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July 21, 2015 - Art Bell
02:37:23
Art Bell MITD - Charles Faddis Biological Warfare
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Time Text
So, I'm going to play a little bit of it.
So, I'm going to play a little bit of it.
♪♪♪ From the high desert in the great American Southwest,
which tonight is peaceful, wonderful, calm, no storms around.
Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, wherever you may be in God's universe.
I'm Art Bell, and this is Midnight in the Desert.
It's great to be here.
This is night number two, so I know that, you know, a lot of you are new, and you're going to have to excuse me for this, but I'm going to roll over a few of the basics because, man, they're joining in droves.
It's unbelievable.
Thank you all so much.
And thank Telos for great sound.
Joe Talbot, great guy right here in Pahrump.
I want to thank Keith Rowland, my webmaster of... You know, Keith, one of these years you're going to have to tell me how many years it's been.
I don't even know.
Dr. J is my producer.
He's just a great guy.
Lines people up for me, like tonight, for example.
We're going to talk to a spy.
Charles Faddis.
We're going to talk to a spy.
C-I-A.
Well, retired, but spy.
I want to thank all of you.
I want to thank the Belgab website.
For so much support the stream guys.
Oh Stream guys.
I'll thank you and you know Maybe you throw in another month Las Vegas dotnet They get the internet here And we you know they get it from here to there so forth and our new one more Pete Peter Eberhardt I want to thank you too.
He's our sales guy up in Anchorage and And then I want to roll over the rules.
There are only two of them, really.
No bad language.
We don't need bad language.
And only one call per show.
That's it.
Those are the rules.
No bad language, one call per show.
And now, the way to call, I know it's tiresome if you already know how to call, but really the cool way to do it, if you've got an Apple product, or you've got an Android or whatever, if you put Skype on it, You can call us, and you'll sound like a million dollars.
Or you can call from your computer on Skype.
You'll sound like a million dollars IF you have a headset mic.
So please use one if calling on a computer.
So, put Skype on your phone, or your tablet, whatever.
If it's a tablet, then you have to click into the mic part of the tablet.
We have two ways for you to get in.
North America calls at MITD 51.
That's Midnight in the Desert 51.
M-I-T-D.
All you need is the initials.
51.
And then, you know, set it up like you're going to call me, but you don't really have to.
And then it'll be in your list and you can call at any time.
And then overseas, that means everybody outside North America calls MITD 55, MITD 5-5.
Important things to go over.
When you do call on a phone and you're using Skype, boy, does it sound good.
Really, really good.
Okay.
Charles will be with us at the bottom of the hour.
I've got a couple things I want to go over.
I've got the drone blues.
I mean, I've got drone blues tonight.
I have a DJI drone.
I got one of the early ones.
That's wonderful.
It does exactly what it's supposed to do, takes high-definition video and everything, and is just awesome.
And being a ham operator, of course, I toyed around with it a little bit for additional range.
But I've got the drone blues tonight.
Now, not as much as this leader of the Khorasan group has in Syria.
They flew a drone silently above his head, and I'm sure he never knew what hit him.
That's one of our big drones.
And so he's gone.
He was an important leader, Corazon, in Syria.
So, bye-bye.
I don't think you ever hear them.
I don't think you ever hear the drone.
I don't think you ever hear the missile that comes from it.
You just cease to exist.
Alright, I've still got the drone blues.
And I have the drone blues because all day today CNN was showing some guy, oh man, he put a semi-automatic handgun on a drone and he was firing it and the drone of course was GPS controlled so it took the recoil, went right back to where it was, fired another shot, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.
We're going to get new laws.
Already the FAA is descending on us drone people.
But I mean, now the guy with a gun, sheesh.
So I've really got the drone blues, but as I mentioned, not as much as our friend from Coruscant group.
He's really got the blues.
So drones are a thing.
What else to say about it?
They're a thing.
I'm just afraid that they're going to make laws about it.
We've got laws for everything, right?
So, we're going to have severe drone laws, I'm sure of it.
Briefly, mayors around the world, mayors that is, declared Tuesday to be climate change day, sort of.
I mean, they said climate change is real.
What happened is the Vatican invited all of these mayors To sort of proclaim that climate change is real, man-made, and we have got to do something about it.
Then there's Donald Trump.
This is actually what I want to talk to you about.
I'm not, you know, I'm not a real political person, but I can't stop myself.
Early on, let me just level with you, early on when the Donald began what he's doing, I called my 2B producer at the time, and I said, Dr. Jay, you have got to get me the Donald.
I really want the Donald.
Not necessarily because I'm going to vote for him, but because he's a really interesting guy!
And really rich!
That's what he says, right?
I'm really rich!
Ten billion, he's rich.
But anyway, he's a very interesting guy.
I think that, I really do, I think he's interesting.
In fact, I may have a couple people, if I have time, comment on it here on the show.
He may well not be somebody I'm going to vote for, or, you never know, maybe I will, but, oh, God, it's incredible.
What's going on is just too incredible not to comment on.
Here's a copy of the ABC Washington Post poll.
This is unbelievable.
I mean, even after the gigantic shot leveled at McCain, even after that, listen to this, Trump leads the pack and not by a little.
Actually, after he took the shot at McCain and went up, Trump 24% Oh, man!
Next to him, Scott Walker, 13, followed by Jeb Bush, now only 12%.
Huckabee, 8.
Rubio, 7.
Paul, 6.
So... Holy Joseph, it's... Trump is leading everything!
I mean, he is just wiping the Republican Party out.
They can't seem to cover anything else.
He opens his mouth and...
All the cameras are there because they're sure he's going to say something crazy, and well, he will.
Now, there's a number of ways of looking at this, and I think it's a really important story.
Why?
Why is it an important story?
People are going, ah, Trump, come on, that's not important.
It is.
It is important.
Why?
Well, because, in my opinion, And you can either be with me on this or not, there's only one way to explain it.
Because he is a wild man, there's no question, a wild man.
Here's what I think.
For years and years and years, at every election that we all trudge through, there are candidates out there saying, we've got to take America back!
Right?
We've got to take America back!
And it never really amounts to much, no matter who we elect.
We pretty much get the same America, whether you vote Republican or Democrat.
Yeah, there's a little difference, but we pretty much get the same America, and people are fed up.
And then I don't mean just a little bit fed up, I mean really fed up.
So what accounts for Donald Trump's 24% being so far ahead of the What?
Scott Walker at 13 percent.
So, I mean, he's really out ahead now, even after the shot fired at Senator McCain.
In my opinion, the American people are very close to being so fed up, they're ready to burn it all down.
I really mean that.
I think they're ready to burn it all down.
I don't mean rioting.
God save us from something like that.
But, I mean, politically, burn it all down.
They're ready.
I mean, they're so fed up with people from the right, people from the left, and then new boss same as the old boss, right?
So they're fed up.
And I've never seen the American people this fed up.
It's the only thing that can account for Trump at 24%, for Trump at 24% after he goes after McCain.
No matter what you think about that, the fact that he is still rising in the polls, in my opinion, can only mean that people are ready to burn it all down.
That we are at some kind of... I don't know.
I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore and I'm going to vote for Donald!
So, I would love to interview the Donald, but of course now he's such big news that I don't know that I'm going to get that opportunity.
But if anybody knows the Donald, I would dearly love to talk to him.
I surely would.
I was asking back before he was even getting going.
I thought he was interesting.
So, yeah.
I think we're at a really important, interesting place right now in America.
And I don't think that we've ever been here before that I know about.
How about the rest of you?
Do you ever recall a moment like this?
Do you ever recall a time when Americans were so on the edge That they're ready to vote for somebody who has said the things that Donald has said.
Candidate Trump.
We've been talking about not allowing him into the debates.
How do you not allow somebody who leads the Republican PAC into the debates?
Answer, the other guys are afraid to talk to him.
They're afraid to debate him.
They're afraid of him.
Period.
I can't say that I blame them.
They've got good reason to fear the guy.
When anybody says anything about him, he comes back and just levels them, and seems to get away with it.
Now, again, that's all I can think of.
I would love to hear from you on the subject, so if you want to call on that subject, by all means, pick up the phone and call me.
In other words, I guess I want to know, do you think that I'm on the mark?
Do you think that accounts for it?
And if that doesn't account for that kind of leading the pack number, then what does account for it?
Just pure entertainment?
No, I have no idea.
No idea at all.
But I would like to hear from you.
So, if you have a comment on that, that we can get to before the bottom of the hour.
And I'll see you in the next one.
Bye.
This is the end of the video. Thank you for watching.
That man's voice is so intimidating.
I'm surprised I use it.
Midnight in the Desert spans the world. To call us from outside the U.S. and Canada only,
use Skype with a headset mic, if on a computer, and call MITD55. That's MITD55.
That man's voice is so intimidating. I'm surprised I use it.
It's hard to come on after that, but that's what I have to do.
All right.
Midnight in the Desert is underway, and we're going to try a few calls and see what people think.
Let's see.
Where should I go?
All right.
How about Michael?
Hello, Michael on Skype.
Hey!
It's midnight and you're on.
Go ahead.
How are you, Mike?
This is Michael.
Yes, Michael, I've got that.
I can barely hear you.
It's getting better.
I hear you just fine.
I actually met Donald Trump a couple years ago.
Was he good to you?
We were in Trump Tower and he had a press conference.
My wife and I were walking out the door and saw an entourage of cars there.
I realize you know what they're fixing to walk him right through here so we kind of held around in that corridor and waited for him to come out and here here enough here come all the cameras and we stood there I was standing by counter and he stopped right next to the counter.
When was it?
How long ago?
I'm sorry how long ago?
It was two years ago.
And there was some discussion at that point while we were in New York about him running for president, and then we're also talking about Alec Baldwin running for president.
But at that point, I looked at Donald Trump in the face and I said, are you gonna run?
And he laughed and he said, God, no.
Did you get that on tape?
Yes, it is on tape.
My wife was filming.
Really?
Oh man, you should have had that ready to play.
Oh, it's on a video camera from our trip, but I will have it.
I'll tell you what, get it off the camera, put it on audio, and call me back with that.
I sure will.
Alright, not tonight, but another night.
And by the way, what do you think about, I mean, 24%, he's leading the total pack, all the cameras are covering nothing but the Donald, I just hope he stays in it.
That's my only thought.
I think that, I hope he doesn't just drop out after he's, he has the potential to maybe hurt the pool.
They're already wounded beyond redemption.
That's right.
But if he's not really in it for, to be in it, then at that point he's hurt us.
I hear you.
Alright, thank you very much.
Well, people are saying the same thing about me too.
Stay in it!
Stay in it, right?
So there's somebody who actually met him and got a, well, I'm not going to run from him.
So that's, I would actually like to hear that.
Hello there, Andrew, it's midnight and you're on the air.
Andrew, it's midnight and you're on the air.
Going once, going twice.
Gone all.
Andrew tried so hard to get through.
So many calling, and he didn't.
Okay, let's try Ronnie.
Midnight, you're on the air.
Oh, me?
You, yes, you.
Ow.
I'm right.
I just clicked dialed, and it just went right straight to you.
That's awesome.
That's how it's supposed to happen, buddy.
I'm right.
Oh, yeah.
Donald?
Yeah.
I was thinking about him.
If he gets the White House, is he going to actually stay there?
I don't know.
Every president we've had lately, they always say, oh, you know, there's going to be martial law, and the president will never leave, and he'll just stay there.
But, you know, with the Donalds, you know, that's actually a legitimate question.
I don't know, Roger.
Well, anyway, I know you're just having suggestions, though, they're not.
And I'll give you a suggestion.
Please.
It's not a debate, but just the interview and having callers call in for you.
Yes.
And crap, who took your spot?
You're all nervous, aren't you?
I am nervous.
I didn't know I was on air all of a sudden.
What you really meant to say, or ask, was Something about an interview?
Yes.
Something about somebody who took my spot?
Yes.
But I'm not clear on it.
He took your old show.
Took my old show?
You mean the person doing my old show?
Yes.
What about him?
Yeah, do an interview with him.
People call him.
Alright Ronnie, thank you very much for the call and the thought and you can be sure I'll mull it over.
Let's go to the phones and say hello to Hawaii.
Hello, Hawaii.
Aloha, how are you?
I'm really well, thank you.
Proceed.
I'm not a call screener.
You're on the air, so go ahead.
Sorry.
I'm sorry.
Thank you, Art.
It's a pleasure to be talking to you.
