Speaker 1: We are saying inside as we collected intelligence, is that
Speaker 1: you can lead a policy maker to intelligence, but you
Speaker 1: can't make them think I'm John Cipher and I'm Jerry O'Shea.
Speaker 1: I served in the CIA's Clandestine Service for twenty eight years,
Speaker 1: living undercover all around the world.
Speaker 2: And in my thirty three years with the CIA, I
Speaker 2: served in Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East.
Speaker 1: Although we don't usually look at it this way, we
Speaker 1: created conspiracies in our operations.
Speaker 3: We got people to believe things that were true.
Speaker 1: Now we're investigating the conspiracy theories we see in the
Speaker 1: news almost every day.
Speaker 2: Will break them down for you to determine whether they
Speaker 2: could be real or whether we're being manipulated.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Mission Implausible.
Speaker 2: Adam Panover is a talented actor, writer intermediate and you're
Speaker 2: now doing You're not doing some stand up specials and Adam,
Speaker 2: two of your shows treck really closely with what Mission
Speaker 2: Implausible does your deconstruct conspiracy theories and commons misconceptions You've done.
Speaker 2: Adam ruins everything by telling the truth about stuff and more.
Speaker 2: Dear to Our Hearts The G Word show about what
Speaker 2: government the G word actually does and how it operates,
Speaker 2: and you did it with some guy called Barack Obama
Speaker 2: and his wife Michelle. I'm not really sure.
Speaker 4: Just this guy's trying to get started in Hollywood, and
Speaker 4: you know I gave him a break by he had
Speaker 4: this little idea for a TV show and I helped
Speaker 4: him make it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, before we plunge into this podcast, I think you
Speaker 2: really hit the nail on the head when you said
Speaker 2: I think it was an interview with The New York Observer.
Speaker 2: We said that telling people the truth in your shows
Speaker 2: often only ends up annoying them, and I think that's
Speaker 2: something that we can It's something that we' we've found
Speaker 2: as well, so I guess. So the first question is
Speaker 2: why do you think telling the truth they're talking about
Speaker 2: fix why does it annoy people?
Speaker 4: Well, I think people construct a comforting reality, mental model
Speaker 4: of the world in which to live. Everyone needs to
Speaker 4: create a the image of the world where everything operates
Speaker 4: according to plan. You know, things are done with intention,
Speaker 4: the world is as it should be. Some people feel
Speaker 4: the opposite. Some people are conspiracy theorists, and they want
Speaker 4: to create an image of the world where everything is
Speaker 4: out to get them and it's a sort of nefarious universe,
Speaker 4: a clockwork world where every choice was made by some
Speaker 4: shadowy figure. But either way, that's a false image of
Speaker 4: the world. Right, The world itself is far messier and
Speaker 4: more confusing, makes less sense, is not done intentionally, and
Speaker 4: that discomforts people to think of the world that way.
Speaker 4: It happens to be true, right, that we live in
Speaker 4: a chaotic universe where things are not as they should be.
Speaker 4: But it's true, you know, and it bothers people either
Speaker 4: way if you tell people that we don't live in
Speaker 4: a perfectly constructed, benevolent democracy where you know, over the
Speaker 4: past couple decades we've defeated the forces of racism and
Speaker 4: corruption and all those sorts of things, which is the
Speaker 4: sort of liberal dream that I was brought up being
Speaker 4: told by my baby boomer parents. And you find it,
Speaker 4: actually the world is a much more complicated place. It's
Speaker 4: uncomfortable to know that. It's also uncomfortable to find out
Speaker 4: that the world is not so full of conspiracy theories.
Speaker 4: I was talking to this dude the other day who
Speaker 4: was like, he was British. He was like, don't you
Speaker 4: think that the puppet masters are all pulling the strings
Speaker 4: and calling the shots. We're only doing what they want
Speaker 4: us to do, the people at the top. And I
Speaker 4: was like, no, I don't think that's true. I don't
Speaker 4: think there's a couple of shadowy figures at the top.
Speaker 4: I think that there's nations that have leaders and they're
Speaker 4: in conflict with each other, and like a lot of
Speaker 4: bad things happen for that reason. But it's not the
Speaker 4: case that the world is even so orderly that there's
Speaker 4: a couple of shadowy figures behind the scenes. That's not
Speaker 4: the case. There is no new world order.
Speaker 3: And he was up.
Speaker 4: He was like, well, well you're talking about When I
Speaker 4: said that to him, he like couldn't handle that because
Speaker 4: it's a simpler world to think that there's only a
Speaker 4: couple of people pulling the strings at the tops.
Speaker 2: Even with this British accent, he couldn't win the argument.
Speaker 2: Not with me.
Speaker 4: I'm tougher than that.
Speaker 1: You've started to explore these things and dig into things,
Speaker 1: and you're a little like John Oliver. You know everything
Speaker 1: about everything, a lot of stuff. How is it that
Speaker 1: comedians have become the holders of knowledge these Ah, that's true.
Speaker 4: I'll tell you the pompous answer, and then the real answer.
Speaker 4: I do think that comedy is intimately related with the truth.
Speaker 4: My personal theory about why people laugh is it's when
Speaker 4: a surprise is combined with the truth. Even Slapstick has
Speaker 4: that right if someone reacts in a surprising way, but
Speaker 4: a way that sort of makes physical sense at the
Speaker 4: same time when the three stooges are slapping each other.
Speaker 4: But also you might when you hear a good joke,
Speaker 4: like a really good stand up comedy joke, you laugh
Speaker 4: and go, oh, that's true. I never thought of that,
Speaker 4: But I also have known that my whole life right,
Speaker 4: and comedy is a way of cutting to the truth
Speaker 4: in a way that is faster and more direct and
Speaker 4: a little blunter and hits people a little bit harder
Speaker 4: than just explaining it to them. That's the pompous reason.
Speaker 4: I think the actual reason is that people are bored
Speaker 4: giving them Giving them a little bit of giving them
Speaker 4: a little bit of spice with their information helps it
Speaker 4: go down more easily. So I think, honestly, the trend
Speaker 4: that you're talking about is not necessarily a good one,
Speaker 4: because there's a lot of comedians out there who spread
Speaker 4: a lot of bullshit. If you don't mind me swearing
Speaker 4: on the show but I try to be the kind
Speaker 4: of comedian who brings people true information with the power
Speaker 4: of comedy.
