Speaker 1: John, I want to give one example of what like
Speaker 1: a honey tramp would look like, and that's something that
Speaker 1: happened to me, and pretty so.
Speaker 2: Much further here. But do you know what you're going
Speaker 2: to say, Like, yeah, exactly what.
Speaker 1: I'm going to say.
Speaker 2: Yes, Yeah, I'm John Cipher and I'm Jerry o'she. I
Speaker 2: 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 whether they
Speaker 1: could be real or whether we're being manipulated.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Mission Implausible, Jerry. As usual, Adam has boguarded
Speaker 2: us and left us. But I think if we talk
Speaker 2: about enough interesting things, since his wife is a big listener,
Speaker 2: maybe she'll get to them.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I was worried about Adam. I thought he might
Speaker 1: have been involved in the big explosion at the cheese
Speaker 1: factory in Vermont, because I heard there was debris all
Speaker 1: over the place. I heard there was debris all over
Speaker 1: the place.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, yeah, I get it. Okay, So since it's
Speaker 2: you and I, let's see. So, is there anything that
Speaker 2: comes to mind about recently? It was in the press
Speaker 2: about conspiracy theories.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think it's a conspiracy that there's so many
Speaker 1: conspiracies that we can't even remember them or keep them straight.
Speaker 1: But I'll tell you one one really stood out for
Speaker 1: me for being both crazy and awful at the same time.
Speaker 1: And I don't know if people have heard about this
Speaker 1: is it? But it ran in the post and it's
Speaker 1: something called med beds, and it ties into a whole
Speaker 1: bunch of other conspiracies. And basically, if I got this right,
Speaker 1: the US military or the US government has this alien technology,
Speaker 1: and with it they've developed beds when our quote military grade,
Speaker 1: we can put our soul in or advanced senior politicians
Speaker 1: and it will grow back limbs, and it will cure cancer,
Speaker 1: and it will help whatever ails you and including aging.
Speaker 1: But because this technology is so sensitive, it's not available
Speaker 1: to the average people except and there's some terrible scammers
Speaker 1: out there. That are pushing this conspiracy theory and telling
Speaker 1: people that they have the civilian version of this state somehow,
Speaker 1: either it smuggled it out or figured it out. And
Speaker 1: they're charging hundreds or thousands of dollars to these desperate
Speaker 1: people with cancer or backaches or broken bones, broken spirits,
Speaker 1: and they're laying them basically in these beds with like
Speaker 1: lights over them and the bedshakes, and the FDA said,
Speaker 1: there's nothing to this. They're basically preying on people who
Speaker 1: believe in conspiracies, who believe in these alien conspiracies, and
Speaker 1: I don't know how some of these people sleep at night.
Speaker 1: Isn't an innocent crise?
Speaker 2: Very typical? You just look at the down side of this, now,
Speaker 2: I see so true. Apparently these scientists are reverse engineering
Speaker 2: alien science to secure diseases, and liberal billionaires have been
Speaker 2: keeping it from the public, is what my understanding.
Speaker 1: If I read that's exactly right. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Don't you see this though, as a good example of
Speaker 2: bipartisanship among billionaires, because you got Elon Musk and Peter
Speaker 2: Thiel and Harlan Crowe and David Sex, all the guys
Speaker 2: on the right, along with the typical left wing billionaires
Speaker 2: obviously working together to keep themselves healthy and keep it
Speaker 2: from the public. And if Adam's wife is listening, can
Speaker 2: pass this on to Edam, maybe he can ask us
Speaker 2: questions about it for future episodes. So the three that
Speaker 2: I just noticed it today when I'm rage scrolling through
Speaker 2: Twitter is one the QAnon and pizzagate folks are saying
Speaker 2: that the CIA is behind all of the memes about
Speaker 2: Vance and Trump being weird. Separately, Tucker Carlson has said
Speaker 2: that Bitcoin and the Signal messaging app are CIA honeytraps. First,
Speaker 2: one of the qan on piece of Gate folks talk
Speaker 2: about how CIA has brainwashed people. So brainwashing is a
Speaker 2: thing that's often tied with intelligence and the history, and
Speaker 2: there is a long and an interesting history there. The
Speaker 2: Tucker Carlson talking about honey traps, that's also an intelligence term,
Speaker 2: and I think it's something we can talk about. And
Speaker 2: then James Comer, the right wing congressman, said that Tim
Speaker 2: Waltz is a Communist party of China's sleeper agent.
Speaker 1: I want to maybe just go to honey traps real quick,
Speaker 1: because I think that's something that people think CIA does
Speaker 1: and we don't because it generally doesn't work, and you've
Speaker 1: gone what it is. Yeah, So a honeytrap is basically
Speaker 1: you entrap someone in a sexual encounter, right, especially if
Speaker 1: it's something that they don't want to come out. If
Speaker 1: somebody's gay and they travel to some authority on country
Speaker 1: and they have a tryst with another man or another woman,
Speaker 1: and then the intelligence service comes to you and says,
Speaker 1: will you're basically blackmailed with that? Or will tell your
Speaker 1: wife about this? And generally those things don't work, or
Speaker 1: they work briefly, the.