I just wanted to say, I think Trump is appealing to people because He really doesn't have any filtering.
He's not surrounded by political insiders, and regardless of if you agree with what he's saying, it's unfiltered and he's speaking his mind.
I think that's one of the things that people are attracted to.
Oh, clearly he's got no handlers!
I mean, if he did, they'd be saying, Donald!
Donald!
No!
But, you know, that's not happening, so...
Yeah, you're right.
I mean, that's part of the appeal, but some of the stuff he's saying, oh my goodness.
Oh, I know.
Absolutely.
But to me, it says that the American people are so incredibly fed up that, you know, they're ready for this.
I agree.
I think the ironic thing of it is, and hopefully people will, you know, as the race continues and people start to dig into the details, He's really flipped on every issue you can name out there.
On immigration, he supported amnesty.
Now he's absolutely against illegal immigration.
A few years ago, he wanted amnesty.
In 2006, he supported... I don't think any of this matters.
You know, he could do flips and flops, and I don't think it matters at all.
That's a good point.
Well, I would love to listen to you interview him.
Maybe we could arrange a Trump-Hillary debate on Midnight in the Desert.
I'll get right on that.
Thank you very, very much.
All the way from Honolulu.
And let's try Lakeland, Florida.
You're on the air.
Lakeland, Florida!
Yes, now is your chance.
Hey Art, how you doing?
I'm doing really well, thank you.
I am familiar with many Republicans within my area and haven't talked to them.
You admit that, huh?
Yes, I do.
One thing that they like about Trump, he's fighting.
Boy, he sure is.
Yes, he really is.
We are not used to having a lot of Republicans that are willing to put up the verbal fight that he is.
And he may be, you know, very abrasive, but he's getting the point home.
Well, we're not used to hearing people say the kind of things he's saying at all, period.
Absolutely.
Especially not people running for office.
But, again, to me, it says the American people, if they're accepting this, and the polls say they are, have got to be so fed up they're just ready to, you know, set it all on fire.
That might be the case.
Secondary about the drones, previous rulings from the ATF about electronic triggers that may be used on drones, on the homemade drones, they are legal.
However, there's some concern about them being altered in which they would fire multiple times per press or per poll.
Well, the guy had a semi-automatic on it, and he was firing, and you could see the drone absorb the recoil, and then the GPS put it right back in position to fire again.
You know, that's potentially... I don't know.
We're going to get new laws out of it.
I know it.
Yeah, and that's the one thing that kind of concerns me.
We already have the framework in place.
We already have the regulations in place.
We don't need more laws.
We don't need more regulations.
Ah, but brother, I'm telling you, here they come.
Oh, absolutely.
All right.
Thank you so very much for the call.
I appreciate it.
Very quickly to, I think, New Jersey.
It's midnight.
You're on the air.
Hello, Art.
This is Daniel.
Hey, Daniel.
If you'd like to learn a little more about the Donald's comments about John McCain, I suggest you look up the book, An Enormous Crime, by former South Carolina Congressman Bill Hendon.
Which details how the Treaty of Hanoi ended the Vietnam War and the United States promised to pay a gazillion dollars to North Vietnam to rebuild the infrastructure.
So in good faith, they released half of the 600 POWs and said you'll get the other 300 back when you pay the reparations.
But they've never been paid to this day.
And the satellite photos, when Hendon wrote the book about ten years ago, showed the walking K symbol in the rice fields.
Okay, and all of this has what to do with O'Donnell?
Well, what you're going to do in that book, you're going to find transcripts and testimony from the Congressional hearings with John McCain, chaired by John McCain, blocking every effort to get the POW M.I.A.'
's back.
Oh, okay.
Yeah, I know about all that.
I mean, the Donald has sort of laid all this out quite well.
I'm going to have to drop you.
I'm sorry.
We've got to go.
He's laid all that out, and there are people who say that his comments were in some way justified, that he hasn't done enough, you know, for POWs and all the rest of it.
But I'm telling you, what's going on is amazing.
Charles Faddis coming up.
He may have comments on this.
I'm Mark Bell.
I'm a lawyer.
For Dark Matter News, I'm Leo Ashcraft.
Thank you.
The comet Eurydice... The comet Eurydice... The comet Eurydice... The comet Eurydice... The comet Eurydice... The comet Eurydice... The comet Eurydice... The comet Eurydice... The comet Eurydice... The comet Eurydice... The comet Eurydice... The comet Eurydice... The comet Eurydice... The comet Eurydice... The comet Eurydice... The comet Eurydice... The comet Eurydice... The comet Eurydice... The comet Eurydice... The comet Eurydice... The comet Eurydice... The comet Eurydice... The comet Eurydice... The comet Eurydice... The comet Eurydice... The comet Eurydice... The comet Eurydice... The comet Eurydice... The comet Eurydice... The comet Eurydice... The comet Eurydice... The comet Eurydice...
Last night on Midnight in the Desert, while speaking with Graham Hancock about possible past comet strikes on Earth, Art mentioned all the internet chatter about something headed towards us from space, with a possible September impact.
Both NASA and the Federal Emergency Management Agency have been preparing for a global catastrophe.
NASA has launched its hypothetical asteroid impact scenario, while FEMA's begun stockpiling on emergency supplies.
Is an asteroid Armageddon just around the corner?
In a YouTube video, author Lynn Liaz shares about a phone call with her friend who was given inside information about a 2.5 mile wide comet, which is expected to hit the Earth between September 15th through the 28th, 2015.
She says that almost a year ago, the Foreign Minister of France three times publicly announced at a White House press conference a 500-day countdown to climate chaos, which will end on September 24, 2015.
She says they know what is coming, and they've already told you, adding that chaos will erupt on this planet in September 2015.
You can watch the full video at artbell.com.
This is Dark Matter News.
The conspiracy theories grew wilder as the massive military exercise grew closer.
Some said food riots and martial law were coming to the United States.
Dissidents would be assassinated.
Walmart stores turned into prison camps.
Foreign troops brought in to help.
Jade Helm began last week, but so far no one has seemed to have seen any of the troops or the out-of-town conspiracy theorists who vowed to watch their every move.
Closures of up to six Walmart stores around the country seem to add credence to these theories.
Walmart claims that the stores have been closed for plumbing problems.
However, several months after the closures, necessary permitting has not been applied for from the local municipalities.
The timing of the closures and lack of real disclosure from Walmart hasn't helped the paranoia.
Then the governor of Texas added to this paranoia by ordering the state's National Guard to monitor a weeks-long special operations training exercise called Jade Helm 15 involving 1,200 troops in seven states.
Some people reportedly buried their guns so government troops couldn't take them away.
Others stockpiled ammunition and supplies.
A group called Counter Jade Helm helped organize quasi-militias to keep track of troop movements.
But while the wildest theories like how the government is building re-education camps for Christians, Libertarians, and other enemies of the state may seem outlandish, the underlying fear is widespread.
Some 60% of Americans see the government as a threat to individual liberty.
According to a poll conducted by Rasmussen in May, the Army spent months trying to reassure people that the public would experience little disruption to their normal lives aside from a slight increase in vehicle traffic and the limited use of military aircraft and its associated noise.
Efforts to create a realistic exercise by having some troops conduct suspicious activity while dressed as civilians and a map that labeled Texas and Utah as hostile territory played into the fears of people convinced the government is out to get them.
Gary Franchi of the Online Next News Network ominously warned his viewers, this is by far the greatest public conditioning exercise in American history.
Martial law may not happen this summer, Franchi intoned, but some say that when the time comes, troops will be ready and trained to take over your town.
For Dark Matter News, I'm Leo Ashcraft.
You'd think that people would have had enough of silly love songs.
Want to take a ride from the high desert and the great American southwest?
This is Midnight in the Desert, exclusively on the Dark Matter Digital Network.
To call the show, dial 1-952-CALL-ART.
That's 1-952-225-5278.
That's the way to do it.
And, uh, Leo Ashcraft, our news guy, and this is really special news you're getting, thank you, and with regard to Jade Helm 15, I've already decided I'm gonna just, you know, I'm gonna turn myself in.
And, uh, ahead of time.
And that way I can become a trustee and slave the rest of you around.
That's awful.
all right coming up now when you ever hear a retired c i a
you like the the terms fine but spy
charles s status is a twenty
year veteran of the c i a s clandestine service
that's a better word right clandestine he served throughout the near east south asia southern
europe conducted operations against rogue states w md smuggling
networks and the world's most dangerous terrorist organizations so we can
speak about a Took the first CIA team into Iraq in 2002, in advance of the invasion of Iraq.
He retired in 2008 as the head of the CIA's WMD terrorism unit.
Since his retirement, Mattis has written extensively.
He is the author of three works of non-fiction, three novels, and dozens of articles and opinion pieces.
He lives near Annapolis, Maryland, and continues to consult for the intelligence community prior to joining the CIA.
He was a combat arms officer in the U.S.
Army and a trial attorney.
He's been married for 34 years.
Congrats on that.
And has four children.
When he's not working or writing, he sails, makes wine and beer, travels, and reads extensively.
He describes himself politically as a libertarian.
Congratulations, me too, with a small L. He believes government has a vital role to play, but that it's too big, too intrusive, and too efficient.
He wants to cut the size of government, trim the size of the budget, and free the American people to pursue their own Destinies.
God bless you.
Welcome to the program, Charles.
It's great to talk to you again.
Thank you very much for having me.
Oh, you sound great.
All right.
You know, before we launch into what we're about to launch into, Charles, I'm sure you kind of made sure that you heard my rant at the beginning of the program about Trump.
You know, I've really thought and thought and thought about this.
How can his poll numbers be this high, even after the shot over the bow?
Actually, mid-section at McCain, I figured he'd drop like a rock, but no, he went up.
How do you account for that?
Right, well, I have to say, because I was listening to your comments, and I think you and I are on the same wavelength.
I mean, I'll throw out the caveat up front so nobody misunderstands.
You know, I don't agree with everything he says, particularly what he said about Senator McCain.
But I think it is absolutely a measure of the fact that the American people are fed up with business as usual.
They're fed up with politicians who won't answer a question with a straight answer.
They're really hungry for change, and they're hungry for somebody who just actually tells them what he thinks.
And I think that's, you know, they're They're saying that loudly and clearly by expressing their support for him.
Whether they will ultimately vote for him or not as president is another matter.
But at this point, they're saying, hey, the rest of you need to pay attention.
This is the kind of thing we want to hear, at least honesty.
So is it fair enough to say that people are so fed up I use the term, they're ready to burn it all down.
That has bad connotations as in, you know, real action, but that isn't what I mean.
Politically, I think they're ready to burn it all down.
I think people are very fed up.
I think people are disgusted with the status quo.
I think they recognize that we have massive issues in Washington that we are not resolving.
and they feel, many of them, that no matter which party we vote in,
that they don't fix it. You know, whether it's the budget, whether it's
anything, they don't fix it. And at least the Donald actually,
you know, sounds like something new and fresh, and my god, you can actually,
whether you agree or not, you could at least understand what the answer was he
he just gave to that question.
That's right.
And that it is boiled down to that, boy, it says just an awful lot, so I'm fascinated with it.
He did say, this will be in your category, he did comment on ISIS.
And I think he said he would bomb the hell out of the ISIS oil fields.
In other words, for the Donald, it's probably all about money, right?
And he's not all that wrong.
I mean, if you can take the money away from the bad guys, you've done something fairly serious to them, right?
Well, taking away oil money from ISIS...
uh... would be a great thing was not to say that there hasn't been anything done
in that direction already but not enough
that would be as a piece of the puzzle yes uh... however you do that
taking away their oil revenue would be a huge benefit okay
uh...
what is a while The whole thing is a wow.
ISIS is a wow.
I've been going nuts now for months wanting to talk about this phenomenon called ISIS.
And tonight we're going to do that.
I guess my first question to you, Charles, would be how did ISIS get so big when apparently we weren't watching?
Well, I mean, there are at least two sides to that.
I mean, one is what's driving the growth of ISIS, and the other is the issue of are we collecting enough intelligence and are we getting the picture that we need?
I mean, so, you know, just as kind of a preamble on both, we're not collecting the intelligence that we need.
So we weren't looking.
Well, we were looking, but not looking closely enough, not looking frequently enough, not looking intensely enough, whatever, however you want to characterize that.
Clearly not collecting the information we needed to collect.
But then there's another side to this, which is their capacity to grow is driven by fundamental issues in Iraq and Syria, and also by American policy.
