August 27, 2024 • 56 mins
During the hectic news cycle of 2015, numerous stories popped up in headlines, only to disappear as soon as another event (or scandal) came to light. One story in particular remains enigmatic in the modern day: During the investigation into the Clinton email scandal, an FBI report found that "There was a powerful group of very high-ranking State [Department] officials that some referred to as 'The 7th Floor Group' or 'The Shadow Government.'" What exactly did this mean? Was there really a shadow government operating in Washington? Tune in to learn more.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Fellow conspiracy realist, have you ever suspected there was some
sort of shadowy cabal? What a softball question?
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Isn't that start of the whole basis of this show.
I think it is.
Speaker 1 (00:13):
Yeah, I think we've all suspected.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
It's entirely like, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (00:19):
This is a fun one for us. Back in twenty nineteen,
we looked at the hectic news cycle of twenty fifteen
with the benefit of retrospect, and we noticed that there
was a particular investigation from the FBI into the Clinton
administration where they said.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Quote, there was a powerful group of very high ranking
state officials that some referred to as the seventh Floor
Group or the shadow government.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
But what does that mean? Well, let's jump into the
episode and find out.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government can bises, history
is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now
or learn this stuff they don't want.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
You to know. A production of iHeart Radios How Stuff Works.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
Welcome back to the show. My name is Matt Noel
is on an adventure. But wait, who are you?
Speaker 1 (01:27):
That's right, they call me Ben. We are joined with
our super producer Paul, Mission Control decand most importantly, you
are you, you are here, and that makes this stuff
they don't want you to know. This is a weird one, Matt.
This is an episode that a lot of our fellow
and listeners had asked us to cover in years past.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
Yes, it's it's a callback.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
It's a callback, it really is, and we did. We
did an episode related to this topic way back in
what twenty sixteen, So looking back, it's strange to recall
that the twenty sixteen presidential campaign happened three years ago.
Speaker 2 (02:11):
Yeah, it certainly doesn't seem as though that much time
has passed, but in fact it has a three ish years. Yeah,
we're not quite there, We're not quite the novembery yet.
But still, Hey, it's crazy that much time has passed.
And you know, elections, especially presidential elections in this country,
(02:31):
they bring out the best and the worst of us.
I think.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
I think that's incredibly optimistic, and I appreciate that I
needed to hear some good news today. You're absolutely right,
my friend. I agree with you. Way back in twenty sixteen,
when we first did some episodes on elections, we figured
that the most fact based and the fairest way for
(02:57):
us to sum up all the allegations and conspiratorial accusations
that we had heard of was to do one episode
for each of the political party front runners. So we
did one episode on conspiracies about the Trump campaign, and
we did one episode on conspiracies about the Hillary Clinton campaign.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
Yes, and Bernie didn't even make it in there. Actually,
that's not true. Bernie made an appearance in the Clinton episode.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
Oh yeah, yeah, along with your pal Wasserman Schultz, right.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
Oh, everyone's pal Wasserman Schultz.
Speaker 1 (03:33):
It was like this. Both of those episodes together were
like this Avengers Infinity War team up of horrible people
doing horrible thing.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
It really was, and whether we like it or not,
we contributed to whatever it is that we are in
right now, whatever this is. We just gave a little
bit because everyone involved, like you said, was all there.
Everybody goes up to no good and there really wasn't
a great choice, it seemed, at least in my opinion.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
Yeah, because we had we had a situation wherein mass
media was being leveraged so effectively. Mass media was around
in other elections, but it hadn't quite reached the fever
pitch that it reached in the twenty sixteen presidential campaign,
and like most presidential campaigns here in the States, the
(04:24):
one in twenty sixteen saw the rise and fall of
multitudes of politicians, as well as the sudden rise and
candidly the disappearance of various scandals. You know what I mean.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
That's correct, absolutely.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
So today's story starts with one of the famous controversies,
or should we say infamous controversies in that election. It's
known as the Hillary Clinton email scandal or email controversy.
The word choice there depends upon which side of the
aisle you fall on. For a lot of.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
People, how much do you want to downplay this?
Speaker 1 (04:59):
Right?
Speaker 2 (04:59):
Right?
Speaker 1 (04:59):
So for some people this was a case study in
out of control media grasping its straws, right yeah. And
those were generally people who were supporters of the Clinton campaign.
For others, generally opponents of that campaign, it was a
case study and how the powerful can sweep their political
dirt under the figurative rug.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
But reality, yeah, it was somewhere in the middle.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
Right right, right, And and nowadays people still use the phrase
but the emails, So first things first, what are we
talking about here?
Speaker 2 (05:34):
Well, that that a phrase, but the emails it's kind
of shorthand really and it's a bit of a joke
and it's uh, I don't know, it's it's pretty crazy.
It goes back to this series of really security violations
that were undertaken. I don't know how you how you
put that that they were There were violations that the
(05:56):
Clinton campaign did while she was in office as Secretary
of Date and it had to do with putting emails
on a private server, or putting emails that should not
be on a private server on a private server right
in the big major scheme of things. That's what it is.
And ultimately you're talking about the classification of certain email
(06:20):
and information within emails that maybe shouldn't have been on
a private server.
Speaker 1 (06:25):
And I know that for many of us listening today,
this is something that you may feel that you heard
ad nauseum three years ago and you're thinking, well, why
should I should listen to this? We have a plot
twist coming up for you. This is not just an
episode about emails. The plot thickens pretty quickly, but to
get there, we need to walk through the email scandal,
(06:49):
the email controversy. It is exactly as you described it, Matt,
a series of security violations. Think of it as you
know what. Think of one server as an old school
filing cabinet, right, and then another server right next to it,
another old school filing cabinet. And in the server to
(07:10):
your right, that's where all the classified stuff goes. What's
up with North Korea? What are Iran and various other
Middle Eastern powers angry or cranky about today? That goes
into this one file cabinet.
Speaker 2 (07:26):
In that file cabinet has a crazy amount of locks
on it and biometric scanning in order to get into it.
It's intense stuff.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
And then you have the other file cabinet on your left,
no locks. It's kind of a junk drawer. Yeah, there
are you know, there are like old recipes, maybe some
Pinterest things in there. But then one way or another,
through accident or through intentional action, the stuff that's top
secret or just secret ends up there with the recipes
(07:55):
and the Hey, what are you doing on Saturday? Let's
go to what's a chain restaurant?
Speaker 2 (08:01):
Oh? Charlie's.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
Oh, Paul's gonna kill us if we don't shout.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
Out apple be sorry, sorry Paul Applebee's. Jeez, that was close.
Here's another major distinction we have to make. Yes, the
server on your right, the one that has all those
locks on it, with all the class wide information. That
one can be seen by the State Department, by a
lot of other intelligence agencies. There's there's accountability on that
(08:25):
one right to the government. On the private one. That one,
the one on your left, it's completely controlled by the
Clinton campaign and people who are contracted to work with
the Clinton campaign on that email server. That's a huge
thing that we have to just remember.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
Absolutely great point. There is a chain of custody and
theory for everything in that right hand filing cabinet. This
controversy is a series of security violations, misfiled emails, deleted emails, and.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
That's another big thing, deleted emails.
Speaker 1 (08:56):
Deleted emails. Yeah, and this started before Clinton became the
Democratic candidate in the twenty sixteen campaign, but it continued
during the campaign. This didn't really become a national story
until March of twenty fifteen, when The New York Times
ran a front page article on the subject. The article
(09:18):
said that the system quote may have violated federal requirements
and was quote alarming unquote to current and former government
archive officials. So that's what the Clinton campaign was found doing.
Clinton was found to have used her family's private server
for official communications instead of official State Department email accounts.
(09:40):
This happens to a lot of people on a much
smaller scale. Let's say that you have multiple social media accounts.
Let's say that, like our good friend Mission Control, you
have one account that's Paul something or other, and then
you have another account that is Applebee's Facts.
Speaker 2 (10:00):
Yeah, and.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
You forget to you know, you forget to switch your
profile over, and so it sounds more like a Reddit user,
it does. It sounds like a great Reddit user name.
And then you know, all of a sudden, things that
should be said by Paul are being said by apple
Bee's Facts, and vice versa. That's that's a much smaller
level because Applebee's Facts, and this is not a knock
(10:24):
on apple Bee's Facts at all, usually doesn't deal with
things like geopolitical tensions in the Middle East yet not yet.
I mean those apps are coming, yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
Or you know, quid pro quo things having to do
with the classification of emails.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
Whenever that whenever I hear quid pro quo, I cannot
help but think of silence of the lambs.
Speaker 2 (10:46):
Oh, really, a little quid pro quote. Clarie what's her name?
Speaker 1 (10:50):
Which broke qho Clarie?
Speaker 2 (10:53):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (10:54):
Uh yeah, did you know? Completely off topic, mattuh. The
renowned actor Anthony Hopps, his character Hannibal Lecter that's not
a spoiler, is only actually on camera for like a
ridiculously small amount of time, like fifteen minutes or something.
Speaker 2 (11:08):
All told, Yeah, and he won, didn't he win? Oscars
Glora that year? We in The Monster of the Zodiac Killer.
We actually mentioned that that year that that movie came out.
They tailored the entire Oscar ceremony around his character essentially
in that movie.
Speaker 1 (11:24):
It's insane the US does glorify serial killers. Also, I
found another ancient serial killer. I think I'm building a
pretty good argument I'd like to pitch to you later. Well,
I'll do it now. Why don't we do an episode
on serial killers before the eighteen hundreds or ancient serial killers?
Speaker 2 (11:44):
Whoa, I have a treasure trove, really.
Speaker 1 (11:47):
A lot that will be new to people.
Speaker 2 (11:48):
Yeah, documented serial killer? Yeah, Okay, that sounds like a
holy podcast.
Speaker 1 (11:54):
We'll see. We'll give it a go. So before we
explode the lives of those ancient serial kill let's continue
exploring this strange story of emails. Right now, we've outlined
the gist, right, let's walk through a little bit more
of it. So shortly before she was sworn in as
(12:15):
Secretary of State in two thousand and nine, Hillary Clinton
had set up an email server at her home in
New York. This was home to an email address HDR
twenty two at clintonmail dot com, and this was for
all of her email correspondence, work related personal stuff during
her four years in office. She also set up email
(12:38):
addresses on the server for her longtime AID State Department
Chief of Staff one Cheryl.
