Title: CIA Spy Breaks Down What's REALLY Happening in Israel
Show: Danny Jones Podcast
Date: 2023-12-11
URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fw_RQc2tpvY
Duration: 3:17:00

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[00:00] [Music] we just we we'll start it right here okay so Maria boua came to the United States uh to go to grad school at American University and um she's a I know Maria she's she's she's very cool but she's a gun nut and she just loves loves loves guns of all kinds and so she

[00:31] founded in Russia this small group that is akin to a little mini version of the uh of the um uh NRA right and so she took it upon herself to reach out to the NRA when she got here and said hey I'm the head of this Russian gun club and we want to have relations with you and uh they said okay that sounds great come and look at our Museum uh they have this kind it's

[01:03] actually a very cool Museum out in uh Vienna Virginia and so um she became kind of a woman about town you'd run into her at the Metropolitan Club at the Army Navy club uh she would be at uh different think tanks or the Heritage Foundation and then she started dating the guy who was the founder of Overstock do okay right and

[01:34] um next thing you know the FBI arrests her and they charge her and this is the important part here they charge her with failure to register as a foreign agent now the the key wordss are foreign agent you and I probably have a very different view of what those words mean than what a guy down the street thinks they mean all that that means this is this is something called a process crime or a process felony all it means is that you

[02:06] failed to fill out a form online right I'll give you an example about 15 years ago I was hired by the Abu Dhabi Chamber of Commerce to write three op-eds saying Abu dhabi's great and they don't have any taxes and everybody should do business there right and they gave me $12 $0000 but I went online um to uh to the Justice Department's far website uh the the

[02:37] foreign um foreign agent registration act website it's like far. or far. justice.gov or whatever it is and I filled out this form it took about 10 minutes and I said I've accepted money from a foreign entity called the Abu Dhabi Chamber of Commerce they gave me $1,200 and this is what I did for the $1,200 and I attached my three op-eds done right okay nobody ever asked me about it ever in the last 15 years all

[03:11] she had to do was to go online and fill up this form and say I take money from the Russian version of the NRA and I set up a meeting with the American NRA and we would like to have a Cooperative Arrangement that's all she had to do but they arrested her because she didn't fill at the form now technically this is a felony until about 5 years ago this felony was never prosecuted never most Americans didn't even know

[03:44] that you have to fill out the form if you're taking money from a foreign entity but about 5 years ago for whatever reason the Trump justice department and and this is the same thing with the Biden justice department this is not a partisan thing they decided you you know what it's easy to get convictions on this we're going to start nailing people on this and so the federal sentencing guidelines for a first offense you've never been convicted of a crime before um is 0 to six months in uh a federal

[04:19] prison 0 to six months now if you've never been arrested before you didn't realize you were supposed to fill out this form you're going to get like a $5,000 fine right they gave her 18 months in solitary confinement and the Russians were outraged and so they said oh okay so this is you're how you're going to treat us we're going to grab this basketball player see how you like that yo guys I just wanted to drop in to

[04:50] say thank you to everyone who's been subscribing on the videos it's been helping a lot the numbers have been growing and we're gonna keep doing these podcasts because I can't reiterate this enough if it wasn't for you guys we would not be able to do this so thank you all to everyone who's watching everyone who's subscribing sharing it all makes such a huge difference and that's it I love you guys back to the show and they gave her 10 years for having a little bit of of cannabis oil and then we were like okay then

[05:21] we're going to arrest Putin's nephew in Rome and we're going to charge him with money laundering and they said oh yeah then we're going to arrest The Wall Street Journal uh uh reporter and we're going to charge him with Espionage so how do you like that this is where we are now it's like like a child's game and then what's going to end up happening and the Russians actually said this in public just about a week ago they said there's going to end up being another prisoner exchange

[05:53] like we used to do during the Cold War where you meet on the bridge in Berlin and you know their guy walks halfway across and our guy walks halfway across and you know just like in the movies that's what's going to happen again so the last time we gave them Victor Boot and they gave us Britney Griner now we're going to end up giving them somebody else and they're going to give us Evan uh uh gersovitz from The Wall Street Journal and then you know Paul wheelen uh who's who's in jail in Russia

[06:24] 10 years for drunken disorderly or something I saw an I saw an interview with with Vladimir Putin one time and it it was an American journalist asked him what about Paul wheen this guy's been in jail for like five years and I was surprised at the frankness of Putin's uh response he said this is a guy who got shitfaced and who attacked a cop and he's in jail because he deserves to be in jail okay well you know what if you get shitfaced and you like a marine or something right yeah exactly then what

[06:55] you going to give the guy you know 30 days not 10 years years at hard labor and just hold them until you can you can trade him for somebody better right but this is where we find ourselves now is there like a like an overall sort of plan or strategic objective to all this no it's a Tit for Tat just a wow yeah like you know you go to work every day and you hope that that we don't or that they don't arrest somebody because then

[07:26] we're going to have to arrest somebody and then if we do then they're going to arrest somebody else and then we have to arrest somebody else and so it's just not a way to carry out foreign policy do you speak full Russian no I don't speak any Russian no not at all mm I speak Greek and Arabic okay so I wanted to have you back you're uh one of the best guests I've ever had on the show you always you always have some of the best outlooks on what's going on around the world so I wanted to get you back cuz it's a it's a pretty crazy time

[07:57] around the world right now it is indeed um um so when it comes to everything what specifically are you like looking at right now most interested in or most concerned about with everything going around like with the wars that are happening in Ukraine um Israel all of it yeah I'm I'm pretty heavily focused on on Israel and on Ukraine but I'm also pretty focused on privacy issues right now um you know the government is just

[08:28] the the American government is just pushing and pushing and pushing into areas of uh of uh press freedom and individual liberties I never considered myself to be you know terribly concerned about government overreach and now I'm very very concerned about government overreach and again this is not a partisan issue this is not something where you can say oh you know the Democrats all they want to do is control the news that we

[08:59] that we get to see or the Republicans they don't want you to know that's not it at all it's when you allow government entities to push the envelope into areas that may or may not be legal or even if they're legal may or may not be ethical they're never going to willingly concede those gains they're never going to say ah you know what we shouldn't have done that we should back off never nobody's ever going to say

[09:29] that in the intelligence Community or in federal law enforcement I'll give you an example patriot act exactly that's exactly what I was going to say so we've got section 702 of the Patriot Act we didn't even know section 702 existed until Ed Snowden told us that it did we all believed because this is what the founding fathers told us to believe 250 years ago practically we believed

[10:00] that the government could not infringe on your Liberty without the appropriate Court author uh authorization to do that or authorities to do that right you have to have probable cause you have to have a warrant well now with Section 702 they don't have to have anything a and it's even worse than just section 702 I'll get to that in a second but 702 means if if you are on the phone on a text

[10:32] message thread or an email thread and somebody else on that thread it doesn't matter who was a foreign National you have no expectation of privacy and The Government Can intercept everything that you're doing and saying now you've not been accused of a crime the government hasn't gone to court and said hey this Danny Jones guy we think he's up to something we need a we need a warrant no warrant they just take it whether you like it or not whether you know it or

[11:02] not they just take it and NSA not just takes it and holds it they offer it up to the FBI and they say hey we've intercepted these uh Communications we don't know if they're important or not but you know you might be interested in them and they just turn them over well there are no courts involved in any of this this all came from the Patriot Act um another thing now is the FBI or really any law enforcement

[11:32] organization has to get a warrant from a court to collect your metadata now you can you can figure out a lot about a person just from the metadata who are you calling who are you meeting are you calling an abortion clinic right are you calling a criminal defense lawyer you don't even need to know what the substance of the conversation is just who you're in touch with okay so the FBI they need a a court order a warrant to get that

[12:04] information actually they don't now they can just purchase it from the phone company or from Twitter or Facebook or Verizon or anybody else because all of it is bundled and sold now it's supposed to be sold for advertising purposes but the FBI is not using it for advertising right and the Supreme Court's never made any a decision on something like this so why would they go to court and and lay out their hand and

[12:36] risk the information leaking to you or to the media when they can just buy it from Big Tech and that's what they're doing I've heard the argument against this before or the push back against this is like when it comes to things like the San Bernardino shooting and remember uh there was a big stink with apple and the FBI Apple didn't want to give up the phone absolutely right but there's the argument like look if the FBI could have had access to this guy's phone maybe they could have stopped something like that and if if every

[13:07] American you know can just be okay with the fact like okay no the FBI and the CIA they don't care about what porn you're watching they don't care if you're cheating on your wife they don't care about all this you know normal everyday sort of like drama um but they need the oversight to be able to weed out people like that and to save people's lives boiling that down what you're saying is if you haven't done anything wrong then wor do you know who the first person was to offer up that rhetorical question in

[13:39] a public venue who it was Joseph Geral in 1933 that's what we have to be careful of that's the slippery slope that we have to stay away from oh I haven't done anything wrong so sure the FBI can have my stuff what was the context of that Germans didn't want to um didn't want to report on things that their neighbors were doing okay and Geral said why not if you're not doing anything and they're

[14:10] not doing anything the information's just innocuous then what do you care that's heavy and then they started rounding people up now do I believe the American government's going to round people up of course not but what I do believe and I I believe this because of firsthand experience is if the government decides to Target you for whatever reason they don't like your politics they don't like your face uh they thought maybe you were involved in something else they couldn't get you on they'll try something else something

[14:42] different then there's nothing you can do to protect yourself nothing now getting back to the San Bernardino um shooter uh you're right they couldn't crack um that iPhone and Apple refused to help them and it went to court and and apple one they ended up turning it over to an Israeli company and the Israeli company charged the FBI $6 million and they cracked it but the information that would have disrupted the attack didn't come from the phone

[15:13] wait Apple never turned it over to the FBI and apple wouldn't wouldn't open the phone for the FBI really no no they would not they were staunch about it okay in fact the FBI director complained later that it was it was six million of the taxpayers money that otherwise didn't need to be spent well actually yeah to protect our civil liberties yes yes MH Apple did the right thing but the information that would have disrupted that that uh attack

[15:44] did not come from the phone it came from the game system have you ever seen the Netflix series FAA no fa AUD da no I haven't it is one of the best TV series I've ever seen in my life really um it's an Israeli series but write it down while sure fa or fawda I can't remember but anyway uh it's it's an Israeli series but it it was made by

[16:16] a group of um guys who were former shinb and former mosad but it really does give you a balanced view between the Israelis and the Palestinians it's shocking that they were able to even make something like this yeah yeah like you're going to you're going to you're going to have sympathy for both the Israelis and the Palestinians in this like you're going to want both sides to to win which doesn't make any kind of logical sense

[16:46] but anyway um in in the most recent season there's this ongoing thing that they do where they only communicate with each other through a back gaming app right because the Americans the Russians the Chinese the Israelis the French the British everybody's intercepting everything right phones and emails and text messages and intercepting everything nobody's looking at back

[17:17] gaming apps and you know all of these game apps that we have they all have little chat functions when you're playing live right right I have a back Amon app on my on my phone I play against Lebanese and Turks and syrians all the time I do it's fun and um and you can chat so that's how mosad and shinb communicate with their agents because they know it's not going to be intercepted and even if it is intercepted no human being's ever going to see it it's just game chat right but

[17:49] it's not game chat it's it's very serious operational planning that's what the San Bernardino uh uh shooter was doing he was communicating over like a Wii or whatever it was a twitch or switch or what I don't even know anymore my kids are beyond that now but um but that's the danger the danger is in is in gaming systems like I when it comes to the

[18:19] government looking into like private Communications of people is it just like how much attention are they really paying that's a good is it just a big catch zero attention normally it's a big catchall um you know NSA built this uh facility in the in the desert in Utah right and uh they started building it right after the 9911 attacks and there's enough computer memory there uh to save every phone call every text message and

[18:50] every email from Every American for the next 500 years right that's how much space they have how much memory they have no human being is going to listen to 99.9999% of any of that stuff it's just being vacuumed up by these you know cray computers or whatever there super computers are called these days and it's being held in case someday law enforcement needs to go back to it for

[19:22] leads or for information about a crime that has been committed to build a case okay which is great well it's not great but you know if if it's not going to be used against somebody for for unethical purposes I can understand it provided that they get a warrant it's not just well you know we're going to we're going to collect on everybody now no nsa's first of all federal law says NSA can't do this secondly nsa's own Charter says that it

[19:55] can't do this and they're like well 9/11 changed everything well you know what okay then change the law don't just pretend that the law doesn't exist which is what I've been saying about torture for 20 years right yeah you want to you want to torture people okay you and I can agree to disagree on this but you got to change the law you can't just pretend that the law says something that it doesn't right now this sort of gets back to the story the recent story or article that you wrote about uh what was

[20:25] the article about Newsweek in the Pentagon cyber command or not News Guard yeah News Guard and Consortium news and what was the story there yeah so there's this organization called News Guard that uh that was founded a few years ago uh by by two media professionals one was the founder of um Court TV and the other is the former publisher of the Wall Street Journal and they decided to hire a bunch of young recent college

[20:55] graduates with degrees in journalism and have them analyze literally every um Independent News uh organization that's out there on the internet everything and um and assign a score to every one of these news organizations now the score is from 0 to 100 100 being absolutely reliable Associated Press 100 right to zero which is like uh Alex

[21:26] Jones has zero right okay so um you think he's an agent he's too stupid to be an agent he can't keep his mouth shut yeah I know a lot of people who think he's an agent a useful idiot oh he might be a useful idiot but in terms of being like a witting agent no he's he's too he's too stupid right okay sorry sorry to interrupt um no that's okay and so um what they've done is they they

