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Aug. 1, 2024 - Fresh & Fit

02:10:50

Former Federal Agent Meets Former CIA Officer

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	Thank you.
	And we are live.
	What's up, guys?
	Welcome to Fresh Shift Podcast.
	I've got a special episode for you guys with Andrew Bustamante, former CIA officer.
	Let's get into it, baby!
	Let's go!
	What's up, guys?
	Welcome to the Fresh It Podcast, man.
	I know that we're kind of doing this last minute.
	Sorry, guys, the event wasn't made, but we made it.
	We are here.
	I'm actually excited for this one, man.
	Welcome to the special episode of Fresh It Fit.
	We have Andrew in town.
	So I was like, dude, we got to do this interview.
	This was kind of the only day that he was able to do it, so we're doing it on a Thursday, and then we're going to give you guys a pop the balloon after the fact.
	Fresh is going to be running that one, but I'm doing this one.
	So he's been on the pod before.
	I mean, I know who you are, but for those that might not know who you are, can you introduce yourself to the people, please?
	Yeah.
	Absolutely, absolutely.
	Andrew Bustamante, former CIA intelligence officer, the founder of Everyday Spy, everydayspy.com.
	I'm the local CIA internet whore, man.
	You see me all over the place.
	If you've tripped on my album...
	Yes.
	If you've chipped on my algorithm, it's there.
	So we were actually talking about this before the podcast, and one of the reasons I really enjoy speaking to you is because you're probably, you and Scott Ritter are probably the only people I've talked to And really the only people I could think of on YouTube that have held a government clearance at some point and understand, you know, the whole—and we'll actually talk about that here in a second.
	So we come from the same world, right?
	I mean, obviously Intel is different than law enforcement, but in general we understand certain things that are uniform, right?
	Classification levels, all this other stuff.
	And we understand each other's missions, versus the American public in general doesn't understand the different missions between the CIA and FBI. It's amazing how they conflate the two career fields, or the two professions.
	But real quick, can you tell us what the CIA is, The mission and then what classification levels are?
	Like for someone that has no idea about this stuff?
	Yeah, absolutely.
	So CIA, the Central Intelligence Agency, is the clearinghouse for all intelligence that's collected in the United States.
	And intelligence is defined as secrets from a foreign source that have impact on national security here in the United States.
	So that's very specifically what CIA does.
	CIA's unique charter is something called Human Intelligence or HUMINT, which is one of several disciplines of intelligence.
	And it's primarily collected in a human-to-human interaction.
	So a person sits across from another person and extracts or steals secrets in some sort of covert or willing collaborator kind of way.
	Again, different than what the other intelligence services do.
	So CIA kind of has two primary missions.
	The first is human collection, human intelligence collection, and the second is the central clearinghouse of all source information, all source intelligence, that then is used to create the president's daily brief, the PDB, that goes up to the senior executive, the president, the commander-in-chief, the chief executive.
	Okay, awesome.
	Now, can you go over the different classification levels for the people, you know, from confidential all the way up into SCI? Yeah, you know, there's a lot more levels of classification than people realize, right?
	And when we talk about classification, what you and I are specifically talking about is the levels of information that are segmented out and given need-to-know access to individuals who have demonstrated a loyalty, a trustworthiness, and a need-to-know of those different classification levels.
	The lowest level is really kind of called unclassified.
	Unclassified means it's not a secret, but it's also not necessarily in the public sphere.
	It's important to understand...
	Law enforcement sensitive would be an example of this, guys.
	Sorry, continue.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	I mean, it's a great example because most people know there's a dark web, and then most people know there's an internet.
	But what most people don't know is there's also a deep...
	And the dark web is where secrets get stolen and hidden and sold, right?
	That's where you can buy children, you can buy cocaine, and FBI is always trying to break into the dark web.
	The internet is where you can just type in anything you want to type in.
	You can start a blog, you can search on Google, you can search on DuckDuckGo, whatever you want, and you'll find the open internet.
	There's also something called the deep web.
	The deep web is the open internet that is not indexed By search engines according to federal or state laws.
	So inside the deep web, there's unclassified information that simply cannot be found if you do a Google search, for example.
	So if you Google search case files on an espionage case, you're not going to find much.
	It's open, unclassified information, but it's not indexed by search engines because it falls under the Department of Justice.
	So Department of Justice archives have it.
	It is publicly available.
	It is accessible, but you have to know how to actually go through those archives to find that information.
	That's the deep web.
	Not illegal, fully legal, but still it's where you have those sensitive, unclassified documents.
	Now from unclassified you go up to...
	Unclassified can include things like sensitive, for your eyes only, confidential, things that are not criminally liable because the classification levels have to do with Damage to national security interests.
	If there's no damage, if there's no risk of damage to national security interests, it basically falls in that unclassified table.
	But it can still be sensitive, it can still be confidential, it can still be need to know.
	It's just if it gets leaked, no damage, no harm done.
	They still want to keep it quiet.
	Yeah, absolutely.
	You know, and an example of that can be like a law enforcement operation plan where they're going to do surveillance, right?
	They'll put in there who's going to be participating, which cars they're using, what guns they're carrying, you know, shit like that.
	Like, is it the end of the world if it got out?
	No, but it does display law enforcement techniques or the way they prepare and they wouldn't want that information out there.
	That's why it's, you know, fairly difficult for like...
	For a private citizen, if they did a FOIA request, it'd be very difficult for you to get an operation plan, right?
	I'd be surprised if you were able to get one that wasn't redacted to the T. So, okay, so we got sensitive bond classified, which so many different things fall into that.
	And then what's next?
	And then the next step up is secret.
	And it's funny because secret is what people think of as...
	secret, but what you and I know is that secret is actually really common.
	You can actually get an interim secret clearance without having any background check at all.
	It's something they give you in the military and they give you in the government during the time that they are vetting you to make sure that you are qualified for a secret clearance.
	So there's actually a huge number of Americans that have a secret clearance.
	Basically, every entry-level military enlisted person, officer, newly recruited federal agent from anything from IRS to Homeland Security to USAID. Lots of people have secret clearances.
	What's interesting is after you're vetted for secret, Usually there's a long history or a long timeline where all you have is access to secret information.
	And secret information is defined as information that is damaging to national security.
	So it is secret.
	It is not unclassified.
	You're not going to find it on the open internet or on the deep web.
	Okay.
	It could do damage to national security not significant damage, but some damage and that's what makes secret clearances Kind of a prime target for prosecution under UCMJ the Uniform Code of Military Justice, okay, or in the federal courts as well Yes, and I think it's very important that we distinguish for the audience.
	Guys, there's two different, if you were to look at the criminal justice system, right, at the federal level, there's two different segues you can go.
	You can go the military courts, and then you can go the criminal courts.
	Which, by the way, did you see that they literally gave a plea deal to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, one of the orchestrators of 9-11 yesterday?
	Oh my gosh.
	And it's UCMJ. It's a military court.
	Which means we can't find any of that shit, which we could talk about that too.
	But, um...
	So that's basically the two different routes that you have.
	So with the secret thing, and I find it interesting that you mentioned the military courts, if you're like a military guy, they would prefer to prosecute you in the military courts way more because the burden of proof is less, they have higher conviction rates, and you're just afforded less rights when you're a service personnel.
	Yeah.
	Your rights are essentially taken away from you once you sign on the dotted line as a resource of the U.S. government.
	Yeah.
	And that's why the UCMJ, like, it's so difficult.
	It's difficult to manage.
	It's difficult to navigate.
	It really is just your commanding officer can basically be like, I'm going to try you for insubordination because you didn't do what I said.
	Yeah.
	And it's interesting, too.
	So we talked about the military side, where you'll get hit with that for having secret information.
	On the criminal side, let's say you're not a service member, guys, and they decide to go through an AUSA or whatever, Department of Justice, you're going to get hit.
	Typically, this is where you start to get hit with espionage.
	18 U.S.C. 793, I think it is.
	Bills, if you could double-check it.
	But that's like, once you start getting into secret information, if you're not You're carrying it correctly.
	You're now storing it correctly.
	You're taking it away from where it's supposed to be, etc.
	This is how you start to get in trouble with the Espionage Act.
	So we talked about unclassified, secret.
	What about confidential?
	So confidential lands in the sensitive, unclassified area, right?
	Because it's confidential to you, but not necessarily damaging to national security intelligence.
	18 DLC, 793.
	Okay, so we covered Secret, and now what about the next level?
	The next level's a big step, actually.
	You go from Secret to Top Secret, right?
	And Top Secret is what...
	Movies make you think that Top Secret's super sexy.
	Honestly, top secret still isn't that sexy.
	You have to be vetted and you have to be proven to have need to know for top secret information.
	But oftentimes if you're a specialist of any kind in the government, if you're in the national security, law enforcement, or intelligence world, you're gonna get a top secret clearance.
	That's what I had when I was an agent that was a top secret.
	And if you guys apply for any special agent position, they're typically gonna get you a top secret clearance.
	Because what Top Secret gives you is the ability to have joint operations.
	So now Homeland Security can talk to CIA, can talk to NSA, can talk to FBI. Top Secret level clearance to Top Secret level clearance.
	Even though what's really wild, brother, is that they define classified information for an agency differently.
	So, for example, CIA considers their surveillance methodology top secret, no foreign, right?
	No foreign meaning not for release to foreign contacts, foreign allies.
	Where FBI considers their surveillance methodology unclassified.
	Same fucking methodology.
	FBI does the same thing CIA does.
	CIA classifies it as top secret.
	FBI says it's unclass.
	Yeah.
	And a big reason for that, guys, is if you think about it, like the FBI prosecutes people in open court.
	So when you prosecute people in open court, there's something called the discovery process, which means it needs to come out to the defendant, who are fucking criminals.
	They don't have a clearance.
	So that is why they can't have their surveillance stuff being unclassified, because that has to come out during the course of a criminal prosecution.
	Right.
	Otherwise, it's got to go to a secret court, a court that's a court of cleared people.
	FISA court.
	Yep.
	And if you have a cleared court, you have less control over who's in the court, who the judge is, what the district is, and where you try it.
	And the general public can go in there.
	Guys, any of you right now can literally go into a federal courthouse, sit in there, and watch trials all day.
	You know what I mean?
	And they're in there testifying and talking about all this stuff.
	It's open to the public.
	So you can absolutely do that.
	And then what's above TS? Because TS is like, yes, I agree.
	That's the beginning where it's like real.
	It actually takes like six months to a year and a half to get a background check cleared.
	This is where you start to deal with sensitive information if you actually do get access to it.
	And then what's above that?
	The SCI. What's really interesting is you have compartments inside TS. So SCI, Special Compartmented Information, is a category of top secret.
	You also have categories 1 through 15.
	So like category 6 is nuclear secrets.
	Category 12 is nuclear targeting secrets.
	So you would have a TS, Special Compartment of Information, so TS-SCI, or you'd have a TS, CAT-6, CAT-12, like I did when I was in the military in nuclear missile services.
	You could also have a TS-PRIVY. PRIVY is when you've got information that goes to a subset of a subset.
	So let's say that you're NSA working against China and you're also working against China telecommunications.
	Now you might have a privy access that gets you the highest level secrets about what's happening in China telecommunications.
	Whereas everybody else in NSA is going to have TSSEI, so they know we're collecting Chinese telecommunications secrets, but they don't have the highest level of information.
	Yeah.
	Right.
	So you've got all these sub compartments that further prioritize and and limit what information people have access to.
	So.
	OK, no, you need to add it.
	Yeah, that's fine.
	Just.
	Yeah.
	We'll handle that.
	Sorry guys, I was getting a message from Mo on the side.
	The other thing I was going to say that I think is really important for the people to understand is when you have a clearance, let's go back 10 years.
	You were working for the CIA, I'm working for Homeland Security, and I'm like, yo, I need some information.
	And I was like, and I had some information that I needed to try to get from and pursue it to my criminal case, right?
	And I was like, hey, you know, and someone puts me in touch with Andrew.
	Let's say I'm investigating a terror cell or some shit like that, and I need some information.
	Andrew's only going to get, well, number one, I need to have a clearance.
	I need to have SCI more than likely for that.
	And then I'm going to need to have a need to know to get that information, right?
	And then he's going to have to probably fill out some paperwork from his agency.
	Hey, DHS is requesting this, etc., How did we get the information?
	What can I disclose?
	What can I not disclose?
	Because he's only going to disclose to me the bare minimum required to fulfill the request that I'm giving.
	So even within the government, guys.
	Which is fucked up.
	Which is fucked up.
	It's ridiculous.
	It's fucked up.
	You're dead right and it's so important to highlight this to people.
	Yeah.
	How did 9-11 happen?
	There you go.
	How did the presidential assassination attempt happen?
	How do these fucking mistakes happen?
	Because government agency to government agency, the literal policy is to give the bare minimum.
	So you submit a request to CIA from HSI, CIA literally gives you as little as possible.
	Yeah.
	And vice versa, man.
	Yeah.
	That's how it goes.
	And on top of that, you need to have the need to know and the clearance.
	Obviously, it's gotten better after 9-11, but this is one of the biggest problems with the federal government, that there's so many different agencies that have different overlaps and different authorities, etc., where...
	Number one, it's sometimes hard to find the information that you need because you've got to figure out, pinpoint which agency is going to have it, which section is going to have it, which guy is going to have it.
	And then second, if you do figure it out, they might be difficult with giving you information.
	One of the things that I've always criticized the FBI for is they classify everything.
	I've given them information before, then I hit them back up like, hey, what was that info I gave you?
	And they'll say, that's classified.
	I fucking gave that to you.
	What the hell?
	This doesn't make sense.
	But every agency classifies things differently, and I'm glad that you mentioned that, how what's classified at one agency might not even be classified at another, depending on what it is.
	And then the personnel that you deal with, some people are fucking what I call secret squirrels.
	They don't want to fucking say nothing, and it's like, bro, it's not that serious.
	So I've always found that very interesting.
	So we went over the different classifications.
	Guys, you can really get in the weeds with this.
	There's the queue clearance.
	For guys that are involved in the nuclear stuff, you're like a nuclear scientist or whatever, you're going to need something called a Q-clearance, you work for the Department of Energy.
