Title: Divisions in the US Deep State (w/ Lee Stranahan)
Show: Caleb Maupin
Date: 2021-01-22
URL: https://youtu.be/kFAHekt9_mg
Duration: 40:00

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[00:12] and we are back this is lee's [ __ ] and i'm here with my host john kiriakou and by the way if you have a terrestrial radio and you enjoy a boombox something like that a filco as i used to have my mustang well here's another question john before we get to caleb real quick what was your first car mine was a 71 mustang convertible what was your first car joe oh yeah my mine was a 72 dodge charger special edition oh a mopar guy yeah it was fabulous i think about it a lot my brother

[00:43] started out as a ford guy like me but he's become a mopar guy and i can't i can't really argue with that you know what i mean like there's nothing sure and the new the new chargers are as close as we have in this day and age to a muscle car those are nice oh yeah they are the chargers and the challengers really really cool cars yeah yeah the challenger challenger's great too joining us now caleb open we love having cantaloupe on the show he of course is an arty correspondent and an author

[01:14] hey caleb how you doing today i'm great how about yourself how both are you doing good to talk to you yeah we're good yeah i'm good john you're good right yeah i'm doing well thank you okay so caleb we were just talking about this with alexander mccorris it was very interesting to me that china literally like within an hour after the inauguration i think it must have been like within an hour after the inauguration they announced sanctions against 28 people including

[01:46] mike pompeo the ex the barely ex secretary of state he still had the secretary of state skank stank on him from uh just just being secretary of state there was maybe a skank too i don't know not getting in his personal life but the chinese sanctioned him and a bunch of other people including the newly pardoned steve bannon and uh we were talking about that with alexander what was your take on that caleb well it seems like china which has

[02:17] pulled ahead amid this global pandemic while economies around the world are not expanding there certainly was and they you know experienced at least some rate of growth in 2020. uh they're saying look you can sanction us and we can sanction you back and why not make a symbolic gesture and go after some of the people that have accused us of allegations that are widely disputed uh that have been funding uh groups in hong kong that have been engaging in provocative acts of street violence

[02:48] lighting people on fire uh etc and uh on top of that since mike pompeo really made his twitter page just you know a a festival of anti-chinese uh hysteria why not uh you know make a statement as he heads out of office that they don't particularly care much for that um and i think it's also to send a message if you listen to biden's speech you know biden was very very very much repudiating the previous four years it was probably a gesture to buy

[03:18] look the past four years are over you don't like the guys who came before you neither do we uh so maybe that's something we have in common and maybe we can sit down and resolve this and and end this trade war and reach a conclusion uh where we can have better relations between the two countries and yes you talked a tough game against us during the elections and yes you're not beijing biden you're not a communist you're not sympathizing with china but you know maybe we can restart all of this um and uh we don't like the trump guys either so let's let's negotiate i mean sounds like to me that's what the jester said

[03:49] that's very interesting you know i i heard too some messages in biden's speech today about human rights he didn't come right out and address the issue as a separate issue but it was sort of this blanket um oh re-commitment i guess to to long-standing american policy on human rights uh and that made me think of the news that we've seen over the previous i don't know year or two about the uyghurs in western china

[04:20] the united nations says that there's a genocide there uh the chinese say there is no such uh genocide going on that this is uh an uprising it's a national security issue where should we expect the biden people caleb to fall on the issue of the uyghurs do you foresee any kind of change in u.s policy toward china because of this i don't think the u.n said that there was a genocide i think there were certain countries within the united nations who used their

[04:50] platform at the u.n to make that allegation but there were many countries at the u.n who did not agree with that allegation and not just china not just russia but many countries around the world didn't buy that allegation but certainly that allegation is being made by a number of u.s alliance countries um but there are a number of countries that are you know sympathetic to china and russia a number of countries that are just kind of neutral you know like india and other countries that are saying and we don't quite buy that um but look human rights has become the mantra of u.s military policy used to be we