[21:57] immediately politicized the um the process um when I and when I say politicized what I mean is they took a position on Ukraine they took a position on Syria and if you aren't in line with that position they knock you down to below 60% well if you're below 60% you get a warning not you you don't get the warning their subscribers get a warning saying whoa warning this website's not reliable it's fake news how do they get

[22:27] to the subscribers yeah so most of their subscribers are governmental entities and most of them are in the Pentagon so what they do is they provide an extension on the website and so if I go to Alex jones.com or whatever that website is yeah their extension will give me until a couple of months ago it was either red or green it'll give me a red and it'll say warning you know there's a little warning that comes up warning this is fake news site now

[23:00] they'll give you a numerical uh figure and it'll say you know 10% warning this is a fake news site okay but how do they determine what's fake news well what they did with Consortium news and this started a year ago is they sent an email to the editor-in-chief of Consortium news and they said hi uh we're uh looking at cons news and you have such

[23:30] interesting articles on Consortium news but we have a couple of questions that our clients would like to know the answers to first of all who are the members of your board of uh directors and do you have the board of directors listed on the website okay yeah here here are the board of directors it's right there on the Mast head right it's easy to see and that's kind of an an uous question um second what's your policy for issuing Corrections okay our policy is we say hey we

[24:01] realized something we said was incorrect here's the correction um why did you say on October the 10th 2021 that there were neo-nazis in the Ukrainian military well because they wear patches with swastikas on them and they pledged FIY to a guy who heads the Ukrainian Nazi

[24:31] party like nobody's saying the Ukrainian government is Nazi government M nobody's saying that you know zalinski is a closet Nazi but there are you know well-identified neo-nazis who are members of the Ukrainian military it's it's fact right they don't like that that's that's fake news well you know somebody should tell CNN because they did an entire documentary about it so that's fake news

[25:03] another thing is um why did you publish an article in 2016 that said that the evidence was not clear that H that Bashar Al Assad used gas on his own people well because eight whistleblowers from the United Nations came out and said we don't believe Assad did this we believe Al-Qaeda did it see but Al-Qaeda

[25:33] is now allied with the Pentagon because this is Bizarro world that we live in now the nus front used to be called Al-Qaeda now we armed them to help them overthrow the Syrian government but they don't like talking about that when did this happen couple of years ago okay yeah so there are like 20,000 articles in the maybe it's not 20 maybe it's 10,000 articles in the uh Consortium News

[26:04] archives they objected to four because they didn't like the uh they didn't like the analytic line well as it turns out these four were written by um Christopher Hedges now Chris is a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner lifelong journalist for the New York Times and he was the New York Times Middle East bureau chief so that's the guy that you're going to accuse of spreading fake news a two-time

[26:35] pullitzer prize winner so they went after Consortium then they started going after others the grey zone is another one uh the grayzone is published by Max Blumenthal the son of Sydney Blumenthal also of the New York Times Confidant of the clintons and um max is a cuttingedge journalist I don't agree with all of his positions on things but by God he does his research so he said he's not even going to fight it he wears this red mark from

[27:06] from newsguard as a badge of honor he said on the Jimmy door show then they went after antiwar.com which is a Libertarian kind of a conservative it's like an a Republican anti-war uh site okay but highly respected MH in in the independent journalism Community went after them then they went after the shear post I write for the shear post Bob Shear is a friend of mine Bob Shear spent almost 30 years at the Los Angeles Times as an

[27:38] investigative reporter he's been nominated for the pulit of prize 11 times mhm you're way too young to remember you weren't born yet but he's the one who got presidential candidate Jimmy Carter to admit that he lusted in in his heart right he was an Evangelical Christian you can't think about other women you're a married man oh my God he lust it in his heart right it was a big scandal in 1980 seriously this is how far we've come

[28:09] wow and they decided oh no no they don't like his position on uh Ukraine this is unacceptable he's calling for peace in Ukraine we have to stand up to the Russian bear and Putin you know Putin's crazy right isn't that what we always say about foreign leaders we don't like they're crazy right so now they're going after the sheer post and so somebody's got to stop these guys uh about a month ago Consortium

[28:39] news hired um a constitutional attorney who filed a suit against newsguard and against the Pentagon now why the Pentagon because as it turns out the only client that newsg guard has that matters is the defense Department's cyber command well it's not up to the Cyber command is that part of NSA it's yes NSA is a part of the Pentagon too okay so

[29:12] they're all it's it's all a joint right got it okay leadership um and so they're suing saying that first of all this is government interference in the Press it's a it's a clear direct violation of the Constitution's First Amendment mhm secondly it's not up to newsguard just like it's not up to DOD to decide what's true and what's not

[29:44] true or what analytic line the American people should see or should not see you know if I don't want to read Alex Jones I just don't read Alex Jones it's as simple as that right but now you've got people you know ruining businesses and ruining people's lives just because they don't like your position on Ukraine who are some of the people that are running that company News News Guard their board of directors would make your hair stand up uh the board is made up of

[30:16] people like um uh Michael Hayden the former director of both the CIA and the FB and the NSA during 911 right during 911 he was the head of NSA and then he oversaw the torture program at the CIA uh Tom Ridge the former uh the the first uh Secretary of Homeland Security uh the guy who uh defended before The Supreme Court um International rendition kidnapping um Anders what's his name U

[30:49] from Denmark the former head of NATO is another one about a year ago I started working with this company called mer health and I wanted to get a comprehensive breakdown of what was going on inside my body from my vitamin levels to my lipid levels to my hormone levels Etc using the most elaborate and Cutting Edge testing on the market they were able to advise me on a new diet sleep training and supplement protocol designed to maximize performance and support longevity I tell all my friends about mer health because you simply cannot get this level of knowledge or attention to detail from a general practitioner who sees up to 50 patients

[31:20] per day plus insurance companies regularly deny Progressive treatment options primary care physicians refuse to order comprehensive lab work and standards of care lag years behind the leading research mer Health represents a paradigm shift in how we approach medicine empowering those who want the most out of their Healthcare and wish to maximize their potential every client who orderers Mer's optimization package receives extensive lab work over 84 carefully selected biomarkers to help provide detailed insights into your hormone profile cardiovascular health organ function and metabolic status expedited onboarding for those

[38:11] ballsy the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and they throw like like it's a you know two rappers going at it in a club where they throw money at each other for disrespect like throwing it at a stripper yeah so I'm smiling as I'm watching all this and Carrie turns around and he says you think that's funny and I said I caught myself I said I think it's gutsy and he says keep your opinions to

[38:41] yourself so when the hearing was over he got up and walked out and I'm kind of cleaning up all the papers and stuff and Senator Jean Shaheen from New Hampshire came up to me and she says John did you throw those women out and I said I did she says why I said the chairman told me to and he said she says well I'm from New Hampshire and in New Hampshire we say Live Free or Die learn some respect well now code pink they're my closest friends wow I go to all their

[39:14] marches all their events fundraising you know whatever these women do incredible work and that's where I take my cue from that we can stop fighting right yes it's a David and Goliath thing like we've both said and maybe the change is going to be incremental or maybe there won't be any change at all but there's certainly going to be no change if you just sit home and say wow I wish I could change the system but I can't so I guess I'll

[39:46] just watch TV no you got to be out there fighting and in my case fighting means writing or broadcasting or marching mhm or speaking at universities which I do a lot of you got to keep up the fight it's the only way you can you can you know make sure that these people are called on the carpet for the crimes that they're committing and that's what's happening here they're committing crimes against the American people I'll give you another example you know there's this family out west so in 2017 there was a

[40:17] standoff in um in Oregon uh it was this family called the Bundy family okay and the bundies were actually from Nevada and they're constantly fighting the federal government because they graze their cattle on federal lands and they don't pay okay right you have to pay the government because their point is look it's federal land which means it belongs to all the American people and it wasn't up to the government to seize it in the first place so we're not paying and so they're constantly getting arrested and

[40:50] prosecuted and then one of the sons of Clive Bundy led the takeover of the visitors center at a a park in Oregon and the FBI was sent and there's a standoff is that them on Horseback right there with the flags make that big Steve holy crap yeah that's them okay so the conventional wisdom is like these bundies are nuts they're right-wing extremists they're

[41:21] freaks but you know what even if that's true they're right and they were acquitted in federal court they were acquitted wow yeah I love that I love that their uh their pseudonym is BLM yeah funny right management and it says How could a Scofflaw like Bundy who owes more than a million dollars in grazing fees backed by hundreds of armed zealots managed to run off Federal officials who

[41:52] were clearly in the right for seizing Bundy's cows God yeah you see this is what everybody's up against that's crazy man so you just have to fight for what you believe in it's really as simple as that yeah I mean like so when you when you are doing your research and you're like researching new stories that you're going to talk about things that are happening in the news where do you get your information oh yeah everywhere listen I get up at 6:00 in the morning

[42:22] just so I can read like everything you have to read the mainstream media because you have to know what the government is saying right so I read every morning the New York Times The Washington Post the LA Times The Wall Street Journal then I go to CNN Fox MSNBC then I do drudge on the right I do drudge and Gateway pundit and daily collar and then I go to the left and I read Raw Story and then I do Independence Consortium

[42:54] news sheer post reader supported news wow there's so many of them the gry Zone just to get a different different angles on the stories yeah and I like to think that I'm smart enough that I know what's what's you know what sounds right and what doesn't sound like some people will say like you know they'll just say something outrageous and be 100% certain in their assertion and you just know because you've been doing this for a long time you know that that's just not

[43:25] right it's it's it's false or there's a problem with the analysis so you know this is what they taught us to do at the agency ironically when I started off as an analyst um in uh in January of 1990 you read absolutely everything because after a while you become such an expert that you can separate the wheat from the chaff so at the CIA I'm going to read cables coming from CIA operations officer

[43:56] overseas from American embassies and state department officers working in those embassies from they're called doirs Department of Defense intelligence reports from defense attaches around the world intercepts from NSA just pulling stuff out of the air but then I'm also going to read the Press now much of the global media is that's just a fact of life right read the Pakistani media for examp example and try to find one

[44:27] true thing in it good luck but you will have read so much from so many different places that you'll know what's true and what's not true and I find that to be the case with the American Media you can figure it out interesting there are a couple that just a couple of sites that I'd say are really exceptional um the associated press and

[44:58] propublica propublica yeah most most journalism outlets in the United States no longer do uh investigative journalism right because it's too expensive it takes too long right it takes too long you're going to you're going to dedicate a journalist or two um to a story that's not going to be published for three months right right so this journalist is going to write four or five pieces a year year and you're going to pay them

[45:28] $150,000 so most everybody's phased it out uh what propublica did then was um they set themselves up as a nonprofit solely to carry out investigative reporting and so you know they'll they'll have pieces that are utterly disperate like they'll do a piece on on solitary confinement right and then they'll do a piece on price fixing

[45:58] in the egg industry right and then they'll do a piece on uh the falling education scores in the state of Kansas stuff that nobody else is going to cover because they don't have the money to do it anymore right and it's when you're doing it like that when you're doing these stores that take a long time to cover it's hard to be uh relevant to stories that are like happening now exactly that's right when I'm curious when people do work on those types of stories

[46:29] with four big Publications right for like my friend Jack who I was telling you about who was writing that story for a year and they come to a big publication with this story and they say hey I have 12 sources uh six of them are former CIA officers other guys are former Army Rangers whatever they might be when they go and present their story with their they Pro obviously they provide who their sources are but does the editor of that publication in like by himself go and vet all these sources

[47:00] they they usually have a factchecking staff who will Who will call the sources and say um is it true that you said that 75% of X is y is it true that in 1996 you were making $335,000 you know everything that they're ascribing to you the fact Checker is going to make sure that it's it's correct and do they not only fact check the statements do they also go and check these people's background and

[47:32] credentials and make sure they are who they say they are they're supposed to um organizations have been burned you know when I first started appearing on Fox News I ran into a guy in The Green Room um and he was supposed to be this big CIA you know Deep Cover Black Ops and he's talking about like Black Ops and wet work and I'm like we don't use those terms they do in the movies right so he I said so what uh what director are you in he said I'm in Ops I'm I'm in Black Ops and I said uh what

[48:05] What's your Division I I can't say Okay number one secondly nobody says Black Ops and if you call it the company I'm going to punch you in the face right so um I said to the producer after I went on I said this guy that that you had on before me I think he's faking it and she's like what why and I said he doesn't know the lingo and he wouldn't tell me what

[48:35] division he was in and that's like the first your first brag is what your division was you know oh I was special activities Division I was counterterrorism Center I was near East operations whatever mhm and she's like okay I'll look into it and um and they did and he made the whole whole thing up he had never been in the agency he had never been anywhere he had never been in the military nothing he just made the whole thing up and he would go on Fox and he would talk

[49:08] with authority and he ended up going to prison he's probably still in prison because you know once you start peeling that onion it's not just that he lied to Fox he lied to the bank to get a mortgage saying he's uh I can't talk about it but I'm a Black Ops special wet work deep deep cover you guys really don't you guys don't use the word Wet Works no no but he does so dumb no I had Rick pra in here he had

[49:39] the same said the same thing you know Rick fra he was the guy was down Iran Contra yeah I sure do Nicaragua his wife doesn't like me oh really I wrote a review of Rick's book oh yeah she took exception to I think I have it back here I think I have it on the Shelf somewhere Annie Jacobson wrote a a a a book I'm sure you're familiar with that one one she wrote was called surprise kill vanish right all about um Billy W Billy was a giant you and I have talked about Billy W have we haven't we

