Speaker 1: We've just captured an al Qaeda guy in the field
Speaker 1: and I'm there to talk to him. And then he
Speaker 1: basically said, I am a warrior of God in you
Speaker 1: are nothing, and eventually we're going to win, and we
Speaker 1: are going to win because we are more committed than
Speaker 1: you are. I am willing to kill myself and live
Speaker 1: here in Afghanistan and fight you for the next twenty years,
Speaker 1: and you're not that dedicated. And I thought, holy shit,
Speaker 1: he's right. I'm John Ceipher and I'm Jerry o'she.
Speaker 2: I served in the CIA's Clandestine Service for twenty eight years,
Speaker 2: living undercover all around the world.
Speaker 1: And in my thirty three years with the CIA, I
Speaker 1: served in Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East.
Speaker 2: Although we don't usually look at it this way, we
Speaker 2: created conspiracies.
Speaker 1: In our operations. We got people to believe things that
Speaker 1: weren't true.
Speaker 2: Now we're investigating the conspiracy theories we see in the
Speaker 2: news almost every day.
Speaker 1: We'll break them down for you to determine what whether
Speaker 1: they could be real or whether we're being manipulated.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Mission Implausible.
Speaker 3: So, Jerry, you have told me how you got recruited,
Speaker 3: and it always blows my mind because it is not normal.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was a hippie.
Speaker 4: I was.
Speaker 1: I was. It's a long story, but I smuggled at
Speaker 1: one point cars into Iran when the Shah was still
Speaker 1: there and ended up smoking dope in Afghanistan, never thinking that, geez,
Speaker 1: thirty five years from now, when I'm balding and and
Speaker 1: got three kids and married, they're going to take that
Speaker 1: experience and they're going to send me back here to
Speaker 1: chase some six foot five Saudi guy.
Speaker 3: So you were a criminal, sort of small un.
Speaker 1: I didn't break American laws, that's right.
Speaker 3: So why would CIA want someone who's smuggling cars into Iran?
Speaker 2: Even the Iranians caught him and threw them in jail
Speaker 2: just to they did.
Speaker 1: They threw me in jail for a little bit. But
Speaker 1: I'm surprised. That's actually a really good question. Oh for
Speaker 1: what John and I do did in operations, we're looking
Speaker 1: for people who don't fit the mold. We're looking for,
Speaker 1: you know, a diversity of experience, and we're looking for
Speaker 1: people with initiative and innovation who can like figure stuff
Speaker 1: out that no one else can. And you know, I lived,
Speaker 1: I lived abroad and I basically lived as a German
Speaker 1: and I spent years in India and Middle East Africa,
Speaker 1: And when I came back, the agency asked me if
Speaker 1: I wanted to come on, and yeah, they sent me
Speaker 1: back to all those places where I was a hippie
Speaker 1: with long hair.
Speaker 2: I think you're looking for people who are really interested
Speaker 2: in foreign cultures. There used to be the story like
Speaker 2: for you know, back in the USS stage, you're looking
Speaker 2: for a PhD who can win a bar fight. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you want people who are comfortable operating on the street,
Speaker 2: making choices on their own, but also aware of what's happening, reading,
Speaker 2: keeping up with things, interested in foreign culture, interested in
Speaker 2: political and national security issues of the day. So it's
Speaker 2: it is a weird profession, but it's great fun.
Speaker 1: The first place I got punched in the face in
Speaker 1: a bar fight was in Istanbul, And what I learned
Speaker 1: is you ever want to be in a bar fight
Speaker 1: because even if you win, you're still not winning, right,
Speaker 1: you still got splitlip or a broken nose.
Speaker 2: You got to win the bar fight, gotcha.
Speaker 3: You got to win the bar fight.
Speaker 2: And often the best way to win a bar fight
Speaker 2: is a cheap shot, just a little Yeah.
Speaker 1: That's right.
Speaker 3: Now do operatives like you guys officers. Are you just
Speaker 3: also looking out for potential Americans wandering around or is
Speaker 3: there like a special team that is trying to find
Speaker 3: car smugglers and recruit them.
Speaker 2: I think in the early days of CIA, it was
Speaker 2: very much word of mouth and who you went to
Speaker 2: school with and that type of thing. If you met
Speaker 2: someone overseas who seemed interesting, you could suggest them to
Speaker 2: the CIA and they might get in touch with them. Nowadays,
Speaker 2: it's much more like other jobs. As people come to it,
Speaker 2: there's a website, there's a larger recruitment center that follows
Speaker 2: up with people who express an interest. There's advertisements because
Speaker 2: there's lots of different parts of the CIA too, not
Speaker 2: just the operative part, and so I think it's more
Speaker 2: certainly professionalized now.
