Title: Around The Empire
Show: Around The Empire
Date: 2017-02-13
URL: https://youtu.be/2xUklyNdFdA
Duration: 66:00

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[00:00] [Music] welcome to around the Empire the show

[00:32] that takes you around the u.s. Empire i'm your host Dan right I'm your co-host ome up on today's episode January eighteen to twenty seventeen we speak with former CIA officer John Kiriakou but before we do that here is around the Empire we begin leaf- Africa Command standing US interest in Africa carlyle group will control South Africa's largest credit agency the carlyle group with 169 billion dollars in assets as a u.s. buyout fund and will become the

[01:02] largest shareholder for global credit ratings south africa's largest pan-african rating agency call our group is one of the largest private equity funds associated with the Bush family as well as you bin Laden family and others us has an increasing role throughout the continent and is now in over 20 countries with special forces operations on to United States European Command Ukraine officials are quote scrambling to make amends with the president-elect after quietly working to boost Clinton

[01:34] Kent Vogel and david stern of political europe say that ukrainian efforts to sabotage Trump have backfired Alexander lupa a Ukrainian American former Clinton administration employee and former DNC staffer work on opposition research against trumping coordinated with the ukrainian embassy the DNC told POLITICO that you did it all on our own and not out their direction since we believe that one European ex-leader sent a letter to warn Trump against restoring relations with and lifting sanctions on Russia they try to convince trumpets

[02:04] somehow a deal with Putin will not bring peace on the contrary makes war more likely not exactly a logical argument now on to the United States Pacific Command in an interview with The Wall Street Journal president-elect Donald Trump call now president so that everything is open to negotiation with US policy on China including the one China policy on Taiwan China's foreign minister Wang Yi told Hong Kong media that quote the one-china principle is a cornerstone of the healthy development of sino-us relations and we do not want

[02:35] any interference destruction of this political foundation Trump mock the fact of the u.s. old two billion dollars in arms of Taiwan but can't accept a congratulatory phone call from the head of state the statement on Taiwan issued by the Chinese Foreign Minister Liu Kang left no room for doubt quote the one-china principle is non-negotiable all into the United States Southern Command and Cuba a flurry of small deals put in place before Tom takes office Cuba and foreign partners began drilling for oil in the Gulf of Mexico and there are concerns

[03:06] that the US would not be able to participate in oil spill responses because of remaining sanction a quote oil spill pact was signed by the Obama administration the Cuban government to prepare joint disaster plans test them and train personnel among other measures this is one of the flurry of small deals in recent weeks being put in place before the trump administration takes control since tom has threatened to scrap still fragile state on between the two countries and less Cuba makes further political and economic concessions moving along the united states central command in iraq the army

[03:38] of advancing rapidly in Lhasa the Iraqi army is advancing and now is in quote striking distance of Saddam Hussein's presidential palace in law school this is the first time in nearly two and a half years of the government forces have seen the site Kevin barren of Defense one recalls many conversations with troops and officers of the US military base without name in air bill they helped formulate them and what to continue the Obama doctrine in which the US and coalition forces fight Isis by with and through local forces and at a patient pace Baron noted that the covert based at Kurdistan international airport

[04:09] is growing into a permanent base quoted seems the US military is in Iraq to stay and photos and so they are temporary quarters are being replaced with permanent buildings to accommodate quote American forces including special operators CIA agents and private military contractors in Afghanistan more Marines deployed the Helmand 300 Marines from Camp Lejeune will deploy to Helmand province in Afghanistan to advise and assist the Afghan forces struggling against the Taliban which control eighty-five percent of the province now

[04:40] a year ago was controlled only twenty percent Helmand is the province where most of the poppies for heroin are grown Marines left this province in Afghanistan as part of the President Obama's promised 2014 withdraw some of the three hundred Marines have been deployed here before and some will stay at Camp Leatherneck which was turned over to the Afghan forces in 2014 and finally to the United States Northern Command the homefront the latest dirty dossier stunned by the media and US intelligence on Trump State Department

[05:11] veteran Peter Van Buren who was retaliated against for reading the book criticizing reconstruction project in Iraq notice that the latest done against president Trump by the US intelligence community leaders has quote collapse like a paper bag in the rain a senior intelligence official told NBC that the salacious opposition research addendum to the dossier used in the alleged Russian act briefing last week was not given the Trump nor was included in an oral briefing from dispute about that numerous US media outlets CNN and others such as New York Times claimed that the

[05:42] chief of Americans intelligence agencies naturally presented both President Obama and president Trump's and president-elect romp with a summary of unsubstantiated reports that Russia had collected compromising his hellacious personal information about mr. Trump Trump reacted by blaming the intelligence agencies for leaving the fake news quote-unquote addendum to the classified data and by saying on Twitter quote are we living in Nazi Germany the Kremlin spokesman denied the claim that Russia didn't have the material and called a story a fake information as

[06:13] fabrication this is pulp fiction the name of the former British spy who prepared the dirty dossier christopher david steele formerly of mi6 was revealed but he was given time to flee his home and go into hiding before the revelation according to the Telegraph news media steel is the co-founder of Orbis business intelligence limited and was hired by a firm in Washington first by Trump's Republican enemies and then by Democrats back in Hillary Clinton who quote shopped it to the media still

[06:44] spent months shopping his flawed intelligence dossier the US media but now that his identity has been revealed in the US media what to talk to him he refuses to comment surprise surprise things are stirred up all over and Britain as well British intelligence are helping steal hive Nigel Farage one time you Kip leader Kingdom Independence Party says they shouldn't help them in the BBC security correspondent Frank garden air claim the dodgy dossier wasn't so dodgy when it was written and didn't have the bad spelling and