[50:12] maybe we have I'm sure we have Oh Billy Billy was a great friend he lived like 20 minutes from yeah he was in like uh nville I think it's called yeah yeah yeah right it was really close to Tampa nville yeah and uh I used to make fun of the name of the town yeah yeah that's funny and Billy and I did a lot of stuff together really uhhuh so him and Rick worked together I think years for years they were joined at the hip yeah uhhuh um Billy was one of the most awesome people I ever met at the CIA how did you meet him he and I did a thing together

[50:43] in in I'm going to say the Middle East okay it was a couple of months before 911 I'll tell you a funny thing Billy Billy had the filthiest mouth of anybody I've ever encountered in my life he was just unable to control his his swearing and when you're in the Middle East you know these guys are all Pious Muslims they're they're all cool guys and they want to hang out and maybe maybe they'll have a little you know glass of wine once in a while probably not but

[51:14] swearing absolutely forbidden so we flew out together to train this Middle Eastern service in counterterrorism operations we were out there for probably a month and a half or two months and um Billy was the lead he was the lead lecturer and then I would get up for you know specific questions and I was kind of the logistics guy and and I taught the surveillance and surveillance detection

[51:45] portion so the colonel that was in charge of this unit finally came up to me and he said we're friends and I saides we are what can I do and he said you've got to talk to Billy and I said okay about what and he said please no more MF no more GD I'm going to have a heart attack and I said I honestly don't know if it's possible for him to not say

[52:16] those words I'll try so I asked him and he's like no can do can't do it and so he just swore like a sailor for the rest of the time they loved him he was everybody loved him but he just couldn't control himself funny thing too he used to listen he he used to drive this gigantic Cadillac and when we were overseas he rented a Cadillac I'm like how did you even find a

[52:47] Cadillac in this country mhm yeah that's weird um and he would play this one cassette tape over and over it was Roger Williams with a piano and the Deep you know baritone yeah big like Liberace kind of he just loved that stuff I think I told you the story about Carlos The Jackal and Billy didn't I I know that he he was the one who captured him right yeah it's one of the most exciting stories I ever heard at the agency you know Billy had a

[53:18] tendency to embellish his stories not this one really yeah this one was well documented how did that one go down Billy was in Sudan working for kofer black kofer black was thebi no he was us oh CIA CIA but he was the senior the term of art we're supposed to use is the senior Cia officer in country the CIA does not acknowledge any such thing as a station so whenever we talk about working overseas that person was the

[53:49] senior Cia officer in country okay okay so Billy's off one day yeah you said coper black for some reason my brain thought Louis free I don't know why yeah okay um he's off one day and he decides to go down to the uh vegetable market and buy some some vegetables for the week he goes down with a buddy of his also from the embassy and you know they're the only two white guys in in cartoon they think

[54:20] so they're in the vegetable market and Billy looks and he's looking at this guy and he says to his friend that's Carlos The Jackal and the guy's like what no it's not and Billy said yeah that's Carlos The Jackal no I don't think so Billy Billy said I'm sure it is they go back to the Embassy Ker's in his office on a what do you call this elliptical machine elliptical machine yeah he's on elliptical machine and uh Billy walks in

[54:50] he says kofer I just saw Carlos The Jackal kofer says get the out of here here he said no I'm telling you I was in the vegetable market and I saw him and I'm sure it's him and he's like well I think you're nuts but if it's Carlos The Jackal we're going to have to confirm it how old was Billy at this time oh he was in his 70s okay yeah Maniac late 60s maybe wow yeah incredibly great shape after having been

[55:22] shot more than a dozen times over the course of three Wars so uh he went back down to that vegetable market every single day for a month and then they saw Carlos again so what they decided to do was they hired a couple of sudin guys to Stage a fist fight um in in Muslim countries it's very very unusual for you

[55:52] to ever witness um physical violence between between people people don't like you know we have videos on YouTube of Karen's they load load a thousand new ones every day yeah in the Middle East no people don't do things like that so they hired these two Sudanese guys that were just down there in the market um you know you give them 10 bucks a piece and just tell them duke it out so they duke it out and of course everybody forms a circle around them because this is so unusual and Carlos comes to the circle to watch the fight and he's like

[56:24] craning his neck to try to get a better View and Billy's got a camera click click click click click click click click so he goes back to the Embassy they send the pictures to CIA headquarters and they say oh my God it's Carlos The Jackal well Billy had followed him back to his house so they knew where he lived and what they ended up doing I'm not sure how much detail I should get in they ended up Carlos had a Carlos had a dental problem and so um

[56:55] what you do is you get the dentist to say hey time for a checkup why don't you come on in and then you give him gas and then when he wakes up he's on a plane on his way to France oh my god wow yeah that was Billy hero with capital letters hero didn't even have to touch the guy no just got to his dentist yeah that's it that's incredible Sometimes the best operations are the simplest that's

[57:26] um so like Billy I think I don't remember who told me I think Rick told me the story but is it true that Billy was in either cartoon I think it was cartoon and he was literally following Bin Laden and taking photos of him for long time that's true too the problem there was um the Clinton Administration wouldn't do anything about it right he he wanted to take him out but they wouldn't let him there were no criminal charges pending against him yeah and that's because doj dropped

[57:56] the ball the CIA had been telling the justice department in the white house since 1991 this is a very bad guy he means us harm we need to do something about it and they're like ah yeah well we have to wait until he actually commits a crime against an American um and then we'll go to court and we'll file charges and then 10 years later we have 911 it's like what have you people been

[58:26] doing for the last 10 years now today the CIA would send a team and they would take him out they would today today yes because post 911 there was a revision of executive order 123 you're saying post 91 they would post 911 but in the 90s you know 12333 said oh no you don't yeah CH I love uh I love Trump's speech it was probably my favorite speech he's ever done where he walks out in front uh alag Daddy he died like a

[59:01] loser the dogs came in and tore him apart it w it was a terrible death oh my God he he sat up there and freestyled for like 30 minutes about how much of a loser he was and how bad he died and he was just like oh God that was a sight that was that was amazing to watch so was that the reason that they got him was that like the same thing you were talking about the same that they would have used to take robin Laden yes okay yeah once uh once 911 occurred it was 2 3 4 days after 911 uh President

[59:33] Bush signed an executive order that altered executive order 12333 which had been signed back in the 70s that said among other things it's a very long extensive exe executive order that the CIA just can't assassinate people and now they can wowow how much of that is going on right now like you think like when I think of the CIA like some some people I have in here they just say oh well it's it's you know it's all boring it's all you know a lot of it is a lot of it's and wa analytics yeah

[1:00:05] yeah and Analysis following people you know taking down Intel and goes through the funnel but like how much of it in today's world is actually like capture kill or like I would say very very little really very little this is an un usual rare occurrence now they were doing it a lot in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 CU we had so many people that needed to be taken off the

[1:00:35] street whether you're going to capture them um render them to a third country or kill them you know think the entire Al-Qaeda leadership for example and then Isis came out of that because Al-Qaeda wasn't violent enough um Isis was created and then you have the somal and then you have the the libyans and then you've got hambali down in Indonesia or Malaysia or wherever it was that he was so there were a lot of moving Parts back

[1:01:08] then and now not So Much Anymore also think of it this way um it was a very big deal 20 years ago to use a drone right if we send a drone up to do something we're all G gaed around a screen at CIA headquarters to to ooh and ah over what the Drone is doing now we have a thousand drones a day out there we don't even pay any attention what the drones are doing that's the like so all the drones and this I just did a podcast about this so

[1:01:38] I know I I have some some decent knowledge about the the surveillance that goes on around the world but we have these surveillance drones as well as these satellites that are literally everywhere and that signals intelligence so we can like tap into anywhere we want anywhere in now or in the past right right and let me let me give you another example of how times have changed when Iraq invaded Kuwait on August the 2nd 1990 we made a decision the White House made a decision that day we're going to liberate Kuwait okay it's not there was

[1:02:09] no hemming and Hauling we're going to go to the UN and we're going to see what we can do we're going to have negotiations President George HW Bush said on August the 2nd we're going to liberate Kuwait so what took us so long why did we wait until February of of 1991 because that's how long it took to move the satellite that was over the Soviet Union to put it over Iraq what can you imagine and we're all like patiently waiting where's the satellite today oh

[1:02:41] it's over Turkmenistan it's on its way why did it take so long for a satellite to get there because that's how long it took in 1990 Jesus they moved like 177,000 miles hour hour now it's crazy yeah and in the meantime everywhere they're everywhere the whole the whole globe is covered and now they're not even classified now you can buy you know Google Earth images right right yeah back then it was so highly classified we couldn't even acknowledge that there were such things as

[1:03:12] satellites we were watching a video a couple weeks ago on here of a company called I want to say it was I forget what it was called but it was a company that was basically a sub company of Lockheed Martin and they were B it was like a a product promo of their satellite system that they have where they showed all these satellites that are surrounding every section of the earth 247 and it was frightening I was like if

[1:03:43] you want to give anyone schiz induce schizophrenia and anybody just get him stoned and show them that video and it's like you're being watched 24 hours a day by a eye in the SK guy it's it was frightening you know 20 years ago or so there was a Will Smith movie I don't remember what it was like Enemy of the State maybe or something like that where where he's running through Georgetown in Washington and he's chasing some guy and he's on the he's on the radio with NSA and he's like

[1:04:15] I need live video feed stat and I was at the movie with a bunch of CIA people and we all busted out laughing like what do you me live video feed what planet do you live on and now you know now it's real now it's real and this is only what 15 years later that's it that's wild manh so I want to talk a little bit about the uh Russia Ukraine NATO thing conflict that's going on right now but

[1:04:46] uh first I got to pee real quick sure we'll jump right back in sounds good I got a tiny bladder I'm sorry not a problem this holiday season you might be looking for some delic ious nutritional meals to fuel you on those jam-packed days Factor America's number one ready to eat meal delivery service can help you eat well for breakfast lunch and dinner with Chef prepared dietitian approved ready to eat meals delivered straight to your door you'll save time and stay on track with your healthy lifestyle while tackling all those holiday to-dos you can cross meal prep off your holiday list this season with Factor skip the planning the grocery

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[1:12:08] I got to get out of here and he ran to Jordan so our sister agencies are picking up intelligence Here There and Everywhere out of the air out of the sky Abu Zeda is in Aman he's doing this abua is in Pakistan he's doing that abua is in Afghanistan abua is in Syria it's like oh my God this is a terrorist Superman right but it was two of them two of them two of them we didn't know and so we

[1:12:40] thought well if if he's able to move from country to Country and he's plotting all these different operations we got to stop this guy we know that Bin Laden's number one we know that Iman a zaahi is number two Muhammad ATF was number three we killed him in uh October of 01 so that means Abu Zeda must be the number three right because he's out doing all this different stuff right and it turned out he wasn't actually

[1:13:11] so you know this this is what makes this a sad story and and this is why I would be willing to talk to abuaba and this is why I am willing to talk to his attorney because first first of all he was not the terrorist Superman we thought he was he was a bad guy so if he was a bad guy he should have been charged with a crime and put on trial as the Constitution says that he should and he should face his accusers in a court of law well we know from the Senate torture

[1:13:43] report that the CIA will never permit him to be charged in a court of law and in fact the torture report tells us that the CIA has made a policy decision that Abu zua will never leave Guantanamo ever and when he does die eventually he'll be cremated and his ashes thrown into the Caribbean so remember this is a guy who has never been charged with a

[1:14:15] crime so why right why hold him right what is their reasoning or what is their explanation for that they it up and they can't let any more get out into the public kiraka was bad enough blabbing that you know we tortured him but then the Senate torture report actually lays it all out Blow by Blow by blow what they did to him and then if we if we release him what he's going to be on every TV channel in the world talking

[1:14:46] about the torture that he underwent at the hands of the Americans the CIA can't allow that what would what would you say to him I would say that I'm sorry for the way he's been treated nobody deserves to be treated this way if he was the killer that we said he was he should have been tried and convicted and punished accordingly if he was not the killer that we said he was he should be released what is going on with the guy

[1:15:18] the other guy at Guantanamo who was in charge with orchestrating everything that's a different case that is Khaled shik Muhammad yes khed shik Muhammad is the he is the Earthly incarnation of Satan khik Muhammad is a perplexing character because you know he was an exchange student here he went to he went to some State University in North Carolina lived with an American Family he's utterly Americanized but he self- radicalized

[1:15:48] when he went back to uh the Middle East or or to Pakistan mhm um he devoted many many years to hatching plans or plots to kill as many Americans as he possibly could well before 911 there's something you and I have discussed in the past called the bojinka plot so the bojinka plot was an idea that khik Muhammad came up with in

[1:16:19] the Philippines to hijack it was something like 7 10 747s and to fly them all into buildings up and down the west coast of the United States wow he actually had a chance of that plot working and he had all these papers laid out Maps drawings notes and he left his apartment and

[1:16:52] housekeeping went in to the apartment to clean the apartment and the housekeeper is looking at this like what the heck is all this stuff I better call the police she calls the police they said this looks like the plans for a terrorist attack and so they set out to look for him they didn't know his name they only knew him by the name MTAR which I think you and I have talked about in the past but he escaped he escaped from Manila so we knew that there was this very very

[1:17:23] bad dude out there known as MTAR who was plotting this massive terrorist attack uh that would take place on the west coast so we knew that MTAR was involved in the planning for 9/11 as it turned out 911 was completely his idea but we didn't know who he was we didn't know what his real name was and that was one of the two most important things that Abu zua gave us in his in his FBI uh interviews

[1:17:54] oh wow yeah he actually laughed at the FBI agent ali sufan uh when Ali said we didn't know who mkar was he's like how can you not know who mkar was he's the most dangerous man in the world and he said we don't know oh it's khik Muhammad was he was he the guy who was in the apartment that apparently there was some Saudi intelligence that were tracking him or knew about him that they didn't tell us about um yes that was one of the side stories