Speaker 1: They do look still for the same things, though. You're
Speaker 1: looking for people who can navigate and are comfortable with ambiguity,
Speaker 1: and they're also looking for people who understand that, you know,
Speaker 1: you can think two separate things at the same time.
Speaker 1: It's like you have to obey American law, but you
Speaker 1: understand that it's moral on occasion to break other people's laws.
Speaker 3: So you've kind of told me, is there an age
Speaker 3: limit or can I just send in my application.
Speaker 1: But if you think CIA guys are weird, you should
Speaker 1: talk to Congressman. I mean, those guys are an interesting
Speaker 1: group of cats.
Speaker 3: Right, let's get to your pal, Denver Wriggleman.
Speaker 2: So today we have Denver Riggleman. So for people who
Speaker 2: don't know Denver, he was a former Air Force intelligence
Speaker 2: officer and Republican congressman from Virginia. More recently, he worked
Speaker 2: on the House Select Committee looking at the January sixth attack.
Speaker 2: And one of the things that he's done from his
Speaker 2: background working in the Air Force and looking at sort
Speaker 2: of data analysis and things, he's tried to use data
Speaker 2: to dig into some of these problems. So some people
Speaker 2: may remember he's one of the only members of Congress
Speaker 2: that has spoken up on the floor against QAnon. So
Speaker 2: there's a lot of stuff we could talk about.
Speaker 1: Denver.
Speaker 2: We'really glad to have you. Thanks, thanks having me.
Speaker 4: Really it's an honor. Yeah, it's just funny you're talking
Speaker 4: about QAnon and being the one to speak on the floor.
Speaker 4: I remember that day because it was supposed to be
Speaker 4: a lot of people with me, like I was. I
Speaker 4: had co sponsors on the bill right. I was the
Speaker 4: Republican lead that I remember. I got on the floor
Speaker 4: and I look behind me, but on the side where
Speaker 4: the Dems were, you know, there was all kinds of
Speaker 4: support structure there for them, a bunch of their colleagues.
Speaker 4: I'm on the right side of the aisle and I'm
Speaker 4: sitting at the lectern and I'm looking around and you
Speaker 4: could have heard crickets vain. It was. It was a
Speaker 4: lonely day. And I remember coming off the floor and
Speaker 4: even the Deputy whip at the time, he goes, hey,
Speaker 4: denver Man, I think this is a First Amendment issue.
Speaker 4: I said, well, no, shit, it's a first Amendment issue.
Speaker 4: But I could use my first Amendment as a cudgel
Speaker 4: against things that I think are ridiculous. And I'm a congressman,
Speaker 4: for God's sakes. And he said, you know, I just
Speaker 4: think you're completely overreacting, and I think this is nuts.
Speaker 4: But I had seen the data, guys, so I stuck
Speaker 4: to my guns. I think my own staff thought I'd
Speaker 4: lost my mind. But you know, when I gave my
Speaker 4: farewell speech on December tenth, I believe of twenty twenty,
Speaker 4: I really like it in because at that point, it
Speaker 4: was overwhelming amount of data that we were seeing on
Speaker 4: the social channels indicating there could be violenced by January sixth,
Speaker 4: and of course I hated to be validated.
Speaker 1: You've been around for a long time. I just want
Speaker 1: to know, when do you think Colin Crazy became crazy?
Speaker 1: Do most of your colleagues in the house really buy
Speaker 1: into q and on or they just don't want to
Speaker 1: say it to piss off the people that claim to
Speaker 1: whatever QAnon is.
Speaker 4: I think the first thing is, at the beginning, I
Speaker 4: believe that a lot of my colleagues were QAnon adjacent
Speaker 4: and didn't know it. Right, there was already this sort
Speaker 4: of baseline belief in the deep state and the globalist takeover, right,
Speaker 4: and a lot of people still had the Hillary Clinton
Speaker 4: emails thing in mind. There was still this sort of underlying,
Speaker 4: i would say, belief system that was sort of baked
Speaker 4: in from the Tea Party movement that the Democrats had
Speaker 4: some kind of nefarious sexual activities going on that was
Speaker 4: somehow funding their activities to take over the United States
Speaker 4: using globalist principles, right, And so I think there is
Speaker 4: that's always sort of been underlying the sort of the
Speaker 4: evangelical portion of this. I think the second thing is
Speaker 4: is that as it started to continue, I think they
Speaker 4: saw that the base was very, very powerful. I think
Speaker 4: they became afraid that they could lose their positions, but
Speaker 4: still didn't take it seriously because they just didn't understand data.
