March 15, 2023 • 57 mins
Today's tale is the stuff of award-winning fiction and counterintelligence nightmares: What would you do if you learned one of the nation's top intelligence professionals had joined the other side? Join Ben, Matt and Noel as they dive into the strange, disturbing case of Charles F. McGonigal.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to the show. My name
(00:25):
is Matt, my name is Nolan. They called me Ben.
We're joined as always with our superproducer, all mission controlled
decond Most importantly, you are you. You are here, and
that makes this the stuff they don't want you to know.
Today's episode is about power. It's often said power corrupts,
and you know, we've all seen that happen in one
(00:47):
way or another. You might remember a kid who got
a little despotic when they became hall monitor, or kept
an eye on the class while the teacher was gone.
There are no shortages the stories of local politicians who
dipped her finger into the sugar jar of public coffers.
But what happens when the people at the very top
(01:07):
reaches of law enforcement start breaking the same laws, these
specific same laws they are meant to enforce. That's our
story today, the still unfolding tale of Charles McGonagall Charlie
to his friends. For twenty two years he served the
FBI and according to authorities, he began serving other masters
somewhere along the way. Here are the facts. Yes, we
(01:32):
first learned about old Charlie here when we did a
quick piece of strange news on him, because I think
it was it's something's been going up for a long time.
But it made the news because he was formally being
charged with some stuff and not good stuff. No, he
wasn't charged with being like the dopest guy at the
roller skating rink, not this time. That was years ago.
(01:55):
That was in his past. It's true. So what was
interesting about this case specifically Charlie Charles McGonagall. Not a
whole lot of information out there in the public sphere,
but we do we can't ascertain some basics. He was
born in the late sixties, in nineteen sixty eight, based
on what we found in Ohio, and he went to
(02:16):
Johns Hopkins, a prestigious university, where he obtained a bachelor's
degree in business administration in nineteen ninety. It's funny, I
always think of Johns Hopkins for their medical school, but
they also have other disciplines represented there, and business is
one of them. He got that in nineteen ninety. Then
in November of nineteen eighty four, he got married to
(02:37):
Pamela Fox McGonagall. Cool middle name, yeah, total Fox. Yeah,
I like that, right, that's a cool name. But right now,
as we record, this guy is not in jail. He's
not in prison as we record on March third, twenty
twenty three, he is living in Chevy Chase, Maryland. He
(02:58):
joined the FBI in nineties, and he also continued to
pursue his education. In twenty twelve, he got a master's degree,
also from Johns Hopkins. As you mentioned, Nole, and this
might seem weird to people, but it's not super unusual
in a ton of careers, Folks will commit themselves to
a brutal schedule to pursue higher education because it it
(03:23):
furthers your job prospects. Right, And in some reaches of government,
there's actually a tiered system of base pay that rises
depending on your level of education. So you know, your
schedule sucks for a while, but it is a good
investment in your time, especially if you're ambitious, and as
(03:43):
will come to find, Charlie is nothing if not ambitious.
May I quickly derail us and ask a silly question,
the chicken or the egg question? What came first? Chevy
Chase the actor or chevy Chase Maryland. Chevy Chase Maryland.
Do you think it was chevy Chase named after the
city or is it it's a coincidence? Is the stage name?
(04:07):
Is Chevy's name actually Chevy or was that as a
nicknames as a result of this place? And did he
have any association with him? His real name is Cornelius
Crane Chase. Okay, one would imagine that it was a
it was a tip of the hat to old chevy
Chase Maryland. Sorry, it's funny. I only first found out
about chevy Chase Maryland from fallout to the one that
(04:29):
takes place in the DC area, and I thought it
was made up. I thought it was some kind of
jokey reference to chevy Chase the actor, But not the case.
If any of you fellow conspiracy realists were wondering the
same thing, Yeah, it's a real place. And as our
pal Paul just said, I don't know if you'll put
down the air Paul. Paul pointed out that chevy Chase
(04:51):
Maryland is a pretty prestigious and wealthy area of Maryland,
so this guy is living in a good neighborhood as
we speak. He in his career over twenty two years.
He went on to serve in various parts of the FBI.
He was always moving up New York, Cleveland, DC, Baltimore.
(05:13):
In twenty sixteen, there was quite a coupe. Toward the
end of his career, he was named the Special Agent
in charge of the Counterintelligence Division for the New York
Field Office. Yes, again, we know only an outfit like
the US government would make a word like counterintelligence and
take it seriously without realizing that if you if you
(05:37):
don't know what they do, it sounds like they're the
dumb squad. They're very much not. They're very much not.
They're not dumb people. Well, let's talk about what counterintelligence
means for the FBI. So we've talked a lot in
the past about how the CIA is the intelligence part
of the United States that operates outside of the US.
(05:58):
So they're the ones that actually put out feelers and
will go into another country conduct intelligence in that country,
or you know, whether that is intelligence or counterintelligence in
that country. The FBI handles all the stuff that happens
inside the territory. So FBI counterintelligence is basically keeping a
lookout for any other spies that may come into the US,
(06:20):
either with diplomatic cover. That's often what happens, especially in
New York because of the UN and they just try
and see, oh, is that diplomat actually a diplomat or
is that some KGB agent or something like that. But
like the etymology of the term intelligence even is a
little veiled, right, because I mean intelligence, you know, in
(06:41):
the way we know it Webster's wise means you know,
smarts means the ability to ascertain information and some level
of deductive reasoning power. But in this case, intelligence refers
to gathering information, right, So there's a there's a connection.
But counterintelligence is sort of like an opposition and all
equal and opposite reaction to those gathering intelligence on you. Right,
(07:05):
you just gotta take it literally the right. This is
um I guess the way I would put it for
an analogy is the FBI and a counterintelligence capability is
largely the goalie of a big, big soccer game and
the field is the rest of the world. So they're
trying to keep the balls from getting into the net
(07:27):
that is US activity, but because there has all the
important stuff in it, right, But this net also bites
back because part of a counterintelligence operation, even though it
could it's largely defensive. Part of it is the ability
to not just identify foreign actors, but potentially turn them
(07:48):
towards your own purposes. Everybody does this. It's a glass planet.
There are no real quote unquote good guys, but there
are rules. And that's where Charlie goes wrong. So he
works on some high level, high sensitivity stuff, the kind
of thing that you don't hear about until it's sewed
up right until the doj is is pretty much happy
(08:12):
and things. They have a case. So for two years
he's a big wheel in the New York Field Office.
He's in charge of counterintelligence in one of the most
sensitive intelligence areas in the country. When he retires, he's
got a great, distinguished career. Like a lot of people
(08:34):
with his level of expertise, he goes to the private sector. Again,
this is neither illegal nor necessarily unusual. We see this
where you make more money, right, you make more money.
We see as a natural progression of careers. Now, is
it a good thing that that revolving door exists? I
would say no, but it is definitely a door that
(08:55):
people use often we should point out that he retired
in twenty eighteen, just so he only he only spent
around two years as that special Asian in charge of counterintelligence,
right right, And that was a culmination of his career.
And let's take a second to say, you know, first,
he was he was very successful. He ended up involved
with a lot of high profile cases, some of which
(09:19):
we reported on in this show in the past wiki leaks.
Let's see he busted. There were some stories that were
really big at the time that a lot of people
forgot about, like he, uh, he busted the Clinton administration's
National Security advisor, Sandy Berger for stealing classified documents. And
(09:40):
then this is very he did like spy movie stuff,
like he led the search for a Chinese mole inside
the CIA. He was he was doing he was doing
his job, and he was he could be really great
to work with if he considered you a peer or
a superior. He knew when to lay on the butter.
(10:02):
But he was also kind of a lot of colleagues
we found quoted anonymously said he was kind of a jerk.
If he thought he was you were working for him,
which tracks it makes me biased because I have no
respect for people like that. If you can't be nice
to a waiter, then you're not worth by time. I
(10:23):
feel the exact same way. Yeah, And you can really
tell a lot about a person's character about how they
treat those working under them, because you know, we all
three of us have managed people and headed up teams,
and I think we all every single step of the
way try to be self aware and treat people with respect.
And that's also how you get the best work out
of people, and not even as a flex or as
(10:44):
some sort of manipulation. It's just facts. And typically if
you treat people like crap, they're gonna rebel against you,
whether outwardly or you know, under the table. Kind of
the way he's described reminds me a lot of that
fairly new television show called The Recruit that's based around
(11:05):
an FBI agent who's really an attorney but functioning as
as an agent, and it reminds me of the way
that FBI in general is described. The work atmosphere at
that outfit, basically, if that resenting successes of other people,
making sure that you're the one who gets the credit
(11:26):
if somebody under you, you know, does something, and again
it's just a fictionalized television show. But it just really
reminds me of the way it's depicted in it. Yeah, yeah,
let's talk about those descriptions. So one former colleague lies,
colleagues are very careful to be anonymous because of the
way making public statements works. One colleague said that McGonagall
(11:50):
was quote an egotistical narcissist who frequently screamed at subordinates
and resented the success of others, another unfortunately common thing
in many industries. And what is more, this is more
dangerous though, because this is the FBI. They also say
that McGonagall seemed to have or could have used his
(12:13):
professional influence to further his political ideology, which is something
you're not supposed to do in the FBI. In case
anyone was wondering, there's a great article at a place
called spy Talk by Jeff Stein who points out that
McGonagall is suspected of being part of this unofficial clique
(12:34):
in the FBI New York office who wanted to prevent
Hillary Clinton from winning the twenty sixteen presidential election, and
that he was probably part of this group that pressure
the FBI Director James Comey to investigate you know, the
Clinton emails just a few days before the election officially
(12:55):
kicked off, which was a huge deal. Which was a
huge deal, not only the fact of what it was,
but also that it was happening at that time. I
remember how much that affected my thinking in twenty sixteen. Yeah,
and at the same time, you know, obviously there were
other forces out who wanted to influence the election in
(13:17):
an undue way, Russia being the primary right. And then
there's still there's still questions about Wiki leaks and how
they decided to release what they did and when. But
you know how, let's stay with spy talk because once
some of these sources get the badge of anonymity, they're
way more open about they say stuff they wouldn't say
(13:38):
what their names attached, kind of like on the Internet.
This guy's describing Charlie and says his peers thought highly
of him, and his managers did, but a lot of
people that worked for him couldn't stand him because he
was such a dickhead. He just treated people really bad. Geez,
this is not us say, we've never worked with Charlie mcgonigall.
