Speaker 1: I just can't escape the thought that you've spent voluntarily
Speaker 1: decades of your life fighting some of the most hate
Speaker 1: filled violent groups on the face of the earth, ISIS
Speaker 1: and al Qaeda, and yet you're getting death threats from
Speaker 1: supposedly patriotic Americans. It just boggles the fucking mind.
Speaker 2: Okay, want to be patriots that are driven by wanna
Speaker 2: be dictators.
Speaker 3: I'm John Ceipher and I'm Jerry o'she I served in
Speaker 3: the CIA's Clandestine Service for twenty eight years, living undercover
Speaker 3: all around the.
Speaker 1: World, and in my thirty three years with the CIA,
Speaker 1: I served in Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East.
Speaker 3: Although we don't usually look at it this way, we
Speaker 3: created conspiracies.
Speaker 1: In our operations. We got people to believe things that
Speaker 1: weren't true.
Speaker 3: Now we're investigating the conspiracy theories we see in the
Speaker 3: news almost every day.
Speaker 1: Will break them down for you to determine whether they
Speaker 1: could be real or whether we're being manipulated.
Speaker 3: Welcome to Mission Implausible. Hunter Biden was found guilty by
Speaker 3: Delaware jury for gun charges lately, and we've done a
Speaker 3: couple episodes on Hunter Biden's laptop, and I was hoping
Speaker 3: perhaps we could get away from the issue, but the
Speaker 3: verdict and the news has spun up again. The issue
Speaker 3: related to Jerry and I and a bunch of former
Speaker 3: intelligence friends who signed a letter in the lead up
Speaker 3: the twenty twenty election warning about the laptop issue coming
Speaker 3: out right before the election might have been in October
Speaker 3: surprise involving Russian intelligence, and so of course is now
Speaker 3: back in the news. The New York Post has written
Speaker 3: about it, and Stevid Miller and a number of others
Speaker 3: are Fox News are commenting saying the Hunter Biden gun
Speaker 3: charges are quote a giant misdirection, a fig leaf to
Speaker 3: cover up the real climbs of Joe Biden, and a
Speaker 3: New York Post has written another story about us, saying
Speaker 3: that x Intel officers stand by their smear even after
Speaker 3: the FBI has confirmed the device's authenticity, of course, which
Speaker 3: had nothing to do with what we said in a letter.
Speaker 4: I'm trying to imagine the meeting where they're like, all right, guys,
Speaker 4: we've got a big problem. The president's obviously the leader
Speaker 4: of a massive criminal enterprise. We don't want people to
Speaker 4: know about that. I got an idea, Let's get his
Speaker 4: son convicted of a crime. And have a massive spotlight
Speaker 4: on his sun and his crimes, because that's the best
Speaker 4: way to hide bigger crimes, Like just how would that
Speaker 4: possibly be the conclusion to that meeting. But then there's
Speaker 4: the U News, which we care about a lot.
Speaker 3: Well, I don't even care that much about that, to
Speaker 3: be honest with you, either, because it's just a deflection
Speaker 3: scam game for partisan purposes, and they use our names
Speaker 3: because it helps them make their case.
Speaker 4: Because we've talked about this on the show before. But
Speaker 4: just remind us, like you were two of fifty one
Speaker 4: former intelligence officers who wrote a letter right before the
Speaker 4: twenty twenty election. Suddenly it was out that there was
Speaker 4: this laptop, and.
Speaker 1: The misdirection comes from what we said and then what
Speaker 1: they claim we said in the letter. The letter simply
Speaker 1: says be careful. We know that Russian intelligence officers are involved,
Speaker 1: named who they are. We named Andre Derkos who was involved.
Speaker 1: We talked to Lef Parnas, he was involved in going
Speaker 1: after information on Hunter Biden and on the laptop. And
Speaker 1: we know that Giuliani had it a year earlier, he
Speaker 1: had in April nineteen, but he waited just before the
Speaker 1: election to put this out with all these grand, wild
Speaker 1: accusations and claims, none of which have been proven to
Speaker 1: be true yet, and so all we did is just
Speaker 1: be careful. This is what the Russians do, and Giuliani
Speaker 1: was working with Russians, and we've seen the FBI has
Speaker 1: arrested this guy Smirnov, who was also involved in this
Speaker 1: whole hunter Biden and Broglio. So the issue isn't really
Speaker 1: whether it the laptop, and there's several of them, but
Speaker 1: which is authentic. It's just whether it's part of a
Speaker 1: malign influence campaign. That's really the issue, and to be careful.