Speaker 4: A lot of the guys in Congress, this is their
Speaker 4: biggest job. I mean, John and Jerry, this is what
Speaker 4: they've aspired to. I had one person tell me like,
Speaker 4: I have reached the pinnacle, and he's in his thirties
Speaker 4: and for me going to Congress, I went to much
Speaker 4: fuller parties in Oman in the early two thousand, so
Speaker 4: I'm like, what the I hate this place right, this
Speaker 4: is the worst job ever had. And it was I
Speaker 4: tell people I got fired from the worst job I
Speaker 4: ever had, you know. I think the third thing is there.
Speaker 4: I would say sixty to seventy percent of the Republican
Speaker 4: Conference are like, Eh, it's probably nuts, But listen, cowardice
Speaker 4: and winning elections go hand in hand. And I would
Speaker 4: humbly submit that in a lot of ways now, I
Speaker 4: think integrity and winning elections are mutually exclusive. So what
Speaker 4: you have to do is you've got to play to
Speaker 4: the base at that time based on the hyperbole you're
Speaker 4: seeing fun raising and the leader of the party at
Speaker 4: that time. If you're not in that political current, you
Speaker 4: get taken out. And you know, even me, you know,
Speaker 4: I fought with my incredible good looks in charisma I really.
Speaker 1: Thought undeniable, undeniable.
Speaker 4: I don't think I really had them because you know,
Speaker 4: after I officiated the same sex wedding in summer of
Speaker 4: twenty nineteen, QAnon came at me before anybody else. So
Speaker 4: that's before anybody I was the first target of QAnon
Speaker 4: adjacent you know, whack jobs. And I think that's what
Speaker 4: you got with the GOP right now, is you got
Speaker 4: the mob ruling roam. When it comes to some of
Speaker 4: these crazy belief systems.
Speaker 2: I sort of get the cynical part that they want
Speaker 2: to win and we'll say anything to their base. I
Speaker 2: think it's disgusting, and you're right. I would like to
Speaker 2: take pride in my integrity. I would never say something
Speaker 2: that I knew to be false. But what you suggest
Speaker 2: also is that there's some true believers.
Speaker 4: I think a lot of it is religion based, and
Speaker 4: I think that's the thing that I've been trying to
Speaker 4: be very careful with even with the books that I wrote.
Speaker 4: You know my background. When I wrote the Breach, I
Speaker 4: did go into my background as being raised very religious.
Speaker 4: I sort of was also summarily sort of odd size
Speaker 4: from the Freedom Caucus. Think about what you're talking to, right,
Speaker 4: A formal Republican, never been in politics before. I was
Speaker 4: told by my consultantsay, you're going to join the Freedom
Speaker 4: Caucus and you'll win. I mean that my first political decision, right, John,
Speaker 4: you said, rather have your integrity. I didn't want to
Speaker 4: join the Freedom Caucus, but I made my first political
Speaker 4: decision that really painted what happened to me never being
Speaker 4: in politics. I remember my consultants said, you got to
Speaker 4: be a little bit crazy to be crazier, and I'm like, well,
Speaker 4: I'm a team player. Maybe I can get through this
Speaker 4: and become independent later. Now you can't.
Speaker 2: Let's take a break. We'll be right back.
Speaker 1: And Rebecca.
Speaker 4: But I think when you're talking about my first meeting
Speaker 4: in the Freedom Caucus, I remember one of the members
Speaker 4: of the Freedom Caucus wanted to actually apply legislation and
Speaker 4: write it to stop a master algorithm that was executed
Speaker 4: across all the platforms that only suppressed conservative voices. Now, guys,
Speaker 4: I was Air Force Intelligence in NSA for sixteen years,
Speaker 4: off and on, back and forth. Here I am forty
Speaker 4: eight years old, forty nine years old, and I'm looking
Speaker 4: at some buffoon talking about the master algorithm to suppress
Speaker 4: all conservative voices across all platforms needs to be made illegal.
Speaker 4: There is that old saying, right, you lose twenty IQ
Speaker 4: points as soon as you're elected, and I think some
Speaker 4: people maybe the tast sizes and it doubles every turn
Speaker 4: they're in.
Speaker 1: So I spent a lot of time in the Middle
Speaker 1: East and long ago listening to Arab friends and colleagues
Speaker 1: from Arab states. The conspiracy theories that they come out
Speaker 1: with I thought were completely outlandish, And at the time,
Speaker 1: I thought, that's what's holding the society back. Rather than
Speaker 1: looking at their own issues. They're blaming everything on Israel
Speaker 1: and demonic forces and the West. And I thought, well,
Speaker 1: we don't do that until the q Andon thing came along.
Speaker 1: And I'm wondering, sort of what is happening with our
Speaker 1: society that we're unable to have educated, complex conversations about
Speaker 1: problematic issues as opposed to with conspiracy theory. There's always
Speaker 1: like you know, five guys in a room with a
Speaker 1: plan or a master algorithm. There's always like this extremely
Speaker 1: simplistic explanation to really complex issues.