(13:59):
But he was successful. He went private industry, he goes
he becomes a vice president at a place called Brookfield Properties,
which is a big deal real estate company, and just
last year, in twenty twenty two, I think he was
hired as the global head of security for a place
called am En Resorts. Am An very a'm on, I believe, yeah,
(14:26):
but I maybe a most pronouncing this place is controversial
because of some murky links to a Russian, a guy
who's a big deal in Russia who is not Putin
and Oligarch. You may say, you might, some might and right,
(14:48):
but there's always more to this story, right. So somewhere
along the way, members of the counterintelligence community, which is very,
very close knit, they started to question his allegiance, and
this story dropped for us in like twenty twenty two,
but there was something in the wind by twenty eighteen.
(15:10):
So as far back as you said, Ben is twenty
eighteen the British were taking some keeping some tabs on
McGonagall and noticed that he was making some very taking
rather some very suspicious meetings with a Russian national stead
of a red flag. Considering the circumstances, even as far back,
(15:31):
I mean, we've always been a little tenuous with the Russians.
I suppose, you know, as far back as the Cold
War and the Iron curtains, there's always a little bit
of suspicion that comes into play when their secret meetings
happening with Russian nationals. And in January of twenty twenty three,
Charles McGonagall was arrested. This is just a couple of
years later after the observation of this meeting on charges
(15:53):
of money laundering, making false statements in mandatory disclosures to
the FBI, violating US sanctions on Russia, because those are
still ironclad and more. Yeah, and we should we should
mention here. We talked, Ben talked about the glass world,
where everybody's doing this kind of counterintelligence. It just should
be noted that the British intelligence was checking out the
(16:17):
Russian person whom McGonagall was meeting, and that's how it happened.
And we talk a lot about five eyes and things
like that, where there's a lot of intelligence sharing, not
all of the intelligence, mind you never all of the intelligence,
but quite a bit is shared between a lot of
these Western countries. And I'm assuming that's kind of what
happened here. There's back channeling to the FBI after they
(16:39):
notice that's a little weird. Oh boy, I'm frightfully afraid
then may be a fox and the in house. Yeah,
the FBI believe the British. They claimed there was a
traitor in their midst. So what happened, We'll tell you
after a word from our sponsor and we're back. That
(17:05):
was hopefully Aman Resorts. Here's where it gets crazy. As
much as this sounds like something out of a movie,
it looked it looked to be the case that McGonagall
have been turned. He has not been convicted yet. That's
very important to say. We'll probably say it a couple
times in this episode. But the authorities, pretty much all
(17:27):
of them, DJ, FBI, you name it. They seem pretty
convinced this guy was a spy or at the very
least corrupt and had that super important intelligence information in
his head or access to it potentially, you know, by
means of a hard drive or a piece of paper
and that kind of thing, and he could be sharing
(17:48):
that stuff, right, And let's think a moment to say, Okay,
something that spy movies get wrong, like works of fiction
always get wrong, is is this And it's kind of
disappointed thing. It's not great for movies. But intelligence, especially
high level or secret intelligence, is often what we would
call perishable, as it has a short shelf life, you know,
(18:12):
like stuff from the organic aisle of the grocery store.
So an otherwise just a window in which it is useful.
And then outside of that is it is basically not yeah, correct,
and so but this means that there's another kind of
resource people like this can offer, and that is connections,
that's influence. Connections are not necessarily perishable. They can be burned,
(18:37):
just like a persona. So we don't like, we'll get
into it, well, we'll get into what he was trading
back and forth, but it seems to be it seems
to be a little bit more like connections and intros
and influence than it does to be actionable intelligence on
the ground stuff. But his professional life definitely made him
(18:58):
aware of tradecraft in a way that many many average
people would would never You just wouldn't know, you wouldn't
know what to ask. He ran one hundred and fifty
FBI agents in New York and they were tasked with
remember we said the net bites back, they were tasked
with shadowing foreign operatives the way the British were following
(19:21):
this Russian contact and then turning those folks if they
could in despise for the US. Now, this doesn't mean
they're getting someone from like the Russian embassy and saying, hey,
we know you're not the it guy and now you
work for us. It could be something as seemingly innocuous
as we know you work at this consulting firm, right,
(19:42):
and we think you have a side gig and we
want to give you another one. Or it could be
we know that you are, yes, going to an academic
conference here, or you're selling Turkish rugs or whatever, but
we also know about those other meetings you had at
the dunkin Donuts. Well, access is the name of the
game here, right, I mean access to individuals, relationships, you know,
(20:07):
with folks that you can kind of blend in with
and and get information, whether it's nefarious in terms of
the knowledge of that person, or whether it's just you're
kind of got your ears open, you know, and you're
you know, working in these circles. So when they can
identify someone that maybe is willing to play ball, who
has that kind of access, Ding ding ding, Yeah, you know,
(20:29):
I hope you had a great time at the conference.
Why don't you when you when you get back to Turkey,
you know, why don't you just let us know if
any of your colleagues are making breakthroughs and things we
would find of interest. Right, it's like an interest wink wink,
you know, and they're talking to a young nuclear scientist
(20:51):
or something. So this means McGonagle knows about this kind
of stuff. He's aware of it, and he's the top dog.
He's got the catbird seat. Most people only think about
this kind of world or industry when you watch cool
spy movies, you know, the James Bond stuff, Tinker Taylor,
Soldier spy, which is great. It holds up. So this guy,
(21:15):
if he ever, if he does get convicted, it's kind
of like he's some dude who worked at a bank
for years and years and years before deciding to rob it,
so he knows how the bank works already, which means
and this is the thing that keeps tripping me up.
This means that he should have, by all logic and reason,
(21:36):
he should have had a better than average likelihood of
conspiring successfully and getting away with it. That's what makes
twenty eighteen even more confusing. Like we said, the British
clocked at first he meets a rushing in London. Apparently,
despite the fact that this is the same year he
(21:56):
retired from the FBI, he did not know this contact
was already being surveiled by the Brits. Like you said, Matt,
they'll share intelligence, but never all of it. And this
something small, something small like that. Okay, but you know
this known Russian person we've been watching is in London
right now, we're watching that person. There's no reason to
(22:18):
share that information with you know, with the United States,
the location and activities of an oligarch in your country.
That doesn't make you know, that doesn't make a lot
of sense. But when one of your former operatives or
former you know, heads of an intelligence agency is meeting
with your target, yeah, you're gonna you're gonna take note
(22:39):
one anonymous source. Again, these guys kind of loosen their
ties when they're anonymous. What anonymous source would later remark,
what the was he thinking? Because years of expence, just
coffee spraying, years of experience running counterintelligence opts means that
McGonagall should have known this London encounter would attract notice. London,
(23:05):
like New York, is highly surveiled in this world because
there are so many centers of finance and you know,
halls of state power there. And look, you know, this
guy lives in the United States. He lives in a
nice neighborhood, but he lives in a country separated by
two huge oceans. You don't just the idea that you
(23:26):
would travel across the Atlantic for a meeting or series
of meetings implies that it was more than just an
accidental run in, you know, or a casual acquaintance like, oh, oldleag,
fancy seeing you here. I'm always saying that. I'm always
saying that because I have a pretty good Russian friend
whose name is olig So wow, so that's a shout
(23:48):
out to you. But oh no, no, no, he's not
an olig Arc. Okay, he's not an Oligarc. So he
does live in London. Though, now that I think about it,
I should text him. Yeah, I don't meet in a
park or something. Look, um, do you think he used
his cell phone to arrange that? Probably not his personal
(24:08):
cell phone or a burner or some kind of encrypted guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
you don't. You don't just make a phone call to
your buddy who happens to be an oligarch and go
meet him if your former head of FBI counterintelligence. We
don't know who the Russian contact was yet, but it probably,
(24:31):
I'm guessing it probably would have been an agent of
an olagark for an interest you know when we're we're
going to talk about here in a minute. Yeah, handler
fixer for for a bigger cat. But this means like
these sources are saying, Okay, this meeting just doesn't just happen.
So in our mind, based on the knowledge we have
(24:52):
is the FBI, this means that we probably stumbled upon
an extended relationship that this was not there for contact,
and mcgonagal by that logic, had probably been in contact
before he retired from the FBI. We don't know the
exact month he retired in twenty eighteen, but we do
(25:13):
know this meeting in London happened in twenty eighteen, so
it may have even been a case where you know,
he gets out and he says, hello, buddy, don't worry,
I got out. You know, I'm a freeman, right, I'm
open to other opportunities. Yeah. But the British were like, oh, wait,
isn't there an Embassy, like, right around the corner, maybe
we should tell the US guys this happened. So that's
(25:37):
what they do, right, Yeah, they go to the attache
at the US Embassy and they're like, look, we know
Fred is not really the IT guy and we need
to talk to him. I'm kidding, I'm kidding. The FBI,
I think, is pretty public with their legal attach a stuff.
They don't need to be all skull duggery issue about it.
But yeah, the FBI said, okay, we believe you, and
(26:02):
thanks for telling us. We're going to open an investigation
into McGonagall. And in twenty twenty one, just a few
years back, US attorneys conspired they secretly got a grand
jury together to look at the evidence, and the Justice
Department had to admit that a grand jury was happening,
but they refused to say what the grand jury was
(26:24):
investigating or whether it remained ongoing, which is a brilliant
psychic I mean, they have to, but it's also brilliant
from a PSI op standpoint, because if you have done
anything that you're worried about and you're just here there's
a grand jury doing something, you know what I mean,
just make that announcement and watch everybody right right, open
(26:48):
your safe of fake passports and get your bag of
loose diamonds out. I say, love it, or you're like
coffee can if you're a betterical song. Yeah, yeah, whatever
it is. It's like a you know, one of those
cookie tins. Then everyone keeps like sewing stuff in. You know.
I saw one of those with cookies in at one time,
(27:08):
and it blew my mind. Those are good cookies, man,
those short bread cookies. Pretty like those. I like them.
I like them all right, I mean I don't. I'm
not a very sort of curk thing. Yeah, I'm pretty
sure those cookies had PCP and them cool. You don't
put them in there unless they got some, unless they're wet,
wet cookies. They come, they come in their own little, tiny, dainty,
(27:32):
little little cup, you know, cup that's let's go, let's
go do a ride along King Kong. And got nothing
on Matt, right, So, uh, Matt's childhood PCP experiences aside.
That's why you are the way you are, which is awesome. Yeah,
(27:56):
which is awesome. This is not us condoning smoking wet,
but let us know about your experiences out. It's funny, David,
Let's keep it um, let's keep out, Let's keep it
in the part where sail escape it. So uh okay.