[07:15] quotient ludicrous scenarios suggesting that it was the Yanks that rewrote it unquote according to the account of BBC reporting from a comment sir British media headlines referred to the whole affair has the dirty dossier The Telegraph reports that Whitehall and downing street were aware of the dossier the Russian embassy in London tweeted debt Christopher steel still works for mi6 fifth days ago Russia claimed they knew of an impending official anti Russia witch-hunt involving the British special services and my six Chiefs are

[07:46] distancing themselves from Christopher steal the sun tabloid reported according to anonymous sources one senior intelligence source called him an idiot early on the Guardian reporter that's well-known uber Hawks Senator John McCain past documents of the FBI director McCain says he was informed about the existence of documents separate by an intermediary from a Western allied state who that could be dispatched on emissary missions overseas McCain once a special select Senate committee to be formed to investigate Trump in his elections connections could

[08:17] be Kremlin he can't get his way than he says he would use the Armed Services Committee he chairs and other committees ones sea2 Director of National Intelligence James clapper issued a public statement reporting that he had called Trump and denounced the media leaks as quote extremely corrosive and damaging to our national security said he believed that the intelligence community and not least the material to the media and that Congress had these materials before the intelligence community the CIA is mouthpiece at the Washington Post David Ignatius published not bad on January 12th where he alleged that about

[08:49] intercepts between the tenant general now National Security Advisor Mike Flynn and the Russian ambassador in an update Ignatius as the Trump campaign told him that Flynn offered condolences for the killing of the Russian ambassador in Turkey and for the shoot-down of a Russian plane carrying acquire Ignatius did appearances on PBS newshour with the same messaging and on embassy embassy during which an audio which caused him to repeat the word Russia Russia Russia again into his feed so did someone at the CIA leak to ignatius who is leaking

[09:19] these dossiers and floating them around in other words what on earth is going on at the CIA well famous whistleblower John Kerry aku tells us [Music]

[10:01] and that was around the Empire today on the show is former CIA officer john kerry aku who has a recent article and reader supporter news titled i have come to the conclusion the country does not need a CIA John's gonna talk with us today about the article and his thoughts on the TA I going done hey doing well thanks how are you great so I wanted to just lead off with this paragraph in the article that struck me quote we can

[10:31] certainly have a discussion about whether or not the country even need the CIA I have come to the conclusion that it does not the excellent civil servants in the State Department's Bureau of intelligence and research can do the analysis the Pentagon's defense Human Services can recruit and run human sources around the world a myriad of VOD and other civilian offices and bureaus can do the science and technology development and I couldn't help us think when i read that of the book i read that i highly recommend everybody called legacy of ashes oh yes which is which is actually a quote from President

[11:02] Eisenhower who I guess at the end of his presidency figured out that he the Dulles brothers had kind of been running him around and said that he was leaving to his well we now know John Kennedy a legacy of ashes so can you talk about just that I were just my basic like do we need a CIA and what if these other services can be performed by other agencies as you noted should we just end it I think we should just end it I'm certainly not the first person to say

[11:34] this at a President Eisenhower said it President Kennedy Senate just said it just two weeks before he was assassinated Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan the late senator from the state of New York wrote a book about it in 1976 and said that the CIA should be disbanded and its responsibilities scattered around government but it's kind of an interesting story from the time of the CIA's creation in 1947 with the passage of the National Security Act

[12:05] J Edgar Hoover went to President Truman to argue against this new law that would create the CIA and Truman assured him that CIA would not be a standalone agency well with that whoever just assumed that the CIA would become a department within the FBI and that he would end up leading it it did not and Hoover had historically correlations with General Bill Donovan

[12:36] Wild Bill Donovan and immediately the competition between the CIA and the FBI began it got worse through the 1950s particularly with the overthrow of Masonic in Iran with CIA interventions in Latin America it continued to worsen through the 60s in Vietnam through the 70s I mean you look anywhere around the world and you can see these failed CIA interventions you know this this failed CIA intervention in Iran in 19 in the

[13:09] 1950s that overthrew a democratically elected prime minister has led to a foreign policy crisis that here we are more than a half a century later we still haven't gotten through it look at look at Greece which is which is both a NATO member and a European Union member and the Greek people still have not gotten past the trauma that was the 7-year military dictatorship installed

[13:39] by henry kissinger in the CIA i have an attorney who was one of President Reagan's assistant attorneys general in the early 1980s and he maintains that the CIA has never succeeded in anything that it's done it has missed everything from the worst thing of the Vietnam War to the fall of the Soviet Union to the al-qaeda attacks of 2001 it's never

[14:11] gotten anything right so when do we finally declare that the experiment has failed and it's time to move on I'd right I could come I mean that makes a strong case and I mean being former said I want to go too far to what but you did work in Greece at one point if i'm correct spent two years in greece and it does seem like when the CIA intervenes right what's that what are the winds what are the actual but what it does seem to be able to do it maybe

[14:41] we can talk about this is there seem to be very good at putting a good face on their failures or burying their failures and it that's one of the parts of that phrase legacy of ashes is there so good at hiding it that apparently there was operations going to North Korea they would parachute people in they get immediately captured and killed it was a complete waste of time but they were able to bury it so is that the key to why they haven't been abolished yet is they are able to hide their failure so well well I think that's a part of it they are able to hide their failures

[15:12] very well there are also masters at behind the scenes public relations Nicholas shoe just came out with a book in the past year about CIA activities in Hollywood and how the CIA has successfully recruited major a-list Hollywood directors producers and writers to essentially tell an inflated false CIA story of victory and progress and patriotism when in fact none of that is true one of the great things about