[05:22] were going around the world to fight the communists because you know you know the vietnamese were going to get in their canoes and come over here and and invade the united states and you know abolish our american way of life and so we had to stop the domino theory or whatever now uh you know the pentagon is just uh superman uh and wherever uh superman hears people around the world being oppressed why uh he jumps into the nearest phone booth and puts on his pentagon superman costume and flies into action to rescue the oppressed and

[05:52] anywhere in the world and uh you know the united states is just a great superhero and the pentagon is nothing but this humanitarian rescue organization that goes around saving people all over the planet that's the narrative we get uh people say that really probably started you know being the dominant justification for us military interventions with the clinton administration and yugoslavia right there was no no no perception that that serbia and slovakia were in any way a threat to the united states but the united states had to intervene because it was just this moral

[06:22] obligation then the rest of the world looks at this and says really you are so concerned about human rights in certain select countries but you're aligned with saudi arabia and you're aligned with all kinds of brutal dictatorships in south and central america and you've got all kinds of brutal human rights violating regimes that you not only are friendly with but give weapons and money to and something's not right about this narrative but that's not the way it goes on cnn and uh and this is how it always goes and this is kind of an interesting aspect of how

[06:52] the liberal narrative has triumphed it used to be you know we were fighting the reds and the commies and and communism had to stop from expanding now it's the united states is this purveyor of liberal values all around the world and we have this global responsibility to to bring liberal ideas to all these countries around the world and and it's kind of a change in the narrative and i think this may be what some of the trump allies were talking about when they talked about globalism the trump folks were just as much in favor of military interventionism at least the pompeo and

[07:24] gina haspel crowd um but they seemed to justify it more in terms of the interests of the u.s population overall not this kind of global human rights narrative lee this is uh an important point and i i i'd love to hear your thoughts too uh this is an important point that caleb makes because there really is a double standard there really is hypocrisy in u.s foreign policy especially on the issue of human rights you know every embassy every u.s embassy in the world every u.s embassy in every country with

[07:54] which we have diplomatic relations every year is tasked with writing a human rights report on that country and submitting it to congress i was the human rights officer in in bahrain for two years i wrote that report it's quite an undertaking and it usually goes for hundreds and hundreds of pages so we like to we like to pretend that we're a shining beacon of human rights yet we provide arms and uh and aid to countries run by dictators

[08:24] we have this special relationship with the likes of saudi arabia for example and and many other countries that are run by dictators uh we have a death penalty of our own uh here in this country and then we criticize other countries for doing exactly the same kind of thing that we do is that going to change let me let me give you the let me give you this the other side of exactly the same coin because i agree with what both you guys are saying but i'm gonna bring up a what sounds at first like a completely

[08:56] different point but it's actually the same thing so somebody who i worked for steve bannon i wrote for breitbart for many years people on the right you don't hear people at the right as they get together talk about human rights i'm just telling you i you know if if you're at cpac walking around there's not a lot of discussion either up on the stage or just at the open bars at night about hey you know i'm really worried about human rights no one talks about that just so i'm just saying it's just not

[09:28] topic of discussion but you know what has been a big topic of discussion for a few years is radical islamic terrorism and you hear that up on the stage and people talking about it people on the right are concerned about radical islamic terrorism in fact when trump first came into office he made a point of saying look the media won't say radical islamic terrorism and i'll say it over and over again he kind of stopped doing that this is the same issue here's the hypocrisy if i was at

[10:00] breitbart and breitbart had decided under bannon to be we're really going to be pro-china i could have done article after article after article about radical islamic terrorism in china by the uyghurs that right that's what the issue there is and i'm not even trying to take a side but it's not like just the chinese decided we don't like you there is a real problem with terrorism

[10:30] in that region and what what they did was they've gotten think about this it's amazing because i've seen it on the right they've gotten right wing people who five years ago were talking about the muslim brotherhood and all this other stuff and they didn't even know what they were talking about because they didn't know that the muslim world league was a bigger deal they've got them to take up the plight of the uyghurs as part of their new cold war narrative on china so on the left i agree with you they talk

