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Jan. 10, 2025 - The Culture War - Tim Pool

02:09:42

Cyber Truck Bombing & Terrorism, 2025 Threats To The Homeland

Phil Labonte is joined by Kyle Seraphin & George Hill to discuss terrorism in America & a broad discussion on how America's intelligence agencies operate. Host: Phil @PhilThatRemains (X) Guest: Kyle Seraphin George Hill

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unidentified		On January 1st, 2025, the United States suffered the worst terror attacks in recent memory, At 3.30 in the morning, a former U.S. Army HR and IT specialist mowed down 15 people in New Orleans.
		The Ford Lightning he was driving flew an ISIS flag.
		Then, only a few hours later, a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device exploded outside Trump Tower in Las Vegas.
		Thankfully, there were no casualties.
		Two experts on national security, Kyle Serafin and George Hill.
		Why don't you guys go ahead and introduce yourself?
		Kyle, why don't you go ahead and give people a little background information?
kyle seraphin ▲ ● ▼		Sure, Phil.
		So I'm a former FBI agent.
		I worked for the FBI of 2016 to 2023, I think is what they consider it.
		I spent time working in counterintelligence, spent time working on the counterterrorism threat, and now I am an FBI whistleblower, so I have no job there anymore, but I do run a podcast, and so that's what I do for a living.
philip labonte ▲ ● ▼		We like whistleblowers.
unidentified		George.
		So I'm a retired FBI Supervisory Intelligence Analyst.
		Got sucked into this vortex with all the post-January 6th shenanigans.
		But I did 13 years active duty Marine Corps, multiple deployments there during the height of the Cold War.
		Was fat, dumb, and happy on September 11, 2001. Also a Navy Reservist at that time.
		I'm a trained interrogator, so did multiple deployments with the Navy in that capacity, post 9-11.
		In 2005, was recruited by the National Security Agency, where I became their very first pursuit leader, where I did find, fix, finish operations for them.
		Life intervened.
		Wound up working for the FBI in 2010 as the National Security Intelligence Supervisor for the Boston Field Office, where I had counterterrorism, cyber, and counterintelligence.
		In my spare time for two years, I was also the Co-Supervisor for the Boston Marathon Bombing Task Force.
		And, yeah.
		I've had a very interesting ride, most of which was not by my choosing.
		There's a lot of history and experience there.
		Thank you guys for joining us.
		Kyle, we were talking a little bit before about your behind-the-scenes information about the bombing in Las Vegas.
		Why don't you go ahead and kind of elaborate on that?
kyle seraphin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, so like a lot of things that happen, you're just kind of in the right place at the right time or you know the right people.
		So for folks that have been tracking that story, they understand that there was an email that was sent over to a guy named Sam Shoemate, who I knew by reputation but didn't know personally.
		He happened to be friends with a mutual friend of mine named Rob Green, who's a commander in the Navy, active duty, whistleblower, a guy who's been pushing back against the vaccine mandates and things like that.
		So done a lot of good work.
		Rob reached out and called me on last Thursday and just said, hey man, would you take some information or help Sam get some information to the FBI? And that was how I knew.
		I knew that what was going on was credible because people don't volunteer hoaxes to the FBI. That's a felony.
		Generally speaking, it's going to get you into a lot of hot water.
		And Sam Shoemate spent like 21 years in the Army, top secret clearance, not the kind of guy that's going to be messing around with that.
		So they reached out to me.
		I facilitated a handoff to the Vegas special agent in charge or the supervisory special agent running the squad doing that investigation.
		And then they subsequently reached back out to me to confirm the route of that evidence coming in.
		Since then, the guy named Spencer Evans, who runs the field office there, has confirmed that they believe that came from the guy, Matt Lillensberger.
		So it sounds like that was a legit email.
		Now, whether the information is legit is probably a totally other story.
		I think George has some weigh-ins on that.
		But it wrote me into this little space where there's a lot of people that are seeing a conspiracy theory where there doesn't need to be.
		We're dealing with a space where there's so many operations being run and people keep thinking they see the op.
		George has illuminated for me the way that Americans are being duped regularly, which is the fact that ops are run within ops.
		They are always kind of working in counter-occurrence to each other.
		And so if you think you've figured out what the op is, which is I think a lot of folks that are probably sitting in your audience right now, like, I pegged it!
		That is the op.
		The op is to get you to believe one thing while they can do something else.
		I always call it the laser pointer theory.
		It's like a cat.
		You show the laser pointer, the cat attacks it, the hand is somewhere else.
		And it's manipulating you to think you see what's going on.
		You know, it makes a good internet video, but in reality, that's what's going on for our intelligence agencies.
		They constantly are manipulating our opinions and our attention span.
		And if they can get you to go over here, then you're not going to pay attention over here.
		It's like, did you ever see the movie Lucky Numbers 11?
philip labonte ▲ ● ▼		No.
kyle seraphin ▲ ● ▼		Did you really not?
unidentified		No.
kyle seraphin ▲ ● ▼		Oh my god.
philip labonte ▲ ● ▼		I don't watch a lot of movies.
kyle seraphin ▲ ● ▼		Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman, Sir Ben Kingsley.
		It's fantastic.
		Lucy Liu's in it.
		You fall in love with her even if you don't like Asian women.
		It doesn't make a difference.
		It's totally irrelevant.
		But the whole point of it is that they have a thing called the Kansas City Shuffle.
		And the Kansas City Shuffle is basically convincing you that there's going to be a con job on you.
		Like a three-card Monty.
		But in reality, somebody's picking your pocket.
		So they might let you win the three-card Monty game.
		You think you figured out what the con was.
		In reality, someone's picked your pocket and they've gone and emptied your bank account.
		So the con is not the con that you think it is.
		That's what a Kansas City shuffle is.
		And our intel agencies do this at a very high level with more layers than that all the time.
		That's why everyone always feels like there's a PSYOP going on.
		Yeah.
		Because they're constantly getting PSYOP. Yeah, you just don't know what it is.
unidentified		George, you mentioned January 6th and how that kind of changed things for you.
		Can you elaborate on that?
		At that time, I was the co-supervisor for the high-intensity drug trafficking area for New England.
		So I had the five-state area.
		And I was located in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Fusion Center.
		You want to bring this about a fist?
philip labonte ▲ ● ▼		Distance from your face?
unidentified		There you go.
		I had two FBI analysts working for me, one at the Boston Regional Intelligence Center, the BRIC as referred to, in Boston, co-located in the headquarters for the Boston Police Department.
		And then the other one was right there in the Commonwealth Fusion Center.
		Now, the Fusion Centers are a post-9-11 construct.
		There are 56 of them across the country.
		And the purpose for that is to be able to push intelligence down to the local law enforcement level, In an expeditious manner.
		So when January 6th happened, the FBI went into full disinformation mode.
		Two guys by the name of Steve Jensen and Steve D'Antuono instituted these twice-daily conference calls for over a month to all 56 fusion centers.
		And when you're – it was a call-in.
		So they would speak.
		You would listen.
		So there were – Thousands of people on these phone calls listening to this narrative twice a day, which if I distilled it all down, they were breathlessly explaining how our democracy had almost fallen and that there is a vast network of right-wing nutjobs from Seattle to Miami, from San Diego to Bangor, Maine.
		And this in itself is bad enough.
		But it gets much worse because they're talking to these fusion centers, and in these fusion centers are representatives from each state.
		So you have state police colonels and other people that report directly to the governor, or the governor themselves has the wherewithal to listen to these conversations.
		So this narrative was being beamed into every state capital in the United States for over...
		Six weeks, twice a day, how the country almost collapsed.
		And that was a watershed moment for me after COVID and all the shenanigans with that.
		It's like, I got to get out of here.
		And, you know, so I retired, you know, about, I don't know, about 10 months after that.
		Okay.
		So if, considering the fact that, you know, it sounds like...
		The federal government kind of turned inwards and started focusing on American citizens.
		How much do you think that – why is it that they didn't have a better ability to prevent the two terror attacks that we're referencing?
		15 people died, and if the government is actually taking this massive apparatus that it built and designed to use on – Foreign entities.
		How did they fail to prevent the two attacks that happened on January 1st?
		So I think it's important for your audience that we start at the very beginning.
		And the beginning is January 12, 2001, in Camp David, when George Bush sat down with Bob Mueller and said, I know you're going to catch these guys, Bob, but what are you going to do to stop the next one?
		And at that time, national security changed from...
		The apparatus that I grew up in, in the Marine Corps for 13 years, from protecting the continuation of the United States and the protection of the Constitution to no American shall die at the hands of a terrorist.
		So giving George Bush and the intelligence community the benefit of the doubt on September 12th, their motives were altruistic.
		We need to stop this sort of thing from happening again, because my first deployment was doing boardings at sea with the Coast Guard.
		We didn't know anything about what was going on, and we'll get into my time at Guantanamo Bay later, but we didn't know anything.
		So we overreacted in an exponential fashion to basically subverting the Constitution and the civil liberties protected therein to keep one single American from being killed.
		By a terrorist.
		So we developed – we had the Patriot Act.
		We expanded FISA, and we created – we lumped the FBI into the intelligence community.
		Up until the Patriot Act, the FBI didn't even have an intelligence component.
		So when George Bush had this conversation with Bob Mueller, Bob not just stepped on the gas.
		He stood on the gas pedal, and the FBI – Almost doubled in size.
		They increased by about 45% the number of personnel to become a domestic intelligence agency.
		And then they gave them all these intrusive tools to make sure that no American shall die of terrorism.
		And it was just a few months ago that the Congress just reauthorized FISA, which certainly didn't stop Jabbar in New Orleans, did it?
		And it didn't stop the scenario of brothers in Boston, which I'm intimately familiar with.
		I don't have a good answer for you, Glenn.
		You know, a happy answer.
		Yeah.
		Kyle, do you have any kind of take on the failures?
		Considering, again, considering the apparatus, considering the extent that the government has gone to to violate people's rights.
		Oh, yeah.
		To absolutely shred the Constitution, in my opinion.
		They have all this technology.
		technology, I mean, we are night and day beyond where we were in, you know, in 2010, never mind, you know, 2001.
		So how do you think if you were, you know, actually a representative of the federal government, how do you justify it?
kyle seraphin ▲ ● ▼		Well, I used to be.
kyle seraphin ▲ ● ▼		So there's that.
unidentified		Yeah.
kyle seraphin ▲ ● ▼		So look, badge and gun, if you carry a badge and gun for the United States government and your job is supposed to be to protect the constitution, you're not really protecting the Article I powers, the Article II powers, You're not protecting that there is a judiciary and how it's established.
		That's not what your job is.
		Your job is to protect the Bill of Rights.
		And I think we should be more specific about that.
		I'm not 100% sure that when I swore in, I swore in as an enlisted guy in the Air Force, when I swore in as an FBI agent, I'm not sure I could tell you every single one of the first 10 and what they were.
		I can not only tell you what they are, but I can detail them, and I refer to them regularly now.
		So that's something that should be part of your training.
		And it really wasn't.
		I mean, I know they didn't quiz us on it, and I think that's important.
		But let me try to do this.
		What George just said, that change in the mission, there's two pieces to it.
		One, the mission changed, and we can track that evolution.
		And it's about eight years-ish each time.
		Times three gets us to 24. So from that period of time, we started off looking for international terrorism.
		People overseas doing bad things overseas and trying to bring them to us.
		That ran out.
		Also, we had a military that was over there doing some good work.
		So the GWAT actually, whether people like it or not, people are into war.
		The fact of the matter is we tied up the enemy overseas and they couldn't bring it to here as easily.
unidentified		Which was the argument that was being made a lot of the time.
unidentified		And again, whether people like it or not, fight them over there so they're not fighting here.
kyle seraphin ▲ ● ▼		It's very effective when it comes to eliminating or slowing down the spread of international terrorism, and that's what it's called inside the FBI.
		That's what the investigative agencies call it, IT.
		Okay?
		The second piece of it is they start looking around for people that are inspired by international terrorism.
unidentified		So essentially they ran out of bad guys, like the FBI.
		Oh, yeah.
		The short of it is internationally, they were effective at their job, and so they ran out of bad guys to get.
		Here.
kyle seraphin ▲ ● ▼		And then they— They ran out of the here ones.
unidentified		Okay, they didn't run out of the ones internationally?
kyle seraphin ▲ ● ▼		No, there was international.
		Yeah, there's plenty.
		That's like an unlimited thing.
		But the hopper that made it into the United States and the hopper of people that were actually able to do that, they were overseas dealing with our military forces.
		So DOD is handling that.
		DOJ is looking internally and they've run out.
		So they found a new sort of space.
		They found a new thing to operate on.
		And those were known as HVEs, right?
		Homegrown Violent Extremists.
		You'll see that term, but most people can't define it.
		Homegrown Violent Extremists means they're here.
		Green card, legal immigrant, first or second generation with a foreign ethnicity.
		They came up in another culture.
		Foreign ideology.
		U.S. person.
		By all of our legal standards.
unidentified		And so you said about eight years.
unidentified		So this is 2008, 9, 10 areas when that kind of started.
kyle seraphin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, check my math on that.
kyle seraphin ▲ ● ▼		I mean, George, does that sound about right?
unidentified		Yeah.
kyle seraphin ▲ ● ▼		Somewhere towards the end of George Bush moving into Obama.
		Okay.
		Like, it's nebulous where that happened.
unidentified		Sure, sure, sure.
kyle seraphin ▲ ● ▼		But here's how bad we know it was.
		There was a thing called Operation Flex that the FBI did.
		And if you don't know this, this is why the Muslim community is not going to operate and help out with what happened in New Orleans.
		I don't really blame them.
		I advise people not to talk to the FBI. If they knock on your door, I have four letters for you.
		A, B, C, D. Always be closing the door.
		Like, politely, you don't have to be a dick, but close the door and thank you for coming.
		Leave a card and I'll never call you or my attorney's will.
		So, I don't blame the Muslim community that's looking around going like, the FBI doesn't have our best interest because of things like happened in Operation Flex.
		And Flex was as follows.
		The FBI recruited a source.
		He was a, what do they call him, like a multi-ethnic looking man who could pass for various things.
		He could have been an Italian, he could have been Sardinian, he could have been Middle Eastern.
		And they had him go into mosques in Orange County.
		And if you guys don't know this, check my math on it, but it's like 2006 is when this went down.
		There was a Supreme Court case that the Supreme Court came down on the side of the government in 2022. And they said national security is more important than your religious liberties, essentially.
		For me, that's atrocious.
		But Operation Flex was essentially a guy that went in.
		He tried to recruit Muslim guys in these mosques and radicalize them or have them essentially radicalize him.
		He presented himself as a target, and he came in doing it by being like a hyper-masculine guy that wanted to take them to the gym and teach them how to be manual men, and he was like a weightlifter.
		Operation Flex.
		It's like, that's actually where it came from.
		That's actually the name of it.
		Kind of silly.
		But when you see that they did that, by that time, by the time that they were doing these attempting to recruit people in mosques, they'd run out of a lot of what they were looking for.
		So they pivoted to this HVE concept.