[15:42] legacy of ashes I thought was the CIA's response to it the author whiner Tim Tim whiner I think his name was won the Pulitzer Prize for legacy of ashes and after he was awarded the pulitzer prize the CIA came out with a statement saying that the book was unfair because the CIA's successes has to remain classified right so as not to expose far as this method I always used to lastway they'd say that they've said it for years

[16:14] whereas the CIA's failures are frequently declassified and that's the only information that's available to scholars well that's nonsense the truth of the matter is this is dia frequently failed at what it's supposed to do you know I've said many many times in the press and the public that the CIA job is very very simple twofold one is to recruit spies to steal secrets and two it is to

[16:44] use the information from those spies to craft the best possible intelligence to inform policy making so that intelligence goes to the President the Vice President the Secretary of State and Defense the head of the National Security Council those the primary policy makers who are the consumers of CIA information but if the information is bad it leads to bad policy decisions and we have seen Matt since the Truman administration right and in Truman's

[17:16] original as i understand it his original idea was he just wanted like a newspaper that he could read and that was really the end he wasn't a lot of covert operations it was just like I went analysis and it is what it was it was an actual classified newspaper that was delivered to the president every morning you're right well then we've paired to a veered off course and I guess that's where your own story comes in part of the reason I think they're so well known to the people who read firedoglake and now reach shatterproof is you were

[17:46] prosecuted for exposing or allegedly exposing whatever oh the torture program of the CIA ran that has been questioned you talk about Hollywood and zero dark thirty it seems like they're they're very vigilant about protecting some secrets like that these are also at least today and this is where I want to kind of talk about John Brennan there's also seem to be very okay with leaking things that hurt certain politicians they don't like or am I perhaps miss

[18:17] reading these leaks in the proud there's a CIA released with impunity when those leaks have the support of the White House or when the leaks make the administration look good it's always been that way if this is not unique to the Obama administration almost certainly there have been some incredible least through the course of the Obama administration that we're never prosecuted and and before I really get the job rented I'll tell you Leon Panetta when I wrote my first book it

[18:49] took me nine months to write and it took me 22 months to get it cleared I ended up having to take out 72 ages and when all was said and done the CIA asked the Justice Department's file of felony charge density for the book they didn't do that I was never charged and I didn't even realize that until I was arrested on other charges later leon panetta wrote a memoir and didn't like the pace of the clearance process and he said screw it and he sent it to the publisher and it was published with all of its top

[19:20] secret classified information attack well Leon Panetta was never charged with a crime Leon Panetta wasn't even sued in civil court which the CIA does quite frequently where someone publishes a book that's not been cleared the CIA successfully sued to recoup all of the prophets and the book advance they do that all the time they didn't do that to Leon Panetta so you know if you if you've got four shiny stars on your shoulder or if you're a friend of the President or you make the president look good you can leak whatever you want and

[19:51] there's not going to be any any problem for you if you could spy on the Senate and you can attack directly into the Senate's computers and then say that it was deceitful but they made you do it and you're still going to get up I've known John Brennan for 27 years I've never liked John Brennan John Brennan didn't like me I had no respect for John Brennan but he does have an interesting backstory and he has very very good

[20:22] political skills John Brennan was what I was hired in in January of 1990 in the CIA's Directorate of intelligence that's the analytic side John was a mid-level manager he was in the well I won't say where he was working on the Middle Eastern event ellipses John did not get along with his supervisor who was really a legendary figure in CIA analysis she was extensively published she was well known around town they didn't like each

[20:53] other and John went to her and asked for her support in his in to enter into the CIA's senior intelligence service that's sis that's the executive levels of the CIA she told him that not only would he never be in the senior intelligence service but she didn't even want him working for her anymore and he was fired so when you are forced out of a job at the CIA you have six weeks to find

[21:23] another job and if you don't find a job in those six weeks you are actually fired so John immediately began pounding the pavement looking for a job well this was around Christmas time and jobs normally open up in the summer there aren't many jobs open at Christmas time so finally he ended up going to the president's Daily Brief staff the PDD stuff and said look I really need a job and as it happened there was one job open and that was to be the PDD briefer

[21:56] for the lowest ranking person entitled to a pd debriefing and that was the director of intelligence program at the National Security Council who at the time happened to be George Tenet so John and George immediately hit it off they're both big loud ugly non-smoking alpha dogs and they hit it off John

[22:27] would go to the White House give the briefing there used to be a cigar shop over on 17th in Pennsylvania both of their lives had had forbidden them from smokings they would go over there and smoke and then they split up well then of course George becomes the deputy director of the CIA he promotes John several times John becomes deputy director of the office I was in that he becomes the senior CIA officer in country in Riyadh then he becomes

[22:58] George's chief of staff and then finally deputy executive director of the CIA which is the fourth ranking position in the CIA needless to say John zold bought on the analytic side he very quickly forced into retirement hmm so John was the number four in the CIA and then became head of what was then called the transnational tear wrist Information Center it was meant to be a standalone Bureau it later became the National Counterterrorism Center and then the Bush presidency ended in 2008

[23:31] well at the CIA in 2008 everybody to decide half the people went to John McCain half the people went to Hillary Clinton but one went to Barack Obama and that happened to be John Brennan and that's how John Brennan became a star you know he was supposed to be named CIA director in 2009 but progressive groups jumped up and down and said wait a minute this guy was the number for ranking guy throughout the Bush administration's torture program and he