I mean, they're growing out of this thing that we call ISIS, is growing out of fissures in Iraq, which is kind of an artificial country, and basically out of the Shia-Sunni divide.
So if you're a Sunni Arab in Iraq, you may or may not like ISIS, and you may or may not wish they'd go away, but you certainly are not happy with the Shia-dominated government in Baghdad, and you don't feel like that represents you.
And you definitely want to resist them.
And if you're pushed to the wall in your choices between the Shia or siding with Sunni Arabs, even if they're ISIS, you're probably going to go in the direction of ISIS.
In fact, one of the things that just throw this out there, you know, go whichever direction you want to go.
One of the things that people don't talk about at all in the news is that actually there are a substantial number of individuals cooperating with ISIS and not just cooperating like as individuals but as organizations in numbers who were formally associated with the Ba'athist regime in other words with Saddam Hussein and you have guys that were that have a history of being completely secular individuals with no real radical jihadist background who are in league with ISIS with radical Islamists because they're common enemy
Let me try this.
There's obviously something the average American does not understand about ISIS, the appeal of ISIS.
They, I don't know, they chop off people's heads, they kill people, they overrun towns and just slaughter immense numbers of people.
You know, it doesn't seem like a really appealing organization, so there is something we're missing about the appeal there of ISIS that they're able to gather so
many so quickly who are so obviously actually dedicated to fighting. There's
something we don't understand. Well they are drawing a lot of energy from from
what I was just talking about. I mean what you have is a nation of Iraq
which didn't exist This is a creation of the Brits post-World War I. And we've cobbled together areas that never existed as a country.
So you have a very large number of Sunni Arabs.
The Sunni-Shia split, you know, is the major divide in Islam.
It's like Catholics and Protestants, except it's not like Catholics and Protestants today.
It's like Catholics and Protestants in 1200 AD, you know, when you burn cities to the ground over the fact that And slaughter everybody over the fact that you're the wrong breed of Christian.
Yes, sir.
That's the way this divide works.
And you have a very large minority of Sunni Arabs in Iraq who now feel they are at the mercy of a Shia-dominated government in Baghdad.
So their inclination is to band together.
And then, you know, even if you're not inclined outright, though, to support ISIS, the fact that they are so brutal and that the cost of resisting them is so huge, Is it unless you really have something to fight for, you're really going to think twice about standing up to them.
And the choice that they effectively Sunni Arabs have right now is this, you can either go with ISIS, or you can fight on behalf of the Shia dominated government in Baghdad.
And the reward for fighting for the government is that when it's all over, ISIS is gone, but you still get to be dominated by the Shia, which you regard as Unthinkable.
Unsatisfactory.
Let me quickly go back to something the Donald said.
He said, there is no Iraq.
Is he right?
Well, he may be right.
I mean, as it stands right now, Iraq does not really functionally exist as a nation-state.
The Kurds in the north are all but independent.
The western portion of Iraq, this whole area that I'm talking about, filled with Sunni Arabs, Is basically almost all of it under the control of ISIS.
So what's left under the control of the national government is whatever that breaks out to, probably 50% of the land mass of Iraq.
And so it doesn't exist now.
Is it going back together?
I don't know.
You know, I have said for some time that it is possible that Humpty Dumpty has fallen and it's not going back together again.
Wow.
We are in the middle of a battle with them, sort of.
I mean, we've got the drones going overhead, hitting a lot, missing a lot.
continue to exist, the more likely that is the case, that it will never go back together.
We are in the middle of a battle with them, sort of. I mean, you know, we've got the drones
going overhead, hitting a lot, missing a lot. Actually, I think we hit more than we miss.
We're fighting a war.
Are we losing the war right now?
The best I could say right now is that it is possible that we may be maintaining the status quo right now.
That's about the best I could say.
It is possible that we are losing.
We are definitely not winning.
We definitely do not have them on the run.
And the current strategy, Such as it is, is not going to defeat them.
I wrote an op-ed piece a couple of weeks ago, and my basic premise was, it may be time for us to begin to start contemplating the fact that ISIS is not going to go away.
That we are actually going to be left with, if we don't get our act together, be left with a radical Islamic terrorist state in the heart of the Middle East.
That's a frightening possibility, and a strong possibility from what I can see.
CNN trots out military analysts all the time.
nation-state committed to our destruction and sort of perpetual war with
the west if if we don't get our act together and get rid of these
guys now that's a frightening possibility
and a strong possibility for my concede
uh... cnn brings out trots out military analysts all the time they've got a map
you know showing the isis controlled areas and so forth And every time I see it, it seems to be more ISIS-controlled territory.
So, I'm not sure how you measure winning and losing, but we're not winning on the map.
No, absolutely not.
And every time that somebody announces that they're losing territory, you know, within a week or so, we hear that they've taken another city.
They are increasingly Staging really large attacks inside of Baghdad and on the periphery of Baghdad.
Huge, huge car bomb attacks and other attacks.
No, they're not losing strength and we're not driving them back and we won't with this strategy.
And by the way, there's nobody, no military No body of military men who sat down with the President of the United States and said, hey, here's a strategy.
We think this is the plan.
Let's just bomb them, and that'll win the war.
That's not true.
That did not happen.
You know, this is driven the other way around.
Political decisions are made about what we're willing to do, and then the military's told to implement them.
Of course, the President was in a very tight spot.
He said he was going to get us out of and keep us out of land wars in Iraq and that sort of thing.
right yeah well that's exactly right he's i mean it you in effect
you've painted yourself into a corner haven't you
he's just state his reputation on the fact that he pulled everybody out of
there and that everything is fine now the place is going up in
flames now he feels like he can't just watch it because then it'll be hung
around his neck that he's the guy who allowed iraq to burn to the ground
So we end up with a middle course of action.
And that middle course of action is not recommended by military experts or anybody else as, this is the best way to fight these guys.
It's a political decision.
Right.
I understand you're a retired CIA, but shouldn't there be some analyst from your old organization who would sit down with the President and say, Mr. President, I understand your political difficulty, however, If we continue on the present course, we're going to end up with a nation-state dedicated to our destruction in the Middle East.
Something like that?
Should be, and are, people who tell presidents all the time the reality of world situations, and then presidents make their own decisions as to whether they feel like listening or whether they don't.
We've been doing that in regard to Iraq for some time, long before this president was up there.
People back home who decide what intel reports they will pay attention to and which ones they won't.
Kind of like there's weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and intel like that?
Yeah, kind of like that.
I mean, you mentioned that I took the first team into Iraq.
We were in Iraq for close to a year before the invasion.
We reported on a lot of things.
We were actually the only people in the country.
We never sent intelligence reports to Washington saying we found weapons of mass destruction.
What?
You know?
What?
Wait a minute.
Wait a minute.
You didn't send those reports?
now we've never reported to washington that we have found weapons of mass
destruction but you know that that's uh...
i mean what i don't know that i don't know how to go with the but i
mean i don't know if going to amplify the great frankly that that's
that's that's clear that's plenty clear we did not we didn't we most certainly did not and i can remember my deputy and
i sitting there many many many months into that adventure
looking at each other and saying you know they keep talking about this stuff
and uh...
And uh...
They were talking about it before we ever got here.
But there was nobody here then.
And we haven't picked up any sources since we got here.
And we're not telling them that.
So where's this intelligence coming from?
Must have been a real puzzle for you.
Where could this intelligence be coming from, if we're the only people here and we're not reporting it?
Anyway, there have been books written on that whole subject.
That is a classic example of an administration that has a preconceived notion of things.
Isn't it fair to say that if that war had not happened as it did, if we hadn't gone in as we did, that we wouldn't be where we are now?
Well, I think it's... I mean, that is fair to say.
Whether we would be...
where we would be though is unknowable right i mean i don't know that's fair
that's mean so that that iraq some coming that iraq somehow would
that the whole region would be in a better place or there would not have
been bad developments i don't think this follows necessarily you
know we're talking about that
we're talking about the middle east and let's not forget that within this is not intended as an excuse for the the wmd
issue anything but saddam hussein was a monster
Okay, yes, but is it fair to say Saddam bad, ISIS worse?
Hold your thought on that.
We've got to take a break.
We'll be right back.
Charles Faddis, CIA guy, now retired.
We'll be back.
I'm going to be back.
Wanna take a ride exclusively on the Dark Matter Digital Network?
This is Midnight in the Desert with your host, Art Bell.
To call Art, please dial 1952-225-5278.
That's 1952.
Call Art.
Well, you know, I've gotta tell you, don't call now.
Don't waste your time, because we're gonna open the lines after a while, and then you can call.
Calling now is... Well, you know, I just wanted to hear Ross's voice.
My guest, You know, I have gotten used to layman speak for espionage terms.
In the trade, of course, the spy is the guy you recruit who works for you.
Or can you get along with that word?
You know, I have gotten used to layman speak for espionage terms.
In the trade, of course, the spy is the guy you recruit who works for you.
So the guy inside the Kremlin who sells me secrets, he's the spy.
I'm an intelligence officer.
Makes it sound a lot more antiseptic that way.
Or a clandestine guy?
Operations officer.
The technical parlance in the Central Intelligence Agency.
Okay.
Operations officer.
Okay.
Bye.
Doesn't sound as cool as spying, but... Doesn't sound cool at all.
Alright, so circling back, Saddam bad, ISIS worse?
Yeah, I don't know.
I'm not downplaying the danger of ISIS at all.
I'm the guy that just finished saying that if we're not careful, we're going to have a permanent terrorist state in the Middle East.
You know, Saddam was a monster of epic proportions.
I spent a lot of time with the Kurds.
in northern Iraq.
You know, there are entire towns, sizable towns, that were gassed to death by Saddam Hussein.
Yes, I know.
I was up there for a year.
Our base, as we built it up, you know, all of the ladies who cooked for us and cleaned and so forth were all Kurdish women and they did that work.
They were all either the daughters Wives, whatever, of men who had been rounded up in what's called the On Fall campaign, which means anvil, where Saddam basically would go into towns and take every Kurdish male, twelve and above, and just line them up in front of mass graves, machine gun them, and bulldoze them into the ground in entire towns.
He was a creature.
Since you mentioned the Kurds, the Kurds seem to be the most effective fighting force against ISIS right now.
Is that fair?
I think that's absolutely fair.
Yes.
Without question.
Okay.
They're holding their own against ISIS?
Yes?
Generally.
Most of the time.
Most of the time.
Okay.
Hopefully ISIS doesn't get any stronger and that equation changes.
That's one of the reasons we're here tonight, because I've never seen... I was about to say I've never seen anything so horrible, but we have the Nazis, of course, and as you just mentioned, Saddam was pretty awful himself, so... The world has always had unbelievable things going on.
Maybe ISIS just manages better PR for their awfulness.
Well, ISIS uses, as a very, very deliberate tactic, The PR, the publication, the social media, whatever we want to call it, the broadcast of these atrocities, you know, they are consciously looking all the time in a very deliberate, horribly sick fashion for more gruesome, terrifying ways to kill people.
And then they want everyone to see it.
And it is a deliberate What kind of person does that appeal to?
to be terrified they want you to be cowed into submission they want you to be afraid to resist that's what kind of
person does that appeal to now uh... i'm gonna pull myself away from the
zone itself come to europe and the united states
uh... frankly when i see somebody get their head cut off not that i watch
those cuz i don't or i see people mowed down shot in the back of the head one
after another it doesn't encourage me to even remotely think about
So we're joined that group.
Gee, that looks like fun.
So how is this working?
Or why is it working?
You're talking in terms of people who are actually attracted to join them.
Yes, mostly outside of that specific area.
I understand the fear locally, but I mean people in Europe, people in the U.S., how in God's name does this kind of stuff attract them?
Well, you know, I'm not sure that I can completely wrap my head around it either.
I mean, I think what you have to be is you have to be somebody that is really, really alienated.
Somebody who feels like an outcast, somebody who feels lost and somehow or another the power of this of this organization attracts you.
And it is.
I mean, it's this is hardly the first group, right, that has managed to take people.
I mean, you made reference to the Nazis.
The Nazis, in some ways, did the same thing.
They take people and The next thing you know they've got this group think going and people are capable of engaging in the most horrible atrocities.
Right.
The things you think a human could never do to another person.
So, in other words, there's no way to really understand the attraction of this kind of PR.
I can understand it again, locally, because of the fear involved.
But in terms of recruiting Americans Or Europeans to go and do something awful like shooting soldiers or shooting up a, you know, I don't know, a shopping mall or whatever it is they're encouraging people to do.