		Again, U.S.-born or U.S.-legal foreign ideology.
		And they eventually ran out of those.
		But once you start looking for terrorist threats within your own country...
		The second piece of the argument is government.
		Government exists for the sake of government.
		If you guys think the government serves you, you're probably listening to the wrong show.
		You probably don't need to be told that.
		Government serves itself.
unidentified		You're listening to the right show, but you're going to learn the right information now.
kyle seraphin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, if you happen to be a government supporter, that's not where I live.
		I'm an anti-government kind of guy who happened to work for the government.
		It's actually who you want to be working.
		You need people in the military that distrust the military.
		You need people that work in the government that distrust the government.
		They are the only hedge against them overstepping.
		In fact, that was actually what the Durham report said, if you ever read it.
		They said that they couldn't fix it with policy, procedure, or law.
		You have to have good people inside of an FBI to get an FBI that does its job properly.
unidentified		And by good people, he means people that are skeptical of the bureaucracy itself.
kyle seraphin ▲ ● ▼		Correct.
		100% that.
		So once you've started looking in there and you start looking for domestic violent extremists, we've gone from IT, international, HVE, homegrown.
		Now we're looking at DVE. That's you and me.
unidentified		Which turns into anyone that's skeptical of the government or sufficiently skeptical of the government.
		If you're an American, that's why they were talking about if you're a constitutionalist, if you too strongly believe in the Bill of Rights, if you're too critical of the government, then the federal government's going to turn its eye on you.
		And that is an extremely uncomfortable position for average Americans to be in.
kyle seraphin ▲ ● ▼		It's 100% the problem, but they've started looking domestically.
		And the reason people go like, why would they do that?
		The reason is money.
		There's a certain amount of funding that funds the counterterrorism programs.
		And in order to meet those metrics, you have to put the hours in.
		You have to work the number of cases.
		It's way easier to go set up Philobonte than it is to go out there and find a guy who's going to run his truck into somebody in New Orleans.
		That's a lot more work.
		So they become lazy like every other government employee.
		That's not for lack of – that doesn't mean they're bad people.
		It means that they found the easiest way to achieve their mission.
		So I want people to understand it's not always nefarious.
		Oftentimes, it's simply this is the – Yeah, there's a lot to pull apart there, especially when it comes to homegrown violent extremists.
unidentified		The last terrorist attack that was directed from a foreign entity was the Times Square bomber in 2010. That gentleman got training from L.E.T., Lashkar-e-Taiba, which is a Taliban-based group out of like in the Paktika province under the northwest territories of Pakistan.
		They operate in that area, and they're actually putting a lot of pressure right now on the Pakistani government, which we don't want that to collapse because they have nukes.
		So we don't want a Taliban with nukes and American weapons and training.
		I don't want to get out of it.
		The law becomes problematic, where you need a FISA to go up on someone who has a connection to an FTO, a foreign terrorist organization.
		So, goodness gracious, who was the guy that Obama droned the USPR, the US citizen in...
		Anwar al-Awlaki.
		Anwar al-Awlaki.
		So, they were just using content from al-Awlaki.
		But they were able – the FBI was able to go in front of a FISA judge and say they're being directed by an FTO, a foreign terrorist organization.
		And in fact, what they are are just American citizens self-radicalizing, seeking out some sort of guidance from, in most cases, overseas.
		Really.
		When KSM Khalid Sheikh Mohammed went to Guantanamo Bay, that essentially ended the foreign-directed, FTO-directed attack possibility in the United States.
		When al-Baghdadi was taken out and ISIS collapsed during the Trump administration, that ended the ISIS-FTO-directed threat in the United States.
		So, as Kyle said, these organizations are, you know, are on everywhere across the Middle East, from the Sahel, North Africa, the Middle East, through the Caucasus, they exist.
		Where we get into erasing the lines that the government is supposed to operate in is saying, oh, if you're absorbing content...
		From an individual overseas, you're now getting direction from an FTO, and nothing could be further from the truth.
		So there are over 1.3 billion Muslims in the world.
		If the Islamic faith was a problem to the Constitution and American security, we would know about it.
		What the issue is, is with that far fringe known as Wahhabist, Osama bin Laden, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Zawahiri, al-Baghdadi, ISIS, those groups.
		So what we have are life.
		Life is complex.
		What the Wahhabists offer is simple solutions to complex problems.
		And people gravitate towards this.
		And we saw that with the Cenarevs.
		When the Cenarevs went to trial, when Tamerlan was dead, Jahar, we were able to show to his defense team in discovery the whole self-radicalization process that he went through.
		But it was all self-initiated on his own initiative.
		But yet we were able to get a FISA because that content was being developed overseas.
		He wasn't receiving direction.
		No one from Chechnya or Dagestan was directing him.
		But because that content was developed overseas, you can get a FISA on somebody.
		So this is where it gets really murky, where the lines are painted on the road, and then they just get run right over while the paint's still wet.
		So that further devolves into...
		These right-wing, as President Biden said in Philadelphia and has repeated numerous times, that it's domestic violent extremists that pose the greatest threat to the country.
		Michael Schellenberger is finishing up a piece.
		He did a deep dive on the data.
		The data doesn't support that.
		That's the narrative that you hear, and obviously because of the fact that for 12 of the past 16 years, we've had a Democrat in the executive, large, usually majorities of Democrats in the House and Senate.
		So that's something that the left has politicized in the U.S. They loved it.
kyle seraphin ▲ ● ▼		So consider this.
		It's not even the politics of it.
		It's a cultural problem.
		We were talking about it before we got started here.
		But one of the things that happened is that the political left has basically demonized American values.
unidentified		Yes.
kyle seraphin ▲ ● ▼		They've demonized the things that we used to agree with.
		I had a very reasonable conversation.
		My mother-in-law is on the left and is a reasonable human being.
		And when we sat down, I said, let's just put this to a fine point.
		If you took Democrats from the early 90s and you brought them out here to 2025, they would be hard right.
		That's how far the Overton window has shifted.
unidentified		If you look at the Trump administration, you've got Donald Trump, who was in the 90s and aughts a Democrat.
		You've got RFK, who's always been a Democrat.
		Tulsi Gabbard, who moved over from the Democrats because of things like what we're saying.
		She was being watched by her own government as a lieutenant colonel.
kyle seraphin ▲ ● ▼		By the way, we're about to see that happen in Los Angeles as well.
		I heard Adam Carolla talk about it the other day on his podcast, sitting in a hotel room.
		So this was like a viral video.
		It was a fantastic argument.
		Everybody has these great theoretical ideas.
		This is the way the world should work, and this is how it should operate.
		And if you're very successful, you're like, I'm successful.
		I have a lot of money.
		I'm a big Hollywood star.
		Right up until you've got to go pull permits and deal with the building commission.
		And you start running headfirst into actual government that you actually voted for, and you realize it doesn't work in reality the way it does in theory.
unidentified		And that's only—he was referencing California government.
		He wasn't talking about federal government.
		Correct.
		Which is the biggest leviathan possibly on Earth.
		Maybe China's got a bigger government, more in-depth.
		But the United States is definitely one of the largest governments in human history.
kyle seraphin ▲ ● ▼		But consider the cultural issue, because you talked about politics of it, and that's one thing.
		But the cultural issue is that we've had a political— Yep.
		Yep.
		Yep.
		But a small enough people that you can find now, folks, that are going to look for an answer.
		Well, if this is so bad, what's good?
		And as George just said, and I think it's a very succinct way of saying it, when you present a simple answer to very complex problems and you open up the possibility that your homeland is the problem, that you are the enemy...
		Then you've got now fertile ground for some of these self-radicalized people to pop up.
		And they do grow there.
		And so we're creating them.
		And at the same time, our federal government is incentivized to find them and or create them themselves.
unidentified		Wait, that's the self-licking ice cream cone.
kyle seraphin ▲ ● ▼		If you've worked in D.C., you know that's the analogy.
		It's like, why does the ice cream cone lick itself?
		It's like, because there's ice cream and it has a tongue.
		And that's what tongues do.
		They look for ice cream and ice cream needs a tongue.
		So they just exist for each other.
		Government serving government.
		It's the worst possibility.
philip labonte ▲ ● ▼		It's inevitable, too.
unidentified		The ideology that you're referring to, that's something that we talk about here all the time.
		The fact that the general zeitgeist in the United States is that the United States is a force for evil in the world.
		And I think that when you continue to shove that idea down people's throats, you're going to end up with people that are...
		I mean, I don't want to say, well, maybe they are nihilistic and stuff, and so then they don't see a reason to support or endorse their own community.
		Never mind.
		The government or the nation as a whole, they don't see anything good from their own community because they're always looking for, well, this particular said something that was a microaggression and this particular person has this bad opinion.
		Well, now everybody is somehow morally deficient and if everyone they come in contact with is morally deficient, well then why should this society even exist?
		And I think that that's something that, if you want to expand on, George, I think that it's something that culturally we need to fix, but it's not going to be fixed by government.
		So, I mean, what is it that you think could be done to begin to change this kind of attitude?
		So I grew up just outside of Philadelphia, totally immersed in the Revolutionary War, all the events leading up to it.
		I was in the private sector for a while in between military careers, and they have this—it's called Signer's Walk in front of Independence Hall.
		And on there is each signer of the Declaration of Independence.
		And if you go out and do a little bit of research, you'll see that most of them met with really god-awful deaths.
		I was a scoutmaster for eight years.
		I'm an Eagle Scout.
		Unless you start—until you start teaching history— And helping young people understand, I'm talking about first, second, third graders, understand the basic foundations of a constitutional republic and basically in human nature, which our founders understood very well, and the failings of human nature.
		Until you start bringing that into the schools...
		I think Lyndon Johnson got rid of civics education at the end of his administration.
		That was probably the beginning of the end.
		I went to Catholic school through elementary school.
		And even when I was in public high school, we still said the Pledge of Allegiance.
		We had a moment of silence.
		Those basic things, basic understanding of human nature.
		Of the founding principles of the country and recognizing that, you know, even Christ himself didn't speak out against slavery.
		That mores and folkways change as people evolve.
		And just because people lived a certain way 200 years ago doesn't make them inherently evil.
		That was just the time that they lived in.
		Go on and embrace and be proud of the evolutionary process that has occurred over the last 100 years, where black people are not considered second-class citizens or even second-class human beings, or that women shouldn't have a place at the table and be allowed an opinion.
		We shouldn't chastise the people that adhere to those sorts of ideas, but we should embrace and be proud that we've evolved.
		Beyond that.
		But for some reason, we insist on projecting 100, 200 years back our own values and principles that exist today, when in fact, to some extent, we should be proud of those values and principles and how they've evolved.
		So just back to basics.
		Bring back a basic civics education.
		But it's going to take a long time.
		I read a couple of informative books back in the day, Closing of the American Mind by Bloom, I can't remember his first name, and Raising the Optimistic Child.
		So I saw this coming back in the 90s.
		And so we're talking 30-plus years down the road of destruction that has taken place.
		It's going to take a while to rebuild it.
		And we don't have to indoctrinate anybody.
		We just have to teach history as it happened.
		Yeah.
		I think that the ideological bent that is being taught in schools, not just in schools, but in the schools that teach our teachers.
		So the teachers that when they get out into your K-12 and your basic education, they're already ideologically motivated.
kyle seraphin ▲ ● ▼		The worst thing that I remember reading is that the lowest average GPA and standardized testing scores going into colleges go into the College of Education.
		And these are the people that are turning around and teaching.
		So look, I'm a radical.
		Somebody the other day, they tagged me on X and they were just like, hey man, this guy, he's a researcher into extremism.
		I don't want you to...
		I'm like, I am an extremist.
		I'm an extremist.
		Like, by any measure, I'm an extremist.
		I think the Constitution should be the law that we go by.
		Go figure.
		Like, that makes me crazy.
		I also homeschool all my kids, which is to say that I married a woman who has a master's degree, by the way.
		She was out there in the world doing normal things.
		She was earning a living, and then when she got pregnant, go figure, man.
		Not only did she—she started off as basically either agnostic or atheist, and she was baptized Catholic, and she wears a veil to church now.
		We go to church every Sunday and all the holy days.
		So the funny thing for me is that we've kind of radicalized in a way that's more traditional because we've looked at the landscape and said, this is not appropriate.
		I don't want to have to worry about my kids and somebody else's care.
		I'm going to care about them more.
unidentified		Not only is it not appropriate, it doesn't work.
		Regardless of whether or not you are a devout Christian or a devout religious person, because I think that it's not just specifically...
		Christianity that works.
kyle seraphin ▲ ● ▼		No, there's good people.
kyle seraphin ▲ ● ▼		No doubt about it.
unidentified		The things that you're taught when you're a devout, when you're devout, devout, devoutly religious, pardon me.
		It teaches you to not throw your trust behind the government.
		It teaches you to throw your trust into your God and your family and your community as opposed to some far off government.
		So if you have people that are living their lives in what would be considered a religious way, which is something that the government doesn't want at all, because then you're not deferring to government.
		You're deferring to something that you consider a higher power.
		You end up with people that are more self-sufficient, and you end up with tighter communities and people that actually have hope in the future as opposed to the kind of atheist—and I'm an agnostic, so it's not that I'm particularly— We'll radicalize you later.
		You know, I've heard people say that.
kyle seraphin ▲ ● ▼		Here's the funny thing about what you're saying, though.
		This is a religious discussion, whether anybody likes it or not.
		When you're talking about politics right now, I've done some very small PragerU-style, I guess, breakdowns.
		People on the right who are conservative that want the government to leave them alone oftentimes are people of faith.
		But if they're not...
unidentified		Look at the Amish.
kyle seraphin ▲ ● ▼		If they're not people of faith, they are still people that have a certain moral code, and if they're honest, they know where that moral code came from.
		Maybe they think they're post-Christianity.
		Maybe they think they're post-assigning it to a specific religion.
		But if you were to track back, where do those virtues come from?
		Why do you think about the things that you do in the way that you do?
		It's a pretty straight line right back, and it goes back about 2,000 years.
		So that's good.
		I think that's a good thing because we share common values.
		Then you look at the people on the left.
		The people on the left right now have made government of God.
		They have elevated to the position of God all the good things will be bestowed by this government.
		This government is the thing that gives us equity.
		It gives us money.
		It gives us health care.
		It gives us all the human rights.
		It allows us to speak, and it tells us what is good and bad speech.
		And you look at it and you go like, okay, bro, we're having a religious discussion with people that are having a zealous position behind their religion.
		Which is leftism.
		And it's a secular religion.
		It doesn't have a true God.
		And then you're dealing with people on the other side that are operating in good faith from, like, saying, like, real faiths are out there.
		And they're both faiths.
		They're both real.
		They're in conflict with each other because one has tried to elevate man to the level of God and an institution of man to the level of God.
		For me, that's the no-go.
		That's why I'm not going to send my kids into school.
		And like I said, we're full radicalized.
		Like, my baby, my 18-month-old, born in my house.
		Has never seen a doctor, not once, born with a midwife, paid out of pocket and cash, and she's healthy, and she's fine, and she's great, and she runs around, she's nuts, you know, because she's a toddler.