[24:04] wants us to believe that he didn't know there was a torture program come on I was sitting in that room 2 and I remember John Brennan being there right there's no way you didn't know about that problem of course i think is not a he was not one of the creators he wasn't one of the designers for the implementers but he was in on it so John wasn't able to become CIA director in 2009 he had to wait for four years and then became CIA director now a lot of

[24:36] people have been asking me why he would even respond to Donald Trump's attacks and my answer I think is very simple because John is like any other political animal in Washington he knows Donald Trump's not going to be President forever but maybe John's going to be the Secretary of Defense in the next Democratic administration maybe he wants to be the Secretary of State maybe he wants to become the CEO of Halliburton who knows but he's playing the the

[25:07] hander in del which is quite a strong hand yeah interest no that's an interesting analysis and history they're very fun history yeah but it's what's your take on because Brennan did I mean and in a very overt way for someone who's in the intelligence community because if people were looking for well who's the intelligence community doesn't like Donald Trump and it looks like Brendan kind of offered himself to be the face of that opposition he really is brendan is the face of the anti-trump faction within these diligence community

[25:40] you know I never when I was first hired into the CIA one of the rules was you don't ever ever talk politics under any circumstances because politics were irrelevant to intelligence and it wasn't until almost four years well almost three years after my arrival it was the morning of the 1992 election and my boss said in our morning meeting he said listen I know we're not supposed to do this but I'm in curiosity could it you

[26:10] guys vote for this morning and I'll never forget it was 34 Bush 34 Clinton and 24 / oh and I remember thinking wow I'm not the only liberal here I just assumed that I was there was one incident i remember in 1996 where a woman was ordered to take down a bob dole bumper sticker that she had at her desk because we were to be a political right i mean you can love Bob Dylan when you get home but not here at the office

[26:42] a political oh that's that's all changed the CIA has become very very political and I think that started really under george w bush people took very clearly drawn sides and it continued through the obama administration was that because isn't like a post-911 polarization okay not know know when people say that everything changed on 911 they mean literally everything changed on 911 especially inside the CIA and it's never

[27:15] it's never gone back to you know the September 10 CIA the agency's become very politicized it's become a paramilitary organization when in fact it never was before again the role in the CIA's recruit spies to steal secrets and to do good analysis it's not to send these these private armies around the world to kill people that you don't like or to implement your own special forces policy or the drone strike policy which

[27:46] was very I mean I almost feel like there was some kind of institutional push back to actually get because at one point I mean talk about paramilitary the sea I was running the drone program and that or was part of the process that was implementing the kill list and that's not really intelligence gathering that's I mean that's extrajudicial assassination in the case of some Americans gettin killed but I mean it is not a weird role for them to be kicking historically as a former CIA officer I can neither confirm

[28:16] nor deny the existence of a drug program ok ok well fair enough I as a private citizen will say it they're so random people getting killed I don't know maybe it's maybe it's all in my head ok so moving on just to the situation where people are trying to understand what's happening with the CIA and Trump in this very public fight I don't I mean what's your read on at least clappers position because he had a very interesting stance

[28:48] he seemed to come out and talk about this dossier this dolce by a former mi6 officer now private consultant christopher i feel right i need all these allegations which by the way i just want to say you know I think BuzzFeed put this out there and say this is unverified and some of its factually incorrect but here's the raw documents I don't really think that's journalism know it but but clapper kind of on the one hand it was kind of a kiss of death types is where he went out there to say to try it seemed to help Trump but we

[29:19] actually did was confirm that there had been a briefing which put Trump back into so can you talk about clappers position and all this crap retrieves very hard to walk this very fine political line and he's just simply not good at it and so you're right clapper tried to briefly remain above the fray one of the things that clever generally does not do is to respond to attacks but

[29:49] he's responded to attack several times on this issue one of those deaths having come from Donald Trump and I think that's why John Brennan jump did John Brennan has for whatever reason a very deep-seated hatred of Donald Trump and I think it's because Trump has criticized him publicly but for Brennan and clapper to take sides on this to speak publicly about this to either confirm or deny rather than to say no comment the

[30:20] dissociate even exist I think it's unprecedented I won't say that I know that mi6 officer Christopher steel I I actually worked with him in London in the early part of the last decade he is a first-rate intelligence officer absolutely first-rate he's a very serious person I don't recall him being even remotely political with that said this whole story just strikes me is crazy you know Donald Trump is a lot of

[30:51] things but he's not stupid and I think that trumps opponents and enemies have consistently underestimated him from the very beginning of the Republican primaries through the general election and it's not just in politics I'm talking also about let's say this call to the president of Taiwan you know everybody said oh my god Trump doesn't understand the one China policy he's

[31:22] going to screw up relations with China that have gone back to the next administration she knew exactly what he was doing and we underestimated him also it's my experience that people here in Washington including in the intelligence community have found themselves in a reactive mode to trunk rather than a proactive one they find themselves reacting to things that Trump says or does and I think this may have been a ham-handed attempt to try to be

[31:54] proactive and it backfired Gaddafi I itself or the clacker the leech of the dossier and clappers comments about the dossier either side of my question I mean your positioning that are offering an idea where it's just these people aren't actually thinking this through their just reacting with Trump other or not I don't I drop thinking it through I think John Brennan has has decided that the notice of Russian intervention is going to be his hammer that he's going to hit Trump with all right so and I wrote I wrote about this in the

[32:24] article to the reader supported news article so Brennan has come out and said there was Russian intervention we have this dossier on top of the Russian intervention take my word for it well my god everything that comes out of John Brennan's mouth was a lie so why in the world would we take his word for it I saying the article the CIA told us they weren't torturing that was a lie the CIA told us there were no secret prisons that was a lie the CIA says if they weren't taking people to this dungeon in