Speaker 4: I think if you think you have a direct line
Speaker 4: to the supernatural, I think they're inclined to believe things
Speaker 4: that are overly simplistic. What we didn't have in the past.
Speaker 4: We had propaganda, We had all these things there, like well, Denver,
Speaker 4: propaganda and disinformation has been around since the dawn of time.
Speaker 4: Well yeah, but what hasn't been around is social media
Speaker 4: and alternative media. And I think if you can self
Speaker 4: select your echo chambers, I think it's just a powerful
Speaker 4: racalizing agent. And I always say that digital profits make
Speaker 4: digital profits, and I think that hyperbole and outrage and
Speaker 4: that simplistic view of good against evil where democrats or
Speaker 4: people like me, you know, an independent now are somehow
Speaker 4: part of this deep state cabal, or you're a globalist,
Speaker 4: or you're trying to change the sexual orientation of children.
Speaker 4: I was called the tool of the Antichrist. I was
Speaker 4: called the general the Sodomite armies. I thought that was
Speaker 4: pretty original, so, you know, and then I was accused
Speaker 4: of laundering money for George Soros in my distilleries.
Speaker 1: If you had removed QAnon and you had put in
Speaker 1: isis right or al Qaeda, they have the same beliefs.
Speaker 1: This you know this the Jewish Cabal, George Soros, small
Speaker 1: group of people. The CIA really runs things, sexualizing our children,
Speaker 1: stealing our women, taking our faith. All those things, our
Speaker 1: example are exactly to include. We don't want to pay taxes,
Speaker 1: we want guns. We don't want the rule of law.
Speaker 1: We want God's word rather than having a secular rule
Speaker 1: of law.
Speaker 4: If you saw the language that we saw leading up
Speaker 4: to January sixth, and it was say isis group or
Speaker 4: some kind of Muslim extremist group, we'd have been on
Speaker 4: that like stink on a monkey because it was so violent,
Speaker 4: and it's just amazing to me that we weren't.
Speaker 2: How did you get into this sort of world of
Speaker 2: data and data analysis? Did it come from the Air Force?
Speaker 4: I got married really young at nineteen, played a little
Speaker 4: college football, did some powerlifting when a couple of state
Speaker 4: powers championships, but lived in the basement. I got married
Speaker 4: so young because I sort of got kicked out of
Speaker 4: the Mormon missionary training center. I wasn't the best Mormon
Speaker 4: So what happened really is that at twenty two my
Speaker 4: wife got pregnant. She goes, either you go to work
Speaker 4: or I go to work. So three days later I
Speaker 4: joined the Air Force. Then I had a captain named
Speaker 4: Captain Shwang, the Shwinger, So he got a hold of
Speaker 4: me and said, why aren't you an officer? Why don't
Speaker 4: you go to school full time? And then when I
Speaker 4: got into UVA by some kind of magic, when I
Speaker 4: won a scholarship, you know, I go to UVA and
Speaker 4: then I ended up getting distinguished graduate and had the
Speaker 4: number one GPA out of my class. But I was
Speaker 4: too old to fly, and I became an intelligence officer,
Speaker 4: and immediately they sent me to Mountain Home Air Force
Speaker 4: Base and as the Air Expeditionary Wing, and we had
Speaker 4: a fifteens of F sixteens and B one's. I didn't
Speaker 4: know at the time they had a secret program with
Speaker 4: another three letter agency combining national data sources with tactical
Speaker 4: data sources.
Speaker 1: How is it that you were able or not able
Speaker 1: to communicate with people who were conspiracy theory minded? I mean,
Speaker 1: how do you work with someone who thinks in a
Speaker 1: completely different realm than you are, or someone who operates
Speaker 1: on faith without evidence.
Speaker 4: It's a difficult answer for me because it's so personal.
Speaker 4: When I came out against Trump and q Andon so
Speaker 4: violently in the middle of twenty twenty, you know, I
Speaker 4: was disowned by the closest person you can't have to you,
Speaker 4: not my wife, but my mom right, not really just
Speaker 4: but so she wished I never won my election. It
Speaker 4: was pretty brutal a lot of my family, and you know,
Speaker 4: I head the conversation like this is the facts of
Speaker 4: the matter. What I found out pretty quickly with her
Speaker 4: and with other friends. I lost six friends of over
Speaker 4: thirty years. Jary, Wow, When I said QAnon was basically
Speaker 4: anti semitic, it went sideways so quickly for me and
Speaker 4: my friendships. You wouldn't believe I mean, yeah, you would.
Speaker 4: You would believe it was you're a piece of shit.