[1:18:26] to this there's a book by to the best of my recollection it was a it was a couple of journalists from the Los Angeles Times and they said that the CIA had a human Source um that led them to to H muhamed I was already working on Iraq at the time so I wasn't involved in this this thing um but it was a human Source it was not an intercept and it

[1:18:57] was not a foreign service that led us to khik M and the human Source was Saudi I I don't have any idea the Saudis listen you can't trust the Saudis as as far as you could pick one of them up and and throw them MH um and this is a beef that I've had with with the Saudi government and the Saudi royal family really all of my adult life uh we profess to have this special relationship with the Saudis and they profess a special relationship with us

[1:19:27] it's just not true we don't like each other we don't trust each other but we buy their oil and they buy our weapons it's as simple as that it's transactional um when we captured obser beta we also uh captured his his diary or what's known as his diary right right it's not really a diary but you and I have talked about that as well well in this diary he also had the names and cell phone numbers of two members of the Saudi royal family and then when we approached the

[1:19:58] Saudis and we we asked them what what's this all about next thing you know one of them goes into the desert to go camping and he dies of thirst can you imagine he dies of thirst the other one was killed in a spectacular onec car accident in the desert oh my God yeah uh-huh it's like it's so crazy it's like the at the level of these nations right like you have all these different levels of society and at

[1:20:28] the very very top you have the nation states and above that there's nothing it's like Lawless it's the Wild Wild West when you're looking at America Saudi Arabia Iran Russia China it's like it's Anarchy yeah it is it's Anarchy that's why I Lament The Death of of modern diplomacy you know because because I think that as a matter of national policy we should always just let the diplomats do their job not send

[1:21:00] carrier battle groups you know here and there and everywhere and with threats of you know you know why I ought that kind of thing you better not cross this line or you're going to get it right right we should let the diplomats do their jobs and this whole thing about you know getting back to uh to Ukraine for a moment yes yes I wanted to go into that this whole thing about oh that evil Putin he's crazy he just invaded out of the clear blue sky like are you joking like does nobody

[1:21:33] know the history of US involvement in in Ukraine right the the maidan um Uprising and orange Revolution the orange Revolution and and Hillary Clinton involved in in changing governments and like does nobody pay attention to these things so this is have you ever met Putin uh no but I'll tell you a funny story about that I was invited to a dinner in Moscow

[1:22:05] to celebrate the 15th anniversary of the founding of RT Russia Today the big television network and they sent me it was actually an engraved it's the first time in my life I ever received an engraved invitation right like from like it's the 50s and all expenses paid they're going to fly me to Moscow and they're going to put me in this hotel and I'm going to be at this VIP table of Americans and so I had just gotten out of prison so I went to the judge and I said hey

[1:22:36] I'm invited to this really important dinner in Moscow and she says absolutely not so I wasn't allowed to go my first question once I get out of prison for a whistleblowing against the CIA go to Moscow so this was the dinner where uh General uh Flynn went Mike Flynn and Jesse ventur and Jill Stein and Mike Maloof and all these like

[1:23:06] important Outsiders all sitting at the same table and then Putin walks in and sits down and shakes hands and they all get a big picture together and then Putin leaves so at first I was like damn it it's like the only chance in my life I would ever have to meet Vladimir Putin and then afterwards you know they arrest Mike Flynn they open a grand jury on some of these other guys they called Jill Stein a traitor I'm so glad I didn't go to that

[1:23:38] dinner oh my God I have enough problems in my life do you think Putin wants to ever wanted to or currently wants to conquer Ukraine and Eastern Europe oh no I I've never thought that you know looking back too going back to the Clinton Administration um when when Putin first became president at the very tail end of Bill Clinton's presidency he floated the

[1:24:09] idea of Russia joining NATO and Clinton said yeah I don't think we really like that Russia yeah Russia joining NATO cuz the Soviet Union's gone we're all friends now right the peace dividend we're always talking about how we going to spend the peace dividend we don't need to spend money on defense anymore right hardy har so uh Clinton's like H we don't really like that idea very much and he said okay if you won't let Russia and

[1:24:40] NATO at least don't allow any of the countries on our border to join NATO and Clinton said that we can agree to next thing you know lvia Lithuania Estonia and Poland All Join NATO directly on the Russian border mhm and he's like hey you promised us that you wouldn't let any of these countries join NATO ah sorry we changed our minds you know strategic planning and all then when Obama becomes

[1:25:11] president um at a summit with Putin Putin said I spoke with Clinton years ago about Russia joining NATO it's something that we would like to EXP explore who said this again Putin Putin to Obama and Obama said no we don't we we don't we don't like that idea we don't think that's going to happen and he said okay well you guys lied to me about these other countries joining NATO so don't allow Ukraine to join NATO this is going to be a serious problem

[1:25:43] otherwise and he's like okay okay we won't and then uh Joe Joe Biden becomes president and he's like oh you know Ukraine would be a great addition to Nato and the European Union and the Russians said we've had enough there was a pro-russian government in Ukraine that was overthrown at the urge of the United States in 2014 as if that wasn't bad enough as soon as that happens then they

[1:26:15] want to talk about Ukraine joining NATO so the Russians said we've had enough that's the background to Ukraine I don't think that the Russians have any I I don't think that they're expansionist as a matter of policy they have a history of expansionism certainly just like we do the Chinese do not but but we do and the Russians do um but we don't expand that way right we expand in a weird way of just gaining influence

[1:26:47] over the country we don't make them part of like it's not a we don't like America is not a traditional Empire like you look at the British Empire right like correct we just have these other countries that depend on us and we basically control that we have all the influence in those countries yeah but then the libyans would say that's wrong and the Afghans would say that's wrong and uh you know the the Chinese would say that's wrong because of what we're doing with the Taiwan now it's wrong and what it's wrong that we do it or it's not true well it's not true look at look

[1:27:17] at Libya just as the easiest example um Steve capus who was the deputy director of the CIA made a made a secret at the time not secret anymore trip to Libya uh in the immediate aftermath of the start of the Iraq War and he said look Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction he's going to die we know that you have weapons of mass destruction so you can either give them all to us and we all live happily ever after or you can die I'm paraphrasing of course and so

[1:27:51] for only the second time time in the history of the planet with South Africa being the first Libya voluntarily gave up its weapons of mass destruction program and then we overthrew him anyway mhm you know Hillary Clinton famously said um we came we saw he died what's that is our word worth nothing right what sort of weapons did they have they had a nuclear program they did not have a nuclear program but

[1:28:21] they had a quite a robust chemical weapons program uh and a biological weapons program but the thing with biological weapons is you can have a BW program just you know in your kitchen you you don't need gigantic Laboratories or factories for BW like you do for CW and then you need reactors and such for for nuclear mhm so what is Russia's concern with NATO why why should Russia be concerned about NATO the Russians

[1:28:52] really believe that we intend to someday invade them and overthrow their government they really believe it that's crazy to you and me it doesn't seem crazy but they they really believe it and you know if you look at it one of my best friends is also my attorney he's former deputy Attorney General of the United States and uh we talk every single day about these kinds of issues and he told me the other day very

[1:29:25] frankly why the is Montenegro in NATO like are we gon to actually first of all who's going to in who's going to invade Montenegro and even if somebody does invade Montenegro we're really going to commit our young men and women to you know defend to the death the government of Montenegro come on right he said if you look at the NATO Charter the the NATO Charter was to protect member countries against the Soviet Union the

[1:29:56] Soviet Union doesn't exist anymore so why is there a NATO you know and in the charter it says it was to defend the member countries so why do we have why did we have NATO troops in Afghanistan Afghanistan's not in Europe and it's not a member country why do we have NATO troops in Syria or in Iraq or in Libya or in the Sahel and that wasn't even revealed to the American people that was revealed by

[1:30:28] accident why do we have NATO troops in these countries they're not being threatened by the Soviet Union so the Russians see this and they're like dang these NATO people they're willing to do anything this is frightening why won't any US Presidency or or anybody in the US consider Russia becoming a part of NATO I don't know I never understood that I

[1:30:59] never understood that because if Russia's asking for it if Putin is asking for it saying I want to be friends yeah what is the real reason why we don't want to be friends you know I think in part and forgive me if this is if this sounds overly cynical but I think in part that this policy is really determined by the defense contractors right we we have a permanent we live in a permanent wartime economy post 911 our defense budget is

[1:31:31] bigger than the next eight largest countries combined right we can't make we we can't make payments on our national debt interest payments on the national debt and and we're going to bankrupt Social Security because everything goes to defense um but if we cut the defense budget it pushed the whole economy into recession right right right so you have to have an enemy to justify a budget like that what's this according to Nato

[1:32:03] Russia cannot be considered a partner due to its hostile actions and policies oh there it is it's because of its hostile actions and policies NATO considers Russia to be a direct threat to the security of its allies as well as to the stability of Peace in the Euro Atlantic area NATO cities NATO cites Russia's war in Ukraine as a reason for this yeah I heard that in the beginning uh maybe 6 months after the Ukraine war started um Ukraine had a really strategic Victory uh over Russia

[1:32:35] and a couple of generals were like urging MH or were saying publicly that like this is the time to go to the negotiating table and exactly right and negotiate peace with Russia because we just had a little bit of a win yes and Now's the Time to from a position of strength Now's the Time to do it and the White House said no the reason why we have not had any peace talks is because of the White House the Russians say okay we're ready for peace talks the ukrainians say well we prefer not to but

[1:33:07] in the interest of saving lives we're we're willing to go to the table and the Americans say absolutely not you remember this joke that started When The War Began that that the White House was willing to fight to the last Ukrainian and and it's true we don't care if it keeps the the Russians wrapped up but the thing is is there's a there's a Tipping Point and we've already seen that Tipping Point now uh you know we put sanctions on Russia that would bring

[1:33:38] most countries to their knees and actually the opposite happened with Russia they so strengthened their relationship with the Chinese with the Indians um with the pakistanis uh the Iranians even in Latin America with those countries that they don't they don't need the United States and they don't need our banking system right you know the the price of Russian oil has gone up since the invasion not down you know and

[1:34:10] the Indians we were complaining to the Indians just a week ago you have to stop buying Russian oil why you going to give us the oil at that price yeah I didn't think so so we forced them into the arms of the Chinese and there was a recent story too about the the pipeline originally there was a story that came out uh was it gome Chomsky who who made no no it was uh Sai HS Sai yeah yeah yeah s she came with up with the story that uh the CIA bombed

[1:34:41] the pipeline the nordstream but then recently some uh Ukrainian military Special Forces said that they did it they went out on sailboats and did it because of without zelinsky's knowledge right he didn't know anything about it and and they relied on their deep expertise in underwater demolitions right you know when when the pipeline was first blown up I happen to be having dinner with a former boss of mine from the agency and U he's been retired for decades and uh he's he's ill

[1:35:15] now so uh I like to hang out with him and uh I said to him who do you think blew this thing up it had to be us right and he said what no it was Putin and I said Putin why would Putin blow up his own gas pipeline right so that he could blame us and I said come on man you don't really believe that do you and he said well truthfully I don't really know what to believe

[1:35:46] anymore going back to so you're talking about we're talking about NATO and some of these countries that are in NATO and they're they are a part of NATO because we have their back and and we would apparently defend them how does this translate to China and Taiwan and so a lot of people including this guy Andy my friend Andy Bustamante who was recently on here he's predicted that

[1:36:17] China's going to invade Taiwan right in the leadup to the 2024 presidential election not a chance not a chance no way so two parts to that question why is there not a chance and number two why is Taiwan important to us why would why would you America not want China to take Taiwan for a couple of reasons that's the easiest question to answer I'll answer that one first so taiwan's important to us primarily because it keeps pressure on Mainland China but two

[1:36:48] because the Taiwanese economy is so strong it's been developed so well over the years like South Korea that as things stand right now that's where we get all of our microchips the the Taiwan semiconductor is the big the big boy on the Block we're beginning now to transfer manufacturing to the United States but we're starting from scratch so most of of our Tech comes from Taiwan MH um you know looking back historically though and I think this is really

[1:37:18] important China does not have a history of expansionism with with just a couple of exceptions first of all Tibet that's a big one they invaded and annexed Tibet but the Chinese truly believe that Tibet has always been a part of China right so they didn't invade and Annex they just secured what was already theirs in the late 1970s they had a brief border Skirmish with uh Vietnam

[1:37:52] brief and every once in a while they'll fire shots across the border with India that's it they don't invade other countries it's just not a part of their foreign policy and that's why they always use their veto in the UN Security Council not always but almost always when the US goes to the UN to ask for a use of force resolution because they just don't believe anybody should be invading other countries now they're very upset with us over Taiwan and I

[1:38:24] think for good reason so the Chinese have what's called a one China policy saying that Taiwan is a part of China it's always been a part of China but it's separated right now from China since the the Civil War 1946 to 1949 and that one day they will be joined again and that day will come after successful negotiations okay that's the position of both both China and Taiwan the United States when it

[1:38:56] recognized mainland China as the representative of the Chinese people during the Carter Administration agreed to adopt the one China policy okay so we don't have an embassy in Taipei we have an interest section it's massive and it's bigger than most of our embassies around the world but it's called an interest section because there's only one China and the capital of China is Beijing so our embassies and Beijing not in Taipei right okay okay now with that

[1:39:28] said the policies ritten in stone we recognize Beijing as the representative of the Chinese people we support the idea that the two will be joined through negotiations right mhm so why do we send carrier battlegroup groups there that's just a Prov a provocative action who we going to fight and for what reason you're saying we're sending

