PBD Podcast | EP 135 | Former CIA Agent Mike Baker
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PBD Podcast Episode 135. Patrick Bet-David is joined by Adam Sosnick and Former CIA covert operations officer Mike Baker. Subscribe to get all notifications.
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About:
Mike Baker worked in the CIA for 17 years as a covert field operations officer, specializing in counterterrorism, counternarcotics, and counterinsurgency operations. He engaged in, organized, and supervised operations around the globe, working in Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Europe, the former Soviet Union, and elsewhere.
Patrick Bet-David is the founder and CEO of Valuetainment Media. He is the author of the #1 Wall Street Journal bestseller Your Next Five Moves (Simon & Schuster) and a father of 2 boys and 2 girls. He currently resides in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida.
About Co-Host:
Adam “Sos” Sosnick has lived a true rags to riches story. He hasn’t always been an authority on money. Connect with him on his weekly SOSCAST here: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLw4s_zB_R7I0VW88nOW4PJkyREjT7rJic
0:00 - Start
3:23 - C.I.A. vs F.B.I.
5:31 - Which Federal agencies can we eliminate
15:14 - The downside to privatizing federal agencies
20:56 - Does the C.I.A. have any world leaders in their pockets?
27:20 - Iranian ties to then CIA
38:38 - Is Vladimir Putin crazy?
45:39 - Is Ukraine being used as a proxy war?
1:00:48 - C.I.A. trained cat spies
1:05:44 - Driver arrested using Legoland License
1:09:04 - The rise in gas prices
1:21:08 - Saudi Arabia is going to accept the Yuan for Oil
1:32:44 - The Simpsons slam Joe Rogan
1:38:12 - Vladimir Putin's secret family
1:39:53 - Congress giving themselves a double-digit raise
1:45:31 - Alien Contact/Black Files Declassified
Yeah, we did a Zoom interview during COVID, but we've never done a face-to-face.
It's great to have you here.
And thank you.
And I got word you were here early 5 o'clock working on the wire, so I don't know what you were working on, but we're optimistic.
Yeah, it was not easy getting into your lair here, by the way.
This is actually a bank vault.
It is a bank vault.
It's fantastic.
It's fully a bank vault.
And we are hoping to get some legit information out of you with all the mess that's going on in the world.
We lock that door.
We're not letting you out until you tell us exactly what's going on.
Well, we're here for a long time then.
That's our version of level one year.
So there's security.
Let me ask you this, though.
Let me ask you this, though.
Today I'm driving.
I'm like, okay, we've had a lot of former CIA guys on.
We had, you know, what do you call it? Jack Barskion a few days ago.
Was it a couple weeks ago?
Jack Barski, KGB.
We've had Matt Zeller.
Matt Zeller.
We've had a lot of different people on.
McKinley.
We've had a few people on.
And I sit down, I'm thinking, I'm like, what is the policy on what you can't share as a former CIA?
Because you know the movie Argo, you know the movie Argo.
Oh, we can't release these stories for 30 years and this whole thing they use, the movie from Canada to go in and take these people on.
What a great thing that they did.
What can, like, are there stuff that you really, you know, that you went through that you can't ever talk about?
Is that the code?
Oh, sure, yeah.
I mean, look, you signed secrecy agreements, and those secrecy agreements don't expire.
You know, even if you retire or leave, I didn't retire.
I wasn't old enough, but I'd been there for going on two decades.
And when it came time to leave, as an example, and I left for fairly pedestrian reasons.
I was raising a daughter, so I was a single dad and needed to be home because, as it turns out, that's one of those things that makes you a good parent if you're home with your young children.
So I thought I got to do something to stay home.
So I talked to my folks in the operations directorate, and they couldn't have been better to me.
I said, well, look, I'm going to leave.
I guess I'm going to try to start a business.
And A, they questioned that in terms of whether I had any skills that would transfer to business.
But they said, okay, fine.
Let's make it so that you can leave and at least say where you were, meaning at the agency, the outfit.
And that was a really generous thing for them to do.
But the agreement is that I have a responsibility.
I don't talk about sources and methods.
I don't get into specifics.
But it allowed me to come out and at least not say that I was an import-export guy for the past going on 20 years.
And that helped then build a business, as it turns out.
And particularly where I am, I'm in the global intelligence and security industry, right?
So there was a direct relationship to it.
If I had come out and said, well, I was in business or I was in government somehow, it wouldn't have had much impact.
So the agency was very good to me in that regard.
And therefore, I'm very tight on what you can and can't say.
Makes sense.
Is it a competitive thing between FBI and CIA or no?
Is it like we're better than you?
Or is it more like we work together?
Firefighters versus cops.
I play the baseball.
It's not even competitive because we're so much better.
Oh, no, no, no.
There you go.
That's bullshit.
No, I'm not going to say that.
I know a lot of guys with the Bureau.
I think very highly of them.
They are great.
But there was, particularly pre-9-11, there was tension between the Bureau and the agency.
And the Bureau started putting their people out in the field overseas to take on counterterrorism activity.
And that's always been sort of the purview of my outfit.
And so that created some tension and just some confusion.
It's what are you guys doing out here?
What's your objective and why are you here and taking up our space?
And so that created some liaison problems in terms of sharing of intelligence.
And, you know, so you'd go in, as an example, if you were operating somewhere and you were engaged in a counterterrorist operation and the Bureau came in and they were doing some activity element, you always had this feeling like we weren't really being completely square with each other.
So we weren't really sharing completely.
Got it.
Why, though?
Is it like who solves the mystery and who solves it?
Is that kind of what it is?
Yeah, you know, it was kind of, you know, you're pissing on my turf, right?
And so how about you not?
It's territorial as it is.
As terrorist competitive as the other day, it was.
But now it's, I will say this much.
It is immensely improved.
The liaison between the organizations is so much better now than it was, again, 15, 10 years ago.
Collaborative relationships.
It's much better because, you know, in part, 9-11 forced that.
I mean, you suddenly realized, look, there were gaps there that did, you know, we probably could have avoided if we, but it's a human endeavor, right?
It's always going to, there's always going to be an element of risk.
You're never going to minimize it down to zero.
Quick question for you.
So, you know, we had Oliver Stone on last week, and so I went on a binge-watching of all these JFK assassination documentaries.
I've already interviewed way too many people on that topic, but just something I'm curious about.
How JFK wanted to get rid of the CIA.
I'm sure you've read the story somewhere.
Which one of these organizations can America do without?
So I'll give you the list and you tell me.
And I hope you're not going to be politically correct just to give a safe answer.
You got CIA, you got FBI, you got PD, you got DEA, you got the IRS, you got all, which one of these guys can we go without and it would probably make America a better place?
Can we put Congress on the list?
Yeah, can we?
I was going to say, can we put Congress?
You didn't pull a Rick Perry and forget the names that you were going to ask.
Oops.
We got to get rid of these three agencies.
I can only name two, though.
I apologize.
Yeah, the Department of what?
Education.
Yeah, you know what?
The ones that you mentioned, the CIA, the Bureau, DEA, I would argue you can't get rid of any of those, right?
There's a real reason why those exist.
Now, at times the bureaucracies get too big.
Yeah, fine.
But it's like when people say, we've got to get rid of customs and Border Patrol or ICE, get rid of these.
It's a simplistic way of looking at it.
And when it comes from a politician, they're just blowing smoke up people's ass to score a point because it's popular to say it.
So IRS, do we need it to enhance the size of the IRS?
I don't think so.
Are taxes a good thing if they're used properly?
Sure.
So I'm probably not the best person to talk about this, but definitely don't get rid of the CIA.
It is a fucked up world out there.
And you need, I'll say apolitical, you need an apolitical intelligence service.
Is the CIA apolitical these days?
Yeah, I mean, I would, again, it's, you know, it had a beating about the same time that the Bureau was taking a beating, you know.
But my experience, and that's all I can talk to, I was in the operations side of things.
And, you know, I'd spent my whole time overseas.
So I never saw it as a political organization.
I never had political conversations with any of the guys that I was working with.
We'd sit in a safe house for three weeks waiting for something to pop.
We didn't sit there talking politics.
It wasn't something you did.
And when I'd come back and walk the corridors in the main building, there weren't political discussions.
So you never had that feeling that that's how that built.
And you don't want that.
I've seen countries where there's a change in government and they just shit can everybody, bring in an entire new Intel service that's politically bound to whatever administrations come in.
That is a disaster that you definitely don't want.
Tom, what do you think?
What do you think out of those?
He even put ice in there.
So let's throw ice in there as well.
Which one of those do you think we can go without?
Well, I've always thought, and I still think, that Department of Homeland Security is there at airports and the border.
And most air travel is like cross-state lines.
So why wouldn't Homeland Security be part of FBI?
FBI covers across state lines.
Law enforcement conflict in this nation has been sort of a staple, right?
Where the local police are working on a case.
Whoops, it's a lot of money across state lines.
FBI, excuse me, step back.
That's ours.
So this conflicts have happened.
I've always thought that the Border Patrol and Homeland Security are redundant.
Since Homeland Security was created after 9-11, I said, well, what does the Border Patrol do?
And if it's borders and intrastate things, why wouldn't the FBI have that?
And why did we create these notions?
So that's my thinking.
I think there's redundancy in some of it.
But I agree that the FBI is an entity and the CIA an entity and the NSA is an entity.
I would never screw with either one of those three.
How about ATF?
I mean, alcohol?
Yeah.
Tobacco?
I was just going to ask that question.
Well, in Texas, alcohol.
I'm a big fan of all of them.
I wasn't sure what the question was.
Right.
Well, in Texas, it's a car.
Alcohol, I like alcohol.
I like tobacco.
I like firearms.
That's the question.
What the hell?
Hang on.
In Texas, ATF is a convenience store, not a federal bureau.
That's a good point.
Well, Prad, you just, the interview you did, the debates, the great debates, you debated whether we need a war on drugs or whether we've won the war on drugs.
Do you have a strong opinion of who won that argument or what were your thoughts on?
ATF?
I mean, but ATF is a $1.4 billion budget, 5,082 employees, including 2,653 special agents, 760 industry operations investigators.
Okay, what are we doing?
Alcohol, tobacco, firearms?
Like, what do we, so for me, you know, anytime like in the world of business, when you go at the end of the year, you look at your expenses and budget, what do you look at?
You look at it and you say, why are we spending money for this?
What are we doing with this?
So rather than constantly adding, I think we're not spending enough time thinking about what we can take away and give that responsibility to one of these other departments that can probably do the job.
We don't need to have another constantly come up with the different departments.
Maybe I'm wrong.
I'm just saying.
No, I'm on that page.
I agree 100% what you just said.
But that's not the nature of government.
The nature of government is not, you know, as an animal is not to shrink itself.
And so once budgets get set, you know, trying to, it's like every year in the agency, towards the end of the calendar year, you'd get this note or somebody would say something from senior management about like, what do you guys need?
Right.
What do you need?
Do you need more gear?
Do you need more, you know, and because we've got to spend the money.
Money's in the budget.
If we don't spend it now, then our next budget might be smaller because they're going to look and go, well, you guys didn't need that.
So we'll reallocate those resources.
But I do agree, you know, after 9-11, when they created Homeland Security, but more importantly, when they created DNI, that was something probably could be looked at, right?
To shrink that, because I think they did put a lot of redundancy in there.
It was just layers of bureaucracy to combine all the various members of the Intel community and law enforcement.
And I think that's never really functioned the way that it should.
Plus, also, I'm not a big fan of having a DNI instead of having the CIA director with a seat at the table.
And that's kind of what they did.
They pushed the CIA director out, said, oh, the DNI is going to be the guy.
And that's a little too political for me.
And by the way, Tyler, go ahead, ask you a great question, Tyler.
I was just going to say, you're talking about the budget's always growing.
That's not how bureaucracy works the government is the single largest employer in the country.
How many, I love the libertarian perspective of small governments.
So how many of these organizations can we privatize?
Can we privatize the FBI?
Can we privatize the CIA?
Can we privatize the what have you?
Like, does it have to be a government organization?