	Then you've got, what's the one that the people in the White House have?
	White Hat or something like that?
	Oh yeah, I know you're talking about it.
	I don't know what it's called, but I know what you're talking about.
	But yeah, there's like a specific clearance for people that are in the White House.
	So there's all different types of classifications, but the ones that we just gave you guys, like the sensitive, unclassified, confidential level secret, top secret, and then top secret SCI, I would say those are the ones that the general public, you guys need to know.
	Obviously, working at the CIA or whatever, I'm assuming the bare minimum is the SCI for you guys.
	Right.
	So even then, you've got categories inside of SCI that talk about whether or not you've had a polygraph.
	So you've got TSSCI full-scope polygraph or counterintelligence polygraph.
	So even within your polygraph, you've got different categories of what kind of clearance that you might have there.
	And, you know, it's really important to know the difference between the different classifications levels because they make news, right?
	Like, if you remember when Trump was in office circa 2018, he kind of made a big stink.
	He went to war against any senior retired official.
	Who tried to then take their top secret SCI clearance into the private sector.
	You remember when he did that?
	Who was it that did this?
	Trump.
	Oh yeah, okay, okay.
	So he was basically saying, hey, if you retire from federal service, intelligence agency or otherwise, you lose your clearance.
	Yeah, that makes sense, yeah.
	It makes fucking sense.
	Yeah, it does, yeah.
	Because you don't have a need to know.
	You're retired.
	Yep.
	But because the actual formal policy is that you keep your clearance until two years after you no longer have access to information, that was being used by senior intelligence officials to move into the private sector and then basically sell to the private sector their private contacts, their network of contacts inside of the intelligence organizations.
	Right.
	So now Raytheon hires a retired CIA officer who continues to carry their CIA, TSSCI full scope polygraph clearance.
	That person now sits at Raytheon, but calls up their buddies at FBI and calls up their buddy at NSA so that Raytheon can close a five million dollar annual contract covering whatever when it's Raytheon.
	So it's more like 50 million dollars.
	Right.
	Yeah.
	That's an abuse of the system.
	Of course.
	Trump saw that.
	Trump called that out.
	Trump tried to make a change, and there was a ton of resistance.
	Of course, because that's how it's been for a long time.
	That's another thing I guess we could talk about is how people kind of transition from the government world into the private sector.
	And then a lot of times they come back.
	Right.
	They'll make their money.
	They can't make it.
	Yeah.
	They'll make their money and then they'll get the fuck out and then they'll come back if they want.
	Like Cheadle, for example, is a perfect example of this.
	Director of the Secret Service you guys saw that was getting grilled by under testimony.
	Like this happened to her where she was basically she was a Secret Service agent first, retired, left, worked for PepsiCo, private sector, headed their security, where she probably made significantly more money, by the way.
	way, guys.
	Then she got appointed as director and came back under Biden.
	And then obviously we had the whole fiasco that we had there.
	But no, I mean, that's very true.
	This is very common in the private sector.
	And then you mentioned, so I didn't even know this.
	So there's a distinction for if you pass a polygraph test in the thing.
	Is that like a new thing?
	It's not if you pass it.
	It's the level of polygraph that you've been exposed to.
	Because there's a polygraph for full scope, which means they go into your personal life.
	But then there's a polygraph for foreign intelligence affiliation, which is more professionally focused, less personally focused.
	Okay.
	Right?
	Because if you have a full-scope polygraph, you're like an open book to the federal government, right?
	Yeah.
	They're asking you about drug use, they're asking you about foreign contacts, foreign allegiance.
	Sexual behaviors, like for full-scope, sexual behaviors, you know, how many marriages you've had, whether you're in contact with your whatever, with your stepdad or with your former roommate's ex-girlfriend, like it's super personal.
	Yeah.
	It sucks.
	I've done one before.
	It sucks.
	And it's multiple days, strapped in a chair, and everything is under a fine-tooth comb.
	And you can't lie about any of it.
	And even when you're honest, you're just so fucking uncomfortable that you still pop sensitive on multiple areas.
	False reads are very common, man, on polygraphs.
	I mean, this is the reason why they're not admissible in court.
	And then there's obviously people that can beat it, too.
	There's sociopaths.
	With polygraphs, what's your thoughts on them?
	How do people do countermeasures, etc.?
	Obviously, this is something that's probably your wheelhouse even more so.
	What are your thoughts on polygraphs in general?
	How do people beat them?
	I think it's important that polygraphs...
	People need to understand that polygraphs are not lie detectors.
	That's not what they actually do.
	What they are is a detector of physiological side effects.
	Boom.
	Yep.
	Big difference.
	If your butt puckers, or if your temperature increases, or if your heart rate increases, that's what a polygraph tells you.
	You could be having a physiological effect because you're telling an uncomfortable truth.
	Or you could be having a physiological effect because you're telling a lie.
	Or you could be having a physiological effect because you've got a fucking cold.
	You don't know.
	And that's why so much of it relies on the polygrapher, the actual person running the program.
	And a good polygrapher can still have a bad day, but a bad polygrapher...
	Just doesn't know anything about anybody, right?
	And that's why they can't be admissible in court.
	Because it basically falls down to a single point of failure in the polygrapher itself.
	It's so subjective.
	And the other thing, too, with the polygraph is, I didn't know this until after the fact, if you don't sleep, guys, the night before a polygraph, you are going to fail.
	Like, that's a big thing.
	Like, you will fail because it's so heavily dependent upon your physiology.
	So, like, something that normally wouldn't bother you or you wouldn't maybe have as much of a reaction to when you're sleep deprived is a big deal, guys.
	Too much caffeine in the morning of.
	Yeah.
	Right?
	If you didn't eat enough breakfast.
	And what sucks is when you know a polygraph is coming...
	It's like the most stressful night ever.
	It is.
	You can't sleep.
	It sucks.
	And then you show up and you're like, I'm bleary-eyed and whatever else.
	And that's where you really learn the difference between a good polygrapher and a bad polygrapher.
	Because a good polygrapher will find a baseline, find out what's normal for you in that state, in that condition, and then measure your variances from that baseline.
	Whereas a bad polygrapher isn't going to set a good baseline and is going to find all sorts of false positives.
	Yeah, for sure.
	Now, the people who beat polygraphs, right, the countermeasures for polygraphs, there's really two kinds.
	There's the people who physiologically train their bodies to tell a lie without showing symptoms of a lie, right?
	So people who will role-play lying.
	I mean, it's something we do at CIA all the time.
	If I'm going to tell a lie to Mo, I'm going to practice the lie with you, Multiple times.
	So that I build the brain-to-mouth muscle memory of saying, 2 plus 2 is 8.
	2 plus 2 is 8.
	2 plus 2 is 8.
	Right?
	If you don't practice the lie, when you actually go to say the lie, you'll have a breakdown between your mind and your muscle.
	Yeah.
	Right?
	It's just like, you don't throw a baseball ever, and then you do throw a baseball, and you're off target.
	A trained interrogator will be able to find that.
	A trained interrogator will be very sensitive to that, but most of the time you're going up against an untrained person.
	So, when it comes to polygraph, you've got the people who condition themselves to beat a polygraph by essentially rehearsing their lies, mastering their lies over and over again.
	And this is what makes a really good con person.
	Really good con men, really good con women, They don't just go out there and wing it.
	They're rehearsed.
	They're practiced.
	They're polished.
	They look at themselves in the mirror.
	They practice their fabrications.
	They backstop their fabrications.
	It's really powerful stuff, which is why they're so effective.
	Whereas your amateur liars are very easy to spot because they don't take the time to practice.
	They think they can wing it.
	They think they're a good liar when they're actually not a good liar.
	And your actual good liars are the people you think are very honest.
	Yeah, no, that's a great point.
	And then the second way that people beat a polygraph is essentially with just noise.
	They know that the polygraph is looking for variations in their physiology, so they just make multiple variations in their physiology.
	That's the person who takes a laxative right before their polygraph.
	Because they know it's going to mess with their whole body.
	And the polygrapher, who's basically, if you imagine like the Matrix, they're watching the Matrix.
	What they're seeing is this person's whole body is jittery.
	Their heart is jittery.
	Their gut is jittery.
	Their sphincter is jittery.
	It's fucking chaos.
	It's chaos.
	Because what they want is something calm so they can see anomalies.
	Right.
	If everything looks chaotic, they can't assess that as a fabrication.
	They have to assess that as a baseline.
	Just a jittery person.
	How do you see a variation if there's constant jitteriness?
	Yeah.
	So, we talked about the CIA, and I have a whole list of questions here.
	And, Chad, go ahead and get your questions in as well.
	It's not often that you get to talk to someone that, you know, used to hold a clearance from the CIA. Oh!
	You mentioned something interesting before.
	CIA is the clearinghouse, right?
	And that you guys are the clearinghouse, and you guys specialize in human intelligence.
	Can you, for the audience, please tell them the difference between being the clearinghouse and CIA and being human intelligence versus an NSA? Right.
	So we talked about there's multiple different types of intelligence disciplines.
	CIA is human intelligence.
	Humant, that is their discipline.
	NSA specializes in signals intelligence.
	SIGINT, S-I-G-I-N-T, signals intelligence.
	CIA not only specializes in human, but also specializes in indexing or synthesizing all source intelligence.
	So they will take human and SIGINT, find out where it correlates or corroborates each other, and from that will create an assessment in a narrative form.
	Boom.
	So let's just say NSA collected a cellular conversation between two terrorists.
	CIA collected information from an informant about a terrorist conversation that was plotting to bomb Boston.
	Boom.
	The two agencies have no idea the other one collected that information.
	And then they both send it to the analytical wing, the director of analysis, or the director of intelligence inside the CIA. And that's in Langley.
	That's CIA. That's CIA. Okay.
	It takes raw data from both places and synthesizes it into a paragraph that says, Dear Mr.
	President, this organization and these two individuals located in Yemen or wherever had a conversation about a potential bombing in Boston at this location.
	Yeah.
	Neither agency has the right to know what the other agency collected, but that's why you have the Directorate of Intelligence inside of...
	So there's an intermediary that collects all the information and puts it in a digestible package for the president in their intel brief every day.
	That person just, that entity happens to sit inside.
	The CIA. Okay, boom.
	Okay, I didn't know that that clearinghouse sat there at Langley.
	Guys, that's just one intelligence agency.
	There's what, 33, if I'm not mistaken?
	Yeah, inside the IC, the intelligence community.
	And it changes all the time, but I think the current number is in the low 30s, 33, 32.
	Okay.
	Yeah, guys, because we're just talking about NSA, CIA, but there's so many more.
	There's DIA, Defense Intelligence Agency.
	There's, I mean, OSI has a component of intelligence, Office of Special Investigations.
	NRO, NGA. We already talked about NSA. All of the military services have their own intel agency.
	IRS has its own intel service.
	Homeland Security has its own intel service.
	And what I mean by intelligence service is an intelligence collection capability inside.
	Right?
	Within that department.
	Correct.
	Yeah, that's true.
	Obviously, the FBI operates as a law enforcement and intelligence agency.
	I think they're the only...
	Yeah, them and OSI. FBI and all the military agencies typically operate as a law enforcement and intelligence agency as well.
	HSI, we're more law enforcement.
	We don't really do intel like that.
	And I think that's actually a reason why the FBI has so many problems, because they have a dual mission, and it's very difficult to do both and be actually good at both.
	Yeah.
	But okay, so...
	Now, let's go to you a little bit.
	So, you were with the CIA. Obviously, a lot of the things that you did were going to be classified.
	So, guys, we're not going to talk about classified information on this podcast for obvious reasons.
	But I guess, generally speaking, I'm going to leave it open-ended.
	Can you tell us about how you got in, how long you were in, and what your duties were?
	Yeah, so I was recruited in 2007 and pulled out of the military.
	So I was an Air Force officer doing nuclear missile stuff.
	So I had a TS clearance already, Cat 6, Cat 12, living underground, doing the military thing.
	Shiny shoes and short hair.
	And when I went to leave the US Air Force, I got a tap on the shoulder from CIA that said, hey, we think we've got a good job for you.
	So then I went and did my interview process and went through my onboarding and my vetting and everything else and said yes to a position with CIA's National Clandestine Service, the NCS, which is sometimes known as the Directorate of Operations, depending on who's in charge of CIA. And when they contacted you, they obviously didn't say who they were.
	Correct.
	Yeah, they contacted me and said, hey, we represent the federal government.
	We think that we might have a promising role for you in national security.
	Did they give you the State Department email?
	I can't confirm or do not.
	Oh, okay, okay.
	All right, that's fine.
	Yeah, a lot of them carry it on State Department cards.
	I'll leave it at that.
	So go ahead and continue.
	Yeah, yeah.
	That's how we know that they're fucking spooks.
	I like that too.
	So I go through the whole vetting process, I get picked up by the NCS, into the Director of Operations, and I go through what's known at the time as a...
	There's a clandestine trainee program, a CT program, and then there was another program too.
	Counterterrorism?
	No, no, no.
	So this was inside of NCS, there's two primary pipelines.
	There's basically a pipeline for young people and a pipeline for old people.
	The pipeline for young people basically means that you're going to do like three years of on-the-job training.
	They're not going to deploy you if you're fucking 22 years old.
	They're going to make you go through a longer period of training on the job before they deploy you.
	But then you've got, oh, CST, Clandestine Service Trainee Program.
	So your CST, that's basically your experienced officer from somewhere else.
	So if you're 32 years old, they'll train you for six months and kick your ass overseas.
	If you're 22 years old, they'll train you for three years and then test you before they kick your ass overseas.
	Makes sense.
	Yeah, it makes sense, right?
	It makes sense when you're in it.
	So I was brought into their old people program.
	And you're 27 at this point?
	I was 27 at the time.
	But I was military.
	Military officer, military experience.
	That bumps you into the old person category.
	Of course.
	You've had clearance for a while.
	Obviously, at this point, 27 years old, you got in the military.
	How old?
	I was in the military at 18.
	So you had at least two different background checks.
	Right.
	Full background checks.
	Because as a government, every five years with the TS clearance, they give you a background check.
	Yep, exactly right.
	And when you have polygraph, they do the same thing every five years.
	Yeah, that sucks too.