Speaker 2 (12:44):
Mills, as well Huma Abodeen.
Speaker 1 (12:46):
Huma Abodeen Yes, yes, was the longtime AID. She did
not use or even activate a state dot gov email account,
which was a big deal. It would have been hosted
on servers owned and managed by the US government. The
reason that's an important detail is not necessarily because people
thought the Secretary of State was a criminal or doing
(13:08):
criminal acts. It's more for operational security or opseca, because
other countries, no matter how friendly they are, would love
to know what's going on in the US when the
doors to the halls of power are closed.
Speaker 2 (13:23):
Oh, of course, and if you're perhaps someone like Hillary
Rodham Clinton, and you stand out that you know that
much as a name, as a powerful person within the
halls of that power, your private email server is a
major target for anyone and everyone who may be looking
to find some information. Heck. Yeah. So the FBI ends
(13:45):
up getting involved a little later on, and what they
found was that over one hundred emails containing some version
of classified information were found on her private servers. There
were sixty five emails that were considered a secret, classified secret,
twenty two were classified top secret, and it doesn't get
much more secret than that. Another two thousand, two thousand
(14:08):
and ninety three emails were not initially classified, but then
they were retroactively classified by the State Department itself.
Speaker 1 (14:17):
Kind of like upon further consideration, this is sensitive information.
Speaker 2 (14:21):
And it's important to know that that is the State
Department that is doing that. That will come into play
a little later.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
And there's a side note. There are things above top secret,
like compartmentalized access your eyes only, yes, but that as
far as we know, these emails just went up to
top secret, which is still a big deal.
Speaker 2 (14:42):
Yep.
Speaker 1 (14:43):
That shouldn't you know, be sitting around on your Yahoo
account or something, but you're absolutely right. So something is
amiss here. It doesn't matter where you fall politically. Various critics,
including Republican members of Congress, are argued that using a
private messaging system and server violated State Department protocols, and furthermore,
(15:07):
they said this violates federal laws and regulations. The FBI
is on the case. As early as two thousand and nine,
officials with the NARA, the National Archives and Records Administration,
expressed concerns over these possible violations of the standard operating
procedure of record keeping at the State Department. December of
(15:29):
twenty twelve, near the end of Clinton's tenure as Secretary
of State, a nonprofit group with a pretty neat name,
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington or crew Oh yeah,
they filed a Freedom of Information Act request to get
the records of the departing Secretary of State's emails. They
(15:52):
received a response in May of twenty thirteen that said,
no records responsive to your request were located. That's government
ease for four oh four.
Speaker 2 (16:02):
Yes, surch error, nothing found. Yeah, and then you you
got to look at the certain emails that were sent
to that whole clintonmail dot com address, which is terrible
to read, by the way, because it looks like Clinton mail.
It just doesn't look great. But they were discovered in
March twenty thirteen when a hacker who called himself or
(16:22):
herself whoever, was Gusifer, and they distributed these emails that
were sent to Clinton from Sidney Blumenthal. And this dude, Gusifer,
obtained them by illegally accessing Bluomenthal's email account. So this hacker,
essentially Gusifer broke into Sidney Bloomenthal's email found all of
these private Clinton emails.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
And Gusifer is a portmanteau of Gucci and Lucifer.
Speaker 2 (16:50):
So is Guccifer Guccifer. It's Gusifer. I've always heard Goosifer.
Speaker 1 (16:53):
Yeah, yeah, I just I like the wordplay. Guys a
criminal though. In the summer of twenty four teen, lawyers
from the State Department noticed several emails from Clinton's personal
account while reviewing documents requested by the House Select Committee
on Bengazi, which is a whole other bag of badgers.
Speaker 2 (17:12):
Oh boy.
Speaker 1 (17:13):
And then, as we said earlier, at twenty fifteen, New
York Times piece comes out it breaks the story that
the Bengazi panel had discovered Clinton exclusively used her own
private server rather than the government issued one throughout her
time as SOS Secretary of State, and that furthermore, her
aids took no action to preserve emails that she sent
(17:35):
or received from those personal accounts. The State Department and
the Intelligence Community Inspector General discovered four emails that had
classified information. And this was out, This was a spot check.
It was out of a random sample of forty and
when they saw that, they said, okay, four out of forty,
that's one out of ten. We need to refer this
(17:56):
to the FBI, their counterintelligence office. And so they alerted
the authorities that this classified intel was kept on the
Clinton server and by her lawyer on a thumb drive.
Speaker 2 (18:08):
Interesting.
Speaker 1 (18:09):
Then The New York Times runs a story on July
twenty fourth, twenty fifteen, with the headline criminal inquiry sought
in Clinton's use of email.
Speaker 2 (18:19):
Yeah, And the lead sentence from that story was two
Inspectors General have asked the Justice Department to open a
criminal investigation into whether Hillary Rodham Clinton mishandled sensitive government
information on a private email account she used as Secretary
of State. Senior government officials said Thursday, So that's the again,
(18:39):
that's the New York Times. You've got them citing senior
government officials saying that Hillary Clinton mishandled sensitive information on
her private email. That's really all you need to know.
That's a big deal. Then, of course you have all
of these large US organizations who you know, they jump
on and they correct, they correct, the New York Times
(19:00):
stating that quote. An important distinction is that the ICIG.
The ICIG did not make a criminal referral. It was
a security referral made for counterintelligence purposes.
Speaker 1 (19:15):
So to get back through that government ease, what they
are saying is that we were not we were not
giving an order to book them Dano. We were saying
this could be leveraged by unfriendly foreign powers. Yes, and
the Times made two other corrections right, first that Clinton
(19:38):
was not the specific target of the referral, and then
that it was not criminal in nature. But the funny
thing is with redactions, corrections things like that, even in
large papers of note, they legally correct the record, but
they do nothing for the court of public opinion. You
know what I mean?
Speaker 2 (19:59):
Yeah, absolutely, remember the first thing, especially the first headline.
If you see Clinton email scandal in a headline, somewhere,
or Clinton email referral, or just some other combination in
that where you've got a person, a bad thing, and
an object, that's what you remember and doesn't matter if
a week later, two days later, there's a correction on
(20:20):
the original article, even if they tweet out correction, this
was not what it was. Nobody gives a crap.
Speaker 1 (20:27):
Yeah. Typically, typically, and that's not a ding on anyone's intelligence.
That's just the nature of psychology for most people. Precisely, So,
how did this initial investigation, how did this all shake out?
Will tell you after a word from our sponsor.
Speaker 2 (20:49):
All right, we're back. So let's jump to July fifth
of twenty sixteen. There's this gentleman named Comy, James Comy.
He was the director of the FBI. You may remember this.
I haven't said that name in a long time. I
used to say it a lot. But he announced that
the FBI completed its investigation and he was gonna, you know,
(21:09):
they were going to talk to the State Department with
a certain recommendation, and that recommendation was that no charges
are appropriate in this case. That's great news for the
Clinton campaign and all of the supporters. He went on
to say, that although there is evidence of potential violations
of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information, our
(21:29):
judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case. Now,
in this initial messaging that's coming from the FBI from
Comey the Director.
Speaker 1 (21:39):
Again July twenty sixteen.
Speaker 2 (21:41):
Yeah, exactly July. They just it seems like, hey, this
email thing happened. It's a little bit of carelessness. But
you know what, We're okay. Nobody did anything on purpose
to hurt anybody else. It was just they used a
private server. Slap the hand, let's move on.
Speaker 1 (21:55):
Sloppy but not sinister.
Speaker 2 (21:56):
There you go, right, So but that changed.
Speaker 1 (22:00):
The thing is that changes? There's another there's another investigation.
On October twenty eighth, twenty sixteen, Comy tells Congress that,
in connection with an unrelated case, the FBI has learned
of the existence of emails that appear pertinent to the investigation.
(22:20):
We're going through a lot of context here, so but
we'll get through it. It'll be worth it at the end.
This unrelated case to which they referred was the FBI
investigation of the famously and hilariously tragically named Anthony Weener.
Speaker 2 (22:34):
Oh yes, from The Daily Show.
Speaker 1 (22:37):
Famously from the famously from The Daily Show. This guy,
despite you know his name, might make you think he
has a sense of humor, but he had busted sending
sexually explicit text to a child, a fifteen year old girl.
The FBI discovered emails from his estranged wife, who was
(22:58):
what was her name again.
Speaker 2 (22:59):
The aforementioned Huma Aberdeen.
Speaker 1 (23:01):
Huma Aberdeen the vice chair of the Clinton presidential campaign,
and because of this, they considered these emails might be
relevant to the investigation. At the time, Comy said the
FBI would take appropriate investigative steps designed to allow investigators
to review these emails to determine whether they contain classified
information as well as to assess their importance to the investigation. Now,
(23:26):
anytime we talk about government procedure, I know it can
feel increasingly like a snoozefest. Yeah, acronyms and initialisms flying
willy nilly. Everybody is talking like someone from the DMV
wrote their speech.
Speaker 2 (23:41):
Yeah, it's talking around things a lot of the time,
or of the procedures and the procedural nature. Yeah, it's
pretty crazy.
Speaker 1 (23:48):
Well, and there's a reason for that, right because you
want to make sure you get every letter, every syllable, perfect, Just.
Speaker 2 (23:56):
To jump in before we're going to such a good idea.
We were joking as we were going through the hum
abadeen stuff with Anthony Wiener. Just let's just take a
moment to say how disgusting that is that he was
sending inappropriate pictures to a fifteen year old. Yeah, really awful.
We are not making light of that. It kind of
slid past us as we were joking through this disgusting right, Okay,
(24:19):
I think, okay, we can move on.
Speaker 1 (24:21):
So yeah, I hope that was never a question for anybody,
but yes, just to be crystal clear, bold it, underline it,
stamp that gross perfect.
Speaker 2 (24:33):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (24:33):
So on November sixth, twenty sixteen, mere days before the election,
Comy sends a letter to Congress, and he says, look,
we worked around the clock and we're sticking with our
guns from July. Sorry everybody, this was careless, but we
do not believe it was a crime.