Speaker 2: Long history of the Soviets and Russians and others right
Speaker 2: in the cities of doing that. So you show up there,
Speaker 2: you're working there, someone shows up in your hotel room
Speaker 2: at night or whatever, or you start a relationship with
Speaker 2: someone when but it turns out the intelligence service has
Speaker 2: been choreographing it, and then they come to you and say, oh,
Speaker 2: you're pregnant, you don't want this to come out.
Speaker 1: You need to work with us.
Speaker 2: Some US Marines got caught up in this. If you
Speaker 2: remember in the nineteen eighties.
Speaker 1: It's right, loan Tree, that's exactly right.
Speaker 2: Our embassies abroad are protected by marine security guards. That's
Speaker 2: a part of the Marines that they're trained as security
Speaker 2: guards and they make sure that the classified material and
Speaker 2: embassies is protected. So they are there twenty four hours
Speaker 2: a day guarding the area where our classified material is.
Speaker 2: And it's always been a target because they're young, oftentimes
Speaker 2: young men also and a women now that a foreign service,
Speaker 2: the Russians for example, could use to try to compromise
Speaker 2: and get in. So there was a story in the
Speaker 2: nineteen eighties where a young Native American named Clayton Loan
Speaker 2: Tree was an embassy guard marine security guard at Moscow.
Speaker 2: But essentially he fell in love with the young Russian
Speaker 2: and as part of the process, this young Russian woman
Speaker 2: introduced him to her uncle Sasha. And uncle Sasha, as
Speaker 2: you can imagine, was a KGB officer who told him
Speaker 2: that he's going to get all kinds of trouble and
Speaker 2: if you want to stay with her, you need to
Speaker 2: provide us information from the embassy. What do the security
Speaker 2: guards do, when are they there? How can we And
Speaker 2: there was a time after Clayton low Tree moved to
Speaker 2: his next post in Vienna, he went to the CIA
Speaker 2: station chief and told him what had happened. For a
Speaker 2: period of time, this was a big issue. We thought
Speaker 2: that the Russians had actually gotten into the embassy, had
Speaker 2: broken in, gotten into safes and that type of thing,
Speaker 2: all helped by Clayton Loan Tree. I don't think they
Speaker 2: had gotten that far, but Clayton low Tree certainly was
Speaker 2: helping the Russians there. And that was a classic honey trap.
Speaker 2: So this Holmo's name is Violetta and he fell in
Speaker 2: love with it, and the Russians used that against it.
Speaker 1: It was only sort of a honey trip because it
Speaker 1: wasn't just a sexual encounter. He actually fell in love, right,
Speaker 1: That was something that was more long. But John, you
Speaker 1: were in Indonesia for a while, and I want to
Speaker 1: ask you this story's true. I've never actually asked you
Speaker 1: this in all these years. So I'd always heard this
Speaker 1: story that Suharto from fifty years ago, the dictator.
Speaker 2: Of actually was Sukarno Sokarna.
Speaker 1: That's right. I mixed it up that Sukarno the strong
Speaker 1: man of Indonesia, that he went to Moscow and he's
Speaker 1: this old guy and he ends up in bed with
Speaker 1: two beautiful young women frolicking, right, And when he went
Speaker 1: back to Jakarta, I went back to Indonesia. The Russians
Speaker 1: approached him and this handhanded attempt, they pulled out like
Speaker 1: all these photographs of him in bed with these women,
Speaker 1: and he went through them, and the Russians are thinking, ah,
Speaker 1: we've got him now, and he's like going through and
Speaker 1: he says, looks at them and says, yeah, I'll have
Speaker 1: two more of these and give me like this one.
Speaker 1: And he says, can you blow this one up for me?
Speaker 1: I want to show my friends, And yeah, that didn't work.
Speaker 1: Is that true?
Speaker 2: That is very true. Sarno was the first leader of
Speaker 2: Indonesia after World War Two, after the Japanese were in
Speaker 2: the dutchy s Indies and Indonesia became independent, and he
Speaker 2: was famously ladies man. In fact, I have a poster
Speaker 2: here behind me of Shukarna with Marilyn Monroe and he's
Speaker 2: staring longingly at her. And he took great pride in
Speaker 2: the fact that he was quite the ladies man, and
Speaker 2: the Russians tried to blackmail him and it didn't work
Speaker 2: in this.
Speaker 1: So epic fail on the honey trap front. But I
Speaker 1: do have a story, so I don't want to say
Speaker 1: the country, but on the honey trap that I know
Speaker 1: of a story. I know of an account where a
Speaker 1: US businessman goes to this country and it's a really
Speaker 1: repressive authoritarian government and he meets this young woman and
Speaker 1: they spend the night together and the next day the
Speaker 1: police show up at his door and they like show
Speaker 1: a picture of her, and they say, do you know her,
Speaker 1: and he's like, no, I member as a conceder for
Speaker 1: he says, we've got pictures of you with her and
Speaker 1: the guy you know. As he's talking to the FBI
Speaker 1: and CIA afterwards, he says, at that moment, I thought, okay,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to allow myself to be blackmailed. I'm
Speaker 1: just going to have to go home and tell my
Speaker 1: wife that this happened, Like, not going to blackmail me.
