Speaker 1: I'm John Cipher and I'm Jerry O'sha. I was a
Speaker 1: CIA officer stationed around the world in high threat posts
Speaker 1: in Europe, Russia, and in Asia.
Speaker 2: And I served in Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East
Speaker 2: and in war zones. We sometimes created conspiracies to deceive
Speaker 2: our adversaries.
Speaker 1: Now we're going to use our expertise to deconstruct conspiracy
Speaker 1: theories large and small.
Speaker 2: Could they be true? Or are we being manipulated?
Speaker 1: This is mission implausible.
Speaker 2: We now continue with part two of our conversation with
Speaker 2: Will Summer of the Bulwark and the newsletter False Flag.
Speaker 2: So will you write a lot about conspiracies and conspiracy
Speaker 2: theories and a lot of conspiracy conspiracy theories center around
Speaker 2: CIA or the deep state. We got two deep state
Speaker 2: guys right here, so ask away, what is your what
Speaker 2: is your favorite conspiracy theory having to do with a
Speaker 2: deep state or CIA? Or what do we have to
Speaker 2: play to you? What lies doing conspiracies? Do we have
Speaker 2: to spin or lie to you on?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 4: I would love to know. Obviously there's been a lot
Speaker 4: of coverage of the JFK files being released, and I'd
Speaker 4: love to know what y'all make of those in terms
Speaker 4: of any revelations or not.
Speaker 1: We've talked to a couple of people about JFK stuff,
Speaker 1: and at first when we did this podcast, we're like,
Speaker 1: we got to stay away from the JFK thing because
Speaker 1: the people who get into that are like so deep
Speaker 1: into it that we're never going to be able to
Speaker 1: read enough so that we can like fix when they
Speaker 1: say something that they're completely focused on some little issue
Speaker 1: that we don't even understand or never followed. Our general
Speaker 1: view is, listen, we worked in the Clandestine Service for
Speaker 1: thirty plus years. We were there doing operations around the world.
Speaker 1: Never heard anything suggesting that the CIA had anything to
Speaker 1: do with the Kennedy assassination. Where is essentially everything else
Speaker 1: that's been secret at some point you hear about or whatever,
Speaker 1: and then to look at something like that and think
Speaker 1: that you could put all of those pieces together to
Speaker 1: pull off that incredible conspiracy and no one would ever
Speaker 1: talk about it is the thing that makes it the
Speaker 1: most unlikely. The one thing we learned about doing real
Speaker 1: conspiracies is you got to keep it very simple. It
Speaker 1: has to be very short term for a clear goal.
Speaker 1: Whereas the Kennedy thing assumes all kinds of complex moving
Speaker 1: parts and all these that kind of things, and so
Speaker 1: when the stuff came out, we weren't expecting anything. This
Speaker 1: stuff has been released year after year. Clearly the stuff
Speaker 1: that hadn't been released is related to other operations or
Speaker 1: foreign governments or sources that helped us on this that
Speaker 1: we promised to keep secret, and now we've seen that
Speaker 1: when they've put out all the other stuff, it actually was.
Speaker 1: It was kind of bad. It hurt some people in
Speaker 1: the Mexican government that had helped us, and it provided
Speaker 1: even prior to what social security numbers of people that
Speaker 1: were on the Warrant Commission, all this kind of stuff
Speaker 1: that there was a reason to keep that secret, not
Speaker 1: because it was covering up the kennedyssassination, for all these
Speaker 1: other normal security reasons.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we cross file things and there's a lot of
Speaker 2: tangential things. I think John mentioned it once. If twenty
Speaker 2: years later you're talking to a diplomat from the Balkans
Speaker 2: who is a conspiratorial mindset, and he talks about his
Speaker 2: theory of JFK, well that goes into the JFK file, right,
Speaker 2: It's like, oh, he mentioned it, because you the way
Speaker 2: we write everything up. We're really good with records, So
Speaker 2: now that's in there. And so do you expose the
Speaker 2: fact that we were talking to this person who may
Speaker 2: become a source later in the Balkans? Do you expose
Speaker 2: him because he's now in the in the files, So
Speaker 2: it's it gets sound right silly. And two it depends
Speaker 2: on what you want to prove. So generally the JFK
Speaker 2: thing is like, we know that we CIA was involved. Well, okay,
Speaker 2: it's a claim, but there's really no evidence for that.
Speaker 2: And the other is that we maybe know who did it.