		But at the end of the day, if you want to, you know, we're dealing with these conflicting worldviews, and I think a lot of people don't really accept the terms.
		If you ever want to mess with somebody on the political left, which is a totally fun thing to do, but you should do it in a loving way, I think, the way that you do it is you ask questions.
		You do it Socratically.
		And obviously we should get much deeper into the terrorism and why the U.S. is dealing with this new kind of small fringe of rash that threatens us.
		But if you want to dismantle folks on the left, how many people have ever come to you and told you you're a piece of garbage and now you're going to change your mind?
		Like exactly zero on Twitter that I've seen, right?
unidentified		It's not effective.
kyle seraphin ▲ ● ▼		It's not effective.
		Ask questions.
		I've radicalized people, or I've at least made them question their thoughts by asking them, where did your values come from?
		What do you believe is good?
		Oh, I want my kids to work hard.
		I want them to have a good job.
		I want them to be nice to women.
		I want them to see people for who they are and judge them based on their actions and their character.
		And it's like, oh, okay.
		Why are those good?
		How did you know that was good?
		Well, I just did.
		Really?
		What kind of religion did your parents raise you with?
		What kind of religion did they grow up in if you didn't grow up with a religion?
		At the end of the day, you contract almost all Western values, and I'll call them Western values, to a Judeo-Christian position.
		And if you don't honestly recognize that, then you just make them wonder and walk around.
		Like, I want people to have ideas smashed into their head, and I want them to have that disagreement.
		At some point in time, they'll wake up and go, this isn't working.
		And the example is, like I said, I had an agnostic-slash-atheist wife.
		She got baptized.
		And two days later, the FBI took my badge and my gun.
		I don't think those things are accidents.
		I don't see them as accidents because there's been too many examples in my life recently where I'm walking down a path where I'm seeing evidence of this.
		Not everybody has the same examples.
		But man, I'll tell you what, when they start hitting you in the face over and over again, you have a moment of self-doubt and someone calls you up and says, hey, by the way, I know you're fighting with the FBI. I just found out that the assistant director is banging people on the side and we have his side piece's phone number if you want to reach out and call her.
		And you go like, oh.
		Yeah, they are evil.
		They are doing bad stuff.
		It's not me.
		I'm not the crazy person here when I'm pushing up against my own agency.
		And I've had constant reaffirmations of that.
		And I think George and I have shared some of these things together, where it's like, if you don't have self-doubt about what you're doing when you're going up against big agencies or big organizations or institutions, you're a sociopath, probably.
		But when you have reaffirmations, it's like, no, no, no.
		We're right, and we're just trying to do the thing that gets us back to a status quo from, let's say, the 80s.
		Which would have been way better.
unidentified		So let me put it to a level where a crayon-eaten jarhead can understand it.
		Me.
		My favorite color is red.
		If you don't believe that you answer to a higher power, the only guidelines, the only guardrails you're left with are laws.
		Yeah.
		Right?
		So this is why...
		One of the reasons we're in this situation we're in today is that...
		You do what you can get away with because there is no final accountability.
philip labonte ▲ ● ▼		These aren't new ideas either.
unidentified		Nietzsche was talking about this in the late 1800s.
		People love to go ahead and quote the God is dead and we have killed him as if that is some kind of triumph.
		And if you know anything about Nietzsche, he knew how dramatic that was and how terrible that was going to be.
		And he predicted all of the horrors of communism and Nazism.
		The absolute bloodbath.
		That the 21st century was.
		I'm sorry for cutting you off, but...
		No, no, 100%.
		I mean, it's just...
		This is why, you know, you start at the podcast, a show like this.
		How did we get to this point?
		And in some aspects, it's complex, and in others, it's actually quite simple.
		We've obliterated the lines.
		We've removed the guardrails.
		And the only accountability that is out there now is what...
		Can you get away with?
philip labonte ▲ ● ▼		Something that I've talked about a lot and we talk about here on this show is the left, in my opinion, the left wants people to be...
unidentified		They don't want people to have hope and they want people to despair because happy people with hope for the future don't become revolutionaries.
		And so if you look at the society and you say...
		They also have children.
		Yeah, yeah, yeah.
philip labonte ▲ ● ▼		I mean, that's true.
unidentified		But I mean, children are emblematic of hope.
		You don't have children if you...
		Children make people hopeful because you can't help but hope for better things for your children, I think.
		And so that's something that, you know, children are a manifestation of a hopeful society.
		If you're a society that has hope for the future, you're going to be having children.
		If you're a society that doesn't have hope for the future, you're going to have problems like...
		The US is having where we don't have people having kids.
kyle seraphin ▲ ● ▼		And a declining birth rate on purpose.
		Listen, leftism is a religion of converts, because I'm going to keep using that terminology.
		It makes a lot of sense.
		It's a religion of converts because they don't procreate, because their values are talking about...
		George uses the term climate paganism, which I absolutely love.
unidentified		That's completely accurate, too.
unidentified		It is.
kyle seraphin ▲ ● ▼		It works within the system.
		It's like we have our own system of beliefs that Mother Gaia is really the end-all, be-all.
		Look, I could care less about the planet.
		I'm going to be completely transparent about that.
		I do...
		We do not care about the planet for its own sake.
		Because it's irrelevant to me.
		We're meant to be good stewards of it, but not for the sake of the planet.
		It's for the sake of human beings to thrive and have happiness.
		So if you want to be a person who has kids, and I have four and I'd like to have more, if we have time, we'll figure it out.
		It's like, you move your way into the world, and if you don't, then you give your kids, like, the kids are looking around.
		If you're not going to model that example, somebody will, and sometimes those people are Islamists, and they're going to go out there and give this simple excuse, like, hey, by the way, your system is bad, it's evil, it's oppressing our system if you want to be part of it.
		George and I have both investigated these types of people, and you just go...
unidentified		So that's a great...
		Go ahead, sorry.
		Yeah, so when I was in Gitmo, I was the Saudi Arabian team chief.
		Before that, the non-commissioned officer in charge.
		There were Saudis down there.
		I was there in 2004, so Gitmo had been open for two years.
		There were detainees out there that hadn't said a word.
		It's the best counter-interrogation technique you can use is not say anything.
		And you can't shut a Saudi up when you start talking about religion.
		Yeah.
		One of the reasons that the Afghans hated them so much is because they were so highfalutin that the only way to read the Koran is in Arabic, and we're better than you, and we're here to show you the way.
		And so I was very fortunate.
		I had a linguist who was a professor at Al-Ansar University in Cairo.
		So he was part of that $1.3 billion.
		That's not a problem.
		But in order to get a Saudi to open up and start talking so that we could actually do the mission that we were sent there to do, you had to understand religion.
		And I spent a year studying at the hands of an honest-to-God Islamic scholar and then being schooled by Saudis who went to Afghanistan to fight in jihad.
		So religion – and Americans need to understand this.
		If you're concerned about radicalization and homegrown violent extremists, Americans need to understand, just because, not you, the people seated in this room, just because religion isn't important to you, know that to a Muslim, it is central to their life.
		Central.
		It is a complete form of existence.
		It comes complete not just with a religion.
		It comes complete with a system of governments and law enshrined in Sharia.
		H-R-I-A. There was a district in Minnesota, I believe it was Keith Ellison's district, that tried to make Sharia the law of the land there.
		Thank goodness we have the Supremacy Clause, and that was quickly shot down.
		But in the Islamic faith, if you are not living under Sharia law, this is the way the Wahhabists believe, if you're not living under Sharia law, you are an apostate, which is a crime punishable by death.
		So this is this chasm that exists within Islam that has existed since the time of Muhammad.
		And every now and then, like every couple hundred years, Islam goes through this explosion of violence, trying to push forward this fundamentalist, Wahhabist ideal on society.
		There are other elements going on, though, at the same time.
		We have Turkey, who is seeking to reinstitute the caliphate, not like Baghdadi, but that's where the caliphate was located before Ataturk, and Turkey became a secular nation.
		But Turkey has a growing population.
		They are a country in ascendancy, unlike its neighbor to the north, Russia.
		And they are seeking to exercise power in the region to become a regional hegemon.
		So this is all intertwined.
		Our own issue with our own paganism, our own issues with homegrown violent extremists, the rise of an Islamic Turkey, and the spread of the more fundamentalist Islam across the region.
		Is that something that you consider to be...
		I mean, you've got a lot of experience, clearly, with dealing with that region.
		Do you consider Islam still on the rise and still something that is a threat to the United States, or do you think that it's something that the United States needs to be aware of but is benign?
		So up until about six months ago, I taught a master's course at Endicott College.
		It was the capstone course.
		And one of my test questions in both when I taught asymmetric threats and the capstone course was, you know, why haven't we seen a major...
		FTO, Foreign Terrorist Organization, directed attack in the United States since 9-11.
		And the answer to that question is KSM is in jail.
		The book Mastermind, I can't remember who authored it, covers very well just how brilliant KSM was and the simplicity of the plan.
		So I believe Sarah Adams has spoken about this at length.
		Al-Qaeda and ISIS are two completely different—they have— Two completely different goals.
		Al-Qaeda is seeking regional hegemony over the area and looking at attaining dominance across the region, where ISIS has largely been fragmented since the collapse of Baghdadi.
		And they are more than willing to engage in homegrown violent extremists, put that ideology out there for them to go out online and look at.
		So yeah, Richard—who was that, Kyle?
kyle seraphin ▲ ● ▼		Minotaur, looks like.
unidentified		Richard Minotaur.
		I highly recommend reading it because people conflate—we don't want to conflate Islam with terror.
		We don't want to conflate Wahhabism with Islam.
		We don't want to conflate...
		Foreign terrorist organization, FTO-directed terrorist attacks with homegrown violent extremists.
		Because once you start blurring all that together, then it's a very – I hate to say it, but it's a very short trip to the crazy guy who wants to drink raw milk and raise chickens.
		Everybody becomes a problem.
kyle seraphin ▲ ● ▼		We're all problems here.
unidentified		Yeah, I mean...
kyle seraphin ▲ ● ▼		My wife is like, when do I get a cow?
		So, but here's the crazy...
		Because you're talking about threats.
		You're talking about Sarah Adams.
		I heard that.
		I've been listening to what she has to say.
		We have so many potential threats coming into this country because we spent four years opening borders.
		We imported 100,000 Afghans.
		One of the things that I had to do in the FBI was investigate major crimes on the bases where we brought in, in my case, we had 20,000.
		We had two different bases, Holloman Air Force Base, Fort Bliss.
		They looked like Afghanistan in the places that had it.
		We had 10,000 Afghans on each one of those places.
		They had no idea what the rules were.
		And I've recently put out a call that I had because I went and I lambasted the FBI's internal affairs and I recorded the call.
		So it's kind of funny.
		But one of the things I brought up...
		We brought in people that were fighters that we were aligned with in Afghanistan, that were working on behalf of the CIA. They were the classic.
		They'd been co-opted, but we don't have a perfect agreement with them.
		We brought them to the United States because otherwise they were going to get slaughtered when we pulled out.
		We brought them in.
		We didn't tell them the rules.
		They brought chai boy culture with them.
		I specifically, personally, investigated a 17-year-old boy.
		Who was claimed to be 19, whose ID said he was 19, but the guys forged it, or they forced it happening either in Germany or in Qatar.
		I can't remember which one.
		Separated him forcibly from his family, brought him in, and were holding him as a sex slave on a U.S. military installation over at Holloman Air Force Base.
		And you've got 30 men who are between the ages of, let's say, 32 and 50. They're battle-hardened guys.
		They were from the Coast Province Force.
		They were all working on behalf of the CIA. They're getting paid in money and cash and trinkets and beers and, you know, electronics and things like that by the guys in the CIA that are still trying to get intel out of them.
philip labonte ▲ ● ▼		While they were over in Afghanistan, or they're still here in the U.S. Yeah, like outside of, you know, in New Mexico.
kyle seraphin ▲ ● ▼		And so they're doing that, and they've got this kid basically under lock and key where they've got a half dozen dudes watching him.
		We went and liberated him.
		I'm not even exaggerating.
		We went in there with armed security forces, folks from the Air Force, pulled him out of a little tent where he was being watched.
		And then separated him, and he never was able to see them again because we were afraid something bad would happen, and we shipped him out to Virginia to where his family was.
		You know, reunited him.
		We brought that into the United States.
		That's one example of people who just didn't have our culture.
		Now imagine that there were 100,000.
		Of those, George, you know how many walk-offs there were that just walked off the base and went into America?
		Do we have numbers on that is what I'm asking?
unidentified		Yeah, we do have exact numbers.
unidentified		I don't know them off the top of my head, but it was a significant amount, like over half.
kyle seraphin ▲ ● ▼		It's in the thousands of people that literally have no paperwork, no identification, no State Department authorization.
		They are not officially paroled into the U.S. They straight up flew in here on a military aircraft.
		They walked off a base because there was no authority to keep them.
		They got into an Uber and they joined whatever the hell network of people they had here.
		Some of them probably have jobs and they're working under the counter.
		Some of them probably don't.
unidentified		Now, would those people be considered illegal immigrants?
		What do you do with that?
		No person is illegal, Glenn.
		The reason I ask is because...
		The reason I ask is because, you know, with the incoming administration, right, with Donald Trump's administration, one of the things that the American people are very clear about is they are comfortable with deportations, particularly with people that are either violent criminals, which I would consider the people that would rape someone, a violent criminal, even if in their culture it's acceptable.
		It doesn't change the fact that in our culture it's not, and that's a crime in the United States.
		If they're doing that, they forfeit.
		The good nature that the United States has, having allowed them to come here, and they've got to go back.
kyle seraphin ▲ ● ▼		Their legal status is dubious at best.
		Again, there was a process.
		The people that came in here from Afghanistan, and some of them I'm sure were decent human beings, and some of them were assets.
		Some of them spoke fluent English and had skills.
		I met a guy who was computer codes in multiple languages, spoke a couple languages, worked for the State Department.
		Yeah, come on in, dude.
		You're going to get a DEI job over at Meta, but you're the kind of guy I want here because you want to come in and do work and you actually have a skill set and great.
		Fantastic.
		Welcome to America.
		We're going to give you a hug.
unidentified		Yeah, I never answered your question about is Islam a problem or is this something we need to be concerned about going forward?
		Yes, but first, brief little segue.
		Under Sharia law, for a woman to accuse a man of rape, she needs two witnesses.
		Yeah.
		So, very, very, very different culture.
		Thank goodness we have common law and constitution.
		It's not rape if you didn't enjoy it.
		Oh, God.
		Sorry.
		So dark.
		You did invite a Marine onto this show.
		It's fine.
kyle seraphin ▲ ● ▼		It's the nature of the beast.
unidentified		As far as Islam becoming a problem, the answer to that question was on 9-12, yes.
		That's not the right answer.
		Our policies simply need to change, and Kyle touched on it, which is, Securing the borders and just adhering to the laws that we already have in place.
		We don't have to go out and play whack-a-mole in this country.
		However, it's incentivized to play whack-a-mole because the federal entities want to increase.