I just don't get it.
And I guess you don't either.
Well, I mean, ultimately, the basis for this is obviously that you have accepted this ideology so completely that you believe that anything is justified.
You know there are no there are no limits and if you if you if you go back to sort of the early days
of when al-qaeda was standing up and really beginning to To take the first steps in the direction of mass casualties
suicide attacks, and then things like this there was actually a lot of discussion in Islamic
Theological circles about is that can we justify this you know and a lot of argument and and amongst mainstream
Muslim scholars there remains a lot of argument about that I mean not much argument. You know that the clear consensus
that no you cannot possibly justify it, but by this point There's this whole jihadist
Mentality that yeah, basically we're on the side of God and therefore anything we choose to do is justified because
From their viewpoint, they're fighting pure evil.
So anything they do is sanctioned.
Let me try this question.
Our president, whenever he speaks about this, and frankly most other politicians, except maybe the Donald, strike out and make it very clear that we are not at war with Islam.
That we are at war with these very radicalized people calling themselves ISIL or ISIS, whatever.
Now, here comes a real sensitive one for you, Charles.
How much un-vocalized sympathy do you suspect there might be inside the larger Islam community, worldwide, for what's going on?
For groups like ISIS?
Yes.
Yeah, I don't, I do not think a huge amount.
I think that what you're witnessing, I mean here's, we're not at war with Islam.
We are at war with a certain group, a certain, what's the right word, a certain sect, a certain strain of thought within Islam that I think is basically trying to hijack This entire faith and drag it off into their own crazy vision of the seventh century.
And I don't think at all that the vast majority of Muslims have any sympathy for that.
I mean, in the course of my career, I ran a lot of operations where people were killed and I mean killed on our side, fighting against the crazies.
95% of those guys were Muslims on our side, you know, fighting against This kind of ideology.
Okay, that's very comforting for me to hear.
I was really actually worried about your answer to that, so thank you.
There's not any change that you can see going on in that as this wears on and on and on and on.
You know, I understand how it works.
I mean, as we kill people with drone strikes, or whatever it is we're going to do to kill them, There are relatives of those people who then become our enemies.
I know how it works.
And so the longer it goes on, it seems to me, the more people will hate us.
Yes?
Well, there is certainly that danger, and there's certainly going to be a reaction in some situations.
And the other thing is this, even if we're not just talking about religion, and this is not necessarily an argument for or against drone strikes, I'm just pointing this out.
If you're living in a nation in which another country, the United States, is routinely operating drones in your airspace without the permission of your country, potentially, and carrying out, at its discretion, attacks inside that country where people are being blown up and killed, whether you are sympathetic to the people being killed or not, That's got to probably rub you really the wrong way.
Oh, yes.
I mean, if somebody was operating drones over Kansas from another nation, making decisions about people to hit, we would probably react pretty strongly to it.
Now, again, I'm not saying whether that I mean, it may be in fact that in some situations we don't have any choice, that we don't have a cooperating government.
There's a threat on the ground.
And this is the mechanism we have.
All I'm saying is, when you choose that mechanism, you have to accept the fact that you're going to, even people that are not on the side of the bad guys, are going to have good reasons why they may not really like the fact that you are making drone strikes in their territory without their permission.
That goes with the territory.
You cannot expect otherwise.
Sure, and if a 12-year-old sees his dad get killed, Then we've probably got somebody who's going to be thinking about buttons they can push when the time is right to get revenge.
You're also going to face the fact, again this is a reality, it goes with the territory, the enemy is going to do everything they can to make propaganda value out of every strike.
So maybe there was a strike And civilians were killed because there's no such thing as a war without unintended consequences.
Except in the movies, I guess.
But maybe nobody was killed except militants, except targets that we knew were there.
But by the time the ISIS or the Taliban is done portraying that strike, You know, they're going to bill it as you just blew up a nursery school.
You just killed a family on their way to the mosque.
They are going to absolutely sell it locally as, oh my god, here's another example of American brutality.
All these people were just sitting around and doing nothing, and they never hurt anyone, and they were all murdered by the Americans.
And you can't stop that.
That's just going to happen every time you attack.
Alright, if you were in a position, and you could be the one advising the President, or even better yet, you could simply implement policies that would win, policies that would get rid of, eventually, ISIS, what would you think we should be doing?
So, back to what we were talking about earlier, ISIS draws its strength from this Fissure in the nation of Iraq, assuming we're going to consider that Iraq still exists between Sunnis and Shias.
You need to give Sunni Arabs something to fight for other than for a Shia dominated government in Baghdad.
What is that?
Well, I would submit to you probably something like the autonomy that the Kurds have in the north, which is not really technically an independent state, but a tremendous amount of control over their own affairs and Big issue, their own defense forces, their own capacity to guarantee that Baghdad will not come push them around.
If you provided provided that kind of alternative to Sunnis in Western Iraq so that they could oppose ISIS and fight for something other than going back under the thumb of Baghdad, I suspect that you would find there are plenty of people that with the right support Would be happy to fight for an alternative to the crazy Islamic State of ISIS.
But you've got to give them something to fight for.
I'll tell you what I think we don't want to do, is you don't want to start putting American ground troops there, conventional forces I mean, and put us right back in the middle of this ongoing war where they're fighting ISIS on one hand while you've got Shia militias running around.
We do not want to do that.
I mean, special forces, intelligence officers, fine.
You do not want to start putting armored divisions and infantry divisions back on the ground in Iraq in the midst of this mess.
Bad idea.
Okay.
Were you surprised when whatever Iraqi forces did exist that we supposedly had trained and armed and financed turned tail and just split when ISIS came?
No, not really.
I mean, because again, these guys have nothing to fight for.
I mean, you have these crazy legions of ISIS coming.
You know that they're fanatics, and you know what the price you're going to pay and your family's going to pay if you fight and lose is.
It's going to be hideous.
And you're supposed to stand up to these guys and risk all of that on behalf of a government that you don't believe in, that frankly you think is oppressing you.
And increasingly, the Sunni Arabs would tell you it's a puppet state of Tehran.
There's no way.
No, you're going to put down your weapon and you're going to go home.
That's what you're going to do.
You're opting out.
At a minimum, if you don't join ISIS and you don't help the government, you're going to go home and sit this one out.
And wait to see who wins this thing.
So, no, it doesn't surprise me.
They're going to melt away.
They're going to continue to melt away.
We're training a whole new army.
Why are we training a whole new army?
We just spent, I think, $26 billion in nine years training an army that gave its weapons to ISIS and ran away as soon as the fighting started.
Why do we think this is going to be different this time around?
Okay.
All right.
Hold it right there.
I don't know, kind of depressing, because I don't see the road to victory.
No boots on the ground.
Strikes only doing so much, maybe not much.
Tough call.
I guess it's Charles Battis, retired CIAI Mart Bell, and this is Midnight in the Desert.
♪♪♪ ♪♪♪
♪♪♪ ♪♪♪
Call Midnight in the Desert at 1-952-CALL-ART.
That's 1-952-225-5278.
Again, note those numbers, but don't call them just quite yet.
Charles Thaddes is my guest.
We're talking about... Well, we've been talking about ISIS, and I'm going to move it away from ISIS a little bit, I think, because it's sort of depressing in a way.
Because I just don't see our way clear to a victory.
Hopefully that'll happen.
We just concluded an agreement with Iran.
And apparently they're saying, we promise not to make a nuclear weapon.
And in return for that, we're going to give them money, I guess.
Allow them trade, selling oil, all kinds of goodies.
Go their way in return for, we promise we won't make a nuke.
Number one, in your position as a, not an analyst, but if you were an analyst, have we made a good deal or have we made a bad deal?
So, you left ISIS because it was too depressing.
Are you sure you want to talk about this topic?
Oh, I'm good.
Or maybe we should talk about puppies and rainbows.
No, I'm good.
Let's head right over here.
Okay, no, it's not a good deal.
It's a terrible deal.
It's a really terrible idea.
You know, it's anytime we talk weapons of mass destruction, which for good or for worse, I've worked with for a lot of years, we could get lost in a lot of technical stuff.
But just to break this down, I mean, first of all, even if it was effective, even if they actually intended to abide by this, handing them What is it, $100 billion in frozen assets that they're going to get?
Opening them up to trade, allowing them to now import the most advanced weapons they want from all over the world, and they'll be flush with cash to buy it.
Right.
All of this is a horrifying prospect.
I mean, we're worried about ISIS.
If we don't defeat ISIS and ISIS grows up, That's it'll look like Iran.
That's what Iran is.
Iran is a militant, radical, Islamic, anti-American state armed to the teeth.
And now we're handing them $100 billion and going to let them restart their economy.
And we're going to let them go forth and buy weapons from everybody on the planet.
Terrible idea.
That's one.
Two is no, they have no intention whatsoever of abiding by this treaty.
And there are loopholes in the treaty big enough to drive We're not winning on either count.
Very bad plan.
Was this deal cemented for political reasons?
Well, I think there's a huge prospect, I mean a huge element of this, which is that the President of the United States apparently really wants to conclude what he believes are these historic agreements that are somehow supposed to be fundamentally altering The nature of our relationships with the countries around the world.
So for instance, he's clearly focused on we've got to renew relations with Cuba.
He really thinks we need to have a new era with Iran.
And he kind of, I think, just basically wants to ignore the reality of the situation in pursuit of these things.
There's even actually a notch further than that.
When you listen to some of the administration officials and you read the things that they're saying, read the things that they're writing, what you hear is actually this idea that somehow they believe that Iran can be a force for good, for stability, a positive force in the region, which is so misguided.
I mean, the first time I heard that as a guy who's worked Iranian stuff for a long time, the first time I I heard a whiff of that.
I almost went into anaphylactic shock.
I found it so mind-boggling that anybody could have that conception of this current Iranian government.
But they apparently do believe that in the White House, at least some people, that the Iranians can be a positive force in the Middle East.
And of course, all of our traditional allies in the Middle East are horrified By all of this.
Sure.
They think we've lost our minds.
Have we?
Well, you know, I don't know if we've lost our minds, but the scope of what we're doing in our foreign policy in the Middle East, and I mean, we're doing things all over the world that are crazy.
But what is happening with our foreign policy in the Middle East right now is incredibly damaging.
And, you know, the average American doesn't have time to watch all of this.
You know, he, she, they're worried about paying the mortgage,
and the jobs, and the kids, and the stuff that real people are focused on.
And I think probably every day they just have to operate under the assumption
that somebody's got their eye on it, and they know what they're doing.
And I think, you know, that's not the case.
I mean, are they going to be able to continue to construct and be on their way toward building a bomb during the time
this agreement's in force?
Yes.
So let me give you a couple of aspects, again, without getting lost in all the technical things.
Maybe three.
First, this is a military nuclear weapons program that we're worried about.
We're worried about them building an atomic warhead to go on a missile.
That's right.
Military installations in Iran are not covered by the inspection regime under this deal.
That the provisions that specifically apply to everything else do not include military installations and the Iranians and there's a lot of dispute about what will happen when we want to inspect a military base.
Now, just as a matter of common sense, if you were trying to build a nuclear weapon for military use and you were trying to hide it, I think it would be fair to assume you would locate it on a military installation.
Sure.
So saying that we're just kind of not going to address that issue, that's a huge deal.
Let's see.
The enriched uranium that they have, something like 98% of it has to be sent out of the country.
Not specified exactly where it's going to be sent, but the smart money says Russia is going to take it.
That means that we're going to take all this Iranian enriched uranium and give it to Vladimir Putin.
And then Vladimir Putin's good faith is the only thing that will stop it from being handed back to the Iranians.
So if that makes you sleep well at night, it doesn't make me sleep well at night.
What assurance is that?
That's none.
Last thing I'll hit.
They have spent years and ungodliest amounts of money on developing Ballistic missiles that are of use militarily only for one thing, to carry a nuclear weapon.
There's no other payload that you can put on them, for a lot of reasons that I won't go into here, that makes any sense militarily.
It is a nuclear weapon delivery vehicle.
Oh, clearly you're trying to cheer me up.
From the beginning of the negotiations, they stated as a precondition that they would not even discuss Getting rid of those missiles.
Now, why would you want to retain this incredibly expensive delivery capability if you did not intend at some point to actually finish building the weapon that goes on?
Well, to carry the weapon that you and I are talking about that we're probably going to keep building anyway despite the agreement.
Hold tight right where you are.