Speaker 1: And then they had another picture and they showed her dead,
Speaker 1: like laying at the bottom of stairs with blood coming
Speaker 1: out of her head, and they said, we're going to
Speaker 1: charge you with murder. She was just found dead, and
Speaker 1: we've got CCTV footage of her going up into the
Speaker 1: hotel to your room, coming out, and then she was
Speaker 1: found dead directly afterwards, and we're going to charge you
Speaker 1: with murder unless you let us look at your computer
Speaker 1: for an hour, right, and then we'll let you leave
Speaker 1: the country. And that's where he snapped. And he was
Speaker 1: a businessman doing there was some like some really big
Speaker 1: business deals that they wanted to have a competitive advantage over,
Speaker 1: and he did it. And he was so frightened of
Speaker 1: this take on honeytrap. And when he got out, to
Speaker 1: his credit, he did go to the FBI and they
Speaker 1: warned him that if he did this that they would
Speaker 1: charge him with murder and they would put his name
Speaker 1: in the newspaper and all the rest of this. And
Speaker 1: so this was a take on the honey trick that
Speaker 1: I had and had, but it's pretty frightening.
Speaker 2: There's a number of Cold War journalists, American journalists who
Speaker 2: were trapped in honey traps in Russia in places like that.
Speaker 2: Some that went came back home and informed the FBI
Speaker 2: of what happened, and some who didn't and worked for
Speaker 2: the other side. Okay, I'm a bit old. I'm going
Speaker 2: to need to go to the bathroom, so let's take
Speaker 2: a quick break and we'll be back shortly. All right,
Speaker 2: welcome back. But you started by saying with honey traps,
Speaker 2: and we didn't really go into it as we don't
Speaker 2: do them, And by we meaning the CIA, and I
Speaker 2: think a lot of people will be surprised to hear that,
Speaker 2: and I think that's it's in fact very true. Sex
Speaker 2: is something you could use to either blackmail someone or
Speaker 2: get them in a compromising position that you could take
Speaker 2: advantage of. So it'd be surprising why wouldn't we use it?
Speaker 2: And it is indeed true that over the years we've
Speaker 2: learned maybe in the early years of the OSSCI.
Speaker 1: Yeah, fifty years ago, the fifties or something like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but it's stopped doing it for a number is
Speaker 2: because number one is if you are put in a
Speaker 2: compromising position and if you are blackmailed, you're going to
Speaker 2: try to get out of that. And so what we
Speaker 2: want when we recruit a source is we want someone
Speaker 2: who is motivated to work for us and stay working
Speaker 2: for us and not turn on us. Whereas if you
Speaker 2: put someone in that kind of situation, yeah, you may
Speaker 2: get them to do something for you in the short term,
Speaker 2: but they're always going to be distrusting you and hating
Speaker 2: you and looking for a reason.
Speaker 1: To get out of it.
Speaker 2: And of course, just morally in the United States and
Speaker 2: our laws, it's something that you don't do, but others
Speaker 2: do it. But when we start with the term honeytrap,
Speaker 2: we're thinking of this thing of using sex, But there
Speaker 2: are you know, I can think of law enforcement things
Speaker 2: where we use traps to catch criminals and things like that,
Speaker 2: like we tell some criminal that he's won an award
Speaker 2: or that he's invited to some party, and that person
Speaker 2: can show up and then be arrested that type of thing.
Speaker 2: So there's a way of using deception to trap someone
Speaker 2: into doing something you want. But in fact, the security
Speaker 2: services out the CIA doesn't use sex as a trap.
Speaker 1: I want to maybe just touch on the positive evolution
Speaker 1: of the agency. So when we came in the early eighties,
Speaker 1: early to mid eighties, being gay and so of the
Speaker 1: CIA was they wouldn't hire you.
Speaker 2: And in fact, when you went through the security thing,
Speaker 2: they would ask you you're going through polygraph that's a
Speaker 2: regular question, have you had a homosexual relationship?
Speaker 1: And yet we did hire a number of closeted gays,
Speaker 1: including one individual I won't say his name. We all
Speaker 1: know who is. Who is like one of the most
Speaker 1: senior guys in the agency. Back when we lived in
Speaker 1: tear of him, a guy who's involved in Russian things,
Speaker 1: and the agency changed that thankfully, because that simply led
Speaker 1: to people being more black mailable by not allowing that.
Speaker 1: So it's a really positive thing.
Speaker 2: That individual was a very powerful individual in the Clindestin
Speaker 2: Services oversaw all of our activities in Moscow and when
Speaker 2: I went there it was famously he told all of us.
Speaker 2: Number one, you're not allowed to date Russians or anybody.
Speaker 2: Number two, there will be no dancing. He wouldn't allowed
Speaker 2: dancing because he says dancing leads to sex, and sex
Speaker 2: leads the potential to be blackmail.
Speaker 1: That's not like a Baptist. But the agency has evolved.
Speaker 1: We have a gay Alliance, Rainbow Alliance inside of the
Speaker 1: agency and it's I think it's something that's really beneficial
Speaker 1: because it makes us less mailable. And the key is
Speaker 1: you have to be open about it.