Speaker 2: Unlike most people, You've delved into our you know, John
Speaker 2: and I as former CAA officers. You delved into our
Speaker 2: former world, and you've done it with President Obama. And
Speaker 2: what are some of the things that you've found out?
Speaker 2: And as a comedian, what are some of your takes
Speaker 2: on it?
Speaker 4: Well, you know you were was a sixth part series.
Speaker 4: Each explores a different area of American life and how
Speaker 4: the government affects it. We do weather, we do food,
Speaker 4: we do money, things like that. And by the way,
Speaker 4: it is some amazing things. We went up with the Noah's,
Speaker 4: the National Isceanic and Atmospheric Agency, I think went up
Speaker 4: with them with the hurricane hunters as they flew into hurricanes,
Speaker 4: as we flew into a hurricane together. Really incredible. And
Speaker 4: we went to see how the people at the FD
Speaker 4: I see how they take over a bank in the
Speaker 4: middle of the night when the bank fails, not in
Speaker 4: the middle of the night, but a sort of somewhat
Speaker 4: clandestine manner. They do so very secretly. And we also
Speaker 4: talked about ways in which the federal government has hurt
Speaker 4: people deficiencies. In the COVID response, we talked about the
Speaker 4: rise of drone warfare, for example. That was in an
Speaker 4: episode about how the federal government has actually created so
Speaker 4: many of our amazing technological advancements by government research and
Speaker 4: development or by funding research and development, but has also
Speaker 4: led They did it all for the purposes of war.
Speaker 4: That's why the government does it. That's why the government
Speaker 4: invests so much money into DARPA and agencies like that
Speaker 4: that are doing weapons research, and that's why we have
Speaker 4: the Internet. It's also why we have the drone warfare
Speaker 4: that's killed so many innocent people that the United States
Speaker 4: government has killed many innocent civilians unjustly around the world.
Speaker 4: And I think one of my biggest takeaways is that
Speaker 4: the federal government resists easy classification. People want to say, oh,
Speaker 4: is it good or is it bad? The United States
Speaker 4: Government is the largest single organization of any kind on
Speaker 4: planet Earth outside of like the Catholic Church depending on
Speaker 4: how you count, but by most measures, it's the United
Speaker 4: States federal government. And so you cannot say that it
Speaker 4: is all good or all bad, because you cannot say
Speaker 4: that the American people are all good or all bad,
Speaker 4: or that an institution is all good or all bad.
Speaker 4: It does many incredibly important things, some of them extraordinarily destructive, right,
Speaker 4: and some of them an incredibly beneficial And so I
Speaker 4: think as a takeaway that makes you a what makes
Speaker 4: me want to resist people who want to kick down
Speaker 4: sand castles? The sort of approach where you know, Rick
Speaker 4: Perry comes in and says, if you remember when he
Speaker 4: ran for president in twenty twelve or sixteen, I forget
Speaker 4: which year it was, but he says, I'm going to
Speaker 4: eliminate three federal I'm going to eliminate the Department of Education,
Speaker 4: Department of Energy in one other one and he forgot
Speaker 4: which were the three? That was his big gat What
Speaker 4: was the third one? I forgot? He said, I want
Speaker 4: to eliminate the Department of Energy. Well, guess what. Under
Speaker 4: Donald Trump, he was running the Department of Energy. And
Speaker 4: I'm pretty sure that once he figured out what the
Speaker 4: Department of Energy did, he didn't want to eliminate it anymore.
Speaker 4: Because the Department of Energy is in charge of our
Speaker 4: nuclear stockpile, of our nuclear weapons stockpile, and also does
Speaker 4: some of the most important high energy physics work that
Speaker 4: is being done anywhere in the world. And he probably
Speaker 4: realized that pretty quick when he had his first briefing.
Speaker 4: And so what was he speaking out of when he
Speaker 4: said he wanted to eliminate the department Pure ignorance, right,
Speaker 4: And my goal is to dispel some of that ignorance.
Speaker 4: Then we should also dispel ignorance about the bad things
Speaker 4: that the government does and not allow ourselves to be
Speaker 4: blinded to it and be, oh, everything is so great
Speaker 4: with our American system of government, because it plainly isn't
Speaker 4: what you.
Speaker 1: Just talked about. There is. The governmance is a complex,
Speaker 1: massive thing. It's not just good or not just bad,
Speaker 1: but there's become a narrative out there. But that sense
Speaker 1: of trust in government, there's all sorts of things behind it.
Speaker 1: But essentially, you know, when Nixon left government, that sort
Speaker 1: of trust that sort of was there among the American
Speaker 1: people in general with their government really went away. And
Speaker 1: then when President Reagan came in, he ran on the
Speaker 1: fact that the government is the enemy, and the sort
Speaker 1: of more right wing Republicans have been in charge running
Speaker 1: on that ever since. And I think nowadays you ask
Speaker 1: most people, they tend to think negatively about their government,
Speaker 1: and they don't have any sense of just how integral
Speaker 1: it is to their life.
Speaker 4: And as you say, it's a very maligned part of
Speaker 4: American life and one that most people are I think
Speaker 4: deliberately ignorant about. People don't want to know about it.
Speaker 4: It's boring, and we don't valorize the people who work
Speaker 4: for the government the same way we do the people
Speaker 4: who work for the tech industry. Right the United States
Speaker 4: government doesn't do a good job of telling it story,
Speaker 4: and so people like the hurricane hunters or the FDIC.