From the High Desert, Great American Southwest, this is Midnight in the Desert, and I'm Art Bell.
Doing alright, a little driving on a Saturday night.
Come watch me, on a dandy way.
For Dark Matter News, I'm Leo Ashcroft.
Scientists have proven a robot can show a glimmer of consciousness.
In an experiment, Neobots were programmed to think two of them took dumbing pills to prevent them from speaking, while one had been given a placebo.
They all tried to respond to a question about which robots took the pills, with one able to recognize its own voice and reason it could speak.
While all of them tried to answer, only one was able to respond aloud by saying, I don't know.
It seemed to take a while to consider the question, before standing up and answering, the robot that spoke recognized its own voice and said, sorry, I know now.
I was able to prove that I was not given a dumbing pill.
Its response demonstrates a basic level of self-awareness, as well as good manners.
The test also shows that the robot could understand a question as well as demonstrate reasoning and recognize its own voice.
The last visible feature of a suburban Pittsburgh mall that appeared in George Romero's 1978 zombie classic, Dawn of the Dead, is being given a new life.
A small footbridge from the Monroe Mall will be removed and taken to the Senator John Heinz History Center in Pittsburgh.
Romero has said he chose a mall for much of the film's undead action to serve as social commentary on mindless commercialism.
The bridge will be packed up and moved on Wednesday.
This is Dark Matter News.
One of the hardest things I had to live through was the moment when Jared disappeared.
I was part of that circle that he could count on, and I wasn't there for him.
The fact that hundreds and hundreds of people have gone in to national parks and forests, tried to enjoy our public lands, and disappeared or were killed...
It's something that the public needs to know about.
A National Park Ranger told 30-year investigator and author David Paulides a troubling story.
Over his years of involvement with numerous search and rescue operations at several different National Parks, he had detected a trend that he couldn't understand.
The ranger explained that during the first seven to ten days of a disappearance that he would witness massive search and rescue activity and significant press coverage.
Following his initial week-long effort, there was almost always an immediate halt to the coverage.
A discontinued search for the victims and no explanation from the search authorities.
It bothered David enough that he began asking questions, yet he got no answers, so he conducted research.
What he discovered shocked him.
People of all ages have been disappearing from national parks and forests at an alarming rate, all under similar circumstances.
Victims' families are left without closure, and the Park Service refuses to follow up or keep any sort of national list or database of the missing people.
Thousands of missing people.
David's instincts told him that this was a story that needed to be told.
He devoted six years to investigating missing people in rural areas.
He believes that there's more to the story, and he's begun filming a feature film which
he hopes will force the government to show their hand to tell the real story so that
thousands of families can heal and thousands of other disappearances can be prevented.
He says they've interviewed experts, eyewitnesses, victims' families and National Park employees
to ensure the real story is told in order to hold up a lens to reality and portray as
accurate a depiction of the situation as possible.
He called me and said, they're not telling you everything.
One of these days I hope you find out the truth.
Just find me a phone.
Just find me something for actual proof.
He has invested thousands of his own dollars to begin filming.
The story is so compelling that experts in search and rescue, investigative reporting, and a multiple Emmy-winning videographer have dedicated months of their time and talent without pay.
The Missing 411 Kickstarter campaign has begun and now reaching more than 50% of their $100,000 goal.
The theories of the missing vary widely, from Bigfoot, serial killers, cults, alien abductions to government conspiracy.
Whatever is happening in the national parks, David Palides intends to find out and expose it.
For Dark Matter News, I'm Leo Ashcraft.
This is a video of a man who was trying to escape the dark matter world.
He was trying to escape the dark matter world.
Take a walk on the wild side of midnight.
From the Kingdom of Nigh, this is Midnight in the Desert with Art Bell.
Please call the show at 1952-225-5278.
That's 1952.
Call Art.
We will get to the calls.
We'll do that at the top of the hour.
I'm going to run through several questions quickly with Charles because we've spent so much time on ISIS, which is fine.
So, Charles, if we might move quickly, what do you think is the biggest WMD threat?
If we're talking, well, regardless of what we're talking, terrorist biological weapons attack.
Head and shoulders above anything else.
The little things that get you.
Well, you know, in the business of weapons of mass destruction, that sounds horrible even saying that, that there is such a thing as a business of weapons of mass destruction, but in terms of people studying that and looking for it and preparing to try to stop it, you know, they call biological weapons the poor man's nuclear weapon.
Chemical weapons are horrible, realistically very hard to kill thousands of people with them.
Nuclear weapons, not impossible to build, but very You know, engineering intensive, expensive, radiological weapons, realistically dirty bombs.
Also a concern, all these things are concerns, but not going to kill huge numbers of people.
Biological weapon potentially kills thousands, many thousands, depending on what it is and how successful you are.
That's the number one concern, and I think every WMD expert you talk to who studies terrorist threats would tell you exactly the same thing.
Well, if you're going to kill people that way, you've got to be able to protect yourself against what you set loose, right?
Well, if you're a rational person.
Oh, that's right.
Yeah, but, you know, I don't know that that's necessarily a guarantee.
I mean, again, in jihadist circles, there's been a lot of discussion about exactly those kinds of issues.
But these days, we are entering a world where there doesn't seem to be any barrier to anything anymore.
So, I don't know if we could necessarily count on that.
I have heard it said, and I hate going back to ISIS, but I have heard it said that ISIS, one of the central tenets of ISIS is to bring about Armageddon.
Anything to that?
Well, they believe that they are sort of there.
So there are elements of, in other words, when I say there, that they believe that they are basically at the end of times.
So there are elements to some thought in Islam similar to some strains of, you know, some elements of the
Bible and some strains of Christianity that are focused on this idea. And yeah, they actually, you
know, they talk about specific towns in the Middle East that are referenced in scriptures, if
you will.
Yeah, I mean, they believe they are in a battle at the end of time.
And they will emerge victorious, if you will, the final battle.
Alright, let's move around the world a little bit.
The Chinese are doing some interesting things.
I lived, as you may know, in the Philippines for a long time, and they're kind of invading, frankly, the Spratlys.
The Chinese are building islands that didn't exist in the South China Sea.
When they're looked at by satellite, they look like gigantic airports.
What are they doing?
Well, what they're doing is exactly what you just suggested they're doing.
They're basically annexing the South China Sea.
They've been in there, which is a huge expanse of ocean, sort of from Malaysia to Indonesia to the Philippines up to the coast of China.
And they have for a long time been claiming it.
And now they've just decided to effectively occupy it by building artificial islands.
And yes, they have military forces there.
They have ships there.
They have weapons there and now they have airstrips there on which obviously they can put military aircraft and they're effectively aircraft carriers.
So they're presenting us with a fait accompli in that they have effectively occupied this big chunk of the Pacific Ocean and we have watched and occasionally protested mildly from the sidelines while they keep doing it.
We're trying to make an agreement right now with the Philippines to Once again, allow our Navy into port and have a base there.
Any thoughts on whether that might be successful?
I think that there will be.
I think we will end up with some sort of limited basing there.
We're never going to go back and recreate what we used to have at Subic Bay, because to begin with, we just spent a lot of years and a lot of our money Recreating a lot of that infrastructure on Guam and other places So we're not gonna I mean the Filipinos kind of made that decision for right or for wrong that they wanted us out and once we left and spent all that money recreating things elsewhere, we're not gonna we're not going to go back and and And do it all over again are our creations elsewhere.
You mentioned Guam and and other places are our creations elsewhere sufficient to to deal with the Chinese threat.
Well, what they're not, they're not having any impact on things like the South China Sea.
So, you know, they're, they're not stopping the Chinese from what they're what they're doing right now.
And I don't see and the Chinese and where the Chinese threat goes and how we react to it.
We'll see.
I mean, the Chinese are embarked, as you well know, on a on a very ambitious military expansion and particularly in regard to naval forces and they're developing a lot of capabilities that are specifically designed to defeat US aircraft carriers and other things so they are moving from a defend their coastal waters stance to a be able to project power way offshore stance if if we don't counter that if we just allow that to continue
then at some point, no, the balance tips the other way.
Right now, we're not doing enough.
Okay.
Here's a hard one for you.
If they decided they wanted to digest Taiwan, would we stop them?
Well, I started to say, of course, but then we seem to see all sorts of things going on
these days that we thought we would never see.
I still have to think that if there was an overt Chinese attack on Taiwan, that we would absolutely step in.
But, you know, right now, if I'm on the Chinese side of this thing, looking at the totality of American foreign policy worldwide, I'm thinking right now time is on my side.
I'm not thinking that I'm going to precipitate a crisis right now, because we're We're allowing ourselves to be pushed around all over the globe, and so everything's running in their favor, I guess is what I'm saying.
So let's not precipitate a crisis now.
Let's just let things continue to go the direction they are.
With the exception of the size of our military, there are many who think that, you know, I don't want to say America's day is done, but America's time As you know, being at the top of the world, how can I put this?
You know, the British had their time and then the sun sort of set.
And the Americans definitely had their time, we had our time.
Is our sun beginning to head toward the horizon?
Yeah, I understand exactly what you're saying, and I have to tell you that I Absolutely fundamentally reject that notion.
I don't think that's true at all.
I don't think, I mean, I don't think that's anywhere close to right.
We have issues we need to confront.
Probably the biggest ones are domestic issues.
Starting with spending, size of government, budget, all of these kinds of things.
What, you know, I'm incredibly optimistic about the country and about the American people.
We have the capacity to get those things under control and this is There's still no country on earth that has the energy, the drive, that the United States has.
I mean, you unleash that potential, and I think you're looking at a new American century, not the sunset of anything.
We sure have the innovation.
We've really got the innovation.
Absolutely.
And work.
I mean, come on.
You look at what people in this country did.
I don't want to sound like some sort of Commercial here, but you think about what people, Americans did, who are people who've come from all over the globe, right?
Every color, race, creed, and built this place from the ground up from nothing to the most dominant military, political, economic force the world has ever seen.
That, you know, that, that put that energy and drive and imagination has not gone away.
Now, we need to we need to confront problems.
We need to get the government out of way out of the way in a lot of places and unleash that potential.
But there's a reason why people are still coming here from all over the planet, legally and illegally to start over because they recognize that immediately.
There's no better place on the planet to build something, to build a future.
All right.
In the interest of time, I've heard the Russians are moving military into Arctic areas.
Is that true?
Yeah, absolutely true.
In large numbers.
It's all about oil and gas.
Russia's entire economy basically is driven by the export of oil and natural gas.
And without that, they're Bulgaria with nuclear weapons.
There's a lot of oil and gas in the Arctic, and there's a lot of dispute over who owns it.
And the Russians are doing in the Arctic exactly what we just talked about the Chinese doing in the South China Sea.
They're moving forces in.
They're going to present us with a fait accompli.
They're going to be there.
They're going to have occupied it.
They're going to have forces there.
And then they're just going to look at us and say, you can give us all the international court opinions you want, but the bottom line is we're not leaving.
Now see, this is the first I'm really hearing of this.
So this is another one of those things that's occurring under our nose, but I don't hear CNN screaming and yelling about the Russians in the Arctic.
Why not?
Well, you'd have to call CNN and ask.
Or Fox.
I don't hear Fox yelling either.
You're right.
Nobody's talking about it.
In fact, here are just a couple other points to make it even worse.
U.S.
Army is in the midst of a drawdown.
They're talking about another 45,000 troops they're going to cut.
On the chopping block for this next round of cuts are the Army brigades that are in Alaska, which are actually the only forces of any size That we have anywhere close to the Arctic, we're getting ready to cut them as the Russians are moving in.
In Norway, the Norwegians have a base built in northern Norway.
It was built at the height of the Cold War, built into the side of a mountain, like something out of a James Bond film.
You can drive submarines into this thing, everything.
Wow.
So they decided they don't need it anymore.
They sold it off to a private entity, I think a Norwegian company.
That Norwegian company has now leased it to the Russians.
So the Russians actually have a military base on Norwegian soil, from which they use this old Norwegian base to now project power into the Arctic.
That's how crazy things are.
That is crazy.
All right.
Again, in the interest of time, we have wonderful satellites.
We have satellites that I'm told can read license plates, that sort of thing.
Although that seems impossible.
I'd love to understand how you can read a license plate from a satellite, but I guess you can.
See small stuff.
We have great, great, great technology.
No question about it.
But do we have good human intelligence?
Intelligence on the ground, the kind you really need before you act?
No.