Speaker 2: So as you're hired going through this process, you have
Speaker 2: to be clear that you're almost going to say that
Speaker 2: it's not something that you're hiding and therefore another service
Speaker 2: could potentially use against that you're hiding this. We know
Speaker 2: what we're going to use it against you.
Speaker 1: And we know of certain cases where people who come
Speaker 1: in as very strict like Mormons or Baptists and their
Speaker 1: closeted days, and it was years later that they finally
Speaker 1: came out. John, I want to give one example of
Speaker 1: what like a honey tramp would look like. And that's
Speaker 1: something that happened to me, And it was in one
Speaker 1: of the stands, right, very much controlled by the.
Speaker 2: Careful before you go much further here, but do you
Speaker 2: know what you're going to say? Like, yeah, exactly what
Speaker 2: I'm going to say, just warning you.
Speaker 1: So I show up at a hotel in one of
Speaker 1: the stands, and as I'm checking.
Speaker 2: In or tell people what the stands are.
Speaker 1: Oh, the stands is like Kazakhstan, turkmenis Stan, it's the
Speaker 1: former Soviet Republic.
Speaker 2: Well, we're supposed to be diplomats and people who support
Speaker 2: the United States foreign policy and we call a group
Speaker 2: of countries the stands because we can't distinguish.
Speaker 1: But this was in one of those countries and right
Speaker 1: where the Russians really held sway. And I show up
Speaker 1: and I check into this nice hotel or at nice
Speaker 1: for that country, and in the lobby are like seven
Speaker 1: or eight clearly Russian women. They're very beautiful and as
Speaker 1: I'm checking in, you know, you look around, and this
Speaker 1: one woman catches my eye and as she does, where
Speaker 1: our eyes touched, and she like raises her eyebrows. I
Speaker 1: raise my eyebrows, like hi, and I go up to
Speaker 1: my room, and sure enough, an hour later, there's a
Speaker 1: knock in the door, and there she is, and she says,
Speaker 1: in perfect English, because she's clearly done this before, she says,
Speaker 1: excuse me. She says, I think we had a moment
Speaker 1: in the lobby and I was just sort of wondering
Speaker 1: if I could come in and maybe we could talk.
Speaker 1: And I said, you know what, I would actually really
Speaker 1: like to sit and talk with you about what your
Speaker 1: life is like. She was clearly Russian, living in this
Speaker 1: country where the Russians are no longer the dominant ethnic
Speaker 1: group anymore. I said, but I understand the pressure's on you,
Speaker 1: and I really don't think that's appropriate. And I said, look,
Speaker 1: I just want to let you know that I've got
Speaker 1: three daughters and they're they're like twelve, ten and eight,
Speaker 1: I think they were at the time, and I love
Speaker 1: my daughters, and I know you're the daughter of somebody else,
Speaker 1: and I want to respect you, and I understand what's
Speaker 1: going on. But really, you know, as a father, I
Speaker 1: really don't think it's a good idea. And she like
Speaker 1: understood and said okay, and she left.
Speaker 2: Oh, I know, I can guess what happens next.
Speaker 1: An hour later, there's another knock on the door, and
Speaker 1: of course I thought, oh, it's going to be a
Speaker 1: dude now, because they're going to think, oh maybe, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what I was because I know the story is
Speaker 1: you say no to the guy and then somebody shows
Speaker 1: up an hour later with a goat. But that didn't happen.
Speaker 1: I opened the door and there she is, and she's
Speaker 1: got T shirts like you know, my daughter's size, and
Speaker 1: she says, if you don't want to talk, she says,
Speaker 1: would you like maybe to buy a T shirt? And
Speaker 1: it said like you know, Kazakhstan Land of a thousand
Speaker 1: Mountains or so whatever it was. And I said, you
Speaker 1: know what, yeah, I will, I'll buy three T shirts.
Speaker 1: And so I imagine what hippened is she went back
Speaker 1: and said, nah, he didn't go for it, and they
Speaker 1: like he said, but he said, he's got three daughters,
Speaker 1: like maybe he'll buy T shirts for his.
Speaker 2: Daughters if we can't. If we can't sit born them
Speaker 2: to be a spy. At least I can be a
Speaker 2: little cash off them. If you can't have sex with them,
Speaker 2: sell them a T shirt. And so my daughters for
Speaker 2: for a couple of years afterwards ran around with these
Speaker 2: Kazakh T shirts.
Speaker 1: And of course I told my wife like, this was
Speaker 1: sold to me by someone who wanted to have didn't
Speaker 1: want to, but it was willing to have, say for money,
Speaker 1: I say, I'm sure she didn't want to look at
Speaker 1: me for Christ's sake. So yeah, that was a That
Speaker 1: was my like one sort of memorable bump with a
Speaker 1: honey trip. How about you in Moscow?
Speaker 2: You must have hit like I said, was in Moscow
Speaker 2: when you serve there, they obviously have video and audio
Speaker 2: in your house and they watch you and they follow
Speaker 2: you everywhere you go, so they're very carefull. They have
Speaker 2: psychologists where you try to figure out what is this
Speaker 2: guy potentially going to fall for, Like if you're there
Speaker 2: visiting at a hotel, they just throw quickly, they throw
Speaker 2: the girl at you, then they throw the guy at you,
Speaker 2: and then they throw the goat at you, and they're
Speaker 2: all trying to make you so you broke the law.
