Title: John Kiriakou — Ukraine, Foreign Policy and Intelligence
Show: Pete A Turner
Date: 2025-03-22
URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEzC9xFLWAo
Duration: 1:02:00

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[00:02] Hey everybody, it's Pete, your buddy Pete who runs the Break It Down Show. I'm waiting on John Kuryaku to come in. He'll be here in a moment, but I thought I would just uh fire up the machine here and take a moment or two to talk with you all. I lost this week a good friend named Dan Marker. And I hadn't had a chance to really uh chat about this yet, but I thought I'd just say something about friends and people you're acquainted with. And and one of the amazing things about the modern world is that we can uh commune with people cross vast distances,

[00:32] develop deep relationships without ever actually being in the same room with somebody. And you all know that uh I'm I'm a big fan of getting into the same space as somebody else and enjoying moments whether it's a night cap or a concert or a symphony. The these things uh they enrich life at a rate that's it's hard to replicate anywhere else. So when I hear about a friend like Dan Mark who passes, you know, I think about the times the last times I saw him and they were both kind of these these incidences where we're both in the same

[01:02] area. One time I was leaving my uh my dad's house in Capola and going over the hill from Santa Cruz down into the the big tech valley over there. And I said, "Hey Dan, I'm going to be coming to your neighborhood. You got a few minutes for a beer?" And he's like, "No, I don't, but I'm going to make it." And and this is the thing when you're a person who asks for these things, people know like, "Oh man, you know, if he's going to try, I'm going to try and and we're going to have these moments." And so Dan said yes. And we went to the Batania Arms in Certino, you know, and we snuck in, you know, just a short time. I had to go

[01:33] somewhere, he had to go somewhere. Neither of us needed to do this, but we did. And it was enjoyable. We got a picture together and just had we had a chat. And then the next time he happened to be down by me in Southern California. His family's from down here. and he said, "Hey, I'm in town. If you got a few minutes, come on over and say hi." And so I did. And and we literally spent eh less than an hour together, but I got to meet his family, his kids, and if he hadn't tried, I I maybe never would have seen him face to face. Interacted with him a lot via email in a group that I'm

[02:03] in. Uh thought really, really highly of him, just, you know, a respected professional dude in in the military. And and I I should have told him this when he was alive, but every time I thought about him, put a smile on my face. And everybody wants to hear that. So when I think about Dan Marker, it's less about his career. And look, he was a very powerful and and competent warrior. I mean, he there's no doubt about that. And that's important. But the thing that matters more is he was a good human. You know, he had advice, he

[02:34] had counsel, he would seek counsel and advice. He had wisdom. Uh he's obviously a great dad, a loving father, and you know, when we have people in our lives, it's on us to get out and go see them and let them know they're special and and give them the the flowers, if we want to use the vernacular of the time, and say, "Hey, you know, I love you. I love who you are. I love how smart you are. You're way better looking and way skinnier than than you think you are." You know, and let people know that they that they matter because you may not get

[03:05] another chance. So, I I just wanted to chat about Dan real quick here for a minute because Dan Barker was a good dude and I don't want his passing to equal someone not talking about him enough. You know, often times when someone dies, it's a thing that I've kind of came up with. We write about 150 words about that person and then we really never talk about them openly unless they're someone notable. But we um I don't know, I owe it to people that I know well enough to say, "Hey, this is a good dude." So, this is sort of, you

[03:35] know, me just saying, "Hey, Dan Marker was awesome. He was my friend. I'm proud of who he was and the mark he left on the world." And when you have people like that in your life, go see him. Have them come see you. You know, get out there and and look, that extra hour and a half, that two hours, just don't scroll that day. There you go, cupboard. And and you've seen someone, go get a night cap, go get coffee. Uh when you think about someone, pick up the phone, call them, send them a text, call them. Hey, let's get together. Like, really, let's make time. You I'm at a point in

[04:07] my life where my friends die rather than get married. And, you know, I I don't want to just go to funerals and see my friends. I I want to go and I want to see my friends. And so, I make an effort to do it. Look, I fail at it all the time. There's people I want to see, I should go see, need to go see, but, you know, I haven't figured out how to always do it. But, that's uh that's the reminder for me. you know, when you lose a friend like Dan suddenly, shockingly, and you're trying to figure out what's up, which way to go. I I guess the the thing I would say to you is is um make

[04:39] time. Make chances. Stack up memories so high that you just you're like, "What time was that? Oh, that's right. We did that one thing." Because it it's too easy to to have 15 years go by and not see someone. And that seems like crazy to say that out loud, but but it really is how all of this works. you if you want to see someone, you have to act like it. You have to take time. When we were doing the um the Ride for the Brave, which was a charity ride that I did for several years with Scott Husing,

[05:10] we um we ended up in New Orleans one of the years, and the co-founder of the show, John Leon Guerrero, and I uh were riding in my truck because John had flown out to Texas and got together with other my friends. We saw Baby Bash. I posted a picture about that the other day just coincidentally and and uh we were done with a long day of driving after many many days of driving. We were exhausted, you know, packing and unpacking the truck and and getting Scott back on his motorcycle. And what we all wanted to do was go home, get a shower, get cleaned

[05:42] up, get some rest so we could do it the next day. And I'm like, absolutely not. We are across the way from Cafe Dumont. Let's go get late night beignets and coffee and just have this moment in this world famous place. It's right here, you know. Let's Yes, we got to go drive for 25 minutes to get over there, but it's going to be awesome. We're going to do that and and we'll always be able to say, "Oh, this one time we went to Cafe Deont just uh Pete, John, Danielle, and Scott. We all went there and we had this wonderful evening." And you know, it's

[06:13] just those kind of moments that matter. So, when you have someone in your life that you've been meaning to see, go see them. call them, text them, email them, whatever it is, reach out because these times can be fleeting and precious. So, I'm going to look at my phone here real quick and see if John is inbound. Okay. Um, not yet, but let me just chat with you about this. So, uh, rest easy Dan Mark. I'm proud to say that you are my friend. You were obviously a wonderful person and I hope your family if they ever watch this that they they know that that this guy right here, Pete Turner, loved and cared about Dan and thought