	SCI, is it three years or is it still five?
	SCI is three years.
	It's still three years?
	It's a three-year suggestion, five-year requirement.
	Boom.
	So there's a lot of people who go five years.
	Yeah.
	Okay, so you get into this program, National Clandestine Service, and you get pretty much, since you had experience, they just kick you out of the field pretty much after three months of training.
	After a few months of training, yeah.
	I think still, even though Wikipedia has a page on it, I'm pretty sure that all the details about the field tradecraft course, FTC, is still considered classified information.
	Okay.
	Which is, again, going back to our idea of classification, it's kind of a funny thing.
	Interesting.
	So you did the training, and then can you say where you worked or where you went?
	So most of my focus was in the region of Southeast Asia and East Asia.
	Okay.
	And part of that was because I'm brown.
	You know what that's like.
	And being brown outside of the United States basically makes you invisible.
	Yeah.
	Because every fucking country in the world is actually racist.
	Not like here in the United States.
	Here in the United States, we have sensitivities about skin color.
	But you can still be black and become the President of the United States.
	You can still be a woman and become a CEO. You can still be a Latino and actually have a six-figure job.
	I find it funny because people say, oh, racism in America is bad.
	I'm like, dude, have you guys ever been in Japan?
	Japan won't let anybody who isn't fucking Japanese become a citizen.
	This is fucking funny to me because it's so incredibly racist.
	And they're open about it, too.
	Totally.
	No gadget!
	Like, they won't serve you and shit?
	Like, well, they're openly racist, but go ahead.
	So Japan is having a population crisis.
	They've been having a population crisis for, like, the last 25 years.
	Yeah.
	The average person doesn't get married until they're 35 years old, and then the average family has 1.2 children.
	Mm-hmm.
	So you're talking about a 33-year-old woman has one child and then basically she doesn't want to have kids anymore.
	That's the average.
	So they have this aging population and this youthful population that won't get married.
	Here's what's really funny.
	Almost 50% of Japanese men say that they're not married at the age of 30 because they can't find a suitable spouse.
	50% of Japanese women at the age of 30 say they can't find a suitable spouse.
	So you got a bunch of fucking Japanese men and a bunch of Japanese women saying they can't find suitable spouses for each other, which is why they're not getting married, which is why they're not having kids, which is why there's a population crisis.
	So Japan launches this brand new policy to inspire population growth.
	Okay.
	The policy is an ad campaign encouraging people to get married.
	Okay.
	That's fucking stupid.
	That's fucking wild.
	You want to know how to have some babies, let some other people into Japan, because I'll bet there's a lot of people out there who'd bang the hell out of some Japanese.
	That's true.
	You know what I'm saying?
	That is true.
	That is true, but they don't want anybody else.
	No, because then it's not Japanese enough.
	So...
	Yeah, how did you operate as...
	Because you're Hispanic, right?
	So, like, how did you operate as a Hispanic guy in Asia without, like, being...
	Well, that's what's so cool.
	Asians, like, Asians.
	Like, that in and of itself, I can already see sensitivities in the United States, right?
	Asian descent, meaning native Asian descent, whether it's Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, whatever...
	They are very good at identifying the nuance difference in their own ethnicity.
	Yes.
	So a Chinese person knows a Korean person quickly.
	Yes.
	Immediately.
	Yeah, we don't always know the difference.
	But they don't know shit about brown-skinned people.
	When people look at me around the world, even here in the United States, people don't know my ethnicity.
	I am Latino.
	I am part Native American, 25% Native American, 75% Latino.
	But people don't know if I'm Israeli, if I'm Palestinian, if I'm Indian, if I'm South Asian in some way, shape, or form.
	Am I Sri Lankan?
	People don't know for sure.
	So especially when I'm operating in Asia, All they see is a brown-skinned guy that isn't Asian.
	And because in most Asian countries, if you're not Asian, you're not a full citizen.
	You don't even count.
	They don't pay attention to you, man.
	Right?
	So it's like, if you're not Chinese, if you're Chinese in China, you're fucked.
	Because then they want to know, are you Han Chinese?
	Or are you some other kind of Chinese?
	Or are you a mix?
	Are you a not true blood Chinese Thai?
	You're screwing eyes to a higher level.
	But if you're brown, they're like, ah, you're brown, you don't count.
	Yeah, who gives a fuck?
	The racism actually works in your favor.
	Exactly.
	Because you're virtually invisible to them now.
	And that's what CIA looks for, and especially in a post 9-11 world.
	In a post 9-11 world, CIA woke up to the fact that Harvard and Yale educated white men can't operate well all over the world.
	Because no matter where you go in the world, if you look like an American, even if you're Canadian, If you look like an American, all those poor-ass countries, they all pour attention on you.
	It's impossible to be invisible if you're white pretty much anywhere.
	But when you're brown everywhere, you're easily forgotten.
	That makes sense.
	That makes a lot of sense.
	And I mean, I think it's very important since you mentioned the whole Harvard-educated Yale thing.
	I think it's important to note for the people that the CIA was started by the good old boys club.
	You know, you're talking about like an Alan Dulles, etc.
	These guys were all wealthy lawyers that had...
	You know, business contacts in the United States that understood that using the intelligence services would be able to destabilize governments for the betterment of American...
	How do I say this?
	National interests, right?
	Because if you destabilize a banana company down in South America...
	That's run by a foreign nation, and then we're like, okay, well, America runs this now.
	We're making the money on the bananas.
	Well, you've pretty much not only secured that country's allegiance to America and reliance, you've secured our ability to garner resources from this country, which is something that the CIA does a lot.
	And actually, we could talk about that next.
	Oh, before we do, so you were there in East Asia.
	Can you tell us about what you were doing, like, in general?
	When you're out there?
	I mean, a lot of that's sensitive.
	Whatever you can say.
	Yeah, intelligence collection operations is really the best way to go about it, right?
	Of course, CIA operates all over the world doing intelligence operations collections.
	So when you're in a place like Southeast Asia, there's a lot of overlapping what we call intelligence requirements.
	Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, etc.
	That's where you're at?
	That's your Southeast Asia, right?
	Yeah, that's where you're at.
	East Asia, you talk about East Asia, that's Japan, Korea, China.
	Northeast Asia, that's your Mongolia and even your Russia.
	So you're in the poorer countries.
	I was all over the Asian subcontinent and the Asian continent.
	Sometimes in poor countries, sometimes in wealthy countries, sometimes in poor circles, other times in wealthy circles.
	But the requirements are what's important because the requirements are what funds the operation.
	I'm sure you've run into this at HSI. Not all law enforcement priorities are equally funded.
	Of course.
	Not all intelligence priorities are equally funded.
	Of So 2008, 2009, tons of funding for counter-terrorism.
	And one of the foundational places for terrorism and terrorist growth and extremism and radicalization was Southeast Asia.
	People don't realize it, right?
	But all over the Philippines all over Thailand all over Burma you had tons of radicalization happening and you had essentially corrupt governments that would let Islamic extremism in and they could create training grounds in those countries.
	Oh, right So lots of money for counterterrorism operations all through Southeast Asia not so much money for counter human trafficking operations, yeah, or counter proliferation operations, right?
	So So what ends up happening is you end up following the money.
	Yeah.
	You can only go where an operation can fund you to go.
	Of course.
	Then other directorates will fund subsets of your operations.
	So now, hey, let's also collect secrets about Russia while you're in that country.
	But we're not going to pay to get you there.
	We'll let counterterrorism pay to get you there.
	And then we'll just kind of piggyback on.
	That's essentially how it works.
	It's a horse trading game.
	Yeah, no, I mean, yeah, when it comes to government bureaucracy and funding things, I definitely understand where you're coming from with that.
	But that's fascinating.
	So in the late 2010s, I guess, 2008, 2009-ish now, Obama's in office at this point.
	So you were under the Obama administration.
	Is that the main president you worked under?
	Correct.
	Under Obama?
	Yeah.
	So, and I think it's important, guys, for you to note that when you're a government employee, the president that's in office does heavily dictate the mission priorities, right?
	Yep.
	So, I'm guessing that this is before bin Laden was killed, so yeah, there was a heavy CT focus, and so these East Asian countries were basically, and that makes sense, actually, that they were allowing and facilitating these guerrilla militias to operate and train in their countries.
	Right.
	So one of the things that people don't realize, and it's so fucking important, man, Islamic extremism, really any kind of extremism, any kind of radicalization, it's really predictable.
	It's not that different from radicalized drug dealers or radicalized zealot Christians or radicalized anything, right?
	when you take somebody coming from a poverty stricken background where they've been disadvantaged and then you give them a common enemy and then you give them some sort of support, like whether it's a community, especially if it's a community and some kind of a job, right?
	Because that's really what most extremists are.
	They're just looking for a job.
	Most of ISIS is just poor, ignorant people who happen to believe in Islam, who also got a job opportunity to work for ISIS.
	And they're stupid enough because they're uneducated and they grew up poverty stricken, right?
	They're stupid enough to believe that they have to like sign a contract and swear this kind of crazy allegiance to ISIS.
	But then they get a steady job.
	They get a steady paycheck.
	They get to pillage.
	They get to rape.
	They get to do whatever they want to do.
	To an ignorant person with no hope, no future, no background, no education, that's a good deal.
	Most of the extremist world is not intelligence, strategy-driven, well-educated, committed soldiers.
	That's not what most extremists are.
	They are desperate, poverty-stricken, ignorant people Who just die for a cause because they're trying to make it day to day.
	Yeah.
	So East Asia is facilitating this stuff.
	So you were there to collect information, figure out where they're doing the training, everything else like that.
	Let's say you identified, you had your sources and they're like, hey look, we have information that this group is training here in Laos.
	Right.
	There's this group of radical extremists and they're training here.
	What would the next step be from there?
	So now what you're getting into is operational tradecraft.
	There you go.
	Which is classified in a lot of different ways, right?
	But to give you an answer, you're always looking for a source of information.
	That source of information might be human.
	It might be a computer.
	It might be a laptop.
	It might be a listening post or a bug, right?
	You're looking for a source of information that yields relevant information.
	Secret, classified, or confidential data that can advance national security interests within an established requirement that was dictated by the chief executive, the president, right?
	So it's a shell game of does this information about the rice trade meet the qualifications of all these different checklist items?
	Of course.
	If it doesn't, you have to throw it out the window and go back and try to get something else.
	Let's go into this hypothetical then.
	Let's say, because I know you can't talk too much about what you specifically did while you're over there.
	So the scenario is this.
	You got a human source.
	You're there stationed in maybe Vietnam.
	And you get information that there is a militia training in Laos.
	20 guys, right?
	And they're training Monday through Friday at 3, 4 p.m.
	at this fucking...
	Random dojo, right?
	And you say, okay, cool.
	You fly out there.
	Maybe you put a bug, a surreptitious bug somewhere.
	You listen in and you, lo and behold, you hear them yelling in Arabic and you hear them saying, yeah, that's to America, all this stuff.
	And you've identified where the location is, your source is credible, etc.
	What's the next step?
	So there's a number of next steps here, right?
	Because one of the things that you want to determine quickly is whether or not you want to neutralize the target.
	Do you want to neutralize the training at the dojo itself?
	Yep.
	Which could be done with sabotage or a drone strike or any number of other things.
	Even though it's a sovereign nation, because it's under the counterterrorism rubric, that's how it is that we can just completely disregard sovereign nation's sovereignty and go in and blow things up.
	Okay.
	Israel just launched a missile into Tehran.
	Yep.
	To take out a leader of Hamas.
	Yeah.
	The only way they could get away with that is because they know that inside the United States, we recognize counterterrorism operations as a unique carve-out of the war, of just war theory, or just war requirements.
	It's one of the ways to get around the sovereignty of nations, right?
	Bingo.
	And because the United States classifies Hamas as a terrorist organization, Israel now has a chance to launch a missile right into the capital city of Iran.
	Yeah.
	Crazy.
	And know that the United States kind of has to be like, well, we accept that.
	And Netanyahu was in the United States about a week prior, so that makes perfect sense.
	I want to definitely talk about that too.
	So there's a bunch of different ways that we can handle the problem.
	Because you basically have to ask yourself, is it worth it to just destroy the cell and destroy the dojo along with it?
	Because that's going to probably create the diplomatic nightmare.
	Correct.
	Or do we allow the dojo to operate so that we can find the next higher level of terrorists in charge of the dojo?
	Because the funding's coming from somewhere.
	The recruitment's coming from somewhere.
	You can follow the money, you can follow the training, and you can find out who's the next level up.
	But if you're going to do that, you're also acknowledging that the 15 terrorists there are all legitimate threats that you're allowing to prosper.
	You're allowing them to train.
	You're allowing them to prosper.
	And are you going to follow all 15?
	Because if you do, you're massively increasing the cost of the operation.
	Because now you've got to put eyes on 15.
	Every single person needs 24-7 eyes on them now.
	And what are you going to do?
	And somehow you have to justify that up the ladder bureaucratically.
	For the cost and expense of the operation.
	Again, it's stupid shit, dude, but that is what it boils down to.
	Well, no, that's why I wanted to get that scenario out there, because I know, obviously, you can't talk about classified stuff, so I'm like, you know, let's just create a scenario and tell me how they would react to it.
	So, guys, what you're basically seeing here is, like, there's so many different things that come into play, because now, you're like, okay, we want to dismantle and disrupt this, We have a different couple ways, but if we just send a drone in there and blow them up, well now we've got to deal with diplomatic ramifications.
	So now let's continue adding on your scenario, right?
	I'm one field officer in one country following one dojo of 15 people.
	Well guess what's happening all over the place?
	The next city over has another dojo.
	The country has 35 dojos.
	The region has 95 dojos.
	Every dojo has between 5 and 25 trainees in it.
	Somewhere there's an accountant at CIA who's literally trying to fit to a budget that was dictated by Congress.
	So somebody has to make the decision like, oh, the Laos dojo in XYZ Village needs 25 extra dollars and the Vietnamese dojo in XYZ City needs to reduce their budget by $25.
	I get what you mean.
	It's not really $25, just for the example.
	It is shocking how cheap operations are in Southeast Asia.
	But still, $25 is not really it.
	$2,500.