Speaker 4: There are so many people who work for the federal
Speaker 4: government who they are mission driven. I was up with
Speaker 4: those hurricane hunters, you know what I mean. They could
Speaker 4: have been commercial jet pilots that could have been flying
Speaker 4: private jets making a lot of money. But these guys
Speaker 4: are They work for the military and they fly into
Speaker 4: hurricanes almost every day during hurricane season, and they do
Speaker 4: it because they want to protect people. And they also
Speaker 4: feel like hot shots. I'm sure there's some machismo two
Speaker 4: it's fun, but that's why they do it. People at
Speaker 4: the FDIC really care about their mission, So why have
Speaker 4: we lost that trust in them? I Mean, nobody was
Speaker 4: feeling that great about the government in nineteen ten or
Speaker 4: nineteen twenty, but the Great Depression nine destroys American life. Yeah,
Speaker 4: nineteen twenty nine, exactly. There are all these bad periods
Speaker 4: in the United States. Government was pretty fucked up in
Speaker 4: the nineteenth century. People were not happy about it, and
Speaker 4: the government was like very ineffectual and small. What happens
Speaker 4: the capitalists take over the economy and crash it right
Speaker 4: in the Great Depression. What happens next? FDR comes along
Speaker 4: and rebuilds American society through the might of the American government, right,
Speaker 4: puts people back to work, literally says the government's going
Speaker 4: to pay you to dig ditches and build highways and
Speaker 4: stuff like that. What happens next? World War Two, the
Speaker 4: biggest crisis in the world, and the United States wins,
Speaker 4: and wins by investing massively more money, so many Americans
Speaker 4: were employed, went off to war in this great victory,
Speaker 4: this great collective struggle that we won. Oh my god, incredible.
Speaker 4: And of course people feel at that point, yes, the
Speaker 4: government is doing the right thing. And if you look
Speaker 4: at the series of presidents at that time, from FDR
Speaker 4: through Nixon, hey, they're all pretty good presidents. Like they
Speaker 4: got their problems, but they're you know, they're true statesman. Nixon,
Speaker 4: of course, incredibly corrupt individual. And also Nixon starts starts
Speaker 4: specifically trying There's a wonderful book called nixon Land by
Speaker 4: the historian Rick Pearlsteine about this. It's an incredible book.
Speaker 4: He is the first president who starts trying to divide
Speaker 4: Americans politically as a political strategy, tries to turn white
Speaker 4: Americans against black Americans, older Americans against younger Americans.
Speaker 1: The Southern strategy.
Speaker 4: The Southern strategy, yes, exactly, and it's one of dividing people.
Speaker 4: It's saying, we are going to turn people against each other.
Speaker 4: And that's the beginning of our current politics. As Parstin argues,
Speaker 4: Reagan then supercharges that Nixon just got it started. Reagan
Speaker 4: does that to create an entirely new political regime, and
Speaker 4: it's an anti government political regime. And that came out
Speaker 4: of both Nixonian sort of racial grievance, and then also
Speaker 4: big businesses saying hey, we want to lower our taxes,
Speaker 4: or rich people saying we want to lower our taxes.
Speaker 4: We don't like these World War two year at tax rates.
Speaker 4: They had a multi decade camp paying to spread propaganda
Speaker 4: and reduce faith in the federal government. And we've all
Speaker 4: been living in that world ever since. And then even
Speaker 4: Obama many administrations later, he was trying to pull the
Speaker 4: lever back in the other direction. He was trying to
Speaker 4: increase faith in federal government and do government programs again.
Speaker 4: But he's still living in this world in which people
Speaker 4: have this huge skepticism. So when it comes to the
Speaker 4: Affordable Care Act, for instance, his big initiative, he's not
Speaker 4: able to get the ball across the finish line in
Speaker 4: terms of having a true government sponsored healthcare program, which
Speaker 4: would have been cheaper and would have worked better. He
Speaker 4: has to do this sort of public private partnership which
Speaker 4: only half works, and people are like, ah, is it good?
Speaker 3: Is it?
Speaker 4: My insurance is still crappy. I use this government marketplace.
Speaker 4: It's a little bit better, but it's not that much better,
Speaker 4: et cetera. So we're stuck in this middle ground where
Speaker 4: we don't trust the government entirely, We don't let it
Speaker 4: do its job. We undermine it as we attempt to
Speaker 4: have it do things. And a lot of that undermining
Speaker 4: is purposeful by people who are ideological and want to
Speaker 4: destroy it or want it to be smaller so they
Speaker 4: don't have to pay for it, and as a result,
Speaker 4: people don't feel positively about it. The average person when
Speaker 4: they try to go to their health insurance marketplace here
Speaker 4: in California, they're like, it's a little too confusing, it's
Speaker 4: a little too expensive, and so they have a bad
Speaker 4: experience with it, and then their trust for with it
Speaker 4: goes down. So it's a combination of that free floating
Speaker 4: cynicism that Reagan really got started. Ah, there are all
Speaker 4: just a bunch of crooks up there, combined with a
Speaker 4: sort of bad experience of it. Now, it's not across
Speaker 4: the board right if you look at for instance, people
Speaker 4: do love the National Weather Service once they know what
Speaker 4: it does. People love the Post Office, people love NASA,
Speaker 4: they love the military. There's a lot of love for
Speaker 4: the federal government still out.
Speaker 1: Three out of four, though the publicans are trying to
Speaker 1: privatize exactly right.
Speaker 4: The guy who runs Acuweather has been I believe his
Speaker 4: name is Barry Myers, has spent the last thirty years
Speaker 4: trying to prevent the National Weather Service from communicating with
Speaker 4: the public when the weather when every I love talking
Speaker 4: about this, every single weather prediction that you ever see
Speaker 4: starts with the National Weather sce Service. When the local
Speaker 4: newsance we've got Doppler ten thousand, that's bullshit. They do
Speaker 4: not have any special technology. What they do is they
Speaker 4: take the government weather predictions that you are paying for
Speaker 4: that has some of the most the best meteorologists in
Speaker 4: the world working for the National Weather Service. We have
Speaker 4: weather stations all over the country, et cetera. We've got
Speaker 4: literal people flying planes into hurricanes every single day. We
Speaker 4: have satellites they have. The government is bruising that prediction,
Speaker 4: and then your local weather person takes that prediction. They
Speaker 4: put their own little special spice on top. They take
Speaker 4: a look at the maps themselves and adjust it and
Speaker 4: then say, here's what I think is going to happen
Speaker 4: in your area. But it's coming from the government. And
Speaker 4: but what are people like Barry Myers from Mackyweather want
Speaker 4: to do. They want to prevent the They want to
Speaker 4: protect prevent the government from communicating with you directly so
Speaker 4: that they are the only ones who get the data.