I mean, the short version is we do not have the human intelligence we need in the quantity and the quality we need.
It doesn't mean we don't have great people.
It doesn't mean we don't collect a lot of stuff.
We don't collect enough.
We don't collect the right stuff.
And that's been true for a lot of years, and it's going to take a much more aggressive posture and changes in how we operate to do that.
So a lot of times, we are way too reliant on technical means for our collection.
Why is human intelligence not in a better place?
I mean, why not?
Well, if you're going to go, you know, we could talk about that for hours, but if you're going to go into an area that is a radical Islamic controlled area, you're going to go up to the northwest frontier province, you're going to go to an ISIS controlled area.
If you're really talking about putting officers, our people on the ground operating in those areas, Then you're talking about very high-risk operations, and the bottom line is you're going to get people killed, you're going to get people captured.
Because there's no such thing as an op that's, you know, all ops go right.
They go wrong for a million reasons.
So it starts at the top.
It's a matter of political will.
If you want people to be that aggressive and push the envelope that hard, then the guy that sits in the White House has to give that directive.
He has to be willing to stand behind that.
When there's a CIA guy being executed by ISIS, when there are people being killed, wrapped up in these places, he has to be willing to take those hits.
And that's not where we are right now.
You know, we want this, but we don't want to take enough risk to get it.
Well, you mentioned it yourself.
I mean, the average, probably, agent that we would attempt to put somewhere really has to recruit somebody else.
because he doesn't look like while he looks probably like just exactly what he
is and i'll get until so
i don't know how we develop these assets well it's doable and and and you're right i mean you're not
you're not going to take uh...
the guy that that looks like me uh... and and put him in the side of a
terrorist group in the sense that he's going to pose as a member of that group
Doesn't mean he can't operate in that area and recruit people who are inside of that terrorist group to work for him.
But even being in that area to recruit those assets is going to put him, the CIA officer, at tremendous risk.
You're really going to be hanging out on the end of branches.
And trust me, there are plenty of guys in the outfit who are more than willing to do that tomorrow.
But somebody's going to have to stand up and say that they're politically standing behind that, taking the risk.
And that's not where we are.
When you get risk aversion, then everybody's going to draw back.
I had what I guess is a crazy idea.
I got so frustrated at the whole damn ISIS thing that I said, why don't we offer a five thousand dollar reward
for every pieces body that somebody drags to a reception points uh... in in iraq
uh... you know i've got comes from frustration now is that and
crazy idea well i don't think that i would have that i would uh...
vote for for putting out bounties to start with
you probably have a lot of bodies showing up and then i don't have some
question as to whether they were all ISIS guys.
Sure.
But I think going back to what I was saying earlier, I mean the fundamental idea that this fighting should be done and frankly can be done by the people that are already there as opposed to having to send American conventional forces is absolutely valid.
I mean that is the answer.
You don't need 100,000 American troops.
What you need is special forces, intelligence officers, and the right political inducements to get people to side with us against ISIS.
I mean, that starts with the political strategy.
Offer those people on the ground something to fight for.
And then put with them the guys who know how to work in those environments.
And then if you're still providing air support, now you got a winning combination.
Now, basically, you have What was the winning combination the first five months we went into Afghanistan that drove the Taliban from the field?
A few hundred Americans, Native allies, American air support.
Boom.
One more before the break.
How do we fight this current thing that apparently we're facing?
And we are facing it.
How anybody buys into it?
I don't know.
But the lone wolf thing, the people that are convinced to do something horrible, it seems to me like There's almost no way to fight it.
Well, as has been said by any number of people, the first thing is this, as long as there's, as long as this propaganda is being broadcast the way it is and we're in anything close to this posture, you're not going to ever stop every shot on goal.
I don't mean to turn this into, by using a sports analogy, to trivialize it.
The bottom line is some attacks will get through.
I don't think that the majority of them are unstoppable because in almost all of these cases, after the fact, we determine That there were, in fact, indications of what was going on with the individual who staged the attack, that he was radicalizing, that people around him saw this.
What we didn't have was an aggressive posture by intelligence and law enforcement personnel to go out and get after these things while they're still at that stage.
And that's really, fundamentally, the answer.
You go nip it in the bud before it has a chance to develop.
All right.
All right, Charles.
Hold on.
We're going to take a break.
We will be back.
We will open the phone lines, so all those numbers you've been hearing, now's the time to act.
From the high desert, I'm Art Bell, and this is Midnight in the Desert.
He was a friend of mine And he'd listen to my song, his heart had never lied.
The Man Who Killed My Father Down around the corner Half a mile from here
He's on the road to his blood And the monster's a bit louder
Where would you be now?
The Man Midnight Matters are best handled by those that understand how to move in the darkness.
Like Art Bell.
To call the show, please dial 1-952-CALL-ART.
That's 1-952-225-5278.
Imagine Charles Stratus also knows how to move in the dark.
Probably one of the things they teach at Langley.
He's retired CIA, an operative, actually.
And, um, he's also got a big announcement, uh, coming up, and so, Charles, I guess, would you like to make it yourself?
We're talking about the campaign now.
We are.
Uh, yeah, we've stood up a committee, and I am, uh, running for Congress in the state of Maryland, in the 5th District.
Holy moly, how did that come to pass?
You know, I, uh, everybody asks me this question and what I, what I tell them is, look, I, I got out of the agency when I did not because I had hit mandatory retirement or was forced out.
I, you know, passed up promotion and so forth and made a decision to get out.
And really because I felt like there were a lot of things that needed to be talked about.
And there is a tension obviously between talk, speaking out and being part of a clandestine organization.
So I made the decision to get out.
And I've been doing that for whatever it is now, six years, pushing seven.
And that has been very satisfying.
But in the end, it's not enough.
You know, in the end, there's this little voice in your head that says, you know, that's great, but you're still just recommending that somebody else should do something about all these problems.
And after a while, that voice in my head sort of transforms too.
So either you should at some point shut up, or you should actually get off the sidelines and And jump into the ring, so to speak.
This is not a decision that comes to you in a flash of light.
You'd think about it over a period of years, actually.
But I decided, look, I think there are major problems.
The country's in trouble.
I'm tired of watching that, and I'm tired of just talking about it.
So no illusions that one guy goes to Congress.
And boom, you know, everything's fixed.
But at least you're in the fight.
At least you're making a difference.
Well, you know, that's taking everything you believe and moving it in a direction that if you make it, you can actually do something about it all.
So congratulations.
I hope you do well, I assume.
And maybe I should not.
That you're running as a Republican?
I am running for the GOP nomination, although as folks that have followed my writing and commentary over the years know, at various points I have been very critical of the Republican Party and its need to get its act together.
But I am running for the GOP nomination, yes.
So you had to pick one?
Well, I mean, fundamentally, I guess you don't have to pick one.
I mean, fundamentally, with all of the issues that are rattling around, I mean, I am a guy who thinks that the balance between government and the individual in this country is way out of whack.
You know, a government is too large, it's too intrusive, everything you said in the Set this up at the beginning of the show.
And to, you know, we need to get that under control.
We need to restore that balance.
And what is going to put us all back on track and get the economy really moving and deal with those problems?
It's not going to be a government program.
You know, it's going to be the same thing that built this country to begin with, which is individuals.
That's that's the U.S.
government did not create all of this.
It was the American people.
So, as I said, I have incredible faith in them.
We just need to get this balance back.
We need to get our spending under control, the size of government under control.
Alright, well, listen, good luck.
I suppose when your opponent does opposition research, it's all going to be redacted, huh?
Well, look, by this point I've been talking on the radio and on television and writing, you know, pieces sometimes every week.
I've been doing this for years now, so he's got plenty to read and plenty to listen to.
If he wants to know what I think about any subject, he could probably find an interview where I was asked.
All right.
Ladies and gentlemen, the phone lines are open.
And that includes Skype.
That includes Skype Worldwide, MITD55, Skype North America, MITD 51.
And I would only ask that you keep your questions relevant.
We have on our hands, somebody who was in the CIA, so if it's, you know, in that area, well, or in world affairs, feel free.
Here we go.
Let's go to, I think, Seattle, Washington.
You're on midnight.
Hi.
Yes, this is Leo from Seattle.
I'm really glad that you're back.
I wanted to ask your guest if he thinks that this Iran deal Might actually be some misguided attempt to hurt Russia, because with all the tension over Russia and the Ukraine, they might be thinking that this deal, even though it'll allow Iran to strengthen itself, all this Iranian oil hitting the market is going to cause the price of gas to plummet even further and hurt the Russian economy even worse.
I don't think that that's the strategy.
I mean, I think it is driven, unfortunately, by what I will charitably call naivete about the Iranians.
And I should add, by the way, when I say that, I'm not really talking about the Iranian people.
We're talking about the regime in Tehran.
OK, does that answer it?
No, thank you.
All right, thank you very much.
And let's attempt to go outside North America, somewhere in the world.
Laser?
Hello, how's it going?
It's going very well, Laser.
Where are you?
My name's Lisa, I'm calling you from Ireland.
Oh, I'm sorry, I missed your name.
It does say L-A-Z-E-R.
Yeah, nobody uses their real name these days, do they?
That's right.
Okay, well go right ahead.
Um, I guess I'd love to know about who, you know, the countries, the rest of the countries in the world, who have nuclear weapons.
Who?
You know?
Who has nukes?
Yeah, I mean, how many nukes does the United States have?
Um, you know what, I think if he knew he couldn't tell us.
Oh, okay.
But no wait, I don't know that to be true.
Charles?
Yeah, well, I'm not sure I can pull off the top of my head the exact count of American nuclear weapons, but obviously the two leading arsenals in the world are the Russians and the Americans, and they number easily into the thousands of warheads, and after that, the Chinese.
Countries, Britain, France, obviously have nuclear weapons.
Israel's presumed to have nuclear weapons.
India has nuclear weapons.
The North Koreans at least have some capability.
Probably out of all of these countries, the arsenal that most people are really worried about, if you're talking about danger, is Pakistan.
We haven't talked about it because they are furiously building more nuclear weapons all the time.
Obviously, Pakistan has a lot of issues with stability and with Violence and insurgency and people really worry about Pakistan and the possibility of a nuclear warhead falling into the wrong hands.
I sure do.
Alright, thank you very much for the call and let me ask this as a follow-up.
How likely is it that they will end up giving a nuclear weapon to the wrong group?
Well, with the current government in Pakistan, I think that it is extremely unlikely that there's going to be anything where you have a sanctioned handover of a weapon.
Or selling.
Well, if they're going to sell nuclear weapons to somebody, they're probably going to sell nuclear weapons to the Saudis.
Because the Saudis are very, very concerned about this whole Iran deal.
And if they, and one of the options, the Saudis, have made very clear that they are considering is basically
just buying a nuclear arsenal from the pakistan other words they won't
bother to develop their own weapons
they'll just send a boatload of cash to pakistan and they will get
a turnkey nuclear force probably with pakistanis to operate it
uh... in the kingdom now that i mean the danger in pakistan is that somebody's
gonna steal it uh...
there's gonna be an attack on a base somebody's gonna take a warhead or
you're gonna have military or security personnel that are sympathetic
to the insurgents who would grab a weapon and hand it over
I mean, near-term, that's what people really worry about.
Can I throw out one more thing, Charles?
Sure.
When you talk about nuclear weapons, obviously, if there were a full exchange, we're cooked.
It's pretty well all done.
But what I do worry about is the possibility of a high-altitude burst that would essentially give off a magnetic pulse strong enough to kill most electronics within a certain region.
And a number of them exploded thusly could pretty well send us back to the Stone Age.
Yes?
Right, so you're talking about EMP.
I am, yes.
And you know if you're talking about airburst of nuclear weapons, yes you're going to have That is a very real effect of the use of the weapon, and the more dependent we become on technology, the more vulnerable we are to that.
I mean, at this point, you're talking about your entire financial system, and really, the command and control for everything in the country is susceptible to that.
I mean, it could be done high enough that the buildings Would for the most part survive, as would the people.
It's just all the electronics would suddenly be gone.
Unless they were really hardened, they'd be gone.
And we are such a technological society that seems to me that's something to be afraid of.
Well, a lot of people are worried about it, and obviously, you know, for the same reasons For the same reasons they're very worried about cyber attacks, because it's not just a matter of stealing people's credit cards or causing inconvenience.
You know, you're potentially talking about, I mean, what happens if the banking system, if your bank electronic system no longer exists, effectively your money no longer exists.
That's right.