	And the person who's pulling the operational purse strings is an accountant who knows dick-all about tradecraft or about counter-terrorism operations or about clear and present danger.
	Wow, okay.
	And it's just interesting how, because you guys operate in the dark, so, since you guys operate in the dark, like, you have to really be cognizant of doing things in a certain way, because we're talking about huge geopolitical implications if things are done in a certain way.
	And I guess we can segue into the situation with Israel and, well, you know what, we'll just go backwards.
	What are your general thoughts on what went down on October 7th?
	Do you think Israel had some prior knowledge about it?
	There's a bunch of people that have different opinions, but I'll just leave it open-ended for you.
	And then we can talk about that, the conflict in Gaza, and then what your thoughts are, and obviously what just went down.
	For the audience that doesn't know, about 24 hours ago, 36 hours ago, roughly, they killed the leader of Hamas, the political side, who was doing a lot of the hostage negotiation, and they also killed the second-in-command for Hezbollah in Beirut, Lebanon.
	Ballsy, yeah.
	Yeah, and Israel did all this within like 24 hours.
	So, I guess we could start with October 7th and just work our way forward.
	Yeah, so, you know, one of the things I think is really important to understand about...
	October 7th and Butler, Pennsylvania with the president's attempt at assassination.
	Yeah, we'll talk about that too.
	Is shit happens.
	Yeah.
	You have to account for the shit happens of the world.
	There are so many opportunities for something to go wrong and things don't go wrong.
	But when things don't go wrong, nobody knows it ever happened.
	Mm-hmm.
	Yeah.
	how such a perfect something could go wrong, right?
	How does the Secret Service must be perfect all the time.
	How did they fuck up today?
	No, man, the Secret Service is wrong all the time.
	Right?
	The same...
	CIA is wrong way more often than it's right.
	FBI is wrong way more often than it's right.
	Remember, there's bean counters, and there's conflicting requirements, and there's changing dynamics, and there's, like...
	People overestimate the competence of the U.S. government.
	Holy shit, dude!
	Like, government employees are retards, guys.
	Every federal agency is essentially like the DMV. There you go.
	That's a great way to explain it.
	That's true.
	Why do people think otherwise?
	When was the last time you went to DMV and you're like, holy shit, these are some elite motherfuckers.
	Yeah.
	Right?
	That's what every federal agency is like.
	It's the DMV in a different building.
	Yeah.
	So it's not necessarily shocking when shit goes wrong.
	Yeah.
	If anything, when shit goes wrong, we should all be...
	What a great comparison.
	They're laughing in the back.
	Hey, guys, yeah, this is live, motherfuckers.
	Don't worry.
	We're just asking if this is pre-recorded.
	We're going to answer your questions.
	I just don't want to interrupt.
	We're just laughing over here because, like, yo, that's a great comparison.
	DMV is fucking paid, bro.
	Anybody got to get their license replaced.
	You guys know how frustrating that shit is.
	Oh, my God.
	So, shit happens.
	October 7th, shit happens.
	Do I think they knew in advance?
	Hell yes, they knew in advance.
	But did they know in advance enough to be able to take the kind of action that was required to prevent it?
	Obviously not.
	Same thing happened, we're finding out now with the assassination attempt on Trump.
	There was information in advance, but were actions taken enough to prevent it?
	No.
	And that's the reality of intelligence, folks.
	Like, intelligence is the art of Of finding secrets, finding things that aren't supposed to be found, and being able to act on them before they take place.
	Yeah.
	When you're successful, nobody knows you were successful.
	Yeah, true.
	When you fail, everybody knows that you fail.
	Yeah.
	So it's just, it's a shame because I don't like seeing Secret Service take the kick to the balls that they're getting, or the kick to the vulva, depending on who you're talking about.
	Yeah.
	It's sad to see them take that kind of abuse.
	Do they own the mistake?
	Yes, they own the mistake.
	Did they fail at their job?
	Yes, they failed at their job.
	Does that mean that they're an incompetent organization?
	Fuck no.
	It means that the realities of bureaucracy prevented them from doing what they needed to do in that moment, and that's exactly what I think happened on October 7th in Israel.
	It's not that Hamas was so skilled.
	Oh yeah, we're talking about guys with fucking...
	Golf carts!
	They were kidnapping people in golf carts, dude!
	Could you imagine going to a 55-plus community and they're like, oh, you're with me now!
	Look at the hostage in the fucking sewer.
	Like, it's crazy, man.
	Yeah, they're very unrefined.
	And the fact that they were able to get around one of the best intelligence...
	I've said this many times that, you know, Mossad is one of the best intelligence agencies in the world, and they have to be because obviously Israel has a lot of enemies.
	People had said some shit about the Egyptians and warned them about this, etc., that this attack was happening.
	They saw them on the cameras, but I guess maybe they just didn't take it seriously.
	There's people saying, oh, well, Netanyahu did this on purpose to rationalize this war.
	I mean, there's a bunch of theories out there.
	But let me ask this.
	What do you think is going to happen?
	Obviously, they've been in Gaza now for almost a year.
	We just saw what happened in Lebanon and we just saw what happened in Iran.
	Iran has pretty much promised some type of form of retaliation.
	It's going to be big too.
	Yeah, what do you think is going to happen here?
	I mean, I personally am like, dude, I think we're closest to a war than we've ever been in a very long time.
	You can make the argument that it's about to be World War III. Some people say we're already in World War III. What's your thoughts on that?
	So Israel's in a precarious situation.
	And here's what sucks, dude.
	If there's any place in the world where we're seeing the straight-up decline in democracy, it's Israel.
	The people do not support Netanyahu.
	Good point, yeah.
	He had a democratic support element in place.
	He had a war cabinet.
	Mm-hmm.
	That was a circle of peers who were dedicated to taking action in the best interest of Israel.
	And then he dissolved the War Cabinet after Benny Gantz left the War Cabinet because Benny Gantz was saying, Netanyahu's not operating in the best interest of Israel.
	So then Benny Gantz leaves, so then what's Netanyahu do?
	He's like, ah, well, fuck this whole War Cabinet thing.
	And Benny Gantz, what was his position?
	He was like a senior minister, senior leader.
	He was a competitor against Netanyahu to become the next Prime Minister.
	Oh, okay, so he was, if we were going to give an American equivalent to that, because Netanyahu guys are Republican in American eyes, right?
	He's even more than that.
	He's conservative, yeah.
	Very conservative.
	Yeah, it's a far-right organization, the Likud party, which, if I'm not mistaken, weren't they hacking out before or something like that?
	I don't remember what they, yeah.
	Okay.
	But they're super orthodox.
	Yeah, so they're very far right.
	And then you're saying that there was someone else in the cabinet with him that represented the left side.
	The more centrist.
	The more centrist side.
	And basically Netanyahu kicked that guy out and just said- That guy left.
	Okay.
	Yeah.
	So what ended up happening was October 7th happens, a war cabinet is called together, very democratic process, right?
	Because Israel is and has always, well, Israel has always been a healthy democracy.
	Mm-hmm.
	Netanyahu and the drama around Netanyahu is essentially equivalent to the drama around Donald Trump here.
	Corruption charges, legal charges, history of...
	He was facing a criminal case literally right before this all happened.
	He was in the process of going in and out of court.
	Was a prime minister, wasn't a prime minister, became a prime minister again, right?
	Essentially was a president, wasn't a president, became a president again.
	People accuse him of killing Yitzhak Rabin, the former Prime Minister.
	They're saying, because he got killed, they're saying he was behind the assassination.
	So yeah, there's a lot of clouds around this guy.
	Correct, correct.
	So now October 7th happens immediately because he's so wildly unpopular inside of Israel.
	That's where these conspiracy theories came up that, oh, he knew it was going to happen and he quieted it down and he let it happen.
	To maintain power.
	Yeah, it's just a conspiracy.
	But that conspiracy comes from the fact that there's so much dissent around Netanyahu.
	Now, what we've seen happen since then is he's abandoned pillars of democracy, right?
	He's abandoned a war cabinet.
	He's abandoned the call for re-elections.
	He's quieted protests that have happened in Israel.
	And now he's essentially operating independently in foreign countries like Lebanon and Iran.
	Right?
	Yemen.
	Like, the dude is doing whatever he wants, really.
	Whatever he wants.
	And guess why?
	Because the Mossad is a highly capable intelligence service that reports to the chief executive.
	That's just how it works.
	They report directly to him.
	There's no oversight at all.
	Well, there's oversight, but that doesn't necessarily mean that he's using that oversight.
	Keep in mind, the president has oversight, too, except when he uses an executive order.
	Right?
	There's always a way around.
	Of course, yeah, there always is, especially in times of war.
	In times of war, you get to bend the rules a lot, right?
	I mean, guys, look at the Patriot Act.
	Yeah.
	You know?
	So, okay, because if I'm not mistaken, I think Mossad directly reports to the Prime Minister.
	Okay.
	Right?
	So, I could double-check.
	So, I guess you're saying he's able to use the resources of the Mossad, and he doesn't have to really check with anybody.
	Does what he wants.
	Can you double check that for me, guys?
	If there's a process, who they report directly to, I think it's the prime minister.
	So there's always a process, and that process can always be bypassed, especially during times of war.
	Keep in mind, in the United States, during a declaration of an emergency action, like COVID, the president just says whatever they want to say.
	They don't have to get it approved by Congress.
	It doesn't have to be approved by the state.
	It gets pushed out.
	The report's directly to the Prime Minister, right?
	Yeah, they do.
	So there's no one really, even the President, because guys, in Israel, the Prime Minister is the Chief Executive.
	That is their functional equivalent of a President.
	So they skip everybody and just report strictly to Netanyahu, the Director of the Mossad.
	So that's how you end up having where we are now, right?
	And where we are now is the whole world.
	The whole world is opposed to the constant killing and the destruction of Gaza, the Palestinian population.
	It's really hurt Israel's public image a lot.
	I feel like what it's done is it's shown Netanyahu's true intentions.
	This is not a democratic leader.
	This is not a person who has the best interests of globalization and global growth and connection.
	That's not what his interests are.
	His interests are far more personal and political than that.
	Mm-hmm.
	What they are, who knows, right?
	But they're definitely not about trying to find peace in the Middle East or maintain diplomatic connections.
	Well, there's recordings of him purposely saying like, yeah, I've sabotaged the Abraham Accords, all that stuff.
	Like, I don't, there's no two-state solution, fuck that.
	Like, he said it openly, you know, in secret recordings.
	But, so what do you think is next here?
	What do you think is going to happen?
	Because that's a big step that they went ahead and killed...
	A foreign dignitary in a foreign land that was responsible for doing the negotiations with them.
	And then obviously they killed the second guy in command for Hezbollah.
	What do you think is going to happen here next?
	What do you think is going to be the retaliation from Lebanon and from Iran?
	It's really hard to know what the retaliation is going to be.
	I've got some ideas of how it'll play out, but it's hard to know exactly what's going to happen.
	But one thing that we do at high probability, CIA works in probabilities, high probability there will be a coordinated counter-attack between Hamas and Hezbollah.
	Because keep in mind, Hamas and Hezbollah are both funded equally by Iran.
	So Iran, hell man, we could see a three-way coordinated counterattack where Iran launches missiles, Hamas launches missiles, and Lebanon launches missiles into three different sectors of Israel simultaneously as a counterattack.
	They could even have another ground assault of some sort, right?
	Because what Israel has done is essentially pissed off three different military forces and given them all justification to To come and attack.
	And here's what's strategically stupid about what they did.
	The north part of Israel is where Lebanon is.
	Gaza is on the fucking west side of Israel.
	Iran's on the east side of Israel.
	They're surrounded.
	What the fuck are you thinking?
	You think that your armored dome is going to take care of it?
	And you know what?
	The thing that really pisses me off is Netanyahu doesn't care.
	Like, that dude is out for his own goals, his own ambitions.
	He's not out to take care of Israel.
	He's out to keep his base, his populist base, or whatever's left of his base, orthodox base, happy.
	And he also knows that he has the United States by the balls because the United States can't back away from Israel.
	But we also can't get all the way in bed with Israel.
	And we are economically tied to Israel because they're an ally in the region and because we have, you know, Jewish American citizens and all sorts of shit like that.
	And people don't understand the difference between Jews and Israelis.
	Not the same thing.
	Big difference.
	Right.
	Big difference.
	There's Arab Israelis.
	There's Muslim Israelis, for you guys that don't know.
	There's a lot of them.
	Yeah, Israel is a nation.
	It just happens to be a nation that doesn't respect the difference between church and state, which, oh, by the way, is a fundamental requirement for democracy.
	Now, nevertheless, what I see happening is some sort of coordinated counterattack from all three or two simultaneously.
	It's important to keep in mind, Iran is a very well-funded machine.
	People don't realize how rich Iran is.
	Iran is the breadbasket of the Middle East.
	They provide all the food and all the agriculture for all of your wealthy Arab nations.
	Hezbollah is a military force just about as strong as the IDF. Like, Hezbollah's been around a long time.
	They're well-trained, well-funded, and they're big.
	Theoretically, Like, a ceasefire was reached, but, you know, they both wanted to preserve each other or preserve themselves.
	If Israel were to really go to war with Hezbollah full out, it'd be a toss-up who's actually going to win.
	Especially considering the fact that Israel's now alienated all of its allies.
	Good point.
	He's going to be forced out with an election.
	He's going to be forced out because of criminal conviction.
	Who knows what?
	He will be a democratic leader that is pulled from power.
	Yeah, at some point.
	It's going to have to happen because the United States needs a two-state solution because without a two-state solution, the Middle East, meaning Saudi Arabia, UAE, Oman, Bahrain, Qatar, all of these countries are continuing to see the abuse of the Muslim people in the face of The Jewish people being backed by the United States.
	Yeah.
	America is too dependent on oil from the Middle East to let that stand.
	So if Netanyahu is the thing standing in the way of a two-state solution, Netanyahu is going to have to go.
	It's interesting, too, because they literally had a meeting planned right before October 7th.
	Yes.
	I think the audience should know this.
	There was a planned meeting where, because I think they had made peace with Bahrain and a couple other countries.
	Yep.
	And the Abraham Accords, the big deal was supposed to be Saudi Arabia.
	Yes.