Speaker 2 (24:52):
Literally days before the election, as you said.
Speaker 1 (24:55):
And furthermore, despite criticisms that this was a superbly time
October surprise, one of those last minute things that can
happen that can swing the needle towards one candidate or
another comy claimed that both the investigation and its conclusions
were a political They had nothing to do with politics.
Where the FBI, we have a job. We do our job.
(25:18):
Their job is to try to get elected. Our job
is counterintelligence and fighting crime. And we did it. No
surprise spoiler alert for anyone who hasn't caught up with
the news. Since the Clinton campaign was unsuccessful, Donald Trump
became the President of the United States, and people who
(25:40):
opposed the Clinton campaign or thought there was something rotten
in Washington were not persuaded by the FBI's two investigations.
They said, it was like it's cover up. It's rotten,
from its fat cats at the top all the way
to fat cats. Given reports in Congress, these cats are.
Speaker 2 (25:59):
Just ob yeah, too many and too fat.
Speaker 1 (26:02):
Too many and too fat, they said, yes, that's a quote.
It seemed that despite the FBI's claims that there there
was nothing wonky about their timing, it seemed that whomever
had managed to orchestrate this story and narrative of private
(26:22):
versus government emails, who had managed to turn it into
a chant and a rallying point for oppositional media, had
done this masterful job. Hillary Clinton herself cited this as
one of the factors in losing the election.
Speaker 2 (26:39):
I would one thousand percent agree that this was a
huge factor. It is what everybody was talking about.
Speaker 1 (26:44):
Yeah, I mean, it couldn't have been the only factor, no, but.
Speaker 2 (26:49):
It was still the thing that if you thought about
Hillary Clinton right around that time, like October, late October,
early November, it was Clinton email.
Speaker 1 (27:02):
It was the you mean like, it was the first
keyword that popped up in everybody's mental Google.
Speaker 2 (27:07):
Yeah, even if you were a supporter or something, I
guarantee you that was happening, even if it was like Clinton,
oh gosh, emails whatever.
Speaker 1 (27:16):
Well, the calls for investigation into this matter did not cease.
This association was prominent in people's minds even after the election,
and furthermore, they felt that justice had not been done
or something was a miss. And these calls for investigation
(27:36):
continued even as the Trump administration floundered. Several times, both
on the domestic and international stage, the White House itself
increasingly called for more investigation into the Clinton campaign's classification
of emails. They went so far as to fire James
Comy for this and some other and fired him for
(27:57):
some other reasons which could be episode all their own
one day. Today, this subject remains a rallying call for
some voters on the right. Foreign intelligence agencies who pretend
to be voters are also very ardent about this, and
politicians who will go on record today saying that they
(28:17):
feel there was a cover up. Now, let's get to
the rumors, right, it's correct, Just like the ongoing arguments
about the release of the Muller Report, the FBI's conclusion
on the Clinton emails, let a lot of people feeling like,
this is not this is the this is the edited version,
the redacted version. I want the director's cut, I want
(28:38):
the theatrical production. Tell me what actually happened. Because for
supporters of the FBI's conclusions, and again typically these would
be supporters of the Clinton campaign, this was all pr
sound and fake news, fury smoke with no fire, mirrors,
with no reflection, a manufactured crisis that accomplished exactly what
it was created to do to remove Clinton and therefore
(29:01):
the Democratic Party from the election game.
Speaker 2 (29:06):
Yeah. But of course, for the people who are opponents
of Hillary sometimes generally supporters of the Trump campaign. In
twenty sixteen, people thought that this story was itself swept
under the rug after she lost the election, like perhaps
something else should have happened. You may remember chance from
(29:27):
rallies that you would see on television of lock her up.
Speaker 1 (29:30):
Right.
Speaker 2 (29:30):
It was because some people truly believed that there was
such a mishandling of this stuff that it was criminal.
You know, whether they believe that because some pundit was
talking about it, or because you know, some news story
came out that was read incorrectly. Who knows, but people
certainly felt that way. But they were, and that's because
(29:51):
they thought there was even more to the story than
what was being represented by the FBI's conclusions within their reports.
They thought that maybe it was a bigger cover up
of some big thing, of perhaps further corruption than just
using an email server. Perhaps there was something deeper, as
in a deep state within the US government that was
operating outside of the control of elected officials.
Speaker 1 (30:14):
A shadow government. Here's where it gets crazy. First, let's
define what a shadow government actually is. It's not always bad.
In the world of British politics, there's the shadow cabinet.
All that is is a group of people from the
opposition party who form a different cabinet mirroring or wait
(30:35):
for it, shadowing the positions of each member of the
real cabinet. So there's a person from the opposition side
who will scrutinize the policies and actions of their counterpart
in the real cabinet, and they will present alternatives. Vote
for us, they say, because this is what we would
(30:56):
have done.
Speaker 2 (30:56):
I get it, like a Teresa May and then a
shadow Reason May with a mustache and like a black
hat or something.
Speaker 1 (31:03):
Yeah, exactly, so you've seen you've seen it.
Speaker 2 (31:06):
I've seen it.
Speaker 1 (31:07):
So in this case, people are talking about the other,
the other definition of a shadow government. It's not near
as neat nor as helpful as the British shadow government.
In the US, the term shadow government refers to two
or three things. The first one is absolutely legal, we
need it. It's the continuity of government, the pre planned
(31:29):
order of secession in the event of one or more
deaths in the executive branch and Congress. The president dies,
who's in charge now? When's the vice president? The vice
president dies, who's in charge now? And on and on
and on and one of the one of the most
interesting questions to me when I was when I was
a kid, it was a very, very strange answer. You know,
(31:52):
I asked that question. A lot of children asked, uh,
do you think I could be president? And family member
can reveal who, and their associates said, well, sure, you
might be president tomorrow. It depends on what happens tonight.
And that's how I learned about the line of secession.
Speaker 2 (32:12):
WHOA are you up there? Are you in the like thousands?
Speaker 1 (32:16):
No, it would have to be like millions, hundreds of
millions of people would have to die.
Speaker 2 (32:22):
We got to change that. We need to get you
higher upon that list.
Speaker 1 (32:25):
I don't know, I don't think.
Speaker 2 (32:26):
Yeah, I think so.
Speaker 1 (32:27):
I appreciate that, but I would nominate you instead.
Speaker 2 (32:30):
Uh, nope, but Paul Paul, Yeah, yeah, it's Paul. I
seem he's nodding. He would take that on.
Speaker 1 (32:37):
He would take that on. So that's that's the legal one.
But then there's what you mentioned earlier, Matt, the deep state.
This is an entrenched, allegedly entrenched network of unelected bureaucrats.
They're thought to wield the purse strings, the influence and
the power needed to actually run the US and therefore
a lot of the world behind the scenes. So haha,
(32:58):
they say, you've been elected.
Speaker 2 (32:59):
For what four years. Yeah, you are a flicker glimmer
in the eye of some of these people. And there
really are positions like that that exist within Washington and
the structure. It doesn't necessarily necessarily mean that they're all
working together for one big thing, sure, but they exist
and they are arguably more powerful in a way than
(33:22):
anyone that holds any office for four years.
Speaker 1 (33:24):
Think the president, even in any large organization in the
US government is huge, most governments are. In any large organization,
we see that communication tends to break down and people
become gatekeepers of information. They run their own fiefdoms.
Speaker 3 (33:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (33:42):
So the third, just for the sake of argument, the
third possibility is the massive amount of private influence wielded
by billionaires or other governments or foreign businesses that want
to push their interests domestically and abroad. You know, like
a foreign trade consortium puts in hundreds of millions of
dollars toward US lobbying to get more favorable trade arrangements. Right,
(34:08):
let's let's kick off the tariffs on these plush garfield cooozies. Yeah,
that are that we're pushing. I don't know why. Look,
that's not my best example, but you know what I'm
talking about. I dig it exam. Another example of this
on the domestic end would be the Koch brothers, who
have for decades been making inroads to push the US
(34:34):
more toward the kind of governance that they would like
to see, which is alternately described as more libertarian government
and neo feudalism.
Speaker 2 (34:43):
Yeah, the money, we're really we're talking about the power
if you're talking about the entrenched deep state, and then
with these private influencers, we're really talking.
Speaker 1 (34:51):
About the money, right, right, and these things can all
happen concurrently. That's the messed up part. Yeah, it gets complicated.
But usually when you hear about a shadow government here
in the States, it will come from It'll often come
from the political right. It used to be, it used
to be in times past, a phrase used by the
(35:15):
far far left and the far far right, who often
agree on things, and more so than perhaps the media
would have you believe.
Speaker 2 (35:22):
Right, But.
Speaker 1 (35:25):
This argument always hinges on that notion of the deep state.
For people who believed in this kind of shadow government,
the Seventh Floor Group was proof positive that something was
wrong in the Beltway.
Speaker 2 (35:39):
And what the heck is the Seventh Floor Group, Well,
we'll talk about it right after a word from our sponsor.
Speaker 1 (35:51):
So the seventh Floor Group or the Shadow Government, and
we promised that this femail stuff would pay off.
Speaker 2 (35:56):
Yeah, in the third the last thirty episode. But a
lot of the stuff we've been talking about, really you
have to remember that and know that stuff before we
get here.
Speaker 1 (36:06):
Yes, a bit of a secuitous route, but we went
the most direct way possible. So we mentioned that the
FBI investigation, both of them found what they saw is
no evidence of crime, right sure, and a lot of
people really took that on the chin because they were
certain that this would be hard evidence, smoking gun of
(36:26):
a crime. However, they did find some stuff because they
dug deep. In October twenty sixteen, the FBI released four
sets of documents, including notes and interview summaries, and in
this summary, in the fourth part of the release, they
found a revelation.
Speaker 2 (36:47):
Okay, so just to set this up so you understand
what it is, through the FBI's vault. The vault that's
where you can find these things. However, they've been removed.
These specific ones relating to the Hillary Clinton campaign have
been removed from the vault the FBI's website, but if
you go to the archive dot org wayback machine and
(37:10):
you put in the URL, you can find this. It's
difficult to find there a couple of players. You can
get to it, but it's called Hillary R. Clinton, Part
four of six. That's what it's called. You can find it.