		You want to make your rice bowl bigger.
		You don't want anybody else eating out of your rice bowl, but you want to make your rice bowl bigger.
		You need a bigger budget.
		You need more people.
		You need...
		More higher levels of SES positions, senior executive service positions.
		You need the good six-figure job at Raytheon or Lockheed or wherever once you leave.
		So we've, again, back to the self-licking ice cream cone, we've incentivized usurpations of people's constitutional rights by saying that Islam is a problem.
		The problem is...
		Is we have the laws on the books and the policies, we just don't enforce them.
		Yep.
		We just make stupid choices.
		Now, whether that's incompetence or intentional...
		I don't know.
		I think it's probably a mixture of both.
		It's my intuition that it's part of the leftist ideology, to be honest with you, because I don't...
		That would be intentional then.
		Yeah, so I think that the left doesn't...
		There's a segment of the left that doesn't believe...
		Not only doesn't believe in the exceptionality of the United States, but doesn't believe that there should be any borders at all, that people are just people and they should be able to move freely without any...
		Unless they show up at Martha's Vineyard, in which case, if they don't have weed whackers and...
		The people that live on Martha's Vineyard, they're not actually ideologically motivated.
		They're doing what they think is the nice and right thing.
		The people that are actually kind of the thinkers and the...
		The people that write books and stuff like that, they're a select small few, and they're probably in academia, and they come up with these ideas which are then filtered through the New York Times, and then the average soccer mom, you know, loony lefty, will read these.
		Think pieces and only understand the very top layer of it and then start telling her HOA, the people that she meets at her HOA and the people at her school, this is what we need to do to make the world a better place.
		And so it's not that they're actually motivated by ideology.
		And this is something that Tim talks about.
		He says that woke is blind obedience to whatever is the current thing, essentially the long and short of it.
		The vast majority of people that you would consider woke, they're not actually theorists.
		They might not even be inherently leftists.
		They just are doing the thing that they think is the nice and good thing.
		For sure.
kyle seraphin ▲ ● ▼		There's like three tiers to this, right?
		So you've got the funders.
		These are the people that have the money.
		So they are spoken word.
		They go with leftism, but they're still having kids and they're still getting married.
		And they still know what those institutions have value because it furthers their financial position.
		Then you've got that.
		The elite communists, if you will, or my buddy calls it elite and street.
		You get those two levels.
		One of them is the academics you're talking about.
		So they don't have a ton of money, but they've got a lot of influence.
		They've got all the ideas.
		They're hardcore believers.
philip labonte ▲ ● ▼		And they're the true, exactly, the true believers in the leftist ideology.
kyle seraphin ▲ ● ▼		They're your priesthood.
		They're your proselytizers.
		They are out there sharing that sort of gospel of this thing.
		And then the last piece of it is the folks that are out there, activists.
		And they're usually, they're kind of useful idiots.
		They may or may not understand exactly what's going on.
		The funny thing is this.
		The reason why we get these pendulum swings, I believe, and the reason why we see...
		It gets so far, and then your people that are the funding class, not the elite ones that are the activists, but the ones that are paying for it but they don't really live on it, the minute they run into those policies in their own life, they immediately get radicalized.
		Bill Maher was the example that Adam Carolla brought up.
		He's like, dude, that guy took a thousand days to get solar panels on a shack in his house in Beverly Hills, and you go, well, here I am.
		I have all the right ideas.
		I say all the right things.
		I have all the right friends.
		I hold all the right opinions.
philip labonte ▲ ● ▼		And I have enough money to make things happen.
kyle seraphin ▲ ● ▼		And I'm trying to do the thing you said, which is do climate paganism and have all this stuff up on my roof.
		And sure as hell, I'm running into the planning commission and the zoning and the permits.
		And I might hurt the red-bearded smelt that lives down here and the pond that may be on the other side of the town.
		And now I can't put a freaking solar panel up.
		Like, what the hell is going on?
		And those people get radicalized against it.
		it.
		So we get a swing back to the middle, which is natural and normal.
		I think we're on that move.
		I think a lot of people feel it.
		I had people tell me that are leftist or that would otherwise sympathize with that.
		And they just go, I'm glad Donald Trump won because the alternative was that we just kept going.
unidentified		Well, you see that with people like Anna Kasparian and Jake Younger and a slew of people that used to be on the left.
unidentified		Again, we were just a few minutes ago talking about the fact that the- I think they are on the left, though.
kyle seraphin ▲ ● ▼		I think that's the thing that we have to understand.
		I think that the right has moved, has softened up.
		That's what a big tent looks like.
		That's why people are going to be pissed about some people that Donald Trump has nominated.
		Not all of them are going to be the people you love.
		He's moderated on a bunch of stuff because America is a place where you don't get everything you want.
		But you're supposed to be able to get things so that everybody can kind of exist.
unidentified		When I say left, I mean, I'm talking about the actual, the ideologically possessed people, the people that really believe it.
		And those people I don't think are movable because they run into a problem with the zoning board or something like that.
		That's not going to change the way they feel.
		Because you look at the people that are in New York City that are happy about the congestion tax, right?
		That's a very left.
kyle seraphin ▲ ● ▼		It's people that don't have cars.
unidentified		Well, they are people that don't have cars, but they're out there saying, you know, it's good that there's this tax, even if I have to pay more.
		Those people are more ideologically possessed than your average soccer mom and the people that are going to the PTA meetings and stuff like that.
		So I do agree with you.
		There are...
		I want to get back to, you know, the extremism conversation, particularly as it pertains to the guy that, you know, rammed the car into 15 people in New Orleans.
		What is it about Islam?
		Or a radical Islam, because you'd mentioned earlier that ISIS didn't claim this attack.
		Right.
		So he was flying the ISIS flag and saying that he was doing it on behalf of ISIS, but...
		You know, most people are aware that if there is an attack carried out by an organization, they're jumping up and down saying, we did this, we did this, we did this.
		And that wasn't the case with the guy in New Orleans.
		Can you go ahead and elaborate on that idea?
		And even if they didn't have anything to do with it.
		So there was an attack in an immigration center in New York while I was in the Bureau.
		And I can't remember the organization.
		It wasn't L.E.T. It was one of the confederates, one of the groups associated with them.
		But they were definitely in the news at that time.
		People were concerned about them.
		And they immediately took credit for it.
		And the investigation by both New York State Police and the FBI showed that there was no connection with that at all.
		But it's kind of like under the ideology of that no press is...
		There's no such thing as bad press, that it's all good.
		So if somebody does something bad, just go ahead and take credit for it because it's all good anyway.
		So ISIS could have said, oh yeah, he's definitely one of ours.
		We directed this.
		Take whatever they're going to say to take credit for it.
		And even if the FBI came out and said, no, no, there's no evidence of that.
		It doesn't matter.
		All press is good press.
		So it's odd that they haven't taken credit for it.
kyle seraphin ▲ ● ▼		Why do you think that is?
		What is that?
		Because there's got to be a change.
unidentified		Because ISIS is not what it was before al-Baghdadi.
		So it's not a model.
		They fight against each other.
		There are multiple groups within ISIS. Fighting ISIS that actually fly the ISIS flag.
		So ISIS-Koroshan actually started off as the Koroshan group, which left ISIS because ISIS was too warm and fuzzy for them.
		So Koroshan was like, oh yeah, you're going to throw homosexuals off a roof?
		Well, we're going to light them on fire and throw them off a roof.
		Ha ha!
		You know, so these groups all try to one-up each other.
		So they're all...
		Really, my experience has been that the only truly monolithic Islamic-based ITO, International Terrorist Organization, is Al-Qaeda.
		All the rest of them are loose confederates with other terrorist groups for a time being operating under that flag.
		Kind of like Canada.
		You know, you've got the 11 provinces, they're all Canada.
		But no, ISIS, Canada.
		You mentioned al-Zawahiri and you mentioned al-Baghdadi.
		And there's an idea on the left that essentially things are going to happen whether or not they're without a person.
		And I'm kind of of the opinion that people really matter.
		So you said that because al-Zawahiri is in jail...
philip labonte ▲ ● ▼		KSM is in jail.
unidentified		There have been no significant attacks.
		And ISIS fell apart when al-Baghdadi was killed.
		Could you guys go ahead or could you elaborate on that idea?
		Do you think that these organizations really do need that man that is motivated to direct and instruct?
		Or do you think that the ideology is enough?
		So staying with the Jerry Nadler approach that, you know, that Antifa is just an ideology.
		This is, again, this is where we get into trouble with the law, whether something is directed from a foreign terrorist organization or a homegrown violent extremist.
		A large-scale attack on the lines of 9-11 required a...
		You know, not the heavy hand, but the guiding hand of ISIS in terms of funding—I'm sorry, Al-Qaeda in terms of funding and training.
		And then what we see in ISIS relies so much on the highly motivated individual.
		Now, could an HVE, a homegrown violent extremist, gather together some like-minded individuals and conduct a large-scale attack?
		Absolutely.
		It is a scary, unanswered question why that hasn't happened yet.
		Kyle and I were talking over breakfast this morning.
		Why wouldn't one person gather together another 15 or 20 individuals and say, look, on this date, at this time, no matter where you are, you're going to pull out a weapon and start shooting and then send these people off into the four corners of the United States and conduct an attack that way.
kyle seraphin ▲ ● ▼		And there's basically no defense against that.
unidentified		Yeah, people forget that al-Qaeda came about.
		The goal was to get the United States out of the region.
		When George Bush 41 went in for Wack-A-Rack 1 to remove Saddam's forces out of Kuwait, UBL, Osama bin Laden, offered the services of al-Qaeda to do that for them, and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, KSA, said, no, we're going to have the United States do it.
		So we have to look at what the organization's goals are as to whether the possibility or the probability of them conducting an organized attack is.
		So al-Qaeda is regional dominance.
		They wanted the United States out of the region.
		We get 9-11.
		ISIS is a confederation of various terrorist groups operating under the flag of ISIS. Could someone get together with other like-minded individuals and conduct a large-scale attack?
		Maybe not of the line of 9-11, but...
		Like we were talking about earlier, Kyle, you know, just sending individuals out at a specified date and time and doing something bad.
		We have created the environment for that to happen by letting in, let's just lowball the number, let's just say 10 million illegals in the country.
		If 1% of those are highly motivated Wahhabists, then you've got what?
		10,000?
		We're talking about 10,000?
		Yeah, 10,000 people.
kyle seraphin ▲ ● ▼		You don't even need that.
kyle seraphin ▲ ● ▼		You could have a tenth of a percent.
unidentified		Right.
kyle seraphin ▲ ● ▼		Still have it be an absolute critical mass.
kyle seraphin ▲ ● ▼		That's terrifying.
unidentified		So, again, back to my earlier point, that it's policies that make us safe, or actually enforcing our own policies and laws as opposed to running after individuals.
		So, an organized attack of the likes of 9-11 directed by an FTO, unlikely.
		Inspired, homegrown, radical extremist, violent extremist?
		Yes.
		Absolutely.
		Could it take on the level of a 9-11 attack?
		Absolutely.
		They just need the opportunity and, you know, the...
		A little bit of creativity.
		But instead, this is where Kyle and I... We have an issue with the FBI and the whole integrated program management, which hopefully we'll get a chance to get into, which is a...
kyle seraphin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, just table that, but we'll come back to IPM. Yeah, we'll come back to it.
unidentified		But where the FBI... If you look at the terror cases that the FBI has been making, they almost 100% involve inserting an undercover and saying, oh, we can get access to weapons.
		We can get access...
		You know, we had a case in Boston.
		NDA prohibited from going into details, but a guy who was going to attack the Pentagon.
		He actually went to high school with a woman who worked for me who's now a special agent in Boston.
		He was going to use model airplanes and attach explosives to them and fly them into the Pentagon.
		And I can't remember the guy's name and I probably shouldn't say it out loud anyway.
		He's in jail today.
		This guy couldn't back a car down the driveway.
		Let alone build the kind of model airplane sizes, acquire those.
		He didn't have the finances.
		He didn't have the training.
		But in comes the FBI, and we'll just move this guy along into an operational level.
		Now, Kyle had brought up earlier about—what was it, Operation—what was it, Kyle?
kyle seraphin ▲ ● ▼		Operation Flex.
		Is this the guy that I'm looking at here?
		It says, Massachusetts man charged with plotting attack on Pentagon and U.S. Capitol attempting to provide serial support of— 2011, just so people can get the time frame on it.
		His name's out there in the public.
unidentified		So...
kyle seraphin ▲ ● ▼		Ferdas.
unidentified		Ferdas, yes.
		So...
		If we had a better relationship with the Islamic community, we would take people like Ferdas and have them get exposure to the kind of person that I had exposure to, an Islamic scholar who can actually explain the faith to them.
		But instead, the FBI sees it as an opportunity to claim a stat.
		To claim more funding, to claim more usurpations of people's constitutional rights.
		And we see this exclusively in the news coming out every day.
		It's almost at a point where they don't make any effort to hide it.
		Like, oh, we had a UC here, we had this covered, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
		I mean, when have we seen a terrorist attack disrupt it because of a FISA? Never.
		It's always been after the fact, but yet we continue to renew it.
		I mean, it's become a meme, the FBI. He was on our radar.
		He was on our radar.
		That's become a joke now.
kyle seraphin ▲ ● ▼		That's essentially meaningless.
		Look, I'm looking at this press release because it's always in these things.
		This is what I do now.
		Instinctively, and I'll teach the audience to do the same thing.
		When you see the concept, the FBI used an undercover operation to conduct this investigation.
		Undercover operations are used to combat all kinds of crimes and criminals, including counterterrorism.
		When you see that they flagged that there was a UC involved, and the FBI has two ways that they can move people in.
		You always hear the word fed.
		In fact, I hear it all the time.
		Now I walk down the airline aisles, and on the left-hand side it says 11, 12, 13, and it says FED for the seat numbers.
		I'm like, come on!
		No, but the idea that everybody is a Fed, we have to be really specific.
		Some of them are called confidential human sources.
		That's what the Bureau uses for source work.
unidentified		They were talking about those were confidential human informants.
unidentified		They were on the ground on January 6th.
kyle seraphin ▲ ● ▼		They were, but I'll get real specific about it, because that OIG report said a lot of things, and it didn't say a lot of things, and most people didn't read the right stuff, especially people that don't know what the FBI means.
		CHS is a very specific type of person.
		That's your informant that most people are familiar with.
		Undercover.
		UC. That's another thing.
		That's an FBI agent working in an undercover role.
		It's usually nominally backstop.
		Some of them do long-term, but a lot of them are just like for operation only.
		It's like, hey, Phil, I'm going to need you over here.
		We're going to send you up to Portland.
		You're going to go meet some people, grow your beard out a little bit.
		You're going to go talk to them.
		You're there for a couple of months, and then you're out.
		It's not like you live in the thing like they were doing long-term infills in the mafia.
		They don't do that as much anymore.
		Okay, but here's the wild piece.
		That's UC. That's a brand name.
		Imagine that as saying, like, oh, did you have any soldiers there?
		And you're like, there were no infantrymen there at all.