[32:55] Afghanistan called salt kit that was a lie the CIA said that they weren't cutting a metadata on the American citizen that was a lie John Brennan personally said we didn't we didn't back into the Senate's computers that was a lie and now he says I'm not lying I'm telling you the truth so you should believe me this time come on people are still good but they're not that stupid good point so okay that makes sense that it's because I think from the outsiders perspective what the public sees is there's two ways to read it there's sort

[33:26] of a competence or a sloppiness that would be reacting and then there's other people who are reading it and getting very scared like oh my god the intelligence community is completely against this incoming president the gambia outbreak of a inner conflict war that could destabilize the federal government I mean are you not afraid of that or don't think that's a hella well I'm not afraid of that I was on CNN last week and asked me exactly the same question and the response that I gave was this what we're not talking about is November 22nd 1963 scenario we're not

[33:57] talking about that what we're talking about is the CIA knows that they can wait out this president because presidents come and go and CIA people there are there forever I mean look at the people in leadership positions in the CIA to have been there 25 years 30 years 35 years they're going to they're going to see this president through and he's going to go and somebody else was going to come more to their liking so what they do is they slow rule the president maybe they don't try to recruit the

[34:30] toughest hardest sources maybe they don't initiate that tough operation that they've been considering they just slow everything down and then four years from now there may be another president and they can ramp back up again I've also said in the past that if there's one thing that the CIA is good at it is recruiting new presidents with a small arm in recruiting what I mean is you get

[35:01] a president elected Bill Clinton Barack Obama immediately come to mind who has no experience in intelligence right none and maybe a little bit cynical about intelligence and so the CIA begins breathing him in the transition period and when he sees his first blue border report write something classified above top secret or black border report eyes only for the president of the president-elect and when they start

[35:34] briefing him about these incredibly well placed clandestine sources that they have around the world well they bring in there and make him a part of a club he's one of the guys now I know that they hoped it but that's not happened with Trump right kind of co-op to him but it's not happening never know how to respond to that you know when the news first broke about this fight between Trump and the agency I'm talking about maybe six weeks ago my wife who was also

[36:04] a senior CIA officer had been traveling in the Middle East and she called me from the Middle East and she said are you watching this news about Trump and the agency and I said I am and she said this is bad and I said it is bad and she said no I mean it's bad for the agency I said it is because now they're not the big dogs at the table now there's a president in power who doesn't just smile and nod and everything that they

[36:35] say and thank them for their service and thank them for their excellent information now that the president is saying I can still read you guys reckon and also structurally here's the other part of this it's one he doesn't have an interest in saying the Russian hacking story which is why they shouldn't be playing it up there trying to co-opt and because he's he's gonna do everything he can to be legitimized that right also seems to be and this goes to that paragraph i quoted earlier in the article you know Mike Flynn was the former head of the DIA yeah and he has

[37:06] from what i've read press accounts you're probably better he has some antagonism toward the CIA anyway boy because this is CIA to every CIA officer dia is a dumping ground for people who weren't smart enough to make it into the CIA and that's the basis of the antagonism it was generations before dia analysts where I even allowed the right to the president's Daily Brief that was the sole domain of the CIA until just

[37:37] recently but I that's really the nature of the antagonism because there's no respect between the two organizations but it doesn't that provide more fuel for the idea that Trump is actually and probably part of the antagonism recently was going to he's actually going to go after the CIA structurally which as as commander-in-chief I mean yes you would need Congress to go along and Congress probably has a better relationship with the CIA than he does at the moment at least but he could still do some serious damage I mean no sure he can't and you know he made a statement just recently

[38:08] saying that the CIA was bloated and inefficient well you know what it is bloated and into it and when a majority of your operational staff is actually sitting in cubicles in Langley Virginia rather than that serving overseas recruiting spies to steal those secrets we were talking about you have a problem and I think that's really what the CIA is worried about with a trump presidency you know we had clapper and Brennan versus trump for a while there but then clapper backed off yes he dropped out

[38:40] who is really the boss the DNI or the CIA director bono the DNI is not the boss the DNI is simply a bureaucratic stickers and I say that for a couple of reasons first of all despite the title Director of National Intelligence the DNI does not have the authority to appoint CIA station chief that is the the sole authority of the CIA director right so the DNI isn't even informed when

[39:10] somebody is being named station chief overseas secondly the DN eyes Authority comes with his budget but most of the larger budgets within the intelligence community are not controlled by the DNI they're controlled by the Secretary of Defense you know NSA has a massive budget but DNI doesn't have any authority over it govt has authority over interface budget DoD has authority over dia budget and Army Intelligence

[39:41] navy intelligence air force intelligence those all fall under DoD not DNI I mean the whole purpose of D&I way it was created by George W Bush was to put an adult in charge of George tenant and history because they had so screwed up the organization post-911 so really it's just another layer of bureaucracy that affects only CIA but not the rest of the intelligence community so what happened when it seemed like clapper and brandon

[40:11] were together against Trump and then clapper retreated sethi of utter dismay profound dismay at the leaks that went out and he says we didn't produce that right we did produce that and I don't think we leaked it either I think Brooklyn and we stand ready to serve you which was a completely different message did he break with Brennan at that point yeah I think he could break with Brennan keep in mind also and this is why I oppose military officers in these senior positions clappers in general and my

[40:43] call general he has spent his entire adult life saluting and saying yes sir but you don't need somebody you don't want somebody in those positions who's just going to say yes sir you want somebody who's going to say mr. president that's a terrible idea and let me tell you what somebody who can stand up to a president clapper can't stand up to a president but brennan's a little bit more ornery he's a little bit rougher and and tougher frankly been clapper is and I