[06:45] the world of him and needed more of him for sure. Okay, so I guess we have to move on because that's what life does and and talk about a couple other things. I had Rob Nyer on the show yesterday. If you're at all into baseball, Rob Ner is a very notable name. He's written a lot of words about it. We have these wonderful chats and it's neat because as Rob is kind pulled back from the day-to-day space. Oh, look. Here's John Kuryaku coming in. We'll talk about Rob later on. Go watch that episode with Rob. All right, here comes John. Sorry about that. No, nothing to be sorry about. I got a chance to I I lost a

[07:17] friend this week. So, I got a chance to few minutes chatting about my friend Dan Marker that passed. So, sorry. Yeah. You know, it's one of those things, too. It's Look, we're of an age where our friends can drop dead. We can drop dead. Yeah. My whole point on all this stuff is go see get together. Okay, text, call, email, whatever it is. But if I get to your area of the world, I'm going to bug you and I'll be like, "Hey, let's get together." Like really, let's let's spend an hour together, you know, because if we don't invest in that time, we don't ever get that time. And I want to stack experience. It's gone. It's

[07:48] gone. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Change gears. Will you do me a favor? Will you say this is John Kuryaku and you're watching the Break It Down Show? Sure. This is John Kuryaku and you're watching the Break It Down Show. Just a couple of spies talking about spy [ __ ] That's what we're going to do. I I love it, man. I was thinking this about this the other day and and so I want to kind of scalpel you out of this circle, but I realized in the military intelligence world, tactical field collectors, we have no icons. We don't talk about these

[08:20] things. Look, Nathan Hale, okay, great. He went on a mission and said some cool [ __ ] and got hung. That's not what I'm talking about. But we don't have these these, you know, big names, you know, like you guys have Allen Dulles. Wow. Like him or hate him, whatever it is, right? Like, you know, so why is that? Why do we in the intel world in general, not so much you guys? Because you have some, but not nearly enough. Why don't we find these people and say, "Hey, this is how you do this stuff." And uh, wow, what a career.

[08:52] Yeah, that's that's a good question. And you know, usually when we do um it's it's decades after the fact. Usually the person's, you know, dead. I remember um you you probably have heard of Gus Avricatus. Gus was my mentor at the CIA and he was played by Philip Seymour Hoffman in the film Charlie Wilson's War. Yeah. And I remember getting back from Pakistan in 2002 and Gus said, "Uh, hey, they're going to make a movie about me." And I was like, "What about you? Why?

[09:24] What would you ever do?" I didn't know what he had done. Yeah. Because even inside the agency, it was so highly classified. Um and then when it wasn't, it was a generation earlier and nobody really cared inside anymore. And Gus was I mean I if if one person can be given credit for pushing the Soviets out of Afghanistan, it was Gus Abricadas. And then he he died shortly after. He died in 2005 and you know besides Charlie Wilson's war his story

[09:55] was never told. Yeah. And and that's this is sort of my point is well one on the on the military intelligence side and again I'll just talk tactical human because that's my world. We um we suck at keeping people. I've left the army three different times because I was in three different ways. No one ever said Pete we're desperate for you to stay. Now look isn't because I suck. It's because we don't retain talent and then you know you move on to other things and all these talented people go on and do other stuff. Here here's a reality about the military and I don't know if this is true in the CIA

[10:26] but if you are a tactical collector you will quickly separate from the ground and you'll never have the ability to be on the This is a guy who's got a lot a thousand missions on the ground. I am so seasoned I can say this about how we do these things. You don't develop the professional instincts. You're capable. you did things, but you were kind of ad hocing it the entire time. I don't know if how true that is for the CIA, but we don't focus on retention and quality and the improvement of of our collection assets. And so, we think, oh, well,

[10:56] there's no way we can do that. We don't know how, but a lot of that how is in dudes like me, in our brains when I'm like, I can tell you how to do that. It's going to take you a while to learn how to ride the bike, but it's ridable. Yeah, it was different at the agency, especially in the immediate aftermath of 911. You know, I remember pre 911, um, there were 200 applicants for every for every open position. I remember HR sort of touting that number a lot pre

[11:28] 911. Post 911, retention was so easy. It was so strong and there were so many more applicants. There were 2500 applicants for every one open position. We never had retention problems at the agency. And and it's not because there were, you know, incentives. You just you stayed because you were a patriot and you wanted to stay. Nobody was at the CIA because of the money. God knows that. We weren't making any money. It was all about patriotism.

[11:59] Yeah. You know, here's my CIA story. So when I had gotten out, you know, it it was really hard to get in and and there is a pretty clear line where like they don't really want army people in there. You know, they want to kind of shape them themselves. I'm saying they CIA and say whoever it's going to be. Sure, you can get through, but it wasn't a reliable path. And so when I got out, I'm like, I'm going to try to live a regular life. And so I was. And then planes hit buildings and I thought, well, now I'm one of the most qualified people in the world who's not working in this field. So now I need to do it,

[12:30] right? and and to say I'm most one of the most qualified people. I knew how to do the job. I knew how to do counter intelligence. And so we needed more of those people. And so I applied for the CIA and I got through the first day and they were dicks to me. You're like, "Oh, you don't read the economist enough." And I'm like, "All right, well, I have a I have a job." I absolutely believe that. Yeah. Yeah. And I was trying to decide because I knew I wanted to go clandestine service because that's really the only thing I should be doing. I shouldn't be in an office somewhere. I'm a field person. So get me out there. And I was thinking long and hard about

[13:00] did I want to see my daughter the next 20 years, which turned out it I probably should have just done it because I didn't see my daughter anyhow. But um I was going to this hotel in Chicago. That's where I lived. And I knock on the door as appointed and I get this sense and I'm like these [ __ ] And so I spin around about face and look at the doorway across the hall and I'm like these guys are going to come out this door and I don't know if I could hear something or sense something and sure enough they tried to So I'm looking at door five knocking on that and door four behind me is the one they open up but I had spun around and looked at him and uh

[13:32] that set the whole meeting off kind of poorly. I don't know if they didn't expect that if it threw them off or whatever it was or maybe there was no chicainery at all. maybe they just were like they oh [ __ ] let's go over to room five because you know we're late and they came out but um all of that that's a field thing that that a lot of us do if you've if you're handling an unvetted source it's just a security thing to see if if the source brought a bad guy along with him that that's all that's kind of silly to do it

[14:02] in Chicago on a recruiting trip that's just dumb well you know what I thought it was dumb and so whatever however close I was to making that decision. And again, assuming the CIA even wanted me, um, that kind of killed it for me, I'm sure I wore it. Leaves a bad taste in your mouth. Yes, it did. It did. And And they didn't see me as a peer or professional. No way. Oh, listen. Oh my god. I can't tell you how many people I worked with from FBI, NSA, and DIA who eventually