Speaker 3: In the New York Post article, Leon Panetta, the former
Speaker 3: Secretary of Defense, said, I signed that letter for one reason,
Speaker 3: which was to make the American people aware that the
Speaker 3: Russians deliberately were engaged in this information campaign in the
Speaker 3: United States and trying to impact on our ability to
Speaker 3: have free and fair election.
Speaker 4: We happen to know that leon Panetta, like that was
Speaker 4: the case study where they took They did take real
Speaker 4: emails from leon panetto But if you actually read Mollor
Speaker 4: report and Molor indictments, we know the names and the
Speaker 4: units of the Russian military that did these actions, and
Speaker 4: so as I read your letter, you're simply saying this
Speaker 4: is not neutral information.
Speaker 1: We strongly suspect a foreign government is trying to manipulate
Speaker 1: with this, and somebody who's the word disinformation that we're
Speaker 1: disinformation never shows up in the letter. I mean disinformation
Speaker 1: means people are telling you things that are simply are
Speaker 1: not true. And there's also just malign influence where they're
Speaker 1: telling you things that have been curated, things that have
Speaker 1: been slightly altered, things taken out of context. They can
Speaker 1: still be like authentic or true, but not correct. A
Speaker 1: good way of putting this across is if you write
Speaker 1: to somebody I'd kill for a beer right now, and
Speaker 1: what they put out is you say I kill, And
Speaker 1: so did I say I kill? And the answer is yes.
Speaker 3: But that's part of the game, right. They know what
Speaker 3: they're doing. This is all deflection, Like they're claiming that
Speaker 3: this somehow impacted on the election, but well, lots of
Speaker 3: stuff impact on the election, and those people who complain
Speaker 3: that we impact on election, we're trying to impact on
Speaker 3: the election for their own purposes. And here's exactly what
Speaker 3: the letter said. One part of it, we want to
Speaker 3: emphasize that we do not know if the emails provided
Speaker 3: to the New York Posts by President Trump's personal attorney,
Speaker 3: Rudy Giuliani are genuine or not, and that we do
Speaker 3: not have evidence of Russian involvement, just that our experience
Speaker 3: makes us deeply suspicious that the Russian government played a
Speaker 3: significant role in this case. If we are right, this
Speaker 3: is Russia trying to influence how Americans vote in this election.
Speaker 3: And we believe strongly that Americans need to be aware
Speaker 3: of this.
Speaker 4: And do you stand by that assessment today?
Speaker 3: Yes, and evidence has shown that it actually was happening.
Speaker 3: Rudy Giuliani was running around Ukraine talking to Russian malign actors.
Speaker 3: They know that the smear is out there, and there's
Speaker 3: a lot of people who they just want to believe
Speaker 3: somehow the deep state was involved. In fact, today, as
Speaker 3: we're talking, Andy Biggs, a Republican representative from Arizona, put
Speaker 3: a bill in Congress to revoke the security clearances of
Speaker 3: the fifty one who signed the letter. Jerry and I
Speaker 3: don't even have security because all the fifty one, all
Speaker 3: of them were retired. This is sort of a silly game,
Speaker 3: but it's trying to keep it in the public consciousness.
Speaker 1: So this is this is where you know, the hyperpartisan journalism.
Speaker 1: It's not even really journalism. John and I somebody from
Speaker 1: Fox News reached out and said, do you now want
Speaker 1: to apologize now that the laptop is shown to be authentic.
Speaker 1: The answer is complicated, but there is no the laptop.
Speaker 1: The FBI apparently, when you know, in the court case
Speaker 1: where Hunter Biden was just found guilty and they didn't
Speaker 1: take the laptop that Juliani had, that hard drive had
Speaker 1: been shared and altered and changed, and we don't really
Speaker 1: understand where it's been. What the FBI used was a
Speaker 1: different version of it that it got initially, so they
Speaker 1: didn't actually need his hard drive. Plus you don't really
Speaker 1: need the hard drive anyway. He wrote in his book,
Speaker 1: I was high and I applied for a gun.
Speaker 3: So I mean, when you go back to the laptop issue,
Speaker 3: we did an episode with Denver Riggleman, a former Republican
Speaker 3: congressman who worked for the January sixth Committee who now
Speaker 3: works for Hunter Biden, and he is the only one
Speaker 3: who has seen all the versions of these various hard
Speaker 3: drives and laptops and gone through all of it. And
Speaker 3: he talked about it on our podcast saying essentially, yes,
Speaker 3: the stuff has been manipulated. It's been in so many
Speaker 3: hands it's impossible to know where things are. That doesn't
Speaker 3: mean that there's not a lot of actual things in
Speaker 3: there that make Hunter Biden look like a scumbag. And
Speaker 3: of course that has nothing to do with what our
Speaker 3: letter was about.
Speaker 4: And our Love Parnis episodes really just lay it out.