Speaker 1: You did go it is, hey boy.
Speaker 2: Because that's one of the things they used to do
Speaker 2: that they get people like, Oh, you would go down
Speaker 2: or you'd pay for something, and they'd be go, oh,
Speaker 2: that's black marketeering you.
Speaker 1: This person's going to jail. Now.
Speaker 2: You need to work with so anything to try to
Speaker 2: put you in a bad position. But when you work there,
Speaker 2: they're trying to do that in a more sophisticated way,
Speaker 2: and so they're following you and they're trying to pick
Speaker 2: up what's the best way that would work against you.
Speaker 2: So I never had the straight girl thing like that,
Speaker 2: but I think I talked about in a previous episode
Speaker 2: about the women I met. They were then after meeting me,
Speaker 2: they would go and they would threaten their families and
Speaker 2: threaten them and say that they had to be me.
Speaker 2: The even report on me and that type of thing.
Speaker 1: Staying with the theme of the show, though these are
Speaker 1: not conspiracy theories, these are real conspiracies. They actually sit
Speaker 1: down and they have psychiatrists and they're maybe you should
Speaker 1: just touch on what it means to like have people
Speaker 1: with audio and video in your apartment, Like they're watching
Speaker 1: you sleep, They're they're watching you go to the toilet,
Speaker 1: they're watching your shower, they're listening to every sort of
Speaker 1: word and fart that you make. But there's a conspiracy
Speaker 1: they're hiring against us all the time.
Speaker 2: Well, my experience, my experiences is with Russia, but that's
Speaker 2: always been a key part. So the security service, intelligence
Speaker 2: services have always played a key role, that maybe the
Speaker 2: key role in that society. And in fact, it's never
Speaker 2: really going to turn around until they somehow destroy those
Speaker 2: security services because they're in charge of everything more important
Speaker 2: than the military. And even in the days before the
Speaker 2: Soviet Union, they had an Institute of Mosca Roka, which
Speaker 2: is essentially an institute of deception and hybrid warfare, and
Speaker 2: as we know from our previous episodes into talking about this,
Speaker 2: they're experts on deception and disinformation and agitation and all
Speaker 2: these type of things, and so they use them individually
Speaker 2: against people who visit. Their huge apparatus to control people
Speaker 2: who come to visit and try to recruit them as
Speaker 2: sources or to monitor them. Huge effort in trying to
Speaker 2: use disinformation and deception to make foreign countries not understand
Speaker 2: what they're trying to do, or to suborn individuals and
Speaker 2: other countries. What they call this firehood of falsehoods to
Speaker 2: push information out there, so you don't know what's real
Speaker 2: and it's not real or Russian citizen, they just constantly
Speaker 2: are flooded with this type of sort of false information.
Speaker 2: So eventually what you do is you just give up
Speaker 2: on politics. Since there's no way of knowing what's real
Speaker 2: and not real, you give up on it. And that
Speaker 2: helps the Kremlin stay in charge, just because they can
Speaker 2: put out their word and people are like, I have
Speaker 2: no way of knowing whether I'm being lied to or not,
Speaker 2: and there's no way to find out, So I just
Speaker 2: am going to move away from politics and let the
Speaker 2: leadership take care of that. They've been experts at that forever,
Speaker 2: both on the individual level of those of us who've
Speaker 2: lived there. They're around the world trying to go after people.
Speaker 2: We've seen them in fact involved in assassinations recently, and
Speaker 2: so this is something that's central to the way Russia
Speaker 2: does its policy domestically and abroad, and so they are
Speaker 2: very good at it.
Speaker 1: And of course everybody else is getting in the game.
Speaker 1: We've seen that just from the newspaper that the Iranians
Speaker 1: are now involved in stealing hacking into the Trump campaign,
Speaker 1: and I'm sure that they will as the Russians did
Speaker 1: in twenty sixteen and twenty twenty, arguably with Hunter Biden's laptop,
Speaker 1: not that the laptop was made up, but the way
Speaker 1: it was amplified and the charges that were made off
Speaker 1: of it, that the Raetians will probably be trying to
Speaker 1: do the same thing with the Trump campaign. I think
Speaker 1: they'll be interesting to see in October. What October surprises
Speaker 1: come out, pushed by either the Russians or the Iranians
Speaker 1: or whomever. It'll be really interesting. I think it's clear
Speaker 1: that's going to happen. Let's take a break, we'll be
Speaker 1: right back, and boom, we're back. It's funny because Iran
Speaker 1: and the Russians are our allies along with North Korea,
Speaker 1: and yet they've got divergent goals. I think basically on
Speaker 1: this coming election, where the Russians I think would like
Speaker 1: to see Trump win because they've always had a close
Speaker 1: relationship with him, and just ask his former advisors they could.
Speaker 1: McMasters just came out out and said, telling his wife
Speaker 1: that his book that's coming out, he says, the Russians
Speaker 1: have something on him. I don't understand why it is
Speaker 1: he just refuses to like say anything bad about them,
Speaker 1: even privately. And the Iranians I think would prefer to
Speaker 1: see Trump not win because I think that they're concerned
Speaker 1: about his hair trigger finger on the nuclear button, right if.