Because you can make the claim that if you privatize one of these organizations, it will become biased or what have you, but you're seeing the same thing now with all the government.
What is the benefit to privatize?
I'm asking as a capitalist, but I'm asking you, what's the benefit if we privatize?
Well, it seems to me that the private sector can run infinitely better anything operationalized.
You're just saying you're saying they're going to be more efficient because you've got money profit loss.
Correct.
I think it could be better to the taxpayer.
Let me ask you, how do you think media sells Prince?
Is it Eric Prince?
Is that from Blackwell?
How do you think he's portrayed as?
I think a lot of people despise him.
I mean, we have him coming on the podcast, I think, in two weeks or three weeks, right?
How is he sold as a what?
He's not.
He's a warmonger.
Yeah, so that's the part as well.
And then say the wrong guy, you know, I don't know.
I don't know.
So who's this guy?
This is Biden Lucky to nominate the new ATF head of after first one was polled.
Aid say the president is committed to filing the post in originalized vacant for David Chipman's nomination, failed to get needed support in the Senate.
Do you know when ATF got started?
Do you know when ATF got started?
1961.
So in 1961, ATF came.
So when 1961 ATF got started, was alcohol legal?
Yes.
Okay.
Was tobacco legal?
Of course.
Okay.
Was firearms legal?
Yes.
So what is your job?
Who was the president?
Was that JFK at that point, 61?
61.
61.
I would say, yeah, it's JFK.
I'm foggy on this, but remember, one of the areas of nonviolent crime by organized crime was the old pink tax sticker that used to be on top of all the liquor bottles.
And they would print all these things in the Bahamas or in the Caribbean, and these tax stickers were then put on this.
And as I recall, it was Treasury Department before ATF that actually presided over that.
With even Hoover saying, wait a minute, this is organized crime.
What are you guys doing here?
Do you think it's weird you got that information in your head?
Do you think that's an interesting?
No, I'm fascinated.
Welcome to the world of the BizDoc, Mike Baker.
I'm fascinated.
That's a lot of information because that's a lot of information in your head, and I'm very impressed.
My brain is like New York City.
By the way, he just figured you out in 10 minutes.
We call him the walking Wikipedia.
This guy is always reading getting information.
But I thought that was a very real thing.
It's like where the FBI was out there, hey, we're trying to bust bootleggers over here.
What are you doing here?
Well, these are tax stickers, and this belongs to the American people, this little pink thing.
And there were actually nonviolent criminals that were out there printing on the tax side, but that weren't whacking each other like they were during Prohibition.
And all of a sudden, we now have an, guess what?
ATF, we'll make a new division.
We'll make a new department.
But if I could jump over to that question about privatizing certain things, look, we went in during the first, what do we call it, incursion into Iraq.
I was out at that point, but we put a bunch of guys.
We put a bunch of guys into Iraq at the behest of some clients that we had that were going to be doing infrastructure work out there in Iraq.
They already knew it.
And so we had been doing some things for them elsewhere.
And they said, look, from a security perspective, can you help us out?
So we started putting people in there really at the same time or just slightly ahead of when the troops went into Iraq.
And we're a private business, right?
So we started building up an operation out there.
And this is early days.
This is before Blackwater became a household name.
And so we watched that sort of that private contract or private security industry build in Iraq over a few years.
It was a bit of a shit show because it's a private business.
And so we saw people looking and going, I can make money doing that.
So you had a large number of MOOCs with no experience thinking, I'm going to start a security company.
And they were banging around Washington, D.C., where we had an office.
And we'd come back, I'd come back and say, oh, could you meet with these guys they want to talk to you about?
Lobbyists?
Is that what this was?
Well, these were guys that were pseudo-lobbyists or they were just, they were just guys hanging around Washington and thinking, I'll bet I could get a contract somewhere.
And this is a good business.
So you started getting all these companies showing up.
And I remember talking to some of these companies, whether they were British or American, whatever.
And look, you don't have an endless supply of trained people with sufficient experience to operate in a hostile environment like that, whether it's providing security or gathering intelligence or whatever.
So that bar kept lowering.
And I'd talk to somebody and they'd say, yeah, I was SBS, you know, out of the British teams.
And you think, no, you're not, you know, because we've got the former commander, you know, working with us and he's never heard of you.
And this would happen time and time again.
So eventually people were hiring just people with no experience, no business being out there.
And that's when shit started to happen.
And so then what happened when that kerfuffle started was that the government got involved and said, look, we've got to regulate this.
We've got to come up.
And so there was this effort with the private businesses now starting to see, wait a minute, our business is being threatened because now the government's looking at it.
Maybe the government's going to step in and start regulating this.
So we started meeting as private contracting companies saying, we've got to form an association here, set some standards, right?
And well, you're doing that because you're trying to protect your business.
You're not necessarily doing it because none of these guys really cared about that, but they were doing it so they wouldn't lose their contracts.
So some of the government, I guess my point being, government involvement in there was actually an important part of it, right?
Because it helped the regulation.
The regulation, the setting some standards, getting some of the idiots out of it.
So again, I'm conflicted because I can see both sides.
So after they came in and you guys set the standards, how did it work out in comparison?
You know what?
It worked out better because there was more policing of protocols, of hiring, of requirements.
There was more, you know, so I don't know.
It was one of those things.
I just wanted to raise the point.
I don't want to disappear down that route at all.
Companies like that, like if I'm Halliburton and I find out that my security team was maybe substandard and not as good as they pitched me in the PowerPoint deck, and I'm hiring them to protect basically U.S. civilians who have agreed to go into a hostile theater and work on an electric power grid project, right?
So now I'm a little bit concerned by that.
And this kind of, didn't that help the companies?
Weren't they appreciative that now they have some sort of reliance and standards?
Right.
That my civilians that are over there working on a dam work on, it was a lot of infrastructure.
Yeah, no, and that's a good point.
And they did appreciate it, and it was beneficial to them.
You would like to have thought that they would have been, you know, look, the companies we worked with, they were very clear about we expect, you know, the following in terms of standards.
But I guess, you know, my point being is that if you leave it up to private business, it may not, there's always that statement.
Oh, private business is how to run things, right?
They're going to be more efficient than government.
Yeah, you know, but there is a place for government at times.
Or it goes the other way, right?
Because Wackenhutt has actually hired, remember Wackenhutt hired to do the private prisons in the U.S.
And they've actually hired their own lobbyists because they like tougher criminal laws because it makes an influx of prisoners that need a place to sleep, which means you build another prison.
So for private business to benefit from wars, that concerns me because you're, you know, that concerns me.
Part of me is concerned.
That's the military industrial concern.
Totally, exactly.
I was going to go there.
But, you know, now, somebody, can you increase Tyler's audio as well like 10%?
But for me, so then the other side of it, if I'm being a devil's advocate to myself, is it's going to happen anyways because, again, the insight that's on the government, hey, you do this.
I'm going to give you this.
Hey, lobbyists coming in.
I think the problem here for that to work out is if you eliminated lobbyists, a lot of things would be more honest and transparent because these guys that are making $10, $20 million a year, a lobbyist is making, it's one of the highest paying jobs in America, by the way.
Being a lobbyist pays very well.
By the way, just out of curiosity, you know, these conspiracies you read about, okay?
And, you know, I don't know if you're into conspiracies or not.
A lot of people are as a CIH, and I'm sure you're not.
But some of these conspiracies, like who are some of the names that are dropped that world leaders that were working for the CIA?
Because, you know, in the mob, you'll read this boss was working closely with the FBI and nobody knew about it for 15 years.
He was this and he was dropping all the information.
And I'm not even talking about like a Joe Pistone, you know, who was actually working for the FBI that went in for five years and 10 months.
I'm talking about like actual world leaders.
That was Donny Brasco, was it?
Yeah, I'm not talking about Donny Brasco.
I'm talking about guys that were world leaders who some say the CIA had them in their pockets and they were giving them information.
Who are some of the names?
You know what?
Well, Vladimir Putin.
He'd be one of them.
No, I'm kidding.
I'm just kidding.
Everybody's wide open like the table.
Yeah, he's secretly going to destroy myself.
That was good.
I got to give it to you.
That was really good.
Mike's got a little bit of acting, you know.
And comedy.
Yeah.
You know, there's been, that's a really good question because in terms of world leaders, normally the question is like, you know, were there celebrities?
Were there, you know, people that had worked because they were in the public eye, but they could travel everywhere and had access.
You know, from a world leader perspective, that's not really, that's not a target.
When you're talking about a collection target, if you're looking to recruit access to a country, your first landing spot is not the leader, right?
I mean, maybe there's relationships that exist as that person was coming up through the ranks or whatever and eventually became a leader.
And so you're going to want to know what that's all about.
You want to know whether you've got anybody who went to school with them or did whatever.
And that could provide you with some insight.
But really, you're looking for people who have actionable intelligence at sort of a grandier little level.
So I would rather have, rather than the world leader, sure, it'd be nice to have them in their pocket.
But you want the guy who's running a desk for a priority target in some other Intel service overseas, right?
I mean, that's what you're looking to do.
Or you're looking for the deputy assistant foreign minister who's got terrific access, but is right there in decision-making points.
That's the sort of thing.
Or, you know what?
You want the housekeeper for the world leader.
You want proximity, but you don't want the number one is what you're saying.
How do you recruit?
What's the method of recruiting folks like that?
You know, it's usually not ideology, right?
It's usually a little bit more base than that.
So you're talking possibly money.
Maybe you're talking about, you know, you bump across some guy that's working and your indications are maybe they're GRU, for instance, or they're FSB or whatever, and you think that'd be a good target.
And so maybe you find out they got a couple of young kids and that's their, I don't want to say their weakling, but that's really what drives them, you know, and that a lot of times that's what it is.
Maybe their kid's sick.
Maybe they need some medical attention or some assistance.
That's simple.
It can be that simple.
It could be that oftentimes, not often, but another scenario is that they're just not getting enough hugs from their home service, right?
Or from wherever they are.
They're not feeling the love.
They're not feeling the love.
They feel like they're disrespected.
Nobody's listening to me.
I'm too smart for this place.
And so now suddenly you're providing an outlet for them.
And now they feel important because now they're getting that information to somebody, right?
And it sounds odd, right?
It sounds like who's going to betray their country and their family and their government?
But that sometimes can be a very powerful thing.
And that's unfortunately in the counterintelligence world when we talk about people like Hansen and Jim Nicholson or some of these guys, Edley Howard, that's pretty much what it was.
They just didn't feel like they were respected.
They were too smart for their own place.
When the CIA sets their sights on somebody and says, we want to get this target, I assume that's how it works.
Like, this is the person we want.
It's driven by tasking.
So it's driven by like, okay, we need to know exactly to the degree we can what the Chinese military is spending their money on in the next two years or three years.
Are they dumping all their money into hypersonics or whatever?
So yeah, you know, it'd be nice to get somebody in the PLA or whatever.
So it's driven by the tasking.
And then you start looking at who's got access to that information and who may be minded to talk to you.
Who could you actually access?
Who could you get to?
So there's a process that you go through.
And to be fair, most Intel services go through the same process because it's a human thing.
And when they get this target or this mission, how hard is it for that person to say no?
Meaning, how much do you squeeze this person to say, I'm not saying you, but I mean, I got to imagine if you set your sights on somebody and that's your target, you're not going to take no for an answer.
No, no, it's, I see what you're saying, but it doesn't work that way because you never want to coerce somebody into this, right?
You don't want to, because that's a bad route.
It's like with blackmail.
People always think, ah, you're going to, you know, you're going to hook them because they've compromised themselves.
Well, maybe, but this is somewhat nuanced.
If someone compromises, so if they go out there and they do something that they, if say they're an Intel officer for some foreign country that's a target for us, if they compromise themselves, they do something they shouldn't have done, you're not necessarily using that as the hook.
What you're doing is you're saying, okay, there's a weakness there, right?
That's the weakness.
Now we're going to build around that, right?
Because hooking somebody up by blackmail or strong-arming them, you're going to be doing them.
It just doesn't work.