Speaker 4: And then they want to make you pay them to
Speaker 4: get it, even though you've already paid for it. So
Speaker 4: I compare it to somebody who is on the show.
Speaker 4: We use the metaphor of somebody bottling government tap water,
Speaker 4: bottling city tap water and trying to sell it to
Speaker 4: you and prevent you from getting it directly.
Speaker 3: More of this after a quick break, and we're back.
Speaker 1: It is now the fiftieth anniversary of Robert Carroll's The
Speaker 1: Power Broker, which is a famous book about Robert Moses'
Speaker 1: important figure book Yeah in New York City. And one
Speaker 1: of the things that Robert Carroll does very well is
Speaker 1: talks about what life was like before, and he talks
Speaker 1: a lot about what the government was like in the
Speaker 1: late nineteenth century earliest twentieth century. And it was essentially
Speaker 1: the spoils system. It wasn't based on law, it wasn't
Speaker 1: based on regulations. It was politicians handing out jobs, people
Speaker 1: having to give money to get things done.
Speaker 2: And it was the good.
Speaker 1: Government effort by reformers to try to create a system
Speaker 1: that created professional civil servants that would be trained in
Speaker 1: their job. They just given free jobs for free money.
Speaker 1: And we forget about that. And how over the years
Speaker 1: as that's moved on, and there's been more and more
Speaker 1: reforms and more and more regulations and laws put behind it.
Speaker 1: One of the great gems of this country is a
Speaker 1: professional civil service and public servants who do, for the
Speaker 1: most part, incredible work. And we lionize the military, but
Speaker 1: there's lots of professionals that work in national security and
Speaker 1: in other places that take their jobs just as seriously
Speaker 1: and are just as professional.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and it's a shame that we are not that
Speaker 4: we don't lionize them more. Because one of the problems
Speaker 4: that the government has is brain drain, because we do
Speaker 4: not promote what these folks are doing. Or there's the
Speaker 4: ads for joining the Air Force and you know, travel
Speaker 4: the world, but we don't say the same thing about
Speaker 4: the FDIC or Noah or all of our various government departments.
Speaker 4: Are the USDA, which changes lives. You know, we have
Speaker 4: the revolving door problem where people leave the government service
Speaker 4: and then they go straight to corporations, and the corporations
Speaker 4: employ them because they want to know how to better
Speaker 4: cheat the government or screw the government. I have friends
Speaker 4: who have gone that path, and I'm disappointed in them,
Speaker 4: but I also understand they need the money. And part
Speaker 4: of that is because government works and it doesn't pay
Speaker 4: well enough. Because we've had leaders who for the past
Speaker 4: couple decades have had a specific strategy of starving the
Speaker 4: federal government. It creates a it's a vicious cycle.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: If you denigrate the people doing the work, then you
Speaker 4: don't get as good people, which means the work is worse,
Speaker 4: which means you denigrate them more and make fun of
Speaker 4: them more. Everyone's had the experience of going to the
Speaker 4: post office and having a bad experience, right, and say,
Speaker 4: I had to wait so long in the line, and
Speaker 4: everything on the post office sucks. Everyone also knows that
Speaker 4: the post office is the only place that delivers everywhere
Speaker 4: in the country. You could have a community of three
Speaker 4: people in the mountains and they have to have a
Speaker 4: post office there because of federal law. And everyone knows.
Speaker 4: I think the American public wants a healthier postal service, right,
Speaker 4: because that's one that we touch every day. We also
Speaker 4: want a healthier government in all respects.
Speaker 2: And you're a comedian, and Ronald Reagan wasn't, but he
Speaker 2: had the stick that he did where it was a
Speaker 2: joke where he says, I'm from the government and I'm
Speaker 2: here to help.
Speaker 4: The scariest words in the English language.
Speaker 2: You said, Yeah, I remember talking to my dad about
Speaker 2: some of the things that you mentioned. It was, where
Speaker 2: did the highways come from the post office? The military? Right,
Speaker 2: we have policemen who don't pull you over like in
Speaker 2: Mexico or in Africa where they're looking for a bribe, right,
Speaker 2: Or you don't have judges that are taking money under
Speaker 2: the table. I don't know. I thought the government isn't
Speaker 2: doing so bad. And in my youth, I'd lived in
Speaker 2: places like India, and you know, I'd been to Iran
Speaker 2: and syst places where Africa where there really is corruption.
Speaker 2: And I got the feeling that this was a conspiracy
Speaker 2: theory that to paint or at least an alternate myth,
Speaker 2: to paint the federal government in a bad way that
Speaker 2: they're all corrupt somehow, and yet playing out most recently
Speaker 2: in North Carolina where FEMA is coming in to help
Speaker 2: people as best they can, and rumors are being spread
Speaker 2: that they need to be hunted down. People will be
Speaker 2: better rested doing that. And I was wondering if you
Speaker 2: could comment on your journey from where you thought the
Speaker 2: government was and now that you've looked into it and
Speaker 2: you've met with some of us, but what's your senses
Speaker 2: of where you are now? With what the government can
Speaker 2: and can't do.
Speaker 4: I've never been a real conspiracy theory type person, and
Speaker 4: I've never been that cynical. I've always tried to be
Speaker 4: clear eyed about here's what's good and here's what's bad.
Speaker 4: I've always liked groups that are like, genuinely trying to
Speaker 4: help people. I've always've always been the kind of guy
Speaker 4: who loves my public library, you know what I mean.
Speaker 4: And the government has a lot of that in it.
Speaker 4: These are the people who are just trying to help.