[11:02] about human rights and they're hypocrites and hypocrites completely but in the right they no longer talk about radical islamist terrorism certainly as it relates to china so uh caleb i'm curious about what both you have to say about that caleb take it well what's interesting is i think big new brzezinski would be absolutely delighted with this inauguration and with this new administration zbigniew brzezinski considered himself to be kind of a mentor to barack obama

[11:34] there's connections there with the columbia university center of communist studies where obama obama studied at columbia and that's where brzezinski's kind of you know academic following was and that this big new brzezinski his whole strategy for the cold war is he said let's make the cold war less ideological let's downplay this capitalism versus communism stuff and instead let's you know find people in the communist world and find people in the east that can be allies and and we can use this kind of proxies and

[12:06] let's play up the differences among the soviet eastern bloc and between china and the ussr and let's let's covertly manipulate uh potential rivals the united states against each other and it was victory brzezinski who bragged about the afghan trap and how the soviet union was lured into afghanistan and how the united states worked with a wealthy young saudi by the name of osama bin laden to build an army of extremists in afghanistan to fight against the people's democratic republic

[12:37] um and they eventually won and that's where the taliban came from what's interesting is that china at that point you know was being courted by the united states as an ally against the soviets and in the uigar regions uh that's where osama bin laden and the uscia and others set up shop on china's border with afghanistan and that's why there is a base of jihadist and wahhabi extremism in that region it mainly comes from the fact that that china allowed the uscia and others to to set up

[13:08] those kind of networks there to fight the soviets in afghanistan uh so the legacy of brzezinski the legacy of kind of courting different extremist and radical groups around the world utilizing them as proxies against our geopolitical rivals uh that legacy is very very well alive and i think that's why you know on the right there was this whole thing you know you know why will obama never say radical islamic terror because he's a secret obama wasn't a muslim but it was about the fact that the united states was actively courting people in places like libya and syria to be proxies of american

[13:40] intelligence to tear down the the government of libya which had the highest life expectancy on the african continent to tear down and format civil war in syria which has cost us at least half a million lives if not more than that um and that you know if obama were to get up and talk about radical islamic terrorism that would offend these various wahhabi and muslim brotherhood aligned groups that were being utilized as as proxies to fight our battles for us and tear down nationalist and socialist and anti-imperialist governments that we don't particularly care for

[14:11] um and i think that that brzezinski uh brzezinski's ghost and brzezinski's legacy is very very well alive and the democrats are very much out of that out of that tradition of foreign policy strategy true you know it's funny too that these foreign policies which which ought to be controversial and ought to be uh the cause of great debate on capitol hill are not and they just continue regardless of who's in the white house regardless of what party is in control of either the white house or the congress

[14:42] and they go for generations it's the same thing year after year after year and then we find ourselves in these endless wars yeah what's interesting is i i become keenly aware of how and by the way brzezinski is listed in the little ukraine's little black book that i have by the way i'll just say he's one of the names in there uh what i noticed and i became keenly aware of it recently is how bannon himself specifically was involved in ginning up these

[15:15] point counterpoint narratives kind of brilliantly where he was working with white nationalists period but he's also really uh has fealty to zionists too and that seems like a contradiction at first but that's what that's what bannon was doing so that brzezinski thing you're talking about caleb i mean it sounds like you know in a way people don't appreciate what a skilled offer i really mean this

[15:46] people don't appreciate what a skilled operator bannon is because he was able to work stuff behind the scenes he's his main audience is on the right but he's ginning up these divisions which is a tried and true technique go ahead go ahead caleb well well i just wanted to add one difference that i think is very key between the democrats and the republicans or the the left and the so-called right or the so-called laughter you know that one of the differences is kind of how they want the united states to

[16:16] be perceived not so much about what the united states does around the world but rather how the united states is perceived what kind of friendly gestures are made or not made etc um one key difference is that you know john brennan who was obama's cia director made a really big point of saying the cia would never torture uh they did not believe in torture if obama ever asked him to torture he would resign well you know when trump came in john brennan was out um and first we had mike pompeo and then