Speaker 2: You remember correctly Trump. When Trump was president, they killed
Speaker 2: a senior commander in Iraq. He was a going Solimani
Speaker 2: and that's really money in Iraq, and I think they're
Speaker 2: looking to get back at him for this. So if
Speaker 2: you're trying to like get in there and steal things,
Speaker 2: you essentially get what you can get. But the first
Speaker 2: thing to do is get that compromising or that material
Speaker 2: that you can weaponize in one fashion or another. So
Speaker 2: sometimes they don't have stuff on the person they want
Speaker 2: to go after, but they want to They try to
Speaker 2: use what they have, and.
Speaker 1: What they have is it's the grain of truth that
Speaker 1: they can build a conspiracy or a conspiracy theory around.
Speaker 1: But I do want to say, and I think this
Speaker 1: is important for the audience to understand that mind standing
Speaker 1: is in twenty sixteen that the Russians Cozy Bear and
Speaker 1: Fancy Bear, the two entities that were associated with Russian intelligence,
Speaker 1: that they both penetrated both the DNC the Democratic but
Speaker 1: also the Republicans as well, but they never used any
Speaker 1: of what they stole from the Republicans. They only used publicly.
Speaker 1: That is an exit. They may have used it, that's right.
Speaker 1: They may have black people who got me there, but
Speaker 1: that speaks volumes. They stole from both, but they only
Speaker 1: used it against the Democrats.
Speaker 2: Because once you have them, you can use it in
Speaker 2: a variety of ways. You could go to let's go
Speaker 2: back to the twenty sixteen things. So you could either
Speaker 2: use it because you at that case, of course, the
Speaker 2: intelligence commit community and the Senate report and everybody said
Speaker 2: they did this on purpose to help the Trump campaign
Speaker 2: because they hated Robie Clinton. But then also you might
Speaker 2: want to use that information just to create friction in
Speaker 2: chaos in the United States because these are your enemy
Speaker 2: and if they're fighting each other, they're not obviously focusing
Speaker 2: on you. Or you can use these things in another way,
Speaker 2: a subtle way, like, for example, yeah, if they use
Speaker 2: it against the Democrats publicly when President Trump was elected,
Speaker 2: they could say, hey, listen, we had stuff on you too,
Speaker 2: because of our good relationship, we didn't use that with
Speaker 2: you. You then have that person like oh, okay, I now
Speaker 2: know they have something on me, and I have to
Speaker 2: behave in my relationship with them so that they don't
Speaker 2: take advantage of this.
Speaker 1: But j let me ask you a question something I've
Speaker 1: never quite understood. Maria Bartona, I got the name wrong.
Speaker 1: The KGB calm with there by their old name is
Speaker 1: conspiring against the United States. So they're going to take
Speaker 1: a lot of resources, time, effort, and risk to take
Speaker 1: a sleeper agent to put them inside of the United States.
Speaker 1: And why would they take this young woman and put
Speaker 1: her up against and insert her into the NRA. But
Speaker 1: there was a Routina, Maria boutin Routina. There we go
Speaker 1: and she was She went into the NRA as a
Speaker 1: gun control as a Second Amendment advocate, but she also
Speaker 1: went in as a Russian citizen, where they do have
Speaker 1: gun control right. And so I never understood why as
Speaker 1: a conspiracy, why would the Russians target the NRA. Why
Speaker 1: would they want to have someone inside there. I've never
Speaker 1: understood that.
Speaker 2: You're assuming that was the attention from the beginning. So
Speaker 2: I think what they did is they had this woman.
Speaker 2: She they clearly had met where there she said, okay,
Speaker 2: I'm in an American university and I'm a student, I'm
Speaker 2: meeting all these people. She was meeting lots of politicians
Speaker 2: and others around power in Washington and sleeping with a
Speaker 2: number of them. And as she became friends that she
Speaker 2: had ended up having more relationships with Republicans. And I
Speaker 2: think they were bringing her to events and so I
Speaker 2: don't know if they planned to get her into the
Speaker 2: NRA or whether the people she was around brought her
Speaker 2: and got her into the NRA. And you know, is
Speaker 2: in a Todales officer Jerry. Once you have a source
Speaker 2: that has access to things, you're going to every time
Speaker 2: you meet her, you're going to be asking them what
Speaker 2: are you learning, what are you doing?
Speaker 1: Who are you meeting?
Speaker 2: And she goes through things. They probably were finding that, hey,
Speaker 2: this is actually interesting. The NRA is a place where
Speaker 2: a lot of right wing people are. They're very angry
Speaker 2: that this is an issue that causes friction in the
Speaker 2: United States, and so they were trying to use as
Speaker 2: best they can. I think they're just taking advantage of
Speaker 2: the access that they gained through this woman. But I
Speaker 2: suspect she was probably more It was more interesting to the Russians.
Speaker 2: The people she was in touch with than it was
Speaker 2: the NRA's institution would be my guess.