	Because where Saudi Arabia goes, the rest of the Sunni Arab world goes.
	Yes.
	And Saudi Arabia was poised to sign a deal and recognize Israel.
	I think Sudan was going to be in that one as well, right?
	In the second round of meetings?
	Or was Sudan already in?
	I'm not sure.
	I'm not sure of the status of Sudan.
	Sudan's not really considered one of the collegiate wealthy Arab countries.
	Yeah.
	Poor as fuck.
	I mean, that's my people.
	But yeah, it's very bad.
	I mean, there's a whole other...
	We could talk about Sudan, too.
	Like, there's a whole fucking civil war going on over there, which is really fucking bad.
	There's two.
	There's two Sudans.
	Yeah, there's two Sudans.
	We could talk about Omar Bashir getting taken out of power, and then the two people that used to work for him, now they're warring, and there's fucking civil unrest going on in Sudan.
	It's fucking wild over there as well.
	The whole Middle East is just in shambles right now, going wild.
	And that's an interesting take, that you think that there's going to be a coordinated attack, which makes sense, because yeah, they pissed off three different countries, and obviously Netanyahu is one of the problems.
	And it's interesting, too, because they had this meeting set up, and then October 7th happened, and everything was suspended.
	Right.
	Right?
	And Netanyahu came to the United States almost two weeks ago now, if I'm not mistaken.
	Met with both Biden and Trump.
	Yeah, that's important.
	Yeah, he met with Trump in Mar-a-Lago, with Biden, and I think he met with Kamala Harris as well.
	Kamala Harris, for optics reasons, didn't want to meet him publicly, like they met behind closed doors, etc., because she wasn't there in Congress when he gave his speech.
	But if we're going to go ahead, I'll summarize his speech for you guys right now.
	Basically two things he wants: expedited support, right, and funding, because the Biden administration has kind of been dragging their feet with giving them money.
	And then the second thing he wanted was something called like Abraham Alliance with all the countries in the Middle East.
	And I would say, presumably so, and I'd like to get your take on this, if that were to happen, Israel would probably be the leader, which I don't think the Middle East would stand for because they have the nuclear weapons.
	So I think by proxy that would immediately make them like...
	They would basically become like a Middle Eastern NATO. And I think the reason why they do that is because it would be a...
	How do I say this?
	A safety net against the resistance.
	Iran, Lebanon, Syria, etc.
	All these countries that dislike Israel.
	Significantly so, but if they have the backing of Saudi Arabia, they have the backing of the United Arab Emirates, they have the backing of Bahrain, all these other countries, it'll be easier for them to exist in a somewhat less turbulent, I guess, space.
	So, let's assume, let's say you're the advisor to the president, right, at this point.
	Yeah, let's say you're like the advisor to the president, right, in the intel world.
	What would you tell them?
	How should we move in the United States knowing that there's a high probability, as you would say, that there's going to be a coordinated attack from these countries in response to the bombings that we've seen?
	This is what sucks.
	Because I am gung-ho America.
	Like, when it comes down to it, America is the freest country in the world.
	We're fucked up, but we're not as fucked up as everybody else.
	Agreed.
	And if we're not the global superpower, somebody else is.
	And that sucks for us.
	Right?
	America has to stand with Israel.
	We have to.
	So we have to stand with Israel.
	That does not mean we have to stand with Netanyahu.
	Okay.
	Right?
	So the other thing that's tricky here is that the U.S. has a stated policy that we do not negotiate with terrorists.
	However, we have labeled Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Quds Force, which is an Iranian military group, as terrorist groups.
	We have, yeah.
	Iran has heavy sanctions.
	So we've painted ourselves into a corner where we don't want to support Netanyahu.
	It's not in our best interest to support Netanyahu.
	We do want to support Israel, but we can't actually negotiate with any of Israel's enemies because we've labeled all of Israel's enemies terrorist groups.
	So we either have to say that we are willing to negotiate with terrorists, which by the way we are, because we've talked to the Taliban and we're currently talking to Hamas, and it's a bunch of fucking bullshit that we try to say that we don't negotiate with terrorists.
	But...
	We are painted in this corner now where our policy is what's driving our geopolitics.
	Instead of letting the best interest of our nation drive our geopolitics.
	Okay.
	Right?
	So, if anything, we should...
	I would recommend we find a way to go in and support the opposition to Netanyahu.
	Unthrown Netanyahu in some way, shape, or form.
	Support the fucking UN has criminal charges against it.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	What does it mean when the United States...
	international criminal court yeah we do sometimes we don't other times yeah like we are we are a disgrace to all the principles that we say we espouse and the problem is that in the world that we live in with the information age and the transparency of media everybody sees it from the poorest person in africa to the wealthiest person in singapore yeah Yeah.
	It's crystal clear that the United States is a two-faced liar.
	Yeah.
	And that costs us influence.
	That costs us power.
	That costs us diplomatic leverage.
	And now the only thing we really have is the strong arm of our economy to push people around.
	And we've been using that since 1950.
	Well, let me ask you this.
	So you said that we can't let Israel fall.
	You know what?
	Real quick.
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	Back to the show.
	So we were talking about Israel and we can't let it fall because they're an ally in the region.
	So I was going to ask, and your thing is you don't like Netanyahu's policies and you look at it like, look, We've got to support Israel.
	However, Israel needs to have a Tuesday solution.
	And that's the only way that we're going to get the Arab world on board.
	And I see your perspective on that, because realistically speaking, they're not going to go anywhere.
	So the only way that you're going to solve this is, yeah, you're going to have to have a Tuesday solution and give both parties the ability to self-govern.
	Netanyahu did mention that he would give Gaza back to the Palestinians if they'd be able to self-govern, but it'd be a civilian government.
	No military, no arms, no nothing.
	Do you think that's the best way to go about it, though?
	No, not at all.
	You have to give an independent sovereign nation the ability to self-govern and direct its own future.
	That's what you have to do.
	Anything that comes out...
	He wants to give them a half-ass, like, you know...
	This is my big issue with both Ukraine and Israel.
	Is that the figurehead for both countries, they are dick-all at being statesmen.
	They have zero chops, credibility, or experience at being actual statesmen.
	Meaning people who can solution their way through a problem.
	They're both really good at getting up and giving, like, pompous speeches and rabble-rousing speeches full of empty promises that get people excited and get people supporting you.
	Netanyahu got 81 ovations.
	I watched that, counted it.
	81 ovations in Congress.
	In Congress, but it's Congress, right?
	Yeah, of course.
	They stand and ovate because they've got gas.
	Who knows?
	But my point is, like, they're both of these leaders, both Zelensky and Netanyahu, They're not experienced people at bringing a solution to a challenging problem to a head.
	Instead, what they are is they're good at motivating a base and getting national awareness and creating a campaign that's lopsided that gets people to believe in their cause.
	Half of the world, not even half the world, the wealthiest parts of the world believe in their cause, whereas everybody else is kind of like, this is some bullshit.
	Yeah.
	They're great at fundraising.
	So, if there was anything that could be done, right?
	And here's, again, this is my gung-ho American coming out, right?
	Yeah, sure.
	The United States became powerful coming out of World War II. Yeah.
	Not by promoting democracy and being a fair country.
	You're right.
	By being a bully.
	Yeah.
	By being an economic bully.
	By bombing Japan.
	That's when Winston Churchill literally said...
	The power has now shifted to the United States of America.
	And that's when I would say officially, we took the world superpower away from the United Kingdom.
	Yes.
	So we...
	Well, after World War II. Coming out of World War II, you had a devastated Germany, a devastated UK, a devastated France, a devastated Japan.
	And you had a powerful Russia and a powerful United States.
	Now, what the United States did well that Russia didn't do is they swept in with economic aid because the United States had turned on their economic machine.
	So now we were able to come in and essentially economically hijack Germany, France, the UK, and Japan.
	We were able to force them to follow our democratic principles, which like you said earlier, made them dependent on us.
	If you want our money, you have to let our companies rebuild your country.
	You have to let our resources build your cars.
	You have to let our systems and our services create your new financial backbone.
	Well, fast forward to today.
	Now you have Japan, France, the UK, and Germany, all well-established economic countries, all well-established economic democracies that are questioning whether or not they are democratic at all.
	France just...
	The Prime Minister of France destroyed his parliament, dissolved parliament.
	Germany is facing a populist uprising.
	Japan is having all sorts of issues with its neighboring countries.
	The UK is distancing itself from the United States.
	So what has happened is the strong arm of the United States...
	That came that the strategy of strong arming people through economic control and manipulation was very effective for about 35 or 40 years.
	Well, over the course of the global war on terror, we got distracted and we started focusing on this terrorist threat and everybody else in the world woke up and was like, hey, you know what?
	The United States is just leveraging a bunch of economic money over us.
	But now, the United States isn't the only person with deep pockets.
	Russia has deep pockets.
	China has deep pockets.
	Iran has deep pockets.
	I mean, what happens when you don't like your bank?
	You go to a different bank.
	What happens when you don't like your credit card company?
	You go to a different credit card company.
	The United States...
	Show the world that they're not the best credit card company.
	They're fucking Capital One, which sucks dick.
	Right?
	Unless they're a sponsor for the show.
	In which case...
	No, they're not.
	No, you're good.
	Fuck Capital One.
	I got a couple of their cars, but yeah, they are going.
	This episode is brought to you by Capital One.
	Kidding, kidding, kidding.
	So now the whole world, like the developing world especially, woke up to the fact that there's alternatives out there.
	There's alternative funding sources out there.
	And China, the reason China's been able to grow so quickly in the last 15 years is because they followed the American process.
	Went to Africa, built roads.
	Hey, we'll fix this shit for free for you, but I owe you.
	Yep.
	We own a 99-year lease on your property, and our people are going to staff your ironworks, your utilities, your whatever else.
	Basically, you are indebted to us.
	All they're doing is following the MO created by the United States.
	And the United States is now throwing a fit because China's doing the same thing that we did better than us in the modern day because we took our eyes off the ball for 20 years.
	So let me ask you this.
	I've been extremely critical of Israel on multiple occasions.
	I don't think that we should support them as much as we do.
	I do think that they cause us some issues, geopolitical issues with getting into Middle Eastern affairs that I don't think we should be involved in.
	And you mentioned that we need to support Israel and we should back them.
	Why do you think it's so imperative that we don't just let them deal with this problem on their own?
	Because I think that they've opened...
	Pandora's box by attacking these two different countries within 24 hours.
	We're the only thing that keeps all of the Middle East from destroying Israel.
	Yeah, we are.
	100%.
	We're the wall.
	We are.
	Right?
	Yeah.
	I agree.
	We promised the Jewish people coming out of World War II that we would protect and safeguard them.
	Okay.
	And the center for the Jewish faith is Israel.
	Yeah.
	There's lots of economic and financial reasons that we should support Israel.
	They're the backbone for most of our medical equipment and medical machinery in the United States.
	Unless you want to start buying fucking CAT scanners from China, you need Israel to make the best medical devices and medical machines in the world.
	They're the center for a lot of precious gems, precious jewels.
	They're another financial center.
	We need them.
	If we give up on them, the whole Middle East collapses.
	The Muslim world collapses and takes everything that Israel has.
	And we just gave up our promise to the Jewish people.
	Again, the difference between Jews and Israelis.
	Israel, rather, and Judaism.
	Two totally different things.
	Completely different, yeah.
	So it's in the best interest, again, I'm not saying that Netanyahu is making good decisions.
	I'm not saying that Joe Biden supporting Netanyahu's policies is making good decisions.
	What I am saying is that it's in the best interest of the United States to support the ongoing existence and survival and independence of Israel.
	And if we stop supporting Israel, Iran's just going to wipe them out.
	Lebanon's going to swing in.
	But you think we should support them under the pretense, obviously, that there's a two-state solution.
	Or, even better, we should start to dictate to them more about what it takes, like what requirements they must meet in order to get American support.
	Coming to our Congress and making a plea to our statesmen, that shouldn't be accepted.
	What the fuck is a foreign dignitary doing in our Capitol Hill talking to independent congresspeople?
	Crazy.
	Like, why would we let anybody do that?
	Why would we let Macron do that?
	Why would we let Xi Jinping do that?
	Why the fuck would we let Netanyahu do that?
	Right?
	You're talking about two completely different forms of government.
	The senator for fucking Georgia has no business talking to the president or the prime minister of Israel.
	Yeah, it doesn't make sense.
	All you're doing there is making some kind of backroom deal because you've got this bullshit in the United States now where apparently the Speaker of the House can fly to Taiwan on her own and completely violate the primary orders and intentions of the executive, the president, who's supposed to be the senior commander-in-chief.
	So we've got our own issues here in the United States.
	But my point with all of that is just...
	Supporting Israel does not mean supporting Netanyahu.
	We need to support Israel to maintain the supremacy and the economic superpower of the United States.
	And if we let Israel collapse, we lose the Middle East to either a Sunni majority or a Shia crescent, both of which are not in our best interest.
	So question, why not?
	So hypothetically speaking, let's say we said, you know, fuck this shit, we're kind of hate over there.
	And we just let it go, and we just didn't deal with the Middle East at all.
	I mean, that's another option, or do you think that's like, no, that's...
	Because we deal with Saudi Arabia mostly anyway for our oil.
	So, like, why be involved in a lot of, you know, Israel's foreign policy a lot of the times?
	Like, we're protecting them, but then we also inherit their problems.
	Well, it's the same thing that we did with Japan, Germany, and France, right?
	We built Israel.
	It was just desert.
	We gave them a financial system, we gave them an economic system, we gave them a foundation.
	If I could have my dream situation, my dream situation would be that we dictate, not just we being the United States, but we being the Western powers, Dictate a two-state solution.
	Okay.
	And then...
	So you think we need to come more heavy-handed with that?
	Absolutely.
	Because I agree with you that there needs to be a two-state solution.
	And then...
	Realistically speaking.
	And then within that two-state solution, we must make Israel's economic success dependent on Palestine's economic success.
	Ah.
	And we must make Palestine's economic success determined by Israel's economic success.
	Kind of like what we do in Egypt.
	Correct.
	Like, Like Egypt, right?
	For the audience, real quick history thing.
	Egypt and Israel used to fight all the time.
	Like, yeah, a lot of issues.