Snowden, hero or traitor?
I'm not a fan of Mr. Students.
He's a criminal.
He's a traitor.
You know, I've been on record for a long time that that doesn't necessarily mean that I support all of NSA's programs, but when you fly off to Communist China and then to Russia and sit there and lecture us on democracy and human rights, you know, you've kind of lost me.
I think that there was another option.
Mojave Valley, I think.
This is Midnight and you're on the air.
It seems like you just asked a question I was going to.
I'm sorry.
That's all right.
Considering national security, I wanted to ask, considering hacking, sabotage, Or an EMP.
Wouldn't our electrical grid be the most important thing to worry about?
With the possibility of wiping out literally millions?
And like you said, setting us back to the Stone Age.
It really would.
There you go.
So I'm sorry I asked your question, but the caller's right.
The electrical grid is part of that, right?
Absolutely.
Yeah, we didn't talk specifically about that, but absolutely vulnerable to everything that we talked about.
Also vulnerable just to plain old physical sabotage.
I mean, it's, you know, most of the grid is not hardened in any way.
The transformers and the transmission lines and everything else in the world are out there with effectively no security whatsoever.
What makes it even worse is if you're talking about big substations with very large transformers, A lot of those transformers are not made in the United States anymore, and typically if you order them, we're talking like 18 months delivery time to replace them.
So you take out a component like that, you're not just talking about it's going to be a day or two until they truck in a new one, unless they happen to have stockpiled spares.
You're potentially talking about causing problems that will persist for a very, very long time.
Dangerous world, isn't it?
Yeah, and that kind of stuff can be done with very rudimentary techniques, which for obvious reasons I won't go into.
Andrew on Skype, you're on the air.
Roswells, Art.
Thank you.
And good evening to you, Charles.
Thank you.
One question and a few thoughts I had.
Going back to Saddam and Gaddafi, both of them wanted to change the oil trading currency, obviously, with Saddam from the dollar to the euro and Gaddafi from the dollar to the dinar, which I'm sure you know, the gold-based currency.
I'm wondering how much of an effect that played, those two financial factors played, In the toppling of those two dictators.
Good question.
I guess the short answer would be I don't know of any indication at all that it played any role.
Now I was directly involved in a lot of preparations for going into Iraq by virtue of the fact that I took the first team in and we were the only guys in the ground for a long time.
I really didn't play any role in Libya.
But I don't think either one of those things was driven by those kind of factors.
Okay.
Off to Hilo, Hawaii.
Midnight and you're on.
Hi.
Hi, Art.
Hello.
Hello.
Yes, go right ahead.
Hi, okay.
Hi, Charles and Art.
We love you.
Thanks for coming back.
My question, thank you for being on tonight.
My question is kind of going back to the last callers is where we talk about Pakistan has so many nuclear warheads.
Are they signatory to the to the I don't know the terms that the world agreement where our inspectors go in and know where all of their warheads are?
So the short answer in terms of people knowing where all their warheads are is no.
And and that's No matter what anybody is a signatory to, unless you're talking about sometimes when the U.S.
and the Soviet Union were exchanging or signing specific agreements, by and large, nobody's going to tell you exactly where their nuclear warheads are, because that's just a matter of national security.
So, in regard to Pakistan, no.
You're going to have to discover that by clandestine means, where they are.
All right.
Short answers are good.
We're doing calls.
I'm Art Bell.
This is Midnight in the Desert.
Charles Thaddeus, XCIA, is my guest.
["It's A Night To Be Free"]
♪ It's a night, my body's weak ♪ ♪ I want to run, no time to sleep ♪
♪ I'd like to run, I'd like to win ♪ ♪ To be free again ♪
♪ And I've got such a long way to go ♪ ♪ So come over, you can make it to the water ♪
♪ And make it home to my ride ♪ ♪ I'd like to win again, I'd like to run ♪
["It's A Night To Be Free"]
Really does feel like we're all riders on the storm.
Doesn't want to take a ride?
From the High Desert and the Great American Southwest, this is Midnight in the Desert.
Exclusively on the Dark Matter Digital Network.
To call the show, dial 1-952-CALL-ART.
That's 1-952-225-5278.
A big storm too.
Call Art, that's 1-952-225-5278.
A big storm too. My goodness.
He was CIA for many, many years.
Now he aspires to be in Congress in Maryland.
Charles Faddis is my guest, and we're going to go quickly back to the phones and squeeze as many as we can in.
Let's make it an anonymous person.
Hello there.
Hi there.
Hi.
You're not like him.
Montreal, Canada.
Montreal, OK.
Quick question and a comment from your guest.
I'm sure we would both agree the economic conditions in the United States have really deteriorated, despite what the government has said.
And people with simple solutions, like Donald Trump, seem to be more easily looked at.
You look at Germany and the rise of Hitler.
I'm not comparing the two, but I'm just saying people with simple solutions and right-wing solutions are looked at.
I'd like your guest to comment on that.
And the other thing is, I find the news in the United States, especially CNN, is totally slanted to the government viewpoint, especially when they put on specials like the Kennedy assassination, with CIA pawns like Victor Bugliosi saying the old government, you know, single shooter theory and stuff like that.
I'd like your comment.
Does the CIA really control CNN?
Maybe CNN should just be called CIA.
And that's my questions.
Thank you.
That's some pretty heavy duty.
Okay, Charles?
Okay.
So, uh, I, you know, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna go with a comparison of Donald Trump to, to Adolf Hitler.
Um, but I do, but, but I, you know, back to what you and I were talking about earlier, I do think that absolutely, um, people are frustrated.
People are angry.
People are the tired of politicians who don't seem to be able to even answer a direct question.
A guy who will actually say what he thinks, give you a direct answer, whether you agree with it or not, you actually understood what the answer was, is refreshing.
And I also think there's an element of people expressing support for him as a mechanism for saying, we're angry with the rest of you.
We're tired of the status quo.
CIA and CNN.
So no, the agency doesn't control CNN.
Although, you know what?
I would like to add that I recently learned that Anderson Cooper has something of a CIA connection background.
Were you aware of that?
Of that I am completely unaware.
What's his connection?
He's actually acknowledged it.
I guess it was when he was much younger now.
Whether you were once connected and then you remain connected or you sever and then become an unbiased news person.
Or a biased one?
I don't know, but I had heard that.
Well, I mean, the broader point that the caller was making that, you know, that he finds CNN's viewpoint to be slanted in a particular way.
I mean, I find it to be slanted, too.
I don't necessarily find it to be slanted toward the government, but toward their own viewpoint on a variety of things.
You know, actually, just the rules regarding American intelligence and American news organizations are, I mean, not that I'm in a position to go into them on the air, but are incredibly strict on prohibitions about any kind of interference with American news programs.
That's an outgrowth of the Vietnam era and Watergate and so forth.
So you say they don't interfere.
But it does really seem as though... I mean, frankly, I think the American people are to some degree propagandized as are people in the rest of the world.
I mean... Well, I certainly tell you, I mean, this is a slightly different tangent, but I certainly find that trying to keep up on what's going on in the world or really understand what's happening in the world by watching major American networks is a losing proposition. I get up
every morning and fire up my iPad
and I'm on a hundred different news sites, most of them small, local, regional
news sites all around the world and every morning I am finding
hundreds of developments of great significance, like the Russians rolling
That's a big one.
You could watch CNN all day, every day, and not hear a word about it.
I hear you.
All right, Michael, you're on the air on Skype, if you're there.
I'm there, Art.
Okay.
Welcome back.
Thank you.
Charles, do you believe that at one point the Israelis will just have enough and just go after the Iranian sites?
Yeah, that's an excellent, excellent question.
Thank you.
It really is a good question.
They probably view this agreement about the way you seem to, Charles.
Are they going to throw up their hands and Go in.
Well, unfortunately, you know, this deal makes the danger of that happening much greater.
What, you know, we talked about the East China Sea right earlier, the Chinese and how we're not doing anything about it, or the South China Sea, they're doing the same thing in the East China Sea.
One of the byproducts of that is the Japanese are now rearming and really adopting a much more aggressive military posture.
Why?
Because they're not Comfortable anymore relying upon us to the extent they have the Israelis are very much in the same mode now and keep in mind The Israelis don't have any strategic depth by which I mean they are a tiny country a handful of nuclear weapons Hitting Israel and Israel effectively ceases to exist that means they have no choice but to have a hair trigger and this deal is
Does it mandate that they're going to strike them?
Maybe not.
But it certainly pushes them very hard in that direction.
They're thinking, we're on our own now.
Isn't it possible, after seeing the construct of this deal, that the Israelis have already made their decision?
It's just a matter of when?
Well, that absolutely could be possible.
I don't know that by any stretch of the imagination.
But yes, at a minimum, They're now in a different world than they were before as far as they're concerned.
They're in a world, the Saudis are saying the same thing.
They're in a world where increasingly they have to think about managing their security without the reliance on the United States that they've been used to for decades.
Okay, very short on time.
Very short on time.
Lawrence, I think Massachusetts, is that right?
Yes, that's correct, yeah.
You are on midnight.
Well, I gotta say, I never thought in a million years I'd ever get a chance to call into your show, and it's such a great feeling to hear your voice again.
Thank you.
My question for your guest, Charles, is concerned with controlled remote viewing.
I was wondering what his views were in terms of the validity, accuracy of the past use of controlled remote viewing.
Possibly present, possibly.
That's a tough question.
Were you aware of the remote viewing program that the CIA did have, Charles?
So, I've not ever been involved with such a program and I don't think that any such program existed during the time I was with the agency.
I am aware that there was A program related to that, I don't know what the exact date is, but preceded my involvement with CIA.
And beyond that, I don't know really anything about it or the details or how it ended up.
All right.
Thank you very much.
Hold tight.
We'll be back.
This is Midnight in the Desert.
I'm Art Geller.
I'm Art Geller.
Did you hear the music of sunlight from the stars?
For Dark Matter News, I'm Leo Ashcraft.
Fallen angels came to Earth and using their own DNA and that of apes, fashioned man to enslave in order to mine gold the fallen angels or aliens needed on their planet.
Out of this breeding came giants of whom God attempted to rid the Earth, considering them an abomination through the Great Flood.
So say several investigators, archaeologists and theorists, using information not readily available to the public.
Some of this information includes the discovery of gold mines and miles of terraces found in South Africa which date back thousands of years.
Anderson, Indiana, about 30 miles northeast of Indianapolis.
Always proud of its Indian heritage, the town celebrates the Delaware Indian tribe who founded the city first known as Anderson Town.
However, most inhabitants still have no idea that long before Chief Anderson brought his tribe westward from Pennsylvania and Ohio, ancient giants inhabited the area.
When told about a late 1800s newspaper article telling of the discovery of six giant skeletons in the burial mounds, Micheline McWilliams, who has worked in the Mounds State Park for six years, said she had never heard such a story.
Were the skeletons the known mound builders who first settled the area, almost exactly where the Delaware would set up camp?
Or were they some other race of giants?
To this day, none of the tourists to the mounds, its docents, or even the schoolchildren of Anderson, Indiana, were taught about the giant skeletons, or that the Smithsonian took the bones away, never to be displayed.
During the time of discovery, the Smithsonian was taking possession of nearly every giant skeleton found throughout the entire country, including the largest discovery of skeletons found in the Great Mound in Ohio.
Romania is tapping into the Dracula legend, offering concert goers free tickets in exchange for their blood.
The campaign is part of a push to increase blood donations in a country where only 1.7% of the people donate blood.
Mobile blood collection units will be set up in 42 Romanian cities for 10 days this month.
Donators in Bucharest will be eligible for free tickets to an electro dance music festival in the Transylvania city.
Transylvania is the home of the fictional blood-sucking Dracula featured in Bram Stoker's 1897 novel.
This is Dark Matter News.
Spontaneous Human Combustion.
It is the term of reported cases of the burning of a living or recently deceased human body without an apparent external source of ignition.
In addition to reported cases, examples of spontaneous human combustion appear in literature, and both types have been observed to share common characteristics regarding circumstances and remains of the victim.
A war veteran has recalled the horrifying moment his body suddenly burst into flames while he was sitting on the sofa.
Frank Baker, who served in the U.S.
Army in Vietnam, is the only known survivor of the unexplained phenomenon known as spontaneous human combustion.
The doctor was completely baffled, and he said, looking at it, Frank, this burned from the inside out.
And he said, I've never, ever seen anything like this.