[1:40:01] carrier carrier group we we have two aircraft carrier battle groups in the South China Sea right now to pressure the Chinese Chinese don't need our pressure we're the ones saying oh my God we should be careful the Chinese are going to invade they're going to invade Taiwan if we're not careful oh my gosh we have to increased defense spending right otherwise they're going to invade Taiwan they never said they're going to invade Taiwan we're the ones that keep saying it and then the Chinese say Hey listen remember part of the agreement that we came to in

[1:41:37] China will invade Taiwan leading up to 2024 election they they get nothing out of it nothing out of it but Bloodshed they don't need to invade Taiwan they have their own dialogue with Taiwan right now they have robust tra trade going back and forth robust they are each other's biggest trading partners why put a torch to all that it doesn't make any sense why go to war with your own people don't forget just a few years ago they

[1:42:07] negotiated these deals where where um people can go back and forth uh to see family members and they can stay for six months at a time between China and Taiwan uhhuh to reunite families so why go to war with your own family and then just start killing everybody crash both your economies risk a nuclear attack from the Americans for what what do you get out of it that doesn't make any sense what what do you think a a conflict would look like between China

[1:42:39] and and the United States if they went we went to war oh wow I think it would be highly technological and when I say that I mean I think we would be bombarded by cyber attacks the likes of which we've never seen and we would of course be doing the same thing I mean you wouldn't be able to get online you wouldn't be able to do your banking it would be brutal um but the real danger of course is a nuclear exchange yeah that's always

[1:43:10] going to be the big danger yeahh see and this is another thing that's scary the Chinese Arsenal is not like the Russian Arsenal where it's all rickety broken down you know 40-year-old technology this is state-of-the-art stuff we know that right we have people oh yeah because the Chinese have way more money than we do way more money the the amount of the amount of knowledge they have of like what it's going to look like and still

[1:43:42] like the saber rattling that goes on when they know all these countries still have this kind of power that's what I mean when I said we should have we should be letting the diplomats do their job right there's no reason to be to be engaged in this kind of brinkmanship all the time and it's and it's it's with both the Russians and the Chinese J Yellen the Secretary of Treasury said the other day um in Congressional testimony that well of course we can fight a two-front war it's like what

[1:44:13] planet do you live on that you think we can fight a two-front war we couldn't fight Iraq and Afghanistan at the same time and you think we can fight China and Russia at the same time you know just let the professionals do their thing okay let's talk about uh Israel and Palestine conflict yeah this is heartbreaking um what is your opinion on what's going on over there I know there's a lot of a lot of stuff I've been watching some of Pierce Morgan's videos on it they're I mean I think he's

[1:44:46] doing a phenomenal job of having like balanced interviews with both people on both sides lot screaming going on a lot of screaming yeah but um but it's it's fascinating and and Israel is something I don't know a lot about the history of Israel um I do know a lot about I know their intelligence agenc you know mad and shim bet are like some of the most sophisticated in the world in the world when it comes to intelligence and and all that how do you think this thing how do you think this thing happened on October 7th was it yeah October

[1:45:16] 7th um there are a couple different answers to that question um in the in the immediate term uh it it turns out that it was an intelligence failure you know the Israeli settlers that live in The Villages um up and down the border with Gaza have been deputized by the government to report back to shinb bet on anything unusual that they see we know now that for the last year and we

[1:45:50] just learned this in the last couple of days for the last year they had been reporting back to shinb bet that something's up they're hearing um gunfire that indicated uh uh practice uh they were watching people climb over the wall also practicing they were picking up a lot of chatter indicating that there was some kind of planning for an attack uh

[1:46:21] there was a lot of stuff and they were dutifully reporting this back to shinb and shinb BET's response to them was um cut it out the fight's going to be in the West Bank it's not going to be in Gaza and so they just wouldn't do anything about it and then several months ago they just decided to stop accepting the information because they had convinced themselves thanks to idar benav the the new extreme right-wing um minister of

[1:46:52] National Security that the fight was going to be in the West Bank not in Gaza so they were asleep at the switch um that's the that's the answer for what we've seen in the in the immediate term otherwise this goes back Generations right and you know I'm somebody who has always supported Israel's right to exist at after the second World War I think I

[1:47:22] think the Jews needed a Homeland I think they deserved a Homeland at the same time I'm a strong supporter of Palestinian human rights I don't care when Israelis tell me the two-state solution's dead well it shouldn't be dead it's the only answer to this thing right there should be an independent Palestine with East Jerusalem as its capital and you guys can live happily ever after the problem is one of many problems but in my view one of the most significant problems is that the Israelis

[1:47:53] especially under Benjamin Netanyahu he's been prime minister seven times now the Israelis have stolen more and more land every single day they're driving more Palestinians off of their farms and out of their homes they're setting their olive trees on fire and they're and they're confiscating uh the uh Headlands of of the handful of rivers and creeks that run through the country so that they can control the flow of water well

[1:48:24] that's that's a crime against humanity you can't you can't do that where a family has owned this farm and worked this farm for 100 years and a Jewish Family from Brooklyn gets to move in and then you're homeless and they tell you oh immigrate to Jordan immigrate to Egypt you're not welcome here anymore you know in 2008 um my mom called me one day and she said hey hey I think I'm going to go to Ireland I've never been to Ireland and

[1:48:54] NPR has this trip and I said Ireland I said Mom it's winter time what do you want to go to Ireland in the winter for and she said oh I don't know I feel like I want to do something I said well um this priest at my church uh is getting a group of people together to go to Israel and I said you've never been to Israel you've always said you wanted to go she said that's a great idea that's what I'll do so she went with a whole bunch of people who are friends of mine and are priest and um they went to Israel and the priest always works with this

[1:49:25] travel agency there it's run by Palestinian Christians most people don't realize that um in the West Bank 7% of Palestinians are Christians and in Gaza still 2% of gazin are Christians they're Greek Orthodox almost all of them wow they're a handful of Catholics still in uh well Bethlehem and Nazareth are both Christian towns and um there are Christians in high anyway so she goes to Israel has the time of her life but she came back and she said there was one

[1:49:56] thing that traumatized me she said you're in Tel Aviv and you're looking around like this place is fantastic right first world palm trees looks like Miami Beach seriously and then you go to a Palestinian town and it looks like hell on Earth and there are these enormous walls Barbed WI at the tops mines along the bottoms of them to keep the Palestinians out of Israel but the

[1:50:27] problem is that they keep settling more and more and more Villages where they they just steal the land from the Palestinians who have been working it for hundreds of years and then they add that to what is Israel proper they've been doing that a lot in the West Bank and she said the worst part of it was they were going from from Jerusalem to Nazareth and you have to cross through a number of checkpoints

[1:50:57] uh IDF checkpoints Israel Defense Force and she said the driver had one of these drugstore Pulp Fiction novels with him so when everybody would be in you know looking at the Museum or looking at a church he would just be in the in the Little Bus reading his Pulp Fiction novel so they stopped the bus at this checkpoint before they could get into town and IDF came on the bus and wanted to see everybody's passport they're all

[1:51:29] Americans and then he grabs he snatches the book out of the driver's hands what is this PLO propaganda and the driver says it's just a book and so my mom said the the solder open the book and says no picture of aaat on this page and tore the page out and threw it at him no picture of aaat on this page and tore Pages out and threw them at him again she said he tore all the pages of the book out and threw

[1:52:00] them at the driver's face just because he could not for any other reason another thing too I've noticed this especially in the past uh several weeks as the Israelis and Hamas have engaged in hostage negotiations why is it that we call Jews being held by hostages but Palestinians being held by Israel detainees did you notice that because these Palestinians have

[1:52:30] never been charged with a crime the military just bust down the door of their house grabs everybody and throws them in a cage how is that not being held hostage what makes those people detainees they're also civilians in many cases they're children you know 70 of the Palestinian hostages that have been released have been children but we're laser focused on the Israelis being held by Hamas now that's

[1:53:01] not to say Hamas isn't a bloodthirsty terrorist organization I think that it is as is Pidge uh the Palestinian Islamic Jihad how long how long has uh Hamas been uh basically the ruling organization in Gaza right since 2005 2005 they were they they were formed around 1990 or 91 but they've actually run it since 2005 which is when the Israelis the Israelis withdrew as the uh

[1:53:33] the governing Authority okay you know funny thing too that strip of land until 1973 was administered by Egypt you know the West Bank was administered by Jordan as was East Jerusalem but Gaza was administered by Egypt and then in the wake of the Camp David Accords between Israel and and Egypt brokered by Jimmy Carter

[1:54:03] uh the Egyptians said uh we don't we don't want it back you guys can have it it's nothing but trouble we don't want it and the Israelis were like well we don't want it well we don't want it either so the Israelis like H okay we'll just let it sit there for a while and then it got to be so much of problem for them because it's very densely populated it's one of the most densely populated places on Earth um and it's restive then the Israelis had to go in as part of I

[1:54:33] think it was the first inata and then by 2005 they decided we got to get out of here there's too many Palestinians here what is like the balance geopolitically of Israel Iran Saud Arabia when it come when it comes to this like well Hamas that's a great question and Hamas made a statement the other day just in the past week or so that what finally convinced them to launch this thing was the

[1:55:03] closeness of a diplomatic agreement between Israel and Saudi Arabia right they had seen history just slipping through their hands right in with these Abraham Accords that Donald Trump um uh negotiated while a great victory for Israel and for the gulf Arabs it was a punch in the throat to the Palestinians remember Trump in the campaign said I'll fix the Israeli Palestinian problem in one day yeah you do that by the Palestinians I mean you didn't fix it

[1:55:34] you just literally gave the ises everything that they wanted that's not fixing it it only made it worse so there was this little Heyday that lasted from you know 200 what 19 to uh to October the 7 7th where Israel opens relations with Morocco and Sudan and the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain and I I think I'm leaving somebody out and they're this close to relations with the Saudi with Saudi Arabia which is

[1:56:05] going to be the Crown Jewel really of Israeli foreign policy and ham just decided Iran does not want Saudi Arabia and Israel to have a relationship absolutely not and the Iranians because Iran's greatest enemy is is Israel now see this this is this is part of the thing that makes this all complicated right Iran and Saudi Arabia hate each other like to the death they hate each other uh going back to

[1:56:37] 1979 the Iranian Revolution was in February of 79 in March I think it was March or April of 79 that's when the Hajj took place in Mecca and Medina right the Iranians infiltrated the Hajj and they took over the holy cabba the the big black granite uh Cube that's that holds the rock that God gave Muhammad so um more than a thousand people were killed in the ensuing um the take the

[1:57:11] Takeover and then the the reaction from the Saudi military and the Saudis broke relations with Iran and it was DEC before they put it back together again mhm so the Saudis even during the the Iran Iraq war the Saudis supported Iran because they were so afraid of I'm sorry the Saudis supported Iraq because they were so afraid of Iran right and um Saudi Arabia has a very large Shia Muslim population in its eastern Province Saudi Arabia is a Sunni Muslim

[1:57:43] country Iran is a Shia Muslim country but this little sliver of Saudi Arabia is Shia and that just happens to be where all the oil is right so they are perfectly happy to execute as many Shia Muslim Saudis as they need to to make sure that everything remains calm and they do it a lot they killed a lot of people there in the Eastern Province so they've got this bad relationship with the Iranians goes back decades and then

[1:58:14] the Chinese come in beginning of this year and they say listen we don't have a dog in this fight but we like you and we like you and we think you guys should get together and it would be good for peace and we can the Americans this way and so would you say we broker peace between you and the Saudis send an ambassador to Teran and the Iranians send an ambassador to Riyad and before we even realize what's going on they announce the resumption of diplomatic relations and we're like oh my God

[1:58:47] that's our sphere of influence and the Chinese just screwed us out of it so then we're like okay well now what we're going to do is we're going to get the Saudis to recognize Israel and that'll screw the Iranians and it'll screw the Chinese because the Chinese won't have played a role in it and so we start leaking these stories to the Press oh we're close the Saudis

[2:05:36] know a couple and then the jordanians apologize and they offer money to the family of the Dead Israelis and the Israelis accept the apology and then they pretend everything's fine but it's because things are bubbling up just beneath the surface it's such a crazy part of the world it is it's fascinating from when I was 15 years old all I wanted to do was live in the Middle East and work on the Middle East and you lived there for a total of how long I was there for 5 years and you

[2:06:08] were how long were you in Greece two years two years um so okay going back to the balance of power over there and it it's seems like a big sort of proxy war between America and China really I mean if you look at it is yeah yes when it comes to Iran and Hamas and Saudi Arabia MH and Israel where does Russia fit into

[2:06:38] this yeah because Russia and Iran are close right yeah Russia and Iran are close um I'm going to go back to 1995 when I was living in Bahrain I was the uh senior economic officer in the American Embassy and this was the Heyday of the Arab Israeli peace process and so um so the United Nations announced peace talks between Israel and the Arab

[2:07:09] countries on the environment and they were going to be held in bahin so I was a delegate to the Arab Israeli peace talks on the environment um what my instructions were the day we received the invitation from the state department to deliver to the the way the way it is we're a superpower and Russia was a superpower so we got this invitation and I was supposed to go with the Russian economic officer to the Minister of Foreign Affairs and say your Excellency on behalf of the governments of the United States and the Russian

[2:07:39] Republic we hereby invite you to host the next round of the Arab Israeli peace talks these talks will be on the environment right right it's all this stupid diplomatic formality MH so I get the invitation I called my Russian counterpart Andre good guy his wife was an Olympic figure skater I still remember nice guy a little lazy but fun and um I said Andre I got my instructions today and he said yeah I got my instructions I said okay I'll call over to the foreign Minister's office and uh and make the appointment