[41:15] think that's why clappers dropped out because it's not in his nature to challenge a president or even a president elect in public and for Brendan Brendan doesn't care friends from clarity I know a lot of guys just like him what about Mike Pompeo do you think he's up for challenging a president the former the club nominee for CIA director Mike Hayden knew who I love said on CNN the other day that Mike Pompeo only job is going to be to protect CIA officers from Donald Trump

[41:47] and that if he can do that he'll be a successful CIA director i will say that Mike Pompeo is crazy right-wing domestic politics aside I have some highly placed CIA friends who have briefed him many many times and they say that he is extraordinarily bright that he understands the issues that he is wrong on a couple of things like Iran for example but he's somebody that they can

[42:19] work with the key is is he going to see the CIA rank-and-file as his constituents or is he going to see the truck White House as his constituent and what agreements as he made to get the appointment I mean Trump had to have signed off obviously given Hughes's nominee I imagine her told him hey these guys are not our friends or I don't know what Trump's informed him of or maybe that happened before the outright public fight but I imagine behind the scenes

[42:49] Trump team was getting the impression that CIA was not happy that they were coming to town on january twentieth so I wonder what private guarantees trunk enforcement roads know from firsthand experience I don't know but I can speculate you know there have been two events in the CIA history that CIA officers called Friday night maskers one was in October 1977 when then CIA director Admiral stansfield turner this is during the Carter

[43:19] Administration just arbitrarily fired something like a hundred and forty officers from the director of operations some of them just weeks away from retirement he did it because the do had failed they had failed on Iran and on a couple of other major issues at the time on terrorism and it was time for a clean slate and he just fired them that was probably a bad idea to just fire your most experienced softly but that's what he did and he did it on a Friday and they call it the Friday night Massacre

[43:50] the same thing happened in the very beginning of the Clinton administration and it was because and we're taking parallel here now it was because Clinton said that the CIA was bloated and inefficient that there was a peace dividend because there was no more Soviet Union and we didn't need to spend all this money spying on every single country in the world he also did it on Friday people were fired it's the second Friday night master well done tom has come out publicly and said that the CIA is bloated and inefficient he's

[44:21] certainly no friend of the CIA's leadership as we've discussed and I wouldn't be surprised if when he was interviewing pompeo he said that his vision for the CIA was more streamlined more focused on overseas recruitment and I want you to clean out headquarters and get rid of all these operational people who are doing operations and plus I mean there has to be some kind of restructuring if one is to take Trump's foreign policy love that face which is

[44:53] to say that he has a more realistic goal if you like of foreign policy where he does not believe in a lot of the liberal interventionism or neoconservatism everyone afraid he's not on the Bob keg and train was really involved in these promoting democracy through the barrel of a gun so isn't he going to have to do some culling no matter what because there's a lot of people who have been in the business of regime change in democracy promotion anyway he will he will every president put his stamp on the CIA another thing about the CIA to

[45:24] as with any big bureaucracy is that it's constantly changing stantly morphing no it changed a lot more than it normally has the past under Brennan because Brennan had a vision where my he did away with the geographical divisions and created these so called fusion centers right so instead of having a Middle East Division of Southeast Division in Africa dimension he has these bigger broader Counterterrorism Center counter-narcotics Center Counter

[45:55] Intelligence Center and you bring together operators and analysts and maybe some science and technology people and an admin staff and everybody works together and it you know kumbaya well that hasn't really worked and it had been tried in the past you know Clinton tried it there was even briefly an environmental center because environmental changes climate change AIDS I mean these were all major events that we're going to eventually impact

[46:27] our national security and George W Bush thought that was a stupid idea and did away with those well oh he got word I did not know that he got rid of the death so there's no like Middle East desk or North Africa desk e prime s regretted did so who's responsible then who takes responsibility when something goes wrong exactly and nobody right nobody I guess that does that couldn't work out too well if you if I didn't realize he had made those changes maybe Trump well maybe the Trump's coming back to a more nationalist realest school

[46:59] he'll of course that's sort of a question to he might try to clear house because he wants a new mission set or a new paradigm if you will it could be it you know I hate what I hate when they have to defend Donald Trump I just hate but but comes right about this I mean Britain's reorganization was a bad idea it was bad for policy it was bad for the agency it was just bad and it didn't work and I think Trump wants to go back to that original construct which is a

[47:30] better idea but I guess the question then is the original construct if he's going to take away authority see there it does seem to be one period of time that people are harking to and I understand you got a much more expertise on this and the people speculating on the internet but it was you know arguably when because prompt people compare Trump to mix it and there was this sort of tensions as we all know now mark felt was deep throat right it was under and the people who did the Watergate burglary and the quote-unquote rat screwing across the country during

[48:01] the Democratic primaries were CIA linked so there was a sort of hidden bubbling conflict and so I just wonder if there's going to be if Trump's takes away operational responsibility not reorganizing and not paring down but actually sort of says I don't want the CIA to have when what else can they throw at him I mean this dossier seem to be like the worst they could come up with that that would be the death knell for the CIA if Trump took away operational authority and gave it to it would most logically go to the Defense

[48:33] Department that would be the death knell of the CIA that's the whole list of dead from the CIA is to conduct operations and if they no longer have that authority then that would be the end of it aren't they also in a bit of a power struggle with JSOC and/or me is that something you have no the agreements that they've worked out with JSOC is whenever the CIA wants to do a sensitive operation involving JSOC like the bin Laden killing for example they will borrow JSOC forces so everybody involved