Speaker 4: I mean, Love Partners was central to this whole actual conspiracy, and.
Speaker 3: He was with Rudy Giuliani in Ukraine as they talked
Speaker 3: about this issue.
Speaker 1: I did want to touch on prosecutetorial discretion. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think Hunter Biden is guilty these charges. It's pretty
Speaker 1: clear to me was. But the question is, really would
Speaker 1: he have been how many other people would he have
Speaker 1: been prosecuted were he not Hunter Biden? And you could
Speaker 1: ask the same would Trump have been prosecuted on all
Speaker 1: these various things were he not Donald Trump? And prosecutorial discussion,
Speaker 1: I think is a whole different kettle of fish. But
Speaker 1: it makes a big difference whether you're like a nobody,
Speaker 1: I mean, who gives a shit about Hunter Biden?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: I mean, nobody's voting for him or whether you're the
Speaker 1: president former president the United States, and you're being charged
Speaker 1: with manipulating the information around whether or not you should
Speaker 1: be president and hiding it illegally. There was a Supreme
Speaker 1: Court case that I actually know about, Wait versus the
Speaker 1: United States. There was a guy who refused to register
Speaker 1: for the draft and Adam and John I graduated high
Speaker 1: school in seventy five, so we didn't have to register
Speaker 1: for the draft, but everybody else after us did.
Speaker 3: I was seventy nine. I did have to register.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so they've prosecuted apparently just a couple of dozen people,
Speaker 1: despite the fact that millions of people have not registered
Speaker 1: for the draft, and the Supreme Court ruled that if
Speaker 1: you broke the law, it doesn't really matter whether they
Speaker 1: didn't go after other people. So, I mean, Hunter Biden
Speaker 1: really can't argue that, well, lots of other people have
Speaker 1: done this and you didn't come after me and nort
Speaker 1: can Donald Trump.
Speaker 3: Let's take a break, we'll be right back.
Speaker 1: And we're back.
Speaker 4: So you know, we do this show about conspiracies. We're
Speaker 4: always talking about conspiracies, and there are a group of
Speaker 4: people who are actively trying to place you two at
Speaker 4: the center of a conspiracy, because what they're saying is
Speaker 4: that there's this deep state, whatever that is.
Speaker 3: I was there's money involved this d thing.
Speaker 1: To be clear, when I signed the letter, I had
Speaker 1: no idea that this is going to like this whole
Speaker 1: kerfuffle would take off. And I don't really mind so
Speaker 1: much if people are willing to talk about it in
Speaker 1: a factual way what we actually said in sparking a contract.
Speaker 1: But what I do mind are the death threats and
Speaker 1: sort of the violence.
Speaker 4: Have you had death threats?
Speaker 1: We've had. There's been death threats, yeah.
Speaker 3: More against some of the other guys.
Speaker 1: So, according to Philip Bump, who is a Washington Post
Speaker 1: columnist has looked at us pretty closely, the FBI case
Speaker 1: really didn't revolve around whether or not the version that
Speaker 1: the FBI has of the Hunter Biden laptops. There were
Speaker 1: three of them. It came out of his iCloud account.
Speaker 1: It came out of his book, and apparently the FBI
Speaker 1: had got an early version of the hard drive from
Speaker 1: the store, and then later the guy that the repair
Speaker 1: man handed it to Rudy Giuliani, and then it passed
Speaker 1: through numerous numerous hands until it ended up in the
Speaker 1: Washington Post, so that one can't be used simply because
Speaker 1: of chain of custody. Nobody really understands what it is.
Speaker 1: So the FBI did not use the hard drive that
Speaker 1: the New York Post and Fox News is talking about,
Speaker 1: using a different hard drive.
Speaker 3: Essentially, what Philip Bump says in his article in others
Speaker 3: is there's a lot of stuff in the laptop hard
Speaker 3: drives whatever that smears Hunter Biden, and we're fine with that.
Speaker 3: But there's nothing that associates with so far that we're
Speaker 3: aware of with President Biden. And that's what they're trying.
Speaker 3: That's what these guys are trying to get. They're trying
Speaker 3: to get something that hurts the president and the lead
Speaker 3: up to the election they've been trying to push for
Speaker 3: the last several years. Biden crime family, Biden crime family,
Speaker 3: the worst crimes ever. Are going to impeach him. Like
Speaker 3: Biden has been in the Senate for like fifty years.
