989
Speaker 4: had been working successfully with the U.S. State Department to

664
00:40:24,030 --> 00:40:27,549
Speaker 4: persuade village elders in Iraq to accept the refugees in

665
00:40:27,570 --> 00:40:30,879
Speaker 4: their villages and provide them a path to a peaceful life.

666
00:40:31,700 --> 00:40:35,239
Speaker 4: Before they accepted anyone, the elders demanded evidence that they

667
00:40:35,260 --> 00:40:38,399
Speaker 4: have no connection to ISIS or any other terrorist group.

668
00:40:39,280 --> 00:40:42,860
Speaker 4: The Institute's staff arranged small conferences to walk the elders

669
00:40:42,920 --> 00:40:46,990
Speaker 4: through the personal histories of the refugees. The Institute footed

670
00:40:47,030 --> 00:40:49,720
Speaker 4: the bill for the venues, plus the tea and coffee,

671
00:40:49,880 --> 00:40:54,740
Speaker 4: and occasionally lunch. God knows the efficiency of that particular effort.

672
00:40:55,180 --> 00:40:57,939
Speaker 4: No one inside Doge seems ever to have bothered to ask.

673
00:40:58,580 --> 00:41:00,700
Speaker 4: Had they dug a bit, they could have found evidence

674
00:41:00,739 --> 00:41:05,080
Speaker 4: that similar sorts of programs had been wildly efficient. For example,

675
00:41:05,120 --> 00:41:07,279
Speaker 4: the work the Institute of Peace had done in 2007

676
00:41:07,280 --> 00:41:11,140
Speaker 4: in Iraq, in an area south of Baghdad, that had

677
00:41:11,160 --> 00:41:14,570
Speaker 4: become known as the Triangle of Death. A region of

678
00:41:14,610 --> 00:41:17,810
Speaker 4: a million people was riven by tribal warfare and and

679
00:41:17,890 --> 00:41:21,970
Speaker 4: laced with insurgents, who had killed 54 members of the U.S.

680
00:41:22,050 --> 00:41:26,590
Speaker 4: Army's 10th Mountain Division and wounded hundreds more. At the

681
00:41:26,640 --> 00:41:29,640
Speaker 4: behest of the Army, the Institute had brought together 30

682
00:41:29,640 --> 00:41:34,320
Speaker 4: elders of warring tribes. The Institute's structure, both an instrument

683
00:41:34,340 --> 00:41:37,620
Speaker 4: of the United States and removed from its political control,

684
00:41:38,239 --> 00:41:43,160
Speaker 4: created a useful ambiguity. It allowed it to facilitate conversations

685
00:41:43,530 --> 00:41:48,760
Speaker 4: that official government authorities could not. Years earlier, a scholar

686
00:41:48,800 --> 00:41:52,660
Speaker 4: named I. William Zartman, working on an Institute of Peace grant,

687
00:41:53,200 --> 00:41:58,299
Speaker 4: had framed the idea of the hurting stalemate. His big

688
00:41:58,360 --> 00:42:01,529
Speaker 4: point was the success of a peace initiative might have

689
00:42:01,610 --> 00:42:04,450
Speaker 4: less to do with the specifics of the proposal than

690
00:42:04,469 --> 00:42:08,009
Speaker 4: with its timing. So long as neither side saw any

691
00:42:08,070 --> 00:42:10,610
Speaker 4: value in moving away from their anger and their violence,

692
00:42:11,320 --> 00:42:13,580
Speaker 4: there wasn't much you could say or do to stop

693
00:42:13,600 --> 00:42:16,850
Speaker 4: them fighting. But when both sensed that anger and violence

694
00:42:17,070 --> 00:42:19,219
Speaker 4: weren't going to get them what they wanted, when the

695
00:42:19,260 --> 00:42:24,360
Speaker 4: status quo became sufficiently painful, they became vulnerable to peace.

696
00:42:25,300 --> 00:42:27,560
Speaker 4: The trick was to have trusted people on the ground

697
00:42:27,700 --> 00:42:31,890
Speaker 4: who could spot these moments and seize them. The Institute's

698
00:42:31,910 --> 00:42:34,990
Speaker 4: staff had started by handing out questionnaires for the warring

699
00:42:35,030 --> 00:42:39,210
Speaker 4: Iraqi tribal leaders to fill out anonymously. Each made his

700
00:42:39,270 --> 00:42:42,810
Speaker 4: list of grievances. The lists were then passed around for

701
00:42:42,890 --> 00:42:48,250
Speaker 4: everyone to read. and something happened. The collective realization of

702
00:42:48,310 --> 00:42:52,229
Speaker 4: how they'd all endured the same terrible losses took just

703
00:42:52,290 --> 00:42:55,130
Speaker 4: enough steam out of the room that they began to talk.