And essentially, these are just, as Ben said, summations of
interviews that they that they had with people, just individuals
regarding the Hillary Clinton email campaign scandal or whatever it was,
(37:35):
talking about the private servers, what they knew, when they
knew it, and all of that. And inside here you
find one specific or there are several specific things. But
in one of these, one of the documents came from
an interview with an unidentified person who suggested that the FOIA,
the Freedom of Information Act requests related to the Clinton
(37:56):
to Clinton, anything related to Clinton, went through a group
that was some kind sometimes referred to at least internally
as the shadow government.
Speaker 1 (38:05):
As literally the shadow government.
Speaker 2 (38:07):
So you know, first of all, we have to say,
maybe this was maybe that's kind of an inside joke, right, maybe,
but let's keep listening in here, because according to this
anonymous person quote, there was a powerful group of very
high ranking state and that state Department officials that some
referred to as the Seventh Floor Group or the shadow Government,
(38:30):
met every Wednesday afternoon to discuss the Freedom of Information
Act process with regards to Clinton. We're talking congressional records
and everything related to Clinton and Freedom of Information Act
and congressional inquiries. So this group, literally they were the
gatekeepers for everything Clinton related.
Speaker 1 (38:48):
And they were a powerful filter. Right, yes, so this,
oddly enough, it sounds pretty crazy. Oddly enough, this was
not a primary focus of mainstream media coverage. It did
receive mention across the board, and those opposed to the
Clinton campaign quickly took this and ran with it. I mean,
you can't you can't blame those people because if you
(39:11):
if you object to a politician or a group, what
a what a gift to have this, to have somebody
and they're foolish enough to call themselves the shadow government.
Speaker 2 (39:22):
My very own State Department shadow government.
Speaker 1 (39:25):
That's like, like, I don't care who you are in
politics or who you wish to be. That's up there
with opening a golf club called Illuminati. Only you know
what I mean, Even if you say it's a joke, no,
not everyone is going to be on board. So here's
what we know according to the FBI summary, and again
(39:47):
these are not actual transcripts. The group argued for a
Clinton document release to be conducted all at once for
what they called coordination purposes instead of on a rolling basis,
and that would normally be the case. That again, to
your point, Matt, sounds like more procedural than a super
big deal. A spokesperson for the State Department said, we
(40:11):
categorically deny this claim, these related claims. There's a big
one coming up. And they said these allegations are inaccurate,
they don't align with the facts. To be clear, the
State Department did upgrade the document at the request of
the FBI. We released it. He's speaking of a specific document.
(40:31):
We'll get to. But let's look at the players. So
the seventh Floor Group was believed to meet on Wednesdays
on the seventh floor right of their building, and the
meetings were attended by some real internal power players Under
Secretary of State Patrick Kennedy, Secretary of State at that point,
John Carey, Deputy Chief of Staff Jennifer Stout, Deputy Secretary
(40:55):
of State for Management Resources, Assistant Secretary Julia frith Field,
and unnamed members of the office of the Legal Advisorice,
Notice how the lawyers got away?
Speaker 2 (41:06):
Uh yeah, yeah, yeah, and just it's a bunch of attorneys.
Speaker 1 (41:10):
Yeah, which, you know, if we were going to be
wildly speculative, can't you can't you easily imagine someone saying,
I'll tell you about the seventh Floor, but I want
full immunity, you know what I mean?
Speaker 2 (41:21):
Yeah, yeah, I can actually see that very much.
Speaker 1 (41:24):
So well, is it a big deal? What? What's the
big deal here? The big deal here is apparently that
the shadow government or the Seventh Floor group asked the
FBI to declassify some emails so they wouldn't be thought
of as security leaks. And the smoking gun for four
people who believe that this was sinister was the alleged
(41:48):
action of Under Secretary of State Patrick Kennedy. According to
the claims in the interview, he contacted the FBI to
ask for the change in classification in exchange for a
quid pro quote.
Speaker 2 (42:02):
Isn't that crazy? An old quid pro quote? Clarice, And again,
this this guy is important. He's also a Kennedy. Do
we know if he's a Kennedy? Kennedy, Patrick Kennedy, I
honestly don't know who cares check this out, so if
he go, he probably cares. Okay. So on page four
of that FBI vault document that you can find on
(42:24):
the web dot archive dot org, it says that there
was this big meeting they're talking about with the State
Department with They called it an all agency meeting, and
this person, Patrick Kennedy that we're speaking about, he presided
over the meeting, and during the conversation, one of the
people specifically asked whether any member of the emails in
(42:46):
question were classified. Making eye contact with predacted, Kennedy remarked, well,
we'll see. And this is apparently while he was making
again making eye contact with somebody as in like a hey,
maybe we'll find out what's going on. And then he
went on to discuss essentially a quid pro quo about
(43:07):
perhaps putting FBI agents in countries where FBI agents are
generally not allowed to be, Like maybe if you can
change the classification, we'll do something for you, something beyond
what anyone would imagine it would be possible.
Speaker 1 (43:21):
Scratch a mat back, scratch a yo back.
Speaker 2 (43:23):
Guy, Yeah, we'll get We'll get FBI agents in this
country where they're not supposed to be. That's a huge deal.
Speaker 1 (43:29):
Yeah, yeah, So the FBI, the FBI said, okay, what
happened was, yeah, you know, what had happened was that
the FBI determined that there was an email senior State
Department official request of the FBI to quote re review
this and look at it again. Just make sure that
(43:50):
you know, do your job, but do it again. Is
it classified? Are you sure? Yeah, but you'd have to
look at it again to be sure. Right. That's basically
won went down. And then they say that an FBI
official who was not part of the later Clinton investigation
told the State's apartment, the guy at the State's Department, well,
(44:13):
you know, now that you mention it, I guess I
could look at it again. You know, would really helped
me look at it. If if we could maybe also
address just while I've got you on the line, Yeah,
while I got you on the line, here, pat, if
we could also address our risk that request they keep
(44:35):
putting in for space for additional FBI employees assigned abroad,
because you know, I've sent you several emails and tried
to call them multiple times. Now you answer the phone.
Speaker 2 (44:43):
Well, you know what, I think maybe we can take
care of it. If some of those emails, you know,
ended up being unclassified, right, that sounds like a pretty
good deal to me.
Speaker 1 (44:57):
Sort of a cool.
Speaker 2 (45:02):
Pro quote.
Speaker 1 (45:04):
Well, I'm hanging out. No, no, you hang up? You
hang up?
Speaker 2 (45:08):
Are you still there?
Speaker 1 (45:09):
Are you still there?
Speaker 2 (45:10):
Going to hang up?
Speaker 1 (45:11):
That's how they that's how they had this conversation shortly,
oh man, And.
Speaker 2 (45:16):
They were both recording the whole time, and they were.
Speaker 1 (45:18):
Both recording the whole time. We're being a little bit glib,
but you can see it's it's somewhat the FBI is
making valid distinctions, right, Yes, But of course people would
deny this kind of one hand washes the other sort
of stuff. So, following this call, the FBI officials, now retired,
(45:41):
got with a senior FBI executive who was responsible for
determining classification, and they decided that it was in fact
classified secret the way it was supposed to be. So
FBI guy goes back to the State Department contact he
has and he says, look, it's classified. We looked at
it twice and it's supposed to stay secret, and we
(46:03):
can't change it. And it wasn't changed. It remains classified today.
The FBI concludes, and you can see this on their
own website. Although there was never a quid pro quo,
these allegations were nonetheless referred to the appropriate officials for review.
So they said, look, we know nothing went down, but
just to keep our nose clean, we asked some other
people to look at it, because with the FBI, we're apolitical.
(46:27):
We do our job, they do their job.
Speaker 2 (46:29):
Yeah, and to be fair, there was no quid pro
quo in this instance of these you know exchanges that
we that became public.
Speaker 1 (46:39):
Being very careful with that. Matt, I admire you.
Speaker 2 (46:41):
Right, but no, but come on, that's that's all we've proven, right,
or at least that's all the FBI says. Right.
Speaker 1 (46:48):
There are other alleged activities, other allegations. This same group,
the Seventh Floor Group, or quote unquote shadow government, has
been accused of censoring official reports, of interfering with special investigations,
of providing diplomatic security or protection for certain individuals, shielding
(47:08):
them from criminal charges, and a lot of that stuff.
Once you get into the providing protection and diplomatic security
and stuff for controversial people, often those are going to
come from biased sources.
Speaker 2 (47:22):
Correct. See the Washington Examiner. If you wish, you can
find something on that. And if you search for Hillary's
officials cut criticisms out of State Department reports, you will
find it and you can read all about it.
Speaker 1 (47:39):
You can also while you're reading those reports, you can
go back to what we have kept going back to,
which is the FBI confirming at least maybe not saying
that they believe this exists, but confirming that they spoke
with people who did think it exists.
Speaker 2 (47:55):
He who casually mentioned that it's the seventh Floor Group. No,
it's the Shadow, It's fine, it's fine. What is the
Irish now? I don't know what happened. That's what they're
talking about.
Speaker 1 (48:08):
So this is this is not quite where it ends.
But we do have some conclusions.
Speaker 2 (48:13):
First, Gusifer, are you speaking directly to Gusifer Gucchifer.
Speaker 1 (48:20):
Maybe maybe if you tune into the podcast, we'd love
to hear from you. According to The New York Times,
the hacker who used this name Guccifer, coined the Moniker
to combine the style of Gucci in the light of Lucifer.
He turned out to be a guide named marcel lejal Lazare,
a forty three year old former taxi driver is at
(48:42):
the time unemployed. He did not have expertise in computers.
He didn't have any fancy equipment or tech. He just
had an old Samsung cell phone and ANNC desktop and
all the skills he used in hacking. According to the
official reports, he picked up on the web. So he
was not, as far as we know, some high level
(49:05):
secret state actor.
Speaker 2 (49:06):
Yeah, yeah, according to the official sources.