Speaker 3: He's been thought of as like a radically boring guy
Speaker 3: who just took the train to work all the time
Speaker 3: and didn't have enough money, you know, like make money
Speaker 3: like a lot of other senators did. And somehow they
Speaker 3: decided Okay, well, we're gonna get him on his massive crime
Speaker 3: He's a massive crime boss. Like, come on, you guys
Speaker 3: could have come up with something better than that. You
Speaker 3: could have gone through the stuff he's done for the
Speaker 3: last fifty years laws he passed and attack those. But
Speaker 3: instead they just it's almost like they made it up.
Speaker 3: Let's just say he's a big crime b and then
Speaker 3: we'll just keep putting it out there until somebody believes
Speaker 3: it and there's nothing that shows up. I mean, you
Speaker 3: think they would have found it by now.
Speaker 1: Jared Kushner's father was a convicted felon, and I don't
Speaker 1: think it's fair to like throw that in Kushner's face.
Speaker 4: I do think I may be the world's leading expert
Speaker 4: outside of actual participants in the Trump Azerbaijan deal, which
Speaker 4: you know, I wrote an article about it in Time,
Speaker 4: Yes in Quneiform, even though Azerbaijan is far outside of
Speaker 4: the Mesopotamia region where kine form was popular. But it's
Speaker 4: a highly corrupt I mean, it's not even I don't
Speaker 4: even think I have to say allegedly because Trump's own
Speaker 4: lawyer said everything I wrote was true. It was a
Speaker 4: money laundering operation for Iranian Revolutionary Guard and in that case,
Speaker 4: Ivanka Trump was the lead executive on the deal within
Speaker 4: the Trump organization, So in that case she happens to
Speaker 4: be his daughter, but it is appropriate to convey the
Speaker 4: fact that Ivanka was an active participant in an actual
Speaker 4: international criminal operation. We also know that the Manhattan DA
Speaker 4: this is years ago before Trump went down the Golden
Speaker 4: staircase and declared his run for presidency, that everyone in
Speaker 4: the Manhattan Day's Office below the DA Cyrus fance was
Speaker 4: all convinced that they had a case against Ivanka and
Speaker 4: Don Junior for a criminal operation. But for reasons that
Speaker 4: are highly controversial, the DA Cyrus fans chose not to
Speaker 4: prosecute them at the last minute. So I do think
Speaker 4: sometimes there are actual crime families, and you know they
Speaker 4: are crime families because you see them doing things like
Speaker 4: committing crimes and doing it in conjunction with each other,
Speaker 4: and there's like evidence and even dare I say prooved,
Speaker 4: So just to point out what crime families actually look like, So.
Speaker 1: Let's bring in our colleague and unindicted co conspirator, Doug Wise,
Speaker 1: who also signed the famous Hunter Biden laptop letter.
Speaker 3: Today's guest Doug Wise is a former colleague and good
Speaker 3: friend of both Jerry and I. Doug had a career
Speaker 3: in Army special operations, to include time in Vietnam after
Speaker 3: graduating from West Point and then joining the CIA in
Speaker 3: nineteen eighty seven, and in fact, his last job in
Speaker 3: the federal government was he was a deputy director of
Speaker 3: the Defense Intelligence Agency. Doug was a senior officer in CIA,
Speaker 3: worked on lots of war zones, and so it's great
Speaker 3: to have him on.
Speaker 1: Doug sort of smoke up you. So you're sort of
Speaker 1: a hero of mine. You saved my ass in Afghanistan
Speaker 1: when I first showed up in the Hindu cush up
Speaker 1: in the side of bad and I didn't know which
Speaker 1: way was up, and you sort of took me by
Speaker 1: the lapels and off we went into the mountains together
Speaker 1: for a while. And I want to talk maybe a
Speaker 1: little bit about why you were unable to catch Bin Latten.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, one of the reason why I didn't catch him
Speaker 2: is he wasn't where I was. It wasn't for lack
Speaker 2: of trying, you know, as anybody in the ciact business
Speaker 2: will tell you. While we all sat there and said,
Speaker 2: what an ex straordinary accomplishment by our targeting and operational colleagues,
Speaker 2: both at headquarters and in the field, and certainly the
Speaker 2: courage of our Navy seals. We also have to sit
Speaker 2: and give some credit to the President of the United States,
Speaker 2: who you know, his central focus was domestic policy. But
Speaker 2: I think the intelligence case for beIN laden being Abadabad
Speaker 2: was not exactly one hundred percent. So you know that
Speaker 2: was a courageous decision because you can imagine what the
Speaker 2: impact would have been if it had failed. There'd have
Speaker 2: been no been laden, if there'd have been dead Navy seals,
Speaker 2: captured Navy seals, dead Pakistani citizens, innocent lives lost. But anyway,
Speaker 2: Jerry's right. I mean he and I were out there
Speaker 2: in the middle of nowhere trying to figure out there's
Speaker 2: been laden there. He could have walked twelve kilometers from
Speaker 2: Jalalabad into Pakistan as opposed to being up Hindu kush
Speaker 2: were there eighteen thousand foot mountains, no oxygen, a lot
Speaker 2: of sheep, and sharing a cave with a grimy ole shepherd.