704
00:42:56,110 --> 00:42:59,450
Speaker 4: The talks led to peace that has lasted to this day.

705
00:43:00,570 --> 00:43:04,200
Speaker 4: Inside the Institute's servers, the Doge guys might have found

706
00:43:04,340 --> 00:43:07,920
Speaker 4: evidence of this triumph. For example, the letter of thanks

707
00:43:08,000 --> 00:43:13,000
Speaker 4: from General David Petraeus. In the Pentagon's view, the Institute

708
00:43:13,020 --> 00:43:17,460
Speaker 4: had saved both American lives and taxpayer dollars. Before the

709
00:43:17,520 --> 00:43:23,150
Speaker 4: Institute became involved, the U.S. Army had been spending $ 150

710
00:43:21,930 --> 00:43:26,290
Speaker 4: million a month to pacify the Triangle of Death. The

711
00:43:26,350 --> 00:43:30,589
Speaker 4: peace talks cost a million dollars. The savings they yielded

712
00:43:31,100 --> 00:43:33,620
Speaker 4: were likely greater than the entire cost up to that

713
00:43:33,700 --> 00:43:37,580
Speaker 4: point of the Institute of Peace. The most disturbing item

714
00:43:37,640 --> 00:43:43,560
Speaker 4: on Doge's list was the $ 132, 000 sent to Mohamed Qasem Halimi.

715
00:43:44,239 --> 00:43:48,760
Speaker 4: In the 1990s, Halimi, a religious scholar, had indeed worked

716
00:43:48,920 --> 00:43:52,660
Speaker 4: in the Taliban-run government as a liaison to foreign diplomats.

717
00:43:53,520 --> 00:43:55,239
Speaker 4: It was the only good job I could find, he

718
00:43:55,280 --> 00:43:59,860
Speaker 4: explained to ProPublica. But after the 9-11 attack and the

719
00:43:59,960 --> 00:44:04,799
Speaker 4: U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in December 2001, he'd quit the

720
00:44:04,840 --> 00:44:09,469
Speaker 4: Taliban and served American interests. the Taliban had tried three

721
00:44:09,530 --> 00:44:10,870
Speaker 4: times to assassinate him.

722
00:44:11,710 --> 00:44:12,089
Speaker 2: The U.S.

723
00:44:12,130 --> 00:44:15,350
Speaker 4: Institute of Peace had paid him $ 10, 000 a month for

724
00:44:15,390 --> 00:44:19,069
Speaker 4: a variety of services. Halimi had fled the country with

725
00:44:19,090 --> 00:44:22,470
Speaker 4: the U.S. military, but he maintained a network that reported

726
00:44:22,489 --> 00:44:25,589
Speaker 4: to him on the Taliban's treatment of women, information that

727
00:44:25,630 --> 00:44:28,710
Speaker 4: the U.S. State Department was unable to gather any other way.

728
00:44:29,570 --> 00:44:32,270
Speaker 4: He had earned the trust of religious scholars across the region,

729
00:44:32,870 --> 00:44:35,330
Speaker 4: so that he might point out when the Taliban's behavior

730
00:44:35,370 --> 00:44:39,490
Speaker 4: violated the Koran. and they, in turn, might pressure the

731
00:44:39,530 --> 00:44:44,330
Speaker 4: Taliban to modify its behavior. In Trump's first term, Halimi

732
00:44:44,370 --> 00:44:47,850
Speaker 4: had actually prepped U.S. negotiators for their talks with the Taliban.

733
00:44:48,650 --> 00:44:52,030
Speaker 4: He wasn't exactly an American spy, but he was certainly

734
00:44:52,070 --> 00:44:56,180
Speaker 4: an ally. By outing him on social media, Musk had

735
00:44:56,219 --> 00:45:01,200
Speaker 4: essentially exposed a U.S. asset to enemies of America. After

736
00:45:01,239 --> 00:45:04,719
Speaker 4: the tweet, the Taliban rounded up Halimi's relatives still living

737
00:45:04,760 --> 00:45:09,480
Speaker 4: in Afghanistan and for beatings and imprisonment. So much of

738
00:45:09,540 --> 00:45:13,420
Speaker 4: what Nate Kavanaugh and his Doge pals claimed was obviously outrageous.