[16:47] he moved on to be secretary of state and then gina haspel who has a reputation for being a defender of torture and harsh interrogation techniques uh she stepped up to leave the cia and then you know of course she has stepped down and biden will be replacing her and it wasn't so much an attitude a question of should the usa torture or not i think the issue at hand is should the united states be perceived as a country that tortures and on the right uh there's a feeling that we should be known as a strong country you mess with us we might torture you we don't care if you like us we don't

[17:18] care if you're friendly but you mess with us be afraid peace through strength on the left there's this attitude that we should be perceived as this woke human rights loving country that is is you know getting over it racial injustice and intolerance and it's really a matter of emphasis what narrative should united the united states put out there an image of peace through strength be terrified of us work with us or be afraid or you know uh look we're this amazing human rights loving free society and we want to bring some of that freedom to you and wouldn't it be fun to work with us we're really really friendly

[17:48] uh good cop bad cop almost well okay we got to go to a quick break here when we john when we come back you bring it back and i'm very curious about what you have to say about what caleb said and i will see caleb's interesting point and raise it you know half a chip because caleb's pretty damn smart so i can't really out bet him but i'm very curious john you being inside the c.i.a did you see that dynamic in rank and file ci just the people the guy at the next

[18:20] desk or the guy the next desk did you see that did you see people who were on the right on the i mean legitimately not playing a role but you talk to him because i heard back in the early days of the cia i've read i read more books about that there was the sort of ivy league educated group and then there's the people who kind of ex-cops xcia people and that was one cultural split within the cia we'll find out about that and more

[18:50] hitler malphine is our guest and of course i'm joined by my co-host the esteemed john kiriakou i'm lee stranahan this is the back story

[19:22] uh welcome back to the back story i'm john kiriakou i'm here with my co-host lee stranahan we were talking liam a moment ago about uh with caleb about um uh the attitude at the cia the attitude of the racket among the rank and file to to torture and you know it's it's kind of funny when i was there in uh 2002 at the very start of the torture program there were so few people who were read into the compartment

[19:52] that when i was first read into it there were only 16 people in the entire us government who even knew that there was a torture program now of course that that changed little by little in the intervening months i'm talking about uh the summer of 2002 and i can tell you that there was a big difference between the rank and file and the cia's leadership uh the rank and file thought this was a terrible idea that first of all it stained us it

[20:23] dragged us down to the level of the people we were trying to fight but at the leadership level there was this there was this desire for revenge because they had dropped the ball 9 11 happened on their watch this was the worst intelligence failure in the history of the united states three thousand americans died that day because they didn't do their jobs and so whether torture worked or not

[20:54] was not an issue it was not something that was discussed at that high level it was torture for the sake of torture and if we were able to gather information that might disrupt a future attack then that was fine too but in my view it was just for revenge it was at the lower level at my level where people said this is wrong wrong wrong and we should not be in the business of doing it see everybody's shocked into silence we were all shocked into silence also there's three of us and we can't

[21:24] see each other and it's hard knowing to talk but caleb you thought comments what john said there well no i mean it sounds quite morally reprehensible um you know when it really gets down to it and that you know i mean i've heard many experts say that torture doesn't really work in terms of getting information the reason that governments engage in torture is to terrify the population and have the population know or the enemy know that this is something that they are capable of doing and that perhaps the rationale might be that if folks are not afraid to die

[21:55] because they are they believe they will they will go to heaven because they are martyrs for the faith uh that they will be terrified of getting tortured but it really at the end of the day is a is a this is a tool of terrifying people it is a tool of of you know getting people to submit and surrender it's not a tool of gathering useful intelligence from my understanding would you say that's correct that's right and you know another thing too that i think is very important reasonable people can agree to disagree first of all though it's a it's a scientific fact that torture does not work

[22:26] you just can't gather actionable intelligence because the person being tortured will tell you anything that they think you want to know just to get you to stop it might be true it's likely not true but either way the torturer then has to pass all that information to a team of analysts to vet it and by the time they finish vetting it that bomb has gone off in xyz city and you failed again now if if you want to torture for

[22:57] the sake of torture there are people on the right who think that this is a viable option that this is something that's not morally reprehensible and should be done but if that's your position you've got to change the law because the law is very clear torture is illegal you can't just pretend that the law doesn't exist you know and forgive me for getting on my soapbox but we have a law in this country called the torture act of 1946 and it