Speaker 2: I think being in a villa in Pakistan south of
Speaker 2: Tora Bora was probably the more likely thing, But anyway,
Speaker 2: we didn't know and so guys like Jerry and I
Speaker 2: and others were all over Afghanistan really trying to look.
Speaker 1: So talking about conspiracy theories. So there was a form
Speaker 1: President of the United States. He did retweet a conspiracy
Speaker 1: theory that Bin Laden was captured and that the Navy
Speaker 1: seals who were involved in this were killed. First of all,
Speaker 1: why would a conspiracy theory like that resonate? And that's
Speaker 1: spin that out? What would that actually take for people
Speaker 1: who don't understand how the US government works? What would
Speaker 1: it actually take. What sort of craziness would have to
Speaker 1: be involved to actually make something like that work. I mean,
Speaker 1: people have to disassociate their critical thinking skills to even
Speaker 1: believe that sort of shit.
Speaker 2: And it plays into the overall psychoses in America all
Speaker 2: the way from the time of our founding, which is
Speaker 2: being skeptical of central government. So I think the unnamed
Speaker 2: individual didn't really believe it. I would he possibly could,
Speaker 2: given a state of his mental health. But the reality
Speaker 2: is he had another purpose. He was talking to a
Speaker 2: very specific audience. But the problem is that this is emotional.
Speaker 2: Not that everybody who believes conspiracy theories is mentally ill,
Speaker 2: but there is a psychosis that is at play. There
Speaker 2: is a disassociation from reality, there is a chaos in
Speaker 2: their lives, and conspiracy theories allows them to provide an explanation,
Speaker 2: a rationalization.
Speaker 3: So there's a difference between the people who believe the
Speaker 3: conspiracy theories and the people who use them for personal gain.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean a cynical exploitation to those people who
Speaker 2: believe and are not violently disposed. It's clear that there
Speaker 2: are those that exploit those community, those good people who
Speaker 2: actually believe in those conspiracies, and they're either one in
Speaker 2: the way that you described, or two they want to
Speaker 2: exploit money out of them. They want to use this
Speaker 2: for financial game.
Speaker 1: So the tweet that I talked about the core is
Speaker 1: that a group of Navy seals was murdered by the
Speaker 1: government and all their families are now clowed into not talking,
Speaker 1: and now we have a tax on like the Joe
Speaker 1: Chiefs and used to be. You know, a third rail
Speaker 1: is that you couldn't attack institutions like the military. These
Speaker 1: are people who risk their lives to keep us all
Speaker 1: safe and free, and yet that seems to be going
Speaker 1: for the first time I can ever remember. By by
Speaker 1: the wayside, why do you think that is doug, that
Speaker 1: it's now okay to attack the US military.
Speaker 2: I just think it's just as it plays well. Right
Speaker 2: the government, you can't trust them, right. It's a very
Speaker 2: easy message to disseminate. It's readily consumed by a broad
Speaker 2: number of people, and so it is now turned into
Speaker 2: a political tool. You know, you hate the government, the
Speaker 2: government scrun you vote for me.
Speaker 1: Which takes us into Hunter Biden's laptop. Many of the
Speaker 1: people who's who signed on to that letter and people
Speaker 1: criticizing haven't really read it. But these are people who
Speaker 1: risked their lives over and over again to keep our
Speaker 1: democracy safe. And the subtle text to that was really
Speaker 1: that these people have sold out.
Speaker 2: But I got death threats, like many people did who
Speaker 2: were signatory to the Hunter Biden laptop letter. Kind of
Speaker 2: a funny story is that I'm getting them through dms
Speaker 2: on Twitter, and as soon as they would come in,
Speaker 2: I would delete them just so my wife didn't see them.
Speaker 2: And the one thing that I found unusual was I
Speaker 2: never got one on email. But what happened was one
Speaker 2: of them squeaked through and my wife said, hey, did
Speaker 2: you see that? Horrible because all these death threats aren't. Hey,
Speaker 2: I disagree with you, right, and we agree to disagree.
Speaker 2: These are exactly what they're going to do to you
Speaker 2: and what they're going to do to your family and
Speaker 2: all that stuff. I mean, all these pusilanimous fucks out
Speaker 2: there on the far right sending these threats anonymously. So
Speaker 2: what happened is Sindy came to me and said, oh,
Speaker 2: did you see that death threat? That was horror? And
Speaker 2: I go, yeah, baby, I've been calling all of those
Speaker 2: out of all of our communications channels so you wouldn't
Speaker 2: see them. But it's weird we didn't get me an email.