Their heart needs to be in it, essentially?
Well, they need to feel that they're doing the right thing, right?
And they're doing it for the right reason, even if they're complete assholes.
Why'd you look at Tom when you said that?
He doesn't appreciate that.
There we go.
Even if they're complete assholes, Tom.
Yeah.
I mean, there you go.
See, there's a reason we're opposite assholes.
By the way, so a question about the most shocking declassified secrets in U.S. history, right?
You got this where going into files and pulling out the top juiciest, most interesting government secrets, all of them haven't been declassified, meaning governments in question have released documents confirming the truth.
FYI folks, season two of Black Files Declassified, airing, is it Wednesday, 9 p.m. Eastern Standard Time on Science Channel and Discovery Plus with Mike Baker?
You can find season one of Black Files Declassified is available on Amazon Prime, I believe.
A link is in the description of the podcast.
We'll put it below for some of you guys.
And then maybe at the end, we'll show a preview of that so you'll be one of the first to see it.
Yeah, so here's 10 of them we have.
Okay, the U.S. relationship with Khomeini.
Declassified records have revealed that Ayatollah Rollo Khomeini, a cleric who would later emerge as the driving force in Islamic fundamentalism, was much closer to the American government than previously thought.
Khomeini has sought to negotiate with the Kennedy and Carter administration in order to ease his takeover of Iran, despite his public anti-American rhetoric, going as far as calling America the great Satan.
I was there for 10 years when he was ruling six weeks after he died.
We left Iran and we went to Germany at a refugee camp.
So I watched everything that they were talking about on TV.
I was old enough to remember some of this stuff.
And the great Satan, I mean, forget about that.
They used to say death upon America.
I'd look outside the window and I'd see 10,000 men march flagellating their backs.
This is not just like in movies.
This is stuff that you actually saw as a kid.
So how much credibility is there?
If Khomeini was with the CIA, I mean, what do you know about this story?
He wasn't with the CIA, but there was, you know, there were efforts to try to, because part of what they were doing is trying to assess who the hell he is and what his chances are of taking over, what his plans and intentions would be.
So there was contact, right?
So you end up getting contact reports written constantly, you know, by, you know, I had a chance to talk to him, or somebody meets with him, maybe from the State Department.
And then you sit down and you talk with that person.
You say, okay, what do you guys talk about?
What the hell's going on?
And so you build up a file.
The file doesn't mean that the person's working for the government.
I mean, you go down to the archives and basement of the agency.
And sorry, it sounds like we've got like a basement.
I'd like to go to the basement of the agency.
It's a vault.
Yeah, it's a vault.
It's much like this.
Not getting out, Baker.
Getting out, buddy.
And so you, you know, there's just file after file of full of contact reports where you're assessing people.
And some of them, you know, were like this.
We'd think like, that's insane.
There's no way that this guy's good.
They're not really, it's not like they think we're going to target him and recruit him.
What they're thinking is, we got to, you know, we got to understand him.
We got to know what the world looks like around him.
Maybe we're going to identify somebody who's in his orbit that we could recruit.
So there's a lot of reasons why you would do this.
But, you know, it's very common.
Now, Pat, this is literally your life based on your childhood.
Would the CIA have motivation to want to get the Shah out of Paris?
Okay.
Of course.
Explain that.
For those of you who are listening here, can you go pull up this story on The Guardian?
Just Google Khomeini.
It's a very easy name to spell.
Khomeini?
K-H-O-N.
That's a lot.
I looked that hip-divergent.
Your job depends on the Khomeini spelling, buddy.
So that's Tyler Schmidt.
He starts with a Q. Khomeini.
There you go.
That one right there.
So make that bigger.
U.S. had extensive contact with Ayatollah Khomeini.
That's a Guardian story, by the way.
So with Ayatollah Khomeini, before Iran Revolution, documents seen by BBC suggest Carter administration paved the way for Khomeini to return to Iran by holding the army back from launching a military coup.
Go, okay, previously the leader of the Excel.
He was in Paris for like 12 to 15 years.
The BBC reporting suggests that the Carter administration took heat of Khomeini's pledges and in effect paved the way for his return to Iran.
The BBC Persian service obtained a draft message Washington had prepared as a response to Khomeini and welcomed the Ayatollah Corporation.
published a previously released but unnoticed declassified 1980 CI analysis titled Islam in Iran which shows Khomeini's initial attempts to reach US to the reach out to the US dated back to 1963 16 years before the revolution the BBC revolution had created a reports have created a huge row in Iran if true they would undermine the myth that Khomeini staunchly resisted any direct links with the US which remained taboo for three decades until the recent nuclear negotiations.
Go down to look at the note.
Go down to look at the note here.
Let me read above it what it says about it.
Give you right there.
Other Iranian politicians have also questioned the BBC's revelations, including Ibrahim Yazdi, Khomeini spokesman and advisor of the time of the revolution, Said Hajarian, a former former reformist refuge figure.
In November 1963, Khomeini sent a message to the United States government through Hajj Mirza Khalil Khamari, a professor of the technological faculty of Tehran University and an Iranian politician close to opposition as religious groups.
Khomeini explained that he was not opposed to American interests in Iran.
Interesting, on the contrary, he thought the American presence was necessary as a counterbalance to Soviet and possibly British influence.
Khomeini also explained his belief in the close cooperation between Islam and other world religions, particularly Christian, by the way.
So you asked the question what the motivation would be.
There's a documentary yeah, there's a documentary that they did on the Shah, a fantastic documentary, that that it's about oil.
So they had a 25-year contract Iran did that was coming up in 1979.
This was signed in 1954.
Matter of fact, if you look it up and you type in 1954 oil Iran, do me a favor, can you type in 1954 oil Iran?
You'll see, it is called the consortium agreement of 1954.
Okay, that was expiring by 1979.
Okay, and this was with US British, I think it's Germans French, and these guys had a meeting in 76, 77.
These four world leaders had a meeting, I think, in South or Central America to talk about what we need to do to get rid of the Shah, because by 1979, when the 25 years came up, he was going to renegotiate the contract, increase the comp and make more money, and they said, this is not good for us.
We got to get rid of this guy because he's becoming too strong and obviously so.
You're saying it was specifically an oil play.
Oh listen, if i'm, if i'm, everything is speculation.
You have to know.
This is you know, not nothing we know, especially what's going on right now with Ukraine, Russia.
We have no clue 100, what everything is going on.
But my speculation, based on what i've researched, 80 percent of it was caused because they did not want one man to have as much power as he had.
Anything to get rid of him is what they needed, and then that's what.
I guess I may be wrong.
So what was the date of the Khomei contact, pat?
What was this?
63 november of 63.
Yeah yeah, you know what that letter started with, dear Lyndon, congratulations on the new job.
Sorry to hear about your boss.
I understand you feel different about World political affairs.
Wow.
Yeah, right after November.
Well, we don't know because we need to know if that is what the date is on that.
But you're right.
I would love to know when that date is because it's 22nd.
There's that encyclopedia in his head.
But there's also, I mean, part of this is also the development of the individual, right?
So you look at 63, then you look down the road, you look at the mid-70s, how Khomeini changed, you know, and how he was developing his belief system.
And also, he was looking at in terms of, you know, how to control and how to maintain power and what's that going to look like.
So, you know, you see these, and I guess I go back to the same thing.
You would see this with other, whether it's Castro or anyone else.
That's part of what the CIA is doing, right?
They're assessing, they're understanding, they're looking at the potential lines of communication.
They're looking, and but I do think it's fascinating, the oil play, because, I mean, you look at the history of Britain, of the UK and Iran.
BP, the whole thing.
Yeah, the whole thing is based on oil.
Pat, let me ask you before we move on.
Is it fair to say they got this wrong?
Meaning whatever hand they had in this didn't work out well for the world or Iran.
But it depends on who you ask.
If you ask the industrial military complex, no, there was a war that made a lot of money with Iraq.
If you ask how about not them, the rest of the world.
Yeah, because this led to them releasing 3,000 political prisoners that the Shah had, and a part of it was the start of Osama bin Laden and ISIS and all that other stuff.
So he had those guys.
The Shah was concerned about a couple different parties.
The extremists, the Hezbollahs, the ISIS.
And then the other side he was very paranoid about was the Today Party.
The Today Party was the AOC, the Communist Party, is what he was.
Think about far left and far right.
So Mossadegh was like a socialist Bernie Sanders.
So he was worried about the communists and he was worried about the ISIS.
So when this happened, they released 9-11 indirectly as a byproduct of having them being released while the Shah's, because you know how people always bash SAVAC?
You know, oh, SAVAK, SAVAC, horrible people, okay?
KGB, wants a KGB, forever a KGB.
Well, what the hell is CIA?
Yeah, why is CIA now?
Yeah, Mike.
No, What I'm saying is, but the way we see KGB and SAVAC is the way Iran and Russia sees CIA and MI6.
But the way we say MI6 and CIA, we kind of say, oh, it's nice people, the CIA and MI6.
So meaning there is— Patriots.
By the way, I mean, you know, I'm maybe born in Iran, but I'm made in Iran, but I'm, you know— Born in Iran.
Made in America.
I am— I'm about America.
But at the same time, you have to keep in mind that everybody's buying into some kind of propaganda.
So somebody may say right now, hey, who gives a shit about the story?
I don't care about Iran.
I don't care about Khomeini.
I don't care about this.
What does this have to do with today?
Here's the point.
I don't want to wait 60 years, 59 years, whatever it is.
I don't want to wait, even from 1980, I don't want to wait 41 years to find out what the hell is going on with Ukraine and Russia.
Or with COVID either.
I want to know what's the cause of COVID.
I want to know what's going on with Ukraine and Russia.
I want to know what the hell this Fauci guy was all about.
I want to know why he kept saying the same shit all over again.
I want to know what is going on today.
So to the average person, Shah Khomeini, irrelevant, but a price was paid worldwide for a bad decision.
And everybody, directly or indirectly, whether you know it or not, you were affected by it.
You know, Mike, you brought up something.
I want to get to Pat's question right there.
So you talked about the development of Khomeini.
So obviously the agency, and without going into details, you can't, you're tracking the intellectual change, the evolution of thought, and the evolution of aggression.
I mean, you got people like Manuel Noriega, from the perfect little pond to the pain in the ass.
And when he became a pain in the ass, we went down there and stuck him in a Florida prison.
And so you see that.
There's a lot talk today in the Ukraine that said that people looking at Putin, and these are people that are on CNN, MSNBC, Fox, everywhere, and they're saying, It really looks in the last five years, there's been a change in him, and he's a little off rails.
Are you seeing that?
No, I don't think he's, I mean, yeah, I've heard that.
Or maybe there's been an evolution and he's alone.
Yeah.
Look, but Putin's a good example of this.
And it's what we were talking about.
Yeah, the big question right now is the Intel point here that everyone's trying to collect on is what's his plans and intentions, right?
So that's saying we're going to get inside this guy's head.
What do you have to do to do that?
There's a shit ton of assessment that goes on.
You're looking for, again, points of access.
You're looking for recruitment of targets that might be able to tell you what the hell's going on with Putin.
The honest guy's truth is nobody really knows except for Putin at this point.
You know, it's a heavy lift to collect on that target.
So I'm not surprised by this.
I think the idea that there was contact between Khomeini and the U.S. government, to me, makes perfect sense because that's what you see that in other locations, countries throughout history as well.
They're looking to build up their power base.
They're looking for a line of communication.
And yeah, the agency or any Intel service is out there trying to understand what the hell is going on because that's what they're told to do.
But I forgot my train of thought.
I'll tell you what.
The evolution of evolution.
That's how I finish all my sentences.
But you know what I will say?
Here's what I will say.
I trust my enemies more than my allies.
Let me say why.
I trust my enemies more than my allies because every morning my enemies wake up.
At least they're honest.
They want to do whatever they can to put me out of business.
My allies, I don't necessarily fully know their incentives and their motives.
I 100% know the motives of my enemy.
I know the enemy wants to do whatever they can to have an upper edge over me.
I'm naive if I don't believe that.