[49:07] in the operation is active duty stuff but they're under CIA auspices so it's technically a CIA operation even though nobody actually on the ground is a CIA officer right right and that's kind of interesting because this is a new field that I think you see the intelligence agencies struggling to get in which is cyber war yeah and what was revealed and I know you're going to have problems talking about this I'll just say what was revealed with some of the reporting on Olympic Games Stuxnet was it was a US

[49:39] Cyber Command which is at Fort Meade now where the NSA is but the CIA got their beaks wet if you will by getting in there and having a sort of administrative authority over the NSA meaning before the NSA would launch attack on the tongs or whatever there be a CIA office who would actually have to authorize it so it was under you it was inside US Cyber Command with an NSA operative designing the weapons of the programs of the operations and then a CIA a person they were tasked with basically having

[50:11] administrative control which I guess created some kind of accountability because who tis okay well yes again I say designing all these programs but they can't actually launch each one you know the tailored operations unless a CIA officer tells them they can yeah i'm going to preface my comments by saying that the complete extent of my knowledge of Stuxnet is from the new york times in the washington post I know absolutely nothing behind the scenes on the Stuxnet

[50:44] virus but I can tell you that it would make sense that that that operation would be under CIA auspices because NSA is a more of a passive collection agency it's not an offensive operations agency they don't put officers on the ground to infect computers to recruit sources to do these things that have to be done by a human being oh okay because that's interesting because the way you read it when they talk about tailored operations is that NSA actually has operatives

[51:18] doing these things they're saying when they take talent operations they have people tailoring operations creating these things and the actual people who implement the weapons whether that means putting a flash drive on somewhere or whatever is a CIA operative correct they don't have any human resources to do these operations of CIO every once awhile on a TV show like blacklist for example they'll talk about an NSA agent and I've chuckled to myself there is no such thing ah interesting ok so then CIA

[51:49] doesn't have to worry that much see I was wondering if there was such an anti CIA position the Trump administration and Flynn's in there who knows how to see the problem with they gotta worry about is maybe they have a lot of antagonism with Trump maybe he's pissed off at them but he doesn't know where to put the knife in Flynn knows were too high so nice right he does because four is been screwed by the agency in the past and slim has had a difficult personal relationship with Brennan so there's there's zero love loss between Flynn and the CIA this is going to be a rough relationship even after and it will be

[52:22] gone even though Brennan will be gone because don't forget that Brennan over the past four years has been promoting all of his acolytes up through the ranks and now they're the ones at the senior most levels of the senior intelligence service who are going to take over the day-to-day operations of the CIA so even though Brennan is gone the CIA is still being run by Brennan's people yeah that was one of my question what happens when the higher-ups leave you know do they still have influence somebody just recently said once CIA all a CIA or you

[52:54] know what role did a these directors play well after they retire Oh literally none they even lose their security clearances retired directors are allowed to maintain a secret security clearance I can tell you when I was an analyst everyone still while a retired director would come to the agency kind of for funny reasons and I was instructed to brief them or have lunch with them in the director's dining room and I was warned repeatedly don't go over the secret level I'll give you an example

[53:25] avril Turner who I spoke about a little while ago stansfield turner he and his wife were invited onto an around-the-world cruise for free and in exchange he had to give four lectures on Middle Eastern politics so I was instructed to brief him on and this is in the early 90s on pro-democracy movements in the Middle East right so we met three times for lunch in the director's dining room he took copious notes but I had to keep my briefing to

[53:58] the secret level and then I would say that's classified that's not classified as I got from the papers if I got from wherever and he made sure to write down only the unclassified information and that's what he used to give his speech on the cruise ships but if there was anything top secret or anything involving human intelligence we're not even allowed to brief it to the retired directors and that's why people like George Tenet for example has nothing whatsoever to do with the CIA anymore George Tenet works for a venture capital firm in New York City

[54:29] doing vulture transactions he has nothing to do with intelligence oh no you didn't you tell no not even a detail which was his baby right that's not yeah so Brennan will have no influence technically but his team is essentially still him left behind because they have all the same sentiments loyalty school everything like that that's often so if there is a purge by pompeo it'll be of the Brenna nights it would be yes it

[55:01] would and then so he can create his own legacy of tenant if Brennan is tenant legacy Pompey will be bringing a whole new crew of people to be his legacy and there's a precedent for this too in in 1981 January of 81 Ronald Reagan wanted to clean the CIA out and get rid of all the Carter people so normally a president comes in and he named the CIA director and a deputy director but what Casey did when when Reagan name's Casey CIA director Casey names his own deputy

[55:33] director but then Casey also named his own deputy director for operations video who happened to be a businessman with no intelligence experience at all know that oftentimes doesn't work because the businessman has no idea what he's getting into but sometimes you really do need a purge and I could see Trump coming to the decision that he needs a purge don't forget all these people and it's not just those at the very top but

[56:06] down at the bottom level of the senior intelligence service the people leading a group chief or hire people younger than I am they all came of age under Barack Obama and so even if they're not in any way political they still came of age under obama and brennan and Petraeus and you know I if Trump wants to start fresh he can

[56:37] make it ugly and start fresh I could see him doing it I think he's signaling it but they can only get two he hasn't come right out and said it but I think that I think we would be foolish to not think that there had been conversations between Trump and Flynn and popeo about how do we clear this place out and start over again and these latest spats over this dossier and the Russian hacking the role of Russian hacking I mean if you