Speaker 4: How dare you say this is anti Semitic? How dare
Speaker 4: you say we're violent? And guys? I was right on
Speaker 4: all of it, not even there's no question. I thought
Speaker 4: the fact that was friends for thirty years, They're going
Speaker 4: to listen to a guy who's who has my background
Speaker 4: right now? I had people say denvers, it's futile I'm like, no,
Speaker 4: it's not. I'm Denver fucking rhythlemen, man, I got this.
Speaker 4: But the thing is is that it was so humbling
Speaker 4: because I was just on ninety nine percent of the time.
Speaker 4: I was completely I just fell on my face, Jerry.
Speaker 4: So I just think, no matter what you do for them,
Speaker 4: the means justify the ends. And that's because if God
Speaker 4: has ordained a leader like Trump, how dare you go
Speaker 4: against them in any way? And an imperfect vessel actually
Speaker 4: can satisfy a perfect mission, and that perfect mission is
Speaker 4: from God. That's really the feedback I would get.
Speaker 1: So I was in Germany in the mid seventies and
Speaker 1: there were a lot of x Nazis around. I used
Speaker 1: to work as a waiter on a construction. I worked
Speaker 1: with a lot of guys, and you know what, not
Speaker 1: most of them, but a lot of them, at least
Speaker 1: talking to me as an American, they still believed right.
Speaker 1: I mean, they knew it. They shouldn't, but this was
Speaker 1: put in their heads when they were kids, when they
Speaker 1: were younger. So the conspiracy theory there that the Jews
Speaker 1: had destroyed Germany, that there was an evil Bolshevik Zionist
Speaker 1: plot to keep them down. Nothing was their fault. It
Speaker 1: was a huge conspiracy theory that Nazi ideology was still
Speaker 1: something thirty years after the war, that they were still
Speaker 1: dealing with and there was still deep held beliefs that
Speaker 1: you could not argue with. And talking to the younger people,
Speaker 1: they would say, yeah, it's my parents. The only way
Speaker 1: of dealing with it is generationally having it go away
Speaker 1: and to try to present the facts over and over
Speaker 1: and over again as best you can.
Speaker 2: What's interesting to me is, at least in the political
Speaker 2: realm where were you were in Congress, is this group
Speaker 2: of people who seem to be speaking this way or
Speaker 2: believe this way are the ones who just a few
Speaker 2: years ago and still to a certain extent, throw out
Speaker 2: the Constitution constantly. Is this is the Constitution? Is the
Speaker 2: constitutional thing? Those two things don't mix. You can't believe
Speaker 2: in the Constitution and believe that one side is ordained
Speaker 2: by God and only the Christian side wins.
Speaker 4: I know a lot of people say, well, everybody blames
Speaker 4: the prior generation, or you always think it's worse than
Speaker 4: the past. I think the cumulative IQ of Congress right
Speaker 4: now is the lowest in the history of Congress. I
Speaker 4: think some of this isn't play acting, and I think
Speaker 4: that is what to concern people, is that they're so
Speaker 4: unserious they're.
Speaker 2: Dangerous to tie again back to your experience with data.
Speaker 2: You worked on the January sixth committee. Tell me a
Speaker 2: little bit about from the January sixth Committee, what you
Speaker 2: think you learned skill wise, and then what you're up
Speaker 2: to today.
Speaker 4: I think what surprised me John, what I learned. Number one,
Speaker 4: Even if the stated objective is to show the American
Speaker 4: people everything, it's not, I ran into massive political head
Speaker 4: or winds with optics with what we found in data,
Speaker 4: one of them being the Jenny Thomas text which our
Speaker 4: team found, which I was one of the I was
Speaker 4: the first to read, probably outside of Jenny and Mark Meadows.
Speaker 4: But what I really saw, you know, by parsing and
Speaker 4: by aggregating over thirty million lines of data most have
Speaker 4: from call detailed records too, from sms's MMS whatever voy
Speaker 4: landline sell really what we saw there was a much
Speaker 4: more coordinated command and control action that anybody could imagine.
Speaker 4: You know. We would break it down into groups, right,
Speaker 4: So we had Trump associates, we had rally planners, we
Speaker 4: had Trump family, we had DJ charge defendants. We had
Speaker 4: specifically identified Proud Boys, Oathkeepers, and other white nationalist groups.
Speaker 4: We had the alternative electors and state legislators, right, those
Speaker 4: are sort of the groups that were connected. We saw
Speaker 4: the connected group. I really thought from the call records
Speaker 4: we'd have we see more of the political people that
Speaker 4: had the massive amounts of sort of frequency. Right.
Speaker 1: And now a.
Speaker 4: Lot of the people we tried to get ahold of
Speaker 4: they fought us on their phone records, so we would
Speaker 4: run them as reference numbers against the kull f deed
Speaker 4: dealt records. We had. The only person that we could
Speaker 4: see that was connected to every single group was Roger Stone.