Speaker 1 (49:10):
Well he's not a botnet king or whatever. But most
of the emails providing the impetus for that second investigation
turned out to be duplicates of stuff they found the
first time around, So in that second investigation there wasn't
apparently that much new stuff. And that lends a little
bit of credence to that October surprise theory, because again,
(49:30):
the timing, you couldn't have planned it better, right, But
the group appears to have been disbanded by Donald Trump's administration,
the syfamous Seventh Floor Shadow Government group. On February seventeenth,
twenty seventeen, CBS reported that much of the Seventh Floor
staff who worked for the Deputy Secretary of State for
Management and Resources these titles Man and the Counselor Offices
(49:54):
were told today that their services were no longer needed.
So if you can read it in other articles of
the time where the headline something like Rex Tillerson kicks
out seventh floor group or fires a bunch of diplomats,
and the State Department did encounter a purge at that time.
Speaker 2 (50:09):
Yeah, but who knows if they're the the seventh floor group, right,
or maybe the people just met up on the seventh floor.
Maybe they lived on the fourth floor. Right.
Speaker 1 (50:22):
It's weird because some of us listening are convinced there's
much more to the stories. Some of us listening or
convinced it's it's just media theater solely meant to discredit someone.
Speaker 2 (50:38):
Right.
Speaker 1 (50:38):
It was a very divisive issue then, and to a degree,
it's still a divisive issue today. But oddly enough, several
of the original media reports have been deleted.
Speaker 2 (50:51):
The FBI vault files literally don't exist unless you go
to the wayback machine.
Speaker 1 (50:56):
Right, But not to be too much of a devil's advocate,
but couldn't the FBI clean out the wayback machine if
they wanted to?
Speaker 2 (51:07):
Maybe? I don't know if they.
Speaker 1 (51:09):
The NSA could do it, probably because Gucci f could
do Uh. The Wikipedia page was also scrupped. If you
go into the talk, it's a really interesting thing about Wikipedia, uh,
which is maybe not so much the articles themselves. But
if you look at Wikipedia, you're gonna see two taps.
(51:30):
Let's see a tab at the top left with the article,
and a tab just to the right of that called
talk right and talk is where the editors of Wikipedia
and the contributors of Wikipedia argue about whether or not
something should be an article, or something should be included
in that article. Wikipedia is a world at war because
(51:53):
numerous numerous debates of geopolitical sandwiches, you know, tragedies, all
sorts of things are currently being furiously edited by one
person or another with differing views. In the case of
(52:13):
the Wikipedia page, from what we found, the reason given
for its deletion was that there were not multiple primary sources,
so they said, you need you need more than one
source for this to even be entertained as the truth.
But you can still find it in Matt Frederick's trusty
(52:34):
wayback machine. I think that's a great T shirt idea.
Speaker 2 (52:37):
By the way, it's not mine, it's archive dot org.
Speaker 1 (52:42):
That's true. That's true. So the FBI does appear to
confirm the existence of this group, while not confirming that
they cooperated with them. There is a real there was
a real shadow government, or at least a real group
referred to as the Shadow Government, and they apparently no
longer work for the state to apartment. But it leads
us to the end of today's episode and a question,
(53:04):
a disturbing question.
Speaker 2 (53:08):
Even if this wasn't that big of a deal, there's
still a group of people that were not elected officials
that were hanging out in you know, someplace making decisions
about what you and I and everyone listening as the
public get to hear or know about an elected official.
How many other groups like that exist that are gatekeepers
(53:32):
of information for the public, that are maybe making bigger
decisions even than that, about geopolitics, about foods we eat,
about the types of polyester mixed clothing we get.
Speaker 1 (53:49):
To wear, how much your dollar is worth.
Speaker 2 (53:51):
Ooh, that's a big one. That's more important than the
type of clothing we get to wear.
Speaker 1 (53:56):
Yeah, I don't know. These all seem pretty important, right.
Thank you so much for checking out this episode. We
know this would be a little divisive for people who
have really dug deep into this. We did give a
high level. Look, because we wanted to provide enough of
a view of the forest for us to understand what
(54:19):
the seventh floor group is. Yeah, why it matters. And again,
why would you why would you call yourself the shadow
government just.
Speaker 2 (54:29):
Even for funzis? I don't know, that seems that seems
a little dangerous.
Speaker 1 (54:32):
I mean, I guess we could do it, but everybody
would probably know that we're not We're not making moves
as representatives of Uncle Sam or a foreign power exactly.
Speaker 2 (54:43):
And I would say, if you want to keep going
down this rabbit hole, a great and exciting fun thing
to do is to go to the Wikipedia page for
the Hillary Clinton email controversy and then go all the
way down to the bottom and just you know, after
looking at the talk thing and all the other stuff,
go all the way down the bottom and just start
clicking through sources down there. Cuz it's crazy just the
(55:04):
amount of media that was generated through this scandal, the
amount of sourcing that exists on that one Wiki page.
It's an intense slog. Good luck to you, enjoy yourself,
make sure you got a drink, and.
Speaker 1 (55:21):
Let us know what other examples of shadow governments you
have found, not just here in the US, but in
other countries or in other groups of countries. Right we
want to hear those stories that you think your fellow
listeners would enjoy about what goes on behind the curtain.
You can tell and that's our classic episode for this evening.
(55:42):
We can't wait to hear your thoughts. We try to
be easy to find online. Find this in the handle
conspiracy Stuff, where we exist on Facebook X and YouTube
on Instagram and TikTok where Conspiracy Stuff show.
Speaker 2 (55:52):
Call our number. It's one eight three three std WYTK,
leave a voicemail.
Speaker 1 (55:58):
And if you have more to say, we can't wait
to hear from you at our good old fashioned email
address where we are conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2 (56:07):
Stuff they Don't Want You to Know is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Fellow conspiracy realist, have you ever suspected there was some
sort of shadowy cabal? What a softball question?
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Isn't that start of the whole basis of this show.
I think it is.
Speaker 1 (00:13):
Yeah, I think we've all suspected.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
It's entirely like, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (00:19):
This is a fun one for us. Back in twenty nineteen,
we looked at the hectic news cycle of twenty fifteen
with the benefit of retrospect, and we noticed that there
was a particular investigation from the FBI into the Clinton
administration where they said.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Quote, there was a powerful group of very high ranking
state officials that some referred to as the seventh Floor
Group or the shadow government.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
But what does that mean? Well, let's jump into the
episode and find out.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government can bises, history
is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now
or learn this stuff they don't want.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
You to know. A production of iHeart Radios How Stuff Works.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
Welcome back to the show. My name is Matt Noel
is on an adventure. But wait, who are you?
Speaker 1 (01:27):
That's right, they call me Ben. We are joined with
our super producer Paul, Mission Control decand most importantly, you
are you, you are here, and that makes this stuff
they don't want you to know. This is a weird one, Matt.
This is an episode that a lot of our fellow
and listeners had asked us to cover in years past.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
Yes, it's it's a callback.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
It's a callback, it really is, and we did. We
did an episode related to this topic way back in
what twenty sixteen, So looking back, it's strange to recall
that the twenty sixteen presidential campaign happened three years ago.
Speaker 2 (02:11):
Yeah, it certainly doesn't seem as though that much time
has passed, but in fact it has a three ish years. Yeah,
we're not quite there, We're not quite the novembery yet.
But still, Hey, it's crazy that much time has passed.
And you know, elections, especially presidential elections in this country,
(02:31):
they bring out the best and the worst of us.
I think.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
I think that's incredibly optimistic, and I appreciate that I
needed to hear some good news today. You're absolutely right,
my friend. I agree with you. Way back in twenty sixteen,
when we first did some episodes on elections, we figured
that the most fact based and the fairest way for
(02:57):
us to sum up all the allegations and conspiratorial accusations
that we had heard of was to do one episode
for each of the political party front runners. So we
did one episode on conspiracies about the Trump campaign, and
we did one episode on conspiracies about the Hillary Clinton campaign.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
Yes, and Bernie didn't even make it in there. Actually,
that's not true. Bernie made an appearance in the Clinton episode.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
Oh yeah, yeah, along with your pal Wasserman Schultz, right.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
Oh, everyone's pal Wasserman Schultz.
Speaker 1 (03:33):
It was like this. Both of those episodes together were
like this Avengers Infinity War team up of horrible people
doing horrible thing.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
It really was, and whether we like it or not,
we contributed to whatever it is that we are in
right now, whatever this is. We just gave a little
bit because everyone involved, like you said, was all there.
Everybody goes up to no good and there really wasn't
a great choice, it seemed, at least in my opinion.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
Yeah, because we had we had a situation wherein mass
media was being leveraged so effectively. Mass media was around
in other elections, but it hadn't quite reached the fever
pitch that it reached in the twenty sixteen presidential campaign,
and like most presidential campaigns here in the States, the
(04:24):
one in twenty sixteen saw the rise and fall of
multitudes of politicians, as well as the sudden rise and
candidly the disappearance of various scandals. You know what I mean.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
That's correct, absolutely.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
So today's story starts with one of the famous controversies,
or should we say infamous controversies in that election. It's
known as the Hillary Clinton email scandal or email controversy.
The word choice there depends upon which side of the
aisle you fall on. For a lot of.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
People, how much do you want to downplay this?
Speaker 1 (04:59):
Right?
Speaker 2 (04:59):
Right?
Speaker 1 (04:59):
So for some people this was a case study in
out of control media grasping its straws, right yeah. And
those were generally people who were supporters of the Clinton campaign.
For others, generally opponents of that campaign, it was a
case study and how the powerful can sweep their political
dirt under the figurative rug.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
But reality, yeah, it was somewhere in the middle.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
Right right, right, And and nowadays people still use the phrase
but the emails, So first things first, what are we
talking about here?
Speaker 2 (05:34):
Well, that that a phrase, but the emails it's kind
of shorthand really and it's a bit of a joke
and it's uh, I don't know, it's it's pretty crazy.
It goes back to this series of really security violations
that were undertaken. I don't know how you how you
put that that they were There were violations that the
(05:56):
Clinton campaign did while she was in office as Secretary
of Date and it had to do with putting emails
on a private server, or putting emails that should not
be on a private server on a private server right
in the big major scheme of things. That's what it is.
And ultimately you're talking about the classification of certain email
(06:20):
and information within emails that maybe shouldn't have been on
a private server.