Speaker 1: Being inside the NRA and being trusted there gave her
Speaker 1: access to a number of high level Republican or.
Speaker 2: Should be invited to other events.
Speaker 1: Congressman, that's right, I think too. She had a back
Speaker 1: to the honey trip. She had a love interest as well.
Speaker 1: There was a CEO that she was certainly involved with.
Speaker 2: And some politicians and others. Yeah, she was sweeping with
Speaker 2: a number of people.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was also a way to set up a
Speaker 1: number of honey traps.
Speaker 2: I would think in intelligence terms, I would call her,
Speaker 2: instead of a honey trap, an access agent. So when
Speaker 2: we were overseas and we were working in a foreign
Speaker 2: country and we're trying to look at the community, the network,
Speaker 2: who's out there, who's important, who has influence, who can influence,
Speaker 2: you know, to get into that, it often if we
Speaker 2: can meet someone who is in that network, who can
Speaker 2: provide us feedback on what happening and who's there, so
Speaker 2: that we can figure out who are the people to
Speaker 2: go after. So Maria Bettina, there's this Russian woman, she's
Speaker 2: in Washington. She's very outgoing, She's meet a lot of
Speaker 2: people she's sleeping with a lot of people. She's in
Speaker 2: all of these events. That's useful to the Russian embassy. Okay,
Speaker 2: tell us who you're meeting, tell them who's out there,
Speaker 2: who are the and they can divert her and aim
Speaker 2: or in certain ways. Oh this person is very interesting,
Speaker 2: why you continue to meet that person? And if that
Speaker 2: person is someone's interesting enough to them, maybe she could
Speaker 2: introduce a Russian intelligence officer to one of those people,
Speaker 2: or she could get into that person's computer at their
Speaker 2: house while she's sleeping with them and pass that on
Speaker 2: too the Russians. And so what we call they call
Speaker 2: that an access agent. That's a person who is providing
Speaker 2: us general information about a network or a group of people,
Speaker 2: to provide us access to others who might be more important.
Speaker 2: So it's a first step on the chain up to
Speaker 2: where you want to get.
Speaker 1: And this is important too, getting back to stop the steal.
Speaker 1: So Buttina, who now is? I think she's in the
Speaker 1: Russian parliament, but according to the media that she was
Speaker 1: in a romantic relationship with Patrick Byrne, who.
Speaker 2: Was the CEO of Overstock A big report.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was a lot of donations to the Republican Party,
Speaker 1: and he was also at the center of the Stop
Speaker 1: the Steel movement to overthrow our election. It's only one.
Speaker 1: It's not a conspiracy theory. It's just a couple of points.
Speaker 1: Is she's a Russian sleeper agent with a influential donor
Speaker 1: to the Republican Party who is involved sitting in the
Speaker 1: Oval Office with Trump trying to figure out how to
Speaker 1: overthrow our elections. So I guess, if I'm Vladimir Putin,
Speaker 1: I've got a sleeper agent inside of the NRA. She
Speaker 1: moves to burn, she meets other Republican operatives, and now
Speaker 1: you've got a guy who she is like romantically involved
Speaker 1: with the bonds of Affection and so forth, with a
Speaker 1: guy who is sitting with the president talking about how
Speaker 1: to overthrow the election. For me, that's more than just
Speaker 1: a conspiracy theory. That is a counterintelligence issue.
Speaker 2: She was also a girlfriend of Paul Erickson was a
Speaker 2: big NRA.
Speaker 1: There you go. Yeah, but she got hers in the end, right,
Speaker 1: she's now a fit. I think she's got her own
Speaker 1: talk famous she has her own talk show.
Speaker 2: And he wouldn't get her on the podcast, and she said, yeah,
Speaker 2: And she's.
Speaker 1: In the Russian Parliament, I think, right, So, I think
Speaker 1: she did less than a year John and made her
Speaker 1: fame and fortune bick in Russia.
Speaker 2: She was found guilty and she was supposed to be
Speaker 2: that's like eighteen months in prison and obviously got out
Speaker 2: earlier than that was sent back.
Speaker 1: Arguably, yeah, I think she's definitely an excess agent, but
Speaker 1: she's also an access agent involved in honey tramps, and
Speaker 1: arguably those honey traps really worked.
Speaker 2: The Russians operate differently. If you're yeah, I think if
Speaker 2: we had an excess agent, we wouldn't try to get
Speaker 2: them to sleep with people were interested in. We'd probably
Speaker 2: try to get them just the friend that I'll go
Speaker 2: to dinner and report to us.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: Questions are like, sure, go sleep with those guys, tell
Speaker 2: us their secrets, and we'll.
Speaker 1: Find a way to use it against them, right right,
Speaker 1: right right.
Speaker 2: And as Paul Erickson, as you recall, he was also
Speaker 2: convicted of fraud and thrown in prison and then was
Speaker 2: pardoned by Donald Trump.
Speaker 1: And I think the Senate Intelligence Oversight Committee later came
Speaker 1: out with a report that she was trying to arrange
Speaker 1: a link between the Trump campaign and a bad channel
Speaker 1: to the unclear how successful she was.
Speaker 2: That's just the one we know about.