Speaker 4: So when you're looking at you across all of this, right,
Speaker 4: when you're looking at call records and data, I could
Speaker 4: just say that unequivocally that is just fact.
Speaker 2: Could you make a determination based on just the network
Speaker 2: analysis of who were the believers and who were the
Speaker 2: ones that were the cynically figured out how to do?
Speaker 2: I mean, is Roger Stone such a brilliant to just
Speaker 2: say he could pull this?
Speaker 4: Sid Roger Stone doesn't believe anything. The thing about Roger
Speaker 4: I just think he's a soulless Cretan who's really given
Speaker 4: his life to ridiculousness. But you know, when you look
Speaker 4: at the twenty three hundred and nineteen text messages, I
Speaker 4: guess what struck me most is how QAnon conspiracy theories
Speaker 4: had saturated every level the GOP. And if you look
Speaker 4: at Jenny Thomas in text messages saying that she can talk,
Speaker 4: she was talking directly to Jared Kushner, And the fact
Speaker 4: she was coordinating with Louis Gohmert's office through Connie Hare,
Speaker 4: the chief of staff, and the fact that she's married
Speaker 4: to a Supreme Court justice and had direct lines to
Speaker 4: Trump and had direct lines to the CNP, ThEC Council
Speaker 4: for National Policy. You would have to almost take out
Speaker 4: the frontal low of your brain not to think that
Speaker 4: all three branches of government at some point was involved
Speaker 4: in those coup like movements. I just think the money
Speaker 4: is so big, my god, that infrastructure is so healthy.
Speaker 4: You know, when you look at the two hundred and
Speaker 4: fifty five million dollars that Trump made between November and
Speaker 4: January on stop steel messaging, when you look at the
Speaker 4: rnc's money, when you look at the fundraising. Now, when
Speaker 4: you look at Marjorie Taylor Green's quarters of over three
Speaker 4: million dollars in a quarter with forty thousand small dollar donors.
Speaker 4: It should scare the shit out of people. And I
Speaker 4: feel like I'm taking crazy pills. I'm like, Okay, well,
Speaker 4: you know, I'm looking to follow the money. I'm looking
Speaker 4: at everything. I saw the JA six data, and I'm
Speaker 4: seeing the same people that did the JA six stuff
Speaker 4: coordinating other things that I'm working on now. The people
Speaker 4: that are usually projecting and accusing people these awful things
Speaker 4: sometimes are the people actually doing it. That is really
Speaker 4: important for the American public to know. And if they're
Speaker 4: accusing people like you, guys who have served our country
Speaker 4: with valor and honor, of saying that somehow this was
Speaker 4: made up or something like that, these people don't even
Speaker 4: know what they're talking about, and if they did, it
Speaker 4: doesn't matter to them because it.
Speaker 1: Is war, right, war and profit. I mean, let's be
Speaker 1: clear that Steve Bannon said it was war, but he
Speaker 1: was also shaking down his own supporters to build wall
Speaker 1: that he never built, and he stole their money.
Speaker 4: I called Donald Trump gotis grifter of the United States, right,
Speaker 4: You got a bunch of little stylins running around that
Speaker 4: want to grift like their daddy.
Speaker 1: Let's take a breather and back in.
Speaker 2: A moment, and we're back. And what's interesting about the
Speaker 2: sort of information revolution and the fact that there's big
Speaker 2: data out there, there's going to be bad actors that
Speaker 2: figure this stuff out too. I mean, I think one
Speaker 2: of the early signs was the cambrid Jenallytica thing. Right,
Speaker 2: Bannon was on the board of Cambridgenallytica. They were using massive,
Speaker 2: massive amount of Facebook information to find new voters on
Speaker 2: the right, to find people who they could use information
Speaker 2: to make them so angry these people never voted in
Speaker 2: the past that they would come out and vote and
Speaker 2: to suppress no black groups and other groups on the
Speaker 2: left using data.
Speaker 1: Denver does data really matter? I mean, if somebody's listening
Speaker 1: to this podcast, they're probably already there, right, So someone
Speaker 1: who latches only newsmax is never going to go down
Speaker 1: that road. Most people, if it's based on faith, how
Speaker 1: much does it matter?
Speaker 4: I think that's the thing about folks who really do
Speaker 4: want to just do the right thing and look at
Speaker 4: facts and data, you're in a big disadvantage. I guess
Speaker 4: I haven't figured it out, I don't know how to
Speaker 4: break through.