But with your allies, you don't necessarily know what is their next 10 moves.
Maybe you're in move number three, but you're dispense, you know, you're, what's the word?
Dispense, you're, you can be dispenseable.
Disposable in move number eight.
And you're like, oh, he's acting like an ally, but what is really his motive being an ally?
Whereas the enemy's like, look, I want to kill you.
It's that simple.
I want to put you out of business.
I trust that Russians' motives are more honest than anybody else's that's sitting there saying, oh my gosh, Iran defending Ukraine.
Yeah, yeah, I don't trust what the hell Iran is doing saying stuff about Ukraine.
I don't trust that.
I trust the fact that Putin's saying, that's our land.
We're going to take it.
Here's what we're doing.
Not in a positive trust.
It's a trust of a very honest, trusted enemy.
So for me, when I'm sitting here thinking about it.
You know his playbook.
You know his playbook.
You don't like the playbook, but you know the playbook.
Yeah, I know fully this is a true believer we're dealing with that knows what he wants and is going after it.
Well, he's been very consistent.
So to answer your question, people are thinking, is he going off the rails?
Well, no, he's consistent in his moves, whether it's what he did in Crimea, what he did in Chechnya, what he did in Abkhazia, what he did in South.
It's the same thing that he's been doing, and he's been very clear, to your point.
He's been very honest about the fall of the Soviet Union was the greatest tragedy of the 20th century.
And he believes that, and he's said it repeatedly, and his intent has always been to recreate a sphere of influence.
So he is being very honest about this.
So I think when people say, oh my God, we can't understand what he's doing.
It's what he does.
Shouldn't be a good idea.
I'm fully resembling what he views as mother Russia.
I fully agree with what you're saying, is that you 100% trust your enemy because you know exactly what their motivation is.
Whereas your allies, you might not be sure what is down the line.
Like I think of the movies, like even in Batman or The Dark Knight, or even in the movies like The Town, you're robbing a bank together.
Boom, Joker is.
Exactly.
But as soon as you get, well, he knows that the cops or the Batman is going to come after him, and that's his enemy.
But as soon as they get the money, boom, he kills a couple of his guys, boom, he keeps all the money.
So the next question here is we know Putin's the enemy, right?
I mean, that's fair to say.
But the next question is, our ally here is this guy, Zelensky.
What do we truly know about him?
Is he really our ally?
What does he want from the world?
That's, I think, the big question here.
Yeah, there's degrees.
There's degrees of good and bad, right?
I mean, it's like the agency, one thing you learn very quickly is nothing's black and white.
And yet, you know, the world wants to frame everything that way, right?
So now the social media story is, oh, my God, you know, the Ukraine.
Well, look, Ukraine had a lot of problems, right?
Corruption being, you know, up the top of the list.
So there's a very difficult history there with Ukraine.
And so we just have to be aware of that.
It doesn't change the fact that Putin's an asshole.
I'll look over at Tom again.
And it's officially real.
It's official.
You have a CIA guy that thinks you're an asshole, Tom Belson.
That's just what the file tells me.
And so I think I'm sorry.
Thank you very much.
See you next week, guys.
Tom Ellsworth goes missing.
It hasn't seemed during 60 to 90 days.
But I guess the point being is that with Zelensky, yeah, you just have to be pragmatic about all this.
And the one thing I do worry about is how simple everything gets framed, right?
And how quickly the news story becomes this three-minute bite of everything.
And if you look at what we're doing right now in terms of, I mean, to bring Iran back into it, if you look at the negotiations, indirect that we're having with Iran and utilizing Russia now, right, in part to try to develop an alternative supply line for oil.
And in part, and this is where I'm very cynical, it's because the current administration here in the U.S. realizes we can't suffer these fucking gas prices for very long because the midterm elections are coming up.
And so we got to do something.
So for political reasons, maybe I'm being cynical, they're pushing forward on this negotiation because they, damn it, we got to get these sanctions off so we can let the Iranian oil flow so we can keep prices down so we don't get our asses kicked in the election.
Okay, so now here's what Oliver Stone said the other day when the conversation came about what's going on with, and I want to get your reaction on this.
If you put him on like, you're going to do 2.0, don't do that.
1.5, yeah.
Is this about what he said with the proxy?
Is this that clip, Title?
Okay, go ahead.
Play this clip.
Organized, by the way.
Very organized.
I think the CIA plays another role there because CIA has been involved with Ukrainian Nazis since World War II.
We got a lot of them out to our country on the rat lines.
And we came back after World War II in 48.
There was an operation by the CIA to drop these people into Ukraine to make trouble, to start troubles for Russia.
It's an old story.
It's not new.
But I don't think a lot of people know it, though.
Well, it's a fact.
In fact, the guy I worked with on JFK Fletcher Proudy was a colonel who was in the World War II and Air Force.
And he was one of those guys who supplies these infiltrators to the Ukraine with weapons and with flights.
And you have to drop them and so forth and so on.
It's a lot of hardware.
All these guys were picked up, by the way.
That's what's amazing.
It's like with Castro.
Whenever we go up against Castro, he seems to find out the people we send in secretly.
It's an interesting side effect.
But the Russians picked up, Russian Ukraine picked up these people.
But we tried to get a lot of people.
Is this where he talks about?
Oh, I'm doing this.
Is this where he talks about the part I want you to get is when he talks about this is just a proxy war between U.S. is just using Ukraine.
Is this the clip or no?
It shouldn't be, yeah.
You sure?
Yeah.
Positive?
Play for 20 more seconds.
Let's see, because so far we've been waiting.
So now if we watch TV today and we turn it on, you're seeing Zelensky that is standing and he's looking pretty strong and tough and he's not reacting.
And the news is telling us that Russia's lost 5,000 to 6,000 soldiers in the last few weeks, which is more than what we lost in Iraq.
And the two foreign ministers had a conversation together two, three days ago.
It was an hour and a half conversation in Turkey.
No advancements really made.
How different is Ukraine's story today versus when you did the documentary?
How much has changed?
Because Zelensky's not in your documentary when you did it, right?
So is it a night and day different story today?
Are they making more progress?
No, it's not me who did it.
The director was Igor Lapatonik, who is Ukrainian, Russian Ukrainian.
And he did it.
And I was an interviewer and one of the producers.
So these two films, Ukraine on Fire, and the other one is called Ukraine Revealed.
Revealed goes into the present title.
When we get there, it's a very interesting documentary about the opposition candidate, Viktor Medvedek.
Medveduk.
Victor Medvedchuk.
Revealing Ukraine.
That's it.
Robert Perry, who was one of the great journalists in our country.
It was the most out of the way.
Are you serious?
Dude, I'm telling you, there's a clip that it starts.
This guy's like, we're watching the entire episode with our friend here.
Just go to Twitter.
Go to my Twitter account.
Let's show it from this angle.
Tyler just wanted us to see that for whatever reason.
I was given this by John.
Oh, those people under the bus.
So go to media.
Bus, meet you.
Go to media right there.
Okay, click on the media side.
Good.
Okay, go up a little bit.
Keep going, Okay, what does that say?
That says, no, not John F. Kennedy.
Keep going.
Keep going.
It's another clip by him.
Okay, click on that one.
Open it up.
That's the truth.
The United States has using Ukraine as a proxy to put pressure.
The U.S. doesn't care about Ukraine.
They care about Russia.
This is a chance to destabilize Russia, remove the leader, regime change once again, on a big way.
This is a big victory for them if they can pull it off.
And this was always the gold from the beginning.
I don't think there's any concern about the Ukrainian people, except as a sentimental thing in the newspapers.
Well, this person was killed, that person was killed.
But what about the people who were killed on the other side?
They never mentioned them for five, six years.
No, more than that, eight years.
Those people were killed, too.
Families were killed.
You know, it's positive.
It's crazy what you're saying.
Positively.
So for me, for me, where that goes to is, okay, Carter used, you know, Khomeini to destabilize Iran, and Shah fell, 79.
It so happens to be the 25-year expiration of oil exactly in 1979.
What are they worried about trying to get rid of this guy?
Do you agree with Oliver Stone has?
Could there be any truth to what he's saying with them trying to get rid of Putin?
Well, look, hey, that'd be a happy circumstance if that's the case.
I don't think that was the, that's not, I wouldn't draw a direct line like Oliver Stone is doing, but that's kind of his thing.
So, but look, is it a proxy war?
Yeah, of course it's a proxy war.
It's the same thing as, you know, fighting in the Congo or, you know, years ago.
I mean, it's just, there's no, I don't think there's any doubt about that, right?
I mean, we're dumping weapons into Ukraine.
You know, helping the people out.
It's against Russia.
It's against Putin.
Putin doesn't have our best interest at heart.
So, yeah, this is a bizarre, surreal replay of the Cold War that we're marching ourselves into.
But no, I'm not drawing a direct line saying, you know, at some point we thought, you know what we could do?
If we could just foment unrest and get Putin so fired up that he moves in in a big way, I'll bet we could fuck him over and get it.
No, I'm not buying that.
And I think that's where he's going.
I mean, he's really.
You're not going there.
I'm not going there.
But I'm also saying that, yeah, Are we backing a country, Ukraine, that's had all sorts of history that we just need to be aware of?
But is that a better option than standing by and watching Putin roll through and decide he's going to rebuild the Soviet Union?
Yeah, I'm on that side.
Nobody wants to get the old thing everybody's been saying.
I don't want to get into a shooting war with Russia.
Well, no shit, right?
But I have no problem saying, yeah, it's a proxy war at this stage, and we're dangerously close to entering a new version of the Cold War.
But yeah, I'm not a conspiracy guy to go back to your original thing.
Most things I've found over the years, and again, it's just based on everyone has to talk based on their own experience, a little bit simpler than a conspiracy theory would have you believe.
But I have a hard time believing that.
I have a hard time believing that.
I have a hard time believing that because I see it on the simplest terms on what happens with family, motives of family members, that seems motive of companies, corporations.
You work with people and you look at the motive and you realize the motive you thought was this and the motive was that.
I have a hard time seeing there's not gamesmanship taking place here.
I just don't.
Now, do I think the whole thing was started to get rid of this guy versus the world is seeing it as an opportunity here to get rid of him?
Maybe.
But why is the question?
Because you replace him.
Who replaces him?
Who replaced the Shah?
How many replaced the Shah?
Anyways, let's go to the next one.
And once you do that, yeah, you're right.
I mean, it always opens up a problem.
But look, no, Putin, again, I go back to the same thing.
He's been very clear about what he wants to do.
And his incursion into the eastern part of Ukraine years ago, what we're facing right now, this full-on invasion, is just another step in his process.
He hasn't gone off the rails.
He hasn't changed.
This is just what he plans to do.
So you'd have to go all the way back.
You'd have to say, okay, let's go back well before even 2014.
If we're going to go down that and say we're doing this on purpose, right?
Somehow this was a conspiracy where we're going to overthrow Putin.
You got to go back a lot further than just what's happening right now to say this is all orchestrated.
And I'm telling you here, the government oftentimes, they're not organized enough to put together panic and a doomed submarine.
It's just not going to happen.
So sometimes we give the government a lot of credit.
And I'm not saying things haven't happened that were wrong and shouldn't.
You look at MK Alters on the list.
That's a good example of something that goes way off the rails.
Look, here's human nature.
And I may be wrong.
And guys, challenge me as much as you want and say you're absolutely wrong here.
I think everybody in this room and everybody we mostly meet has selfish desires.
You're here.
You'd like to promote the show because that's what you're supposed to do.
We're here sharing our opinions, creating content.
If the audience, they like it, they support us, we appreciate it.
Without them, we don't have a business model.
There's not a podcast.
But if we also don't keep staying entertaining, then the market's going to say, hey, listen, you guys are not really good at podcast stuff.
Get out of here.
Do whatever else you want to do and sell insurance or maybe go sell some gym memberships, right?
So Adam has a motivation.
Adam is wanting to build his brand.
So he wants to also get eyeballs because he wants to grow his podcast, which has been crushing it lately.