[23:28] outlawed specifically outlawed exactly those techniques that our enemies that we used on our enemies after 9 11 like waterboarding for example i'm going to use waterboarding as the as the example because it's the easiest one well in 1946 we executed japanese soldiers who had waterboarded american pows we executed them in january of 1968 the washington post ran a front page photograph of an american soldier

[23:59] waterboarding a north vietnamese prisoner when that photo ran robert mcnamara the secretary of defense ordered an investigation that very same day that soldier was arrested he was charged with torture convicted and sentenced to 20 years in a military prison well the law never changed from 1946 to 1968 to 2002 to 2021. the law never changed we changed but again if we change we can't just pretend that the

[24:31] law doesn't exist indeed now the church the church committee though did reveal that there were a lot of i mean this is not the first time the cia has engaged in this kind of activity i mean this stuff went on during and 70s if i'm not mistaken right you're absolutely right all the way up until 1974. yeah i know what you know one of the things that's i'm just going to address something that's going on in the chat room john because there's somebody in there who and i just i just locked them because i i'm not a free speech purist on this point i'm in favor

[25:03] of stupid uh i'm opposed to stupid people but somebody's in there saying because they know a lot more than you john that a you're lying that that that and then they're quoting this article where you said when you were brought on that our boss said uh to steer clear of 911 truthers which i i don't know if that's true but i hope it is and and the reason why is there's enough bad stuff about 911 that's absolutely provable such as the saudi involvement in it and

[25:35] the the pages that we're missing that i always think that bad information and a lot of the and we i've had whitney webb in the show we talked about the dancing israelis story and stuff like that so we've had stuff that i hear 9 11 people uh truthers like van jones by the way talk about uh sometimes on the show but i would like john you to respond and kendall i'm curious about how you deal here's the thing i don't think anyone could accuse me or john or caleb

[26:07] of being establishment shills so the idea on here that that we're just going along with the establishment line on 9 11. i think it's complex but i think that there's a lot of stupid stuff that gets said too and i'm curious about how you deal with that as a journalist caleb but john you want to respond first go ahead yeah listen i take it on the chin from 911 truthers all the time i take it on the chin from the from the pro torture crowd and uh

[26:39] listen i'm sorry but i don't remember those guys being there when we were kicking down doors and taking names so if anybody wants to challenge me go ahead and challenge me that doesn't mean i have to take you seriously that doesn't mean i have to take your silly opinion seriously especially if you're yapping from a chat room 202 521 13 20 is the number and i say this all the time and i mean it call in if you want to say something don't swear you know could you know yeah it's a live show don't swear act the way your mom would want you to

[27:10] act on the phone but aside from that caleb what's your do you i'm curious about a you're jake in general on what this 911 truther stuff that comes up and go ahead caleb honestly i have questions about the official story of 911 but that's all i have because i don't as a journalist say anything i do not know and i don't know anything other than you know what about the 28 pages what about saudi involvement yes you know i i there are other things that i just wonder about but beyond that you

[27:40] can't really do anything and i'm i'm very careful because there is so much out there about 911 that is very easy to debunk there are so many things on the internet that people allege that are mysterious about 911 and if you look at them they're not based on reality you have to be very careful because if you then repeat any of those things you're immediately discredited um and i you know there was a document that was revealed by cass sunstein uh who was the husband of samantha power um and it talked about you know quote unquote conspiracy theories being a

[28:11] threat to national security and one of the proposed methods of dealing with these conspiracy theories that were considered to be a threat to national security was what they called cognitive infiltration and that would be filling the internet up with other conspiracy theories to discredit conspiracy theories and um i've noticed that you know it seems weird after anything happens in the united states anything immediately all over the internet it's declared a false flag you would think that crimes don't happen news events don't happen in the united states anymore