Speaker 4: At the same time, I think we need to be
Speaker 4: clear eyed about how the government hurts people. Foreign policy wise,
Speaker 4: the US government has primarily been a disaster throughout the
Speaker 4: rest of the world. I understand why in some other
Speaker 4: countries people go, oh, fuck the US government. Look at
Speaker 4: what they did in my country, and you got to go, yeah,
Speaker 4: I can't argue with that. People died, right, cities were destroyed,
Speaker 4: et cetera. And there are people in the United States
Speaker 4: who feel similarly about the federal government that like a
Speaker 4: freeway was put through my neighborhood and everyone was forced
Speaker 4: to leave, or look at different ways that different communities
Speaker 4: received care. During COVID nineteen, it was sure, seemed like
Speaker 4: we had a great government response here where I live
Speaker 4: as a white guy in Los Angeles. But we went
Speaker 4: to a largely black rural community in Alabama and the
Speaker 4: federal government was nowhere to be seen. There was one
Speaker 4: doctor in the entire county that we visited, and he
Speaker 4: was employed by the federal government. But the's one guy
Speaker 4: treating thousands of people trying to get them all their vaccinations.
Speaker 4: And this county as a result, had the highest COVID
Speaker 4: rates in the nation at one point because they did
Speaker 4: not have the full court press that communities might like.
Speaker 2: Mind.
Speaker 4: God, you know, there's conspiracy theories and cynicism, and then
Speaker 4: there is having to acknowledge when things can actually be
Speaker 4: better and when the government has made mistakes.
Speaker 1: So in your show, obviously you were working with the
Speaker 1: Obama's as producers, and we served under Obama and under
Speaker 1: many other presidents too, and there was some concerns, like
Speaker 1: you said about droll and warfare and all these other
Speaker 1: kind of things and terrorism issues.
Speaker 2: Is right?
Speaker 1: Are there are there areas that you'd like to talk
Speaker 1: about that have to do with a security that we
Speaker 1: might have some insight on.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Oh good, that's a good question. We worked our
Speaker 4: hardest to make sure that we did not steer clear
Speaker 4: of areas because of the Obama's involvement. You know, we
Speaker 4: talked about the rise of drone warfare during the Obama
Speaker 4: administration and the number of civilians killed in that program
Speaker 4: and how in my view that's that's a mistake. He
Speaker 4: and his administration will give you their reason of this
Speaker 4: allows them to avoid setting America soldiers into battle and
Speaker 4: results in less loss of life overall, and it's targeted,
Speaker 4: et cetera, et cetera. There is a rationale given. I
Speaker 4: disagree with it, and you know we had to fight
Speaker 4: tooth and nail to get that on because not him himself,
Speaker 4: but folks who work in the organization are like, should
Speaker 4: we really be talking about this? And I just say, guys,
Speaker 4: people aren't going to take the show seriously if we don't,
Speaker 4: if we don't cover these topics. When we did the
Speaker 4: show with the Obama's what's the number one thing people
Speaker 4: think we won't be able to do, it's talk about drones.
Speaker 4: And we did an episode that we left on the
Speaker 4: cut ding room floor, and it wasn't because it was
Speaker 4: too controversial. It was just we had a little bit
Speaker 4: of trouble. It was such a complex topic that we
Speaker 4: had a little bit of trouble getting the script to work,
Speaker 4: and we decided to go with a different one. But
Speaker 4: it was about American power. It was the episode was
Speaker 4: called Power, and we were talking about the power grid
Speaker 4: and also nuclear power. Right, how the government is in
Speaker 4: charge of controlling the nuclear waste that comes from nuclear
Speaker 4: power plants. Right, But the government, the same department, the
Speaker 4: Department of Energy, is also in charge of our nuclear
Speaker 4: weapons stockpile. And that stockpile gives us enormous power in
Speaker 4: the world and allows us to do whatever we want
Speaker 4: in the world in a way that other countries are
Speaker 4: not able to. And for instance, we were going to
Speaker 4: talk about how on the Marshall Islands, which is a
Speaker 4: little island chain that's like what it's I believe it's
Speaker 4: a it's a separate nation, but it's like under the
Speaker 4: US umbrella a little bit. There's like an enormous stockpile
Speaker 4: of US nuclear waste from atomic bomb tests that stored there,
Speaker 4: and the people there are like, why the hell is
Speaker 4: this on our island? Like it's making people sick and stuff,
Speaker 4: and it's like, yeah, we can put it there because
Speaker 4: we're America. We could do whatever we want. You guys
Speaker 4: are in foreign intelligence. How do you see American power operating?
Speaker 4: How do you think about that?
Speaker 1: We are saying inside as we collected intelligence, is that
Speaker 1: you can lead a policy maker to intelligence, but you
Speaker 1: can't make him think. So there are times when policymakers
Speaker 1: get to make decisions, whether we agree with them or not.
Speaker 1: I think the invasion of I Rock was obviously a
Speaker 1: disaster for this country that has ramifications even today. Now
Speaker 1: that doesn't mean that I think the people who are
Speaker 1: involved in trying to follow through and do some of
Speaker 1: those things didn't do serious work or good work, and
Speaker 1: as well as some bad work. But I gotta be
Speaker 1: a little careful here on the drone thing, because it's
Speaker 1: still very sensitive the CIA's role in those type of things.
Speaker 1: But I saw some of what I saw was in fact,
Speaker 1: incredibly focused. There is a narrative out there that other governments,
Speaker 1: for their own purposes, have put that we've killed a
Speaker 1: lot of civilians with drones, and I didn't see it.
Speaker 1: I'm telling you there's times where I know specific what happened,
Speaker 1: that the right horrible terrorist was killed and the next
Speaker 1: day it was in the papers and spread through and
Speaker 1: followed up with then Joe said, oh, all these people
Speaker 1: were killed and it was terrible, and the places where
Speaker 1: this happened had an interest in making it look like
Speaker 1: those are happening. No, that doesn't mean there weren't mistakes,
Speaker 1: but in general, there is a view out there that
Speaker 1: civilians were killed a lot in these type of things,
Speaker 1: and I didn't see it, but I can't go too
Speaker 1: deep into that.