	We basically told Egypt, hey, and Israel, you guys are going to stop fucking fighting.
	We're like the parents.
	And we're going to give you aid.
	And basically, right now, they kind of still hate each other.
	But they play nice and assist each other because of the foreign aid.
	Right.
	And even better, if you can make some kind of organic requirement, some kind of organic cooperation, that makes sense.
	One country has oil, one country has food, right?
	One country has ocean ports, one country has rail ports.
	If you can make it like that, now they have to get along.
	They have to cooperate to move forward.
	And if they have to cooperate, then they both get the trade benefits of access to both the Western world for Israel and the Arab world for Palestine.
	Right?
	Because as soon as Palestine's its own independent state, as soon as it's its own state, Saudi Arabia, UAE, like Iran, are all going to become close trading partners.
	There's going to be so much money that flows into Palestine to rebuild Palestine, to create school, educations, and hospitals.
	The whole Muslim world wants to support Palestine.
	Yeah.
	And the Palestinians deserve to have support.
	Yeah.
	Right?
	Israel also deserves to have support.
	They just don't deserve to take their, they don't deserve to abuse, they don't have the right to abuse their support and kill Palestinians in the name of trying to hunt down Hamas.
	Not the same thing.
	Understandable.
	Okay.
	Yeah, no, I mean, I definitely see your perspective.
	You know, we might have different viewpoints on aid to Israel, but I definitely see your perspective.
	I think it's a good perspective.
	I agree with you that there needs to be a two-state solution.
	For all the people that say, we just need to get rid of it, it's like, bro, it's not going to happen.
	Like, we got to come to some kind of conclusion here.
	And no, it's crazy because, like, so many presidents have tried to solve this problem and none of them have done it.
	Like, whether it's President Clinton...
	Trump.
	Who else?
	Obama.
	Like, every president has tried to fix this fucking issue, and they failed.
	You know what I mean?
	And it's interesting because...
	Who's been in power this whole time?
	It's been Netanyahu.
	He's been in since, like, 96, right?
	If I'm not mistaken?
	He's been in since, like, fucking 96.
	It's like Putin.
	Yeah.
	So it's like...
	Yeah, I mean, with him, he doesn't want a two-state solution.
	I think that's a big inhibitor in this situation.
	But we talked about Ukraine.
	What are your thoughts on Ukraine?
	Obviously, there's been a lot of updates since last time we spoke.
	The people I've spoken to that are really, you know, into this whole conflict, they say Russia controls somewhere around 20-25% of Ukraine right now, pretty much the whole eastern portion, which, you know, has a lot of the middle-rich areas.
	What are your thoughts on that?
	What do you think we should do?
	How should the United States...
	Navigate this situation.
	So, within just a few months after the invasion in 2022, I went on a big podcast and made my prediction for what I thought would happen.
	Was it Lex Friedman, right?
	Correct.
	That the Western world would grow tired of supporting Ukraine, that they would acknowledge that Ukraine's a corrupt country, not really a democracy, and And Putin just had to sit around and wait for the Western world to get distracted or bored or run out of money.
	Your prophecies come true, my friend.
	And now that's exactly where we are.
	That's exactly what happened, yeah.
	Right?
	So within a few weeks after Russia's invasion, they controlled 24 or 25 percent of Ukraine.
	Now I think the number is closer to like 17 or 18 percent of Ukraine.
	But Russia's been making territorial gains because Ukraine can't keep asking for money.
	Like the world does not want to keep giving money to Ukraine.
	October 7th also hurt them a lot.
	Oh yeah, they took Zelensky out of the headlines.
	Yeah.
	And that was the number one problem, right?
	I mean, even then, there's an argument that I think is very sound that the reason Ukraine got as much press coverage as it did was because we needed something other than COVID to talk about, right?
	So, all that to say, Russia, from the beginning, what Russia's been really going for is to control the resource-rich eastern side of Ukraine and essentially to put a puppet or friendly government into western Ukraine that's going to be pro-Russia rather than pro-NATO. And that's been his endgame from the beginning.
	He even said, and Putin's a liar.
	In the Tucker interview, right?
	The Tucker interview is amazing.
	But Putin is a liar.
	He's a trained liar.
	He's a skilled liar.
	So you have to understand that he's a liar.
	Former KGB. But the problem is that what makes liars so effective is the moments where they leverage truth.
	And Putin has done a fucking phenomenal job of leveraging moments of truth in oceans of lies.
	And one of those moments of truth is when he said he didn't want to take away Ukraine's sovereignty.
	He never wanted Ukraine's sovereignty.
	He never wanted Ukraine to become part of a new USSR. He didn't want Russia to control Ukraine.
	He wanted Ukraine to remain sovereign and independent, but favorable to Russia, similar to what Belarus is.
	And a lot of the other former Soviet black countries.
	That's what he's looking for.
	When that...
	Kazakhstan, etc.
	When that didn't happen, when NATO and when Ukraine started showing stronger convictions to the West, then he invaded.
	And all he was looking to do was basically create a buffer between the Russian border and NATO. Well, now, even if it's only...
	They're right on the doorstep of Moscow.
	He had to do something.
	Even if it's only 20% of the country, he's created his buffer.
	And the fact that he can turn that 20% into a higher gross economic output for Russia is all that much better.
	As Ukraine continues to flag in resources and disappoint the West and show Russia's strength, even if it is a paper tiger.
	Dude, if a paper tiger wins at the end of the day, it's still a fucking tiger.
	So it's just challenging.
	I think what's going to happen there, Zelensky and Putin are going to come to some sort of ceasefire.
	All of Zelensky's demands are going to go unmet.
	Because think about it.
	Everything that fucking guy said, right?
	We're going to restore the 1996 border.
	We're going to retake Crimea.
	We're going to retake all the land that Russia took from us.
	Russia's going to pay back for all the...
	This is stuff that he was promising, right?
	And people were tripping over their dicks trying to support him in the first six months.
	Well, now you wake up and you're kind of like, oh, wait a second.
	The guy who was making all those promises was hiding the corruption of his country.
	And then, after a year when he started losing support, then he kind of went to war trying to overcome the corruption of his country.
	Only then validating that there was all sorts of corruption, making all of us Americans wake up to the fact that, oh, those billions that we gave you, you don't even know where they are anymore?
	Like, maybe that wasn't a good use of our money, now that we ourselves are in an economic recession.
	Like, it's just, it's messed up.
	We are just waiting and biding time to see when and how a ceasefire agreement is established.
	Zelensky is going to get fucking sent to the United States on witness protection.
	He's already here.
	Got a mansion in Miami?
	So, dude.
	I saw his naturalization certificate.
	Because the Biden administration turned him into a hero.
	He's a champion for democracy.
	He's an actor and not a statesman.
	We put him in power in 2014, didn't we?
	However it worked.
	CIA. You guys.
	You guys put him in power!
	My point at the end of the day...
	He won't confirm or deny.
	How dare you!
	Is that this guy is going to live out his days in comfort while the Ukrainian people have bled and died and they're going to end up having nothing to show for it.
	And then, the United States?
	What's our MO? We're going to flood into eastern Ukraine and take all the debt and rebuild all the cities and we're going to make back every dollar that we invested in aid.
	Yeah.
	You know, I agree.
	I do agree with you, and I think that's what's going to happen, especially if Trump comes in.
	I think what Trump's going to do is he's going to pretty much force them both to the table and come to an agreement.
	I think with Trump, he's kind of like, bro, you know, and he always says, you know, if I was in, this war would have never started, which I kind of do agree with him on because he wasn't really big on NATO, and that's Putin's biggest thing is NATO. So I think the fact that he didn't really give a shit about it, he felt like we were spending way too much money on it.
	It wasn't really benefiting us like that.
	I think that kind of kept Russia at bay.
	But then you get Biden in, who's super pro-Ukraine, super pro-NATO. I think Putin was like, yo, we got invaded.
	Then you had the issues going on in the Donbass, where there was war.
	Ethnic Russians were being killed a lot of the times.
	So I think there was just so many things in there why Putin invaded.
	And I think I agree with you that he got the buffer he wanted.
	And I think he's willing to negotiate.
	And it's funny, because they brought this up during the presidential debate, and Trump didn't really answer the question.
	They were like, yeah, so are you going to concede to Putin's demands with Ukraine, etc.?
	And he just went on to insult Joe Biden instead of answering the question.
	I was like, come on, man!
	Because to me, I think...
	Foreign policy, in my opinion, I want to get your take on this because that's what you used to do.
	I think foreign policy is probably the most important topic in this presidential election that people, I don't think, are paying attention to.
	I think they're paying way more attention to, like, dumb social issues, right?
	Versus, like, us potentially being in World War III. And I think, obviously, the rising tensions that we have in the Middle East, right?
	Like, what went down in the past 48 hours is fucking huge.
	Obviously, the conflict in Ukraine.
	We got Taiwan is constantly under...
	You know issues which actually I want to get your take on that as well like I think Us potentially going into war can create a lot of problems for us, and I don't think Americans understand.
	The price of food went up dramatically after Russia invaded Ukraine.
	And I don't think Americans have been able to piece it together to think, it's because Biden's in office.
	Yeah, of course, that's a part of the reason.
	But another reason is that Biden's allowing war to happen, war happens, winds up happening as food goes up.
	Yeah, let's have an honest conversation.
	Sure.
	Most of the voting population base of the United States is ignorant.
	I agree with you.
	Stupid as fuck.
	Not just stupid, but also uninformed.
	Even those people trying to be informed are getting their information from a biased source of information.
	CNN. And then what?
	And what we've seen is, and this is what's so powerful about the dichotomy between Trump and Biden.
	Trump is a non-traditionalist.
	Not a politician at all.
	Not a politician at all.
	You saw his interview with the chicks up in Illinois in Chicago?
	The dude is like...
	You're a nasty woman.
	He's a total wild card.
	He breaks all the rules of the traditional bureaucratic process that we have made that has turned into professional politics.
	Which, by the way, the Founding Fathers never wanted professional politics.
	They wanted people to come and be a public servant, like you and I, serve a period of our lives to the public, and then get the fuck out and go do something better for the economy.
	And let new blood come in and sacrifice to serve the public.
	That's what a public servant is supposed to be.
	We created professional politicians.
	People whose political careers require that they constantly politic so that they can stay in a job.
	Yeah.
	The Biden House, the whole Biden administration, is an example of the indulgence of the bureaucratic process.
	Fantastic point.
	Biden's been around for fucking...
	Forever.
	Yeah, forever.
	And now, look at their champion for 2024, Kamala Harris, who no American voted to be president, who never won a primary, who never had a debate where we got to see that she was a demonstrably good leader.
	Instead, it's just the passing down of the Democratic blessing from the Democratic National Convention to Kamala Harris.
	And they haven't even done that yet.
	DNC hasn't even started, right?
	Correct.
	But they're all the donor money?
	Yeah, it's going.
	She's going to be the official, yeah.
	Well, we don't know.
	We don't know.
	But what I think is really interesting here is that what Americans are being faced with in the polls in 2024 is, do you want professional politics to be more of what it's always been, or are you open to the idea of something else?
	Because I'm not saying Trump is a great solution, but Trump is 1,000% not the same solution.
	And when we've seen, like, do you remember the, it was Bush and Gore, Yeah, I do remember that, actually.
	They were just shades of the...
	They were a left testicle and a right testicle.
	Yeah.
	Right?
	They were still in the same sack.
	Yeah.
	Like, they were the same thing.
	Yeah.
	Just representing different parties.
	One guy cared a lot about the environment, though.
	That's the only difference.
	That's the only difference, right?
	That's how Gore's, like, made the...
	I'm an environmentalist.
	Yeah.
	Both professional...
	Cold warming!
	Everyone's laughing at him.
	It's the 90s.
	What the fuck is...
	You know, it's the early 2000s.
	Get this guy out of here.
	Ha ha ha!
	Global warming?
	What is that?
	Get the fuck out of here.
	We got Y2K problems.
	Forget about it.
	You have to have some way of differentiating yourself.
	When everything's the same, you have to find some way to differentiate yourself.
	Either way, now we're as polarized as you can get.
	Yeah, yeah.
	For sure.
	Right?
	So that's the real question on the polls.
	Are we going to pick the standard political process or are we going to pick something else?
	Are we going to try something new?
	Yeah.
	And that's what I think is driving a lot of the contention.
	Yeah.
	No, that's absolutely true.
	Speaking of Trump, assassination, what are your thoughts?
	Assassination attempt.
	Yeah, attempt.
	Right?
	So I see the assassination attempt as shit happening, right?
	I don't believe that there was a second shooter.
	I don't believe in any of the conspiracies.
	If anything, the fact that you see so many repeat conspiracies...
	Mm-hmm.
	Is strong evidence that it's not a conspiracy.
	This assassination attempt is starting to sound so much like the actual JFK assassination.
	And a lot of the conspiracy is also sounding like the same conspiracy around 9-11 and the same conspiracy around the October 7th invasion in Israel.
	The current sitting president or prime minister knew it was going to happen and allowed it to happen and used the resources of the deep state to make it happen.
	There was a fucking gap that the Secret Service tried to shore up with local law enforcement.
	It didn't work the way it was supposed to work.
	Bad shit happened.
	Miscommunications happened.
	Like, we watched on stage as a Secret Service agent couldn't pull her weapon quickly.
	Or a holster, yeah.
	I'm not trash-talking her.
	I'm just saying that's the reality.
	The reality is when you go from a sitting position where everything looks normal to gunfire in the air...
	Guess what's not going to work the right way?
	Your fine motor skills.
	And drawing from your holster is not an easy thing to do when you have to go from a sitting position to a standing position in a suit coat and you don't know where the direction of fire is coming from.
	It's difficult.
	That's the reality of kind.
	Like if you ever get a chance to sit and have a true conversation with a tier one operator who's operated in the field, they will all tell you that once the bullets start flying.
	Your fine motor skills go away, which is why so much of our time is spent drilling gross motor skills, right?
	Not this fine fingertip bullshit, but like full hand and palm stuff.
	We slam...
	Your gun fucking jams like boom, you know, rack and tap, right?
	Yes, exactly.
	That's why they teach you that.
	Versus like, let me go ahead and flick this little button here on the side of my Glock.