		And you're like, well, what about guys from the mortar platoon?
		Like, what about dudes that were in armor?
		So we're saying one thing.
		They said there were no UCs involved in the crowd, but that didn't mean that there weren't plainclothes FBI agents.
		I walked around in crowds all the time in my job.
		I was a surveillance guy.
		On purpose, I would walk like this, okay?
		I wasn't undercover.
		The FBI would say we had no UCs in there, but Kyle Serafin was one of our agents and he was playing close.
		They said things without saying things when you read that OIG report about J6.
		But this gets to a very specific point.
		When we're talking about undercover operations, I call it the playbook.
		My buddies and I have kind of just made this as a joke.
		If people want to read a good book on it by someone on the political left, by the way, it's Trevor Aronson.
		You go read the book.
		It's called The Terror Factory.
		My folks that did surveillance on CT targets, counterterrorism, said this is mandatory reading because this is what the FBI does.
		It's very, very simple.
		George can back this up on as well.
		We find somebody on the internet.
		You're on a Reddit chat group.
		You're on a regular podcast, and you always say the same things.
		You have the dumbest, most violent ideas in the group.
		The FBI is going to come and make friends with you.
		You're a person who doesn't have a lot of friends in real life, let's say.
		They are going to help you do your dumbest, most dangerous, most violent ideas.
		For the exact amount of money that you have, that person is a Fed.
		Now, they're going to be a CHS. They're going to be an undercover.
		They could be various things.
		They have a thing called a UCE. That's an OCE. It's an online covert employee.
		So they can do that.
		They don't have to even be an agent.
		They will set you up with the thing you need.
		They will hook you up with people in real life.
		You'll meet IRL. You'll get to go out there and do the thing that you need to do.
		You're going to get fake explosives.
		You're going to get a gun that has no firing pin.
		You're going to go out there.
		The minute you touch it, you're going to jail for 20 to life.
		So this is a playbook that they exercise.
		The problem with intelligence, and I notice that we've got kind of our thing, like what's the threat?
		We've got Sarah Adams talking about invisible bombs, people that are wearing, you know, bombs that they can make it through a metal detector.
		We're hearing all these claims.
		We don't have good intelligence overseas.
		We betrayed our allies over there by pulling out of Afghanistan.
	So the Afghan Source Network...
	Disappeared.
	People who saw what happened to the sources in Afghanistan that got killed off, they don't want to be part of us either.
	So we lose intelligence in all of the places where we used to have visibility.
	We screwed it up domestically because we've done things like piss off the Muslim community starting back in 06, 07, 08. They've gone through, and the Supreme Court said, yeah, they can do that.
	So you've burned your domestic route that's going to maybe flag extremism.
	Flagged terrorists that are domestically located that don't like the United States.
	So your HVE visibility goes down.
	So now you start flying blind, and then we brought in 10 million people, or however many.
	We know 100,000 Afghans.
	We know however many came over the southern border.
	Look, if you can smuggle a person, you can smuggle all kinds of things.
	There have been stories about whether or not they were, you know, man-powered, like man-pads, and they had, you know, surface-to-air missile capabilities.
	Is that a possibility?
	Of course.
	Because you can—a human being.
	If you can move a trailer full of human beings, what can you fit in a cargo trailer?
	How many do you have to move across the border to not get caught?
	They say they catch 30% at best.
	So 60%, 70% are running through.
	That's where the real threat comes in.
	And we're running blind.
	We're running blind on this stuff.
	So the intelligence failure is one thing.
	The fact that the FBI is interested in going after this setup job, which is what they are.
	And again, it's a terror factory.
	It's a numbers game.
	George can break down what IPM is.
	Everybody thinks it's because they're looking at one thing because either, well, they think a lot of things, but they don't know what it is.
	They think they're going after all these folks because it's about ideology.
	Oh, we're going to get the right-wing extremists.
	We're going to get Kyle because he's got an AR-15 on his shirt.
	That's the guy.
	We're going to go knock them down.
	We're going to get the MAGA people.
	This is not where the threat, and that's not why they're going after them.
	They're going after the low-hanging fruit because of a thing called IPM, which is the most bureaucratic and lame way of anything done, but it's perfect government if you want to break it down because people should know.
unidentified		I'll try to make it, I'm going to break it down Marine Corps style, you know, just crayon-eating, jarhead.
		It is a system that was developed by McKinsey and Company that was brought in by Bob Mueller.
		Bob, he first tried to emulate what New York was doing.
		All these shenanigans started right after 9-11.
		So they decided that, okay, how are we going to determine whether or not we're really doing our job to keep the country safe?
		So the FBI determined these are the performance metrics.
		We determined these are the performance metrics that we say that we're going to hit in order to reduce crime and reduce terrorism.
		So if we were all sitting in a room at headquarters and we would just say, Hey, Phil, what do you think, how many FIs do you think we need to have in order to mitigate the threat from Iranian-based terrorist groups?
		We had three last year, right?
		You think we can do four this year?
		Yeah, I think we can do four.
		I think we can do that, right?
		So, you know, how many UCs do we need?
		Well, we had...
		We only had two last year, and that was tough.
		I don't think we can get more than two.
		Well, George, how many Intel products do you think we can write on this?
		Wow, that's easy.
		We have access to Data Warehouse now.
		We can write Intel products all day long.
		All right, good.
		We're going to put you down for 15. Not a problem, boss.
		We can do easy.
		So we set out these metrics at the beginning of the year, and then we exceed them at the end of the year because we decide what's a stat and what's not a stat.
		And we hand out awards and promotions.
kyle seraphin ▲ ● ▼		So there's one more piece to it.
unidentified		But wait.
kyle seraphin ▲ ● ▼		Your bonus structure.
unidentified		Mm-hmm.
kyle seraphin ▲ ● ▼		It's going to be related to how many of those metrics that you forecast at the beginning of the year.
		It's going to be how much you get.
		And those bonuses are like five figures.
		They're $25,000, $30,000 to $50,000, whatever it may be, depending on the level of SES. So this is your quote-unquote deep state, your administrative state.
		These are the people that run field offices.
		For their success, they negotiate a process.
		Because let's say I'm in the field office and George is saying, hey, we need 15 Intel products.
		And I take it to my Intel shop and I go, hey, can we do 15?
		They're like, oh man, we just lost three people and we're in the middle of hiring.
		We can only do 13. So I come back and say 13 and they go, how about 14?
		And we settle on 14. Then I'm going to go get 14. That's literally how crazy this is.
		And then as long as I get those 14 as the executive over here, I'm getting paid.
unidentified		And you know who keeps the stats?
		HRD, the Human Resources Department.
		So your bonus stats essentially are getting fed into the organization, the entity within the Bureau who decides who goes where, who gets their field office of choice, who gets the best position, and who gets moved up in the organization.
		So I don't know if they use it in the private sector, but in the Marine Corps and the Navy, we used to call it gun decking.
		You just fill it out.
		It doesn't matter whether it happened or not.
		You just send in the number.
		And here it is.
		You know, this speaks to an idea that we discuss here on IRL a lot.
		The idea that the deep state, as much as it's doing nefarious bad things, the motivation is rarely nefarious and bad beyond, I want to make a little extra money this year.
		I want to make sure that my job is here next year.
		I want to make sure that my kids can go to college.
		I want to make sure that my retirement is safe.
		The motivation isn't...
kyle seraphin ▲ ● ▼		It's the oldest motivation in history.
		Look, we talked about religion a little bit, but it's greed.
		Yeah.
		It's one of the most fundamental things that human beings have is our flaws.
unidentified		I think that it's probably functionally better to not even call it greed as it's just people looking out for themselves the way that people do.
unidentified		Because even when you say greed, right, that brings to mind nefarious motivations as this is a uniquely bad person.
kyle seraphin ▲ ● ▼		Oh, no, it's not unique at all.
unidentified		It's not at all.
		It's just people doing their job the most efficient way that they can to benefit them.
		Not necessarily to benefit the final product at their job or to benefit the country.
		It's just, hey, how can I do my job, the job that I'm expected to do, the job that everybody around me also expects me to do?
		Right.
		How can I do that in a way that is going to produce maximum benefit for me and for my family and for my kids and.
		And actually, you know, where it actually does the job that I'm supposed to do, right?
		Accomplishes the task that I'm supposed to be doing.
kyle seraphin ▲ ● ▼		Add this to it.
kyle seraphin ▲ ● ▼		The myth of competency.
unidentified		Sure.
kyle seraphin ▲ ● ▼		A lot of people saw this in Butler, PA. For the first time...
kyle seraphin ▲ ● ▼		They realized that there was not an impenetrable force field around every single person that the Secret Service protected.
philip labonte ▲ ● ▼		I assure you.
unidentified		When you go a great deal of time without some bad thing happening, it's not because there's this magic force field.
		It's because nobody actually tried to do the best.
		And that image becomes less clear when you layer on top of that DEI. Of course, yeah.
		So we saw that in New Orleans with the ASAC Duncan.
		The New Orleans who can barely speak.
		That was the woman that specifically said this was not a terror attack.
		It's pacifically.
		It's pronounced like the ocean.
kyle seraphin ▲ ● ▼		I can't stop saying it now, by the way.
		It's the worst.
		People will be like, are you doing okay?
		And I'm like, well, I pacifically told you that I was going to be fine.
		I woke up early this morning and I'm good.
unidentified		So I actually have a friend of mine who worked with Duncan in the Miami field office.
		She tried out for SWAT. Didn't pass it.
		Mercifully.
		Her first choice, or first, you know, thing that she did after failing, making SWAT, was she was going to sue the SSA, the Supervisor Special Agent in Charge, of the selection process.
		So she was talked off the ledge by her leadership command.
		But, again, kind of like all press is good press, she became known as someone you don't stand in front of.
		Okay?
		So her career at that time, her failure...
		Actually, because of her threat to sue, actually, all mountains were laid low, all valleys filled in, and here we go.
		She's off to New Orleans standing in front of a microphone at 6.36 in the morning and can't even speak a coherent sentence.
kyle seraphin ▲ ● ▼		Let me throw another thing on there, because there's this idea, and DEI is a real problem in the FBI, although Chris Wray will not acknowledge it.
		They did a lawsuit that they settled, and I'm trying to see what the date was.
		Okay, so it sounds like the press release came out in September of last year.
		So pretty recently.
		And it was like almost a $23 million settlement with a bunch of women that were discriminated against at the FBI's Academy at Quantico.
		Okay?
		Because there's this idea in the outside world, especially people on the political left and the political energy behind it, is that women are getting screwed over in law enforcement.
		They're not given a fair shake.
		I will affirmatively tell you that I knew two of the women that were in this lawsuit.
		And there weren't that many women in it.
		There were 34 women.
		I knew two of them.
		A friend of mine knew another one.
		Another friend knew two more.
		So we can account for five of them.
		They were so dangerous and so unprepared to be at the place that they were at that literally my wife would be better off.
		My wife has zero training except living around me with a gun.
		She would be better off.
		She's a better shot.
		She was much safer with firearms than any of these characters were because they were atrocious.
		Like, I watch women fail non-pass-fail events.
		Imagine, you know what a familiarization is with a weapon?
		You just shoot a couple rounds and then you go away.
		You're not supposed to fail that.
		It's not supposed to be a failure.
		I give you a shotgun, pump the shotgun, fire some buckshot, pump it again, fire the buckshot, pump it, fire a slug, and then give it back to the instructor.
		The woman couldn't hold on to it.
		She fired it and it left her shoulder and it left her hands and it's in the air.
		They picked it up and gave it to her again and she did it again to the point where they're like, we're not even going to finish the fam.
		That's not even a pass-fail event and you failed it.
		I watched women like that.
		They got paid out in this lawsuit.
		I watched a woman where there was a standard for a slalom course with cones.
		By the way, some of the most fun thing you can do is driving through cones with somebody else's car.
		Like, bro, let's do that all day long.
		The driving course has like a two-minute limit.
		The people that needed work on it were doing it in like 2.5, 2.45.
		I watched a woman do it in 16 minutes and she hit more cones than there were counts for penalties.
unidentified		Driving backwards?
kyle seraphin ▲ ● ▼		There's some backwards driving, but she couldn't see over the back.
		She's sub five feet tall.
		She's from New York.
		She'd never driven a car before.
		And they allowed her to go and do the slalom course.
		And she eventually failed out.
		But she failed out in like the 18th week.
		And she was part of this lawsuit.
		Her name's Elena Parra.
		She's EP in the lawsuit.
		I'll just say it because I don't care.
		And she was atrocious.
		Here's the other crazy thing.
		You know what happened after she left the FBI as part of this?
		She got hired on by the Secret Service.
		And she made it through.
		This kind of stuff is wild.
		You file one lawsuit and you win.
		You threaten a lawsuit in the FBI's Miami field office and you get backed off the ledge.
		Everybody gets out of your way.
		And they pay you out tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of dollars of taxpayer money.
unidentified		But it gets worse.
kyle seraphin ▲ ● ▼		But wait, there's more.
unidentified		So the plus up of the 45% of the FBI came with the Patriot Act.
		It's the Intel program.
		So there was a big discussion whether they're going to create an MI5. Domestic intelligence program like the Brits have, standalone, and it was decided that we're going to lash it up to the FBI. Those 0132 job series, those intelligence analysts actually belong to the Director of National Intelligence, who's Avril Haines right now.
		Hopefully, Tulsi Gabbard will get that job going forward.
		The intelligence cadre is the engine because they drive integrated program management.
		They drive the stats.
		They do most of the violations which Ray has testified on regarding abusing data warehouse and just looking for cases to make against U.S. citizens without predication.
		In 2016, you were at the Academy in 2016?
		Yep.
		Okay, so I was what's called a field counselor.
		So I was lashed up to a class of agents and analysts going through the FBI Academy.
kyle seraphin ▲ ● ▼		We actually met, but we didn't know it until years later.
unidentified		And Director Comey came for his regular lunch that he has with the field counselors.
		So there's a separate dining area off of the main dining facility at Quantico.
		And at the time, we were having a large turnover ratio of analysts coming into the Bureau, a high turnover rate, and at the same time, the ones that were staying were beyond petulant and hard to deal with.
		Self-entitlement doesn't begin to cover their attitude.
		So it was my turn to ask a question.
		And I said, Director Comey, this is 2016. I said...
		After 15 years of war, we have thousands of intelligence professionals that have deployed into combat theaters of operation, worked in high-stress environments, in a team environment.
		And most of those people were enlisted, and they don't have college degrees.
		Director Comey, would you consider—I had already laid out about the turnover rate.
		I said, would you consider bringing— You know, changing our policy of only recruiting out of top-tier schools and allowing some of these high school graduates but experienced intelligence professionals to come into the intel program and then set out milestones for them.
		So you get an associate's degree, you get your next promotion, you get your bachelor's degree.
		He never answered the question because his posse of sycophants tore me to ribbons.
		There was blood on the wall.
		They destroyed me inside of 20 seconds.
philip labonte ▲ ● ▼		The audacity to ask if experienced people could do the job.
unidentified		And we see what kind of people are coming out of the universities.