739
00:45:14,400 --> 00:45:17,739
Speaker 4: But what especially infuriated Colin O'Brien was the final item

740
00:45:17,800 --> 00:45:25,210
Speaker 4: on their list, $ 675, 000 for private aviation services. When the

741
00:45:25,230 --> 00:45:27,850
Speaker 4: United States finished pulling out of Afghanistan in the summer

742
00:45:27,870 --> 00:45:32,069
Speaker 4: of 2021, it imperiled the lives of every Afghan who

743
00:45:32,090 --> 00:45:36,460
Speaker 4: had helped, including the Institute of Peace's local staff and

744
00:45:36,500 --> 00:45:40,120
Speaker 4: their families. The male staffers assumed that if they fell

745
00:45:40,140 --> 00:45:45,160
Speaker 4: into the Taliban's hands, they'd be summarily executed. The female

746
00:45:45,200 --> 00:45:49,420
Speaker 4: staffers expected to be enslaved and packed off into forced marriages.

747
00:45:50,440 --> 00:45:53,600
Speaker 4: It fell to the Institute's security chief to extract what

748
00:45:53,620 --> 00:45:58,029
Speaker 4: in the end amounted to 256 people. That was the

749
00:45:58,130 --> 00:46:03,190
Speaker 4: only private aviation service the Institute had engaged. It was

750
00:46:03,450 --> 00:46:08,060
Speaker 4: one fucking flight, said Colin. A 737 from Kabul to Qatar.

751
00:46:08,960 --> 00:46:11,640
Speaker 4: To get them out before they were taken by the Taliban.

752
00:46:12,700 --> 00:46:16,180
Speaker 4: You said we have private jets. Fuck you. We had

753
00:46:16,219 --> 00:46:18,760
Speaker 4: a charter plane to rescue our people from a war zone.

754
00:46:19,920 --> 00:46:24,399
Speaker 4: He took pride in that exercise. Their final two Afghan employees,

755
00:46:24,420 --> 00:46:26,020
Speaker 4: who had been working in a remote part of the

756
00:46:26,060 --> 00:46:29,120
Speaker 4: country and were unable to make the flight, Colin had

757
00:46:29,140 --> 00:46:32,510
Speaker 4: arranged to be smuggled across the Pakistan border and kept

758
00:46:32,550 --> 00:46:36,520
Speaker 4: hidden from the Pakistani government for three years before getting

759
00:46:36,540 --> 00:46:40,180
Speaker 4: them to safety. A few weeks after the barrage of

760
00:46:40,239 --> 00:46:44,740
Speaker 4: distortions and deceptions, Musk gathered his team on Fox News.

761
00:46:45,719 --> 00:46:48,860
Speaker 4: The idea was to use host Jesse Waters' open sympathy

762
00:46:49,010 --> 00:46:51,170
Speaker 4: for what they had done to reveal to the American

763
00:46:51,250 --> 00:46:56,060
Speaker 4: people the specific waste and fraud they'd uncovered. As Exhibit A,

764
00:46:56,750 --> 00:47:00,470
Speaker 4: Musk introduced Nate Kavanaugh and his work inside the U.S.

765
00:47:00,610 --> 00:47:01,370
Speaker 4: Institute of Peace.

766
00:47:04,020 --> 00:47:09,020
Speaker 6: What has been the biggest resistance? Is there one agency?

767
00:47:09,160 --> 00:47:12,259
Speaker 2: Is there one department that when you guys walk in,

768
00:47:13,460 --> 00:47:17,219
Speaker 2: they all start fighting you, start hiding things?

769
00:47:17,260 --> 00:47:21,069
Speaker 3: Wait, I thought you weren't going to talk.

770
00:47:21,140 --> 00:47:22,260
Speaker 5: I'm sorry.

771
00:47:22,280 --> 00:47:24,930
Speaker 3: But I guess you can answer that question.

772
00:47:25,230 --> 00:47:25,469
Speaker 6: Sure.

773
00:47:25,930 --> 00:47:28,690
Speaker 3: I mean, yes, we've certainly had some battles.

774
00:47:29,110 --> 00:47:29,470
Speaker 4: Battles?

775
00:47:29,650 --> 00:47:30,850
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah.

776
00:47:31,700 --> 00:47:33,920
Speaker 5: I mean, who should talk about Yusuf?

777
00:47:34,800 --> 00:47:35,460
Speaker 6: Oh, Nate.

778
00:47:35,680 --> 00:47:37,399
Speaker 3: Okay.

779
00:47:37,480 --> 00:47:40,339
Speaker 6: The small agency called the United States Institute of Peace

780
00:47:41,239 --> 00:47:43,500
Speaker 6: is definitely the agency we had the most fight at.