So here's how we know about this. Earlier Business Insider,
(28:19):
which has done a series of great reports on this,
they managed to obtain a witness subpoena that shed light
on what they were doing. And at the time, the
subpoena was asking this witness for records about mcgonagall's interaction
with a consulting firm. And consulting firms can be very
(28:42):
shady called spectrum risk solutions. Yeah, the more innocuous the name,
the more shady the dealings. And we should say it's
security like it's it's based in security. Right. You have
a former FBI agent who has a lot of security
experience who's now moving into the private sector. And then
(29:02):
that thing like what is that entity doing? M Yeah,
because security, like consulting, can also mean many many different things.
But on the if we didn't look past the surface,
it makes sense if you're a private firm, you want
to hire somebody with experience, right, and they have experience
(29:23):
in one of the best intelligence counterintelligence operations on the planet.
So this is this is a good get for you.
But it turns out that Spectrum was probably doing some
shady proxy stuff to help with some introductions that we
don't have to get into, but we do know they
(29:45):
involved operatives of a guy we're about to meet, Olag
dere Paska, not my pal, like different dude, much older,
much older than my pal, but not to be confused
with Olaf the delightful singing snowman from the Frozen film franchise.
Yeah no, absolutely not that guy. That guy is Pakistan
(30:06):
Intelligence through and through. Everybody knows he's with I SI,
but I'd say it rewatch it, Okay. So it's there,
It's all the clues are there. It's there if you
look for it. So McDonald, let's talk about the charges,
all right. What's he actually charged with? And again he
hasn't been convicted. So McGonagall was actually charged in two
separate corruption cases involving illegal cash receipts and money laundering,
(30:31):
the first for allegedly taking secret payments of more than
two hundred and twenty five thousand dollars from a former
Albanian intelligence agent on behalf of a political party there.
He also apparently kept a framed photo of him with
Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama. I'm laughing because it's just
that's a weird thing to do in general. You know,
(30:53):
you got to really stand for somebody if you're walking
around with a framed photo of you and them, like
that's not a member of your family. It's sort of
like those people that have pictures of them and like
George Bush on their mantle. But this is even a
step further than that, isn't right. Yeah, I want to
put this part in because it's it seems to indicate
(31:16):
that he was, like you said, proud of the relationship
and also wasn't wasn't worried about people knowing that this
is his home office. By the way, in the same room,
he's got a framed photo of him with a guy
named Rob mush Hara Dinaj, who was a former Prime
Minister of Kosovo. This starts to get international real quick.
(31:38):
We also know in twenty eighteen he had access to
a secret list of Russian oligarks that Uncle Sam was
going to sanction for their ties to Luke Kremlin, their
ties to Putin Well. He was keeping an eye, like
his group was keeping an eye specifically on those oligarchs
where's the money? Where? How's it being spent? Right now?
(32:00):
And moved around, and then he ends up being accused
of trying to get this one particular oligarch tera Posca
removed from that potential list right right, the mongoose appears
to have befriended the snake it was supposed to hunt.
That second charge is just as you described it, Matt.
(32:22):
There's this Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska and apparently McGonagall and
he worked out some kind of arrangement where he was
going to try to get dere Pasca off of US sanctions,
which is a big, big deal because he has access
to a lot of money from his side of the fence,
and if he can play ball in the US, then
(32:45):
he can move that money very easily to make it
dance for him in all kinds of ways dance funny money. Yeah,
so he was paid monthly, right, he was like employed. Yeah,
he had w nines you know, I mean this is well,
I don't know, I know, he definitely did not have
(33:07):
anything of the sort, but yeah, he was. He was
paid twenty five thousand dollars a month for work that
he was doing here, which is great money. Twenty five
thousand dollars. That that should give everybody kind of a
glimpse into what oligarch Well, like the capital, the oligarchs
(33:29):
are capable of spending easily. You know. No, it's not
how so said level, but it's still it's big, you
know this, This is the kind of thing where in
the mind of the oligarch you go, what's the smallest
amount of money that would seem like a huge money
to one of these law peasants. Twenty five g's a month. Yeah, well, yeah,
(33:53):
but what account is it going to come from? Ah?
That's where you get careful, right, because in addition to
that five grand you're ponying up, you also have to
pay for the support structure to keep it from looking
like you're openly cutting this guy at check every month.
So this goes through an account held by a former
(34:15):
Russian diplomat who worked as an interpreter for the US government.
His name, Sergei Shstakov, not made up, that's his real name.
And one would assume that, you know, these types of
folks are vetted pretty heavily if their former Russian officials
or a Russian you know, would you consider a diplomat
(34:38):
not an operative, but still people within the Russian government.
If they're coming to work for US, you would assume
that they're being paid pretty close attention to in terms
of their background and their allegiances and all of that, right, Yeah, Yeah,
the bar is pretty high. The background checks are quite extensive,
you know, the net is pretty tight there. And because
(34:59):
they're these folks are professionals right there, They're not amateurs.
And the one of the big issues that's happened in
recent years is that the US government has challenges getting
people who are fluent in certain high value languages, like
it's it's tough to find those people, so they are prioritized,
(35:23):
that's right. Yeah, Okay, well, let's talk about Darris Bosca.
He has Ian McGonagall. This is very cinematic. They have
been aware of each other for years. Like the the
FBI as far back as twenty fourteen tried to recruit
our pal Oleg as an informant because of course he's
(35:46):
high value. Well yeah, let's let's talk about why he's
high value. Okay, sure, this dude, this oligarch Oleg was
the richest person in Russia in two thousand and eight,
the richest person in Russian two thousand and eight, and
then what happened in two thousand and eight, two thousand
and nine, Guys, huge crash in the United States, huge
(36:08):
global economy crash. He ended up losing a ton of money,
had a bunch of debt, and his net worth right
now was around just under a three billion. But he
was the richest person in Russia in two thousand and eight,
And you can imagine then after losing a ton of
that money, by the time you get to twenty fourteen,
(36:29):
he's made all the connections as the richest the former
richest person in Russia, right, and he's moving in all them. Yeah,
he's in a debt's pretty he's in a much more
vulnerable place than he had been in a long time.
Probably you can imagine he was a target. Oh I'm sorry,
I see I was reading it the other way. I
was looking at it like he lost all that money.
(36:50):
He had all these connections from back when he was
super rich, so now he was going to exploit those connections.
But it's the other way around to what we were
saying earlier, that access that he had was seen as
like red meat for those who would seek to exploit him. Well, well,
that's why I'm saying the FBI wanted him, right, Yeah,
I get it, I get it. Yeah, of course you
(37:11):
would want. This guy's the bell of the ball intelligence wise,
you know what I mean. It's like that Uncle Sam Poster,
we want you, except it's a dude in a suit
with some glasses, and it just I'm sorry to just
keep harping on this guys, but he's involved in so
many industries within Russia that if you think about the
actions Russia took with the Crimean Peninsula, you know, for shipping,
(37:33):
for getting goods in and out of Russia and out
of that that whole area, basically he was in how
did they describe it at Forbes Aluminum like utilities, energy, construction, agriculture.
He was in all the stuff, all of the agro culture.
Am I Right? There we go. Also two important points.
(37:57):
I'm hesitant sometimes with the use of old arts to
describe these Russian actors. They are tentacles of the state.
But also it seems to imply that there aren't oligarchs
running the United States, and that's very much the case. Yeah. Always,
I always get a little confused about the term. I mean, officially, uh,
(38:20):
it is a small group of very wealthy individuals that
kind of run a state in a sort of shadowy way, right,
because because they've got the power of the purse essentially,
like there their money talks and they are influencing government.
But no, what what is what? What are corporations? You know?
And in America, you know what are like super super
(38:41):
wealthy campaign donors. Why are so many people? Why are
so many of the same people on the top board
of directors across all these kind of out revolving door
you were talking about them, you know, folks going from
you know, these positions of government power to private industry
and then becoming the top dogs they are, and then
they have those connections. I mean, this is a topic
(39:02):
for another day, but I agree. I think the term oligarch,
especially in terms of using to describe other countries, it's
like this is something that happens in other countries. So
but yeah, that's so not true. Yeah, that's the point
of making here's the second point, just real quick, soing,
so this up he is olig is in trouble in
Russia as well. Now this last year, a year ago
(39:24):
actually he called for peace in Ukraine. He said, destroying
Ukraine would be a huge mistake, and a few months
after that, Russian authorities started seizing some of his assets,
including a hotel complex. He owens and sochi. Oh, that's right,
that was that was a retribution kind of almost, wasn't it?
Well again, we got I think we when we do
(39:44):
a series on oligarchs, it's probably this guy's his own episode.
But but we do. We just I think the only
reason why I'm okay with describing Oleg as an oligarch
is because he is one of these guys that got
his business roots are at the collapse of the Soviet Union.
So he's one of these guatization. He's one of the
(40:04):
guys that swooped in with private money, bought up all
of the state run stuff that well was state run
at the time, and then just made billions and billions
for the equivalent of pennies on the dollar. Yeah, and
McGonagall had investigated multiple Russian operatives earlier in his career.
It's currently unclear whether he was involved with the effort
(40:27):
to recruit dry Pasca. But here's the thing. If you've
ever worked anywhere, you tend to have some idea of
your colleague's projects. Unless you're in like the puzzle palace,
you are. You might not be actively involved in something,
but you know what they do, right. You're not up
(40:48):
to the day to day of the accounting or like
the folks who are I don't know, involved in some
new initiative, but you know they're doing something you roughly
know what. Before his retirement in twenty eighteen, McGonagall had
moved to the point where he was directly in charge
of investigating Olig and this guy, like you said, many
(41:12):
already been implicated in so many criminal acts over the years,
including Russian attempts to sway the US election, the same
election that, according to some anonymous sources, McGonagall may have
also tried to sway. The press caught on they began
reporting on this, and they uncover a lot of firsthand
accounts from anonymous former colleagues. But then also they found
(41:37):
account messy personal life stuff like it looked like Olig
and Charlie had started helping each other out, kind of
on a personal as well as professional level, like he was.
Charlie was helping Olig's daughter with some stuff. It was
very important to Olig that she get to the US
to give birth. So that her child would have us
(41:59):
papers that clean. And it seems like Charlie was also
stepping out on his wife, who he described as his
ex wife. They seem to have been estranged for a bit.