Speaker 2: We know the Russians did or the Cubans were involved.
Speaker 2: And if that's the case, I think we bind out.
Speaker 2: We would have revealed it. And we've been through how
Speaker 2: many presidents, right, you know, and you know to include
Speaker 2: Trump before, to include Trump before, if they alway a
Speaker 2: smoking gun, they would have put it out. And Trump
Speaker 2: is no friend of CIA, John and I can certainly
Speaker 2: attest to that. So if there was something bad in
Speaker 2: those files which people could read, they would have outed it.
Speaker 4: On another topic kind of knatsek More broadly, I'd love
Speaker 4: to get your take. And you guys mentioned Tucker on
Speaker 4: what's going on with these these pete hegsath aids who
Speaker 4: were fired. One of them just went on to Tucker
Speaker 4: and was kind of making it out that he's the
Speaker 4: martyr for opposing the warrant Iron and I kind of
Speaker 4: lack the experience with the military to understand kind of
Speaker 4: all the contours here, but it seems like something interesting
Speaker 4: is afoot in terms of the various narratives going on here.
Speaker 1: I think you're going to find out before we've had
Speaker 1: But it's really interesting because he turned on these people,
Speaker 1: and there are people he just brought in a month
Speaker 1: or two ago, So there's clearly personal things going on here,
Speaker 1: and I don't know that it actually ties to the
Speaker 1: military or anything NATIONALS, SECU purity related.
Speaker 2: So in our world, our former world, when you're building
Speaker 2: a team to accomplish a mission or to set out
Speaker 2: a direction, it has to be fact based, right, Policies
Speaker 2: are based around facts. Okay, you know, here's here's our
Speaker 2: goals and directors and here's why. If it's completely ideological
Speaker 2: and there's nothing really that you can agree on other
Speaker 2: than like I'm the boss, do what I fucking say,
Speaker 2: then it's hard to maintain cohesiveness inside of your organization.
Speaker 2: Because it's not based on anything that anybody that people
Speaker 2: can look at it and go, yes, that's true, because
Speaker 2: if nothing's true, or if it's realistic, and I think
Speaker 2: Pete Heggsaf has a group of people around him that
Speaker 2: they can't agree on anything, and I think what you
Speaker 2: end up with then if there's no facts, as you
Speaker 2: end up with a lot of backstabbing. And I think
Speaker 2: you're seeing it with the trade policy right on tariffs.
Speaker 2: This is a non fact base set upon and of
Speaker 2: course everybody if there's no fixs and everybody can interpret
Speaker 2: what the ideology is and I'm not even sure there's
Speaker 2: an ideology behind it. It's all about just raw power.
Speaker 2: We see that in other authoritarian regimes. And the only
Speaker 2: way you can if there's no fis the only way
Speaker 2: you can keep cohesiveness is through terror. I mean, how
Speaker 2: did Stalin stay in control when they were breaking the
Speaker 2: laws of economics and everybody knew it because people were starving.
Speaker 2: It was like do what I say or I'll kill you.
Speaker 2: Because beyond that there's nothing else that they can rally around.
Speaker 1: One of the things I always find interesting is people
Speaker 1: put the CIA, Deep State and Trump and these and
Speaker 1: his people run agree there's some kind of danger to them.
Speaker 1: But frankly, from my experience, from just reality is the
Speaker 1: CIA doesn't care about Americans. We don't collect on Americans.
Speaker 1: Our job is to recruit foreigners to give a secrets,
Speaker 1: and we can't get to it in any other way.
Speaker 1: And so people tend to think that we have all
Speaker 1: these records of Americans and we wouldn't have any res
Speaker 1: on somebody like Pete Hegseth, and I think even Donald Trump.
Speaker 1: If Donald Trump is traveling back and forth to Russia,
Speaker 1: the CIA doesn't care about that. If an American's traveling Russia,
Speaker 1: that's not something we try to collect or get someone
Speaker 1: to report on all those kind of things. So even
Speaker 1: now on the left or like our CI, you're obviously hiding,
Speaker 1: you must know that Trump is We don't follow Americans.
Speaker 2: That's not our job unless they're in touch with the Russians.