Speaker 1 (06:25):
And I know that for many of us listening today,
this is something that you may feel that you heard
ad nauseum three years ago and you're thinking, well, why
should I should listen to this? We have a plot
twist coming up for you. This is not just an
episode about emails. The plot thickens pretty quickly, but to
get there, we need to walk through the email scandal,
(06:49):
the email controversy. It is exactly as you described it, Matt,
a series of security violations. Think of it as you
know what. Think of one server as an old school
filing cabinet, right, and then another server right next to it,
another old school filing cabinet. And in the server to
(07:10):
your right, that's where all the classified stuff goes. What's
up with North Korea? What are Iran and various other
Middle Eastern powers angry or cranky about today? That goes
into this one file cabinet.
Speaker 2 (07:26):
In that file cabinet has a crazy amount of locks
on it and biometric scanning in order to get into it.
It's intense stuff.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
And then you have the other file cabinet on your left,
no locks. It's kind of a junk drawer. Yeah, there
are you know, there are like old recipes, maybe some
Pinterest things in there. But then one way or another,
through accident or through intentional action, the stuff that's top
secret or just secret ends up there with the recipes
(07:55):
and the Hey, what are you doing on Saturday? Let's
go to what's a chain restaurant?
Speaker 2 (08:01):
Oh? Charlie's.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
Oh, Paul's gonna kill us if we don't shout.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
Out apple be sorry, sorry Paul Applebee's. Jeez, that was close.
Here's another major distinction we have to make. Yes, the
server on your right, the one that has all those
locks on it, with all the class wide information. That
one can be seen by the State Department, by a
lot of other intelligence agencies. There's there's accountability on that
(08:25):
one right to the government. On the private one. That one,
the one on your left, it's completely controlled by the
Clinton campaign and people who are contracted to work with
the Clinton campaign on that email server. That's a huge
thing that we have to just remember.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
Absolutely great point. There is a chain of custody and
theory for everything in that right hand filing cabinet. This
controversy is a series of security violations, misfiled emails, deleted emails, and.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
That's another big thing, deleted emails.
Speaker 1 (08:56):
Deleted emails. Yeah, and this started before Clinton became the
Democratic candidate in the twenty sixteen campaign, but it continued
during the campaign. This didn't really become a national story
until March of twenty fifteen, when The New York Times
ran a front page article on the subject. The article
(09:18):
said that the system quote may have violated federal requirements
and was quote alarming unquote to current and former government
archive officials. So that's what the Clinton campaign was found doing.
Clinton was found to have used her family's private server
for official communications instead of official State Department email accounts.
(09:40):
This happens to a lot of people on a much
smaller scale. Let's say that you have multiple social media accounts.
Let's say that, like our good friend Mission Control, you
have one account that's Paul something or other, and then
you have another account that is Applebee's Facts.
Speaker 2 (10:00):
Yeah, and.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
You forget to you know, you forget to switch your
profile over, and so it sounds more like a Reddit user,
it does. It sounds like a great Reddit user name.
And then you know, all of a sudden, things that
should be said by Paul are being said by apple
Bee's Facts, and vice versa. That's that's a much smaller
level because Applebee's Facts, and this is not a knock
(10:24):
on apple Bee's Facts at all, usually doesn't deal with
things like geopolitical tensions in the Middle East yet not yet.
I mean those apps are coming, yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
Or you know, quid pro quo things having to do
with the classification of emails.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
Whenever that whenever I hear quid pro quo, I cannot
help but think of silence of the lambs.
Speaker 2 (10:46):
Oh, really, a little quid pro quote. Clarie what's her name?
Speaker 1 (10:50):
Which broke qho Clarie?
Speaker 2 (10:53):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (10:54):
Uh yeah, did you know? Completely off topic, mattuh. The
renowned actor Anthony Hopps, his character Hannibal Lecter that's not
a spoiler, is only actually on camera for like a
ridiculously small amount of time, like fifteen minutes or something.
Speaker 2 (11:08):
All told, Yeah, and he won, didn't he win? Oscars
Glora that year? We in The Monster of the Zodiac Killer.
We actually mentioned that that year that that movie came out.
They tailored the entire Oscar ceremony around his character essentially
in that movie.
Speaker 1 (11:24):
It's insane the US does glorify serial killers. Also, I
found another ancient serial killer. I think I'm building a
pretty good argument I'd like to pitch to you later. Well,
I'll do it now. Why don't we do an episode
on serial killers before the eighteen hundreds or ancient serial killers?
Speaker 2 (11:44):
Whoa, I have a treasure trove, really.
Speaker 1 (11:47):
A lot that will be new to people.
Speaker 2 (11:48):
Yeah, documented serial killer? Yeah, Okay, that sounds like a
holy podcast.
Speaker 1 (11:54):
We'll see. We'll give it a go. So before we
explode the lives of those ancient serial kill let's continue
exploring this strange story of emails. Right now, we've outlined
the gist, right, let's walk through a little bit more
of it. So shortly before she was sworn in as
(12:15):
Secretary of State in two thousand and nine, Hillary Clinton
had set up an email server at her home in
New York. This was home to an email address HDR
twenty two at clintonmail dot com, and this was for
all of her email correspondence, work related personal stuff during
her four years in office. She also set up email
(12:38):
addresses on the server for her longtime AID State Department
Chief of Staff one Cheryl.
Speaker 2 (12:44):
Mills, as well Huma Abodeen.
Speaker 1 (12:46):
Huma Abodeen Yes, yes, was the longtime AID. She did
not use or even activate a state dot gov email account,
which was a big deal. It would have been hosted
on servers owned and managed by the US government. The
reason that's an important detail is not necessarily because people
thought the Secretary of State was a criminal or doing
(13:08):
criminal acts. It's more for operational security or opseca, because
other countries, no matter how friendly they are, would love
to know what's going on in the US when the
doors to the halls of power are closed.
Speaker 2 (13:23):
Oh, of course, and if you're perhaps someone like Hillary
Rodham Clinton, and you stand out that you know that
much as a name, as a powerful person within the
halls of that power, your private email server is a
major target for anyone and everyone who may be looking
to find some information. Heck. Yeah. So the FBI ends
(13:45):
up getting involved a little later on, and what they
found was that over one hundred emails containing some version
of classified information were found on her private servers. There
were sixty five emails that were considered a secret, classified secret,
twenty two were classified top secret, and it doesn't get
much more secret than that. Another two thousand, two thousand
(14:08):
and ninety three emails were not initially classified, but then
they were retroactively classified by the State Department itself.
Speaker 1 (14:17):
Kind of like upon further consideration, this is sensitive information.
Speaker 2 (14:21):
And it's important to know that that is the State
Department that is doing that. That will come into play
a little later.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
And there's a side note. There are things above top secret,
like compartmentalized access your eyes only, yes, but that as
far as we know, these emails just went up to
top secret, which is still a big deal.
Speaker 2 (14:42):
Yep.
Speaker 1 (14:43):
That shouldn't you know, be sitting around on your Yahoo
account or something, but you're absolutely right. So something is
amiss here. It doesn't matter where you fall politically. Various critics,
including Republican members of Congress, are argued that using a
private messaging system and server violated State Department protocols, and furthermore,
(15:07):
they said this violates federal laws and regulations. The FBI
is on the case. As early as two thousand and nine,
officials with the NARA, the National Archives and Records Administration,
expressed concerns over these possible violations of the standard operating
procedure of record keeping at the State Department. December of
(15:29):
twenty twelve, near the end of Clinton's tenure as Secretary
of State, a nonprofit group with a pretty neat name,
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington or crew Oh yeah,
they filed a Freedom of Information Act request to get
the records of the departing Secretary of State's emails. They
(15:52):
received a response in May of twenty thirteen that said,
no records responsive to your request were located. That's government
ease for four oh four.
Speaker 2 (16:02):
Yes, surch error, nothing found. Yeah, and then you you
got to look at the certain emails that were sent
to that whole clintonmail dot com address, which is terrible
to read, by the way, because it looks like Clinton mail.
It just doesn't look great. But they were discovered in
March twenty thirteen when a hacker who called himself or
(16:22):
herself whoever, was Gusifer, and they distributed these emails that
were sent to Clinton from Sidney Blumenthal. And this dude, Gusifer,
obtained them by illegally accessing Bluomenthal's email account. So this hacker,
essentially Gusifer broke into Sidney Bloomenthal's email found all of
these private Clinton emails.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
And Gusifer is a portmanteau of Gucci and Lucifer.
Speaker 2 (16:50):
So is Guccifer Guccifer. It's Gusifer. I've always heard Goosifer.
Speaker 1 (16:53):
Yeah, yeah, I just I like the wordplay. Guys a
criminal though. In the summer of twenty four teen, lawyers
from the State Department noticed several emails from Clinton's personal
account while reviewing documents requested by the House Select Committee
on Bengazi, which is a whole other bag of badgers.
Speaker 2 (17:12):
Oh boy.
Speaker 1 (17:13):
And then, as we said earlier, at twenty fifteen, New
York Times piece comes out it breaks the story that
the Bengazi panel had discovered Clinton exclusively used her own
private server rather than the government issued one throughout her
time as SOS Secretary of State, and that furthermore, her
aids took no action to preserve emails that she sent
(17:35):
or received from those personal accounts. The State Department and
the Intelligence Community Inspector General discovered four emails that had
classified information. And this was out, This was a spot check.
It was out of a random sample of forty and
when they saw that, they said, okay, four out of forty,
that's one out of ten. We need to refer this
(17:56):
to the FBI, their counterintelligence office. And so they alerted
the authorities that this classified intel was kept on the
Clinton server and by her lawyer on a thumb drive.
Speaker 2 (18:08):
Interesting.
Speaker 1 (18:09):
Then The New York Times runs a story on July
twenty fourth, twenty fifteen, with the headline criminal inquiry sought
in Clinton's use of email.
Speaker 2 (18:19):
Yeah, And the lead sentence from that story was two
Inspectors General have asked the Justice Department to open a
criminal investigation into whether Hillary Rodham Clinton mishandled sensitive government
information on a private email account she used as Secretary
of State. Senior government officials said Thursday, So that's the again,
(18:39):
that's the New York Times. You've got them citing senior
government officials saying that Hillary Clinton mishandled sensitive information on
her private email. That's really all you need to know.