You think I'm here to promote the SOSCAST that goes live every Thursday at 4 p.m. and we have amazing guests and beautiful women and great controversy.
You're dead wrong, Pat.
I would not promote the SOSCAS on this channel.
I apologize.
This is about the PBD podcast, not the SOSCAS.
You know what?
And again, it's Thursday at 4 p.m.
Go live.
I would never do that.
So you know what, my pleasure?
Forgive me for doing that.
My apologies.
But here's where I'm at.
But here's where I'm at.
Where it goes to me is the following.
I think almost everybody is 50 plus percent is them.
50 plus percent is your motivation for what your desires are, what your needs are, right?
Some people are 60% them, 40% others.
Some people are 70%.
Some people are 80%.
You get the idea.
If you get to the 80% mark or higher, now it's more about you.
People eventually are like, you know what, dude, you're a one-man show.
Nobody can do anything with you.
It's all about you.
You're not a team person.
You're a one-man show, right?
Politicians and statesmen, those are two different things.
Politicians want to get re-elected.
Politicians owe favors to people that funded their campaign that you and I don't know about.
Politicians owe favors to other people that said, if I get you elected, dot, dot, dot.
So for me to sit here and think and say, you guys give the politicians way too much credit, I don't give the politicians a lot of credit.
I give the people that did favors for them a lot of credit to come and collect their debt.
That's who I give a lot of credit because those guys are not dummies.
I guarantee you lobbies are not dummies.
I guarantee you these money people are not dummies.
Last time we had a dinner at a restaurant we've never been to called Casa D'Angelo for the first time.
We're there like three.
That's the first time this week.
Actually, I've been there two nights and we're going again by the way, just so you know, we're taking a bunch of people.
But we're at Casa D'Angelo and we're having dinner with this one private equity guy, right?
He runs a multi-multi-billion dollar fund, does very well.
The whole team showed up.
We had a great dinner together, conversation about, you know, what's going on in media, what's going on in business.
Anyway, it's a great conversation that we had with them.
But I'm sitting across from the main guy I'm talking to.
What's his motive to make returns?
But the part that made it very impressive versus a guy that I met with last week who crossed his arms and we offered to have dinner with him.
And he said, I don't want to have dinner.
I just want to meet you in the office.
Where this guy yesterday flies in, is worth more than the other guy.
This guy flies in, comes to my house.
Then we go to dinner, spends five hours with us.
And he says to me at the end of the meeting, would you mind if I take a walk with your wife?
And I said, no problem.
We went over there.
I took my baby.
They walked 20, 30 minutes, they talked.
And then he says, I just learned a lot about you.
I'm so glad I had a chance to talk to your wife.
So I know he still number one concern is returning money for his investors.
But the fact that he wants to know more about the DNA of the individual, he's to me a 70-30 guy, not a 90.
The other guy was a 90-10 guy.
So you're right.
I don't think these politicians are, you know, but I do think the people behind closed doors are going to collect their debt.
Again, that's where I'm at.
Yeah, I see what you're saying.
I don't disagree with that.
I'm just saying that sometimes the nature of government is that they can't, you know, I wouldn't give sometimes, and when I say government, I'm not really talking about politicians, I suppose, but I wouldn't give them as much credit as sometimes somebody like Oliver Stone might where he says this is a massive machination.
Sometimes they fall into shit, right?
They fall into things and then they think, yeah, this is a happy circumstance.
Let's do this, right?
But yeah, no, but I agree.
I think what you're talking about in part is, I mean, I see it on a very personal level where you see it at family, right?
You know, do you have kids that are empathetic?
Right.
And, you know, to what degree are they?
Do they have EQ or whatever they call it?
And so, you know, I got three boys and the oldest one, Scooter, is very empathetic, right?
The middle kid doesn't give a shit what you think.
And so he's a completely different cat, right?
And the youngest one is just kind of a happy-go-lucky kid.
But, you know, Slugo, he's like, you know, I'm going to tell you what I think.
I don't care what you think about that, right?
And so it's an interesting, so I look at it, and you're right.
That's the way people work.
I do agree 100%.
I've seen the lobbying industry very close up in Washington, D.C.
And yeah, there's expectations, right?
And part of it is how the system's built now.
If you can send somebody to Congress in the Senate and they're there for 36, 42 years, from a lobbyist perspective, that's an investment to be made, right?
I'm going to invest in that person.
So part of this, and maybe I think about it too simplistically, is put in term limits.
And then suddenly it's a little bit tougher to say, this is where I'm investing my money, meaning this particular politician who's going to end up as a head of the Ways and Means Committee or whatever.
So now if you've only got two terms and then you've got to get the hell out of there and go back and do a job, maybe as a lobbyist, now I got to rethink my business.
Maybe I'm not going to get those hooks in there to make it possible.
If we were to make a list of the top 10 enemies in America that are hurting America the most, I'm going to put lobbyists in the top 10 list is where I would put them.
I don't know where they rank as if they're going to be, they're probably not in the top five, but they're in the top 10 list.
Lobbyists are hurting a lot of things and they are great, great debt collectors.
Another question.
Another question is the following.
In regards to Nixon, you know the whole story about the CIA tried to kill Nixon many, many years ago.
Have you followed that story or no?
Not really, but I believe it had something to do with Elvis.
So I'm just going to put that out there.
I'm not kidding.
Yeah.
Did you see Elvis is the new movie that's coming out or have you seen the commercial?
No.
No, is it another one?
Oh, it's pretty sick.
You've got to watch the commercial.
Yeah, it's pretty sick.
Yeah, he's come out.
Anyway, he's playing himself.
It's pretty impressive.
So if you don't know that story, then I want to skip that story.
That photograph of Elvis and Nixon is one of the top 10 ironic photographs in American history.
Oh, let's see this.
Right.
Badge given to drug-add singer.
I mean, did you see that movie?
I think you do a very good job for the United States of America.
Well, thank you very much, Mr. President.
That's actually good, Tom.
You do a good Elvis and a good clinical person.
And he gives him a badge.
There's a thing where he gives him a badge.
Remember that?
Yeah, I can't wait to see this guy's movie when it comes out.
It's a trailer right there.
Let's watch something very important here.
This is very concerning for Adam in regards to declassified government secrets, shocking declassified government secrets.
Trained cat soldiers.
Documents declassified in 1983 revealed that the U.S. government tested the idea of training cats to be spies, implanting, recording equipment in their bodies and letting them loose near the Kremlin or Soviet embassy.
Is this a true story?
It's a true story.
It's my people.
It's a true story.
It's my people.
It's a true story.
Cat spies out there.
I'm here to tell you that it was called Acousta Kitty.
And it was an operation.
And, you know, where people can learn a lot about this is on Black Files Declassified, which appears every Wednesday night at 9 p.m.
You're not selfish at all.
Am I doing this right?
On Discovery Plus.
What channel?
What channel?
Yeah, Science Channel.
Science Channel or Discovery Plus.
I hear great things about it.
You happen to have the app.
Yeah.
And so the idea was that, yeah, the idea was that, look, again, if you're trying to collect intelligence, you're going to try to be creative.
One of the things that the agency does, well, they've got a science and technology directorate, right?
And that's one of the divisions within the organization.
And that's where incredible engineers work.
And they've developed everything from the U-2, you know, to the Blackbird to satellite technology, battery capability.
And so they do some amazing work down there.
And one of the ideas was, look, If you're trying to collect on some target in some country and maybe what you want to do is figure out a way to get close to that target in an unassuming way, how about we implant a receiver into a cat?
I mean, I know that sounds crazy, but these guys are just throwing ideas out there.
They built years ago, decades ago, they built a thing called an insectathopter, which was just a little dragonfly that could hover outside a window of, say, the Soviet embassy and collect intel.
It's incredible.
Anyway, the Acoustic Kitty didn't work.
They also tried.
Why didn't it work?
You know, cats are, as it turns out, are not that trainable.
Oh, I know, Mike.
Yeah.
Yeah, there you go.
So it's basically desertion.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So as it turns out, you know, the cat, I don't know.
I don't have all the insight, but I think it spent most of its time licking its own ass.
Those are more dogs.
Yeah.
Well, let me ask you, which created interference and static on a little.
You know, static, Phil, the term for Phil.
What is it?
Like international arms dealers.
We've seen the movie War Dogs, right?
And then in the movie, he's like, he's a dog of war, right?
This cat idea, how much thought goes into it?
Or realistically, how often is just someone just hi shit, smoking weed?
He's like, man, forget about war dog, war cats, man.
That's where it's at.
Well, no, you think it is crazy, right?
Because some of the shit that they came up with was just remarkable.
As an example, they built a fish, a remote fish, right?
Because they were trying to figure out what was going on at a facility overseas somewhere.
And it had an estuary, right?
And so what they wanted to do is collect water samples.
There was no way in hell they were going to be able to accomplish this.
So anyway, they built this fish.
They have a copy, one of them in the museum there at headquarters.
It's incredible.
It looks just like a damn fish.
And this thing would, they set it off and it would swim up the estuary and collect water samples and could gather some other data and then come back.
I mean, so yeah, they're throwing ideas on the table, but sometimes it makes sense.
Again, the Acoustic Kitty didn't work.
They tried it on a pigeon, right?
And the gear was too heavy for the pigeon to make it all the way to the target.
And some of the ones that really work, they don't talk about it.
But these are the kind of wacky ideas where they're like, let's put a budget together.
Let's put $20 million into this.
Wasn't there a dolphin?
Dolphins are, yeah, look.
That was very famous, right?
They were turning in my era.
Yeah.
And look, animals, you know, the ones that could be trained, you know, could be used in this sense.
What they then went to, what this developed into was robotics, right?
And so the use of the insectathopter was a very important development because while it didn't necessarily work that well because it wasn't as controllable as they wanted it to be, it allowed them to develop technology that could then be used in other ways.
And so, you know, anyway, I'm banging on about the right now is in the Austin Powers movie where he's like, sharks with lasers.
Exactly.
We're going to have sharks and put lasers on them.
Those laser beam scatters.
Well, let's talk about it.
Let's talk about it.
Something happened this last week that is deeply concerning.
I'm wondering, like, as a well-trained CIA agent, how would you solve this mystery?
Because it's heavy on my heart.
So an alleged stoner stopped after a wild car chase whips out license from Legoland.
Okay.
A UK driver who was arrested for reckless driving had officers and stitches after producing a license from Legoland.
Driver was pursued from Bexley to Isle of Sheppey and arrested for a multitude of offenses last week, according to a tweet by Kent Police RPU, which apprehended the 21-year-old motorist in February following an epic car chase.
This was a 35-mile car chase, and this guy, when he gets pulled over, he takes out his Lego.
Is this truly a real story or what?
Tell me, you're joking with me, right?
No, it's legit.
And you get the license, there's a driving gorse at Legoland, and it's got like a speed cam, few other things, and you get this license.
And here it is right here.
I've actually seen this Lego land.
I took my daughter to that Lego land, and it's true.
You can get a driver's license.
And yeah, so the guy had a big bag of weed.
He's, as far as I'm concerned, he's a hero.
I think it's a fantastic story.
And that's great news, right?
Yeah, it does.
I think it says more about the poor Kent police because the average highway patrol in any of the 50 states would be far less patient than 35 miles.
You would have put the trip line down, puffed the tires, or catch up behind him, give him a spin.
We just let this happen.
Have you ever gone to the airport and you forgot your ideal passport?
Has that ever happened to you?
Have you ever gone to the airport to travel?
You forget your ideal passport.
I feel like you have a story behind that.
And I'm just curious because it's happened to me multiple times.
I'm asking you if it's happened to you.
I'm sure it's never happened to you.
Actually, it's never happened to me.
But it's happened to you.
Yeah, I showed up.
I realized all of a sudden I didn't have a passport.
Now, to be fair, I was traveling to Canada.
I guess I just thought that was another state.
And so I didn't think they'd actually want my passport.
One time I went to the wrong airport.
I was heading back overseas.
So you're the stoner that this guy was.
I was a stoner.
Now, I was hungover.
I was back in the States for just a few days, got together with some guys that were back here.