Speaker 2: She goes, I've been calling them out.
Speaker 1: Of the easy.
Speaker 2: Because I didn't want you to see them. But I
Speaker 2: think it's all rooted in the cynicism toward federal government,
Speaker 2: which Trump exploited very well by calling us all members
Speaker 2: of the deep state. Deep state. I mean that just
Speaker 2: plays into that psychosis, that the deep rooted psychological belief
Speaker 2: that government is untrustworthy and dangerous.
Speaker 1: So you've risked your life many times in exchange you
Speaker 1: get nothing right, You get the feel that you've the
Speaker 1: sense that you've served your country, that you've served a
Speaker 1: higher mission, you've helped democracy, and yet at the end
Speaker 1: of this at the end of thirty five years, supposedly
Speaker 1: this letter implies that you took what money or influence.
Speaker 1: It's like none of us are rich, and yet we
Speaker 1: have a billionaire talent everybody else that we somehow are
Speaker 1: deficient in our patriotism and our willingness to serve.
Speaker 2: I share your feelings of betrayal. You know, after all
Speaker 2: that all of us on this oh yeah, done, and
Speaker 2: now to be treated like we're being treated. I suppose
Speaker 2: I look at it and say, the individuals who are
Speaker 2: actioning their hatred perhaps maybe don't know any better, and
Speaker 2: they're being egged on and manipulated by Trump and by
Speaker 2: the ultra right wing of the Republican Party. Maybe that's
Speaker 2: my way of rationalizing that these thousand plus people out
Speaker 2: there that threaten my life and my wife's life, and
Speaker 2: they just don't know what they're doing. They're just being
Speaker 2: cynically manipulated. Some of the conspiraciy actually are bringing up
Speaker 2: Italy Gate was from a CIA officer Doug also worked
Speaker 2: for knows. Another person who's in the same boat is
Speaker 2: Mike Flynn. So it's not just nutjobs. Well, they may
Speaker 2: be nut jobs. It's just those people came from inside
Speaker 2: the US government and worked in serious and hard places
Speaker 2: and nonetheless are spouting these type of things. Is because
Speaker 2: you know, both these people done. Is there anything that
Speaker 2: you saw as you worked with these people that would
Speaker 2: have suggested to you that they might go down this road? Well,
Speaker 2: one no, and the other yes. I suspect that one
Speaker 2: of the officers who was our CIA collegue, probably within
Speaker 2: the limitations and the constructs and the behavioral norms that
Speaker 2: existed inside CIA, I think that individual probably conformed to
Speaker 2: those kind of norms, and to a degree, I think
Speaker 2: the second guy, the retired three star, did as well.
Speaker 2: I think the individual that we see today is the
Speaker 2: individual that always existed. But I think the professional bounds
Speaker 2: of norm and expectations and regulatory guided behavior can constrain
Speaker 2: that individual. And so, you know, back to Jerry's point,
Speaker 2: arrived at this time in American history where one can't
Speaker 2: without existential damage politically, economically, personally, socially reach across the aisle.
Speaker 3: Let's take a break.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back and Rebecca, So, in any demographic,
Speaker 1: there's always going to be a scoundrel or two, right,
Speaker 1: you know, an a sociopath, and that's certainly the same
Speaker 1: for agency officers. But for both these people that we're discussing,
Speaker 1: they've been on the inside. So the agency officer in question,
Speaker 1: he understands we don't do stuff and couldn't do stuff
Speaker 1: like hijack nonexistent Italian satellites to steal off the internet,
Speaker 1: you know, voting talies from machines that aren't connected to
Speaker 1: the internet. Right, this is so wild and why we
Speaker 1: would do this. So he knows that's not true.
Speaker 2: So for our colleague, is he a believer or is
Speaker 2: he an exploiter?
Speaker 1: Good question?
Speaker 2: In the worst case, all the above, Right, He's unlike
Speaker 2: the unnamed tweeter who clearly is cynically exploiting, knowingly exploiting,
Speaker 2: and is not a believer.
Speaker 1: You know. One of the accusations made by the unknown
Speaker 1: tweeter that we're talking about here is that we cynically
Speaker 1: and with mail us a forethought intended to impact on
Speaker 1: the election, which of course was farthest find in my mind,
Speaker 1: except impact on the election in a positive way that
Speaker 1: people should like have the facts before they vote.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean to to start to me, I think
Speaker 2: all fifty one have probably different motivations, but anyway, the
Speaker 2: context for me was the disinformation campaign by Progosions internet
Speaker 2: research agency, which he admits to clearly confirmed, clearly identified
Speaker 2: as having an impact on the election. That was my
Speaker 2: context for taking a look at Rudy Giuliani's possession of
Speaker 2: this alleged laptop contents people, whether they pay attention to
Speaker 2: this issue or not, and so everything we knew about
Speaker 2: the Hunter Bye laptop came from Rudy Giuliani. So when
Speaker 2: Michael Morrell reached out to me and said, would you
Speaker 2: be willing to sign this letter? I like you, Jerry.