Speaker 2: I'm just saying, Michael, going back to Michael Flynn, why
Speaker 2: he got fired, right, it is like we weren't collecting
Speaker 2: on him, but we were collecting on the Russian ambassador
Speaker 2: in the United States. And when Flynn is on a
Speaker 2: telephone talking to the Russian ambassador telling him to ignore
Speaker 2: the administration, which is breaking the law, and then he
Speaker 2: lies to the FBI about the fact he was listening
Speaker 2: to the Russian So we listened to the Russian ambassador
Speaker 2: and we pick up Michael Flynn talking to him, and
Speaker 2: then he lies about it.
Speaker 1: So in any case, it wasn't the CIA that was
Speaker 1: listening to.
Speaker 2: No, there was NSA NFBI. Yeah, that's right, that's true.
Speaker 4: You know, it is always funny. I consume so much
Speaker 4: news through right wing media, and especially during the Russia investigation,
Speaker 4: you ran into a lot of that, like they were
Speaker 4: spying on Michael Flynn or Carter Page or whatever, and
Speaker 4: then you run across it it's oh, who was he talking
Speaker 4: to at the time? How did that come up?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Yeah, and Michael Flynn, yeah, even you know, he went
Speaker 1: to Russia to deal with the GRU and then when
Speaker 1: he retired he went there to make money through the
Speaker 1: RT and then he was in Britain with a Russian
Speaker 1: girlfriend and the Brits reported and there's all kinds of
Speaker 1: stuff there that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no one's.
Speaker 1: Following Michael Flynn or Pete haigsit, Donald Trump or any
Speaker 1: of those people. It's just yeah, if they're dealing with
Speaker 1: bad actors that we are interested in.
Speaker 2: The right for the audience, Let's go back to Carter
Speaker 2: Page and the Russia thing. I just want to let's
Speaker 2: be clear on this, right, it's like because conspiracy. He
Speaker 2: goes to London and he talks to the Australian number
Speaker 2: two in the embassy and he says, look, I've been
Speaker 2: told that the Russian was a quarter page. Oh, Papadopolis,
Speaker 2: I get my conspiracies mixed up.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Pardi Page is the one who was getting recruited
Speaker 1: by That's right, that's right New York because we heard
Speaker 1: the Russians talking about how easy it would be to
Speaker 1: recruit him.
Speaker 2: That's right, that's right. I was just going to figure
Speaker 2: Papadopolos was saying that that the Russians have tapped into
Speaker 2: the Democratic National Committee and then they did, right, And
Speaker 2: so that's what began. It wasn't the Steel Dusty just
Speaker 2: for the artist.
Speaker 1: The Australians who reported it exactly.
Speaker 2: Yes, So yeah, Russia was behind all this. There is
Speaker 2: a conspiracy. As a CIA officer, that is a you know,
Speaker 2: that's a counterintelligence issue. Is how would actually put it.
Speaker 1: We'll be back in just a moment. So will I
Speaker 1: have a question for you. Again, you're part of the media,
Speaker 1: you're an enemy of the people by definition, but you're
Speaker 1: also reporting specifically.
Speaker 3: On the right wing. Have you been threatened?
Speaker 1: What is it like if you go to it, for example,
Speaker 1: QAnon conference, What is that like? And do you worry
Speaker 1: for your security for example?
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's a good question. I mean, you know, there
Speaker 4: have been some threats, maybe not as many as you'd
Speaker 4: imagine they are. You know, they're sort of eering degrees,
Speaker 4: you know, when I'm covering like neo Nazis or something
Speaker 4: like that, that's much more intense than often qan On people,
Speaker 4: although they have committed murders and things like that. I mean,
Speaker 4: for the for the most part, they're they're a little
Speaker 4: moor sedate. In the case of this q and On
Speaker 4: convention in twenty twenty one, I was in Dallas, and
Speaker 4: so I wanted to go, but you know, already qan
Speaker 4: On people had started recognizing me. Some of them wanted to,
Speaker 4: you know, obstutly beat me up or whatever. Some thought
Speaker 4: I was maybe working for q because I wrote about
Speaker 4: it so much and kind of a backwards way. This
Speaker 4: guy at January sixth yelled Will summer, and I said,
Speaker 4: oh god, you know it's over for me. And then no,
Speaker 4: he just wanted a selfie, so you know, I declined
Speaker 4: on that. But so going to Dallas, I had grown
Speaker 4: out my you know, here's my trade craft, let me know.