That's a big deal. Then, of course you have all
of these large US organizations who you know, they jump
on and they correct, they correct, the New York Times
(19:00):
stating that quote. An important distinction is that the ICIG.
The ICIG did not make a criminal referral. It was
a security referral made for counterintelligence purposes.
Speaker 1 (19:15):
So to get back through that government ease, what they
are saying is that we were not we were not
giving an order to book them Dano. We were saying
this could be leveraged by unfriendly foreign powers. Yes, and
the Times made two other corrections right, first that Clinton
(19:38):
was not the specific target of the referral, and then
that it was not criminal in nature. But the funny
thing is with redactions, corrections things like that, even in
large papers of note, they legally correct the record, but
they do nothing for the court of public opinion. You
know what I mean?
Speaker 2 (19:59):
Yeah, absolutely, remember the first thing, especially the first headline.
If you see Clinton email scandal in a headline, somewhere,
or Clinton email referral, or just some other combination in
that where you've got a person, a bad thing, and
an object, that's what you remember and doesn't matter if
a week later, two days later, there's a correction on
(20:20):
the original article, even if they tweet out correction, this
was not what it was. Nobody gives a crap.
Speaker 1 (20:27):
Yeah. Typically, typically, and that's not a ding on anyone's intelligence.
That's just the nature of psychology for most people. Precisely, So,
how did this initial investigation, how did this all shake out?
Will tell you after a word from our sponsor.
Speaker 2 (20:49):
All right, we're back. So let's jump to July fifth
of twenty sixteen. There's this gentleman named Comy, James Comy.
He was the director of the FBI. You may remember this.
I haven't said that name in a long time. I
used to say it a lot. But he announced that
the FBI completed its investigation and he was gonna, you know,
(21:09):
they were going to talk to the State Department with
a certain recommendation, and that recommendation was that no charges
are appropriate in this case. That's great news for the
Clinton campaign and all of the supporters. He went on
to say, that although there is evidence of potential violations
of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information, our
(21:29):
judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case. Now,
in this initial messaging that's coming from the FBI from
Comey the Director.
Speaker 1 (21:39):
Again July twenty sixteen.
Speaker 2 (21:41):
Yeah, exactly July. They just it seems like, hey, this
email thing happened. It's a little bit of carelessness. But
you know what, We're okay. Nobody did anything on purpose
to hurt anybody else. It was just they used a
private server. Slap the hand, let's move on.
Speaker 1 (21:55):
Sloppy but not sinister.
Speaker 2 (21:56):
There you go, right, So but that changed.
Speaker 1 (22:00):
The thing is that changes? There's another there's another investigation.
On October twenty eighth, twenty sixteen, Comy tells Congress that,
in connection with an unrelated case, the FBI has learned
of the existence of emails that appear pertinent to the investigation.
(22:20):
We're going through a lot of context here, so but
we'll get through it. It'll be worth it at the end.
This unrelated case to which they referred was the FBI
investigation of the famously and hilariously tragically named Anthony Weener.
Speaker 2 (22:34):
Oh yes, from The Daily Show.
Speaker 1 (22:37):
Famously from the famously from The Daily Show. This guy,
despite you know his name, might make you think he
has a sense of humor, but he had busted sending
sexually explicit text to a child, a fifteen year old girl.
The FBI discovered emails from his estranged wife, who was
(22:58):
what was her name again.
Speaker 2 (22:59):
The aforementioned Huma Aberdeen.
Speaker 1 (23:01):
Huma Aberdeen the vice chair of the Clinton presidential campaign,
and because of this, they considered these emails might be
relevant to the investigation. At the time, Comy said the
FBI would take appropriate investigative steps designed to allow investigators
to review these emails to determine whether they contain classified
information as well as to assess their importance to the investigation. Now,
(23:26):
anytime we talk about government procedure, I know it can
feel increasingly like a snoozefest. Yeah, acronyms and initialisms flying
willy nilly. Everybody is talking like someone from the DMV
wrote their speech.
Speaker 2 (23:41):
Yeah, it's talking around things a lot of the time,
or of the procedures and the procedural nature. Yeah, it's
pretty crazy.
Speaker 1 (23:48):
Well, and there's a reason for that, right because you
want to make sure you get every letter, every syllable, perfect, Just.
Speaker 2 (23:56):
To jump in before we're going to such a good idea.
We were joking as we were going through the hum
abadeen stuff with Anthony Wiener. Just let's just take a
moment to say how disgusting that is that he was
sending inappropriate pictures to a fifteen year old. Yeah, really awful.
We are not making light of that. It kind of
slid past us as we were joking through this disgusting right, Okay,
(24:19):
I think, okay, we can move on.
Speaker 1 (24:21):
So yeah, I hope that was never a question for anybody,
but yes, just to be crystal clear, bold it, underline it,
stamp that gross perfect.
Speaker 2 (24:33):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (24:33):
So on November sixth, twenty sixteen, mere days before the election,
Comy sends a letter to Congress, and he says, look,
we worked around the clock and we're sticking with our
guns from July. Sorry everybody, this was careless, but we
do not believe it was a crime.
Speaker 2 (24:52):
Literally days before the election, as you said.
Speaker 1 (24:55):
And furthermore, despite criticisms that this was a superbly time
October surprise, one of those last minute things that can
happen that can swing the needle towards one candidate or
another comy claimed that both the investigation and its conclusions
were a political They had nothing to do with politics.
Where the FBI, we have a job. We do our job.
(25:18):
Their job is to try to get elected. Our job
is counterintelligence and fighting crime. And we did it. No
surprise spoiler alert for anyone who hasn't caught up with
the news. Since the Clinton campaign was unsuccessful, Donald Trump
became the President of the United States, and people who
(25:40):
opposed the Clinton campaign or thought there was something rotten
in Washington were not persuaded by the FBI's two investigations.
They said, it was like it's cover up. It's rotten,
from its fat cats at the top all the way
to fat cats. Given reports in Congress, these cats are.
Speaker 2 (25:59):
Just ob yeah, too many and too fat.
Speaker 1 (26:02):
Too many and too fat, they said, yes, that's a quote.
It seemed that despite the FBI's claims that there there
was nothing wonky about their timing, it seemed that whomever
had managed to orchestrate this story and narrative of private
(26:22):
versus government emails, who had managed to turn it into
a chant and a rallying point for oppositional media, had
done this masterful job. Hillary Clinton herself cited this as
one of the factors in losing the election.
Speaker 2 (26:39):
I would one thousand percent agree that this was a
huge factor. It is what everybody was talking about.
Speaker 1 (26:44):
Yeah, I mean, it couldn't have been the only factor, no, but.
Speaker 2 (26:49):
It was still the thing that if you thought about
Hillary Clinton right around that time, like October, late October,
early November, it was Clinton email.
Speaker 1 (27:02):
It was the you mean like, it was the first
keyword that popped up in everybody's mental Google.
Speaker 2 (27:07):
Yeah, even if you were a supporter or something, I
guarantee you that was happening, even if it was like Clinton,
oh gosh, emails whatever.
Speaker 1 (27:16):
Well, the calls for investigation into this matter did not cease.
This association was prominent in people's minds even after the election,
and furthermore, they felt that justice had not been done
or something was a miss. And these calls for investigation
(27:36):
continued even as the Trump administration floundered. Several times, both
on the domestic and international stage, the White House itself
increasingly called for more investigation into the Clinton campaign's classification
of emails. They went so far as to fire James
Comy for this and some other and fired him for
(27:57):
some other reasons which could be episode all their own
one day. Today, this subject remains a rallying call for
some voters on the right. Foreign intelligence agencies who pretend
to be voters are also very ardent about this, and
politicians who will go on record today saying that they
(28:17):
feel there was a cover up. Now, let's get to
the rumors, right, it's correct, Just like the ongoing arguments
about the release of the Muller Report, the FBI's conclusion
on the Clinton emails, let a lot of people feeling like,
this is not this is the this is the edited version,
the redacted version. I want the director's cut, I want
(28:38):
the theatrical production. Tell me what actually happened. Because for
supporters of the FBI's conclusions, and again typically these would
be supporters of the Clinton campaign, this was all pr
sound and fake news, fury smoke with no fire, mirrors,
with no reflection, a manufactured crisis that accomplished exactly what
it was created to do to remove Clinton and therefore
(29:01):
the Democratic Party from the election game.
Speaker 2 (29:06):
Yeah. But of course, for the people who are opponents
of Hillary sometimes generally supporters of the Trump campaign. In
twenty sixteen, people thought that this story was itself swept
under the rug after she lost the election, like perhaps
something else should have happened. You may remember chance from
(29:27):
rallies that you would see on television of lock her up.
Speaker 1 (29:30):
Right.
Speaker 2 (29:30):
It was because some people truly believed that there was
such a mishandling of this stuff that it was criminal.
You know, whether they believe that because some pundit was
talking about it, or because you know, some news story
came out that was read incorrectly. Who knows, but people
certainly felt that way. But they were, and that's because
(29:51):
they thought there was even more to the story than
what was being represented by the FBI's conclusions within their reports.
They thought that maybe it was a bigger cover up
of some big thing, of perhaps further corruption than just
using an email server. Perhaps there was something deeper, as
in a deep state within the US government that was
operating outside of the control of elected officials.
Speaker 1 (30:14):
A shadow government. Here's where it gets crazy. First, let's
define what a shadow government actually is. It's not always bad.
In the world of British politics, there's the shadow cabinet.
All that is is a group of people from the
opposition party who form a different cabinet mirroring or wait
(30:35):
for it, shadowing the positions of each member of the
real cabinet. So there's a person from the opposition side
who will scrutinize the policies and actions of their counterpart
in the real cabinet, and they will present alternatives. Vote
for us, they say, because this is what we would
(30:56):
have done.
Speaker 2 (30:56):
I get it, like a Teresa May and then a
shadow Reason May with a mustache and like a black
hat or something.
Speaker 1 (31:03):
Yeah, exactly, so you've seen you've seen it.
Speaker 2 (31:06):
I've seen it.