Speaker 2: I looked at it very carefully. I wouldn't want to
Speaker 2: sign up to something that was declarative at all. My
Speaker 2: objective in signing the letter was to add in my
Speaker 2: credibility to a message that said, let's not rush to judgment,
Speaker 2: Let's take a deep breath, let's wait for the facts.
Speaker 2: I mean, this letter was written by a highly experienced
Speaker 2: senior analyst, former presidential daily briefer, Michael Morrell wrote an
Speaker 2: excellent letter, and so for me it was a cautionary letter.
Speaker 2: It was to caution anyone who paid attention that there
Speaker 2: may be more given the context of Russian meddling in
Speaker 2: our election in twenty and fifty in twenty sixteen, none
Speaker 2: of us had ever seen the contents of the laptop,
Speaker 2: and so for me it was not to sit and say,
Speaker 2: all of this laptop is bs. None of it's true,
Speaker 2: The entire laptop is a creation of the Russian Internet
Speaker 2: Research Agency or some element of the Russian government. It
Speaker 2: was to just say, take a deep breath, and let's
Speaker 2: just let the facts come out, which they ultimately did. So. Ultimately,
Speaker 2: I think we all had to agree with the forensic
Speaker 2: analysis that the contents of the laptop turned out to
Speaker 2: be reasonably true. I wasn't worried at all with the
Speaker 2: letter and the fact that the laptop turned out to
Speaker 2: be forensically true, because at that point I said, now
Speaker 2: the Russians have a treasure trove of data and information
Speaker 2: that's been validated allegedly by the forensic analysts, and they
Speaker 2: could exploit that to our disadvantage and to the advantage
Speaker 2: of Russian foreign policy goals.
Speaker 3: The Russians used things as benign as Colin Kaepernick, an
Speaker 3: NFL football player, kneeling for the national anthem, or using
Speaker 3: vaccines against US, anything that creates some sort of tension
Speaker 3: or tribalism or anger in our system can be used
Speaker 3: against us. And so whether the laptop contents were true
Speaker 3: or not, it's something that the Russians could take advantage
Speaker 3: of and would.
Speaker 1: Say that the laptop is true or isn't true. That's
Speaker 1: sort of like, what are you talking about? What parts
Speaker 1: of it are true? I think it's also clear that
Speaker 1: parts of it were manipulated, which doesn't mean it was changed.
Speaker 1: I mean, we do know that before Julia Giuliani had it,
Speaker 1: different files were made on the inside, that parts of
Speaker 1: it were moved around, and who had access to it.
Speaker 1: But the letter made it very clear that we didn't
Speaker 1: talk about disinformation. I don't think anybody was even claiming it.
Speaker 1: The whole thing was completely made up. My line influence
Speaker 1: it was, yeah, it was about whether it was being
Speaker 1: used to influence us unnecessarily.
Speaker 2: You know, the chain of evidence was quite loosey goosey,
Speaker 2: to say the least. As recently as just a few
Speaker 2: days ago, we had several members of Congress that are
Speaker 2: objecting to a body of very experienced advisors for the
Speaker 2: Department of Homeland Security and demanding that they be terminated
Speaker 2: from that advisory role at literally at the cabinet level.
Speaker 2: Why because they signed this letter. And you know that,
Speaker 2: all of a sudden, the irony here is not lost
Speaker 2: on me that the intent of the Russian malign influence
Speaker 2: is now being attributed to our colleagues.
Speaker 3: So we're still fighting over the whether this is true
Speaker 3: or not and what our role was and how it
Speaker 3: plays in politics. And what we should have done is
Speaker 3: we should have jumped in and said absolutely, I influenced
Speaker 3: the election I wanted for the Democrats. And now I
Speaker 3: am a political pundit and you need to come to
Speaker 3: me if you want to win elections in the future,
Speaker 3: and I will throw elections for whoever wants to win
Speaker 3: if you pay me large sums of money.
Speaker 2: And you can imagine that the dudes in Moscow are
Speaker 2: sitting there going, Jesus, I can't believe these guys are
Speaker 2: beating us.
Speaker 1: I certain visit a barrel be the face right, yeah.