Speaker 4: Obviously, that's fascinating to know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so John and I were both chiefs of station,
Speaker 2: which means that the countries that we were in they
Speaker 2: knew exactly who we were. We would liaise with that,
Speaker 2: we would work with them and their intelligence services, sometimes friendly,
Speaker 2: sometimes less friendly. But I got to tell you, at
Speaker 2: no point do we walk in and everybody goes, WHOA,
Speaker 2: this is the powerful Americans. They're mostly like you get
Speaker 2: a lot of fuck us. And like if you think
Speaker 2: the Germans of the French are like, oh the Americans
Speaker 2: are here, it's oh the Americans are here. Let's see
Speaker 2: what we can manipulate them into doing for us. So
Speaker 2: I like I served in Zimbabwe. Zimbabweans know who exactly
Speaker 2: who I was, and a lot of that time. When
Speaker 2: I was in Zimbabwe, I found myself defending from the
Speaker 2: Zimbabwean government officials talking lot is there, like, we know
Speaker 2: you guys created AIDS. That was a conspiracy theory operation
Speaker 2: at Fecsion. We know all about it now put out
Speaker 2: by the Soviets, right, and it costs hundreds of thousands,
Speaker 2: if not millions of African lives because they were basically
Speaker 2: saying there's nothing you can do about it, don't protect yourself.
Speaker 2: And you talk about power when you're on the inside,
Speaker 2: it's a whole lot more complex.
Speaker 4: But I do think that there is a power and
Speaker 4: balance between the countries that results in the US calling
Speaker 4: the shots in the world, and in a way that
Speaker 4: was not always beneficial. And by the way, if you
Speaker 4: look at the instability in our government, imagine if your
Speaker 4: angela Merkel or another person who's just part of the
Speaker 4: liberal order right that is running the world, and then
Speaker 4: one day you wake up and your counterpart is Donald Trump,
Speaker 4: and you're like, hold on a second. The most important,
Speaker 4: the most powerful country in the world also had a
Speaker 4: political system that can lead to this outcome. Having that
Speaker 4: much power can be a bad thing because when the
Speaker 4: wrong person gets in and it gets the keys. That's
Speaker 4: bad for the world.
Speaker 2: Early when after he was elected, President Trump tweets that
Speaker 2: the Germans, he doesn't like the Germans very much. He
Speaker 2: accuses them of manipulating their currency so that they can
Speaker 2: export more to improve their economy at others expenses. And
Speaker 2: so this led to a comedy of errors inside of
Speaker 2: the German government and they finally came to the US
Speaker 2: side and said, look, we know that Donald Trump understands
Speaker 2: that we don't have a currency, right, I mean the
Speaker 2: currency the Euro is the rules and regulations are all
Speaker 2: made in Brussels. We have the same currency as the
Speaker 2: Greeks do. We can't manipulate our currency to help our
Speaker 2: export because we don't controul Because it was just beyond
Speaker 2: them that like Donald Trump didn't realize that the Germans
Speaker 2: don't have the mark anymore and have it for for
Speaker 2: the last ten years. And I think it's since dawned
Speaker 2: on them that no.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And that's a real dynamic by the way, throughout
Speaker 4: the federal government that you've got the electeds and then
Speaker 4: you've got the political appointees they put in, and then
Speaker 4: you have the career civil servants for INDs of the FDICE.
Speaker 4: I keep bringing up some of the smartest, most committed people.
Speaker 4: These are the people who keep your money safe in
Speaker 4: the bank, right, These are some of the best experts
Speaker 4: and most competent people I've ever met in my life.
Speaker 4: You need to trust those civil servants to know what
Speaker 4: they're doing. And when Trump us talking about the deep state,
Speaker 4: that's what he was really talking about, was like civil
Speaker 4: servants who actually give a shit about their jobs and
Speaker 4: are paying attention. And yeah, I think again, conspiracy theories
Speaker 4: come out as a result. But I think the truth
Speaker 4: is a lot of times people are just ignorant or stupid,
Speaker 4: or incompetent or lazy, because that's what people are. That's
Speaker 4: what humanity is as a whole.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: We have as much ignorance and stupidity and laziness as
Speaker 4: we do bravery and intelligence and determination.
Speaker 1: Sometimes bravery intelligence, these things are still not enough. The
Speaker 1: world is so complex.
Speaker 3: We'll be right back in OVID. All right, let's get
Speaker 3: back into it one.
Speaker 2: This is a bit sound, but on as a civil servant,
Speaker 2: John and I both were in the Agency. I voted
Speaker 2: against George Bush and yet when the Iraq War started,
Speaker 2: I volunteered to go. And I spent over a year
Speaker 2: and a half of my life in Iraq, and I've
Speaker 2: had friends killed there, and so you know, this isn't
Speaker 2: something that I supported or started, at least I didn't
Speaker 2: not once I realized that there were no weapons of
Speaker 2: mass destruction supported or stut And yet I'm the one
Speaker 2: who paid the price. We take the hit often for
Speaker 2: bad policies of our politicians who actually look with mails
Speaker 2: of forthought to shove their bad policy outcomes into our shoes.
Speaker 4: Absolutely. And look, there's also people in the federal government,
Speaker 4: by the way, who are just collecting a paycheck and
Speaker 4: or maybe seventy five percent as good an employee as
Speaker 4: the person next to them. But that's humanity. And guess what,
Speaker 4: they also deserve to slack off a little bit and
Speaker 4: collect a paycheck, just like we all do some days.
Speaker 4: But as a whole, the civil services, like my experience was,
Speaker 4: it's full of these incredible people who really give a
Speaker 4: shit about their jobs and about making the country work.
Speaker 4: And yeah, the problem, when there is one, usually starts
Speaker 4: at the top. It certainly did with the Iraq War
Speaker 4: and the Vietnam War as well.
Speaker 2: To be quite honest for your next episode.
Speaker 1: If you want, I can give you a list of
Speaker 1: slackers in the government if you want.
Speaker 4: Oh, that would be great again. I think people should
Speaker 4: be allowed to slack off. I think that's part of
Speaker 4: human life. A real memory of mine, and this maybe
Speaker 4: really informed my perspective on this. I was on the subway.
Speaker 4: I lived in New York City at the time. I
Speaker 4: was on the subway. They say, hey, everybody, the train
Speaker 4: is canceled. You all got to get off the train,
Speaker 4: like we're shutting down this line. And I got off
Speaker 4: the train. Everyone's so mad, and we all get in cabs.