[14:36] made their way to the CIA, but were treated as secondass citizens, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, anyhow, so I don't want to hang around here too much and talk about that, but I'm glad we got a chance to chat about it because it is it is this problem with capacity and quality that we we we struggled. So look, the CIA should be looking into Army, CI, Marines, Air Force. They should be looking at these guys going, "Hey, before you guys get all the way out of the service, let us take a crack at you. You know, let's find you somewhere to go." You know, and so when I look at like someone like Tulsi Gabbard, if I had her ear, I'd be like,

[15:07] "Can you please fix retention? Can you please get some of these highly credentialed field agents who just got left behind? Can you please get them in a mentor role for a very small amount of money? I could run four dudes around, and I say dudes, I mean anybody. Um, and we can go do things and get them field capable reliably and pretty fast, you know, but we don't have a system like that. And it's a shame. Yeah, I I agree. I, you know, and if anybody is going to be sensitive to that kind of issue, it it's got to be Tulsa Gabbard.

[15:40] It's got to be. Yeah, we'll see. We'll see. We will see. So, I wanted to get into there's been so much talk about Ukraine and and and Russia and you and I both have a good deal of insight on Ukraine again because of what we do and who we are and who we know and I don't want to act like I'm like the queen of France or something like I know everything but me I know people. Yeah. Right. I know people and I've met with people and so when you understand Ukraine from the inside it's not this political like ideological view of the

[16:11] country. I want Ukraine to be well, but it's also true that only so much can happen. Russia is important. They are going to be neighbors. They are going to do business. And we have this uh and I'm sure I've talked about this before. We have this chalk line that we snapped across Ukraine and said anybody on this side of the line is a bad person and anybody on this side is a good person, especially if they donate money to the Atlantic Council. And that's [ __ ] doesn't help us get through the real problems of there's a [ __ ] ton of corruption in this country and to act

[16:41] like it isn't there to act like Zinsky is not complicit. I wasn't even supposed to talk about this a few Oh, but but you're absolutely right. You know, it's funny that as soon as hostilities began, everybody just forgot, conveniently forgot that year after year after year, the United Nations ranks Ukraine as one of the most corrupt countries on the planet. Right? We just pretend that that wasn't the case anymore once the Russians started shooting. Yeah. And and again, when I say I wasn't supposed to talk about this, this is

[17:11] like a directive and I don't work for anybody, but like if you want to work with us, you have to zip it about that. We understand he's got these problems, but we're not going to talk about that openly. Please don't do that on your show. Again, I'm nobody in this equation, but I'm somebody enough to to get those directions of like stay on the uh Zalinsky say, you know, we're not going to do that. And when you understand the things he does, because he is a these guys are all of the Soviet era. I'm not saying that they are Soviets, but they still have these norms just like we would. Like we're going to talk about football if

[17:42] we're into football, you know, even if we don't watch football anymore. I'll gladly talk about Drew Pearson and the Cowboys or whatever it is, right? Because that's who we are. Yeah. I I couldn't agree more. That's just the way it is. And I'll tell you another thing too is despite everything that has been said about the the Ukraine war, those of us who were watching Ukraine from the very beginning, from the day of the of the Russian uh invasion or incursion or whatever you want to call it, we all said the same thing that this was an

[18:12] untenable situation for Ukraine and for the West by extension. And in the end, if there was going to be peace, the Ukrainians were going to have to seed territory. And we knew exactly what that territory was. It was the Donbass and Crimea. That Ukraine would not be permitted to join NATO, but would be permitted to join the European Union and everybody was going to live happily ever after. And now here we are in 2025. And that's exactly how this is shaping up. Yeah. It's also always been

[18:45] true that the US and Russia were going to resolve this thing if they got to the table, right? Yeah. And I get I get the the cold war US position of trying to bleed the Russians, but it's a different world. It's a multipolar world. The Russians um you know, I remember u uh the Russians saying just in the weeks after the start of the conflict that they were surprised at the quickness with which the West was able to impose sanctions. But those sanctions didn't really bite because economies are

[19:16] globalized and the Russians are economically close to China, to India, to Iran. There are lots and lots of countries around the world that are very happy to trade with with Russia and to allow access to Russian uh banks. And so, you know, the the Western sanctions were kind of a surprise at first and then they ended up amounting to nothing. It's not only are they tied and connected with business, they're physically not far from these places.

[19:46] You get in a truck and drive from Moscow to Toron and these are not like the shortest distances and you can do that if you're a hard ass. You can do it in a day. Yeah. You know, and that's it. I mean, so you're not going to stop that exchange. It just becomes a gray market or a black market depending on which one which way you want to look at it. when when we talk about and and look, let's just put a pin in this whole thing. Um, our role, our our complicit nature in why this conflict exists, you know, DC is full of people that have written their their PhD paper on how Russia is

[20:19] going to attack us. And so, they're desperate for this to happen. And so, they make all their money by being right about all these things instead of looking at like how do you how do you work together? So, so we'll put that aside for a second because there's a lot we could talk about there, but I want to focus back inside Ukraine. When when you have the kingmakers, the businessmen in Ukraine, and they are wonderfully talented people there, they all have sharp elbows just like our billionaires do. But when you look at these guys and the direction they want to go, if you listen to them, they don't want to go backwards. For the most part, these guys

[20:50] are not Russian people. Do they work with Russians? Yes. Are they of Russia? Yes. Do they have to abide certain rules socially and culturally to get deals done with really bad people? Yes, just like our billionaires. But we tend to look at them and say oligarchs. And the one thing I've learned in the last couple years is that term is is political. It's [ __ ] I hate that word. I hate that word because we've made it specific to Russians, which makes no sense to me. Why don't we call Elon Musk an oligarch? He's the richest man in the world. He's worth $446

[21:22] billion. He's an oligarch. Jeff Bezos is an oligarch. Uh Sheldon Adlesen was an oligarch. He controlled half the half the casinos in in Macau and Las Vegas. So why do we reserve that word as an as an epithet uh for Russians? Yeah. The next time Zinsky picks up the phone and calls one of those billionaires that he opposes publicly and shakes them down for millions of dollars, it's not going to be the first or last time. Right. Right. And then how