Speaker 1: I think the rest of the other sleeper agents, like
Speaker 1: the ones that the Americans were based on, were much
Speaker 1: less successful as far as we know. I mean, I
Speaker 1: wasn't read into the case.
Speaker 2: So there's been a war in Ukraine. Europeans and Americans
Speaker 2: are kicking out Russian intelligence officers and diplomats out of embassies.
Speaker 2: These are the people who normally run spy cases like
Speaker 2: we did, and we worked in embassies abroad. So what
Speaker 2: you do is these deep cover people who are pretending
Speaker 2: to be Americans or South Americans or Europeans that are
Speaker 2: actually Russian intelligence officers. Right, they're still here under granted
Speaker 2: theyge So if there's an important spy, say there's a
Speaker 2: spy working in the White House that they're trying to
Speaker 2: meet secretly, and the Russian intelligence officers and the embassy
Speaker 2: are kicked out. These people are the strategic reserve who
Speaker 2: were there to handle those really sensitive cases, and like
Speaker 2: during wartime, they bury weapons that be prepared to dig
Speaker 2: up during wartime, or they handle the most sensitive cases.
Speaker 2: That so because the FBI conceive he doesn't know who
Speaker 2: they are, they're not following them.
Speaker 1: So there's different level. So Patina was in the US
Speaker 1: as a Russian. I think she was here was just
Speaker 1: a student, right, she was a student. And then the
Speaker 1: Russian who you know, back to the twenty sixteen election,
Speaker 1: the Russian who met with Don Junior and Jared Kushner
Speaker 1: saying that initially saying it was the meeting was about
Speaker 1: at Trump Tower, the meeting that was initially about orphans,
Speaker 1: and it turned out no, she was saying that we've
Speaker 1: stolen democratic.
Speaker 2: They they had information on Hillary, on.
Speaker 1: Hillary's emails, I think that was it. And she said
Speaker 1: I'm from the Russian government. We're here to commit a
Speaker 1: criminal act to help the Trump campaign. And they said hooray,
Speaker 1: and did not go to the FBI. That was arguably
Speaker 1: another sort of honey tramp, right, because even the fact
Speaker 1: that they didn't go to the FBI makes them culpable.
Speaker 1: I'm surprised that they weren't charged with a crime. Kushner
Speaker 1: in them. If the Russians came to US and made
Speaker 1: us a deal saying hey, we've broken US law and
Speaker 1: we want to rest American elections and so forth, if
Speaker 1: you know of a crime like that, your honor bound
Speaker 1: to report us if you know of a murder, your
Speaker 1: honor bound to go to authorities, and they chose not today.
Speaker 2: As I recall from the Muller Report and the Senate report,
Speaker 2: essentially they did not bring chargers against Don Junior because
Speaker 2: they just thought he was too dumb and didn't.
Speaker 1: Really It's true.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she said, listen, we could charge this guy, but
Speaker 2: I don't think he even understands what he's brought up in.
Speaker 2: And I think dealing with presidents and presidential elections, our
Speaker 2: law enforcement system, if we're going to be really careful
Speaker 2: about those things, and so I think per in retrospect,
Speaker 2: maybe they were too careful.
Speaker 1: And I have to say, because this is important, there's
Speaker 1: a difference here between what happened in twenty sixteen what
Speaker 1: we talked about, the Trump Towers and Russia. If you're
Speaker 1: out there, get me the emails. Trump actually asking publicly
Speaker 1: for Russian intelligence to break the law, and he already
Speaker 1: knew that they had and he needed this to get
Speaker 1: out of the grab by the pussy saying. It came
Speaker 1: out the next day. But what the Iranians have taken Apparently,
Speaker 1: according to the press from the Trump campaign, Politico, the
Speaker 1: Washington Posts in New York Times. They have not gone
Speaker 1: to print with that material. They've not used it against
Speaker 1: the Trump can pain, at least not yet, and the
Speaker 1: Hairs campaign hasn't used it either. They certainly have that
Speaker 1: material is available to them from inside the Trump campaign
Speaker 1: that they can use, and they haven't done it. So
Speaker 1: I think that's a good thing, and I think it's
Speaker 1: hopefully show some growth. But it's very different than how
Speaker 1: when she was on the other foot, Trump wanted and
Speaker 1: exploited and used it against the Democrats, and as yet
Speaker 1: the Democrats haven't used that against me.
Speaker 2: And my understanding is they hacked into Roger Stone's emails.
Speaker 1: That's right there, the man with a Nixon tattoo on
Speaker 1: his back.
Speaker 2: Like many of our discussions, we ended up going in
Speaker 2: ways I didn't expect, and we ended up talking about
Speaker 2: the honey traps.
Speaker 1: I think the only way we're going to get Adam
Speaker 1: back on this podcast is using a honey trap. Right.
Speaker 2: So, But so that's all for today's episode of Mission Plausible.
Speaker 2: Join us next time.
Speaker 1: Mission Implausible is produced by Adam Davidson, Jerry O'shay, John Cipher,
Speaker 1: and Jonathan Sterner. The associate producer is Rachel Harry Mission
Speaker 1: Implausible is a production of honorable mention and abominable pictures
Speaker 1: for iHeart Podcasts.