	No, it's like fucking tap and rack.
	Yeah, most of the features that are advertised in weapons, like, oh, you can use this simple button to eject your magazine, or you can rack with a flip of a button.
	That's not what you do in gloves.
	In gloves, it's rack, tap, bang.
	That's what you do.
	So, anyways, my point with all of that is just that You...
	The assassination attempt, to me, looks like pretty much what we see on the surface.
	People fucked up, communication wasn't great, and a stray bullet hit the ear of the president, or the former president.
	Yeah.
	Regardless...
	For that to be conspiracy would take something more effective than the DMV. Yeah.
	And I don't think it's an inside job.
	I think that's just a series of mistakes at a time and a place that was very fortuitous for Donald Trump and for Donald Trump supporters.
	Okay.
	So, okay.
	Quick add, real quick, Mo.
	Go ahead, take it away.
	and I got a follow-up question here.
	One more question.
	One more?
	Go on, Mel.
	Got you.
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	Boom.
	So, as far as like...
	As far as the whole inside job conspiracy, I agree with you that I haven't seen any conclusive evidence at this point.
	To me, it's just gross ineptitude and just incompetence is what it comes down to.
	Whether it's the two police officers that were told that there was a shooter on the roof and they left their post and didn't see him actually climb up onto the roof.
	And he was able to go ahead and set himself up, and then they climbed up to try to find him, and then he pointed the gun at him, and went, oh shit!
	And then he fell off, because the guy literally boosted the other guy up to get in there, and then he had his hands there, and he was dangling, and he saw him, and he looked at him, and then literally the shots were fired after the fact.
	I think all that saved Trump, because the dude was obviously nervous at that point.
	Seconds after the police told him, hey, what the fuck are you doing?
	And he pointed the gun, he shot at Trump, because he obviously got nervous.
	I think right now, I haven't seen anything conclusive that lets me believe that it was like an inside job or anything else like that, because I think people are very quick to assume everything is a grand conspiracy from the government.
	I think they grossly overestimate the government's competence.
	So I would say, yeah, that was just a huge fuck up from the Secret Service.
	Now, and then obviously the FBI joined the investigation and, you know, I'll probably talk about this more on FedReacts for you guys as well, about like, because I, um, Secret Service, the new director and the, um, The acting director.
	Yeah, the acting director of the Secret Service and the second in command assistant director for the FBI both came in and actually testified a couple days ago together.
	So that was pretty interesting stuff.
	Now, JFK, I want to get your thought, because I genuinely do believe that that was a conspiracy.
	I don't think Oswald was the shooter.
	I did a whole podcast on this with a guy, and we went through it, and it was a great show.
	You should check it out if you get time.
	But what are your thoughts on JFK? There's obviously talks all over the place that it was a CIA inside job, but what do you think?
	So, the JFK thing is interesting, because if you look at just facts alone, right?
	Yeah.
	If you look at just facts alone, we know that as of 2019, when there was supposed to be the release of all the classified files, that they weren't all released.
	So the only reason that classified information is retained and reclassified after 50 years is because it still has current impact on national security.
	We talked about the definitions of classification, right?
	For something to be a top secret classified document, it has to be of grave national security interest, meaning it can do grave damage to national security.
	So in order for those files from JFK to be reclassified again 50 years later, it means they must still demonstrate grave damage to national security.
	That's telling.
	That's telling.
	And that's a fact.
	That's the definition of top secret information.
	That's the definition of classification.
	And that's what would be required in order to reclassify that information in 2019.
	So I didn't know that they reclassified it.
	I just knew that they didn't want to release it.
	But you're saying the reason why they didn't release it is because they reclassified it.
	If you look at the bottom of every classified document, there's a time frame in which that classification is valid.
	For most human intelligence, humans, which is what a lot of JFK was, that default classification is 2x25, which means 2 times 25, two cycles of 25 years.
	Because the assumption is that after 50 years, whatever was of grave national security interest is now obsolete or what's called overcome by events OBE.
	The fact that that didn't happen with the JFK files or part of the JFK files tells me there's something still inside those files that can be assessed with confidence as grave damage to national security.
	Holy shit!
	What is it?
	I don't know what it is, but it must be there.
	There must be something.
	Inside job, Russia job, who knows what the fuck.
	So you don't know what it is, but do you have your suspicions on who you think was behind it or what you think went down?
	I mean, obviously you gave us the very matter-of-fact look.
	Whatever is behind this is probably pretty fucking bad if it's been 50 years.
	In your professional experience, have you seen anything go that long without being declassified?
	No, man.
	I mean, that's why there's a whole process.
	Because when things are 50 years old, that's why there's a reading room.
	The CIA has a reading room of information that was classified 50 years ago that isn't classified now.
	It's online!
	You can just go to CIA archives and you can read case files and top secret fucking secrets from 50 years ago all day long.
	But not these secrets.
	You know what's scary, dude?
	They declassified, I forget what it was, but it was like when they were going to do a bunch of false flag attacks and blame Cuba on it.
	Yep.
	So, they declassified that.
	This came across Kennedy's desk.
	He said, fuck no, he declined it, right?
	I forget.
	Someone in the chat, please tell me what the operation is called one more time.
	But yeah, basically, they wanted to cause riots, blow shit up.
	Like, destabilize a bunch of government buildings, whatever the fuck.
	They want to do all this crazy stuff and come back and say, it's the Cubans!
	And then use that to rationalize war.
	And he came across Kenny's desk and he said, fuck no.
	Rightfully so.
	And they declassified that.
	It goes to show you what we talked about with the pre-911 CIA and the post-911 CIA. The Wild West CIA. Versus the kinder, gentler DMV CIA. Like two different worlds.
	So everything that happened before 2001, It was crazy shit.
	Whether you want to talk about American United Fruit Company, whatever it is in South America, and, you know, obviously the Contra, the Iran-Contra, all that stuff like, you know, yeah.
	Because we were doing everything that our opponents were doing, right?
	Russia was using chemical attacks.
	We were going to look at chemical attacks.
	Northwoods, that's what it was.
	Northwoods.
	Operation Northwoods.
	Thank you so much, guys, in the chat.
	So that's actually very telling, bro.
	You've never in your professional experience seen something not be declassified.
	You know what's funny?
	Trump said, again, he's just very bland.
	He said, if you saw what I saw in those files, you wouldn't declassify them either.
	What the fuck does that mean?
	Exactly, right?
	What could either an adversary have done so right Or, what could we have done so wrong that makes it so that these secrets still have to be kept from the American people?
	And I understand the secrets that are kept from the American people.
	And I'm telling you right now, the majority of secrets kept from Americans should be kept from Americans.
	Because Americans would not know how the fuck to process a lot of what happens outside the United States.
	They just wouldn't, right?
	I mean, you've seen it too.
	Think about inside of law enforcement.
	How much would Americans actually be able to process?
	How much faith would they lose in the institution of the United States federal government if they really got to see the secrets of law enforcement, right?
	If they really got to understand how the court system worked.
	If they really got to see how things really do work behind the confidential curtain.
	And I wasn't even really dealing with classified shit like that, you know what I mean?
	Like, I was doing mostly criminal cases, and criminal and intel world don't mix, because in the criminal world, the cases have to be discoverable, and you have to disclose where your info comes from.
	This is why so many intel cases, like, you know, we talk about the FBI doing counterintelligence, etc., you don't hear about it because no one ever gets arrested because they stop it before it happens.
	That's like you just said before, the intel world, it kind of sucks for you guys.
	You guys don't get your flowers for what you guys do.
	Because no one knows what the fuck you guys do.
	But you guys are thwarting attacks, you guys are stopping espionage, etc.
	But no one knows, and that's the way it's gotta be for it to be successful.
	When you get a fuck-up, Everyone sees it.
	The 9-11s.
	The fucking assassination attempt that we just saw.
	The Boston bombings.
	The Boston bombing with the Zocars, right?
	So you rarely, if ever, see when things are thwarted.
	Now they're starting to come out with it and declassifying it sooner so FBI can do these documentaries and show, look!
	We stopped this terrorist attack in Denver, right?
	When they were like the subway system attacks that they were trying to do.
	Now they're like coming out and showing all the things that they've thwarted, but there's so many more that they haven't, right?
	Or that are still active investigations.
	So, yeah, I mean, that's telling with Kennedy.
	What are your thoughts on 9-11?
	Because they still haven't declassified a lot of that stuff as well.
	Do you think that's going to get declassified after the 50 years or what?
	So 9-11 was such a significant disaster that there's actually a fully classified lessons learned briefing that we go through at CIA. Oh really?
	So like part of your onboarding process, you go through a classified training on what happened during 9-11, the lead up to 9-11, the mistakes that were made, the communication guffaws, like all of it.
	And it's highly sensitive and it's highly classified because it's the true secrets of what happened.
	The American people will never get to know that.
	Because it's just too wrong.
	It's too wrong to actually know what really went down that resulted in the falling of the Twin Towers.
	And it's something we can never let happen again.
	So we still need that knowledge transfer, but the level of confidentiality, the level of classification...
	What is that?
	That training is classified as an SCI level problem?
	TSSCI clearance, yeah.
	Wow.
	Everybody that onboards a CIA officer has to go through that training and it literally tells you all the fuck-ups.
	And never do this again.
	It's one of those kinds of trainings, right?
	We can never let this happen again.
	Did you lose a little bit of faith?
	You were like, fuck.
	Dude, the first three weeks of being at CIA is nothing more than an exercise in, one, I fucking knew it.
	LAUGHTER And two, and two, oh shit, we're really not that safe.
	That's all the first three weeks are.
	I fucking knew it.
	I got to ask. - Like, Hey guys, he's gotta get out of here in a few minutes, so obviously we're going this thing until Trey falls off, and I'll read the chats after.
	It's fucking funny shit, man.
	As you know, Julian Assange, right, was recently released.
	The United States decided not to prosecute him, etc.
	And I think there's a bunch of political reasons for that.
	And Snowden.
	As someone that came from the intel world, that your job was obviously to safeguard these secrets, what are your thoughts on whistleblowers like Snowdens and Assanges, etc.?
	You can't compare Snowden and Assange.
	You cannot compare them, right?
	Snowden is a fucking traitor.
	Okay.
	Snowden deserves to rot in hell as a Russian citizen or come back to the United States and rot in hell in a fucking jail.
	Snowden is a coward and a traitor against his own people.
	He sold American secrets for personal gain.
	He claimed it was a whistleblowing operation.
	He clearly had premeditated it.
	Fuck him.
	Julian Assange is actually a foreign citizen.
	Who isn't culpable under American law.
	And we are overreaching in our Espionage Act and overreaching in our actual sovereign rights by trying to make an Australian citizen culpable under American law.
	That's bullshit.
	And the poor fucking guy...
	It was Manning that fucked up.
	Who is an American citizen, who should be tried under the Espionage Act, who did...
	He narrowly escaped the death penalty.
	He, she!
	They got him with UCMJ, yeah.
	He, she was like, was saved by, who was it, Barack Obama?
	Come on!
	What the fuck, dude?
	Pardon him, yeah.
	Meanwhile, Julian Assange has lost like 20 years of his life.
	This is ridiculous.
	To me, it's such a simple and frustrating case, and I can only imagine what it's like to be Assange or Mrs.
	Assange or anybody in Australia.
	Call him in a British prison forever.
	Forever, dude.
	So that he could be extradited to the United States for the Espionage Act because he posted secrets that an American army personnel member publicly shared to WikiLeaks?
	That's not on him.
	Okay.
	So you think if you take that oath to the Constitution, because you have to do that if you're going to have a clearance, right?
	You become a government employee, you raise your right hand, you take that oath.
	So you think with Snowden, unacceptable because you were in a privileged position, you took an oath, and you betrayed that oath by telling...
	By whistleblowing a foreign news source.
	That's what The Guardian is.
	It's a foreign news source.
	That's who he whistle blew to, right?
	There's a process.
	When you see an abuse of information...
	You could have went to OIG. You could have.
	That's where he should have gone.
	And if he did go there first and they didn't move fast enough for him, that's still on him, right?
	He also had a complaint system within his contractor because he wasn't a federal officer.
	He was a contractor.
	Yeah, he was a contractor.
	So he had multiple avenues by which he could verbalize his complaints, create a law, create a history, follow the bureaucratic process that we all swore an oath to.
	Because if you recall, the oath that actual officers swear is to protect and defend the Constitution.
	Not...
	Against all enemies, foreign and domestic.
	Not the American people.
	We protect the Constitution, which represents the United States and the United States government.
	Not an oath to the American people.
	And then we promise to willfully execute the roles and responsibilities of our office to the best of our abilities.
	It's a clear oath.
	It is.
	This fucking guy.
	Me and you both take it.
	So we know.
	This fucking guy violated that.
	Assange is just a travesty of bullish, bully-ish American behavior.
	He's a journalist.
	Yeah, that's what he was.
	And I'm glad that even though he's wasted almost a decade of his life, That justice has prevailed.
	And he will get to go back to Australia and he will have his background exonerated and, you know, that's a win for international sovereignty.
	And it's a good lesson in fucking actually remembering the source of information, the source of secrets, is the person culpable for protecting the secrets.
	It's interesting because I didn't get that chance to ask you last time.
	So with Snowden, I see your perspective why you're like, look, man, there were avenues for you to whistleblow versus giving this information to a foreign publication, which I see your perspective because there are.
	There's a bunch of channels where you can whistleblow, and a lot of times you'll get your job protected.
	You know, he could've went to the...
	NSA's gonna be under...
	Fuck, who's it gonna be under?
	The Department of...
	Which department are they under?
	I'm trying to think.
	Department of Defense!
	He could've went to the Department of Defense Office Inspector General.
	They would've loved that.
	Yeah, internal investigations?
	Yeah.
	Any number of things.
	Yeah, he could've done...
	At least exhausted those...
	He could've at least went there first.
	Yeah, he could've...
	If he had done that first...
	He would have had more, I guess, leeway to stand and say, like, look, I went to the news because he didn't even try to go to any of these, you know...
	I think he claims he tried, but I've seen no evidence that he's ever tried to do anything else.
	Nah, he didn't try.
	Because if he had tried, they'd have that documented.