Speaker 4: But I had I had grown out my beard, and
Speaker 4: I a baseball cap and sunglasses when I could, because
Speaker 4: the organizers I knew would recognize me. But I just
Speaker 4: bought a ticket and they hadn't rejected it, and so
Speaker 4: I made it two days there and then basically another
Speaker 4: reporter had been there and really like taunting them on Twitter,
Speaker 4: and so they were really on the hunt. And basically
Speaker 4: I think they saw me looking less than like I
Speaker 4: didn't have a bloodlust that everyone else did. And so
Speaker 4: suddenly I start seeing all these I think they're mostly
Speaker 4: gone now, but there was this kind of like paramilitary
Speaker 4: called First Amendment preetorians, and they would start these guys
Speaker 4: start sitting around me, and I'm going like and I figured,
Speaker 4: you know, hey, I'll go to the bathroom and they
Speaker 4: lose these guys for bits sit elsewhere when I come back,
Speaker 4: and then a guy grabs me and he looks at
Speaker 4: my idea and he said, all right, that's fine. Then
Speaker 4: I come back to the crowd and Michael Flynn is
Speaker 4: on the stage and he goes, yeah, this media is
Speaker 4: really opt to get us. In fact, there's a reporter
Speaker 4: here who infiltrate it. And I start looking around like, oh,
Speaker 4: who's gonna get busted? And it was me, so you
Speaker 4: might imagine. And so the police who were there, they
Speaker 4: kind of escorted me out. This whole crowd was chasing me,
Speaker 4: a couple dozen people just screaming at me. There was
Speaker 4: a shirtless guy. It was very bizarre, very kind of
Speaker 4: heavy set, shirtless guy, you know. And then I got
Speaker 4: in my rental and I left, and then, you know,
Speaker 4: like a genius, I had decided to stay in the
Speaker 4: same hotel as the convention because I wanted the color.
Speaker 4: So then I've got to go back to the hotel
Speaker 4: and kind of hole up there because obviously they're kind
Speaker 4: of on the hunt for me. So it was that's
Speaker 4: maybe the most intense that's ever gotten.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I have a admission to make to you,
Speaker 2: and I do. Yes, it's a confession. So I live
Speaker 2: in kind of a rational bubble with the people I
Speaker 2: know and the information they consume. I'm not confronted, except
Speaker 2: with some of my family. I'm like one of ten kids.
Speaker 2: But in my personal life, I'm not confronted with people
Speaker 2: who believe in these conspiracies on a day to day basis.
Speaker 2: And in fact, I have never sat down with a
Speaker 2: conspiracy q and honor or a really deep trumper and
Speaker 2: handed like a fit based conversation friendly like you know, hey,
Speaker 2: let's let's talk as opposed to you pre me or them.
Speaker 2: Have you had that where you can actually sit down
Speaker 2: with somebody who I believe that may be a nice person,
Speaker 2: someone who pets puppies and is nice, but believes this stuff.
Speaker 2: How would you sit down and have a conversation with them?
Speaker 2: They're like you eat babies? No I don't, but let
Speaker 2: me tell you what I do do and like I
Speaker 2: don't believe. How do you in your own life? Do
Speaker 2: you have like constructive friendly conversations with people?
Speaker 4: Yeah, well I wouldn't say they're constructive, but I do
Speaker 4: have you know, you know, I have had, you know,
Speaker 4: plenty of friendly conversations with with QAnon people or other
Speaker 4: conspiracy theorists. I mean often, you know, some of them
Speaker 4: really have no sense of humor about it. I mean
Speaker 4: they take it very seriously, and you know, they do
Speaker 4: think that I'm in the cabal and out to get
Speaker 4: them and other people. Kind of even if they believe that,
Speaker 4: you know, I'm in this sinister group, they they they're
Speaker 4: happy to play ball with me. One thing about covering
Speaker 4: the right that's fun is it's extremely factional, and the
Speaker 4: people are often they're lot of like personality defects going on,
Speaker 4: and they rub up against each other a lot, and
Speaker 4: so often they'll say, well, will I think you're a scumbag,
Speaker 4: but I also really want this article to get out
Speaker 4: about my rival in QAnon world, or so let me
Speaker 4: tell you what he's up to. And these are more
Speaker 4: like kind of rank and file people, they kind of
Speaker 4: want to save me, you know. I remember there was
Speaker 4: one person I had interviewed about her police in QAnon,
Speaker 4: and she was so concerned that sort of the big
Speaker 4: moment of retribution would come where Tom Hanks and Oprah
Speaker 4: would get shipped to go on Tomamobay, and she was
Speaker 4: concerned that I would be among them. And so she said,
Speaker 4: I think you really need to come clean. You need
Speaker 4: to talk to James O'Keefe. Maybe he'll make you cut
Speaker 4: you a deal, you know, and you can you can
Speaker 4: flip sides.