[21:54] much do you want to bet he uses that money to to relocate to London or Dubai or Geneva or something like that? Right. Yeah. Absolutely. Right. And so we look, I understand that, right? But we don't talk openly about this kind of thing. And so, so I will say the normies, the people who don't know these things, they don't understand the corruption, don't understand that he is, and I'll say a shakedown because that's what it is. These guys he's publicly opposed to, he will absolutely call up on the phone. Some of us in this chat may or may not

[22:25] have been in the room when one of these things has happened. And it's a negotiation. It's not a no because that that business person has to do this. They have to just reduce the damage to them. But publicly the the claws and the teeth are out and it's dangerous. These guys are doing really dangerous work and it they are trying to make life as uncomfortable as they can for these billionaires. Agreed. Why do we turn the other way? Why don't we talk about this? Surely we could. You that that's a good question

[22:58] actually. Why don't we talk about it? Um, you know, why don't we talk about from a domestic perspective how it's even possible for one man to amass $446 billion worth of wealth? Why why are there so many Americans living in poverty? So many Americans who can't even afford food, for example, and we have one man worth $446 billion. I you know, I I'll tell you a story. I I've only told it once or twice, but uh

[23:30] in uh in very early 2009, I had an idea for a news show that I wanted to try to sell. And this is a hobby of mine. I've had great success in Hollywood. I've sold um I've sold eight shows over the years. One of them made it to pilot. I do it for fun. And um I had an idea for a news show and I mentioned it to a friend of mine who's in the industry and he said oh wait a minute before you go to LA and pitch it. He said I uh I went

[24:00] to high school with a guy who's now the president of NBC. So why don't we pitch it to him informally and if he's not interested then we'll go to LA and pitch it. I said that's great. So uh he um he called his friend and said hey we have this show idea we want to we want to pitch. And the guy said, "Oh, I'm going to be in Washington. I'm going to a fundraiser at the at the White House for for wealthy American Jews." This was at the very beginning of the Obama administration. And uh he said, "Uh, it

[24:31] ends at 9:00. Why don't we meet at the Hey, Adams Hotel Bar uh directly across the street from the White House as as soon as it finishes at 9:00." We said, "Great." At 9, he calls and says he's going to be about 15 minutes late. Can he bring a friend with him? And I said, "Hey, the more the marrier." So he comes and uh my friend says, "John, this is Ben. Ben, this is John." And then Ben says, "This is my friend Elon. Elon, this is John and this is Rich." Okay, nice to meet you. We all sit down. So rather than to talk about my

[25:04] show idea, my friend Rich and Ben from NBC start talking about, "Oh, remember this girl we went to high school with? Remember this teacher? What a jerk he was? Remember this? remember that I got bored. So I said to the other guy, I said, "So Elon, what do you do for a living?" And he goes, "Oh," he gets really excited. He goes, "Oh, I have a passion for technology." And and I made this company called PayPal. And then I sold it for like a billion dollars. And

[25:35] then I took the money and bought another company called Tesla. And then I have another company called SpaceX. And we're going to go to Mars. And we're gonna colonize Mars. and we're gonna put this bubble and there's going to be oxygen in the bubble. And I go, "Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Are you saying you're Elon Musk?" And he goes, "Yeah." And I said, "The Thomas Edison of our time." He goes, "I guess so." But anyway, we're going to go to Mars and then we're going to colonize Mars. We ended up never pitching the show. He just went on and on and on and

[26:06] on about technology. My point being though, in a roundabout way, this was 2009. He was worth $1 billion in 2009. How is it that in 2024 or 2025 he's worth $446 billion? How's that even possible? He did it in the backs of the American people. Why aren't we talking about that? You know. Yeah. Yeah. Um well, god

[26:40] damn, that's a different conversation alto together too. You're right. Why don't we talk about that? And and how much of that success is just his brilliance and his hard work and his, you know, I'll sleep in the factory. And how much of it is, hey, there's a whole bunch of of fraud and abuse and the stuff he's trying to root out of the government, you know, and look, I think we're all for that, but is a bunch of [ __ ] you know? There's there's a lot of problems with what you're talking about. Um, but yeah, it's amazing where he's at. I invested in Tesla a long time ago. My friend's

[27:11] like, "I'm gonna buy a Tesla and save money." I'm like, "Fuck that. I'm gonna buy stock." Yeah. And I'm really gonna save some money. That's right. And so I am torn because, and again, when I talk about oligarchs and billionaires, I always say they have sharp elbows. And that [ __ ] will cut anybody. They don't care. They make decisions that cause people to die, to go bankrupt. They're ruthless, but that's how they got to where they got to. And it's all competition. So I I say that, but you're right. Like 400. And it's not like here's here's the thing that we do lose sight of. It's not in his bank account.

[27:43] None of that money it's just money moves at the speed of light. It is it never stops. It just does this all the time. All you can do is maybe funnel some of it your direction. Like when my when my check hits my account every month because I'm a disabled bet, that money before it's even there, it's already accounted for and gone off and invested five different ways, you know, so it never rests. And so there is that thing where people who are good at money are going to accumulate money. People are good at punching people in the face are going to to punch people in the face and win. Yes. How how do we meter that in a

[28:14] way that inspires innovation and creation and things like domes on Mars? Yes, you're exactly right. How do we, you know, getting back to to Musk for a minute, too, I I read something in um in the Wall Street Journal just in the last week, I guess it was, that uh ever since Donald Trump first mentioned tariffs, um Musk has lost $40 billion in wealth. And I read even more recently, just in the last couple of days, that Jeff Bezos has lost something like 20 billion

[28:45] dollars in wealth just because of the uh the drop in the stock market. Yeah. I'm just I'm uncomfortable with the idea that that this small handful of people control the wealth of the United States. It doesn't make any sense to me. It it puts the era of the robber barons to shame. Just recently I read an article saying that uh that JP Morgan when he died was worth like $300 million which in today's money would be worth I forget

[29:16] what $6 billion he was the richest man in the world with today's wealth sorry sorry with today's wealth uh being a a fraction of what the really rich people makes no sense. Yeah. Yeah. I want Elon Musk to do well. I want him to cut all this stuff out of the government where we see waste. I want him to do that. But I also want to understand how do we

[29:47] look, he's made more millionaires than than any of us ever will in our lives. But yeah, how do we figure out how to get that money flowing in a way that other people have a chance to put their little scupper out there and shoot some of it through their account? And I don't know that relying on him. And and as much as I'm mad at Congress for all the money that they make, if he says, "Boy, oh boy, do I like Nvidia stock?" Right up. You know, some of them Yeah. And and uh look, that's a meeting. That's a