And this is just reporting. This is not us personally
saying this. We had an extra marital relationship, a girlfriend
on the side. Alison gertietro Of from about spring at
(42:22):
twenty seventeen to twenty eighteen. Yes, yes, relationships can always
be tough. Affairs are not ethically sound, but adultery is
not a crime in Maryland. Still, this tells us more
about the case. What do we mean? We'll tell you
after a word from our sponsors and we've returned, you know,
(42:49):
mat It occurs to me that this next part of
the story, if someone makes a movie on this, this
is going to be the part they focus on way
too much, because screenwriters and TV writers are always like, oh,
let's let's talk about the emotional aspects of the thing.
Let's have everybody use their names way too often in
a scene. Well, yeah, the b storyline is it's often
(43:13):
what gets you through to the next important plot point. Yeah,
I mean it's functional, You're right, I I sound cold
I'm sorry, I think it's okay for people to have emotions.
That's not fair of me. Whatever. So, okay, these guys
(43:34):
both have pretty they don't have perfect personal lives. Who does.
The thing is it would not have necessarily been illegal
for Charlie McGonagall to work for Oleg Depasca, right, No,
I mean if it was, if he truly left his
post at the FBI and just started up, you know,
a new position somewhere, utilizing the things he'd learned in
(43:58):
his position, not necessarily any of the seats, but the skills,
then I guess that's okay. We do know, you don't
you never really leave an intelligence agency when you retire,
and not really kind of mostly but not really. I mean, yeah,
I guess it depends on because these are big, big operations, right,
so I guess it depends on what you do. But
(44:19):
if you're like a special agent in charge, it does
seem like those relationships and influences would follow you after,
you know, after you leave. And even if even people
who go through the debriefing process still I'm confident they
can still make some calls and things like that. I
(44:40):
don't think it's I don't know, I just I don't
know if we want to paint a huge broad brush
and say that everybody is still active when they leave.
Some people some people are still some people are still
just you know, going fishing, right. Yeah. Yeah, I don't
mean to say. I don't mean to say you're always
(45:00):
active even when you retire. What I mean is like
a part of it, a part of the journey stays
with you, you know what I mean. I don't know
what I'm saying. But ultimately, there's a you have a
tie to the FBI now no matter what, even if
you're retired, right, And it's not that you have that information,
you know, it's no, it's known that you're aware of
the methods. That's probably one of the most important things. Yeah,
(45:24):
if you're gonna go into a relationship like this with
an oligarch, you basically would just have to inform everybody
and be upfront about it. Hey, guys, just want to
let you know I'm doing my thing over here now
with the whole legg Uh. You know, you check it
out if you need to, totally fine, buff board, But
that's not what happened. Do you think they had nicknames
(45:46):
for each other? Oh? He was was he calling him
like the leg man or something that's a cool dick
dave like man. It's probably just like Chucking Gregg or
something real sick. Yeah, yeah, no, you're right, you're right.
They they may not have their conversations may not have
been as fun as ours. But but yeah. The Foreign
(46:09):
Agents Registration Act, it's an old law and it's one
of those laws that is still in effect. It requires
anybody who is operating for a foreign government organization or
a VIP of some sort to disclose their relationship to
the Department of Justice. And part of this, I mean,
(46:32):
it doesn't ban any specific activities, but it's kind of
like a let us know, loop us in so we
understand what's going on. And if you don't do that,
then you can get hit with a two hundred and
fifty thousand dollars fine and up to five years in prison.
There's there's a report again from Business Insider did some
(46:53):
excellent work here. The show's mcgonagall's girlfriend kind of always
knew something was up. She knew he was lying to
her about the state of his previous relationship. You know,
he said he loved his kids, but he has a
soon to be ex wife and they're definitely going to
get divorced, and they've been per her Dave. He's saying that,
(47:14):
you know, the marriage is over and it's just almost
a matter of paperwork. And he goes back home to
Maryland once or twice a month, but he has an
apartment in Park Sloop in New York. And one day
in October twenty seventeen, I think it is, she's hanging
out at his apartment and she sees a literal bag
(47:36):
of cash on the floor, bundles and bundles of big
denominations wrapped up in rubber bands. And she's like, Charlie,
what was going on? And he says, oh, I want
to bet a baseball game. Dang, Charlie man suffle bag bets.
All right, yeah, I should do that more often. Cheeziles.
(48:00):
Uh yeah yeah. Um. I guess the girlfriend his his
a girlfriend at the time really just kind of believed
what she was being sold. Um, And he was definitely
not being upfront about really anything there. Um, And I
don't know, I don't I guess you just kind of
move on. He go all right, well, I guess that's
(48:22):
his that's his baseball money. Let's go see that movie.
Charlie's baseball money. Yeah. Uh. She had also had relationships
in the past with people who are in law enforcement.
You can find a picture of her with Giuliani by
the way, Rudy Giuliani And yeah, and she said, you know,
(48:44):
sometimes I just didn't ask questions. I knew. Charlie lived large.
He would take her to really posh, nice restaurants. He
would give her gifts of large amounts of cash for birthday,
like five hundred thousand dollars. He said he would frame
his divorce papers for her as a present. He would
(49:05):
take her to private box games to watch the New
Jersey Devils saw hockey team there and then she saw it.
She recalls stuff like one time he just gave somebody
on the street one hundred dollars, like he got his panhandling,
and he said, well, I'm better off than he is.
I'm gonna try to help him because I'm in a
better place. And then she also said she contracted cancer.
(49:28):
She battled cancer for a while, and she said during
that time he would he was very loving and caring,
and he would send agents to drive her back and
forth from treatment in government vehicles. He's kind of playing
fast and loose with the company property at that point. Yeah,
that's pretty nuts. So McGonagall and his girlfriend were living
(49:51):
it up. They were doing some great things. I mean,
come on, hanging out Washington, New Jersey, Devils in a box.
That's cool, that's fun. But his girlfriend and he said,
quote he needed to make more money. He had two
kids to put through college and he you know, it
was a whole other family as a wife too. He
needed to make more money as the big deal here.
(50:12):
Mm yeah, yeah, it's never enough, right, we all know
the game and the slope, for God's sakes, in an apartment,
come on, that's an expensive area, and that's your second
place or third, that's your second place. Yeah. In the
world of counterintelligence, you know, any any little crack in
someone's personal life can, should, and will be used as
(50:36):
leverage if needed. So that means Matt throughout the devil
hordes there. Uh, that means that any compromising personal information
can and will be used against someone. And infidelity is
just as valuable to those sorts of operatives as crushing debt.
It's a way in. But it doesn't seem in this
(50:58):
case that adultery was the prime factor in his turning
it seems he sold himself for different reasons. And again,
if there is a conviction that follows, if Uncle Sam
is able to prove this conspiracy, it honestly looks like
he sold himself kind of cheap because when he was private,
(51:20):
industry sources report he was pulling something like three hundred
to three and fifty thousand dollars a year, not counting
annual bonuses. And I get at college costs or increasing,
but that's still that's a fair amount of money. I
would imagine it's a lot of money. Kidneys, it's gone
a lot of money. It's quite a bit of money.
(51:42):
And so before we start sounding like a Seinfeld episode
or curb your enthusiasm, it's a lot of body. He
apparently needed more. And remember, I think earlier, Matt you
mentioned it was two hundred and twenty five thousand dollars
that he had received in the high level world of
tradecraft and consulting firms and oligarchs. That's peanuts. I mean,
(52:07):
if you do the cost benefit analysis, what we say,
even just the Foreign Registration Act getting popped on that
one is a two hundred and fifty thousand dollars fine.
You know, take a lesson from the banks. Make sure
that if you are convicted of a crime, the fine
for that is less than the money you made doing
the crime. Hey, so you always come out on top.
(52:27):
So you always come out on top and shut out
Mac always study in Philadelphia. I mean, that's the thing,
all right. The current status Charles McGonigal has not been convicted.
There has not been a trial. So a lot of
what we're exploring here is just what has been said
in the public sphere. It's quite possible that there is
(52:50):
information on the defense side and the prosecutor side that
will only later come to light and it may change
the conversation. He made ale, he paid a five hundred
thousand dollars bond. He is, to all accounts, he is
currently residing there in Maryland. Uh, I don't know, Chevy Chase,
(53:13):
not Slope, New York or whatever? Is that? Is that Brooklyn?
I think that yeah, yeah, yeah, it's Brooklyn. Uh. And
I gotta ask, do you think he'll be convicted? Um? Oh,
I don't know. I think on some charges at least
there's fishy stuff, but it's high. It's also so highly sensitive.
(53:34):
I wonder how much, oh right, how much could be
an open court. Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah, I mean,
that's the thing I personally think right now. It is
likely that he'll be convicted on at least some charges,
but there is only a chapter in a much larger
story of conspiracy. As we're recording to day, it is
(53:55):
certain that multiple government agents are being targeted by Turn
for turning operations. Hopefully none of them will be successful.
The McGonagall case is extraordinarily rare, but the conspiracies continue.
We only know about the ones who get caught. Of course,
foreign powers want people on the inside of their rivals operations,
(54:15):
and why not. I mean, don't forget folks, especially if
you live in America, around the planet, in every country
you can imagine right now, the United States wants the same.
That's how the game is played. Who so, you know,
let's do our little podcast. Yeah, yeah, let's talk about it. Yeah,
(54:40):
oh god, So what do you think? It's just this
just a case of a former spy going out and
trying to make some cash in you know, a way
that he understands how to do it. Or is it
some kind of tricksy thing going on the back in
the background between the US and Russian powers. I don't
(55:00):
know if we saw this, ben, but there was a
March twenty seventeen report connecting this same guy, Dry Pasca
Olegg to Paul Manafort, the guy who was running Trump's campaign,
and allegedly Paul Manafort was getting paid a lot of
money on a multi year contract to specifically promote Russia
(55:26):
and the things that Russia wanted. He had a contract
with Derri Pasca. Dera Pasca also sued Manafort. He did,
he did. There's a connection to Christopher Steele from the
Steel dossier, you know, the Ppe dossier. There's some weird
(55:46):
stuff going on with that oligarch, that guy who the
guy who is known as an oligarch. Yeah, which which
oligarch's should we look into? Let us know. We hope
you enjoyed today's episode. Again, this is unfolding case, but
it can It's a window through which we can view
a world that does not have to get explored. We
(56:07):
want to hear your thoughts. Find us on Facebook, Instagram,
TikTok until the US takes that down, would love it.
If you check out our YouTube show, you can see
not too many spoilers, but you can see that night
getting back to our roots there in a way that
I think we both really enjoy. And if you also
(56:27):
not like our roots dancing way too much, and and
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directly dial one eight three three std wy t K.