Speaker 2: I just want to have a rejoinder to that. So
Speaker 2: John and I in our past lives, and I can
Speaker 2: remember conversations with going back Soviets right where they would
Speaker 2: they would look at you in a conversation at a
Speaker 2: diplomatic function and then you know you're a running dog
Speaker 2: or capitalist, but there's always this glimmer in their eye
Speaker 2: like you know, I don't believe this shit, right, you know,
Speaker 2: this is I've got to say so or even like
Speaker 2: I remember one Libyan diplomat who was going on about
Speaker 2: how evil I was, and he pretty much knew I
Speaker 2: was CIA, but you could see in his eyes like
Speaker 2: this is all a kabuki play, right, He's like, you know,
Speaker 2: I don't buy into most or any of this, right,
Speaker 2: And you know we can go off and hit him
Speaker 2: drink later, but in front of people, this is what
Speaker 2: I got to do. But I don't get that sense
Speaker 2: with a lot of these Q non folks right that
Speaker 2: they are true believers.
Speaker 4: I mean, yeah, they're definitely, and you know, in kind
Speaker 4: of the right wing media more broadly, I mean a
Speaker 4: lot of these people are are real believers, but they're
Speaker 4: also you know they have, you know, and there's a
Speaker 4: lot of similarity between the work of an intelligence agent
Speaker 4: and a journalist and that you're evaluating someone's motives, what
Speaker 4: is their short term goal? Often and so in that way,
Speaker 4: I mean, they'll they'll talk to me because they you know,
Speaker 4: they want publicity or something like that, and so there
Speaker 4: is a way to cover them. It's not always easy,
Speaker 4: and it involves a lot more I think soul searching
Speaker 4: on their parts. I mean there's a lot of like
Speaker 4: I've been called and people say, why did I ruin
Speaker 4: my life? You know, I've done all these crazy things
Speaker 4: for attention often and now I've alienated everyone, and you know, yeah,
Speaker 4: you know that's how it goes.
Speaker 1: So what is the hierarchy of danger? Like of these conspiracies,
Speaker 1: theorists and people, which ones do you think are a
Speaker 1: real threat and danger? Which ones is it like entertainment?
Speaker 1: Which ones are there because this moment and they're Trump people,
Speaker 1: but they're may be not. Like you know of QAnon
Speaker 1: and Proud Boys and oathkeepers and you probably know of
Speaker 1: a lot of other people that haven't even come together yet.
Speaker 1: Where's the danger? Which ones you think are going to
Speaker 1: sort of go away, And what's your sense of that?
Speaker 4: Yeah, And I mean I know, I think there's kind
Speaker 4: of like different types of danger, right, I mean there
Speaker 4: are elements of like is this person going to try
Speaker 4: to swap me or try to murder me, or or
Speaker 4: as someone else they perceives as a foe. And then
Speaker 4: what about our democracy?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 4: I mean in the case of you know, q Noon,
Speaker 4: for example, we had or these militias, I mean these
Speaker 4: they have murdered people in case of Quton. And then
Speaker 4: also you know, they whipped up this army of people
Speaker 4: that a lot of them were at January sixth, who
Speaker 4: were convinced that this was like a utopian moment for America.
Speaker 4: I think you know of Ashley Babbitt and other people
Speaker 4: who died then as well, who kind of made up
Speaker 4: this rabble.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 4: Similarly, you look at the Proud Boys so much. I
Speaker 4: mean I started covering the Proud Boys right when they started,
Speaker 4: and so much of it was so ridiculous. You know,
Speaker 4: they had these rules about masturbation, oh, you know, the
Speaker 4: no wanks agenda or whatever, and they would have oh,
Speaker 4: you can't wear flip flops. I mean, just ridiculous stuff.
Speaker 4: And then you know famously right, they would they would
Speaker 4: punch their members and then you would have to name
Speaker 4: five serials to join the band, right, And so then
Speaker 4: cut to January sixth, and they're trying to participate in
Speaker 4: overthrowing the government. And so in that way, I think
Speaker 4: there are people who are like really hardcore members of it,
Speaker 4: who have devoted their lives to it. There are people
Speaker 4: who have who are just along for a good time
Speaker 4: until it stops being fun. Certainly in the case of QAnon,
Speaker 4: I think when Biden was inaugurated, you saw a lot
Speaker 4: of people who said, oh, I guess maybe that's over,
Speaker 4: or maybe the plan isn't happening. I'll go off and
Speaker 4: do something else.