[57:07] were if you were trying not to get her down this would be the last thing you should be trying to do so this would be the last thing you'd want to do it or maybe be a little conspiratorial maybe it was they started a fight with the CIA so they could rationalize the purge I don't know but what a great Russian covert operation that would be how do I get how do we get that the CIA purge and then look they've done it I mean I'm not saying it was the Russians but how interesting i mean this is something you could you know write books about or how

[57:38] did this thus credit this yeah i mean who exactly who's done more i mean if it was a Russian up they all they want to do is just described the CIA they would have succeeded immensely because now you've got people it's all mixed up because I see people and you know on social media else work defending the CIA who are left yes and then you have people on the right who hate the CIA now and they were their traditional supporters it's just crazy it's bizarro world reverse world yeah two more things

[58:09] they seem to me to be acting more like I mean doesn't have to be CIA could be anywhere in station you know like a creature sort of and it escalates when one action doesn't work then you know the next week the next friday nights are we something else they will try something else Timmy they act like Brandon whoever else is involved seem to be acting like people who are threatened but that's just a an uninformed opinion but I do have one more question that happened over the last couple days President Obama's presser there are a

[58:40] couple people reading more than a couple people reading something into this something that he said the quote is he said so with respect to WikiLeaks I don't see a contradiction first of all I haven't commented on Wikileaks generally the conclusions of the intelligence community with respect to the Russian hacking were not conclusive as to whether WikiLeaks was winning or not in being the conduit through which we heard about the DFC email that were reached

[59:11] and it's a long quote but I see people reading something into the WikiLeaks witting or not as the conduit and that last thing emails that were elite it seems from people saying oh he just admitted they were leaks not hat right I read it that way I thought it was a bad use of the word me I don't care what I think he didn't mean to to definitively say that they were released seeing it like published right yeah well that's

[59:42] what I think of points are joint like what what is the CIA's view of wikileaks I imagine it's very I mean I'm sure they hate WikiLeaks but it has to be one of ya of deep hatred now no CIA documents have ever been leaked to WikiLeaks right you go through you go through the chump demanding cash and it's all really low-level State Department diplomatic cables some low-level military stuff a lot of expressly was unclassified it was press but there's not a single CIA

[1:00:14] document in there so I think the CIA hates WikiLeaks for what it is but there's no personal grudge against Julian Assange I think because he's never damaged or harmed the CIA in any way hey can I add one more thing to please need to be Joanne's a comment about the leak um you know Craig Murray the former British ambassador to his Becca stands a member of veteran intelligence professionals for sanity has told the British press that he was

[1:00:47] the conduit to WikiLeaks right he says that there was no Russian hack that it was a whistleblower inside the DNC he won't say who it was who took the documents and gave them to craig and craig gave them to WikiLeaks now why the mainstream media has utterly ignored this I have no idea because Craig Murray is one of the most highly respected whistleblowers in the UK demands an ambassador a decorated

[1:01:19] ambassador and he's telling us that there was no hack well and that may be that you could talk about this for a second just because I want to keep you too long but what is up and it's because of your what you just raised which is the press is so invested in this new Cold War yeah this tension with Russia and I can't figure out if it's sort of a reverberation of the Clinton campaign shoving all this talking point into their brains during the campaign and they can't let go if it's sport you know

[1:01:51] people who are still pissed off if it's just a group of people want to discredit Trump but there is this I agree like I saw that report i was very interesting other than sean hannity yes which is a crazy I've my mind's made up bizarro world develops other than it's been completely ignored and instead they have continually rashes up the tensions with Russia it seems like they have a like this is an agenda to get it to get US Russia to being a conflict yes thinking

[1:02:22] what do you make of that getting exactly the same thing it's like it's like for whatever reason the left is not going to be happy unless there's this new conflict with Russia but but nobody has accused the Russian of actually throwing the election nobody has accused the Russian of packing into polling machines voting machines and switching votes or hacking into the SEC or two state Electoral Commission so what exactly is it that the Russians are supposed to have done I'm not really clear on that

[1:02:54] and besides if there was a real hack and bill Binney says this all the time and he's exactly right because he's one of the country's foremost authorities on this issue if there was a hack regardless of how good the Russians were there would be an electronic trail that goes right back to the Russians and there is no electronic trail if there was an athame CIA would tell us so and then have it what they're telling us is take our word for it but and also about

[1:03:28] Obama's quote there one of the things that really bother me about it was when he says you know the conclusions of the intelligence community with respect to the Russian hacking we're not conclusive as to whether WikiLeaks was winning or not in being the conduit and then also there's a McClatchy article yesterday about oh well they've been investigating this is the spring and we think that a the Russian pension system was used to funnel money to hackers and I mean

[1:03:59] basically if you believe that Craig's mary says I'm basically facilitated this exchange you know it's sort of employing to heat a Russian operative of some time right after Russian dangerous which is ridiculous because why would he offer is say oh yeah the Bob yes your I know I think they're just still digging for something that people might believe yeah we got work out that's our bed end so any closing thoughts John before we go or no you know like you like I always

[1:04:30] say with shadow proof thank you for what you guys do and what you have done in the past shadow proof and before shatterproof firedoglake was where I published my letters from Loreto my blog from prison I owe you guys a debt of gratitude and I'm always happy to speak with you thank you so much we feel the same way and thank you for giving us time today make the coffee it's a legend a good one bye bye bye

[1:05:01] okay that's our show well thank you for listening and special thank you to John Kerry ocular guess read his work at the reader supported news.com I want to ask you to please support the show at patreon actually on.com flash around the Empire five dollars a month let's put on the show questions comments or just want to yell at me standard shatterproof calm and please see Joanne and my work at shatterproof back down see you next time

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