This was when I was in the old job.
And we went out and might have had a little bit too much drink.
Had to go overseas to do something and went to, instead of going to Dallas Airport in Washington, I went to National and bounced around there for a while, trying to figure out, where the hell is my flight?
And I was getting really shirty with the gay people.
I said, no, my flight, I'm leaving here to go.
And they looked it up and they go, no, you're supposed to be a drugstore.
I love when you.
Yeah, it's so funny.
In Dallas, it would happen all the time.
You're online.
A guy's like, sir, your flight's from Lovefield, not from DFW.
You're kidding me?
No, you have to leave.
What happened to me one time is we parked the car in DFW, but Moral booked my flight back to Love.
I totally forgot about it.
And I'm like trying to go to Valley.
Can you get my car?
I've been waiting 20 minutes.
Like, sir, we don't have your car.
I call Moral Morales.
Like, your car is at DFW.
Yeah, but it's always a fun conversation when you're saying, I'm telling you, I'm Patrick B. David.
Sir, whatever.
Do you have an ID?
No.
What would you like me to show you?
And you have to make phone calls to get that part done.
Let's talk about gas prices.
Can you pull up the picture somebody just sent me from Beverly Hills?
So this was just sent to me from Beverly Hills.
And gas prices in Beverly Hills, 895, 925, 955.
And a story comes out from Common Dreams that I want to read to you on page seven.
If you can pull up the other stat that we had about where gas prices went, do you remember the one that we did the other day?
I'm sure you have it.
If you don't, I'll send it to you as well.
82% of U.S. voters believe inflation is fueled by corporations jacking up prices.
Released Friday by the advocacy group, fight corporate monopolies.
The poll showed that 82% of register voters blame big companies for at least some of the recent inflation spike and want elected officials to take on powerful CEOs and raid in corporate greed to lower prices with gas prices, searching Ahmed Russia's onslaught against Ukraine against Ukraine.
Democrats in the House and Senate introduced legislation that would impose a windfall tax on oil companies in an effort to curb profiteering.
Last year, oil and gas companies made $174 billion in profits.
Bernie Sanders said, this year they're on track to make more.
We cannot allow big oil companies to use Ukraine and inflation as an excuse to rip off Americans.
What are your thoughts on that?
Yeah, I think it's a lot more complex going back to it.
Is that your ringtone?
Someone's goes up.
Fuck it, okay.
So it's CIA.
I knew you were missing.
You were up to something.
I know.
I know.
It's not easy getting signal into this room.
But yeah, you know, I think this story is like so much else.
It just becomes a simple narrative, right?
And if people took the time to say, okay, look, maybe I'm going to sit and study and understand how the oil market works.
You know, maybe I expand my thinking about this and just think it's not that ExxonMobil is screwing us over, right?
ExxonMobil, yeah, 2021, they made what, $20, $23 billion, right?
In 2020, they posted a $22 or $23 billion loss because of the pandemic.
And oil prices fluctuate based on world conditions.
So prices come down right now.
Why is it coming down?
Well, because in part, as an example, these discussions are going on with Iran.
And suddenly the traders are thinking, okay, maybe we're going to get that pipeline opened up.
They're going to re-ease the sanctions.
So yeah, prices start to come down.
Prices may be fluctuating up because what?
China's going through a lockdown again, right?
So what's that going to do?
Oh, shit.
Now maybe we've got a problem with demand and supply.
Okay, so I guess, do I think that the oil companies are screwing us over?
Are they interested in making profit?
Well, damn, right, they're interested in making a profit.
But I think that the way that, you know, another problem here.
The Biden administration, I think, failed in one way here with this energy issue by not apparently drawing a direct line between energy and national security, right?
Energy is a national security priority.
And so therefore, if you say that, then you would assume that in that case, yes, okay, great.
We should be a leader in green technology.
That's a wonderful thing.
But we should also be as independent or close to independent as possible in production of energy.
And so that's a national security concern.
We can do both.
And in fact, there aren't that many people that invest as much money in new green technologies as oil companies because it's a profit motive for them.
They understand, right?
Whoever builds the next best battery is going to win.
So, yeah, I just think it's more complicated than AOC or whoever tweets about wants us to believe.
Hey, David John, can you guys show that real quick?
Gas prices for people to know that gas prices have been climbing way before Putin invaded Ukraine.
I think it's important for audience to constantly see this, that it's been going up since even November when the election came out and they announced, look how low gas price was, they were $2 and it's gone up to $3.51 by then.
That's nearly 100%, 80%.
But go ahead.
You were saying that.
I think this is a perfect segue to a nice case example from the BizDoc right here.
Not even so much gas, but how do prices work in the market?
Supply, demand, prices, costs go up.
Gas aside, how does it all work?
I'm sure you have strong feelings on this.
When you look at fuel and everything, most people don't know.
There are economists that work for the airlines, and they are some of the fastest and best hedgers.
You're nodding, Mike, on fuel prices on the planet Earth.
They are so fast and so quick to hedge.
And if you look at any of the annual reports for the airlines, they talk about their hedging strategies, their hedging staff, and everything.
And hedging means that they see the prices change and they're trying to actually keep the price of air tickets balanced so that they can maintain customer inflow.
They don't want during spring break the price of a ticket to double and they lose customers.
They're trying to keep some stability for summer travel and all these things so they can go make a buck.
And the second part of it is, you're absolutely correct.
We have in this country, what most people don't understand, is the strategic petroleum reserve.
And the president can open and close the valve to put oil that's in storage into the market.
Supply comes in the market, prices are moderated.
And he can do that.
And all the things about drilling and everything, that takes a while.
Okay, you've got permits, you've got leases, but I didn't approve your permit.
And so Pasaki will go to the microphone and say, they have leases up the wazoo.
And the guy from Fox Nepak didn't get called on.
He's like, yeah, but you didn't approve the actual permit to drill.
So if you take a look at what everything's out there, if Americans just understood two things, the president can ease prices with the petroleum reserve, number one.
And number two, it's good to be green, but balanced energy independence is even better.
And most Americans also don't know this third point, which is Canada buys 100% of its natural gas from the United States of America.
We are actually a top four energy exporter in the world.
And so to blame the man, you know, it's just very fashionable in the election year to go blame the man.
Oh, big corporations are screwing you again.
It's the man.
You know.
You know one thing I got to tell you, Tom.
You know, people often tell me I have an accent and they'll say, Pat, you got an accent.
I'm like, oh, okay, cool.
I got an accent.
I've never heard anybody call Jen Saki, Jen Pasaki.
And I love the way you say Putin.
You say Putin.
It's like such a unique Canadian accent you have.
That's wonderful.
Can you go back to that picture you showed by Bumble?
What is it called?
Pasaki.
Who is this?
This is the due to gas prices.
Next Fast and Fierce movie will be Bobsy.
Oh, my God.
But can you do me a favor and Google highest gas tax state?
Just type in highest gas tax state.
Highest gas tax state.
And look what comes out.
Okay, so make it a little bit so everybody can see it.
Make it okay.
So California, New Yorkers pay 66.62 cents on a gallon of gas, the ninth highest statewide.
State gas tax alone is 48.22 cents a gallon.
But California is 86.55.
Illinois is 78.
Pennsylvania is 77.
Hawaii is 70.
If you want to see the next 10, click on it so the competitive folks can see where the state ranks.
Make it bigger.
And we got Pennsylvania, Hawaii, New Jersey, Nevada, Indiana, Washington, New York, Michigan, Florida, Oregon, North Carolina.
Okay, so these guys are saying we need to ask these big corporations to not, you know, as record-breaking profits that they have.
Fine.
If you're really concerned, let's go through three different organizations.
We hold you accountable.
We hold the oil companies accountable.
And we hold governors of states that are charging a shit ton of taxes accountable.
So if we do it that way, then guess what?
Maybe there's a reasonable conversation.
So one, for 90 days, if we're 100% of Canada gets their oil from us, why don't we start doing it ourselves for a time period to lower gas prices?
Number two, talk to Exxon and Mobile and give them some kind of a credit for the next couple years to have a certain number that they're doing to lower prices for them.
And then contact all your governors and tell them for the next six months, the gas tax that you're collecting right now, the 86.55, we need to get rid of it for the next 90 days to six months.
That is a reasonable way where everybody is pulling their own.
You know, a startup company, when you get started and the company is going through challenging times, the CEO will come in and they'll do this.
They'll say, guys, let me tell you where we are.
We all own equity in this company.
Yes?
Yes.
Okay.
Company is growing.
It's exploding, but we have a problem right now.
What's that?
Our margins are very small.
If we can make it through the next 12 months, we'll be fine.
And our equity is going to be worth a lot.
For the next six to 12 months, us, the C-suites, who can afford this because we own the most, what do you call it?
We own the most shares in the company.
I think we have to lead from the front and do something with our salary.
Let me tell you what I'm doing with my million-dollar salary.
I, for the next 12 months, I'm not taking a penny of salary.
I'm going to a penny.
And I'm not telling you to do that as well.
But all I'm telling you is see if you can figure out a way to take a lower salary the next six, 12 months so we can reinvest that money into the company and then we can bring it back up.
We need that for the next six, 12 months.
But I'm telling you from front, my salary just went from a millionaire to a penny for the next 12 months.
CFO, I've already had a conversation with John.
John's already told me he's taking a salary from a half a million to $120.
And that's a savings on $380 per year.
Thank you, CFO, for doing that.
Larry's already agreed to go from 400 to 80 because he's also got savings.
Larry, thank you for doing that.
Then you go to the rest of the people and say, shit, okay, I'm willing to go to this.
Oh, great.
Let's have a memorandum.
Then you go to your employees, your directors, and your managers, and you present it to them.
Then you go to your partners, your carriers, your vendors, whoever it is, and you say, guys, this is what we're doing.
Here's a memorandum.
We would like you to lower the expenses a little bit for the next six, 12 months.
Work with us.
We're growing very, this is the way you get people to say, you know what, if you're going to feel a little bit of the pain, I'm okay feeling a little bit of the pain.
I'm all in.
Rather than saying it's the corporations who are doing da-da-da, but you don't talk about your state, you don't talk about your own drilling, you don't talk about your own responsibilities, you just point it out everybody else, you become a hypocrite.
That is the challenge I have with their solution.
It's all this way, but I'm not held accountable to do anything.
Again, we simply run a podcast.
We don't run countries, we don't run states.
But if somebody came up like that and presented that to me, I'd kind of say, you know what?
Okay, that's fair.
I'm listening.
Well, it's also part of the problem is also, I think, that it's this idea that it's got to be all or nothing, right?
You're either all in on alternative sources of energy or you're a complete asshole.
And like you said, a balanced energy policy, but that's got to be driven from the top.
I really do think that one of the reasons why we're staring at this invasion in Ukraine right now is because we got our energy policy so wrong, right?
If oil, if crude's down at 34 bucks a barrel, Putin really can't afford his adventurism that he's engaged in right now.
You get it up to where it's been and where it's been climbing to, and that gives him a lot of hope.
And then he looks around and he thinks, yeah, you've fed into my plan anyway.
You know, it's been clear for years that he's using energy as a weapon.
That's an obvious statement, right?
And we just fed into it by saying we're putting our hands up.
You know what?
We're going to kill the energy industry here in the States, you know, in our pursuit for green technology.
And he looks at that and he goes, yeah, great.
That's exactly what I want.
And thank you for the help.
So, yeah, I think we screwed the pooch on that one as far as the current administration goes.
Meanwhile, meanwhile, did you guys hear about what Saudi Arabia announced the last 24 hours?
Have you seen this or no, Tyler?
Okay.
So go to Wall Street Journal story or Examiner or Fox or Bloomberg or any one of them.
You can go to any one of their stories, okay?
So Saudi Arabia just announced, if you can open that up, Saudi Arabia considering accepting the won instead of dollars for Chinese oil sales.
Okay.
So China is playing aggressively coming in saying, hey, we're here.
We're waiting.
Can you imagine what happens if Saudi Arabia goes away from the dollar, which the dollar has historically been what?
The main currency.