Speaker 2: By my my sordid background before the Agency, I studied history,
Speaker 2: right history degree, and in the US in the eighteen fifties,
Speaker 2: you know, the second political party after the Whigs flamed
Speaker 2: out was the American Party, the know nothing Party, and
Speaker 2: it was all focused around basically some of the same
Speaker 2: things we got now, but it was papist Catholic plots
Speaker 2: focused on Irish immigrants and immigrants from southern Germany who
Speaker 2: were Catholic. God forbid the you know, the Italians who
Speaker 2: were not even seen as white right in those days,
Speaker 2: and they fielded serious political candidates for president and so forth.
Speaker 2: But we moved on beyond that, right, I mean, you
Speaker 2: know sort of now Catholics, you know, people of Irish
Speaker 2: extraction are q ANDON members.
Speaker 1: So do you see this as that's a real thing.
Speaker 1: They really moved up from.
Speaker 2: The d yes pressure right, from being victims of to
Speaker 2: like we're betraying the same conspiracies about.
Speaker 1: In the run concentration camps others.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I know, but they proved historically, I wouldn't say
Speaker 2: a flash in the pan. They formed our history parts
Speaker 2: of it, but they didn't determine it. The guardrails. We
Speaker 2: had the strengths of democracy that even from those days
Speaker 2: we had came through. And so do you see these
Speaker 2: as these set of conspiracies, the spectrum of conspiracies as
Speaker 2: something that simply reflects popular discontent and it is a
Speaker 2: deep vein of like concerned as the world changes too
Speaker 2: fast maybe for some people, or is this genuinely a
Speaker 2: threat to our democratic way of life? I suppose there's
Speaker 2: a middle ground too that, yeah, we'll have democracy, but
Speaker 2: it'll be a more authoritarian version thereof.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean I think it's a serious issue. I
Speaker 4: mean people, you know, on one hand, people can say
Speaker 4: we always had conspiracy theories. I mean, you know, in
Speaker 4: a lot of times they sort of resurface. I mean,
Speaker 4: in the case of QAnon that draws on Jewish blood
Speaker 4: lib while going back almost a thousand years, and we
Speaker 4: have these other examples. But at the same time, you know,
Speaker 4: it can get worse. And you know, I think in
Speaker 4: the Internet, the combination of social media and having someone
Speaker 4: like Donald Trump who really validates people for he's saying, well,
Speaker 4: you know, I believe in conspiracy theories, so you know
Speaker 4: the president does, why not you? And so I think
Speaker 4: in that way it is a really serious issue. I mean,
Speaker 4: you have people who believe that essentially, at best, that
Speaker 4: there is no objective truth or no kind of shared
Speaker 4: reality that we live in. I mean, the idea that
Speaker 4: you would have roughly half the country and I think
Speaker 4: probably nearly every Republican member of Congress who claiming that
Speaker 4: the twenty twenty election was stolen. I mean that alone,
Speaker 4: that's terrible for democracy, right, And so I do think
Speaker 4: these conspiracy theories, and this is certainly something that experts
Speaker 4: on Russia that said kind of runs a muck in Russia.
Speaker 4: This idea where if anything bad happens for the regime,
Speaker 4: you can say, oh, it was these sinister forces, and
Speaker 4: so that that is.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I think it's awful for democracy, And in terms of
Speaker 4: having an informed public, yeah, it's not good.
Speaker 1: No, especially if everyone who gets a job. These are
Speaker 1: serious jobs. These institutions are very powerful and if they're misused,
Speaker 1: can really be dangerous to Americans and foreigners around the world.
Speaker 1: So you got the FBI, the CIA, the Defense Department,
Speaker 1: our Army, Navy, all of these things are really powerful organizations.
Speaker 1: And to get those jobs, have to agree to follow conspiracy.