[2:08:11] for us so I did and they gave me an appointment for the next day and so just as I was going to leave to go pick him up and then go to the foreign Ministry I get instructions from State don't pick up the Russian just do it yourself and I'm like why this is a joint us Russian peace initiative so I went to the Ambassador and I said Ambassador I got this odd this odd instruction from State he said

[2:08:41] yeah I saw that I said what do I do he said well you got to ignore the Russian I said that's going to make make for a an awkward lunch so I drove over to the foreign Minister's office I went to see him and I said your Excellency on behalf of the United States government I would like to formally invite you blah blah blah my phone is blowing up at the time well my phone it was like this big so you know MH the size of a shoe box and um and Andre is like where are you and I said Andre I am so sorry and I explained what

[2:09:16] happened he's like come on man like what the I said I'm sorry it's some kind of power play in Washington I I don't even know what to say to you I'm sorry and after that he was you know very cold to me and he knew it wasn't me but the whole point of this is historically really since the end of the of the second world war the Middle East is ours it's not the Russians or the Chinese it's ours and so that's why we are so apoplectic about the Russians having troops in Syria because Syria is part of

[2:09:48] the Middle East and the Middle East is ours and now all of a sudden the Chinese are involved negotiating peace between the Iranians and the Saudis like where did that come from we're already worried about the Russians in Syria and now we got to worry about the Chinese in Saudi Arabia right another thing another thing the last time I was in jouti jibou is a little tiny country in Africa right right the only reason I went to jouy was because we have a military base there and uh and I knew it was for it's like

[2:10:18] the worst kept secret in the world that's our drone base for Yemen right it's only 16 miles across the water from Djibouti to Yemen and Yemen was at the time that I was last there it was one of the the headquarters of al-Qaeda so this was a base built by the French back in the 60s camp Camp lemonier it's called so like you see guys in the French Foreign Legion they wear these stupid like short shorts and these funny

[2:10:48] hats and they're walking around they're always in Paris walking around town in their little shorts and um so I went to the base and all I see is Chinese and I said to the the military guy that I was working with I thought this was a French base like and we we had part of it he said oh no no he said the French sold it a couple of years ago I said they sold it not to the Chinese he goes yeah it's the only foreign military base that the Chinese have

[2:11:18] and they share it with the US military how crazy is that so you know what else was funny at the time and I made a joke about it with the guy there's literally a chain link fence that goes down the middle of the base so on the left side it's Chinese and on the right side it's American so on the and it's just a row as far as the eye can see a row of hangers with this fence going down the center of it and on the left all the hangers are open the

[2:11:49] Chinese side uhhuh they're all open and on the right the American side all the hangers are closed and I said uh why are the hangers closed what do we have in there and he goes come on dude I go oh I know what we have in there I'm just pulling your leg drones all drones oh my God that's interesting so what do you think what do you think the communication is between Russia and Iran

[2:12:23] trying to with with Israel being in the middle of all this are they what do you think they want to see happen with this with this conflict if you recall on October 7th and October 8th virtually the first thing that came out of the Israeli government as soon as hostilities began was you need to help us bomb Iran the Iranians did this the Iranians are behind it they gave Hamas the weapons they gave Hamas the money and the Iranians came out and said look we had nothing to do with this and then

[2:12:54] the White House leaked some intelligence saying the intelligence Community is unable to confirm allegations that the Iranians were behind the Hamas attack which is true the Iranians didn't do this the Iranians probably hoped it was going to happen MH and are glad that it did happen but we we put our foot down and we did WOW because ever since George W Bush was president Benjamin Netanyahu has begged us to attack Iran he's begged us literally I mean I I

[2:13:27] was I won't go into the details but he's begged us multiple times and um we're not willing to go to war with Iran just you know as a favor to the Israelis and so that's shocking he thought that he could pull us into it on the 8th of October and we said no our intelligence is not coming to the same conclusion that yours is well there was no intelligence that the Iranians were involved so the Iranians know that the

[2:13:58] Russians are preoccupied right now which is I think what the Israeli calculation was the Israeli calculation was probably look the Russians are bogged down in in Ukraine if we can convince the Americans to hit the Iranians even if it's just by launching cruise missiles that's going to help us a lot but then the Chinese are like whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoaa wait a minute we have good relations with the Chinese and we don't have any intelligence I mean the Chinese with the with the Iranians and we don't have any

[2:14:28] intelligence to show that the Iranians were involved China doesn't have any int does right and so we backed off the Russians probably you know were like that was a close one and the Chinese are like look at us and how powerful we are in the Middle East all of a sudden and I'll tell you one of thing that the Chinese have really done right here we are spending all this money on military systems and Hardware right and what are the Chinese spending

[2:14:59] their money on ports highways hospitals airports loans to poor countries this the belon road MH it's brilliant and is it true that all of these airports and train stations and embassies that they're building and cargo ports all over the world that these things can be converted into Air Force bases in the matter no no no I'll give you as an example um when the Greek economy uh collapsed in 2008 you know it

[2:15:29] took actually yesterday uh standard and pores upgraded Greek bonds to investment grade for the first time since 2008 so it's taken this long from 2008 to 2023 and in that time the Greeks really really really needed the money and so they sold the port of pereus to the Chinese the port of parus is the biggest um cargo port in the world and they sold the port of Thessaloniki and the port of iron creit

[2:16:00] right which is the biggest port in the aan they sold all three ports to the Chinese it killed them to have to do it but for the first time all three ports are profitable wow mhm see for the Chinese it's all about good relations it's all about good relations and they buy good relations you need money no problem what do you need you need a new hospital we can do that for you you need to upgrade

[2:16:30] your airport oh my God your airport looks like it belongs in Africa we'll give you a new airport you know oh you need a you need a highway to go from Athens to Thessalon cuz the mountains are so high you know you don't have the money to to uh to blow the tunnels we'll do it for you no problem and they do now can you explain to me I have a loose understanding of it but um can you explain what the brics is like I know there's NATO then there's the brics alliance right yeah so brics was

[2:17:00] originally uh Brazil Russia India China okay b r i c Brazil Russia India China okay so this was more of a trade uh organization than anything else saying you know we're all big powerful economy we're tired of of being sanctioned by the US let's just do our own thing and it ended up working for them to the point where the Brazilians have been talking for the last year about creating

[2:17:32] a new currency that's going to be unique to the bricks countries like the Euro for example um and it's gone so well for them that they just added several countries they added like South Africa South Korea oh wow all the way up until the fall of the Soviet Union there was an international organization called the the N the non-aligned movement so it was like this but it was political in nature this is specifically trade in nature

[2:18:03] Brazil Russia India China South Africa and then they added a bunch uh they add in 2023 bricks countries held an annual leader Summit in Johannesburg Summit was oh the new countries Iran Saudi Arabia Egypt Argentina the UAE and Ethiopia W oh wow now what does this mean for the United States yeah this is bad this is bad because it's all about trade it's all about money and we're so focused on the European Union and on sanctioning

[2:18:34] everybody that pisses us off that we've actually cut trade with a lot of these countries so we're missing out on a serious Financial opportunity here you know I remember when I was still on the analytics side in the agency we announced a new round of sanctions on Iran and I remember saying to my boss how many new sanctions could there possibly be right not realizing at the time that if I say hey you Danny Jones you're not

[2:19:06] allowed to open a checking account in my country well you didn't have any intention of opening a checking account anyway but that's a sanction you've been sanctioned right so they don't they're meaning we do it for political reasons but then you know after a while these countries are like you know I'm tired of this you I'm going to go with the I'm going to go with the Chinese I'm going to go with this new bricks thing yeah they're not yelling at me and sanctioning me all the time and that's what's happening that reminds me there was a

[2:19:38] story you told um uh when we were gearing up for the Iraq War I think you you were sitting there in a televised and somebody said something about invading Iran yeah it was the day before uh we invaded Iraq and I was the notetaker in uh a secure video teleconference it was only George Tennant who was the uh CIA director and me and then on the screens was the vice president and his notetaker uh coni rice

[2:20:11] was the uh National Security adviser and her notetaker Colin Powell Secretary of State and his notetaker um uh don Rumsfeld and his notaker couple of other people the head of NSA the head of centcom and they're note takers and so our job is done as far as CIA goes right and starting tomorrow morning it's his military operation so George is just sitting there at the table with his hands folded there's a microphone in front of him and um the vice president

[2:20:43] being the senior officer uh in the meeting is chairing the meeting and he starts by asking the commander of sencom General I forget his name now to give us a briefing so I'm sitting directly behind George this is like the story of my life I'm always the notetaker I'm always the guy sitting behind the important guy right so I'm I'm taking notes and I think I mentioned you I hate military analyst you got to be a fast writer to a

[2:21:13] very fast writer in fact do you like abbreviate and one of my trainers actually commented on it one time he said you take notes at a wicked Pace I said oh thank you anyway um I'm taking notes and I hate military analysis it's so boring and mind-numbing to me the General's got this big map and he's like you know elements of the first Infantry Division are moving south to this Village and then elements of the Fifth Army core and and we've got the

[2:21:45] unit this battalion I don't know what the he's talking about so I'm just writing it all down and then he says if all goes as planned we can be in teron by August and George again George is just sitting there like this and then he very discreetly turns the microphone off and he turns around and he says did he say Baghdad or did he say Tron and I said he said teron and who is it that said that again

[2:22:16] uh the the commander of Central Command okay fourstar General who's leading the the troops across the border the next day got it and George said have these people lost their minds and then he turns the microphone back on and just sits there so the meeting goes for about an hour everybody's like good luck tomorrow everybody good luck good luck USA you know that kind of thing so I go back to the office I was working for the deputy director at the time and he said who was the deputy

[2:22:47] director again uh Jim pavit Jim pav yeah yeah and he said how'd the meeting go and I said did you know we were going to invade Iran and he goes oo are they still talking about that and I said yeah I said uh sent brought it up sent commander-in Chief sencom sent brought it up and he said listen they're not going to invade Iran these people don't understand anything about the region they think we could just you know walk

[2:23:19] in and everybody's going to be milk and honey nobody's invading Iran and of course you know it was never mentioned again wow that's so wild just to be a fly in the wall for these meetings I remember one of the other attendees um I don't want to say his name but he was a senior director at the uh National Security Council I didn't like this guy from the get-go because he was so arrogant and he would put people down he would put our allies down he was especially harsh with

[2:23:49] the Kurds we used to have Kurds come to Washington all the time for high level meetings and I was often the note taker or sometimes I would escort them to the meetings um and this guy always talked to them like they had half a brain and you know it was just insulting so anyway sense's giving the briefing and this guy chimes in and he says they're going to throw flowers at us as soon as we cross that border and I I said to my boss

[2:24:19] afterwards I said has this guy never been to the Middle East has he never read history do none of them understand what we're getting into tomorrow throw flowers at us they would rather live under Sadam Hussein than to be occupied by the American Army and so when you guys were leading up to the Iraq War what was the cia's stance on this oh yeah so

[2:24:50] when I was first read into the compartment it was about uh let me think July August September um it was about eight months before uh the invasion they said look we're going to invade Iraq we're going to overthrow Saddam Hussein we're going to do this and do that and there was some con man who was involved in getting yes chelby that's it was ahed chelby Major con man um when I was first read into the compartment I said are they nuts we haven't caught Bin Laden yet like this

[2:25:23] is all we ever talked about we got to we got to find Bin Laden we got to kill Bin Laden now all of a sudden we're going to attack Iran or I mean Iraq for what reason Iraq hadn't done anything to us and um and this senior officer that read me into the compartment very senior officer um he said look the decision's already been made and the battle lines have been drawn this isn't this is an answered to your your question he said the battle lines have been drawn he said the proar faction is ovp the office of the

[2:25:54] vice president OSD the office of the Secretary of Defense and NC the National Security Council he said the anti-war faction is the state department the CIA and The Joint Chiefs and we've lost wow mhm yeah it was crystal clear this was all on Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld all of it and to a lesser

[2:26:25] extent coni rice because she was very easily pushed around yeah and who so can you explain chellby yeah and how was he instrumental in all of this he was like he was like robbing people out of their money he created like a fake bank at one point and did did Dick did Cheney know oh of course he did okay yeah that makes that makes it an even more interesting story so Ahmed chelby was one of those very rare Shia Kurds

[2:26:58] there are like you know six of them right um he was born in Iraqi Kurdistan but his family was Shia Muslim very very unusual he was a bright kid and so his parents sent him to London to get degrees in finance at the London School of Economics he ended up moving to Jordan before Saddam became the leader

[2:27:30] of Iraq he he moved to Jordan and opened a bank there that he called Petra bank and Petra Bank succeeded because chelby was able to convince Iraqi refugees to use it as their bank right right so if you were Iraqi Petra Bank was your bank you didn't Bank anywhere else so that lasted from the 60s through the 70s through the 80s and then at the end of the

[2:28:01] 80s he literally stole all the money was $30 million in deposits and his secretary smuggled him into Syria in the trunk of her car he had transferred the money uh to uh Secret counts in London and Geneva and then escaped to Syria and then flew to London he owned a magnificent townhouse in um in nightsbridge London right by uh herod's magnificent that today would be worth

[2:28:32] you know 5060 million um he wore suits that I could only fantasize about affording but there was something very dirty about him he was just an awful human being and he would come on to every female uh officer that we would go out there and meet with him with he was just disgusting so in 1990 Iraq invades Kuwait and George HW

[2:29:03] Bush says we got to get rid of this Saddam Hussein 1990 well you you can't just overthrow a foreign leader and not have a plan for the next day and so he said well we need to identify some uh that we can install as the new president of Iraq well everybody like this guy chelby why why would why do you think people would really like chelby more than everybody else he spoke