		We know who they are now with the protests going on with Hamas and Israel.
		So we know who those people are.
		We know what they look like because we've seen their professors as well.
		But this is the cadre.
		This is the fuel and the engine that drives that whole...
		Integrated program management.
		It's the intel cadre.
		If you ever want to get the FBI back to a law enforcement organization, you need to end this domestic intelligence program completely.
		Do you guys have a sense, considering what you're talking about here, do you have a sense that...
		The incoming administration is going to be able to do anything about this because I understand it's difficult to make changes in Washington, D.C., especially on the bureaucrat level.
		There are people that as soon as you fire someone, they're going to sue.
		I've heard people articulate an idea that what's going to have to happen is you're going to have to have people get fired, they'll sue, and it'll have to go to the Supreme Court.
		The question is going to be, does the executive, as in the president, does the president have the authority to fire people in the executive branch that are not doing their job?
		Do you think that there's going to be...
		That the executive has the ability to make changes that are necessary?
		Or, you know, people like Kash Patel, will they be able to?
		Or is it going to have to take, you know, going through the court system all the way up to the Supreme Court and having the Supreme Court decide, which hopefully the makeup of the court would say, yes, the executive does have the authority to decide who does and does not work for them.
		But, you know, that's not guaranteed.
		What's your sense?
		Tried to cut Kash Patel off at the knees, recognizing that he plans on making some structural changes and pointing out that, oh, we might not want to do that in view of this rise of Islamic terrorism now coming back to the United States.
		So they're already laying out that narrative, like no structural changes, Kash.
		Furthermore, it would take Congress.
		To do away with the domestic intelligence program.
		Now, could the executive branch do something to kind of zero that out in terms of allocation of resources and through the DNI? Yes.
		It could happen.
		But it would only be about funding and then an administration that supports the idea after...
philip labonte ▲ ● ▼		So consider this.
kyle seraphin ▲ ● ▼		George already told you where the cheat code is.
		The analysts that work for the FBI don't answer to the FBI. That's not the master.
		The master comes from the Office of Director of National Intelligence.
		So they are serving in a role and being paid by the FBI. Actually, we don't get paid by the FBI. You get paid by the Department of Agriculture.
		All my checks came in from Department of Ag through the National Finance Center.
		It's so weird.
unidentified		Super secret.
kyle seraphin ▲ ● ▼		Super secret.
		And then you go and you're like, hey, I work for the FBI. And they're like, but your pay stub says the Department of Agriculture.
		And you're like, I know, and I can't get them to fix it.
unidentified		You've got to have a G19 clearance.
kyle seraphin ▲ ● ▼		Apparently you've got to have fake clearances.
		So listen, the people, they're getting paid by one organization.
		They are answering to another.
		We can fix that problem.
		Kash Patel can fix that problem.
		The answer is like, hey, Tulsi, hey, high five.
		I'm going to give you all of the analytical core that's been sitting here.
		And they can continue to co-locate.
		They just don't work for the FBI anymore.
		Let's remove that chunk.
		And as it stands right now, and I think George can validate this, because of that IPM, because of the way that they just do term papers, essentially an analyst in the FBI writes term papers for a living.
		What's their quota per year?
unidentified		Three.
		The DNI said they have to write three a year.
		It was while I was with the Bureau.
		They said, these other intelligence agencies are writing X number of products per year.
		You're not.
		Your analysts need to produce at least three per year of what's called finished intelligence products.
kyle seraphin ▲ ● ▼		This is analysis of raw intel in a way that means something to somebody.
		Okay?
		Is it domain awareness program?
		If you wrote a domain awareness bulletin, is that finished?
unidentified		Yeah.
kyle seraphin ▲ ● ▼		Just out of curiosity.
unidentified		Yeah.
kyle seraphin ▲ ● ▼		Okay, so the thing that I came forward with that showed that they were targeting Catholics in Richmond, Virginia.
		That's one.
		So it's a long-form term paper with a bunch of different little footnotes in it.
		It has some sourcing, which should be better than the Southern Poverty Law Center, but in that case it was not.
		And so you show all the things.
		It should be better than The Atlantic, but it was not.
		So they write up this long term paper.
		That's one of three.
		If you get three in the year, then you're going to be green in that metric.
		So you're good to go as an intel analyst.
		Well, you can write term papers for somebody else.
		Because as an FBI agent, when I was doing that job, I didn't need your term paper.
		It never did anything for a case I worked.
		Not one.
unidentified		Ever.
kyle seraphin ▲ ● ▼		It didn't predicate a case.
		It didn't give me an idea of what my subjects were involved in.
		It's non-investigative work.
		It's analytical work.
		So get rid of those people.
		The second problem is the executives.
		And the question is, can we fire them outright?
		And can you do something with them?
		And without giving away a lot of strategy, because I have some ideas for people and I've shared some of them, right?
		What you do is you find some people that have done objectively wrong things and violated the federal policy or law that the agency holds them accountable to.
		And you hold them accountable to that.
		Some of that means prosecution.
		Some of it means removal from your job.
		You suspend them immediately.
		You investigate them.
		Give them the opportunity to resign or to retire, which a lot of them will.
		And then they're going to be outside the agency's purview.
		Now you have some spots in some places in the country.
		And J. Edgar Hoover was really good at doing this back in the day.
		He was kind of a gangster.
		Not kind of, really.
		He was a gangster.
		I mean, he was known to dress cross-dress.
		That was a well-known thing about J. Edgar Hoover.
		So people would get upset about it, and you'd look at him and be like, no, no, the guy dressed up in women's clothing, moved around in the space.
		It is what it is.
		So long and short of it is, historically, that was a thing.
		I also think it's kind of funny.
		He was like the first LGBTQIA plus guy in the government, and he used to hunt them.
		He was a trendsetter.
		So before his time.
		Long and short of it is, you had this...
		This moment that what he would do is he would get rid of people that he thought were disrespecting the Bureau that caused problems.
		And he would move them to places like Alaska.
		He would move them to Montana.
		He would move them to wherever they wanted to go.
		Those are places we want to go.
		He would move them to places that they shouldn't be in.
		And so they would go, oh, I want to move to Miami.
		And he was like, cool.
		Looks like you're going to South Dakota.
		And so he would send them out there to places they didn't want to be.
		And then they would go, well, rather than take that move, I'm going to resign.
		And that is an opportunity to not have to pay a bunch of lawsuits.
		Because why would you want to pay a bunch of lawsuits if you don't have to?
		You just give people an opportunity to make the right decision for the country and for the organization.
unidentified		And that's something that I've heard.
		I'm not sure actually who was touting the idea, but getting the bureaucracies.
		Out of Washington, D.C. instead of having them all...
kyle seraphin ▲ ● ▼		You should totally decentralize it.
unidentified		You should have...
unidentified		The Department of Agriculture should be, you know, based in Iowa or based in Nebraska, you know, in Lincoln or something like that, right?
kyle seraphin ▲ ● ▼		They hire people that live inside the D.C. Beltway who have D.C. Beltway attitudes.
kyle seraphin ▲ ● ▼		And that group of people is pretty small and they mostly have an experienced America.
unidentified		Yeah.
kyle seraphin ▲ ● ▼		Broadly speaking.
unidentified		Yeah.
kyle seraphin ▲ ● ▼		Like, if you look around and you don't know where your food comes from, because you live in Jersey, and maybe there's some food in Jersey, but not enough.
kyle seraphin ▲ ● ▼		If you live in New York City and it comes from the grocery store or a bodega, and you have no idea, people in Washington, D.C. oftentimes have zero clue how the rest of America operates.
unidentified		It's really, really different.
unidentified		Another point to that is, I think D.C. went 94% for Kamala Harris.
kyle seraphin ▲ ● ▼		Correct.
unidentified		And so, if you've got that kind of, you know, ubiquitous political opinion.
		It's institutional culture.
		And someone that, honestly, any honest, objective estimation of the ability of Kamala Harris would lead you to say, no, she cannot do the job.
		She's not qualified to be the executive.
kyle seraphin ▲ ● ▼		Let me pin that down even weirder, okay?
kyle seraphin ▲ ● ▼		Because people have been attacking Kash Patel's credentials.
unidentified		He's got history working with the FBI, doesn't he?
kyle seraphin ▲ ● ▼		Okay, but what was the big deal about Kamala Harris?
kyle seraphin ▲ ● ▼		She was a prosecutor.
unidentified		Yeah.
kyle seraphin ▲ ● ▼		She was a prosecutor, and therefore she knew how to be the President of the United States.
unidentified		Which is a ridiculous assertion.
kyle seraphin ▲ ● ▼		Cash Patel was a defense attorney.
		And he worked as a public defender.
		And then he was a prosecutor at the federal level.
		And then he was a chief of staff over to the, you know, in the DOD. So he's worked all kinds of things.
		He has more experience in the federal government than Kamala Harris did when it comes to the capabilities of it.
		She was a senator for, like, not even the full term.
		We look at people and you say, and then how about this?
		How come nobody on the left is excited about the first brown guy who happens to be a former public defender?
		Isn't that what you would want if you were a leftist, if you were really into this thing that we need to have diversity of opinion and skin color and things like that?
unidentified		Clarence Thomas.
kyle seraphin ▲ ● ▼		It's just so simple.
		It's like when your politics don't align with what the ideology is, then you no longer count as that person.
		You're no longer a score point for us.
unidentified		They do this all the time. - The left, the left, Unquestionably, the left has only the politics in mind, and they use any of the excuses that they have, whether it be, oh, this person's of this identity or whatever.
		Those things only matter.
		If they have the right ideology, and it's an excuse and an arguing point, but the substance of that doesn't matter, because if it's a person that has the correct skin color or the correct gender or the correct, you know, ideological alignment, or I'm sorry, orientation, it doesn't matter if they don't have the correct ideological alignment.
		So that is a clear refutation of the argument that they make.
kyle seraphin ▲ ● ▼		But they can't even stand on it, and they don't try to.
		Here's the biggest simple thing.
		At the end of the day, America...
		A lot of Americans want to see something that I would call retribution.
		Would that be accurate?
unidentified		I mean, yes.
kyle seraphin ▲ ● ▼		People want to see retribution.
unidentified		Payback.
kyle seraphin ▲ ● ▼		But in reality, you can't do that at the federal government level.
		So what you can hope for and what you should ask for is accountability.
		And that's different.
		That means if you broke the law, if you violated policy, then you have to go because you didn't meet the terms of the condition of your employment.
		And you can do that without a lot of problems.
		And you should.
		But you shouldn't go after and just go, we're going to swipe out huge swaths of people, even if it feels good.
		That's bad for America to go through that court system battle up to the Supreme Court and decide whether or not the president can do this.
		It's not going to be effective immediately.
		It's going to tie up a bunch of stuff in lawsuits.
		You're going to have a bunch of attorneys doing this.
		It's far better to say that these people violated in a narrow subset.
		These are people that can no longer work here.
		And then you create an opening to do some other things.
		And you give people opportunities.
		I'm using words very carefully.
		To choose to no longer, to self-separate.
		And that's better for America.
		It's better for the accountability versus the retribution end of it.
		And like I said, it is historically something that has been used by people like the FBI. When you have 55 field offices across the country, there are some that people don't want to go to.
		I'm just telling you, there are some that are high on the list and there are some that are very low on the list.
		And everybody supposedly wants to move to, where do they all want to move?
		They all want to move to Charlotte because of the cost of living and because of the temperature and what you can buy in housing.
		And nobody wants to go live in New York, and a lot of people don't want to go live in parts of Montana.
		But, like, you'd be surprised now.
		People like Salt Lake City, very, very coveted.
		Wait list until you're dead.
unidentified		Everyone goes to Anchorage.
kyle seraphin ▲ ● ▼		Anchorage is a cool place, but Anchorage has some of the most corrupt senior executives in their field office for the FBI. Because nobody pays attention to them?
		I don't know.
		It's just a bad culture.
		Like, a lot of this cultural rot, consider this.
		The management, which we've talked about the intel piece of it.
		When you're recruiting people that are on board with what you're doing.
		Are you going to recruit a George Hill to step up to the next level?
		When I first vetted George, because he reached out to me on X, by the way, this is how we met.
		He sent me a DM, and it was very straightforward.
		I actually will give this as a lesson if you want to reach out to somebody in a public space.
		He said, my name is George Hill.
		I used to work for the FBI in Boston.
		You have ways of vetting me.
		If I pass muster, give me a call.
unidentified		Clear and concise.
kyle seraphin ▲ ● ▼		It was almost like that short.
		And so I reached out to my friends in the Boston field office and I go, hey, do you know George Hill?
		And someone that I trust very much and is a buddy of mine for a long time.
		He's like, oh yeah, he's a straight shooter.
		You know, piss people off occasionally because he said the truth.
		Guy doesn't come up with an angle.
		He just tells you how it is.
		That's never going to promote it in an FBI. It's never...
		Would you agree?
unidentified		Oh, no.
		I even tried.
		The FBI came up with a system on promotion.
		You have to take a written test and then you have to go for an interview and stuff like that.
		I'm like, oh, this will be fun.
		You know?
		So like...
		I had to give a briefing to some people who were, you know, like 10, 15 years my junior in age, right?
		I briefed General Alexander every week for three years at the National Security Agency, and I saw people last one brief, two briefs, fired, fired.
		I did this for years.
		I know how to brief.
		I've briefed members of Congress, four-star generals.
		And I go in front of this group to do a briefing, and they're like, yeah, yeah, I did.
		No good.
		I'm like, yeah, okay.
		I get what you people are about now.
kyle seraphin ▲ ● ▼		I'll double down on that.
		We had one of your analytical cadre in my Quantico class that was teaching briefing.
		And I got marked down points because I was too confident in what I briefed, and because I emphatically hit.
		The keyboard when I was changing screens on my slide deck, which could intimidate senior management in the FBI. So sayeth a woman who was basically shaped like a human thumb.
		I think that her head went directly down to basically her shoulders.
		She was just this sort of like rotund little person.
		It was a face on something like this.
		And you're like, you're not my people.
		I'm not intimidating senior FBI management.
		I guarantee it.
		They carry a badge and a gun.
		I've met David Bowditch, who was the deputy director.
		The dude is big.
		I don't know how big he is, but he's 6'3", 6'5", something like that.
		He's a stocky man.
		He wore a pistol under his suit that I could see while we were in the airport.
		Didn't even care.
		But good for him.
		He actually carried a gun as a senior executive.
		He was the number two in the bureau.
		And by all accounts, he was a pretty decent guy.
		I actually messed with him a little bit.
		I said something funny to him when we came out of Portland, when it was burning.
		During the riots of 2020. And I go, I said, hey, sir.
		He goes, where are you coming out of?
		I said, Washington Field.
		And he goes, but he didn't know who I was.
		So before I said that, I go, hey, do you think we can save Portland or should we just let it burn?
		And he looked over at me and he goes, 50-50.
		What field officer are you out of?
		That's a good kind of person.
		I'm going to intimidate that guy by a flourish when I hit the keyboard.
		These are the kind of folks that are driving the promotion change.
		So they only bring in people that don't threaten to upset the apple cart.