It's a voicemail system. Give yourself a cool nickname. We
(56:49):
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Come on, we've learned more than this. Don't use your
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(57:09):
dot com. Stuff they don't want you to know is
(57:30):
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your favorite shows.
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to the show. My name
(00:25):
is Matt, my name is Nolan. They called me Ben.
We're joined as always with our superproducer, all mission controlled
decond Most importantly, you are you. You are here, and
that makes this the stuff they don't want you to know.
Today's episode is about power. It's often said power corrupts,
and you know, we've all seen that happen in one
(00:47):
way or another. You might remember a kid who got
a little despotic when they became hall monitor, or kept
an eye on the class while the teacher was gone.
There are no shortages the stories of local politicians who
dipped her finger into the sugar jar of public coffers.
But what happens when the people at the very top
(01:07):
reaches of law enforcement start breaking the same laws, these
specific same laws they are meant to enforce. That's our
story today, the still unfolding tale of Charles McGonagall Charlie
to his friends. For twenty two years he served the
FBI and according to authorities, he began serving other masters
somewhere along the way. Here are the facts. Yes, we
(01:32):
first learned about old Charlie here when we did a
quick piece of strange news on him, because I think
it was it's something's been going up for a long time.
But it made the news because he was formally being
charged with some stuff and not good stuff. No, he
wasn't charged with being like the dopest guy at the
roller skating rink, not this time. That was years ago.
(01:55):
That was in his past. It's true. So what was
interesting about this case specifically Charlie Charles McGonagall. Not a
whole lot of information out there in the public sphere,
but we do we can't ascertain some basics. He was
born in the late sixties, in nineteen sixty eight, based
on what we found in Ohio, and he went to
(02:16):
Johns Hopkins, a prestigious university, where he obtained a bachelor's
degree in business administration in nineteen ninety. It's funny, I
always think of Johns Hopkins for their medical school, but
they also have other disciplines represented there, and business is
one of them. He got that in nineteen ninety. Then
in November of nineteen eighty four, he got married to
(02:37):
Pamela Fox McGonagall. Cool middle name, yeah, total Fox. Yeah,
I like that, right, that's a cool name. But right now,
as we record, this guy is not in jail. He's
not in prison as we record on March third, twenty
twenty three, he is living in Chevy Chase, Maryland. He
(02:58):
joined the FBI in nineties, and he also continued to
pursue his education. In twenty twelve, he got a master's degree,
also from Johns Hopkins. As you mentioned, Nole, and this
might seem weird to people, but it's not super unusual
in a ton of careers, Folks will commit themselves to
a brutal schedule to pursue higher education because it it
(03:23):
furthers your job prospects. Right, And in some reaches of government,
there's actually a tiered system of base pay that rises
depending on your level of education. So you know, your
schedule sucks for a while, but it is a good
investment in your time, especially if you're ambitious, and as
(03:43):
will come to find, Charlie is nothing if not ambitious.
May I quickly derail us and ask a silly question,
the chicken or the egg question? What came first? Chevy
Chase the actor or chevy Chase Maryland. Chevy Chase Maryland.
Do you think it was chevy Chase named after the
city or is it it's a coincidence? Is the stage name?
(04:07):
Is Chevy's name actually Chevy or was that as a
nicknames as a result of this place? And did he
have any association with him? His real name is Cornelius
Crane Chase. Okay, one would imagine that it was a
it was a tip of the hat to old chevy
Chase Maryland. Sorry, it's funny. I only first found out
about chevy Chase Maryland from fallout to the one that
(04:29):
takes place in the DC area, and I thought it
was made up. I thought it was some kind of
jokey reference to chevy Chase the actor, But not the case.
If any of you fellow conspiracy realists were wondering the
same thing, Yeah, it's a real place. And as our
pal Paul just said, I don't know if you'll put
down the air Paul. Paul pointed out that chevy Chase
(04:51):
Maryland is a pretty prestigious and wealthy area of Maryland,
so this guy is living in a good neighborhood as
we speak. He in his career over twenty two years.
He went on to serve in various parts of the FBI.
He was always moving up New York, Cleveland, DC, Baltimore.
(05:13):
In twenty sixteen, there was quite a coupe. Toward the
end of his career, he was named the Special Agent
in charge of the Counterintelligence Division for the New York
Field Office. Yes, again, we know only an outfit like
the US government would make a word like counterintelligence and
take it seriously without realizing that if you if you
(05:37):
don't know what they do, it sounds like they're the
dumb squad. They're very much not. They're very much not.
They're not dumb people. Well, let's talk about what counterintelligence
means for the FBI. So we've talked a lot in
the past about how the CIA is the intelligence part
of the United States that operates outside of the US.
(05:58):
So they're the ones that actually put out feelers and
will go into another country conduct intelligence in that country,
or you know, whether that is intelligence or counterintelligence in
that country. The FBI handles all the stuff that happens
inside the territory. So FBI counterintelligence is basically keeping a
lookout for any other spies that may come into the US,
(06:20):
either with diplomatic cover. That's often what happens, especially in
New York because of the UN and they just try
and see, oh, is that diplomat actually a diplomat or
is that some KGB agent or something like that. But
like the etymology of the term intelligence even is a
little veiled, right, because I mean intelligence, you know, in
(06:41):
the way we know it Webster's wise means you know,
smarts means the ability to ascertain information and some level
of deductive reasoning power. But in this case, intelligence refers
to gathering information, right, So there's a there's a connection.
But counterintelligence is sort of like an opposition and all
equal and opposite reaction to those gathering intelligence on you. Right,
(07:05):
you just gotta take it literally the right. This is
um I guess the way I would put it for
an analogy is the FBI and a counterintelligence capability is
largely the goalie of a big, big soccer game and
the field is the rest of the world. So they're
trying to keep the balls from getting into the net
(07:27):
that is US activity, but because there has all the
important stuff in it, right, But this net also bites
back because part of a counterintelligence operation, even though it
could it's largely defensive. Part of it is the ability
to not just identify foreign actors, but potentially turn them
(07:48):
towards your own purposes. Everybody does this. It's a glass planet.
There are no real quote unquote good guys, but there
are rules. And that's where Charlie goes wrong. So he
works on some high level, high sensitivity stuff, the kind
of thing that you don't hear about until it's sewed
up right until the doj is is pretty much happy
(08:12):
and things. They have a case. So for two years
he's a big wheel in the New York Field Office.
He's in charge of counterintelligence in one of the most
sensitive intelligence areas in the country. When he retires, he's
got a great, distinguished career. Like a lot of people
(08:34):
with his level of expertise, he goes to the private sector. Again,
this is neither illegal nor necessarily unusual. We see this
where you make more money, right, you make more money.
We see as a natural progression of careers. Now, is
it a good thing that that revolving door exists? I
would say no, but it is definitely a door that
(08:55):
people use often we should point out that he retired
in twenty eighteen, just so he only he only spent
around two years as that special Asian in charge of counterintelligence,
right right, And that was a culmination of his career.
And let's take a second to say, you know, first,
he was he was very successful. He ended up involved
with a lot of high profile cases, some of which
(09:19):
we reported on in this show in the past wiki leaks.
Let's see he busted. There were some stories that were
really big at the time that a lot of people
forgot about, like he, uh, he busted the Clinton administration's
National Security advisor, Sandy Berger for stealing classified documents. And
(09:40):
then this is very he did like spy movie stuff,
like he led the search for a Chinese mole inside
the CIA. He was he was doing he was doing
his job, and he was he could be really great
to work with if he considered you a peer or
a superior. He knew when to lay on the butter.
(10:02):
But he was also kind of a lot of colleagues
we found quoted anonymously said he was kind of a jerk.
If he thought he was you were working for him,
which tracks it makes me biased because I have no
respect for people like that. If you can't be nice
to a waiter, then you're not worth by time. I
(10:23):
feel the exact same way. Yeah, And you can really
tell a lot about a person's character about how they
treat those working under them, because you know, we all
three of us have managed people and headed up teams,
and I think we all every single step of the
way try to be self aware and treat people with respect.
And that's also how you get the best work out
of people, and not even as a flex or as
(10:44):
some sort of manipulation. It's just facts. And typically if
you treat people like crap, they're gonna rebel against you,
whether outwardly or you know, under the table. Kind of
the way he's described reminds me a lot of that
fairly new television show called The Recruit that's based around
(11:05):
an FBI agent who's really an attorney but functioning as
as an agent, and it reminds me of the way
that FBI in general is described. The work atmosphere at
that outfit, basically, if that resenting successes of other people,
making sure that you're the one who gets the credit
(11:26):
if somebody under you, you know, does something, and again
it's just a fictionalized television show. But it just really
reminds me of the way it's depicted in it. Yeah, yeah,
let's talk about those descriptions. So one former colleague lies,
colleagues are very careful to be anonymous because of the
way making public statements works. One colleague said that McGonagall
(11:50):
was quote an egotistical narcissist who frequently screamed at subordinates
and resented the success of others, another unfortunately common thing
in many industries. And what is more, this is more
dangerous though, because this is the FBI. They also say
that McGonagall seemed to have or could have used his
(12:13):
professional influence to further his political ideology, which is something
you're not supposed to do in the FBI. In case
anyone was wondering, there's a great article at a place
called spy Talk by Jeff Stein who points out that
McGonagall is suspected of being part of this unofficial clique
(12:34):
in the FBI New York office who wanted to prevent
Hillary Clinton from winning the twenty sixteen presidential election, and
that he was probably part of this group that pressure
the FBI Director James Comey to investigate you know, the
Clinton emails just a few days before the election officially
(12:55):
kicked off, which was a huge deal. Which was a
huge deal, not only the fact of what it was,
but also that it was happening at that time. I
remember how much that affected my thinking in twenty sixteen. Yeah,
and at the same time, you know, obviously there were
other forces out who wanted to influence the election in
(13:17):
an undue way, Russia being the primary right. And then
there's still there's still questions about Wiki leaks and how
they decided to release what they did and when. But
you know how, let's stay with spy talk because once
some of these sources get the badge of anonymity, they're
way more open about they say stuff they wouldn't say
(13:38):
what their names attached, kind of like on the Internet.
This guy's describing Charlie and says his peers thought highly
of him, and his managers did, but a lot of
people that worked for him couldn't stand him because he
was such a dickhead. He just treated people really bad. Geez,
this is not us say, we've never worked with Charlie mcgonigall.