[2:29:34] English uhhuh he spoke English as well as you and I everybody else is like you know if they spoke English it was heavily accented they had bo you know they didn't shave all the time H but chelby he wears $2,000 Italian suits he speaks English he smells nice yeah we like him we like chelby so the CIA engaged a private

[2:30:04] contractor by the name of the renan group in Washington headed by John renan I love John renan awesome guy what kind of contractor um he's a propagandist you know he said to me one time I said to him what does that mean actually that you're propagandist this he's a self-proclaimed propagandist oh nice and he said you remember the day that we liberated Kuwait and I said I'll never forget it as long as I live I went into quit with the Marines on Liberation day oh wow and he said everybody in kit was waving a little American flag I said yeah it was

[2:30:35] like a dream he goes where do the heck you think they got all those little American flags what they're just laying around wow I was like oh my god I didn't even think of that no way that's wild this is a CIA contractor wo so um so they they pick chelby so John renan flies to Vienna Austria meets up with chelby and John says okay here's what we're going to do we're going to create this new group

[2:31:06] called the Iraqi National Congress and what it's going to be it's going to be representatives of all the different Iraqi opposition groups right and you're going to be the chairman of the Iraqi National Congress so when we finally move into Iraq you're going to be the president and everybody else will be your cabinet okay that sounds like a decent enough idea several problems ahed chalabi hadn't even been to Iraq since

[2:31:39] 1965 we weren't even sure if he spoke Arabic anymore secondly all the other people hated him they're like ahed chalabe are you kidding me do you people not know who you're dealing with the answer was no at the time we did not know who we were dealing with the third problem is literally not a single one of these people on the Iraqi National Congress actually lived in Iraq none of them if Saddam thought that

[2:32:09] maybe perhaps someday you might possibly become an oppositionist you're going to get a bullet in the bra mhm so there were no oppositionists inside Iraq except the Kurds and the Kurds are like we're not working with any of these people we're going to make Kurdistan and we're going to live happily ever after and that's where the oil is anyway MH so the CIA started funneling money to the Iraqi National Congress millions and millions of dollars okay they need to buy a building where are we going to put

[2:32:40] this thing we could put it in Vienna we could put it in London we don't want to put it in Washington it'll be too closely tied to us so we're trying to come up with different ways to do it h maybe Vienna's the way to go okay so he spent all the money and he needs more money okay so we gave you $40 million how much more do you need uh give me another 20 million okay so what have you done with the first 40 million I spent it yes we know that would' you spend it on all different kinds of stuff like what where's your building you must have

[2:33:12] bought a building with $40 million I know bought a new fraking house in London and a house in Geneva and a Mercedes S600 so where's the rest of the money he couldn't account for a single dollar of it gone so the CIA issued something called a burn notice a Burn Notice is when you send a cable to every CIA officer in the world and say don't ever have any contact with this person ever again he's dead to us okay that's what we did with

[2:33:44] chelby so then for the rest this again pardon me what year was this uh by then it was like '92 okay got it so then we pretty much forget about chelby through the 90s you know the Iraqis are sort of pissing us off because they won't let the UN inspectors go in and then Clinton would bomb them and then they' do it again and we'd bomb them again and nothing was happening it was just a stalemate and then George W bush gets elected

[2:34:14] president and 9 happens and as soon as 911 happens Bush says we got to invade Iraq it's their fault 911 is their fault we're like no they had like literally nothing to do with 911 well we're going to invade him anyway okay well we think this is a mistake but battle lines drawn as I said earlier was there no conversations like like a real conversations with the only conversations were between Cheney coni rice and

[2:34:44] Rumsfeld but mostly chaines deputies scooter Libby and Addington and you know all those guys um zal no one in the CIA could get in Bush's ear and be like look we were absolutely preoccupied with Al-Qaeda got it okay every Everybody in the building is working on Al-Qaeda okay and then Bush calls one day and says oh by the way uh come up with an invasion plan because we're going to invade Iraq and overthrow Saddam Hussein we're like what what are you talking about but that was it that was the order

[2:35:15] so we decide to invade Iraq and the CIA says we in let's say we do invade Iraq and we overthrow Saddam Hussein then what and Dick Cheney says we're g to put this fella Ahmed chalabi he's going to be the president and we said whoa no we are not Cheney said that yeah we have a Burn Notice on Cheney I I mean on uh on chelby and on everybody associated with

[2:35:46] chelby we're not working with chelby and then the CIA reissued the burn notice saying listen this is from 10 years ago but just remember we don't deal with this guy so what Cheney did is he ordered the under secretary of defense for intelligence to secretly reopen a Channel with chelby and he specifically told him

[2:36:18] don't tell the CIA I remember you know part of my job or 90% of my job at the time was reading 10 15,000 cables a day 20,000 that were coming in to brief the director I'd boil that that 10 or 20,000 cables down to a half a dozen of the most important issues mhm to brief the director in the morning and then we started getting these cables like the weapons of mass

[2:36:49] destruction are located at these geoc coordinates I'm like holy who found this super secret you know double secret probation kind of special source that nobody can know about well this is a military cable what sources does the military have we're the ones that run the sources unless this is actually an intercept that they're disguising which sometimes an intercept is so sensitive that they'll disguise it as something else what is an intercept

[2:37:21] NSA catches it out of the air got it so I went to my boss I said do you know anything about this you know who this Source might be and he's like no it's pretty explosive information I said yeah it could like you know end the war before it begins if we can send the UN inspectors in there and then we started getting these like every single day amazing exactly on Point intelligence so a couple of our guys from the Iraq operations group said we

[2:37:53] want to talk to the source we don't care where he is in the world we're going to fly a team out there and we're going to we want to interview The Source Pentagon said absolutely not too sensitive we said no no no no we're the Central Intelligence Agency right at the time the head of the CIA his title was DC I director of Central Intelligence he was the dni he headed all intelligence agencies not just the CIA now it's just

[2:38:25] the CIA okay but um the Pentagon refused to allow us to have access to the source and then finally after some pushing and prodding they admitted it's chelby and we're like literally not a single word is true not a single word we went to war for this but people are dying because of this and not a single word of it is true and so nothing ever came of chelby where is he now he died a couple of

[2:38:57] years ago two three years ago uh in London good Lord yeah did you see on I saw on Twitter this morning there was a video of Liz Cheney talking about how uh Trump is going to lead us into a dictatorship oh please her father led us into a dictatorship I was going to say a uh one it's a one hell of a thing for a Cheney to be giv us a lesson on dictatorship seriously right none of those people uh from the Iraqi National

[2:39:27] Congress ever amounted to anything um in fact um only the Kurds only the Kurds ended up running government uh Jalal talibani the head of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan ended up being the uh the president of Iraq and I'll tell you something funny in in in my office a couple of weeks ago we were talking about Iraq and my co-host on my radio show said something about Barham Salah and I said oh what's Barham doing and she looks at me she said he's the president of Iraq I said baram Salah is

[2:39:58] the president of Iraq he was my main my main partner during the Iraq War he lived in anandale Virginia we had dinner at each other's house every couple of weeks we would go out our kids would play together I said he's president of Iraq it's like wow baram really made it makes me feel like an underachiever good Lord yeah but baram was a kurd uh he was a talibani kurd there were two two different there's patriotic Union of Kurdistan under Jalal talibani and the uh Kurdish Democratic

[2:40:30] party under um under um the amount of people that you've just rubbed shoulders with that are like powerful such powerful world leaders around the world is so bizarre to think about man masud bar was the other C that just came to me yeah it's crazy but you know I'm I'm almost 60 years old now and I don't feel like I'm 60 like in my mind I still feel like I'm 25 how old were you when you were um the notetaker for that meeting with President Clinton and

[2:41:02] uh in Greece who was the meeting with oh in Greece it was with the Prime Minister the foreign minister and the defense minister and then on the American side it was the president uh the Secretary of State the National Security adviser and the Ambassador I was 3 I had just turned 35 35 and that was the first time you ever met Clinton or that was the first time I had met Clinton yeah and how what was that meeting like what was the purpose of that meeting it was a a meet and greet

[2:41:36] okay uh he didn't come to go to Greece often did he No in fact the only other presidents that have been to Greece have been Eisenhower and HW oh oh wow yeah um he specifically came to Greece to apologize for overthrowing the Greek government in 1967 yeah which was a major major deal I'll tell you a funny story I used to watch the Greek news every night right to practice my my U spoken Greek and um for two weeks before Clinton came

[2:42:10] uh they derisively coined a a a name for him a title for him it was planetar it means the planet ruler so they wouldn't say o Clinton President Clinton they would say Planet he's Clinton the planet ruler Clinton is going to come here and grace us with his presence you know that kind of thing every single night on every News Channel it's a and it would piss me off

[2:42:41] right then Clinton came and he's like we we love you you love us this is the birthplace of democracy we owe our culture to you we owe philosophy to you and medicine and Mathematics language we owe everything to you and I want to apologize from the bottom of my heart to the people of Greece for the the illegal activity of my government in 1967 to

[2:43:11] install a military dictatorship here that you have never gotten over you know people are still traumatized as soon as he gets on the plane to leave right I put the news on they're like wow we were wrong about him what a good man what a kind man oh my God he should be the president of Greece it was like it was crazy the turnaround it was crazy but that meeting

[2:43:41] I will never forget that meeting as long as I live just because I'm standing there like I can't there have been a couple of times over the course of my career where I'm in the room and I'm looking around like I can't believe I'm in this room like surely they're going to figure out that I'm a fraud right didn't he walk up to you and he was like talking about the the or derves or something like that yeah he offered me I got there before he did and when when I first got there the the Prime Minister arrived with his people and I I offered the Prime Minister a cup of coffee a cup of tea whatever he wanted

[2:44:13] he said no no no I'm fine I said okay so I'm standing there cuz again I'm the note taker so my job's not to to get comfy on the couch my job is to stand discreetly with my notebook and take notes so Clinton comes in and it's all hugs and kisses on both cheeks and slaps on the back and he asks the Prime Minister uh would you like we got sandwiches we got all it was a table of food that went like the entire length of the of the room it was ridiculous $1,000 worth of food on this table and he

[2:44:45] didn't want anything the foreign minister didn't want anything the defense minister didn't want anything and the Greek notetaker of course wasn't offered anything so then he turns to me I think I've told you this and he goes may I offer you something to eat and I said oh no thank you Mr President I'm fine and he goes oh are you with me and I said yes sir I'm with you he said I'm sorry I thought you were Greek I said I I kind of am but not

[2:45:15] really it's a long story yeah was Hillary there oh yeah what happened was we finished the meeting the meeting went about 45 minutes not a single substantive word in the whole thing and Clinton walks out with Burger who was the National Security adviser Albright who was the Secretary of of uh State walks out with the Ambassador and then I walk out so they're standing in the the hall there

[2:45:45] are two little groups and I'm standing against the wall so I'm about 3 feet away from Clinton maybe I'm 4 feet away from Clinton and then he finishes his conversation with Burger so Burger walks over to Albright and the Ambassador so Clinton is standing like where you are and I'm standing where I am and at the end of the hall is the elevator and the elevator opens and Hillary and Chelsea get off the elevator and she's got this this

[2:46:15] mug you could just tell like oh this is going to be bad just the look on her face like oh she was ready to explode so she walks right up to us and it's the four of us then and one thing that I learned very quickly about Bill Clinton is that he absolutely hates silence something he's so gregarious and so outgoing like somebody has to fill the void with with a joke a story something yes so he says boy we sure had a good

[2:46:49] time at the paron this morning didn't we Hill silence she just looks at him with this look like she wanted to kill him so he repeats himself and he says we sure had a good time at the Parthenon this morning didn't we Hill and she says Jesus Christ Bill it rained all day I'll be in the room and then she walks between us and he looks at me and I'm thinking of s you poor man you have to sleep next to that every night so he

[2:47:19] looks at me he goes let's get the out of here and he walks to the elevator I follow him to the elevator Secret Service runs down there we go to the basement there was this rockus crowd of 500 women in the basement it was the throwing themselves at them pretty much it was the helenic American Women's Chamber of Commerce and he gave this rousing like amazing speech there's screaming we love you Bill you know that kind of thing MH I don't know how he did

[2:47:51] it wow I don't know how he did it what what do you think fueled that relationship the resentment she had towards him or I don't know if it was resentment but this was only this was only a year after the Monica Lewinsky thing and oh a year after yeah he had humiliated her and right right right you know she had eyes on her own political career by then she she was weighing a run for the Senate from New York she didn't need him anymore right yeah you know it's amazing they stayed together all time it's amazing I was friends with the uh with

[2:48:22] the American ambassador to Luxembourg he's a Greek American who's now the president of U of uh oh some big university I can't remember now which one but anyway he told me the best story he said that he had been he had been a businessman and multi-millionaire self-made millionaire and so he was was the head of fundraising for the Clinton campaign uh for the Southeastern United States and his reward was he was named

[2:48:53] ambassador to Luxembourg so he said that when the Lewinsky scandal broke all the fundraisers got together and called each other and said he's got to resign right we have to we have to confront him together and we've got to get him to resign Gore can become president and then Gore can run for his own term in 2000 so um Clinton agreed to get together not knowing why they were getting together

[2:49:24] but they said that they all needed to see him together he said they rented a room a a banquet room at the uh Willard Hotel across the street from the White House on uh on 15th Street and he said that they had met the night before and they had rehearsed this that they are going to they're going to be strong and they're going to be United and they're going to tell him that he has to resign or that none of them are going to raise money for anybody anymore this is going to be it they have to resign and make room for for Gore and so