	Don't you think the American public would immediately...
	They would have been like, yeah, they would put that out there immediately if you did.
	But I mean, yeah, I guess it's different when you have a clearance and you take an oath to do it.
	Because even though it was fucked up, that they were like...
	Because the thing is, for the American public, just so you guys know, it was what, the whirlwind program is what he exposed?
	Where they were collecting...
	Metadata.
	Metadata from conversations in the United States, which is a big no-no in the intel world.
	They're basically collecting on American citizens.
	They were collecting metadata from American servers that were pulled from cell phone records of American providers.
	There you go.
	Right?
	Which, it's highly specific, but the point is, it's data that was already being collected by businesses, and the businesses were able to give that information to the federal government in an effort to try to identify terrorist threats.
	So nobody cares that you're cheating on your spouse.
	Nobody cares that you're cheating on your taxes.
	Nobody cares that you're stealing from your church.
	They're looking for fucking terrorists.
	Yeah.
	And if you don't want them looking for terrorists because you're afraid they're going to trip over you- And they're not going to expose you for cheating on your wife on there because then that would disclose the fact that they were spying on you in the first place.
	So they're only going to use that to go after the terrorists.
	It's an example of, like we started this whole conversation, people don't understand the value of intelligence and the difference between intelligence and law enforcement.
	Yes, big difference.
	When you're looking for a terrorist, you don't give a shit for how many people are cheating on their taxes.
	Because the bigger deal, the bigger impact, the bigger case...
	You don't even care about criminals, really.
	You could be getting information...
	Guys, this is how dark it could get.
	They could be getting information that someone's going to get killed, and they're like, yeah, we're not going to, because we will compromise this operation and our intelligence and our capabilities.
	They'll let that fucking person die.
	That's how the intel world works.
	We are literally national security only.
	We don't give a fuck about criminal shit.
	So I got to roll, man.
	Yeah, yeah.
	I'm sorry.
	We went right up to the wire, but I got to roll.
	It's 7.30, guys.
	He had a hard stop at 7.30.
	He's got to run.
	I'll go ahead and read these chats, and then we'll close out.
	Andrew, thank you so much for coming.
	My pleasure, dude.
	It's fucking great for having him.
	He's got places to go and people to waterboard.
	What?
	Head to everydayspy.com.
	Yes, check him out.
	We're going to be able to find you real quick, please.
	You can find me on everydayspy.com.
	You can find me on YouTube at the Everyday Spy Podcast.
	Here's his channel right here, guys.
	We've got it up on the screen for y'all ninjas.
	Go subscribe, motherfuckers.
	All over social media at Everyday Spy.
	So look forward to seeing everybody there and continue to tell the truth, brother.
	Thank you for the conversation.
	Absolutely, man.
	We'll bring you back on.
	As you guys know, we always...
	I fucking knew it!
	We'll be bringing Andrew on.
	I fucking knew it.
	That's what he said.
	The first three weeks, he's like, I fucking knew it.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	I fucking knew it.
	And he's gone.
	He's got to go waterboarding some people, guys.
	Wait, what?
	That's where he's really going to go, but that's fine.
	He's not going to tell us that.
	Yo, Mike is on, Myron.
	Oh, my bad.
	I'll read some of these chats and then we'll close this thing out.
	I hope you guys really enjoyed that interview, Andrew.
	Thank you so much for coming, by the way, man.
	I knew you guys would enjoy it.
	We had to make up for, obviously, that debacle yesterday, which I apologize for, guys.
	You ain't got to apologize.
	So, yeah.
	You came in the same day.
	You swooped in like da-da-da-da.
	You feel me?
	What do we got here?
	Oh, let me make a big break.
	Oh, what can we do to truly be anonymous online?
	Brows with VPN servers, etc.
	Please get detailed.
	Yeah, the VPNs help.
	Colonels.
	WFNF, there's definitely a good makeup for yesterday's train wreck.
	Question for Bustamante.
	Why would people point hells in the chat?
	I'm confused.
	Because they're loving this show.
	Oh, oh, okay.
	Yeah, I hope you guys were like, yeah, guys, give me some W's in the chat if you guys enjoyed it, man.
	Like, you know, I always love having Andrew here.
	We can have higher IQ conversations.
	They're saying him leaving because they wanted to, like, continue.
	Oh, they wanted him to stay?
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	He had a hard stop at 7.30, guys.
	I'm sorry.
	That's why we did the pod sooner, you know what I mean?
	So, yeah.
	Oh, they're saying L for Ray J. Ah.
	Oh, man.
	Now there's W's.
	Okay, yeah.
	Don't listen to the chat.
	Yeah, that's fine.
	I don't know what's going on.
	Well, because Myron just said W's if you like the show.
	Yeah, if you like the show.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	But this thing else for Ray J. Okay, understandable.
	That was an L. I ain't gonna lie to you on Ninja.
	I watched a little bit.
	I was like, what the fuck is this?
	But, you know, it is what it is.
	Okay, this is definitely a good makeup for yesterday's train wreck.
	Question for Bustamante.
	When it comes to different levels of clearance, is there a guideline or prerequisite that investigators use or follow when determining whether or not they'll approve someone for a clearance?
	Just curious, because I had a secret in SCI at different points.
	Well, yeah, bro, you've had a clearance, so you already know.
	It's going to be...
	He explained that earlier.
	He answered that question, the different levels and stuff like that.
	But you go through a background check, and then you get rid into what you need.
	A lot of these came earlier.
	What's that?
	A lot of these came from...
	These came from way earlier, right?
	We probably answered a bunch of these questions.
	Yeah.
	The agency that classifies certain information that other agencies might not see and is classified, is there a high possibility that a particular agency has some fuckery to do with that information?
	Yeah, I mean, different agencies classify things at different levels, bro.
	That's what it is.
	The unnamed.
	Hey, man, can you tell us what you know about UFOs after being in the CIR or Lockheed and Raytheon Martin-Heinem?
	That would be a question for the next one, my friend.
	You probably knew it.
	Crazy insight on this, and it helps to clear...
	I'm trying to bring on, you know, Dr.
	Greer for this, guys.
	I'm going to work and fucking find a way.
	I can't get a hold of his people.
	Army NG, and I was wondering why SF groups in the arm only have secret, but other branches such as Navy SEALs and WSSC have to have TS.
	It comes into the sensitivity of their operations, guys.
	That's really what it comes down to.
	Philippines, Indonesia.
	He did say that?
	Philippines?
	Yeah, like Southeast Asia.
	That's what Andrew said?
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	- Okay. - Well, where he went to, yeah. - Okay.
	Just finished Muhammad Hijab's interview, respect to him, but when is Muhammad versus Kalasha debate?
	Who is he, may you ask?
	He's a veteran Christian scholar popping on YouTube right now.
	Okay, I can reopen that conversation with Muhammad Hijab.
	Question for Andrew in the film, Gray Man CIA created a program called the Sierra Program for criminals to take out people on different missions.
	Do you think CIA has programs like that?
	Well, you heard him say earlier, I fucking knew it.
	So what do you think that means?
	I was waiting for everyday spy to come back.
	What's your take on Venezuela?
	Do you think the U.S. foreign policy over the years in Latin countries has fueled instability?
	Is that president for Russia and China to have similar practices, i.e.
	Coop's instability assassinations?
	I mean, yeah, we talked about that a bit.
	You know, you could talk about like United Fruit Company right there.
	That's an example of destabilizing Latin America.
	Go ahead and Google it, guys, and you'll know exactly what I'm talking about.
	I'll just ask the question we all want to know, which is, Myron, why did you make that your name and didn't keep your birth name?
	I've explained this a bunch of times, but I'll say it one more time.
	Guys, when I started doing this podcast, I was still working for the government, and my name is very unique.
	It's Amaru.
	So if you Google my real name, court documents come back of cases that I've done.
	So I didn't want people to know that I was a federal agent also being a YouTuber, so that's why I didn't use my real name.
	And then obviously after I resigned, the stage name just stuck, so I kept it.
	But yeah, for all the idiots out there, they say, you're ashamed of your real name.
	That's not true whatsoever.
	I just use my stage name because I was working for the government and I have a unique weirdo ass name.
	If my name was Andrew, I probably would've just used that.
	Why are you so caught up on calling you by your real name?
	I don't know, people are weird, bro.
	It's whatever, man.
	I've explained this many times and people don't get it.
	Like, yo, I had a clearance.
	I worked for the government at the time and I have a unique ass name.
	So if you Google my name, shit comes back that would identify me easily.
	So I was like, fuck, let me not do that.
	So I just used a stage name.
	And you wanted to pay homage to Aziz.
	Yeah, and I like these two.
	What else we got here?
	Modern...
	Where are we at?
	FNF Super Chat.
	Okay.
	FNF Super Chat.
	Modern The Antidote goes, Hi, Maren.
	I've been a fan for a while, and a couple months ago I started posting clips of FNF, and they have been putting good views on YouTube, but all the clips are copyrighted by Rumble.
	Anything I can do, can we post clips anymore?
	Thank you, Modern The Antidote.
	No, yeah, we can.
	Can you do me a favor and DMO right now on Instagram, and we will whitelist your channel.
	You gotta be in Castle Club.
	Yeah, but you gotta be a Castle Club member, though.
	Gotta be in Castle Club.
	So, if you want your channel to be whitelisted, Screenshot, proof of subscription on Castle Club.
	And DMO right now.
	Must be in Castle Club.
	Do it right now, bro.
	Yeah.
	We'll only whitelist you if you're on Castle Club.
	King Duarte goes, Hey, my awesome guest.
	I got an inconclusive polygraph for the FBI last month.
	I'm trying to petition it to get a retake.
	I heard you are banned for life if you fail and they can use it against you.
	Other agencies, what can I do to solve this?
	Man.
	So, inconclusive, bro.
	If they're not giving you the ability to retake it, that means you failed.
	So, that's number one.
	And, yeah, you can't go back and work for the FBI if you failed a polygraph with them, which kind of sucks.
	But they don't use it against you for other agencies.
	Obviously, if it comes up and they ask you, you obviously be honest about it.
	But it won't fuck you for other agencies.
	You can apply for other agencies.
	That's fine.
	I've seen people fail polygraphs for one agency and still be able to get on another one.
	You know, I think it's bullshit.
	I think that's stupid.
	This is why it's so important, guys.
	If you're going to go do a polygraph, you need to go to sleep.
	Don't drink caffeine before it, etc.
	It will fuck you up.
	Damn, that's stress, though.
	Yeah.
	Do you guys believe FBI will remove or lower their poly requirement?
	They keep lowering the drug requirement.
	Many people are getting banned for life for failing.
	The poly HSI is now using DHA to hire people, and the poly is optional for them.
	Yeah, yeah.
	I mean, polygraphs are bullshit, bro.
	I know, King Drool, it sucks.
	It really does suck.
	That's one thing.
	That they, you know, they use a lot of the times.
	But I don't think they're going to remove or lower their polygraph thing.
	They're going to keep it, bro.
	The problem with polygraphers, guys, because I know a couple of them, is they swear by polygraphy.
	They think it's the end-all, be-all, like, you know, the polygraphs are God.
	It's not.
	It's bullshit a lot of the times.
	Can you guess an opinion on the Homeland Security investigations if it wasn't working for the CIA? Would he rather work for HSI or FBI, the difference in his opinion between DHS and DOJ when it comes to federal law enforcement?
	We kind of went over that a bit.
	But guys, he's in the intel world.
	Intel and law enforcement are completely different, bro.
	Completely different.
	I just want to say thank you again, Meyer, and your reason for why I'm working for the government now.
	Would have never thought about this sector.
	Without you, almost done.
	With my first fear of probation, we'll always be in your debt.
	Cheers.
	Thank you so much, Gabidi.
	And Myron always chooses HSI above all.
	Yeah.
	I mean, the FBI is a good agency to work for, guys.
	They just have a lot of bureaucracy and a lot of bullshit.
	But I've told people before, if you want to be a special agent, the best agencies to work for, I think, in my opinion, by far, are HSI and FBI. You have the most ability to work different types of cases.
	You have the most diversity.
	So, yeah.
	You could do a more specialized agency like an ATF or a DEA, but it might get annoying doing drugs after 20 years.
	You know what I mean?
	Since the post-9-11 agencies are hitting retirement because of 6C, do you think there's going to be a big hiring push by Federal Intelligence Agency soon?
	Seems like a lot of people can't meet the rigorous requirements.
	What will happen?
	Yeah, guys, a lot of the law enforcement agencies are hiring right now.
	So, definitely apply.
	I mean, HSI did a big announcement recently.
	FBI is always hiring agents because it's so hard for them to get agents.
	So, yeah.
	Jeremiah Kidwell, Mr.
	Butamante, I really love your work, man.
	Anyways, I was wondering if you have a code of ethics you apply to manipulating people in other activities some would consider wrong.
	He's not here, but I would tell you, if you work for the CIA, you do what's best for the CIA and the United States government.
	Romaine Garden goes, question for the guests.
	If you think the Trump assassination attempt wasn't planned by the far left, explain why not airing any of Trump's rallies over the years.
	All leftist stations and media outlets chose to air that rally live.
	Coincidence?
	I mean, you can put your tinfoil hat on if you want, bro.
	That's it?
	Cool.
	Guys, I hope you guys enjoyed this special for y'all.
	Right?
	For this episode.
	We are going to have a pop the balloon here.
	This was one of Myron's favorite guests.
	No, I believe his favorite guests of all time.
	Nah, not favorite all the time.
	I definitely like having him on.
	Actually, I know what your first is, but I won't say it.
	But this is definitely like his second, maybe.
	I know Myron doesn't like to have favorites, but yo, Myron's eyes really sparkle.
	Dude, come on, man.
	I mean, no diddy.
	All right, man.
	So we're going to have, I think Fresh is going to be here.
	We're going to do Pop the Balloon or something like that.
	Probably what?
	Like in a half hour or some shit?
	Probably an hour.
	I think after eight.
	After eight?
	After eight.
	Okay.
	So we're going to get some food, guys, and we'll be back for a Pop the Balloon with you guys on a Thursday, man.
	And I hope you guys enjoyed it.
	Love you guys.
	Peace.
	Peace.
	I just run.

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