[30:18] meeting at at the Hey Adams Bar and it's like, "Yeah, sure. I'll mention that." And then, you know, the the notes go out and then everybody all makes money except for you and me. We weren't in this meeting. That's right. Exactly right. Yeah, this takes us back to Ukraine where we're going to spend this money and we're going to go out and do things. You and I have been abroad in conflict zones. So, we've seen it and and I'm real hard on the State Department and because the thing I've learned is when they show up in area that I'm in, I focus my attention on them. Look, I'm a

[30:49] collector, but I'm trying to help the commander win more and lose less and those guys cause us to lose. When I see USA ID and I'm like, do not just diminish their role here because they are not going to reliably help you make things happen. I've got to prove that that's part of my collection until I go out and I find out what's going on. I'm for sure looking for the enemy, but the enemy are insignificant in this case because USAD is going to go out and interact with women and teach them how to weave on a loom. I'm going to go talk to the the dudes who actually have to run this place, you know, the shakes, the the the tribal leaders, and I'm

[31:21] going to ask them, "What happens if we do that?" not like, "Oh, you're going to give me problems. It's going to be hard. It's going to cause death. It's going to cause destruction." And so I talk to these dudes and bring that back to the commander. The commander's like, "I want USA, get out of here." You know, I want these NOS's out of here because they don't they don't have to be principled. They don't own the negative outcomes. And so we do this stuff in places like Ukraine when we come in, we're like, "We need green technology." Yes, we do. But also, they have so much energy in their ground already. They they are already so great at taking the dirt and turning in

[31:52] products. If we got out of their way and figured out how to not do spend too much money, but help those billionaires figure out how to do that, they're going to get better faster. Is it the best way? Probably not. But it's better than microloans and all the [ __ ] that we try that just fails and fails and fails. Yeah, I have to agree. How many times, for example, did USAD try to get an electrical grid up and running in southern Afghanistan only then to have it blown up in the middle of the night? It was at least three

[32:23] times that I know of. So I agree. You know, it's it's almost as though the State Department and USAD is at odds with the situation on the ground. The situation on the ground is oftentimes not stable enough to accommodate a State Department or USAD presence. And yet there they are trying to make things happen that just have no chance of succeeding. It's great. It would be great if Ukraine were to have green energy. God bless. But seriously, that's what we're going to talk about right now. green energy in Ukraine.

[32:54] Yeah. And you know as well as I do that's the playbook. It's like they're gonna go to page one of the playbook and be like women need to be empowered and then they'll start the programs and they don't give a [ __ ] if any lady gets her face punched in because she grabbed a radio in a place where they're very conservative. You can't just you can't just me I always say this John I think this will resonate with you. You can't presume to improve the condition of someone something that you refuse to understand the condition

[33:25] of like you just you can't do it. We love to bring the problem and the solution in one package without knowing anything about anyone there and it never works. I mean going back we can go back to the Vietnam War and and use every you know mil political military uh situation since then. uh the Vietnam War, uh the invasion of Grenada, uh the the invasion of Panama, the Gulf War, the Iraq war,

[33:57] the Afghanistan war, and it never works out the way we want it to work out. Never. So either either the planning is faulty or there is no planning. When we look at Ukraine with these, you know, I I almost kind of think we look at Ukraine like we look at uh our Native Americans and we think that these ma they're these magical people, you know, like, oh, they've been attacked and so therefore, you know, they're all one with the trees. The reality is is whoever's in charge of the government, they're going to look at IBM and say,

[34:27] "We are going to nationalize that asset." And they will take over that asset to punish that oligarch. And then they don't know anything about running IBM. And so they put all in prison and then they go to the oligarch and they're like, "All right, listen. Um, we [ __ ] up. Can you help us unfuck ourselves?" And I want to add to this and then I'm going to let you free stuff for as long as you want. So we have these problems. There is a legal process to fight this. And so you can get a decision from the Ukraine court and they're like, "Fuck you. You've been nationalized. Go away."

[34:58] But like look at all the mistakes and all the illegality. We don't care. Why? Because the court's corrupted. And so you leak out into the higher European courts and you're like, "Hey, I can't get a fair hearing in Ukraine." And the European courts, you're right, you can't. Here's your fair hearing. Boom. Approved. You've been wronged. Go get your stuff back. You walk into the office in Ukraine, they're like, "Fuck you. Get out of here. That's our that's our plan." But we will call you when we're desperate for your help and we [ __ ] your entire company up and expect you to to fix it. And they'll do these things over and over again. What I'm describing to you is something that

[35:29] makes it very, very hard for an American investor, a European investor to come in and go, "Yeah, I'd like to invest in this refinery, in this, you know, this foundry or whatever it's going to be because who's going to own that asset in six months? Who really owns it? What what's the change the chain of ownership? What do you mean you have conflicting court decisions with your I and this is going to create, I think, problems for us that are tough to resolve. This is part of the problem is corruption. Well, let me let me tell you a story, a semi-personal story. One of

[36:00] my best friends in the world is married to a Ukrainian woman and uh her family uh is still in Ukraine and this is a couple of years before the war started. Uh my buddy decided to help her family by investing with her brother in the very first combination gas station car wash in the Donbass. Okay. Revolutionary idea. You fill up your tank and you get

[36:31] a car wash at the same time. So they buy this uh this car wash uh from a Ukrainian guy, transfer the money, shake hands, sign the contracts, everything's good to go. Couple of weeks after they make the purchase, the guy sues them to get the the car wash back. They're like, "What are you talking about? We bought it fair and square. We have this contract. We sent you the money. It's ours." He buys off a judge in the district

[37:03] court and the judge says, "Nope." The decision is the Ukrainian guy gets the the gas station back. So they uh they go to the American ambassador. He my friend asked me, "What do you think I should do?" I said, "You got to get the embassy involved because this is so corrupt it's going to be completely out of your hands." He goes to the American ambassador. The ambassador says, "Look, this is the way Ukraine is. What you're going to have to do if you're serious about this is you're going to have to bribe a an

[37:33] appellet court judge. And so they bribe the appellet court judge and and it's expensive. It's like 25 and so they win of course at the appellet level. Well, then the guy appeals to the Supreme Court of uh Ukraine and the ambassador says, "You're gonna either have to bribe another Supreme Court judge or walk away." Yeah. And they walked away. And in a nutshell,