[28:42] because immediately all over the internet no matter what happens immediately uh people are claiming it's a hoax and that makes me wonder you know if somebody wanted to really actually have a hoax it would no one would notice because no matter what happens it gets to be declared a hoax and i think on the one hand that shows that there's a huge amount of public distrust of government that people are ready to think anything's a hoax number one but i think it also shows that there's a there's a bit of a conscious effort to create a light switch effect where uh basically you believe everything mainstream media says or

[29:12] everything's a false flag and a hoax done by the reptile people in the illuminati and you're one of the crazies and and that kind of is the dynamic that they've created either believe everything mainstream us media says 100 percent or be alone and obviously the truth is somewhere in the middle u.s mainstream media has gotten it wrong on a number of occasions uh there have been lies in american media like weapons of mass destruction and such but there was also a lot of a lot of you know you know very very confused and delusional people out there you know putting out their views on the internet

[29:43] so you know by creating that light switch effect we can't really have a conversation and if you just introduce the conspiracy allegation into the conversation it poisons everything in a way no i i agree and it's it's the same as racism you know i was talking to uh rabbi yakko shapiro about this uh recently you know as i and i've talked i've talked about a lot that the fact is if you talk about soros your anti-semitic is a way to avoid conversation about soros and on the other hand there is such a

[30:16] thing as anti-semitism and so if if i'm talking about the rothschild's connection to genie energy and someone jumps in and goes yeah and they're jews i go i don't know why i did a southern accent there but you know it's stereotypical but ah but because you could be yankee you could have any accent hey jews that's fine but you don't need a southern accent is my point but i immediately you've derailed the conversation you just took it what what are you doing and now

[30:46] let's see how this go actually i know dave a little bit so i'm glad he called in i said to people call in 202 521 1320. two comment on this topic dave from california what is your take sir hello people uh you you all you all have a fantastic point about the the nuttiness because i've heard the the planes didn't exist and i've heard that there was beams being fired from satellites and all kinds of crap but hey how about how about the pile drivers that damaged the destroyed the entire buildings not once

[31:17] but twice through the path of most resistance and then when the dust cleared they were gone what happened to the pile drivers the upper floors they destroyed the buildings because they they weren't even in the picture when the buildings were completely demolished they were gone so what happened there that's my question and that's i'd like to hear you guys take on that and i'll take it off the air thanks a lot lee thanks dave john you want to take that one caleb you got anything honest to god that's the first time i've heard that i i haven't heard i haven't heard it before my apologies

[31:49] caleb do you know anything same yeah i've yeah i've never heard it either sorry dave sorry dude you never heard it either and also that's it's almost like an engineering question in a way which i will admit that i'm completely unqualified i'm not an engineer and you know that's it but i've actually never heard that one before okay well can i can i make one other comment too real quickly caleb i'm sorry uh dave dave made an important point too i've heard i've heard the same stories that it was

[32:20] it was the quote-unquote jews it was the the saudis it was the space aliens it was you know an inside job it was the bush family it was the chaney family i've heard all these these crazy stories uh over the years with that said there are a lot of legitimate questions that have never been answered you know we could have we could do a whole show on the 28 pages we could do a whole show on the saudi royal family i'll tell you just one quick anecdote if

[32:50] we have the time i think we have seven or eight minutes left when we captured up as a beta in pakistan on the night of march 22nd 2002 i confiscated his diary and he had been shot and severely wounded and my orders were to remain at his bedside so i started leafing through the diary and it wasn't just a diary it was a doodle book a sketchbook an address book he would jot down notes to himself well there were names and cell phone numbers of three

[33:22] members of the saudi royal family in that in that book and i wrote them down and i sent them to headquarters in a cable well headquarters then contacted the saudi government and said hey we want to talk to these three princes because their their personal information their private cell phone numbers were in abu zubair's diary well before we could speak to them before we could interview them or interrogate them uh one died

[33:52] in a fiery car crash on a highway in central saudi arabia all by himself single car crash one went camping in the desert and nobody ever saw him again and the third one went camping in the desert and died of thirst so you know it makes me wonder it makes a lot of people wonder what exactly was the role of the saudi royal family or was it rogue elements