And now they're going to take this angle.
What kind of a look is that on the U.S.?
What kind of a look is that on the administration?
What kind of a look is that for the world?
What does the world say when they see this?
Uh-oh, motive.
China is officially the new powerhouse in charge.
U.S. is getting more and more and more weaker with the dollar.
What do you think about when you see this, Tom?
Man, we've got to get that vice president out there to say something nonsensical.
You know, we've got to send her on a tour.
No, I think this is also, I think, national security.
The dollar's been a storehouse of value and also the store, sort of the ruler by which all currencies are measured.
It's been the stable currency.
And it may be, oh, well, that's an elite thing to say, such an imperialist thing to say to put your currency out there.
But I think it's a security issue, personally.
Can you pull up the article to read the whole article?
Go to the Wall Street Journal one.
This is the heel.
The other one's behind the paywall.
Okay, let me look at this one.
Two nations have intermittently discussed a major of a matter of six years, but talks about 2022, disgruntled over the United States' nuclear negotiations with Iran and its lack of backing for Saudi Arabia's military operation.
And boom!
There you go.
By the way, did you see what just happened right there?
These guys are sitting there negotiating with Iran on nuclear deals.
And Saudi says, no problem.
I thought we were your number one ally.
You're doing that.
We're going to China.
Nearly 80% of global oil sales are priced in dollars.
And since the mid-70s, the Saudis have exclusively used the dollar for oil training as part of security agreement with the U.S. government, according to the journal.
The talks are the latest in an ongoing effort for Beijing both to make its currency tradable in international oil markets and strengthen its relationship with the Saudis.
Specifically, China previously aided Riyadh in construction of ballistic missiles and construction of nuclear power.
Conservative relationship has increasing fate in recent years.
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salaman initially put forth a public image as a reformer liberalizing the country's policies on women's rights lands.
However, 2007.
Anyway, so there you go.
You sit there and you negotiate with Iran, you lose Saudi.
Well, but the interesting thing with China is, while China's been increasing their military support and technology cooperation with the Saudis, they've also been at the same time and are currently increasing their economic cooperation with Iran, which if you look at it, they go, well, how do you square those?
They don't care.
China, as long as it's in the Xi's regime's best interest, that's all they care about.
They are very straightforward.
It's what you said before about your enemies and at least honest.
How many billion did China give?
400 billion, 25 billion.
20 billion.
Exactly.
Am I saying it correctly?
400 billion, 25.
Type in Iran, China, 400 billion, 25 years.
Well, aren't they kind of talking both sides of their mouth right there?
Whereas I'm talking about Saudi Arabia right here.
Search it.
Search it, Tyler.
Just type in China, Iran.
They're acknowledging the fact that China is doing business with Iran, investing in Iran, but now they're basically dissing America because we're having conversations with Iran.
It's not like we're having economic conversations with Iran.
We're trying to basically figure out this Iran nuclear deal that's been back and forth left and right for 10 years now.
But the current administration is very clear about their essential, their agreement to lift sanctions, right?
So that opens a spigot and gets Iranian oil flowing.
That concerns the Saudis.
So they're going to look at that in terms of their own interests.
It is bad.
And China, again, you look at just their relationship with Putin.
Is it Pew?
Is it Psaki?
Pisaki.
I like that.
You look at their relationship.
And again, China, do you honestly think that they're going to respond to threats where the U.S. may say, well, you better not cozy up or cooperate with Putin because that's not going to end well for you.
We're going to impose sanctions.
That's not how Xi is going to respond, right?
Gee is dealing with Russia right now because he perceives it as in his best interest.
As soon as this thing, if it were to go really ugly, you're going to see daylight between them because China's playing a much longer game.
And I just, so it is fascinating.
But this conflict, apparent conflict between them dealing with both the Saudis and Iran at the same time is, I think, has been fascinating.
Well, hold on.
I just thought of something.
This is a perfect analogy to what you were talking about.
Here it is.
You talked about, I trust my enemies more than I trust my allies.
Well, we know that Iran is our enemy.
Facts.
Okay.
What the fuck is Saudi Arabia at this point to us?
Are they our ally?
Are they our strategic partner?
Are they an enemy?
Did they have an involvement in 9-11?
That is what's clouding U.S. judgment right there.
I don't know what to make of Saudi Arabia.
Saudi Arabia is Michael Jordan when he says Republicans and Democrats buy Jordans.
Everyone buys oil and everyone buys oil.
So they stay in the middle and they just say, hey, listen, China buys from us.
Russia buys from us.
Maybe not Iran, but U.S. buys from us.
Everybody buys from us.
But that's their perspective on us.
What should our perspective be on Saudi Arabia?
You buy from them.
Saudi Arabia.
That's just a business transaction.
First transactional relationship.
Very good question.
It's not a vendor.
It's a partner.
What is the difference between a vendor and a partner?
Vendor you use once in a while.
A partner you use all the time.
You can't treat Saudi Arabia as a vendor.
U.S. is treating them as a vendor.
It's an insult the way you're handling them as a vendor.
I would also be upset if I'm them.
You need to treat them as a partner.
They're not trying to attack you.
They're not trying to do anything to you.
What do you mean?
How many people from 9-11 were from Saudi?
The Saudi government that's selling oil to you, you need to treat them as a partner, not a vendor.
You can't just go to them and say, you're now an enemy.
Do that.
So let's just say you do that since 1973.
They've been using U.S. dollar, and now they're going to go to China.
Now, what happens?
I totally understand what you're saying.
Obviously, we want to keep them on the dollar and be a partner.
But what you're pointing out, something that this administration, previous administrations, it's a very difficult relationship.
But people are very conflicted about it.
But I agree with the fact that the world is the way it is.
You got to do business with what you got.
Sometimes you're dealing with a government that you look at and go, in an ideal world, you're not what we'd like to deal with.
Of course.
But fuck it.
That's not the way it is.
Let's serve two evils.
And then how do you even talk to your partner about clearly MBS, Mohammed Belsaman, chopped up the journalist Khashoggi?
Clearly, that happened.
Okay, on the world stage.
Everyone condemned that.
All right, well, you know, sorry about Khashoggi.
Let's just get some more oil going.
Like, where the lines are so blurred with Saudi Arabia.
And that's what makes me bring up.
What do you do?
So that's the question.
That's why we got CIA here.
Yeah, but what do you do in this situation?
Would you rather, do you see more Saudi Arabia having an honest relationship with you or Iran?
Well, again, do you trust your enemies?
You know that they hate you, or do you trust your supposed partner ally?
What are we buying from Iran?
Nothing.
We're buying their ability to not create nuclear capabilities.
We're buying them off.
Okay.
But by doing that, you're also pissing off Saudi.
Correct.
And then that's a whole Sunni Shiite dilemma.
You know how you, do you have anybody in your family that no matter what friends, or employees, or anybody, customers, no matter what you do, you can never make them happy.
Yes.
Okay, I've had people like that.
You know what I, when I, when I finally get to a point that I'm like, there is nothing I can do to make her happy, make him happy, make them happy, nothing.
Listen, guys, let's just go on separate ways.
Because there's nothing.
Hey, let's take them out to dinner.
Oh, everything goes good.
Next day, put you guys.
Hey, let me get them this.
Hey, let me do.
So you're never going to make Iran happy, but at least you can keep Saudi civil.
So which one do you want to look at more as a long-term person you want to keep?
I see.
That's the company.
That's how I process.
I may be wrong, but that's hypothesis.
But then how do you handle the nuclear negotiations with Iran?
Do you just ask the question, even if the guidelines you put in place, do you trust they're going to follow the agreement?
Seriously?
Like, you think Xi follows foreign relation policies?
Seriously.
Right.
I mean, we had that agreement between Xi and President Obama at one point.
Okay, we're not going to engage in cyber shenanigans.
Well, that's a lot of horseshit.
Or we're not going to engage in economic espionage.
Of course they are.
That's how they got to the point on the food chain where they're at right now.
That's how they intend to get to the top.
But I think with Saudi and every other nation, you've got to think in terms of we're going to act in our own national best interests.
What is important for our national security?
What's in our best interest as a nation?
That's how every other country does it.
There's nothing wrong with that.
Well, we tend to apologize for it on occasion, which is puzzling.
You're talking about the Obama apology tour around the Middle East?
Well, just in general, every time we act in our own best interest, it's like, oh, my God, I can't believe we're doing that.
Or you'll get it out in social media and a sector of the population will be angst-ridden.
But yeah, I think with the Iran deal, look, how do you deal with that?
Well, you deal with it by getting a better deal than we had, right?
We didn't have full transparency because they wouldn't allow it.
So when John Kerry would bang on about trust and verification.
Well, we couldn't verify because we didn't have access to some of their key facilities.
And that's a problem.
So create a better deal or just say, fine, we're not going to, I'm sorry, we're not getting that deal.
And yes, we're going to then have to have better intelligence that's going to allow us.
Right now, our intelligence on that target is kind of all over the place.
Some people say, well, their breakout is a month away.
No, maybe their breakout's 12 months away.
Well, there's a big gap there.
So that's an important part of this because at some point, maybe the decision is you got to go in and degrade what they're doing.
But yeah, when you talk about the Saudis, you hear that all the time in Washington.
People are always spun up about this.
Sounds like we've got to get some cats on the scene in Iran to snoop around with nuclear facility.
Cats, dogs.
Did you guys see the Homer story with Joe Rogan?
Did you see that story?
Homer gets canceled, meets Joe Rogan in a new Simpsons episode.
This is a New York Post story.
The Simpsons is dividing critics after spoofing controversial podcast host Joe Rogan54 in a brand new episode satirizing cancel culture in the divisive season 33, episode 14, titled, You Won't Believe What This Episode Is About?
Act 3 will shock you.
Homer is erroneously blamed for leaving the family dog named Santa Little Helper in a hot car, resulting in him getting publicly shamed.
Newsweek reported, things really go off the rails when The Simpsons patriarch tries to apologize and inadvertently knocks Reverend Lovejoy out of the church window.
Videos of the fiasco subsequently go viral on social media, causing Homer to lose his job and become ostracized by his family and friends, co-workers.
Eventually, the donut gobbler meets up with Joe Rogan, Poltyanger.
The commentators never explicitly mentioned by name, but he is represented by a generic right-wing podcast host who is the only one willing to meet with Homer following his cancellation.
Needless to say, the gap rang hollow with many critics, with screen rant, deeming it's bizarrely misguided and self-contradictory, particularly problematic per side with the fact that Homer was under undeserving of his excommunication, presumably unlikely many so-called victims of cancel culture.
So, what do you think about this?
By the way, does that even look like Joe Rogan?
Does he look like kind of Joe Littlebitt?
Yeah, I like how they just said, We're not going to name him right-wing podcast.
Okay, right-wing podcast.
Pariah's welcome.
How shall we draw him?
Let's draw him like this, and we won't name him.
Yeah, yeah, the other day, they uh they called Russell Brand a right-wing podcast.
Can you imagine calling Russell Brand right-wing Republican podcast?
But apparently, now Joe Rogan is a couple of the guys shared a video with it was it went viral on Twitter about the times Joe has said things that has nothing to do with being right-wing.
The only thing he's doing is he's questioning things.
I think he said one time, you know, Barack Obama is the best president of our generation.
Yeah, right-wing guy would never say that.
They would probably say something.
And he would vote for Bernie.
He would vote for Bernie.
He said a bunch of different things.
Such bullshit how they portray him as being right-wing just because he says things that are contradictory to the narrative that is being spoken out there.
It's absolutely true.
Look, he just has interesting people on and you know, asks questions, good questions.
And you've been on Rogan how many times?
Yeah, a dozen or so.
Just a dozen times on Rogan.
No big deal, Mike Baker, CIA.
Yeah, but he's just curious.
He's curious about everything, right?
But God forbid, you should have someone say something on your show that somebody else doesn't agree with.
The one thing about self-righteous people is I don't know how they're so fucking dry.
There's no sense of humor, right?
I mean, who the fuck takes exception to a Simpsons episode?
I mean, how does that work?