[38:06] that's Ukraine. Yeah. How come we can't talk about that? I mean, that's a real problem, right? like we're partnering with these people. So, we expect our money to reliably get where it's supposed to go to do what it's supposed to do. Look, we don't have to talk about what Zilinski's done, but we don't have to talk about the people in the room that have said, "Hey, they don't even they don't even want the already fatty contract we're going to give them. They want fat on top of the fat. Otherwise, they won't take

[38:36] things like airplanes or whatever it is." But how do we how do we get involved? How do we excrete? Why do we get stay involved in these kind It's just such a mess, man. I don't know. You know, I think we're desperate. We're so desperate for the world to remain a unipolar world that we will do anything, no matter how foolish, no matter how uh expensive, to try to remain the the 800 pound gorilla of the world. We refuse to

[39:08] accept the fact that Russia is still a major power, whether we like it or not. We refuse to accept the fact that China is a major power and the Chinese are actually better at winning friends and influencing people than we are because they put their money where their mouths are. And uh and we just pretend that if we keep arming Ukraine or we keep arming, you know, whatever country, Israel, in the end everything's going to work out. And that's just not reality. It's just not reality. And then there's our own bad deeds to consider. You know,

[39:40] we can always bring that back in where we create a lot of this stuff. Would Russia be as prominent if we just left them alone to be Russia? I I would think not. Yeah. We forced we forced Russia to to create alliances where alliances never existed before, even if they're just economic alliances. We forced Russia to expand trade with China and with India and with Iran. Yeah. Why? We couldn't just let Russia collapse in on itself. But we decided to throw them a lifeline

[40:13] by forcing them into the arms of of, you know, countries that they otherwise would never have had these close economic relations with. I'm hard on our foreign policy people. They get great degrees. They get a lot of benefits. They get a lot of laurels. And they [ __ ] suck at their job. Are they all bad? Of course not. But when I see that, look, when a uh this is just being honest, when I see a Kennedy School of Government grad out in the battlefield, that guy has my

[40:44] attention. I expect them to [ __ ] up. They never fail to. They they always do, right? And so when I see John Sullivan's going to be, you know, a senior, oh [ __ ] Jesus Christ. Yeah. I mean, look, all of these guys, you look at their resumes and I'm hard on the generals, too. Any general is over his career in America. These guys did not figure it out. Did Did they get good at moving chips from here to there? Yes. And that's exceptionally hard to do. You know, did they did they move water millions of miles and all that? Oh, okay. Great. Logistics, great. You

[41:14] guys all did a good job. We lost over and over again. We spent a lot of money losing. Iraq doesn't have a high tension grid line, you know, like because we couldn't do that. Certainly couldn't do it in Afghanistan. Afghanistan doesn't really have any more roads than when we got there, you know. They I think they had 18 feet of rail before we got there. You know, we we didn't partner with the goddamn Ministry of of Mining at the uh state and county levels in a in a in a country full of mountains and and minable things. We just [ __ ] up left

[41:44] and right. It makes me It just makes me so mad when I think about that. And then I see John Sullivan or whoever it's going to be from that world and and they get the sweet gig and it's like, "You guys were all wrong. Your theories didn't work." Okay, I'm gonna shut up. I get fired up about that. No, I I agree with you. Look at Tony Blinkin as an example. I think Tony's one of the most outrageous examples. Um I know him. I I I actually took his desk at the uh Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Um Tony graduated from

[42:17] Harvard. He's absolutely brilliant, right? And when he left Harvard, he went to work for Joe Biden uh in Biden's Senate uh office. He was a a junior legislative aid. Then he became the legislative aid for foreign policy. Then he became the legislative director. And then when Biden became chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Tony became the staff director. When Biden became the vice president, Tony became his

[42:47] national security adviser. In the second term, uh second of Obama's two terms, Tony became the deputy secretary of state. He went back to Harvard uh for the first uh Trump term and then when Biden became president, Tony became the Secretary of State. Tony owes literally every job he's ever had in his adult life to Joe Biden. Okay? He's smart, but he has no

[43:17] experience doing actual work on the ground. None. Zero. It's all airy fairy Harvard, you know, I'm smarter than everybody else kind of work. And we see where that got us. Yeah. Failure, right? And and when I saw him, his ideas, you see him talk about stuff and I'm like, you're wrong. I am doing it right now. And then here's the thing. This is what I want people to understand this this moral injury that we talk about. When I am talking to a

[43:48] person who's from the government that we're partnered with and I am saying the words that I'm supposed to say, not because I'm trying to lie, but I I am like this is my job. This is what I'm trying to explain to people. This is how we work. This is how we do things. This is coming straight down. I am the tactical connection to the theoretic thing and I'm doing my best to push on that so that we tactically move the theory forward and drag that balloon with us. And those [ __ ] put lies into my mouth that got those people that I talked to killed. And I own those

[44:19] souls because I'm the one that said, "USA's not going to let you down. They're absolutely going to do it. I'm on your side. I'm going to go there and I'm going to make sure these guys stay on job." And then they come back to me like, "Oh, we canled that program six months ago. You [ __ ] I told this guy this was going to happen. He put his neck on the line with these dangerous people to get them to calm the [ __ ] down. And you're telling me it was never even going to happen. And you just now tell John, I'm telling you right now, if I had a gun on my arm right then, I

[44:49] might have shot that guy because he and they couldn't give a [ __ ] And if it happened to me, and I know it's happened to you in your own way. It's happened a thousand times. Just completely lack of principle. And so there's a Tony Blinkin who goes up up up and he doesn't know anything. He doesn't know anything. Maybe he's smart, but he can't apply his knowledge in a way that reliably produces a good result. Like I say, lovely guy. Lovely guy. The kind of guy you would love to

[45:20] have over for dinner and, you know, think the big thoughts and talk the big talk, but Secretary of State. No. Sorry. Sorry. And to me that was just indicative of the of the failure of the Biden administration because it was all none of it none of it was was outside the box. It was all Washington insiders who all thought they were smarter than everybody else and then just presided over one of the weakest uh one-term presidencies, you know, in the