Speaker 4: And I get in a cab with this guy because
Speaker 4: we're going in the same direction, and he goes The
Speaker 4: MTA is so screwed up. They're just sitting around giving
Speaker 4: each other pay raises over there. And I didn't arg
Speaker 4: you with the guy because I don't want to argue
Speaker 4: with the real New Yorker, you know, in the back
Speaker 4: of a cab. He was really pissed off because he
Speaker 4: was late for work. But I was reading Robert Carrow's book, right,
Speaker 4: and I know that the reason the MTA has trouble
Speaker 4: is it was created by the government and the Mayor
Speaker 4: of New York City as a way to separate themselves
Speaker 4: from responsibility because they didn't want to have to raise
Speaker 4: fares or take the blame. So the MTA was literally
Speaker 4: created as like a whipping boy for the New York
Speaker 4: City Mayor and the government of New York. And then
Speaker 4: they spent the next fifty years starving it of money,
Speaker 4: right saying, we're not going to give you enough money
Speaker 4: to fix the trains, to improve service, to build new
Speaker 4: train lines, God forbid, or any of those things. And
Speaker 4: that's what happened, right the electives. The public doesn't want
Speaker 4: to spend the money, and the electors don't want to
Speaker 4: take responsibility, so they create this agency called the MTA
Speaker 4: that everyone just you know, takes a crap on all
Speaker 4: the time. And this guy's been reading the New York
Speaker 4: Post his whole life and he's gotten that perspective. Oh,
Speaker 4: it's the MTA. It's the people who work there. They're
Speaker 4: just sitting around giving each other pay raised and instead
Speaker 4: of getting work done, I'd say, number one, what do
Speaker 4: you do at your job, sir? You said, trying to
Speaker 4: figure out how to do less work, how to get
Speaker 4: a raise. That's a human condition. Right, But why does
Speaker 4: the MTA specifically have problems. It's because the people in
Speaker 4: charge of the city and the state we were being
Speaker 4: cowardly and venal and trying to preserve their own skins
Speaker 4: rather than actually make the subway work better.
Speaker 2: So I'm not a fan boy of any politician, but
Speaker 2: I thought a lot of Barack Obama.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: I didn't agree with him everywhere, but I thought he
Speaker 2: was a guy who had some basic integrity. But I
Speaker 2: did want to ask, what is it like working with
Speaker 2: somebody who is, you know, an icon and that people
Speaker 2: have strong opinions about one way or another, and somebody
Speaker 2: like yourself who's clearly a comedian and iconic class What
Speaker 2: was it like working with the Obamas to the extent
Speaker 2: you you know, you're willing to talk about great question.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm happy to. First of all, he I think
Speaker 4: really interestingly lives his life as though he's still president.
Speaker 4: So when we had to get him a script, it's like, Okay,
Speaker 4: that script has to be in by so and so
Speaker 4: on Friday, because it's got to go in his weekend
Speaker 4: briefing book, because he gets a briefing book every weekend.
Speaker 4: And that's like what the president gets right. The president
Speaker 4: gets a briefing book where all his staffers put in
Speaker 4: a document that he has to read, and you know
Speaker 4: he's going to set it's the same time to read this,
Speaker 4: and so I was like, dude, you're not president anymore.
Speaker 4: You don't have to have a briefing book. You know,
Speaker 4: George Bush is just sitting around making paintings. And they
Speaker 4: gave us our room to work. You know, we had
Speaker 4: to fight sometimes to do our drones segment or to
Speaker 4: do some other segments. We were also critical about the
Speaker 4: origin of the Affordable Care Act, which on balance is
Speaker 4: a good act, but was still a compromise with the
Speaker 4: anti government forces who don't want the government to actually
Speaker 4: put in place a program. Was less than it could
Speaker 4: have been because it had to compromise with the Reagan
Speaker 4: era ideologues. When it came to him appearing on the show,
Speaker 4: I wrote a comedy scene for us to be in together.
Speaker 4: He's incredibly funny. He has no right to be that funny.
Speaker 4: It annoys me professionally as a comedian that he's as
Speaker 4: funny as he is. We started the show with a
Speaker 4: comedy scene with the two of us. We ended it
Speaker 4: with me and him having a long form conversation about
Speaker 4: the government and how people should feel about it and
Speaker 4: the possibility for change, right because I experienced when he
Speaker 4: entered office in two thousand and eight, I was in
Speaker 4: my twenties, We're going to have change. By the time
Speaker 4: he left, I think a lot of us were thinking
Speaker 4: where was that change?
Speaker 3: And I have.
Speaker 4: Complex feelings about that, and I was able to have
Speaker 4: a really substantive, long form conversation with him, and that
Speaker 4: was one of certainly one of the highlights of my career.
Speaker 2: You've got another project, factually, why don't you? Why do
Speaker 2: you tell us about that a little bit?
Speaker 4: Yes, it's a long form interview podcast I do. I
Speaker 4: talked to experts and fascinating people from around the world
Speaker 4: of human knowledge speaking of the government. We've had the
Speaker 4: chair of the FTC, Lena Khannon. We've had a dot
Speaker 4: had Pete Boudaje John, We've had local politicians here in
Speaker 4: Los Angeles on to talk about the work that they do.
Speaker 4: We have journalists, we have scholars, academics, anybody who knows
Speaker 4: something fascinating that the public doesn't know that I don't know.
Speaker 4: And you can catch that out you guess that on YouTube.
Speaker 4: Tube on YouTube and wherever you get your podcast. It's
Speaker 4: called Factually Jeremy Cia. Guys, here's my question for you,
Speaker 4: as too spies. I used to read a lot of
Speaker 4: John la Coray novels, but I was always like, this
Speaker 4: is a fantasy, right, But do you ever read any
Speaker 4: book like that and go, okay, wait, that one actually
Speaker 4: happened to me.
Speaker 1: John McCarey is probably one of the ones that we
Speaker 1: that worked in the Clandestine Service, the spy side of
Speaker 1: the agency, most trust and follow because it's about the
Speaker 1: human relationships rather than many of the movies and shows
Speaker 1: are about sort of action and shooting and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: For the most part, we weren't carrying guns, we weren't
Speaker 1: involved in shootouts. We were trying to develop relationships with
Speaker 1: people and build trust in an area where there's potential betrayal.
Speaker 2: And what we did human intelligence is about, at its core,
Speaker 2: two people sitting down and telling each other the truth.