(13:59):
But he was successful. He went private industry, he goes
he becomes a vice president at a place called Brookfield Properties,
which is a big deal real estate company, and just
last year, in twenty twenty two, I think he was
hired as the global head of security for a place
called am En Resorts. Am An very a'm on, I believe, yeah,
(14:26):
but I maybe a most pronouncing this place is controversial
because of some murky links to a Russian, a guy
who's a big deal in Russia who is not Putin
and Oligarch. You may say, you might, some might and right,
(14:48):
but there's always more to this story, right. So somewhere
along the way, members of the counterintelligence community, which is very,
very close knit, they started to question his allegiance, and
this story dropped for us in like twenty twenty two,
but there was something in the wind by twenty eighteen.
(15:10):
So as far back as you said, Ben is twenty
eighteen the British were taking some keeping some tabs on
McGonagall and noticed that he was making some very taking
rather some very suspicious meetings with a Russian national stead
of a red flag. Considering the circumstances, even as far back,
(15:31):
I mean, we've always been a little tenuous with the Russians.
I suppose, you know, as far back as the Cold
War and the Iron curtains, there's always a little bit
of suspicion that comes into play when their secret meetings
happening with Russian nationals. And in January of twenty twenty three,
Charles McGonagall was arrested. This is just a couple of
years later after the observation of this meeting on charges
(15:53):
of money laundering, making false statements in mandatory disclosures to
the FBI, violating US sanctions on Russia, because those are
still ironclad and more. Yeah, and we should we should
mention here. We talked, Ben talked about the glass world,
where everybody's doing this kind of counterintelligence. It just should
be noted that the British intelligence was checking out the
(16:17):
Russian person whom McGonagall was meeting, and that's how it happened.
And we talk a lot about five eyes and things
like that, where there's a lot of intelligence sharing, not
all of the intelligence, mind you never all of the intelligence,
but quite a bit is shared between a lot of
these Western countries. And I'm assuming that's kind of what
happened here. There's back channeling to the FBI after they
(16:39):
notice that's a little weird. Oh boy, I'm frightfully afraid
then may be a fox and the in house. Yeah,
the FBI believe the British. They claimed there was a
traitor in their midst. So what happened, We'll tell you
after a word from our sponsor and we're back. That
(17:05):
was hopefully Aman Resorts. Here's where it gets crazy. As
much as this sounds like something out of a movie,
it looked it looked to be the case that McGonagall
have been turned. He has not been convicted yet. That's
very important to say. We'll probably say it a couple
times in this episode. But the authorities, pretty much all
(17:27):
of them, DJ, FBI, you name it. They seem pretty
convinced this guy was a spy or at the very
least corrupt and had that super important intelligence information in
his head or access to it potentially, you know, by
means of a hard drive or a piece of paper
and that kind of thing, and he could be sharing
(17:48):
that stuff, right, And let's think a moment to say, Okay,
something that spy movies get wrong, like works of fiction
always get wrong, is is this And it's kind of
disappointed thing. It's not great for movies. But intelligence, especially
high level or secret intelligence, is often what we would
call perishable, as it has a short shelf life, you know,
(18:12):
like stuff from the organic aisle of the grocery store.
So an otherwise just a window in which it is useful.
And then outside of that is it is basically not yeah, correct,
and so but this means that there's another kind of
resource people like this can offer, and that is connections,
that's influence. Connections are not necessarily perishable. They can be burned,
(18:37):
just like a persona. So we don't like, we'll get
into it, well, we'll get into what he was trading
back and forth, but it seems to be it seems
to be a little bit more like connections and intros
and influence than it does to be actionable intelligence on
the ground stuff. But his professional life definitely made him
(18:58):
aware of tradecraft in a way that many many average
people would would never You just wouldn't know, you wouldn't
know what to ask. He ran one hundred and fifty
FBI agents in New York and they were tasked with
remember we said the net bites back, they were tasked
with shadowing foreign operatives the way the British were following
(19:21):
this Russian contact and then turning those folks if they
could in despise for the US. Now, this doesn't mean
they're getting someone from like the Russian embassy and saying, hey,
we know you're not the it guy and now you
work for us. It could be something as seemingly innocuous
as we know you work at this consulting firm, right,
(19:42):
and we think you have a side gig and we
want to give you another one. Or it could be
we know that you are, yes, going to an academic
conference here, or you're selling Turkish rugs or whatever, but
we also know about those other meetings you had at
the dunkin Donuts. Well, access is the name of the
game here, right, I mean access to individuals, relationships, you know,
(20:07):
with folks that you can kind of blend in with
and and get information, whether it's nefarious in terms of
the knowledge of that person, or whether it's just you're
kind of got your ears open, you know, and you're
you know, working in these circles. So when they can
identify someone that maybe is willing to play ball, who
has that kind of access, Ding ding ding, Yeah, you know,
(20:29):
I hope you had a great time at the conference.
Why don't you when you when you get back to Turkey,
you know, why don't you just let us know if
any of your colleagues are making breakthroughs and things we
would find of interest. Right, it's like an interest wink wink,
you know, and they're talking to a young nuclear scientist
(20:51):
or something. So this means McGonagle knows about this kind
of stuff. He's aware of it, and he's the top dog.
He's got the catbird seat. Most people only think about
this kind of world or industry when you watch cool
spy movies, you know, the James Bond stuff, Tinker Taylor,
Soldier spy, which is great. It holds up. So this guy,
(21:15):
if he ever, if he does get convicted, it's kind
of like he's some dude who worked at a bank
for years and years and years before deciding to rob it,
so he knows how the bank works already, which means
and this is the thing that keeps tripping me up.
This means that he should have, by all logic and reason,
(21:36):
he should have had a better than average likelihood of
conspiring successfully and getting away with it. That's what makes
twenty eighteen even more confusing. Like we said, the British
clocked at first he meets a rushing in London. Apparently,
despite the fact that this is the same year he
(21:56):
retired from the FBI, he did not know this contact
was already being surveiled by the Brits. Like you said, Matt,
they'll share intelligence, but never all of it. And this
something small, something small like that. Okay, but you know
this known Russian person we've been watching is in London
right now, we're watching that person. There's no reason to
(22:18):
share that information with you know, with the United States,
the location and activities of an oligarch in your country.
That doesn't make you know, that doesn't make a lot
of sense. But when one of your former operatives or
former you know, heads of an intelligence agency is meeting
with your target, yeah, you're gonna you're gonna take note
(22:39):
one anonymous source. Again, these guys kind of loosen their
ties when they're anonymous. What anonymous source would later remark,
what the was he thinking? Because years of expence, just
coffee spraying, years of experience running counterintelligence opts means that
McGonagall should have known this London encounter would attract notice. London,
(23:05):
like New York, is highly surveiled in this world because
there are so many centers of finance and you know,
halls of state power there. And look, you know, this
guy lives in the United States. He lives in a
nice neighborhood, but he lives in a country separated by
two huge oceans. You don't just the idea that you
(23:26):
would travel across the Atlantic for a meeting or series
of meetings implies that it was more than just an
accidental run in, you know, or a casual acquaintance like, oh, oldleag,
fancy seeing you here. I'm always saying that. I'm always
saying that because I have a pretty good Russian friend
whose name is olig So wow, so that's a shout
(23:48):
out to you. But oh no, no, no, he's not
an olig Arc. Okay, he's not an Oligarc. So he
does live in London. Though, now that I think about it,
I should text him. Yeah, I don't meet in a
park or something. Look, um, do you think he used
his cell phone to arrange that? Probably not his personal
(24:08):
cell phone or a burner or some kind of encrypted guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
you don't. You don't just make a phone call to
your buddy who happens to be an oligarch and go
meet him if your former head of FBI counterintelligence. We
don't know who the Russian contact was yet, but it probably,
(24:31):
I'm guessing it probably would have been an agent of
an olagark for an interest you know when we're we're
going to talk about here in a minute. Yeah, handler
fixer for for a bigger cat. But this means like
these sources are saying, Okay, this meeting just doesn't just happen.
So in our mind, based on the knowledge we have
(24:52):
is the FBI, this means that we probably stumbled upon
an extended relationship that this was not there for contact,
and mcgonagal by that logic, had probably been in contact
before he retired from the FBI. We don't know the
exact month he retired in twenty eighteen, but we do
(25:13):
know this meeting in London happened in twenty eighteen, so
it may have even been a case where you know,
he gets out and he says, hello, buddy, don't worry,
I got out. You know, I'm a freeman, right, I'm
open to other opportunities. Yeah. But the British were like, oh, wait,
isn't there an Embassy, like, right around the corner, maybe
we should tell the US guys this happened. So that's
(25:37):
what they do, right, Yeah, they go to the attache
at the US Embassy and they're like, look, we know
Fred is not really the IT guy and we need
to talk to him. I'm kidding, I'm kidding. The FBI,
I think, is pretty public with their legal attach a stuff.
They don't need to be all skull duggery issue about it.
But yeah, the FBI said, okay, we believe you, and
(26:02):
thanks for telling us. We're going to open an investigation
into McGonagall. And in twenty twenty one, just a few
years back, US attorneys conspired they secretly got a grand
jury together to look at the evidence, and the Justice
Department had to admit that a grand jury was happening,
but they refused to say what the grand jury was
(26:24):
investigating or whether it remained ongoing, which is a brilliant
psychic I mean, they have to, but it's also brilliant
from a PSI op standpoint, because if you have done
anything that you're worried about and you're just here there's
a grand jury doing something, you know what I mean,
just make that announcement and watch everybody right right, open
(26:48):
your safe of fake passports and get your bag of
loose diamonds out. I say, love it, or you're like
coffee can if you're a betterical song. Yeah, yeah, whatever
it is. It's like a you know, one of those
cookie tins. Then everyone keeps like sewing stuff in. You know.
I saw one of those with cookies in at one time,
(27:08):
and it blew my mind. Those are good cookies, man,
those short bread cookies. Pretty like those. I like them.
I like them all right, I mean I don't. I'm
not a very sort of curk thing. Yeah, I'm pretty
sure those cookies had PCP and them cool. You don't
put them in there unless they got some, unless they're wet,
wet cookies. They come, they come in their own little, tiny, dainty,
(27:32):
little little cup, you know, cup that's let's go, let's
go do a ride along King Kong. And got nothing
on Matt, right, So, uh, Matt's childhood PCP experiences aside.
That's why you are the way you are, which is awesome. Yeah,
(27:56):
which is awesome. This is not us condoning smoking wet,
but let us know about your experiences out. It's funny, David,
Let's keep it um, let's keep out, Let's keep it
in the part where sail escape it. So uh okay.