Speaker 2: We are happy you're doing it, and I think it's
Speaker 2: important that we all keep doing this because there is
Speaker 2: some things that you know, It's like dealing with the
Speaker 2: Russians or the Soviets and things. We and the West
Speaker 2: often forget our strength. We have the allies, we have
Speaker 2: the money, we have the power, and we often give
Speaker 2: into the Russians when they bully and threaten. We should
Speaker 2: understand our strength and use it. You've got to be
Speaker 2: aggressive and offensive because at the end of the day,
Speaker 2: if they beat you, they don't care about the truth.
Speaker 2: They've won. They're in charge.
Speaker 1: But it does make to what you're saying about facts
Speaker 1: and details and trying to talk to somebody who thinks
Speaker 1: fundamentally different than you based on faith in the worst
Speaker 1: sense of the word. So it's early two thousand and two.
Speaker 1: We've just captured an al Qaeda guy in the field
Speaker 1: and I'm there to talk to him. Right, I'm not
Speaker 1: going to use zero and terrogate, because i just want
Speaker 1: to talk to the guy. He speaks, he speaks some English,
Speaker 1: and basically what he said is you started this, and
Speaker 1: I'm like, no, September eleventh, you know you started it,
Speaker 1: and he's like, no, you did, because you are trying
Speaker 1: to take over my society. You were trying to steal
Speaker 1: our children. You're sexualizing our children. You're showing TV shows
Speaker 1: with women walking around showing their arms and sitting in
Speaker 1: bars and drinking alcohol. You are destroying our families. And
Speaker 1: then he basically said, I am a warrior of God
Speaker 1: and you are nothing. And eventually we're going to win,
Speaker 1: and we're going to win because we are more committed
Speaker 1: than you are. I am willing to kill myself and
Speaker 1: live here in Afghanistan and fight you for the next
Speaker 1: twenty years, and you're not that dedicated. And I thought,
Speaker 1: holy shit, He's right.
Speaker 2: If you're a true believer, you are willing to play
Speaker 2: the long game. So we see this with the Russians
Speaker 2: in the history, we played an intelligence We would try
Speaker 2: to these operations do things, but we had a short
Speaker 2: time window. Rush would put stuff into play that they
Speaker 2: knew they weren't going to get anything out of for
Speaker 2: ten fifteen twenty years. The Chinese the same way, and
Speaker 2: these people that Jerry talked about in Afghanistan, the true
Speaker 2: al Qaida believers and stuff, and perhaps even in the
Speaker 2: political space. Now, you know, we've seen Republicans played the
Speaker 2: long game on the judiciary on the Supreme Court that
Speaker 2: you know, over time definitely got them control of the
Speaker 2: Supreme Court. If you're a true believer, your time horizon
Speaker 2: might be different too.
Speaker 1: Within al Qaeda, one of the tenets of al Qaeda,
Speaker 1: when you take by odd is you understand that lying
Speaker 1: in pursuit of a greater truth is a virtue.
Speaker 2: You talked about being a Mormon and a lapse Mormon.
Speaker 2: A lot of Mormons in the Agency, a lot of
Speaker 2: our friends are elapse Mormons. Is the issue of religion.
Speaker 2: If we are growing people in our system that have
Speaker 2: such a deep view in faith that people who don't
Speaker 2: have their view or the enemy, this is a real problem.
Speaker 2: But of course none of us want to tackle like,
Speaker 2: is there a problem with religion? I don't even know
Speaker 2: how you would.
Speaker 4: You know, it's funny. We had no problem attacking extremist Islam,
Speaker 4: did we.
Speaker 2: No, that's a good point, exactly right.
Speaker 4: Spiritual warfare is what you always talk about. I put
Speaker 4: on the armor of God. I'm a warrior for God.
Speaker 4: If you read a book that's against Christ or against God,
Speaker 4: you're an apostate right, those books were written of the
Speaker 4: devil's hand. That is how I was raised. So we
Speaker 4: do have a religious problem if a majority of evangelicals
Speaker 4: believe in the storm or the Great Awakening or the
Speaker 4: Great replacement, or the hashtag say of our children or
Speaker 4: hashtag stop to steal, or that Italian satellite stole the election,
Speaker 4: or that hammer and scorecard from USA where use to
Speaker 4: manipulate votes, or that there were broken algorithms that was
Speaker 4: led by some Venezuhalen group, or that Ukrainians and Romanians
Speaker 4: were digital mules coming over and stealing people's license by
Speaker 4: the way, sent by a congressman, and the text messages
Speaker 4: to Mark Meadows, a foreign disinformation video sent in the
Speaker 4: text messages to Mark Meadows. This video shocked me that
Speaker 4: fifty million votes had been turned somehow fifty million are
Speaker 4: you talking about?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 4: There was fun one hundred and you know fifty six
Speaker 4: million taxs. What So when I read the text messages
Speaker 4: and read all of the God will change the election
Speaker 4: type of texts and what I've seen in my own life,
Speaker 4: my own friends and family, we have to come to
Speaker 4: grips that there is a portion of Christianity that believes
Speaker 4: Jesus is a really good, violent guy and that he
Speaker 4: needs to go to war and do some fighting. And
Speaker 4: all of it's based on some unprovable myth of a
Speaker 4: satanic push by the globalists right to destroy our Christian
Speaker 4: way of life. It goes all the way back to
Speaker 4: the Constitution was a document creative by God, and there
Speaker 4: is no separation of church and state. And if you
Speaker 4: have Marjorie Taylor Green out there saying I am a
Speaker 4: Christian nationalist. So I think right now, if we're afraid
Speaker 4: to touch on the fact that most of QAnon was evangelical,
Speaker 4: I think we're really sort of fooling ourselves that that
Speaker 4: problem doesn't exist in the United States right now.