Speaker 1: You have to say the twenty twenty election was stolen
Speaker 1: and the January sixth was a day of love. Just
Speaker 1: to get in the door, you have to be complicit
Speaker 1: in a lie, and most of those people at some
Speaker 1: level have to know they're lying and they're complicit to
Speaker 1: get those jobs. And that's a real dangerous place, especially
Speaker 1: for the intelligence community. Intelligence is about trying to find
Speaker 1: truth to the extent that you can try to provide
Speaker 1: your best guess on what's really happening. We take pride
Speaker 1: in giving intelligence to policymakers that they may not want
Speaker 1: to hear because this is you know, Jerry works in
Speaker 1: India or Afghanistan or Germany, and he's trying to explain
Speaker 1: to our policymakers what's really happening on the ground, so
Speaker 1: that they may be upset because it's not fitting with
Speaker 1: their policy, but eventually it's going to make them make
Speaker 1: better policy. But from the outset, if you can't tell
Speaker 1: your leaders the truth, that's a real dangerous thing, and
Speaker 1: that can cause things to go away quickly.
Speaker 3: More of this after a quick break, and.
Speaker 1: So let me ask you one question I just thought of.
Speaker 1: This is not connected to that. Is Ivan Rakeland. Whatever
Speaker 1: happened to him? He was like the guy the secretary
Speaker 1: of Retribution and he was coming after Jerry and I
Speaker 1: and I haven't heard about him lately, So what's his.
Speaker 4: Yeah, this was the guy with the list of the
Speaker 4: all the enemies we're going to get to when Trump
Speaker 4: gets elected. You know, it's interesting, I think some of
Speaker 4: these guys, you know, there was a lot of coverage
Speaker 4: of him and this idea, you know, he's going to
Speaker 4: come in and then showed Trump the list in the
Speaker 4: Oval office. But that's a guy it's a little unclear
Speaker 4: to me how much sort of cloud he actually enjoys
Speaker 4: with the administration, you know, you have, But at the
Speaker 4: same time, you have some of these figures who seem
Speaker 4: so outlandish, and you think Laura, well, and I was
Speaker 4: gonna bring that up, I mean, and now she's just
Speaker 4: a person who has done all these stunts. I mean,
Speaker 4: for many years she was considered like too crazy or
Speaker 4: too embarrassing for even a lot of right wing people
Speaker 4: to associate with. And now she's purging the National Security Council,
Speaker 4: supposedly getting rid of the NSA director, and that story
Speaker 4: that is such a crazy story. And yet there's that
Speaker 4: was almost like brushovers, like well, what can you do?
Speaker 4: That is crazy stuff that on a nine to eleven
Speaker 4: conspiracy theorist is going in and saying, yah, you should
Speaker 4: get rid of this guy because he used to work
Speaker 4: in the republican relatively sane foreign policy establishment.
Speaker 2: Apparently one of the questions to get a job in
Speaker 2: the Trump administration, yes, formally or informally, is nine to
Speaker 2: eleven an inside job. In January seventh, I don't even
Speaker 2: know what inside job means, because there's such a broad
Speaker 2: spectrum of conspiracy theories about both of them, right it
Speaker 2: was like it was the Jews, or it was the
Speaker 2: US government, or it was the Saudis, or January sixth
Speaker 2: it was Antifa. No, it's not Antifa. It was the FBI. No,
Speaker 2: it wasn't FBI because nothing bad happened, it was all good.
Speaker 2: I'm not even sure you know what the conspiracy theories are.
Speaker 2: I get the conspiracy theory clear first. I know, it's
Speaker 2: like there's such as there's such a wide spectrum of
Speaker 2: moment ie put them all straight.
Speaker 4: Well, often it is tricky because often there is there's
Speaker 4: not like one specific conspiracy theory they're asking you to believe.
Speaker 4: They're saying, don't you think that's a little odd? You know,
Speaker 4: it's sort of that reflexive and I think offense, sort
Speaker 4: of immature skepticism that is really what they're pushing, rather
Speaker 4: than a specific one idea which could be disproven or not,
Speaker 4: Rather than you're just being asked to say, don't you
Speaker 4: want to look behind the curtain? Don't you really want
Speaker 4: to understand the world and outside? They draw people in,
Speaker 4: and I think some of.
Speaker 1: It is obviously for entertainment. Some of it is just
Speaker 1: taking advantage of people's predilections. A lot of it is
Speaker 1: for domestic politic. So you want to say the Democrats
Speaker 1: your enemies, you need to create stories to make them enemies.