[34:23] of the saudi royal family this is a question that has never been answered and nobody ever wanted to pursue it and also makes a lot of people wonder why anyone would ever go camping in saudi arabia but indeed let's quickly get to uh greg from kansas city who was the person in the chat room thanks for calling in greg and uh and not just yapping from the chat room go ahead yeah you're welcome um by the way the article i mentioned it's from the new republic uh profile on

[34:54] teriyaki and sputnik so anyway by the way though and what really got me was the uh was the line about you know calling from chevrolet if you remember i've been trying for probably close to a year to reach out and have a dialogue with you lee i even talked with your son shane briefly i tried to coordinate and to his to his credit he was very respectful i mean i i've been for months trying to talk with you about a number of things ranging all the way from the actual roots and the actual um uh what breitbart actually represents to like the real steve bannon to a number of things and you know you and he ultimately ended up

[35:24] blocking me on uh on twitter but i mean we've i've been trying to have this i love with you for a while you know well if i if i i almost never block people so if i block to people and by the way i've been a i had the same 2020 as everybody else and i've been going through an absolutely brutal divorce and other stuff and so sorry i just sorry but if i had to block you on twitter i almost never blocked people greg well i think it was over me critiquing your interview with david horo with lee by the way and then

[35:56] i also we critiqued uh also i was very critical of your uh of your apologetics for for roger stone as well but look i don't want to get into your private life that's no i'm not in any way shape or form trying to do that but i mean i still still think like i really tried hard to actually coordinate a real dialogue greg greg here's here's the problem i got right now i've got a few minutes left in the show we got two more callers so do me a favor call back again sometime on an open segment i'm not trying to blow you off now but i have to blow you off now so call back again on another segment

[36:28] and we will handle that 202 521 1320. metea from australia go ahead hi hi hi um i would like to ask you about the ukrainian black poke how are you talking about it okay so i i will tell you a family member and and then i got to go to the next call neither alexander or andrea chalup are

[36:58] mentioned in here but their father leo chalupa is mentioned and leo chalupa is somebody who i haven't even talked about much but he is right in this uh small number of contacts that the ukrainian embassy he's a he's a i believe a teacher or a researcher and i believe at george washington university but it could be georgetown because it confuses me because they both have the name george in them and they're both in dc so i get confused sometimes 202 521 1320 real quickly tariff we only

[37:30] got it we only got a few seconds here what's on your mind okay uh free julian science we love you man we still fighting for you uh i was listening to george gallery earlier today they were talking about brighton administration um new deal with um uh iran is not the same deal with a barack obama have something totally different and he was saying that a bright administration might want um for the um iranians to dis disarm from the missiles to basically destroy the uh long-range missiles which you know the iranians

[38:01] ain't gonna do so that's going to be it make things worse you know so you know hopefully we get peace in the world you know so so yeah teri thanks for the call let me just make sure see john i was having to do basically air traffic control there because we had so many cars yeah that was that was tough we had so many callers yeah i guess if you mentioned 911 the phone lines light up i don't know something like that let's let's go to the last point how do you see do you think john and caleb do you think that biden is putting a poison pill

[38:32] in this new iran reset he's sort of talking about caleb let's go to you first i think that trump buried the iran deal uh when he ripped it up uh when he assassinated qasim solimani uh at this point i i really doubt the supreme leader of iran is going to allow new negotiations to take place i think iran made huge concessions in geneva and at this point any any chance of of the supreme leader of iran saying okay we're going to go ahead and negotiate once again with the united states i just don't think it's going to

[39:03] happen okay john because we've only got a few seconds left go ahead yeah you know i think that we might have crossed the point of no return and i i'm not optimistic even if biden's um head and heart are in the right place i i don't expect anything great to happen okay and it looks like i get the final word because we're about out of time caleb it's always great to have you on the show the final word is don't go camping in saudi arabia that's my advice because i know people who've had my kids go camping my older kids and i've never been like

[39:34] maybe they'll die of thirst or something i don't even know that's a bad string of luck there yeah who dies of thirst how does that happen very tricky it is saudi arabia i'm lee stranahan joined by my co-host john kiriakou we'll be back tomorrow this is the back story

[40:11] you