		George Hill is a guy who upsets the apple cart.
		Has to be.
unidentified		You need those people.
		I was just going to say, that's exactly what's necessary to make sure that the bureaucracy is doing what it's supposed to do.
		I mean, granted, that's not going to make the bureaucracy happy, but you need people that are skeptical, like we were saying earlier.
		You need people that are skeptical not only of the government as a whole, but skeptical of their little...
kyle seraphin ▲ ● ▼		They think that the government is working properly when it promotes them, and it goes back to that principle you said earlier.
		It's not that they're doing something nefarious.
		They're serving their own interest, and you know what's not in my interest?
		Having someone more competent than me come in and supplant me and make me look bad, because I didn't deserve this position in the first place.
		If that's the case...
		You're never going to bring people in that question what's going on.
		We used to have this joke that a GS-15, so the government scale goes from 1 to 15, and then it goes into the SES, the senior executives.
		A GS-15 within the FBI, but it's probably true government-wide, is someone that's never said no to a bad idea.
		Because how else do you get to be a 15?
		You can't be a 15 if you're over there calling out problems.
		Now you're a problem maker.
		We're not interested in problem makers.
		We're interested in co-signers.
		We need people that agree with our great ideas, which is how you got a lot of COVID tyranny, things that should have been sussed out in the courts and they eventually were, and we were right to question it.
		It's like you didn't have to weigh in, but you chose to.
		They failed to do things.
		It's like, well, should we go after MAGA extremists?
		Yeah, yeah, yeah, we should.
		Why?
		Because they're everywhere and they're super easy to find and we can set them up really easy and we can set it up and it's way easier for us to get our metrics.
		That is a terrible way to run law enforcement.
		And I'll leave you with this thought as well.
		When you start adding, and this is why George and I hate the Intel product and the programs, when you add an intelligence capability...
		National security capabilities.
		And he should tell you about 12333 and how those changed, because this is really where it got dangerous.
		But when you add that to a law enforcement entity that has no right under the Fourth Amendment to be able to search you, and you start having exceptions because you have national security at play, you have a secret police force.
		And that has existed in every Western country, and they're always tyrannical.
		Like, there's only one way to be a secret police.
		Tyranny.
		If he tells you how this evolved with that DWS, we've said it a few times.
		I know we talked before we started, but people should understand how invasive that is.
		And it'll scare them more than they probably initially thought.
unidentified		Yeah, so George, why don't you go ahead and elaborate on the idea that Kyle's talking about?
		So Barack Obama on his way out the door at the end of his administration, so early January of 2017, he made a change to Executive Order 12333. 12333 was first written by Ronald Reagan after the findings of the Church Commission,
		which if – brief segue – if there's any organization that needs to have some rocks turned over and to have a good taking a look at, it's the CIA because they haven't been looked at in 50 years or scrutinized.
		Nonetheless, so 12333, that was the evolution of 12333. So Barack Obama amended that.
		And his press release said that the reason that he was making NSA collection available to the intel community at large was because he was afraid that Donald Trump was going to lock it down to protect any scrutiny of his Russian connections.
		This is after Admiral, the head of the NSA at the time, He went to Trump Tower and told him that the NSA was collecting on him.
		So Barack Obama made that change to 12333, allowing the FBI to have access to not just the FISA across the entire FBI, because usually FISA is locked down to, you know, it's got a bigot list to it.
		Only certain people can have access to it.
		Not only allowing everybody within the FBI to have access to FISA, but also to the 702 data, which is the collection that the National Security Agency does.
		And somehow the FBI had Data Warehouse already set up to migrate these, what's beyond a terabyte?
		Gigabyte.
		What is it?
		Pentabyte.
		Pentabyte?
		Yeah.
		Over, you know...
kyle seraphin ▲ ● ▼		Sounds good.
unidentified		Hundreds of thousands of pentabytes of data into a data warehouse for the FBI to go shopping every day and to come up with intelligence products or, you know, to make sure that Donald Trump doesn't...
kyle seraphin ▲ ● ▼		You've got to flesh out shopping so people understand how simple this is and how accessible it is.
unidentified		Yeah, it's no different than doing a Google search.
		You just set your search terms, you know, and you pull something back.
		You get a report back or information back, and you cull through that reporting data, and you can build an intelligence case.
		But the beauty of it is, and Kyle explains this much better than I do, you can build a parallel case without any real predication based on an intelligence case that has no predication.
		So you start backfilling your faux-f-a-u-x case.
		On predication that didn't exist.
kyle seraphin ▲ ● ▼		So, like, let's say I'm investigating George, right?
		And he's talking to somebody from China.
		So he's talking to a Chinese person that is under collection.
		So now I have some access to George.
		And I see what he's doing, and I'm looking into him.
		And so I open up in a case on George, too.
		Right?
		Which I shouldn't do, because that theoretically is reverse targeting unless I can predicate it some other way.
		But that's what they do.
		So now we've got this.
		There's ways to articulate it, it turns out.
		You can dodge that.
		I've brought that to Congress.
		And I said, this is a real problem.
		You guys should go into the operating rules.
		It's called the DIOG, the Domestic Investigations Operation Guide.
		There's one little classified paragraph at the end of it that allows them to get away with a lot of this stuff.
		And it would be very easy for them to tell the Attorney General to fix it, which they should.
		All right, so now I'm looking into George because he's talking to the Chinese guy that I like.
		And I'm like, okay.
		Well, George is not doing anything nefarious.
		He's not selling out the country and he's not doing any of this.
		But he does have a short barrel rifle that he keeps talking about with one of his other buddies.
		So now I'm on to something else.
		I was talking about something that was...
		National security.
		That's why I'm looking at George.
		But I'm not interested in national security now because I found out that he's actually involved in another crime.
		He has this, like, BS tax violation under the National Firearms Act.
		Okay.
		Well, how do I predicate that?
		Because I've got to go find the—I've got to get the gun to be able to prove this case.
		So I've got a couple options I can do.
		I could just open up the case and not have any reason, but it's way easier for me to go to Phil, who I found out is George's buddy, and I go, listen, Phil, I'm with the FBI. And I understand you know George.
		And I know you guys have been to the range together.
		And I know that you know he doesn't have a tax stamp for that rifle he's been shooting.
		So do you want to tell me or do you want to get on the list too?
		You want to deal with me.
		And you go, yeah, no, I want to tell you.
		And it's like, great.
		Now I can predicate a criminal investigation based on a source reporting.
		Now how did I get that information?
		I got it from something I'm not going to be able to talk about in a warrant.
		I'm going to get it from a national security tool.
		This is parallel construction.
		But I don't have to declassify my FISA. Or my 702 coverage.
		I don't have to declassify any of that stuff.
		This is all protected by sources and methods, right?
		But you're a source.
		That's a different thing.
		I can actually hide your identity as best I can.
		But reported by a source.
		Now I have an allegation or information, which is the standard, for predicating a criminal case that George has violated the National Firearms Act of 1934. It's an 18 U.S.C. 922 statute.
		Very easy.
		So now I go and I open up that case.
		And now I can go after George for a 10-year felony.
		Okay?
		But I found out of it.
		By things that I should have never had a Fourth Amendment right to go find.
		This is the real danger.
		Because let's say it was wire fraud.
		I mean, there's a million things you could be doing that somebody might find out.
		Because the minute that I find out that I'm interested in George, I can pull financials.
		Okay?
	I can do it under the guise of protecting him.
	Because I don't want George to be targeted by foreign nations and so on.
unidentified		He may even be able to put together a FISA package on me.
kyle seraphin ▲ ● ▼		In which case, then I get everything.
unidentified		And then he can two-hop me.
		Two-hop?
		Yeah.
		He can...
		This is who George is talking to, and this is who they are talking to.
		So now, we're back to IPM again, right?
		Integrated Program Management.
		Now we're talking big league numbers here, brother.
		Yeah.
		And that also brings into question anyone that you know.
		It brings into the privacy of anyone that you happen to know.
		It doesn't matter that they're loosely connected or affiliated or whatever.
		People are researching their wives and girlfriends.
		Yeah.
kyle seraphin ▲ ● ▼		So we found out before this got clamped down just a little bit that there were literally millions of violations of 702 search parameters that were being used, mostly by analysts, but also by counterintelligence agents, people that worked in my job.
		As far as I know, I don't think I violated it at all.
		I certainly wasn't, like, intending to.
		But the tool is really difficult because it's – imagine that you're not allowed to go look up – you know, I'm looking at George and I'm not allowed to look you up because you're talking to George, okay?
		If I'm not allowed to do that, but your name pops up.
		And you're doing the thing that I might be supposed to do.
		Imagine having a TSA agent where everybody goes through the metal detector.
		You're not allowed to use the metal detector to find guns, but you have to find all the guns before they get on the airplane.
		What are you going to do?
		You're using a tool that basically is set up to fail that person unless you have those authorities and they're not granted.
		So that's really, really problematic.
		It was millions.
		They tamped down on it, and I kid you not, Chris Wray came in, and he was very, very proud that they reduced like 95% of the threats and the problems and the abuse, and they were only in like 284,000 in 2022. Only 284,000 violations of the Fourth Amendment.
		Okay?
		Now, do people ever find out about it?
		Mostly not.
		But I'll give you a real concrete example that hits really close to home to me.
		The FBI started investigating me because I've been kind of a pain in their butt.
		And so one of the things they did is they wanted to hit me with an obstruction charge.
		I found out through some sourcing, because we still have some friendlies that within the FBI, they're like, hey man, DOJ and the FBI are having meetings at Hoover that are about you, specifically.
		45 minutes at a time trying to figure out how do we get Seraphine on an obstruction charge.
		This is not a place you want to be.
		It scared the living crap out of me.
		I went out and found a defense attorney that was willing to jump on with me.
		You've got to put up somebody on retainer for that.
unidentified		Yeah, just finding an attorney that's willing to take the case is problematic because nobody wants to fight the feds, especially if you're not rolling in money.
unidentified		I mean, Donald Trump has had issues with his defense attorneys and stuff being targeted and stuff, and Donald Trump is...
philip labonte ▲ ● ▼		Former president, billionaire.
unidentified		I mean, his checks are probably going to be good.
philip labonte ▲ ● ▼		You know what I mean?
kyle seraphin ▲ ● ▼		He's like one of the people that can actually stand and stand at least in the same footing.
kyle seraphin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
unidentified		The average person is in a position where they're going to find it almost impossible to find representation.
kyle seraphin ▲ ● ▼		Here's where it gets really weird.
		So they subpoenaed my records for X and all of my social medias, I'm sure, but I only found out about the one on X. And we found out of it because X has a transparency policy where they notified us.
		They didn't actually notify me.
		They actually notified Garrett O'Boyle.
		They went for two records, Garrett O'Boyle's and mine.
		And here's the thing.
		I didn't open up an X account until after I'd left the FBI. So they can screw off on that one.
		But they went out and got it.
		X Corporation, Elon Musk's corporation, because it was post-acquisition, they fought this.
		And they fought it and they lost.
		And they had to surrender all my X records.
		So anybody that DM me is going to be in there and all those people.
		Here's the fun thing.
		You can open up a counterintelligence investigation into me simply because Iranian television reached out and asked for an interview, which I denied.
		I didn't even open the DM. But the fact that they were doing it is predication for them to actually open a CT case.
unidentified		It doesn't even have to open the DM. I don't even have to open it.
kyle seraphin ▲ ● ▼		I just saw it was from Press TV. When you look at the website for Press TV, which anybody can go do, you'll see this thing has been captured by the FBI. They've got a banner on there.
		They seized the website.
		They stole the URL. And so even that alone would be enough to predicate an intel case on me.
		So I know they have one.
		Why wouldn't they?
		Because they were trying to do a criminal one as well, and so they go in the door, they can get in.
		The scary thing was, is that even though they lost, or not the scary thing, I guess the silver lining is, we found out that Elon Musk and co...
		Actually fought this, and they continued to appeal the process, even though they turned over the information.
		They fought it on the First Amendment grounds, that there was in fact no due process, that I hadn't been served with anything, and there was no allegation of a crime.
		And so the best part was is they actually argued that in D.C., in the district of D.C., in the appeals circuit.
		And so they didn't name me, by the way.
		They redacted my name, and they redacted Garrett's name.
		But they're two former FBI whistleblowers who are doing this thing, and they describe our accounts very dramatically, and it's like there's only two people that fit that.
		And then also they notified Garrett that he and I both had been subpoenaed.
unidentified		And it's worth noting that prior to Musk's acquisition of X, there probably would have been no resistance at all.
kyle seraphin ▲ ● ▼		It wouldn't have had to subpoena it.
kyle seraphin ▲ ● ▼		That's what we found out.
unidentified		The FBI just had a desk essentially at Twitter when it was there.
kyle seraphin ▲ ● ▼		Well, this is what one of George's whistleblowing activities is that some companies have chosen to work with the federal government for reasons.
unidentified		Actually, I was going to go into that.
		Let's get a little darker because it's just not dark enough.
		I went in front of the weaponization committee because I had a front row seat to the shenanigans that the FBI was involved in with Bank of America on January 6th.
		What happened was, is that the Washington field office set a lead in Sentinel.
		So in layman's terms, it's like a honey-do list, but it's electronic.
		And you can't ignore it, just like you can't ignore a honey-do list from your wife.
		If it gives you something to do, you better do it.
		And you better tell her what you did, or show it, one or the other.
		So, the Washington field office sent a lead via Sentinel to the FBI office, which went to, and he wasn't happy with it when it first came out, but he's since been, you know, people in the Bureau know who he is, but I'm still going to keep his name out of the discussion.
		It went to the supervisory special agent in charge of the domestic terrorism squad.
		Now, earlier in our conversation, I said I had the Boston Regional Intelligence Center, the BRIC, and the Fusion Center.
		So I would meet with this gentleman at least once a week, face-to-face, and talk to him every day because his purview was domestic terrorism.
		I had analysts embedded both at the BRIC and at the Fusion Center.
		So I go into his office and swings his monitor around and says, have you seen this?
		And I'm like, no, I haven't, because the lead was sent to his squad.
		They wanted his squad to open up cases on everybody who went to the Trump rally on January 6th from the Boston area.
		One of them opened up cases and the predication, well, not really predication, but the intel came from Bank of America.
		Bank of America took it upon themselves to data mine their customer base and strip off of there anyone Across the country.
		This is voluntary by BOA? I'm getting to it.
		Okay, good.
		Yeah.
		It gets dark.
		Strip off anybody who went to Washington, D.C. that used a Bank of America product either to book a flight or some sort of transportation to D.C. or used a BOA product in D.C. So a debit card, a credit card, scratched a check, whatever.
		So we got about 20 names on that list of people that...
		We're in D.C. that Bank of America generated.
		Bank of America all then took that list for the whole entire country and then resorted it.
		So if you, not only if you were in D.C. using a BOA product, if you had ever bought a firearm in your life with a BOA credit card, so if you went to South Dakota to go pheasant hunting with your son and bought a shotgun at Walmart or the Fleet Farm, you're on the top of the list.
		So that was done without any legal process at all.