Speaker 1: But then when people start to believe those things, then
Speaker 1: it goes to that next level. And that's what's unusual
Speaker 1: about this administration is they seem to be happy weaponizing
Speaker 1: that without worrying about what the implications are further down
Speaker 1: the road. And we've seen a lot of people Republicans
Speaker 1: who are probably even in the first Trump administration, ready
Speaker 1: to follow along, who at some point couldn't keep up
Speaker 1: with it and then they got turned on. So the
Speaker 1: question for you is like, how do we get out
Speaker 1: of this? And I know that's a hard question maybe
Speaker 1: the right answer, but is this something that is this
Speaker 1: a Donald Trump phenomenon that is bringing it to the
Speaker 1: surface and it's always going to be there, but it's
Speaker 1: never gonna be as bad as it is now? Or
Speaker 1: are we going past the rubicon and it's going to
Speaker 1: be part of our life and we might not be
Speaker 1: able to get away from it.
Speaker 4: I think in many ways, I think, at least for
Speaker 4: the foreseeable, the next couple decades or something. I think
Speaker 4: this kind of conspiratorial thinking and this populism is really
Speaker 4: with us for a long time, whether it's going to
Speaker 4: be in and out of power. But I do think
Speaker 4: just so many fact actors, whether it's the Internet or
Speaker 4: the rise of Trump or anything else, I think this
Speaker 4: is very much going to be with us. And you know, yeah,
Speaker 4: I mean I think unfortunately it's something we're gonna have
Speaker 4: to learn to drapple with.
Speaker 2: It's we're sort of seems like we're stuck in and
Speaker 2: never before. It's like, on one hand, now we've got
Speaker 2: a cult, right, it's no longer that the cult is
Speaker 2: the GOP. There's not a And then we've got the
Speaker 2: Democratic Party, which is you know, has a lot of
Speaker 2: warts and it can be kind of wishy washy, and
Speaker 2: I'm not really sure what the Democrat because it's a
Speaker 2: conglomeration of like different factions and not a whole lot
Speaker 2: of people with powerful magnetic personalities. Although Chuck Trumer may
Speaker 2: be like talking sense, but he's not like inspiring anybody, right,
Speaker 2: I mean, he just isn't. Sorry Chuck, but you know,
Speaker 2: is this sort of what we're stuck with is boring
Speaker 2: and insipid but maybe right and then just deadly wrong,
Speaker 2: but sort of like simple and charismatic. Yeah, I just don't.
Speaker 2: I don't quite know what to For most people, it's
Speaker 2: an easy choice, it should be, but it's more fun
Speaker 2: to go with a cult, right.
Speaker 4: About giving Yeah, Well, I mean I do think democrats
Speaker 4: are hopefully I think these kind of these stunts, and
Speaker 4: I mean that in a positive way. About Chris van
Speaker 4: Holland going down to El Salvador, for example, I think
Speaker 4: we're starting to see democrats or Cory Bookers filibuster more
Speaker 4: examples of Democrats realizing we need to do things that
Speaker 4: are getting attention, not just going on the same place
Speaker 4: as where I was going on and just complaining about it. So,
Speaker 4: you know, if you look for a little optimism, I
Speaker 4: think it's there is that hopefully Democrats are starting to
Speaker 4: realize that you have to compete in these spaces, whether
Speaker 4: it's podcasts or vertical short form video or.
Speaker 2: What have you. I just hope that to get out
Speaker 2: of this, we don't have to crash the economy and right,
Speaker 2: that's the other way of burning it out is have
Speaker 2: it been just such a friggin failure that except for
Speaker 2: the twenty percent hardcore who don't mind losing their four
Speaker 2: to one case and houses.
Speaker 1: And they'll just blame somebody. Well, yeah, yeah, Russia. Russia's
Speaker 1: economy has gone to hell. They've had to give it
Speaker 1: over to the Chinies. They're slaughtering more people per day
Speaker 1: in Ukraine than we lost in twenty years in Afghanistan.
Speaker 1: But Putin is able to blame it on. It's the Americans,
Speaker 1: it's a NATO, it's there's always somebody to blame in
Speaker 1: those situations. And Trump has that skill, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: You look at after the financial crisis, and they basically
Speaker 4: the Republican line became it was too easy for minorities
Speaker 4: to get houses, and that's why the financial crisis happened.
Speaker 4: And I think they can always come up with some
Speaker 4: shred of evidence to blame somebody.
Speaker 2: Biden.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so, Will, thank you very much. We will continue
Speaker 1: to follow your reporting. He reports for The Bulwark and
Speaker 1: he has a newsletter called The False Flag. I would
Speaker 1: encourage you to continue to follow him.
Speaker 2: Will.
Speaker 1: It was a real pleasure.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, thanks for having me