[45:52] last century and a half. Yeah. Yeah. And and and to be fair, you're very critical of the Trump presidency, too. So, this is not like a rah. No. Sure. No, no, no. Yeah. I I'm I'm an equal opportunity uh criticizer. Sure. I mean, your stuff about Rudy Giuliani and the shakedowns that you've seen, but talk about We'll get right back to Ukraine here in a second, but the shake the illegal felonist shakedowns for you that you have to like to get a pardon for some [ __ ] you didn't even do is appalling,

[46:23] right? And again, like, why aren't we talking about that? Why isn't that the thing that they talk about instead of this sensational [ __ ] that you see a bunch of Teslas on fire? Okay, that's horrible. That shouldn't happen either. But these are felonies, man. Everybody does felonies all the time. Most definitely felonies. Yeah. What you're talking about is um when when Donald Trump was uh first president, that that first term, um I was actively seeking a presidential pardon. I was convicted of violating the Intelligence Identities

[46:54] Protection Act of 1982, uh, after I blew the whistle on the CIA's torture program. And so, um, I'm out there trying to get to Trump. Uh, and I had great support. You know, Tucker Carlson has has put his reputation on the line for me. I I've had great consistent uh, steady support from Tucker. And he suggested that I talk to Giuliani. A lot of different people suggested that I talk to Giuliani. So, I have a friend, you know, who knows a guy, you know, that kind of

[47:24] thing. And he got me to to Giuliani. So, I talked to his chief of staff. Um, and uh, the chief of staff says, uh, well, we're going to be in Washington next week. Why don't we get together? I said, great. So, I said, I finish I finish work at 2:00. Why don't we meet at the Trump at 2:30, the Trump hotel? and he says, "Well," he said, "Rudy, uh, you know, Rudy's usually by afternoon not really himself, so why don't we call it 12?" So, I took the day off. I go over to the Trump with my

[47:56] attorney uh, at 12 and we meet with this chief of staff and Giuliani and a hanger on that Giuliani brought with him. So, we're sitting there in the in the lobby of the Trump Hotel, which which is a bar area, and um and Giuliani's like, "Uh, hey, you follow baseball?" I said, "Yes, I do." He said, "Those Mets, the Mets are really great this year." Like, yeah, yeah, the Mets are great. Um, you a football fan? You follow the Giants, the

[48:27] Jets? And I said, "Well, I'm a Steelers fan." Like, what the [ __ ] is he talking about? So finally I said, "So Mr. Mayor, there's this issue of a pardon." And he goes like this. "Anybody know where the pisser is?" And he gets up to walk out and he just leaves. Yeah. And I said to the to the chief of staff, I said, "What just happened here?" And he said, "You never talk to Rudy about a pardon. You talk to me about a pardon." And I talked to Rudy. I was like, "Okay, whatever."

[48:58] and he says, "Rudy's going to want $2 million." And I laughed. I said, I said, "First of all, I don't have $2 million. I'll never have $2 million. And secondly, why in the world would I spend $2 million to recoup a $700,000 pension?" Right. Go make two million for myself. Yeah. And I said, I I'm sorry. I I I've wasted your time. And I turned to my

[49:30] lawyer and I kind of nodded and we stood up and we walked out. That night I went to a book event. A buddy of mine, another whistleblower had written a book on his whistleblowing and there was a big party at uh the Republican National uh committee. They have a an event space. So I ran into yet another whistleblower when I was there from TSA. And very casually he said, "How was your day?" And I said, "Oh, listen to how my day was." And I told him about the

[50:00] Giuliani meeting. And he said, "That's a felony." And I said, "Of course it's a felony." He tried to squeeze me for $2 million to sell a presidential pardon. I mean, that has corruption written on it with capital letters. He said, "Did you call the FBI?" And I said, "Of course not. The FBI is not going to give a [ __ ] about something like this." So, I just, you know, moved on. Two, three days later, um, I'm in my attorney's office and I

[50:30] get a phone call from the New York Times, from Mike Schmidt at the New York Times, and he says, "A little birdie told me that Rudy Giuliani tried to shake you down for $2 million." And I said, "Damn that, Bob. He can't keep his mouth shut." The other whistleblower. And uh and Mike Schmidt said, "Well, he was so upset by what you told him, he called the FBI and they didn't care. They didn't even want to

[51:01] take." So he said he was so outraged he called me. Are you willing to give me an interview? And I said, "Hold on a second." I put my hand over the phone. I said to my lawyer, "Am I willing to give the New York Times an interview?" And he said, "Of course you are. You have no reason to protect Giuliani." So I said, "Okay, Mike. I'll give you an interview. And you know what? I'll go on the record. Well, it turned out Giuliani had tried to shake down about a half a dozen people for $2 million. And there was a very clear reason why he did this. He did it because he was going through his

[51:32] fourth divorce at the time. And his fourth f ex-wife leaked the discovery to the New York Times. And it turns out that Giuliani was a member of 17 country clubs. 17 country clubs. He spent $10,000 a month on cigars. And so he money to maintain his lifestyle. And so

[52:03] um Mike Schmidt wrote this article. It appeared a few days later on the front page of the New York Times. So Giuliani issued a statement saying that he had never met me. He had never heard of me and that I had made the other things up. The whole the whole story I'd made it up. Yeah. So Schmidt called me again and I said, "Jiuliani forgot that we took a picture together in the lobby of the hotel." I said, "I'm going to send it to you." So I texted it to him. And so they

[52:35] they did a little article saying Giuliani denied, denied, denied, denied. The New York Times has seen documentary proof that the meeting took place and that's how I left it. And in the end, he was never prosecuted. But I will say one thing, Noel Duny, God bless her, Noel Duny was was his um assistant. She was the one that he forced himself on and she's filed a a civil suit against him. I hope she's successful. But she called

[53:07] me to tell me that the day the New York Times article came out, Giuliani said to her, "That damn CIA guy ratted me out to the Times." Like, this is this is this is the political world we live in now. It's graceful. It's it's a cartoon. That's right. That's all you can conclude. It's a cartoon. Yeah. I mean, how do I take I I know we used to love Rudy Giuliani because he was the guy at the time and he needed to be the guy. No, he was he was America's mayor. And and thinking

[53:39] back on it, thinking back on it, uh why was he America's mayor? He was America's mayor because he went to every 911 funeral that he could go to. Okay. Big deal. Big deal. What's that all about? America's mayor. Yeah. Some good marketing. Yeah. And so again, this sounds a lot like what happens in Ukraine, you know, and we get all this money flowing and and and here here's the thing I learned and again, this is a lot of experience in the field. Anytime