Speaker 2: Well, Denver, it was really great to have you. Thank
Speaker 2: you for that discussion. It was really it was really important.
Speaker 2: Now we're going to bring in our friend and colleague
Speaker 2: and producer Adam Davidson to sort of discuss this issue
Speaker 2: a little bit more.
Speaker 3: Hey, guys, can I ask, like, if this was all
Speaker 3: happening in a developing country with a weak state that
Speaker 3: you were covering for the CIA, that you were responsible
Speaker 3: for learning about, how would you describe, like write a
Speaker 3: cable or something. How would you describe what's going on
Speaker 3: in the US right now?
Speaker 2: Well, I think the first thing we would do if
Speaker 2: this is a similar situation in another countries, I think
Speaker 2: Denver would be exactly the kind of person we would
Speaker 2: be going after to be a source for us. So,
Speaker 2: for example, this January sixth committee looking at what happened
Speaker 2: on January sixth, you know, lots of politicians, lots of experts,
Speaker 2: lots of people coming in to talk about what they saw,
Speaker 2: but they brought in Denver Riggleman as an expert to
Speaker 2: look at the data, right, to look at everyone's phone,
Speaker 2: so look at all the computers, look at the connections,
Speaker 2: and look at the analysis of the group and who's
Speaker 2: connected to who and type of thing. His actually would
Speaker 2: be the perfect person for us to have as a
Speaker 2: spy in there to understand what's happening. So rather than
Speaker 2: sort of the pontificating of the politicians who are running
Speaker 2: the show, you'd want to know what's happening behind the
Speaker 2: scenes and where the data leads.
Speaker 3: It feels like a fairly crude bunch of like this
Speaker 3: is not like wow, that's a sophisticated group of people
Speaker 3: that Denver uncovered.
Speaker 2: Well, the issue with this conspiracy is it's pretty clear
Speaker 2: what's going on. It's an effort to deflect from other issues, right,
Speaker 2: and so one political party wants to damage another political
Speaker 2: party by using information and throwing ugly stuff out there
Speaker 2: and claiming that the other political party supports this. It
Speaker 2: deflects from there, either from their own problems or it
Speaker 2: is looking to smear the other side. Look over here,
Speaker 2: look at this ugly thing. Keep looking at this, keep
Speaker 2: looking at this, while the real issue of what's happening
Speaker 2: is over here on the other side.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but Bananda, your question about who the lowest character is,
Speaker 1: I just want to jump in and say, Rudy Giuliani
Speaker 1: for me, takes the case if you're going to run
Speaker 1: with a follow on conspiracy. Theory to this, which may
Speaker 1: actually be real, is Russian efforts and there are several
Speaker 1: Russian intelligence officers who were working closely with Rudy Giuliani
Speaker 1: to uncover this, which is something that is ignored completely.
Speaker 1: And the Russian connection to Rudy Giuliani, I think is
Speaker 1: something as an intelligence officer, both John and I would
Speaker 1: like to have people look into a little more closely.
Speaker 2: Boy, can you imagine being a Foreign Intience officer and
Speaker 2: having Rudy Giuliani, and.
Speaker 1: To control Rudy Giuliani, I would feel sorry for those
Speaker 1: Russian guys.
Speaker 3: I'll tell you that he's not a great advertisement for
Speaker 3: spying for the Russians. Well, guys, I found this incredibly interesting.
Speaker 3: I also found it super depressing. So can we have
Speaker 3: like a silly fun one next time?
Speaker 2: Thank you all, and we'll see you next time on
Speaker 2: Mission and Plausible.
Speaker 5: Mission Implausible is produced by Adam Davidson, Jerry O'shay, John Seipher,
Speaker 5: and Jonathan Stern. The associate producer is Rachel Harner. Mission
Speaker 5: Implausible is a production of Honorable, Mention and Abominable Pictures
Speaker 5: for iHeartMedia