So here's how we know about this. Earlier Business Insider,
(28:19):
which has done a series of great reports on this,
they managed to obtain a witness subpoena that shed light
on what they were doing. And at the time, the
subpoena was asking this witness for records about mcgonagall's interaction
with a consulting firm. And consulting firms can be very
(28:42):
shady called spectrum risk solutions. Yeah, the more innocuous the name,
the more shady the dealings. And we should say it's
security like it's it's based in security. Right. You have
a former FBI agent who has a lot of security
experience who's now moving into the private sector. And then
(29:02):
that thing like what is that entity doing? M Yeah,
because security, like consulting, can also mean many many different things.
But on the if we didn't look past the surface,
it makes sense if you're a private firm, you want
to hire somebody with experience, right, and they have experience
(29:23):
in one of the best intelligence counterintelligence operations on the planet.
So this is this is a good get for you.
But it turns out that Spectrum was probably doing some
shady proxy stuff to help with some introductions that we
don't have to get into, but we do know they
(29:45):
involved operatives of a guy we're about to meet, Olag
dere Paska, not my pal, like different dude, much older,
much older than my pal, but not to be confused
with Olaf the delightful singing snowman from the Frozen film franchise.
Yeah no, absolutely not that guy. That guy is Pakistan
(30:06):
Intelligence through and through. Everybody knows he's with I SI,
but I'd say it rewatch it, Okay. So it's there,
It's all the clues are there. It's there if you
look for it. So McDonald, let's talk about the charges,
all right. What's he actually charged with? And again he
hasn't been convicted. So McGonagall was actually charged in two
separate corruption cases involving illegal cash receipts and money laundering,
(30:31):
the first for allegedly taking secret payments of more than
two hundred and twenty five thousand dollars from a former
Albanian intelligence agent on behalf of a political party there.
He also apparently kept a framed photo of him with
Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama. I'm laughing because it's just
that's a weird thing to do in general. You know,
(30:53):
you got to really stand for somebody if you're walking
around with a framed photo of you and them, like
that's not a member of your family. It's sort of
like those people that have pictures of them and like
George Bush on their mantle. But this is even a
step further than that, isn't right. Yeah, I want to
put this part in because it's it seems to indicate
(31:16):
that he was, like you said, proud of the relationship
and also wasn't wasn't worried about people knowing that this
is his home office. By the way, in the same room,
he's got a framed photo of him with a guy
named Rob mush Hara Dinaj, who was a former Prime
Minister of Kosovo. This starts to get international real quick.
(31:38):
We also know in twenty eighteen he had access to
a secret list of Russian oligarks that Uncle Sam was
going to sanction for their ties to Luke Kremlin, their
ties to Putin Well. He was keeping an eye, like
his group was keeping an eye specifically on those oligarchs
where's the money? Where? How's it being spent? Right now?
(32:00):
And moved around, and then he ends up being accused
of trying to get this one particular oligarch tera Posca
removed from that potential list right right, the mongoose appears
to have befriended the snake it was supposed to hunt.
That second charge is just as you described it, Matt.
(32:22):
There's this Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska and apparently McGonagall and
he worked out some kind of arrangement where he was
going to try to get dere Pasca off of US sanctions,
which is a big, big deal because he has access
to a lot of money from his side of the fence,
and if he can play ball in the US, then
(32:45):
he can move that money very easily to make it
dance for him in all kinds of ways dance funny money. Yeah,
so he was paid monthly, right, he was like employed. Yeah,
he had w nines you know, I mean this is well,
I don't know, I know, he definitely did not have
(33:07):
anything of the sort, but yeah, he was. He was
paid twenty five thousand dollars a month for work that
he was doing here, which is great money. Twenty five
thousand dollars. That that should give everybody kind of a
glimpse into what oligarch Well, like the capital, the oligarchs
(33:29):
are capable of spending easily. You know. No, it's not
how so said level, but it's still it's big, you
know this, This is the kind of thing where in
the mind of the oligarch you go, what's the smallest
amount of money that would seem like a huge money
to one of these law peasants. Twenty five g's a month. Yeah, well, yeah,
(33:53):
but what account is it going to come from? Ah?
That's where you get careful, right, because in addition to
that five grand you're ponying up, you also have to
pay for the support structure to keep it from looking
like you're openly cutting this guy at check every month.
So this goes through an account held by a former
(34:15):
Russian diplomat who worked as an interpreter for the US government.
His name, Sergei Shstakov, not made up, that's his real name.
And one would assume that, you know, these types of
folks are vetted pretty heavily if their former Russian officials
or a Russian you know, would you consider a diplomat
(34:38):
not an operative, but still people within the Russian government.
If they're coming to work for US, you would assume
that they're being paid pretty close attention to in terms
of their background and their allegiances and all of that, right, Yeah, Yeah,
the bar is pretty high. The background checks are quite extensive,
you know, the net is pretty tight there. And because
(34:59):
they're these folks are professionals right there, They're not amateurs.
And the one of the big issues that's happened in
recent years is that the US government has challenges getting
people who are fluent in certain high value languages, like
it's it's tough to find those people, so they are prioritized,
(35:23):
that's right. Yeah, Okay, well, let's talk about Darris Bosca.
He has Ian McGonagall. This is very cinematic. They have
been aware of each other for years. Like the the
FBI as far back as twenty fourteen tried to recruit
our pal Oleg as an informant because of course he's
(35:46):
high value. Well yeah, let's let's talk about why he's
high value. Okay, sure, this dude, this oligarch Oleg was
the richest person in Russia in two thousand and eight,
the richest person in Russian two thousand and eight, and
then what happened in two thousand and eight, two thousand
and nine, Guys, huge crash in the United States, huge
(36:08):
global economy crash. He ended up losing a ton of money,
had a bunch of debt, and his net worth right
now was around just under a three billion. But he
was the richest person in Russia in two thousand and eight,
And you can imagine then after losing a ton of
that money, by the time you get to twenty fourteen,
(36:29):
he's made all the connections as the richest the former
richest person in Russia, right, and he's moving in all them. Yeah,
he's in a debt's pretty he's in a much more
vulnerable place than he had been in a long time.
Probably you can imagine he was a target. Oh I'm sorry,
I see I was reading it the other way. I
was looking at it like he lost all that money.
(36:50):
He had all these connections from back when he was
super rich, so now he was going to exploit those connections.
But it's the other way around to what we were
saying earlier, that access that he had was seen as
like red meat for those who would seek to exploit him. Well, well,
that's why I'm saying the FBI wanted him, right, Yeah,
I get it, I get it. Yeah, of course you
(37:11):
would want. This guy's the bell of the ball intelligence wise,
you know what I mean. It's like that Uncle Sam Poster,
we want you, except it's a dude in a suit
with some glasses, and it just I'm sorry to just
keep harping on this guys, but he's involved in so
many industries within Russia that if you think about the
actions Russia took with the Crimean Peninsula, you know, for shipping,
(37:33):
for getting goods in and out of Russia and out
of that that whole area, basically he was in how
did they describe it at Forbes Aluminum like utilities, energy, construction, agriculture.
He was in all the stuff, all of the agro culture.
Am I Right? There we go. Also two important points.
(37:57):
I'm hesitant sometimes with the use of old arts to
describe these Russian actors. They are tentacles of the state.
But also it seems to imply that there aren't oligarchs
running the United States, and that's very much the case. Yeah. Always,
I always get a little confused about the term. I mean, officially, uh,
(38:20):
it is a small group of very wealthy individuals that
kind of run a state in a sort of shadowy way, right,
because because they've got the power of the purse essentially,
like there their money talks and they are influencing government.
But no, what what is what? What are corporations? You know?
And in America, you know what are like super super
(38:41):
wealthy campaign donors. Why are so many people? Why are
so many of the same people on the top board
of directors across all these kind of out revolving door
you were talking about them, you know, folks going from
you know, these positions of government power to private industry
and then becoming the top dogs they are, and then
they have those connections. I mean, this is a topic
(39:02):
for another day, but I agree. I think the term oligarch,
especially in terms of using to describe other countries, it's
like this is something that happens in other countries. So
but yeah, that's so not true. Yeah, that's the point
of making here's the second point, just real quick, soing,
so this up he is olig is in trouble in
Russia as well. Now this last year, a year ago
(39:24):
actually he called for peace in Ukraine. He said, destroying
Ukraine would be a huge mistake, and a few months
after that, Russian authorities started seizing some of his assets,
including a hotel complex. He owens and sochi. Oh, that's right,
that was that was a retribution kind of almost, wasn't it?
Well again, we got I think we when we do
(39:44):
a series on oligarchs, it's probably this guy's his own episode.
But but we do. We just I think the only
reason why I'm okay with describing Oleg as an oligarch
is because he is one of these guys that got
his business roots are at the collapse of the Soviet Union.
So he's one of these guatization. He's one of the
(40:04):
guys that swooped in with private money, bought up all
of the state run stuff that well was state run
at the time, and then just made billions and billions
for the equivalent of pennies on the dollar. Yeah, and
McGonagall had investigated multiple Russian operatives earlier in his career.
It's currently unclear whether he was involved with the effort
(40:27):
to recruit dry Pasca. But here's the thing. If you've
ever worked anywhere, you tend to have some idea of
your colleague's projects. Unless you're in like the puzzle palace,
you are. You might not be actively involved in something,
but you know what they do, right. You're not up
(40:48):
to the day to day of the accounting or like
the folks who are I don't know, involved in some
new initiative, but you know they're doing something you roughly
know what. Before his retirement in twenty eighteen, McGonagall had
moved to the point where he was directly in charge
of investigating Olig and this guy, like you said, many
(41:12):
already been implicated in so many criminal acts over the years,
including Russian attempts to sway the US election, the same
election that, according to some anonymous sources, McGonagall may have
also tried to sway. The press caught on they began
reporting on this, and they uncover a lot of firsthand
accounts from anonymous former colleagues. But then also they found
(41:37):
account messy personal life stuff like it looked like Olig
and Charlie had started helping each other out, kind of
on a personal as well as professional level, like he was.
Charlie was helping Olig's daughter with some stuff. It was
very important to Olig that she get to the US
to give birth. So that her child would have us
(41:59):
papers that clean. And it seems like Charlie was also
stepping out on his wife, who he described as his
ex wife. They seem to have been estranged for a bit.
And this is just reporting. This is not us personally
saying this. We had an extra marital relationship, a girlfriend
on the side. Alison gertietro Of from about spring at
(42:22):
twenty seventeen to twenty eighteen. Yes, yes, relationships can always
be tough. Affairs are not ethically sound, but adultery is
not a crime in Maryland. Still, this tells us more
about the case. What do we mean? We'll tell you
after a word from our sponsors and we've returned, you know,
(42:49):
mat It occurs to me that this next part of
the story, if someone makes a movie on this, this
is going to be the part they focus on way
too much, because screenwriters and TV writers are always like, oh,
let's let's talk about the emotional aspects of the thing.