781
00:47:44,780 --> 00:47:46,620
Speaker 6: We actually went into the agency and found that they

782
00:47:46,660 --> 00:47:50,339
Speaker 6: had loaded guns inside of their headquarters. Institute for Peace.

783
00:47:50,900 --> 00:47:53,640
Speaker 2: I mean, any given company, any given organizational name is

784
00:47:53,680 --> 00:47:55,439
Speaker 2: going to kind of be the opposite of the title.

785
00:47:55,900 --> 00:47:56,120
Speaker 5: Right.

786
00:47:56,300 --> 00:47:59,500
Speaker 6: Yeah. Yeah, so it was by far the least peaceful

787
00:47:59,660 --> 00:48:03,600
Speaker 6: agency that we've worked with, ironically. Of course. Additionally, we

788
00:48:03,620 --> 00:48:05,920
Speaker 6: found that they were spending money on things like private jets,

789
00:48:06,219 --> 00:48:09,550
Speaker 6: and they even had a $ 130, 000 contract with a former

790
00:48:09,590 --> 00:48:12,290
Speaker 6: member of the Taliban. This is real. We don't encounter

791
00:48:12,330 --> 00:48:13,090
Speaker 6: that at most agencies.

792
00:48:15,650 --> 00:48:19,469
Speaker 4: That is how Colin O'Brien had lost the building. He'd

793
00:48:19,530 --> 00:48:22,569
Speaker 4: expected to lose it, but still he was surprised by

794
00:48:22,630 --> 00:48:26,080
Speaker 4: how it had gone down. It really was true that

795
00:48:26,120 --> 00:48:28,859
Speaker 4: in security work, you could never war game out what

796
00:48:28,900 --> 00:48:32,580
Speaker 4: eventually happened. He had lost the building to its own

797
00:48:32,739 --> 00:48:36,859
Speaker 4: private security company after it was blackmailed by the Trump administration.

798
00:48:37,820 --> 00:48:40,940
Speaker 4: To the D.C. police, which for some reason were now

799
00:48:41,120 --> 00:48:44,320
Speaker 4: acting as a private security force for these random kids

800
00:48:44,420 --> 00:48:48,510
Speaker 4: Elon Musk had empowered. To the FBI, which had somehow

801
00:48:48,590 --> 00:48:52,630
Speaker 4: reconfigured itself as yet another battalion in the White House's army.

802
00:48:53,550 --> 00:48:56,969
Speaker 4: Thrust into this new environment, These people and institutions had

803
00:48:57,010 --> 00:49:00,210
Speaker 4: done what they needed to do to survive. All that

804
00:49:00,270 --> 00:49:05,460
Speaker 4: now mattered was power. Who had physical control of a building?

805
00:49:06,540 --> 00:49:10,720
Speaker 4: Who had the guns? An institution dedicated to the idea

806
00:49:10,760 --> 00:49:13,680
Speaker 4: that conflict did not need to lead to violence now

807
00:49:13,739 --> 00:49:17,500
Speaker 4: found itself in a society in which might meant right.

808
00:49:18,640 --> 00:49:22,300
Speaker 4: Of course it had to die. Legally, the battle wasn't

809
00:49:22,360 --> 00:49:27,480
Speaker 4: completely over. In mid-May, U.S. District Judge Beryl A. Howell

810
00:49:27,520 --> 00:49:32,270
Speaker 4: of Washington issued a scathing ruling that required the Trump

811
00:49:32,290 --> 00:49:36,350
Speaker 4: administration to vacate the building. Colin had the brief pleasure

812
00:49:36,390 --> 00:49:39,270
Speaker 4: of rolling in with an army of off-duty Baltimore cops

813
00:49:39,290 --> 00:49:43,219
Speaker 4: and old pals of his, and taking it back. And

814
00:49:43,300 --> 00:49:47,050
Speaker 4: finding that the Institute's flags had been stolen, its logo

815
00:49:47,070 --> 00:49:49,830
Speaker 4: had been ripped from the wall, and that the Doge

816
00:49:49,870 --> 00:49:52,450
Speaker 4: Boys had left behind a pile of beer bottles and

817
00:49:52,489 --> 00:49:56,730
Speaker 4: cheap weed. A month later, a panel of Trump-appointed judges

818
00:49:57,350 --> 00:49:59,650
Speaker 4: on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit

819
00:50:00,150 --> 00:50:03,069
Speaker 4: issued a stay, and the building was returned to the

820
00:50:03,090 --> 00:50:06,210
Speaker 4: Trump administration. And in December 2025, it was renamed Donald J.

821
00:50:06,219 --> 00:50:12,230
Speaker 4: Trump United States Institute of Peace.