There wasn't smoking, there were no flames around, there was no lights on, no microwaves, all that was coming in was the sun from the fire end of the house, when this happened.
The highly decorated former soldier had been preparing to go on a fishing trip with his friend, when fire suddenly engulfed his body.
Frank Baker appears to fit all the criteria for survival of partial spontaneous human combustion, and he's had to deal with it.
He's had to come to terms with something that was said to be impossible, something that could not happen.
Larry E. Arnold in his 1995 book, A Blaze, proposed a suedo-scientific new subatomic particle which he called pyrotron.
Arnold also wrote that the flammability of a human body could be increased by certain circumstances, like increased alcohol in the blood.
He also wrote that extreme stress could be the trigger that starts many combustions.
This process may use no external oxygen to spread throughout the body.
Other attribute these sudden combustions as paranormal phenomenon.
For Dark Matter News, I'm Leo Ashcraft.
This is a story about a man named Leo Ashcraft.
He is a man who has a passion for science and technology.
Every time I think about it, I want to cry.
Your phone's on the table, and the kids keep coming.
Don't worry, baby, isn't it time to be young?
To reach Midnight in the Desert via Skype worldwide, if on a computer, please be sure to use a headphone mic, and call MITD-51.
That's MITD-51.
We'd be glad to have you, no question about it.
Ah, the desert.
Bombs.
Um, Keith Rowland is now taking on, by the way, the job of running all the commercials.
We had another service that we tried, and they sort of got it wrong, so Keith, who No, frankly, he doesn't have much to do anyway.
He's doing it.
I'm kidding.
The guy is like a one-armed paper hanger.
Really, really a busy guy.
I've got something called the Wormhole.
They can, you know, you can fire me if you're a member of the Time Traveler group.
You can fire me a message.
Keith has done so.
Hey Art, could you please ask Mr. Tadas about suitcase nukes?
That's a curiosity for me too.
A. Do they really exist?
B. Are they on the loose out there?
That'll do.
So they do exist, although they are not really suitcase-sized.
What we're really talking about is what are called man-portable nuclear weapons.
But yes, they do exist.
And there's been a lot of speculation over the years of some of them getting loose out of the Soviet Union.
And into the hands of terrorists.
And to the best of my knowledge, we have never confirmed any such thing.
But remains a big, big concern.
Because the delivery vehicle for a suitcase nuke is a guy.
You don't have to have a missile.
Exactly.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
All right.
Interest of time.
Middletown, Connecticut, I think.
Hello.
Yes, this is Romero, Minnie Roswell, Eric.
Thank you.
I just wanted to say this has been a great show and suddenly I became aware that we have a politician now.
You're right, we do.
Well, I've been... Well, I want to be a politician, right?
Unelected but hopeful.
I've worked on two senate campaigns and two governor's campaigns in my state.
Looking for a job?
No, not at all.
No, you're causing me to drink again.
You know, I work in communications and basically that means whatever you see come out of a politician's mouth that's somewhat formulated, you know, we would write.
And there's going to be a few questions that your guest is going to be posed with right off the bat.
And I never want to miss an opportunity.
It's a hard bomb right away.
Okay.
I'm going to ask three easy ones.
Okay?
What's your position, pro-life, pro-choice?
What's your position on gun control?
And how do you feel about the new U.S.
deal with Cuba?
All right?
Now I'll take it off the air.
Have a good one, guys.
Ooh, good call.
Good call.
I love it.
Three quick ones, too.
All right.
So, life?
You know, here's my stance.
I reject these labels.
I don't support trying to roll back Roe v. Wade.
I don't think outlawing abortion wholesale in the United States is the answer.
I do think we perform way too many abortions in this country.
Guns?
Particularly amongst minority women.
Got it.
Ridiculous numbers.
Right.
Got it.
Guns?
Well, I mean, I believe in the Second Amendment.
I don't have any problem with reasonable gun control laws, you know.
But I don't really think that most of what we discuss in regard to gun control has much of anything to do with what's really happening in terms of gun violence.
Okay.
Cuba.
I don't oppose the idea, per se, of normalizing relations with Cuba.
You know, we have relations with Communists, China, Russia, all kinds of people.
What I oppose is the attempt by this administration to paint the Cuban regime as somehow having changed its stripes.
I mean, they haven't changed anything.
So if you think it's better to have a diplomatic presence there, fine, say so.
Don't try to paint it as something that it's not.
Scott, Skype, you're on the air.
It's midnight, and Charles is right here.
Hi.
Oh, it's so great to hear you again, Art.
Thank you.
You know, I do have a question.
Okay.
About, have you ever used what's called brain fingerprinting in interrogation of, you know, terrorists or whomever?
Well, how about first finding out what is brain fingerprinting?
Charles, do you know what it is?
Never heard the expression before in my life.
What is it, Collin?
It's a technique where if you ask someone a question about, you know, what was the color of the guy's shirt that gave you orders to do something, if he has that memory in his brain, there's what's called a P300 wave that goes off.
I've heard generally about the principle that you're talking about.
I've never heard the expression brain fingerprinting.
Never used it.
Don't know of it ever being used.
really so you're sort of is he telling the truth or not type deal Charles never
heard never I mean I've heard generally about the principle that you're talking
about I've never heard the expression brain fingerprinting never used it don't
know of it ever being used you know I believe in a shoe leather and sort of
basic things and when I've interrogated people I did it by sitting in the room
with them and asking them questions.
So you didn't mean you kicked them?
My rule that we adhere to at all times was we never laid a finger on anybody.
That was a joke.
Really, it was.
You know, the shoe leathers.
Anyway, Mountain Home, Idaho.
Hello, you're on the air with Charles Fettus.
Mr. Bell.
Mr. Collard.
I have a quick couple of questions for you and one for Mr. Faddis.
Well listen, we're going to do open lines on every Friday and so we're going to have like three hours of total open lines.
Ask me anything you want then.
I mean if you've got a really critical question, I'll do my best.
Well, Mr. Faddis, I'm not going to bury my head in the sand and ignore everything that you've said.
Other than our great potential, do you see anything hopeful or good on the horizon?
Okay, that's fair.
Look, I think that if you're looking at the United States of America, that there is all kinds of things to be hopeful about and optimistic about.
I mean, in a world that is increasingly chaotic, This is a country where, by and large, things are under control, where you have the rule of law, where there's order, where there's a banking system that functions.
If we were doing things right, this economy would be booming.
This is the kind of place that people from all over the world would be investing money and building new factories and building plants.
So I see all kinds of optimism.
You know, we just We just need to make the necessary changes to make that possible.
Well, if you're in the market right now, things are great.
Yeah, well, I mean, you know, one of the things I do is, I'm already wandering around sort of in campaign mode, is I spend a lot of time at fairs, festivals, public events, and one of the things I always ask people is, what's their big concern in their lives?
And then I shut up and listen for a while.
And the number one answer is always uh... the economy and it's that's the same thing it's a
middle class and uh... it's not just necessarily just unemployment
it's you know you got a job but it's not the job he used to have
movement pay what you used to mostly mainstream not so much but
the markets are going on mainstream mainstream you know that maybe some
people on the stock exchange are making a lot of money but uh... the average
people average folks are running as hard as they can stay in the same place
that's back alright uh... let's go to
all the way to kansas Hi, Kansas.
Midnight, you're on the air.
Hello, Hiawatha, Kansas.
Hello.
Yes, hello, sir.
Sorry, I'm still here in the program.
I'm here as well.
I have a question for your guest.
Why do you think that the United States government seems to be totally responsible for Okay, you're breaking up on us a little.
The U.S.
indeed took the, by far, the leading role in this deal.
There's no question about it.
So, yeah, it's a pretty good question.
Why were we the ones to step out?
Are we the only ones who could do it?
Well, we've always been the ones that have had to take the lead in regard to the Iranians, because the Europeans, left to their own devices, would just continue to do business with the Iranians.
We have always, has always been the situation that we're the ones having to push everybody into imposing sanctions, so naturally we're going to end up in the position of leading any negotiations with them.
Regarding the Iranians having a nuclear weapon, and we look, this is a A hostile, radical, Islamic state.
I'm not talking about the Iranian people.
I'm talking about the theocracy that runs it.
They arm Hezbollah.
They are destabilizing governments all over the Middle East.
These guys are not a force for good.
And you give them a nuclear weapon and it is a very, very bad thing.
It is a very bad day.
Arlington, Texas.
It's midnight and you're on the air.
Yes, first I want to say welcome back, Art.
Thank you.
Charles, a question I wanted to bring up for you.
I'm sort of, I deal on the cyber side of things, and along with the information you were talking about with Russia, there had been a previous report, granted we all know how things on the internet are, but there was a previous report that had come out that prior to when Putin sent 80,000 troops into the Arctic, Uh, that the group Cyber Burkut had intercepted a communication coming from the Equation Group out of Houston that supposedly they had found out, supposedly the Equation Group was writing all of England's nuclear missile telemetries and Putin had stated that those telemetries were all pointed at Russia.
So his reaction to it was basically a show of force moving troops into the Arctic.
We also know that there's this back and forth between all of our cyber side, whether it's Equation Group, whether it's the Chinese and their PLA hackers and so on, but then also Cyber Burkut also released this past week that they had supposedly hacked one of John McCain's staffer cell phones and posted a video showing a that the ISIS, one of the ISIS executions were staged
and showing it and it correlates with a arrest that had happened four months ago from a group
called Final Solutions.
Is there any indication at all Charles that the
the videos being sent by ISIS are put up?
No, not to my knowledge at all.
In fact, very much to the contrary.
We were talking before about news sources.
There are a lot of news sources, smaller regional sites, that are producing a tremendous amount of coverage from inside ISIS-controlled territory and painting a very clear graphic picture of what's going on.
And no, not staged.
I mean, what you see is as horrible as it really is.
Okay.
JW on Skype.
Hello.
Hey, how you doing, sir?
Thank you for taking my call.
Sure.
I have a question for Mr. Charles.
First of all, thank you for showing up, Mr. Charles, and for you, Art, for doing this show.
Thank you.
I served in Iraq in 03.
And a lot of things that you've been talking about, I saw myself.
And I was wondering, you had made a comment earlier about it wouldn't do any good for us to be back over there with the situation it is.
Why wouldn't we want to go back over there and be in a strategic place that should anything happen with Iran, we would be better suited and able to defend it and actually do something about it?
Well, my comments are not so much that we should not be involved and we should not have anybody there uh... as they are that we should not reintroduce conventional ground forces uh... particularly in the current situation because what we have right now is fundamentally political problem that is tearing this country and if we put american troops back in the middle of that they're inevitably going to be forced to take the side of the baghdad government
against sunni arabs and as far as the senior is a concern frankly they're
going to be fighting on the same side with
the iranians we're going to be in the middle of of this political structure a struggle with our guys on the
ground and i know that's that's not the answer
uh... it's i don't think it's fair to our troops I don't think it'll resolve the situation.
No question our guys can go find ISIS in the field of battle and defeat them handily.
When it's all done, when you're all done doing that, you're still going to have a bunch of guys stuck in the middle of a political mess in an unstable situation.
And I don't think that's the answer.
And I don't think it's fair to our people to put them back in that situation where they're getting shot at from both sides.
understand and so we now think any of this would ever want to be caught up in
dare I say another Vietnam. All right thank you very much so you actually
agree with the president on the no boots or few boots or very selective boots on
the ground I'm not sure how to put that. Well I suppose to that extent I do but
the thing is that what's missing from him from his approach is any strategy in
other words you know is air power alone and not confronting the political issues
and not putting our special forces personnel on the ground lashed up with
tribal units All of these things are critical.
I mean, we have aircraft now flying around dropping million dollar munitions on pickup trucks.
Um, while we're ignoring the underlying major political issues that are tearing that country apart.
This is not a strategy.
All right, Charles, on that note, I'm going to wish you very, very good luck with Congress.
We're going to have you back again.
You're a fantastic guest, but we're out of time.
Thank you, sir.
Appreciate you having me on.
Thank you very much.
Good night.
Just went like that.
That's all there is tonight.
I can't believe it.
Listen, I want to remind everybody that coming up after this program is Richard C. Hoagland.
And it'll be interesting to stick around and see what he's going to do.
So, thank you very much for tuning in.
And from the high desert, I'm Art Bell.
good night all.
Good night in the desert.
And where's the moon?
Where's the moon?
Yeah Oh
Oh Oh
whoops Midnight in the desert and there's wisdom in the air I've been looking for the answers all my life
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