Let's have everybody use their names way too often in
a scene. Well, yeah, the b storyline is it's often
(43:13):
what gets you through to the next important plot point. Yeah,
I mean it's functional, You're right, I I sound cold
I'm sorry, I think it's okay for people to have emotions.
That's not fair of me. Whatever. So, okay, these guys
(43:34):
both have pretty they don't have perfect personal lives. Who does.
The thing is it would not have necessarily been illegal
for Charlie McGonagall to work for Oleg Depasca, right, No,
I mean if it was, if he truly left his
post at the FBI and just started up, you know,
a new position somewhere, utilizing the things he'd learned in
(43:58):
his position, not necessarily any of the seats, but the skills,
then I guess that's okay. We do know, you don't
you never really leave an intelligence agency when you retire,
and not really kind of mostly but not really. I mean, yeah,
I guess it depends on because these are big, big operations, right,
so I guess it depends on what you do. But
(44:19):
if you're like a special agent in charge, it does
seem like those relationships and influences would follow you after,
you know, after you leave. And even if even people
who go through the debriefing process still I'm confident they
can still make some calls and things like that. I
(44:40):
don't think it's I don't know, I just I don't
know if we want to paint a huge broad brush
and say that everybody is still active when they leave.
Some people some people are still some people are still
just you know, going fishing, right. Yeah. Yeah, I don't
mean to say. I don't mean to say you're always
(45:00):
active even when you retire. What I mean is like
a part of it, a part of the journey stays
with you, you know what I mean. I don't know
what I'm saying. But ultimately, there's a you have a
tie to the FBI now no matter what, even if
you're retired, right, And it's not that you have that information,
you know, it's no, it's known that you're aware of
the methods. That's probably one of the most important things. Yeah,
(45:24):
if you're gonna go into a relationship like this with
an oligarch, you basically would just have to inform everybody
and be upfront about it. Hey, guys, just want to
let you know I'm doing my thing over here now
with the whole legg Uh. You know, you check it
out if you need to, totally fine, buff board, But
that's not what happened. Do you think they had nicknames
(45:46):
for each other? Oh? He was was he calling him
like the leg man or something that's a cool dick
dave like man. It's probably just like Chucking Gregg or
something real sick. Yeah, yeah, no, you're right, you're right.
They they may not have their conversations may not have
been as fun as ours. But but yeah. The Foreign
(46:09):
Agents Registration Act, it's an old law and it's one
of those laws that is still in effect. It requires
anybody who is operating for a foreign government organization or
a VIP of some sort to disclose their relationship to
the Department of Justice. And part of this, I mean,
(46:32):
it doesn't ban any specific activities, but it's kind of
like a let us know, loop us in so we
understand what's going on. And if you don't do that,
then you can get hit with a two hundred and
fifty thousand dollars fine and up to five years in prison.
There's there's a report again from Business Insider did some
(46:53):
excellent work here. The show's mcgonagall's girlfriend kind of always
knew something was up. She knew he was lying to
her about the state of his previous relationship. You know,
he said he loved his kids, but he has a
soon to be ex wife and they're definitely going to
get divorced, and they've been per her Dave. He's saying that,
(47:14):
you know, the marriage is over and it's just almost
a matter of paperwork. And he goes back home to
Maryland once or twice a month, but he has an
apartment in Park Sloop in New York. And one day
in October twenty seventeen, I think it is, she's hanging
out at his apartment and she sees a literal bag
(47:36):
of cash on the floor, bundles and bundles of big
denominations wrapped up in rubber bands. And she's like, Charlie,
what was going on? And he says, oh, I want
to bet a baseball game. Dang, Charlie man suffle bag bets.
All right, yeah, I should do that more often. Cheeziles.
(48:00):
Uh yeah yeah. Um. I guess the girlfriend his his
a girlfriend at the time really just kind of believed
what she was being sold. Um, And he was definitely
not being upfront about really anything there. Um, And I
don't know, I don't I guess you just kind of
move on. He go all right, well, I guess that's
(48:22):
his that's his baseball money. Let's go see that movie.
Charlie's baseball money. Yeah. Uh. She had also had relationships
in the past with people who are in law enforcement.
You can find a picture of her with Giuliani by
the way, Rudy Giuliani And yeah, and she said, you know,
(48:44):
sometimes I just didn't ask questions. I knew. Charlie lived large.
He would take her to really posh, nice restaurants. He
would give her gifts of large amounts of cash for birthday,
like five hundred thousand dollars. He said he would frame
his divorce papers for her as a present. He would
(49:05):
take her to private box games to watch the New
Jersey Devils saw hockey team there and then she saw it.
She recalls stuff like one time he just gave somebody
on the street one hundred dollars, like he got his panhandling,
and he said, well, I'm better off than he is.
I'm gonna try to help him because I'm in a
better place. And then she also said she contracted cancer.
(49:28):
She battled cancer for a while, and she said during
that time he would he was very loving and caring,
and he would send agents to drive her back and
forth from treatment in government vehicles. He's kind of playing
fast and loose with the company property at that point. Yeah,
that's pretty nuts. So McGonagall and his girlfriend were living
(49:51):
it up. They were doing some great things. I mean,
come on, hanging out Washington, New Jersey, Devils in a box.
That's cool, that's fun. But his girlfriend and he said,
quote he needed to make more money. He had two
kids to put through college and he you know, it
was a whole other family as a wife too. He
needed to make more money as the big deal here.
(50:12):
Mm yeah, yeah, it's never enough, right, we all know
the game and the slope, for God's sakes, in an apartment,
come on, that's an expensive area, and that's your second
place or third, that's your second place. Yeah. In the
world of counterintelligence, you know, any any little crack in
someone's personal life can, should, and will be used as
(50:36):
leverage if needed. So that means Matt throughout the devil
hordes there. Uh, that means that any compromising personal information
can and will be used against someone. And infidelity is
just as valuable to those sorts of operatives as crushing debt.
It's a way in. But it doesn't seem in this
(50:58):
case that adultery was the prime factor in his turning
it seems he sold himself for different reasons. And again,
if there is a conviction that follows, if Uncle Sam
is able to prove this conspiracy, it honestly looks like
he sold himself kind of cheap because when he was private,
(51:20):
industry sources report he was pulling something like three hundred
to three and fifty thousand dollars a year, not counting
annual bonuses. And I get at college costs or increasing,
but that's still that's a fair amount of money. I
would imagine it's a lot of money. Kidneys, it's gone
a lot of money. It's quite a bit of money.
(51:42):
And so before we start sounding like a Seinfeld episode
or curb your enthusiasm, it's a lot of body. He
apparently needed more. And remember, I think earlier, Matt you
mentioned it was two hundred and twenty five thousand dollars
that he had received in the high level world of
tradecraft and consulting firms and oligarchs. That's peanuts. I mean,
(52:07):
if you do the cost benefit analysis, what we say,
even just the Foreign Registration Act getting popped on that
one is a two hundred and fifty thousand dollars fine.
You know, take a lesson from the banks. Make sure
that if you are convicted of a crime, the fine
for that is less than the money you made doing
the crime. Hey, so you always come out on top.
(52:27):
So you always come out on top and shut out
Mac always study in Philadelphia. I mean, that's the thing,
all right. The current status Charles McGonigal has not been convicted.
There has not been a trial. So a lot of
what we're exploring here is just what has been said
in the public sphere. It's quite possible that there is
(52:50):
information on the defense side and the prosecutor side that
will only later come to light and it may change
the conversation. He made ale, he paid a five hundred
thousand dollars bond. He is, to all accounts, he is
currently residing there in Maryland. Uh, I don't know, Chevy Chase,
(53:13):
not Slope, New York or whatever? Is that? Is that Brooklyn?
I think that yeah, yeah, yeah, it's Brooklyn. Uh. And
I gotta ask, do you think he'll be convicted? Um? Oh,
I don't know. I think on some charges at least
there's fishy stuff, but it's high. It's also so highly sensitive.
(53:34):
I wonder how much, oh right, how much could be
an open court. Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah, I mean,
that's the thing I personally think right now. It is
likely that he'll be convicted on at least some charges,
but there is only a chapter in a much larger
story of conspiracy. As we're recording to day, it is
(53:55):
certain that multiple government agents are being targeted by Turn
for turning operations. Hopefully none of them will be successful.
The McGonagall case is extraordinarily rare, but the conspiracies continue.
We only know about the ones who get caught. Of course,
foreign powers want people on the inside of their rivals operations,
(54:15):
and why not. I mean, don't forget folks, especially if
you live in America, around the planet, in every country
you can imagine right now, the United States wants the same.
That's how the game is played. Who so, you know,
let's do our little podcast. Yeah, yeah, let's talk about it. Yeah,
(54:40):
oh god, So what do you think? It's just this
just a case of a former spy going out and
trying to make some cash in you know, a way
that he understands how to do it. Or is it
some kind of tricksy thing going on the back in
the background between the US and Russian powers. I don't
(55:00):
know if we saw this, ben, but there was a
March twenty seventeen report connecting this same guy, Dry Pasca
Olegg to Paul Manafort, the guy who was running Trump's campaign,
and allegedly Paul Manafort was getting paid a lot of
money on a multi year contract to specifically promote Russia
(55:26):
and the things that Russia wanted. He had a contract
with Derri Pasca. Dera Pasca also sued Manafort. He did,
he did. There's a connection to Christopher Steele from the
Steel dossier, you know, the Ppe dossier. There's some weird
(55:46):
stuff going on with that oligarch, that guy who the
guy who is known as an oligarch. Yeah, which which
oligarch's should we look into? Let us know. We hope
you enjoyed today's episode. Again, this is unfolding case, but
it can It's a window through which we can view
a world that does not have to get explored. We
(56:07):
want to hear your thoughts. Find us on Facebook, Instagram,
TikTok until the US takes that down, would love it.
If you check out our YouTube show, you can see
not too many spoilers, but you can see that night
getting back to our roots there in a way that
I think we both really enjoy. And if you also
(56:27):
not like our roots dancing way too much, and and
if you don't sip the social meds, as always, we've
got your back, fellow conspiracy realists. You can call us
directly dial one eight three three std wy t K.
It's a voicemail system. Give yourself a cool nickname. We
(56:49):
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