[54:10] someone on our side got mad about corruption and I'm like, [ __ ] we are the corruption. That's right. That's right. We encourage the corruption because we do nothing to stop it. We just say, "Oh, well, corruption." Uh, I guess that's the way it is there. Nothing we can do. We absolutely wipe our hands of any guilt. Like if you didn't bring $2 million to that guy, he wouldn't blow $2 million on whatever he blows it on. You know, stop stop this thing. Like and I my my rule is scars and country clubs. Yeah. Right. And whatever that equals in whatever country

[54:41] you're in, whether it's cigars or get the [ __ ] out of here money or whatever it's going to be, you know, just wherever we go. Let me tell you another thing. This is not this is not apppropo of Ukraine, but I've actually never told this story before. All right. I had to go to to Dubai one time to meet with Benazir Bhau. Do you remember Benazir Bhau? She was the uh she was the prime minister of Pakistan. She was the daughter of another prime minister of Pakistan who had been executed by the military dictatorship.

[55:12] So she had been the prime minister of Pakistan and then she was exiled and she was in Dubai. Now she and her husband his name was Muhammad Zardari. Zodari had a reputation for being like corrupt of global epic proportions kind of corruption. She was corrupt. He was corrupt like they're going to teach college classes about his corruption. So we're in this, you know, $5 million

[55:43] waterfront palace that they were living in in Dubai. And I'm there with a a senior American diplomat and we're we're talking to her in the in the living room and we hear a car pull up. She assumes it's her husband and she said, "So help me God. If he came home with another Bentley, I'm going to flip out." You make $80,000 a year. How do you afford a fleet of Bentleys and a $5

[56:14] million palace on the water in Dubai? That's corruption. And we do nothing about it. Nothing. Yeah. Yeah. And so when we look for this waste, it's going to be there, you know, whatever it is. And like I know we're talking about fraud, waste, and abuse at like the the organizational level. But if you just follow any one of those streams down to the hydroelectric program with USAD in Afghanistan, a place full of canyons and rivers, and you look at how

[56:47] many smallcale hydroelectric things were set up, the number is going to be really close to zero. Zero. You know, there's that power plant that that we unhoused people and said, "Hey, we're going to build a power plant here. It was based upon the playbook that doesn't apply to Afghanistan. A bunch of swells, Afghan swells, moved into that area in housing that we all set up. The power plant is and it basically doesn't and I don't know that it's ever kicked out a kilowatt of energy. I I it's my understanding that it has never it's

[57:19] never been uh turned on. Right. Right. That was the last I heard. It was just billions of dollars down the tubes. Yeah. Meanwhile, I'm in Iraq talking to a farmer, you know, and I'm I'm just doing my job, talking to my people. And he's like, you know, Pete, uh, the US has been here for however long it's been at that time, 10 years, let's say, and you guys have spent a trillion dollars, probably more than that at that point. He's like, there's no high tension electrical um, line through the nation

[57:49] and we have all the energy we need. And he says, he points, he's like, I can light my dirt in my yard on fire. there's so much oil in my backyard and I'm a farmer. I believe that, you know, and I write that [ __ ] down, right? Because yeah, it's just painfully obvious like, okay, if we're gonna invest in this place, everybody, and here's the thing, like we were desperate to know how much electricity was going on. And I would report it because it's important thing that it gives us ideas. And every time I'm the [ __ ] on the ground, I'm looking at the fan. You're like, "No, no, Pete. It's like 20 hours a day." And I'm like, "No, it is

[58:21] not. No, it is not." And these people are sweating. They're crazy. And so I learned to bring the the VIPs from the country I was in onto the camp and let them breathe our delicious air conditioned air and let them be important. Let them be VIPs instead of searching and everything. And it made such an impact on them that I wish I would have figured it out earlier to just trust these guys and be like, "Come on." And then it made them for me more pliable. It built a lot of trust, a lot of respect for me because I respected them. But we couldn't be bothered to

[58:51] give a government a reliable source of energy. Yes, you have this multi-million dollar semi-tra um size generator that is going to get you killed when we leave, but here you go. Here it is. And we don't have any fuel for you. Yeah. That that's that's daily life. Yes. Yeah. Well, listen, we've talked for about an hour and and I was I knew that you would have a lot to say about these things because we've both from our own paths seen all of this ineptitude. Is it

[59:24] better just to not get involved? I don't want to be an isolationist, but we're so we're such a frat boy when we go abroad, you know, like I was Yeah. Yeah. That you've really you've really hit the moral of the story on the head right there. Um what do you do? I mean, people like you or I want to document all this, get it on the record, make sure the people back at our headquarters know what's going on, and then at the end of the day, do they really give a [ __ ]

[59:55] Does it really matter? Are we going to change anything? You know, I suppose if if you've got sort of these whistleblower instincts, and I know you do. Yeah. You're going to want to document it. I wanted to document it. But in the at the end of the day, you have to be prepared to just walk away, right? You know, let the other side declare victory and walk away. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I have to think about that because I get I get riled up and I'm going to go do something about this. I even I've even started a uh a

[1:00:26] nonprofit that called the ground truth center. You know, like can we just get expertise your expertise into that meeting that's way above the tactical level so you can say please don't do that or please do less of that or let's do a small scale test or or or or and just get us to slow down instead of just jumping to the mistake right from the beginning. Yeah, that's exactly right. It's like we have a we have a package that we're going to export to you. It's got a problem. It's got a solution. And it's got a lot of money. Here you go. We

[1:00:57] didn't ask for that. Here it is. Turn it on. And the party comes out. You know, it's just it's patently ridiculous. And and uh again, not to be an isolationist, but we haven't earned the license to go and do these things because we've acted in a way that is not responsible. Yeah. I I couldn't agree more. I think I think you've hit it right on the head. Oh, thanks, man. Well, listen, I don't want to take any more of your time and thank you very much for the time we had. Uh, give me a second here to wrap this up. Everybody else, I will see you uh later today, maybe if they show works

[1:01:28] out. If not, I'll see you on Monday. John, thank you very much. Anything in closing before I wrap this? Oh, yeah. I've got a show called CIA Declassified. It's on Unified Television, UNFYD, Uni, FYD. Uh, we use original declassified CIA documents to get to the bottom of some of these these historic events that have taken place over the decades. Check it out. Yeah, definitely go check that out. I'll be right back to you, everybody. I'll see you later.