Speaker 2: So you know, you get someone from an authoritarian government
Speaker 2: and they look over both their shoulders and they say,
Speaker 2: I can't live like this anymore. I need to tell
Speaker 2: you the truth. This is what's really going on. I
Speaker 2: love my country, but my government murders, people, murders us
Speaker 2: and I just can't do this anymore. And for whatever reasons,
Speaker 2: love hey, And it's always a cocktail of reasons. They've
Speaker 2: opted to sit down and talk to someone from the agency,
Speaker 2: and we talked about power earlier. I think mostly their
Speaker 2: hope is that we can do something about it. When
Speaker 2: an Iranian nuclear scientist sits down and says, we're building
Speaker 2: these things to commit genocide and we're beggaring our country.
Speaker 2: This is wrong. I need to talk to you about this.
Speaker 4: That's really cool.
Speaker 2: So I'll give you one anecdote to underline that I'm
Speaker 2: sitting in a car driving through the wilderness at two
Speaker 2: o'clock in the morning, and sitting with me is a
Speaker 2: representative of a radical Islamic regime whose whole raisondetra is
Speaker 2: like to kill Jews and kill Americans. And this guy
Speaker 2: has something eating on his soul and he can't tell
Speaker 2: anybody about his wife, who he loves, families, friends, And
Speaker 2: he looks at me and he says, do you think
Speaker 2: there's a God? And I look at him and the like,
Speaker 2: this is a tiny be truth. And I said, you
Speaker 2: know what, I don't think there is, but maybe I'm
Speaker 2: not sure, and he's like, I don't think there is,
Speaker 2: he says, but you have to understand. I get up
Speaker 2: at four in the morning and pray with my wife
Speaker 2: and I look at her and think she faking it.
Speaker 2: And then I pray with my friends and I look
Speaker 2: at them and they faking it. And my whole life
Speaker 2: is you know, this with missionary zeal to carry out
Speaker 2: something that very something deadly, like we're looking to kill
Speaker 2: Jews and Americans, and I can't live with this anymore.
Speaker 2: I have to talk to you. I'm like, okay, now
Speaker 2: that where you look them straight in the eye, you
Speaker 2: tell him I can keep you alive, but what do
Speaker 2: you want to do about it? And this is where
Speaker 2: the professionals gits involved.
Speaker 1: That's so cool, But at both sides it actually is
Speaker 1: transactional in the sense that we even though that relationship
Speaker 1: is very serious and I will do anything I can
Speaker 1: to protect that person, I need that relationship to provide
Speaker 1: information to the US guy to do something with it.
Speaker 1: And he not always a heat but usually a he
Speaker 1: needs that relationship hoping that we can do something that
Speaker 1: can help solve his problem. What if his problem is
Speaker 1: his kid needs medical care and he can't get it
Speaker 1: from his government. That is something I can solve. If
Speaker 1: it is I want us to change his policy so
Speaker 1: that you destroy my regime. It's not always something that's
Speaker 1: going it's going to happen.
Speaker 4: I do want to ask, do you guys ever like
Speaker 4: people say, oh, the CIA is like top bled democracies.
Speaker 4: This is stuff decades ago, top of democracies because it
Speaker 4: was in the US's best interest to do so, and
Speaker 4: some folks there would say, not in the best interests
Speaker 4: of the people who live there. Do you ever, Are
Speaker 4: you ever in a situation where someone is giving you
Speaker 4: information you're like, actually, this is maybe not in your
Speaker 4: best interest. It's in the United States's best interest.
Speaker 1: That's I mean, you are working for the US government
Speaker 1: and you work on behalf of the u's government. If
Speaker 1: you're uncomfortable with that, you need to leave or you
Speaker 1: need to try to push back if you think a
Speaker 1: policy is silly. Now, ninety to ninety five percent of
Speaker 1: what the Clandestine Service does, the part of the spot
Speaker 1: side of the Inciaward Jerry and I worked is collecting
Speaker 1: intelligence to give information to policymakers so they can make
Speaker 1: better policy. But there is that five percent, which is
Speaker 1: called covert action, which is action, which is the stuff
Speaker 1: you're talking about in the fifties, trying to in Chile
Speaker 1: or in Guatemala or what have you. Now, there was
Speaker 1: very serious reforms in the nineteen seventies. I think the
Speaker 1: US got involved in a lot of those overthrowing regime
Speaker 1: things that you talk about in Iran and other places,
Speaker 1: and they had blowback to them. And in nineteen seventies
Speaker 1: there was a lot of reforms to try to change things.
Speaker 1: In fact, the US comment can't be involved in assassinations,
Speaker 1: and there had to be a process by which if
Speaker 1: the CIA was going to be asked to do something,
Speaker 1: it had to be done in writing from the White
Speaker 1: House and shared with the Congress before Eisnawer could just
Speaker 1: say hey, listen, get rid of that guy, and the
Speaker 1: CIA would do that. So it is different now than
Speaker 1: it was then. But in some ways it's not like
Speaker 1: if we were talking about toppling governments. Now it's done
Speaker 1: pretty overtly. The US military goes in in topples of government,
Speaker 1: we're not necessarily doing it nefariously from the inside. And
Speaker 1: so the CIA that Jerry and I grew up in
Speaker 1: for our thirty years was a post reform CIA where
Speaker 1: we were brief in Congress and we weren't getting somebody
Speaker 1: whispering in our ear to kill a politician or something
Speaker 1: like that.
Speaker 4: For your sakes, I'm glad, yeah, me too. You didn't
Speaker 4: have to like poison Dart anybody exactly.
Speaker 1: Thank you very much for your time. It was really
Speaker 1: exciting and interesting to talk to you and enjoy what
Speaker 1: you're doing.
Speaker 4: It was a thrill to be here. This was so
Speaker 4: much fun.
Speaker 5: Mission Implausible is produced by Adam Davidson, Jerry O'shay, John Cipher,
Speaker 5: and Jonathan Stern. The associate producer is Rachel Harner. Mission
Speaker 5: Implausible It's a production of honorable mention and abominable pictures
Speaker 5: for iHeart Podcasts.