[2:49:55] he said Clinton finally gets to the room and before anybody can even say anything he says I have wronged you friends with this like almost this quivering almost cry in his voice and he begs their forgiveness and he pleads for them not to abandon him that what he did was wrong and he's so sorry he can't believe

[2:50:27] that he did what he did now like every president he's a sociopath this is probably an act it's probably all made up you have to be a sociopath to be president you climb to the top on the backs of everybody else around you that's just the nature of the system that we have have right so the Ambassador said to me nobody ever mentioned resignation he said by the end of the meeting he said most of us were crying God and then

[2:50:59] somebody started chanting Clinton Clinton Clinton and that's how it ended and that's how he walked out with people chanting Clinton and I said I said he suckered you he said of course he suckered us he knew exactly what was going on yeah he knew exactly what we were there for and he suckered every one of us he said but that was that Clinton magic that people used to talk about and I said I saw it that that day in the meeting I saw it myself he had a meeting out of his hands yeah wow he was positively inspirational

[2:51:32] to be around I've never experienced anything else like it Reagan Reagan was like that in a much more understated way but I only met Reagan once but Clinton like wow you you really felt like you were in the presence of greatness with Clinton even if you weren't you felt like you were wow what do you think of what is your take on all the different people like the the next presidential election and the people that we have lined up for the next I saw something about um my friend Julian was explaining to me he saw a report about Mark hubin

[2:52:04] potentially might be doing it he apparently like sold his he sold the Mavericks he sold the Mavericks to a guy to adon's Widow what but but but he not only did he sell it but he remains in control of basketball operations yeah that was the deal the deal was he sold her 95% of the team he gets to retain 5% and control of basketball operations that doesn't happen that's not that's not normal I'm not aware of that ever happening so he has to be running for president well you know every four years

[2:52:35] he's like I might run I might run I might run n I'm not going to run every four years MH um frankly I think it would be kind of an intriguing camp candidate I really do now maybe I'm an idiot I don't know it's entirely possible God knows people have called me an idiot including two Ex-Wives but but uh it would be intriguing to me but one of the things that I say on my own show a lot is that neither the Democrats nor the Republicans have a deep bench right the two weakest possible people that any

[2:53:06] party could possibly nominate are going to be the nominees right you can't ask for two worse people Bob Kennedy I consider to be a friend I think Bob's an awesome human being I believe him when he says that he's not antia but people think that he's antix and that might be enough to just kill his candidacy but I like the man I respect him he's an awesome guy awesome human being um but you know name name another Democrat or another Republican that can be taken seriously

[2:53:36] maybe possibly Nikki Haley maybe didn't isn't she is she the lady who said something about the when the um um the Israel Palestine thing kicked off she's like crush them all or something yes she was known she took a lot of heat when she was very briefly for a minute the US ambassador to the United Nations I say a minute it was two years but um she took a lot of heat because a news reporter took a picture of her speaking with the Israeli Ambassador he was

[2:54:07] sitting and so she's on her knee talking to the Ambassador and people like uhhuh on our knees to our masters the Israelis right he should be on his knees in front of her right but I mean that's the crazy thing right like talking about the Israel Lobby MH I was just watching a great podcast with um uh mimer oh he's fantastic John mimer and fredman yeah they did a podcast where he

[2:54:39] was talking about the Israel Lobby and how much influence like it's unprecedented the amount ofl from reporting uh laws did you know that you and from what reporting laws you and I were talking about the far law the foreign um foreign agents uh registration act right with Mara who didn't register right um APAC the American Israel it's not political action committee it's like policy I forget they're they're

[2:55:10] cute with the title um they don't have to register as representatives of the Israeli government wow mhm they're the only ones that don't everybody else does you'll get a prison if you don't right they don't have to why yeah it was fascinating to to hear like the amount of influence that Israel has over policy in the United States is like is unheard of and to the and and John's argument even though people like to label him anti-semitic but he his

[2:55:40] argument is that it's to the detriment of Israel it is it is to the detriment of Israel and there he said there's also um a lot of Jewish Americans or Israeli Americans that are against the Israeli Lobby absolutely true absolutely true I'm friends with a bunch of them I I have a good friend um mop pelled his father was a fourstar general in the IDF and is one of the country's greatest military heroes in history and mo wears

[2:56:10] a cafa and you know shouts free pal at every at every uh demonstration yeah he's a major uh part of the Jewish voices for peace it's just like when you see the people that are have the most chance of becoming president they all have some sort of tie to Jeffrey Epstein like we can we just get a president who has no ties to Jeffrey Epstein that would be a nice change of pace even you know I don't I I'm I've never met uh Bob Kennedy but I I know he had a lot of numbers in the black book yeah um Bob

[2:56:42] has tried to deal with that head on has he yeah so so he was on the flight logs mhm at least one of the flight logs that was that was uh released and he had a legitimate um explanation uh his wife at the time was friends with galain Maxwell who was Jeffrey Epstein's uh mhm what do you call her girlfriend I guess procurer procurer partner in crime yeah partner I

[2:57:14] like and her father was uh a very well-known mad asset very well-known mad asset um and uh Bob's wife mentioned that the family was going to fly to Palm Beach for Easter and she said oh do you need to you need a lift and so the whole Kennedy family flew down on Jeffrey Epstein's l express oh wow yeah it was it was innocent you know the amount of reach that guy had was oh my God it was incredible but that's what makes for his successful access

[2:57:46] agent I I feel confident in my analysis on Epstein I believe he was a mad access agent I'm I'm very confident about that you know I said on your show when we spoke uh what two years ago now a year and a half ago that if you're the mad and you want to recruit somebody at the absolute highest levels of the US government you're not going to be able to recruit a president or a vice president or you know anybody

[2:58:16] that's in that direct line mhm so you recruit an access agent you have you recruit somebody who has access to the people that you would like to recruit and so what better way than to have somebody like Jeffrey Epstein who had virtually unlimited funds nobody was really sure how but unlimited F funds A Private Island and and a an illegal Kink that might be kind of attractive to some

[3:05:02] production company yeah yeah some they're usually shell companies shell company so we got on the phone and Sasha introduces himself and says I don't know if you know anything about my characters I said oh I know all of your characters I said listen Bruno I almost pissed myself but I've been watching you since Ali G when it first appeared on uh on HBO and he says okay so you know Bruno Bruno is a gay Austrian fashion journalist and I said

[3:05:32] yes very flamboyant yes okay he said I want to put Bruno in front of bonafide terrorists he said I'm thinking I'll kaida maybe Hezbollah and I want to show them Polaroids of men having hardcore anal sex and I want to ask them in the Bruno character if this uh is a form of torture and should these men be sent to

[3:06:04] Guantanamo and I said oh that's an exceptionally bad idea he goes really I said oh listen just as a general rule you shouldn't mess with the religious types they're nuts I said they'll kill you they'll kill your crew they'll go out onto the street and kill people who remind them of you and he said but I've got to do it and it's got to be convincing and I said well what we could do is you know there

[3:06:34] are still Bonafide terrorists out there who are not religious they're Communists and they're kind of retired they all live in in Damascus you know popular front for the liberation of Palestine Abu nidal organization the Democratic front for the liberation of Palestine and he said yeah do you know how to get in touch with them I said I I think I could probably figure it out and he said um where should we film this thing and I

[3:07:06] said well do you have you have any locations in mind he said yeah Jordan and I said yeah Jordan is a good that's a good choice but you got to bring the jordanians in on it because they have one of the best intelligence services in the in the Middle East you're not going to be able to get away with anything he said absolutely not nobody can be in on the gag nobody and I said no that's that's not going to work I said well we could do it I said you know I was talking to the Libyan Ambassador the other night at dinner and uh and they're

[3:07:37] dying to have Hollywood films done in Libya this is right before Qaddafi was killed the year before and he said no won't do that he said as a Jew I just can't go to Libya I'd be too afraid and I said well we could do it in Morocco but Morocco has very unique architecture and it's not going to it's not going to look like Palestine and he said well I think we should just do it in Jordan but not tell the jordanians and I said no I have an idea I said let let's

[3:08:08] do it let's do it in Syria I said I know the Syrian ambassador and um I can call the Syrian Ambassador and try and get it all you know online and he said no no I'm going to go to Newport Beach tomorrow and there's a Syrian Consulate in Newport Beach and I said no no this is what you're paying me for so let me call the Syrian Ambassador the next day 11:00 at night my wife and I are in bed and we're

[3:08:39] reading and the phone rings and I look at the phone and it says Sasha Baron Cohen and I show my wife look at this it's like 11:30 at night so I said hello Sasha and he goes mate with this he has a very thick British accent he goes mate I think I up mate and I said oh oh don't tell me you went to that Syrian Consulate in Newport Beach he said he walked into the Syrian consulate the guy saw him came out from

[3:09:10] behind the the bulletproof glass and said stop I know who you are I know what you do and you are not welcome in Syria and I was like damn it wow and I said okay I got to double down if we're going to do it in Jordan you have to tell the jordanians that you're doing it and he said absolutely not I said Sasha if we have Bonafide terrorists flying in from Damascus on

[3:09:41] the same day to go to your hotel room they're going to be on you like white on rice and he said no I got to risk it I said okay so the plan was he was going to fly out to Aman and then I was going to fly out the day later okay so only he and one cameraman flew out and he told me later when I arrived that when he landed

[3:10:13] they got off the plane and they go through customs and immigration and there's a guy standing there with a sign that says Sasha Baron Cohen and he says I'm Sasha Baron Cohen and then he tells the cameraman John got us a limo John didn't give them any limo so they get in the car and he said they're driving through town and he says to the guy where are we going and the driver says we're going to the Royal Palace his Majesty is a huge

[3:10:44] fan and he says these enormous iron gates open and they go onto the palace grounds and there's the king and he's standing next to the director of the Jordanian intelligence service so they get out of the car and the King says Sasha Baron Cohen I am your biggest fan he said Bruno I mean uh Borat I almost wet myself he says but I want you to know we're happy to have you in Jordan

[3:11:15] anything you need you call my friend here he'll take care of you anything you want and I said the next day when I got there I said I told you you hadn't even arrived in the country yet and they knew exactly what you were doing and when you were doing it that's crazy so we get these guys and you hadn't told them no I didn't say anything to anybody I I had a non-disclosure agreement I didn't even tell my wife wife wow nothing

[3:11:47] so we we meet with these two guys one from the popular front for the liberation of Palestine General command and one from the Democratic front for the liberation of Palestine so we're at this table they're at this table I'm I'm you know standing against the wall with my notepad like I always do I'm no I'm not I'm just standing against the wall so um we get to the point where he pulls out the Polaroids and and dude these were hardcore gay anal porn and he asks them with that very

[3:12:21] effeminate flamboyant accent if is this torture and should these men be sent to Guantanamo and the one like they're adjusting their Tri focals they're old men they're in their 70s and he he looks at the Polaroid like what and he goes no no no no this not good this not good and he puts it down on the table Sasha had specifically said I want the guy to LEAP

[3:12:51] across the table to try to strangle me that's how angry I want him to be and I said well I mean this is pretty offensive for these guys yeah he goes no no this not good and he puts it down and then the other guy picks it up and he looks at it and he's like trying to adjust his glasses like what and he goes oh oh this Haram not good and that was it and we're just like sitting there or they're sitting there I'm standing and they're like looking around

[3:13:21] like can I get a cup of coffee or how long's this going to take or whatever and we're like okay cut thank you thank you gentlemen and that was it they didn't even put it in the movie wow it was a disaster it was a disaster so the other thing was um the second part of that Middle East scene I only consulted on the Middle East part oh I should add I found these guys in the Damascus telephone book no way uhhuh I figured they're old

[3:13:52] men nobody remembers them nobody remembers them shooting up the Rome airport and killing six people or hijacking a tww plane to Cairo right they're just living in these little apartments in Damascus and their names and numbers are in the phone book so I just called them hey would you do this you we're going to pay all your expenses we'll give you $100 you know be in this documentary about the peace process mhm so um we go we go on to Israel I actually flew home from Jordan he went to Israel without me MH and

[3:14:25] um he went to um to the Western Wall right but he went in leather boots that went up to his mid thigh and pink hot pants need a photo Steve and a leather vest with no shirt underneath and he's like covered in hair like a gorilla right yeah and he said as soon as he got there he saw this nearby group of Yeshiva students with a Raab a rabbi and

[3:14:57] the rabbi spat on him and called him a dirty and he said next thing he knew these Yeshiva students are just wailing on him and they beat the out of him to the point where it it was the only time in the filming of of the movie that he broke character and he said no no it's a joke it's for a movie I'm Sasha Baron Cohen it's just a joke it's a joke they were wailing on him they blackened both of his eyes and he had to stop filming for two weeks to get his uh we

[3:15:28] see if we can find a picture to get his uh you know eyes swelling to go down oh my God look at him riding the cannon oh my God I I got to say it was an absolute pleasure to work with him he's a genius and that's not a word that I throw around lightly the man's a genius um sometimes his genius is too Cutting Edge for people but I found him to be absolutely

[3:16:01] brilliant yeah and that movie that movie The Dictator that was oh my God I just rewatched it a couple of weeks ago oh my God even my son is like how did I never see this movie before it's hilarious he's running in the race and just shooting everyone that's next to him oh God incredible is brilliant incredible story John thanks again uh I really enjoyed it as always we'll have you back again in the future I hope um substack substack um I put everything I write everything I record I've got a TV

[3:16:32] show once a week I have a radio show every day it all goes on substack perfect I'll link it all below thank you and let's getat you on your flight goodbye everybody thank you