So, anyway, meanwhile, Joe keeps winning.
Yep, yeah, because all this you do, you're all just helping him win.
The mainstream media doesn't even know it.
They're officially Joe Rogan's best publicist, and the great news is he has to pay them nothing.
They're doing it for free.
By the way, all this publicity they're doing, do you realize if you were to put a dollar amount of how much the media is shit talking of him making videos, saying stuff, how many billions of views it got, Joe?
And if you were to put a dollar amount on it, I'm going to speculate on what that dollar amount is.
If Joe was running for office and he wanted to buy this viewership, it's probably going to cost him $300 million.
So, mainstream media just brought Joe Rogan $300 million of free publicity.
By the way, Joe needs to say thank you to my favorite publicist.
By the way, this is not new.
The same thing happened with Rush Limbaugh.
You may remember that there is a small coterie of Democratic congressmen that tried to pass what they called the Hush Rush Act.
And he was talking about equal time.
And that led Rush on this big campaign where it was I am equal time.
And it actually propelled Rush from the consortium of AM talk into the whole EIB network.
And so it actually was jet fuel on Russia's trajectory.
And we see it again 20 years later.
Yep.
And by the way, all the news of Rogan getting canceled, you don't hear that as much anymore, right?
This reminds me of kind of what Jordan Peterson said.
He was sitting in Mike Baker's seat right there.
He said, Listen, the hardest part to do is deal with it when it's at its worst.
When things are, the heat is on you.
If you could stick it out, you'll be sitting pretty on the other side.
Now, you know, everything that happened with our friends at Spotify and Rumble offering him $100 million.
Where's that now?
Yeah, I think he all young.
He survived the worst of it.
Neil Young put himself back on Spotify, as it turns out.
Neil Young went back.
Yeah, he went back, and as did, I think, everyone else.
I'd love to see the Neil Young on Joe Rogan podcast coming soon.
Oh, by the way, that would be if there's a guy that could pull it off, he could pull it off to do something like that in regards to getting somebody in.
By the way, did you guys hear about Putin's girlfriend?
Have you guys heard about Putin's girlfriend?
Or did you hear any story about Putin?
I have.
Can you pull this up?
So, inside the luxury life of Putin's secret girlfriend as Ukraine goes through hell.
Okay, this is a mirror story.
Tyler, I don't know where you found this from.
Her name is Alina, I believe, right?
I noticed you had a picture of her on your computer.
I don't know why she's not.
It's not bad, but Olympic gold medal-winning gymnast.
Alina Kabayeva, 38, reportedly traveled to a very private and very secure chalet near Lugano in Switzerland with her young children while Russia invaded Ukraine, widely believed to be the mother of Putin's two sons and a daughter, or possibly two daughters.
Kabeva lives in a luxurious bubble, shielded from the horrors her 69-year-old partner is inflicting on innocent children.
In February 2015, a local TV station reported that Kabeva had given birth at a private VIP maternity clinic in Sorengo on the periphery of the city in spotless clean streets that weave between Cartier, Gucci, Louis Vuitton, mega-rich Russian strolls through pampered pooches.
Anyways, was that her in the previous picture, too?
Go back.
She's a gymnast.
Yes.
She's very flexible.
She is, quote, the most flexible woman in Russia.
Wow.
It's true that opposites are traps.
She's very flexible, and Putin not too flexible on these quarrels and opinions.
Is this true, Bizdog with your opinion?
Although for the rest of us, this is a KGB torture move.
Yeah.
You could put a listening device in her.
It'd be like Acoustic Kitty.
Here we go.
This just went to completely.
See where I'm going with that.
Very creative.
And you say CIA is not that creative.
What are you talking about?
I know.
They're very creative.
Naturally creative.
Did you guys hear about this raise that Congress gave themselves?
Did you see the raise?
It's very honorable.
So if you want to go to this page five, Congress decides to give them a raise.
I think it's on page six.
Okay.
Congress gives themselves a double-digit raise.
This is a town hall story.
Amid economic turmoil for the American people.
They're representative in Washington.
Gave their office a double-digit raise this month, even as the average American worker finds their real wages decreasing due to inflation that outpaces wages at noon.
If you missed Congress giving itself a little pat on the back, that's understandable.
Members aren't likely to tout outside the beltway how they're filing their own, filling their own office coffers.
Plus, the funding increase for congressional offices just went was just one part of the 2700-page omnibus bill that funded the U.S. government into $1.5 trillion.
The roll call explains $5.9 billion fiscal 2022 legislative branch.
Funding, the increased taxpayer funding for congressional offices is $134 million more than was allocated in the last fiscal year, a 21% increase according to the House Appropriations Committee summary.
In addition, congressional offices in the House side get $18.2 million in paid internships, that 21% raise for the offices with a 5.1% year-over-year wage growth for household report in a February job report.
And you can see why Americans might not be that thrilled and frustrated.
FY, I asked Tyler to ask to check how much the military got a raise in the last 12 months.
2.7% raise.
So they get a 2.7% raise, and they gave themselves a 21% raise.
God, I love it.
I mean, this is a very honorable move for them.
Inflation is at about 8%.
Yeah.
Inflation is at 8%.
To think.
You know, with all the bipartisanship that's going on in Congress, finally there's something they agree upon, let's give ourselves more money.
Anyone object?
Mcconnell Pelosi, all right, let's do it all right.
Term limits, term limits, term limits that's this.
I mean.
It is astounding when you look at the size of of of, of the operation of Congress, and the number of staffers they've got.
Um god, I can't say enough bad things.
They're so dysfunctional.
That's the other part of it is.
If we we're clearly not sending our best and brightest to Washington, I mean, I think possibly most people would hopefully agree on that, but the system is designed to, it seems like, increasingly send dysfunctional people to Washington.
Well, as they say, every now and then an innocent man is sent to the legislature.
By the way, I want to just get a quick look at congressional approval ratings and where they stand right now.
Tyler's on the scene.
Where do they stand, Tyler?
I think it just said 18, all right, and they're still in double digits.
Guys, they're still in double digits, by the way, for 12 years.
I'm curious, like, what other things should we look at for?
Uh, raises that are given so, military being one of them?
Uh old, old folks, retirements they're getting what social security check to see how much social security raises.
They did increase it.
Okay, if it matches it, I respect it.
If you, if you increase social security.
So if your social security is what?
Uh uh, or is it a net social security banning about social security, 5.9 percent, while inflation is what?
7.9 percent?
And you're raising a 5.9 percent, but Congress got 21 percent, it's not uh, not a bad again.
But these are the types of things that the average person watches and says, let me get this straight.
We're going through yeah, you're raising gas prices.
I'm going through what i'm going through right now.
During this time, you secretly all give yourself a 21 percent raise, but you don't do it to me.
So if this were to happen and they raise social security by 21 percent, they raise military by 21 percent, they raise themselves by 21 percent, then somebody could say what okay cool, I can see that fine, even though the number may be astronomically high.
Uh, but when you do it and you give yourself 21 social security 5.9 military 2.7, right it's.
It's what Mike Baker would call it an asshole move.
Yeah, by the way, if you want to call it, take a look in there.
The Medicare surcharge is coming.
So the six percent they gave you they then take away on drugs, hospitalization and physicians, so it's probably net less for grandma, not to mention the inflation rate of eight percent.
Um, you know, eating into that on grandma's grocery store.
And if you want to read more about this, you can check out the 2700 page uh bill that's uh reaching Congress right now, which nobody read.
They passed it.
Kid again.
How how, how screwed up do you have to be to put together a 2700 page omnibus bill, not allow for people to debate it, read it, create some transparency around it for the voters and then make a decision?
And this is.
But they do this shit all the time and I guarantee you the people that wrote those most of that legislation they're like 23 year old interns and staffers.
You know who you know are probably hungover.
Uh, i'm not.
I'm not saying that's a bad thing at all.
Sounds like we're gonna get the ATF on that exactly.
So we've had she looked into the camera, remember.
We'll find out when we pass it.
Remember that yeah, she looked right into the camera.
So that was for the what, the infrastructure deal or the a.
We'll find out when we pass it.
So we had a ton of good comments today and I I want to get one in, and since we have Mr Black files declassified right, I thought this was really interesting.
Uh, Ronin Returns asks.
He asked a few things, but specifically, if there was alien contact, who would have jurisdiction?
I think that's so, and would it be the president?
Would it be the head of the military, the ATF?
They would have.
They show up with cigars, a thigh-lifted keyload, a couple LRs.
Why can't they land in Manhattan?
Mike, I got to ask you.
I figured you got CIA guys coming in here.
You could have a double life as a comedian.
You could have pretended you were a comedian.
Do most CIA guys have this sense of humor, or you're like the funny guy in the crew.
That's the only skill set I had when they recruited me was that I did like four years undercover as a stand-up and traveled around the world because you get good access, right?
And so, no, you know what?
Most of the guys I know are a lot funnier and smarter than I am.
Funnier.
I found it hard to believe.
Smarter?
Let's get him to answer the question because this guy wants to know the question.
So what do we do with these aliens?
Well, you know what?
If you set aside Area 51, which is pretty much where we keep them all, it's a good question because who would have jurisdiction over an airline?
I hope to God.
What's the guy's name, Ronan?
Ronan, I don't have a fucking clue.
Come on.
Yeah, and if you did, you wouldn't say.
Okay, well, that's fair enough, yeah, to say that.
Look, would the CIA have jurisdiction?
Well, possibly, because it involves a foreign asset, I think you could say that.
You know, the Bureau would probably come in and say it's our turf.
It crossed state lines, do they?
Yeah, so you'd probably get this sort of thing going on.
But look, Area 51, going to that, that was set up by, you know, by the agency, basically, but it was set up for the development of air assets, of new technology.
And so that's, you know, again, whether it's the Blackbird or whether you're talking about U2 or any of our assets, it's so Area 51 was started and it made sense, right?
That people would be going, what the fuck is that?
I saw something really bizarre flying around.
Well, yeah, you know, you just saw a stealth wing, you know, fly over your ranch, and it looks like an alien aircraft.
So, I mean, I get why Area 51 is so fascinating, and it is fascinating.
But I think if we actually encountered, and there are some things going on right now, the Pentagon came out and actually admitted that they had an office, ATIP, that was following unidentified aerial phenomena and trying to figure out what the hell they were.
That was a big admission by the Pentagon.
So then you ask yourself, well, why did they come out and say that?
Were they just trying to get ahead of something or were they just thinking, okay, it's time we can declassify the fact that this office existed?
But from a national security perspective, if you've got something out there that, say, a naval aviator saw and couldn't identify, and you've got gun camera footage of it, then it makes sense from a national security perspective.
You better be investigating it and figuring out what it is.
Is it a new technology from a hostile nation or what the hell it is?
Well, first of all, that's an interesting question to ask.
I'd be curious myself on what the answer to that question is.
It's going to be Joe Rogan.
We're just going to be going to the doors.
But we are coming to the end of the podcast.
And a reminder to everybody, Season 2 of Black Files declassified airing Wednesday, 9 p.m. Eastern Standard Time on Science Channel and Discovery Plus.
We have a commercial to show you what this that's coming up if you want to play that.
Nice.
Here we go.
Why was our government investigating the paranormal?
That information is still all classified to this day.
Whatever was being done was done for mind control.
You fully immerse yourself in the enemy.
This was by far the most terrifying experience of my life.
There might be something right here.
It seems like an effort to keep the public in the dark.
That's exactly how psychological operations work.
Hello?
I wouldn't call this a treatment.
I would call it torture.
The Soviet Union created a doomsday system.
These systems are always learning.
Always developing.
Is that an existential threat to mankind?
The Navy's already looking at how to use aerial drones to attack an objective.
Whoever can master those techniques will rule the world.
There we go.
Next Wednesday, 9 p.m. Black Files Declassified.
Do not miss it.
Put the link below to get more information on that.
Mike, thank you.
Thank you for running, brother.
Thank you.
Of course, great to have you on.
Really enjoyed it.
I'm glad we had a chance to do it face to face.
Looking forward to the next time we have you on again.