		It just materialized in the Washington field office.
		Whose desk?
		I don't remember.
		I know the name of the agent who sent it, but it was years ago.
		I don't remember who set the lead.
		And then Director Wray testified, well, I don't know who asked for it.
		I don't know if we asked for it.
		I don't know if Bank of America volunteered it.
		But it just appeared without any formal request from the FBI. Does that answer your question?
		I mean, sort of.
		Yeah, I think it does.
		And did that have...
		Did Operation Chokepoint have anything to do with that, or is that a completely different...
		No, you're talking about the financial involving...
		Yeah, the financial...
		Is that...
		That came afterwards, so we know...
		So Chokepoint was after?
		Yeah.
		Okay.
		Yeah, but we know...
		So this was even after Congress knew about financial institutions voluntarily interacting with the FBI, then Chokepoint occurs.
kyle seraphin ▲ ● ▼		Well, Chokepoint was...
		You're talking about Chokepoint 2.0, I think.
		Okay.
unidentified		Well, when the federal...
kyle seraphin ▲ ● ▼		The first one happened in like 14...
unidentified		Yeah, well, the federal government started using the FBI to influence who the banks would do business with and stuff like that.
kyle seraphin ▲ ● ▼		Correct.
		So that happened early.
		That was the first round of it.
unidentified		I was thinking of FinCEN.
kyle seraphin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, this is a voluntary disclosure going the opposite direction.
unidentified		Okay.
unidentified		Yeah, and that was the Bank of America just saying, hey, federal government, you should know about this.
kyle seraphin ▲ ● ▼		So let's get real weird about it.
		Michael Schellenberg and Matt Taibbi did things called the Twitter files.
		Do you remember those?
		Yeah.
		This is my synthesis of that analysis.
		What happened there was the FBI, on behalf of all of the IC and all of the executive agencies, cultivated a number of businesses the way that you cultivate a source.
		They found out their motivations, their pinch points, the things that will otherwise make them comply, pain points, and how they could ease them.
		They gave them carrot and stick opportunities, the same way you do with someone who's committed a crime and you want them to inform on their friends.
		And they cultivated them to do the things that they wanted without having to ask for it all the time.
		And when they did ask for it, they got less and less pushback until they got none.
		This choke point was a piece that was leaning that on the financial industry, 2013 onward.
		The Twitter file showed that they did that with big tech as well.
		And they've done it with censorship.
		They've done it with demonetization of media as well.
		So you've looked at the federal government stepping in and cultivating friendlies in agencies and entities that would otherwise be theoretically interested in free speech and preservation.
		There's actually bank secrecy rules that probably should come into play, and I don't know how that comes in.
		But when they voluntarily give it to you, it means there's no process.
		And why would someone come and voluntarily do it?
		Unless I take you, Phil, I groom you as my source, and so that you know that if you go ahead and it's like, dude, I met some Proud Boys this weekend, and you're like, oh, good, tell me more.
unidentified		Yeah.
kyle seraphin ▲ ● ▼		Why would you know to tell me that?
		Unless I've cultivated you, these are the things I've primed you to be aware of them, right?
		I've tuned you into a particular radar, and then you know you get paid when you have good information.
		And I've never done Proud Boy investigation, although I've done other white supremacy investigations, which I think are mostly garbage.
		My experience with them is like a 22-year-old kid getting a Starbucks, you know, wearing boat shoes and having khaki pants and a polo shirt on who's like on Reddit and he's a racist.
		Like, I don't necessarily like what he has to say, but this is America and you're allowed to be that guy.
		Now, if you want to go blow something up, that's a very different animal.
		And so there are people that we have to watch for that.
		But when you start running these cases that are garbage and you start tuning your source network, including massive industries that have all of your data...
		You know, that puts the American people at a very, very big disadvantage, which is why you've got to get back away from the intel business and get into the law enforcement business.
		You need a predicated action.
		Allegation or information of a federal crime should be it.
unidentified		And the U.S. government is prohibited from keeping a firearms registration list.
		But would the Bank of America provide for the FBI? Firearms registration list.
		Yeah.
		You know, and so the other institutions have that as well, and credit card companies are seeking to capture that data with a, it's a three-digit code, I forget what the name of it is, where they capture firearms purchases.
		You know, so people now, ideally, if you can, you want to make those purchases using cash.
		Yeah.
		But if they go with a CBDC, a central bank digital currency...
		Well, the federal government can tell you, like, oh, no, you can't use your money to buy red meat because you're fat and overweight and you have high cholesterol and you can't buy a firearm.
kyle seraphin ▲ ● ▼		It's for your own good, though.
unidentified		Yeah, I mean, I think that, I mean, I'm not sure that there are enough people in Congress that are aware of the dangers of what a CBDC would mean, but it's something that at least the internet is very aware of if you're on X or a lot of, I imagine, not that I'm a Redditor, but I imagine there's a lot of people on Reddit that are aware of it.
kyle seraphin ▲ ● ▼		I can't figure out how to use Reddit.
kyle seraphin ▲ ● ▼		I must have missed the gap when you could jump on that train.
unidentified		All I've ever heard is it's just a cesspool.
unidentified		A leftist cesspool because the people that run it are the people that moderate.
kyle seraphin ▲ ● ▼		So let's get even worse with that.
		So there was a guy named Elvis Chan that came out during the Twitter files.
		He was sort of the point man in San Francisco that was interfacing with a lot of the big tech companies.
unidentified		He was an SSA, right?
kyle seraphin ▲ ● ▼		No, he was an ASAC at the time.
		So he was a GS-15.
		Never said no to a bad idea.
		That's who he was.
		And the fun thing about guys like Elvis Chan, whose name got really public during that kind of expose, is that I had people reach out from the Bureau.
		I'm already out at that time.
		And they're reaching out to me and they're like, I've been in meetings.
		I've been on conference calls.
		I've been on like training and education.
		Where Elvis Chan is up on the stage with the CEO of Reddit and other tech companies.
		But Reddit specifically was called out at one point.
		And he said...
		We can't enforce your terms of service, and we can't tell you what to do to censor Americans.
		But we can always point them out, and if you guys want to do something about it, it's up to you.
		A literal wink and nod on stage on a video camera presentation, and I know the FBI has documents of this.
		I know that they have them, and they haven't been transparent.
		So for me...
unidentified		Is it something that you could find on the internet or no?
kyle seraphin ▲ ● ▼		No, it's done on their side.
		It's on the classified network.
		And the problem is, is I've reached out and I've got FOIA requests right now.
		I've been suing the Bureau for over a year trying to get FOIA requests showing them making fun of congressmen at the Hoover Building in November of 2023. I know they did it because I know somebody in the meeting that shared it with me.
		And they said that it was so bad that even people that were on the political left said no adult reviewed this procedure.
		Nobody actually reviewed this presentation they did.
		It was terrible.
		And it was all senior executives that were involved in doing the presentation.
		So we're suing for it, and I've gotten stuff back in FOIA. This is the other problem, transparency.
		So you know what I got back?
		I got the slideshow that says, investigations by the 118th Congress into the FBI. The opening slide deck.
		And I got the last slide as well.
		Questions, comments, sarcastic remarks, or whatever it is.
unidentified		Everything else is redacted.
kyle seraphin ▲ ● ▼		I got a video, and the video is them setting up the podium, and a guy's saying, okay, we're going to get started here.
		He taps on the thing, and then it cuts.
		So you're not going to share it.
		Why not?
		I know they didn't talk about anything classified.
		I had somebody in the building.
		Now what are we going to do with you?
		So when Akash Patel comes in, the disruptive sort of force, the answer has to be we need to open these things up so that transparency is the byword.
		That yes is the answer that we go default to both the press and to the independent press and to the alternative media groups.
		They need to be able to be accountable to people, and they're not right now.
		And the minute we can kind of get that motivation where people stop serving themselves the way we talked about earlier, and they start looking towards the actual mission, you probably don't know this, but in...
		Donald Trump's, he gets out of office at the end of 2021, right?
		Beginning of 2021. So his last couple days in.
		Somewhere between September 3rd and September 7th of 2020. Trump's term.
		The FBI changed their core values.
		You can find it on the internet through the Wayback Machine.
		I knew they did it when I worked there, but I didn't know exactly the date until after I got out.
		And I went through the archives.
		December 3rd, December 7th, there were different refreshes on the Wayback Machine on the archives there.
		And somewhere between that time, they updated it.
		And it used to be that when I signed up, the number one core value of the FBI was rigid obedience to the Constitution of the United States.
		That was it.
		It was a full thing.
		That is now number seven behind things like inclusivity and diversity.
		And they've shortened it.
		So now it's rigid obedience to the Constitution, period.
		No United States of America.
		I don't know why.
		But when people tell you their mission statement, and George has private sector experience to explain this...
		Mission statements mean something, even though they're kind of frustrating when you're an employee that's at a low level.
		They actually are telling you who they are, and the FBI told us who they were in 2020. But at length, right?
unidentified		It's a very verbose explanation of who the FBI is, right?
		Usually, your core values are like a couple, three, four sentences tops.
		It's usually not a list, because then they're not core values.
		It's the result of a brainstorming.
		We've got to make sure that we have all this in there.
		It reminds me of a South American constitution revamp.
		In South America, a lot of the countries in South America, the constitutions are pages and pages.
kyle seraphin ▲ ● ▼		Too many equities involved.
unidentified		I think the Indian constitution is over a thousand pages for India.
		Have we gotten too far into the FBI? Do we get away from terrorism and national security?
		I don't know.
		The conversation flowing is always a good thing.
		This is the kind of stuff that...
		Our audience is extremely friendly, too.
		They love to hear inside information about the abuses that we need to look out for.
		But it is about time we wrapped up.
		So, George, if you don't mind giving us a couple of final thoughts, and then we'll go to you, Kyle.
		What is it that you think that could be done with the new administration?
		And if you want to go ahead and add anything else.
		I think Doge provides the best vehicle for reforming the federal government.
		You've got to get rid of it.
		If you have a dandelion weed growing in your yard, you don't trim off the yellow flower and the seeds and the leaves.
		It grows out.
		Some of these agencies are going to have to be ripped out.
		If they haven't been expressly called for in the Constitution or they're not adding value to the American public, they need to be gotten rid of entirely.
		What you can't get rid of, you need to shrink drastically.
		We've seen government shutdowns where...
		Nobody's really noticed other than when Obama closed World War II memorials for veterans in wheelchairs that couldn't visit during the last government shutdown.
		So that has to happen.
		And then the other thing, because this was a national security show, we need to be greatly concerned about China.
		Their penetration of our infrastructure is complete.
		My biggest concern is that They turn everything off, either across the country or in parts of the country, and let us suffer for seven to ten days, and then turn it back on and say, okay, are you ready to take a knee now?
		Oh, you're not?
		All right, how about another three weeks?
		That's my greatest concern.
		This crazy talk about Chinese submarines and all this other stuff is just that.
		It's crazy talk.
		They don't know anything about submarines.
		They don't know anything about our SOSIS network.
		They don't know anything.
		That's my greatest concern.
		And that's a very real, tangible threat as well, correct?
		What, China?
		Well, no, the capacity to shut entire...
		Oh, no.
		It 100% exists.
		I had the counterintelligence and the cyber programs in Boston, and they were robust then.
		In every urban area.
		They're even better now.
		I highly recommend The 100-Year Marathon by Pillsbury and Peter Zion's book on China and just about anything by Gordon Chang.
		One has to understand Chinese culture before you can fully understand the threat.
		That it poses to the United States.
		But make no mistake about it, they see themselves as a global hegemon, and in order to do that, they're not going to share the stage with the United States.
philip labonte ▲ ● ▼		Where can people find you?
unidentified		Senior Chief EXW on X, or Twitter if you prefer to use that name.
		It was the highest rank I held.
		I'm very proud, obviously, of my Marine Corps service.
		Wound up...
		Going in the Navy Reserve and then getting swept into the vortex that became the GWAT. All right, Kyle?
kyle seraphin ▲ ● ▼		So a real important thing for people to remember, particularly people on the political right, a lot of Republicans, and that's not conservatives per se, these are Republicans, they want to use the infrastructure that exists and say, as long as we control it, we're going to win.
		And that's really a problem.
		You're trying to hold on to fire.
		I think if people understand that the federal government is the worst solution to every single problem, even when it is the only solution, it needs to constantly be vigorously maintained, checked, and you have to keep a lot of accountability on it.
		Not retribution, but accountability in order to keep it in check.
		Otherwise, it will run afoul.
		And somebody's always going to come over and take over the reins of government later.
		So you should be building things that are built against abuses.
		Because just because you can control today doesn't mean you will tomorrow.
		And so that means that people have to be constitutional.
		It also means another thing that's a little bit more difficult.
		They actually have to go out there and be responsible for their own safety.
		No one's going to come and save you.
		No one's going to solve your problems.
		If you guys want to do the single biggest thing that most people can do for themselves, folks, go out and take a stop the bleed course.
		Go out and take an emergency trauma first responder course.
		Learn how to stop bleeding.
		You're probably not going to be able to stop a terrorist attack, but you might be able to save someone's life in it.
		During the Pulse nightclub shooting, 49 people died.
		Seven of them died from positional asphyxia.
		They basically just had their airway collapsed.
		They got really small and they died as they went into shock.
		If they were pulled off the wall, they would have lived.
		That's how little it took.
		So go learn how to do a march assessment.
		Learn how to do a rapid trauma assessment and a rapid trauma interventions.
		You can do this for about $40 worth of equipment.
		You can have an NPA. You can have a cat tourniquet.
		You can have a couple of bandages.
		You can have one little idea to do a pressure dressing.
		You can learn how to do this stuff yourself.
		So nobody has to be completely incapacitated with fear.
		And then go out and do ride-alongs because it's really important.
		If you're not responding to your own emergencies, if you don't have your own self-response, then you are going to be reliant on the government.
		So you can make yourself ungovernable by actually taking that back.
		A lot of people don't want to do it.
		It takes work.
		So be proactive in that.
		Don't wait for the FBI or the local police to come save you.
		And I also recommend people learn how to use a firearm safely.
		Go out there and get training.
		Spend time.
		Know your lane.
		Some people are not going to be the right person for that.
		But if you are that kind of person, to make sure you do it, take responsibility for yourself.
		And if people want to follow me, they can do so over on social media where I like to mix it up with anybody.
		I don't care how small your account is.
		I will get into it, especially if you say something nasty.
		It's my favorite.
		My cup runneth over with people that want to call me fed.
		I'll mess with them.
		It's Kyle Serafin.
		It's just at Kyle Serafin there.
		We're over on Rumble as well, just like you guys.
		We do it in the morning.
unidentified		Awesome.
		And don't buy Chinese tourniquets.
		Don't buy them from Amazon.
		Get them from someone that has reputable quality products.
philip labonte ▲ ● ▼		I'm Phil Labonte.
philip labonte ▲ ● ▼		I'm Phil that remains on Twix.
unidentified		You can check out updates throughout the day.
		I think there's some posts that they've got lined up.
		And then we will be back here for IRL tonight at 8 p.m.

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