Speaker 2: And now all of a sudden you have nations that
Speaker 2: are emergent democratic states, you know, looking at maybe America,
Speaker 2: isn't that perfect ideal? And then you have mature democracies
Speaker 2: sitting there going if America can't do this. Maybe it's
Speaker 2: too hard to do this, and Putin's right there to
Speaker 2: sit and say, yeah, you're right.
Speaker 1: But the alternative don't trust your government even though you
Speaker 1: elected them. The alternative to that is an authoritarian government
Speaker 1: that you have no control over. There is a growing
Speaker 1: force on the far right, and not even always on
Speaker 1: the far right, red Caesarism that the United States, in
Speaker 1: order to save itself, needs to have less of a monarch,
Speaker 1: but more than a tyrant right. We need a strong
Speaker 1: man to commit and reassert all those values. A red
Speaker 1: Caesar is what we need. And that's just more government.
Speaker 1: That's like bigger government. If you're distrustful a government. It
Speaker 1: just seems to me logically and foolishly that you should
Speaker 1: push for more democracy, right, more people voting, not less.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, I agree.
Speaker 1: So, Doug, what's been the fallout from you personally for
Speaker 1: signing that letter.
Speaker 2: Well, the fallout for me personally was quite direct. One
Speaker 2: thousand plus death threats of various kinds from various corners,
Speaker 2: all anonymous. Of course, you know, even if the name
Speaker 2: sounds legitimate, it turns out it's not. But still these
Speaker 2: are death threats, these aren't I don't agree with you.
Speaker 2: Threats based on your belief set me you deserve to
Speaker 2: die and your family deserves to die. That's just not
Speaker 2: right in America today, but it is very common in
Speaker 2: America today. And I laid the origins of that literally
Speaker 2: at the feet of Donald J. Trump and the Trump
Speaker 2: Inner Circle in the cynical manipulation of American people that
Speaker 2: are ripe for this kind of messaging, and he gives
Speaker 2: them the comfort to action. He hates what they hate,
Speaker 2: and he gives them permission to action that hatred, where
Speaker 2: in years past, you know, wouldn't be able to do it.
Speaker 3: I would love to see some of these people actually
Speaker 3: come after you, someone who's been in combat, who's actually
Speaker 3: been wounded in combat.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, was in a state where I'd like to
Speaker 2: show up in my driveway.
Speaker 1: That would be interesting, I thought. I just can't escape
Speaker 1: the thought that you've spent voluntarily decades of your life,
Speaker 1: decades of your life fighting some of the most hate
Speaker 1: filled violent groups on the face of the earth ISIS
Speaker 1: and al Qaeda, and yet you're getting death threats from
Speaker 1: supposedly patriotic Americans. It just boggles the fucking mind.
Speaker 2: Yeah, want to be patriots that are driven by want
Speaker 2: to be dictators.
Speaker 3: But Mike Flynn's in the same boat. He was on
Speaker 3: that side of the aisle, and now he's pushing these
Speaker 3: kind of violent things.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's crazy.
Speaker 3: So, Doug, knowing what you know now, in a similar situation,
Speaker 3: would you sign the letter again?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I would, because the letter is just
Speaker 2: as valid as it was in twenty twenty. Let's wait
Speaker 2: for the facts, let's not rush to judgment, let's not
Speaker 2: overreact when we can react, which is what used to
Speaker 2: be a core value in America, which appears is no
Speaker 2: longer a core value. But the reality is I would
Speaker 2: sign that letter again.
Speaker 1: Mark Milly said, paraphrasing him, but I mean I thought
Speaker 1: it was really powerful. He said that, you know, that
Speaker 1: loyalty to that pledge to the Constitution that we had
Speaker 1: against all enemies foreign and domestic, that opposed the ideals
Speaker 1: in the Constitution, that doesn't end when you retire.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is. It's true for all of us on
Speaker 2: this podcast to public service.
Speaker 1: Doug, thank you very much, it's been great having It's
Speaker 1: an honor, good friend, and thanks for coming on.
Speaker 2: Well, it's a singular honor for me. It's good to
Speaker 2: see all you guys.
Speaker 3: Well, let's hope to god we never have to talk
Speaker 3: about Hunter Biden's laptop again. But if more information comes
Speaker 3: out or it's used in the upcoming election, which is likely,
Speaker 3: we may have to come back to this issue again.
Speaker 3: But for the time being, thank you and tune in
Speaker 3: next time for Mission Implausible.
Speaker 5: Mission Implausible is produced by Adam Davidson, Jerry O'shay, John Seipher,
Speaker 5: and Jonathan Sterner.
Speaker 1: The associate producer is Rachel Harner.
Speaker 5: Mission Implausible is a production of honorable mention and abominable
Speaker 5: pictures for iHeartMedia.