Speaker 1 (31:07):
So in this case, people are talking about the other,
the other definition of a shadow government. It's not near
as neat nor as helpful as the British shadow government.
In the US, the term shadow government refers to two
or three things. The first one is absolutely legal, we
need it. It's the continuity of government, the pre planned
(31:29):
order of secession in the event of one or more
deaths in the executive branch and Congress. The president dies,
who's in charge now? When's the vice president? The vice
president dies, who's in charge now? And on and on
and on and one of the one of the most
interesting questions to me when I was when I was
a kid, it was a very, very strange answer. You know,
(31:52):
I asked that question. A lot of children asked, uh,
do you think I could be president? And family member
can reveal who, and their associates said, well, sure, you
might be president tomorrow. It depends on what happens tonight.
And that's how I learned about the line of secession.
Speaker 2 (32:12):
WHOA are you up there? Are you in the like thousands?
Speaker 1 (32:16):
No, it would have to be like millions, hundreds of
millions of people would have to die.
Speaker 2 (32:22):
We got to change that. We need to get you
higher upon that list.
Speaker 1 (32:25):
I don't know, I don't think.
Speaker 2 (32:26):
Yeah, I think so.
Speaker 1 (32:27):
I appreciate that, but I would nominate you instead.
Speaker 2 (32:30):
Uh, nope, but Paul Paul, Yeah, yeah, it's Paul. I
seem he's nodding. He would take that on.
Speaker 1 (32:37):
He would take that on. So that's that's the legal one.
But then there's what you mentioned earlier, Matt, the deep state.
This is an entrenched, allegedly entrenched network of unelected bureaucrats.
They're thought to wield the purse strings, the influence and
the power needed to actually run the US and therefore
a lot of the world behind the scenes. So haha,
(32:58):
they say, you've been elected.
Speaker 2 (32:59):
For what four years. Yeah, you are a flicker glimmer
in the eye of some of these people. And there
really are positions like that that exist within Washington and
the structure. It doesn't necessarily necessarily mean that they're all
working together for one big thing, sure, but they exist
and they are arguably more powerful in a way than
(33:22):
anyone that holds any office for four years.
Speaker 1 (33:24):
Think the president, even in any large organization in the
US government is huge, most governments are. In any large organization,
we see that communication tends to break down and people
become gatekeepers of information. They run their own fiefdoms.
Speaker 3 (33:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (33:42):
So the third, just for the sake of argument, the
third possibility is the massive amount of private influence wielded
by billionaires or other governments or foreign businesses that want
to push their interests domestically and abroad. You know, like
a foreign trade consortium puts in hundreds of millions of
dollars toward US lobbying to get more favorable trade arrangements. Right,
(34:08):
let's let's kick off the tariffs on these plush garfield cooozies. Yeah,
that are that we're pushing. I don't know why. Look,
that's not my best example, but you know what I'm
talking about. I dig it exam. Another example of this
on the domestic end would be the Koch brothers, who
have for decades been making inroads to push the US
(34:34):
more toward the kind of governance that they would like
to see, which is alternately described as more libertarian government
and neo feudalism.
Speaker 2 (34:43):
Yeah, the money, we're really we're talking about the power
if you're talking about the entrenched deep state, and then
with these private influencers, we're really talking.
Speaker 1 (34:51):
About the money, right, right, and these things can all
happen concurrently. That's the messed up part. Yeah, it gets complicated.
But usually when you hear about a shadow government here
in the States, it will come from It'll often come
from the political right. It used to be, it used
to be in times past, a phrase used by the
(35:15):
far far left and the far far right, who often
agree on things, and more so than perhaps the media
would have you believe.
Speaker 2 (35:22):
Right, But.
Speaker 1 (35:25):
This argument always hinges on that notion of the deep state.
For people who believed in this kind of shadow government,
the Seventh Floor Group was proof positive that something was
wrong in the Beltway.
Speaker 2 (35:39):
And what the heck is the Seventh Floor Group, Well,
we'll talk about it right after a word from our sponsor.
Speaker 1 (35:51):
So the seventh Floor Group or the Shadow Government, and
we promised that this femail stuff would pay off.
Speaker 2 (35:56):
Yeah, in the third the last thirty episode. But a
lot of the stuff we've been talking about, really you
have to remember that and know that stuff before we
get here.
Speaker 1 (36:06):
Yes, a bit of a secuitous route, but we went
the most direct way possible. So we mentioned that the
FBI investigation, both of them found what they saw is
no evidence of crime, right sure, and a lot of
people really took that on the chin because they were
certain that this would be hard evidence, smoking gun of
(36:26):
a crime. However, they did find some stuff because they
dug deep. In October twenty sixteen, the FBI released four
sets of documents, including notes and interview summaries, and in
this summary, in the fourth part of the release, they
found a revelation.
Speaker 2 (36:47):
Okay, so just to set this up so you understand
what it is, through the FBI's vault. The vault that's
where you can find these things. However, they've been removed.
These specific ones relating to the Hillary Clinton campaign have
been removed from the vault the FBI's website, but if
you go to the archive dot org wayback machine and
(37:10):
you put in the URL, you can find this. It's
difficult to find there a couple of players. You can
get to it, but it's called Hillary R. Clinton, Part
four of six. That's what it's called. You can find it.
And essentially, these are just, as Ben said, summations of
interviews that they that they had with people, just individuals
regarding the Hillary Clinton email campaign scandal or whatever it was,
(37:35):
talking about the private servers, what they knew, when they
knew it, and all of that. And inside here you
find one specific or there are several specific things. But
in one of these, one of the documents came from
an interview with an unidentified person who suggested that the FOIA,
the Freedom of Information Act requests related to the Clinton
(37:56):
to Clinton, anything related to Clinton, went through a group
that was some kind sometimes referred to at least internally
as the shadow government.
Speaker 1 (38:05):
As literally the shadow government.
Speaker 2 (38:07):
So you know, first of all, we have to say,
maybe this was maybe that's kind of an inside joke, right, maybe,
but let's keep listening in here, because according to this
anonymous person quote, there was a powerful group of very
high ranking state and that state Department officials that some
referred to as the Seventh Floor Group or the shadow Government,
(38:30):
met every Wednesday afternoon to discuss the Freedom of Information
Act process with regards to Clinton. We're talking congressional records
and everything related to Clinton and Freedom of Information Act
and congressional inquiries. So this group, literally they were the
gatekeepers for everything Clinton related.
Speaker 1 (38:48):
And they were a powerful filter. Right, yes, so this,
oddly enough, it sounds pretty crazy. Oddly enough, this was
not a primary focus of mainstream media coverage. It did
receive mention across the board, and those opposed to the
Clinton campaign quickly took this and ran with it. I mean,
you can't you can't blame those people because if you
(39:11):
if you object to a politician or a group, what
a what a gift to have this, to have somebody
and they're foolish enough to call themselves the shadow government.
Speaker 2 (39:22):
My very own State Department shadow government.
Speaker 1 (39:25):
That's like, like, I don't care who you are in
politics or who you wish to be. That's up there
with opening a golf club called Illuminati. Only you know
what I mean, Even if you say it's a joke, no,
not everyone is going to be on board. So here's
what we know according to the FBI summary, and again
(39:47):
these are not actual transcripts. The group argued for a
Clinton document release to be conducted all at once for
what they called coordination purposes instead of on a rolling basis,
and that would normally be the case. That again, to
your point, Matt, sounds like more procedural than a super
big deal. A spokesperson for the State Department said, we
(40:11):
categorically deny this claim, these related claims. There's a big
one coming up. And they said these allegations are inaccurate,
they don't align with the facts. To be clear, the
State Department did upgrade the document at the request of
the FBI. We released it. He's speaking of a specific document.
(40:31):
We'll get to. But let's look at the players. So
the seventh Floor Group was believed to meet on Wednesdays
on the seventh floor right of their building, and the
meetings were attended by some real internal power players Under
Secretary of State Patrick Kennedy, Secretary of State at that point,
John Carey, Deputy Chief of Staff Jennifer Stout, Deputy Secretary
(40:55):
of State for Management Resources, Assistant Secretary Julia frith Field,
and unnamed members of the office of the Legal Advisorice,
Notice how the lawyers got away?
Speaker 2 (41:06):
Uh yeah, yeah, yeah, and just it's a bunch of attorneys.
Speaker 1 (41:10):
Yeah, which, you know, if we were going to be
wildly speculative, can't you can't you easily imagine someone saying,
I'll tell you about the seventh Floor, but I want
full immunity, you know what I mean?
Speaker 2 (41:21):
Yeah, yeah, I can actually see that very much.
Speaker 1 (41:24):
So well, is it a big deal? What? What's the
big deal here? The big deal here is apparently that
the shadow government or the Seventh Floor group asked the
FBI to declassify some emails so they wouldn't be thought
of as security leaks. And the smoking gun for four
people who believe that this was sinister was the alleged
(41:48):
action of Under Secretary of State Patrick Kennedy. According to
the claims in the interview, he contacted the FBI to
ask for the change in classification in exchange for a
quid pro quote.
Speaker 2 (42:02):
Isn't that crazy? An old quid pro quote? Clarice, And again,
this this guy is important. He's also a Kennedy. Do
we know if he's a Kennedy? Kennedy, Patrick Kennedy, I
honestly don't know who cares check this out, so if
he go, he probably cares. Okay. So on page four
of that FBI vault document that you can find on
(42:24):
the web dot archive dot org, it says that there
was this big meeting they're talking about with the State
Department with They called it an all agency meeting, and
this person, Patrick Kennedy that we're speaking about, he presided
over the meeting, and during the conversation, one of the
people specifically asked whether any member of the emails in
(42:46):
question were classified. Making eye contact with predacted, Kennedy remarked, well,
we'll see. And this is apparently while he was making
again making eye contact with somebody as in like a hey,
maybe we'll find out what's going on. And then he
went on to discuss essentially a quid pro quo about
(43:07):
perhaps putting FBI agents in countries where FBI agents are
generally not allowed to be, Like maybe if you can
change the classification, we'll do something for you, something beyond
what anyone would imagine it would be possible.
Speaker 1 (43:21):
Scratch a mat back, scratch a yo back.
Speaker 2 (43:23):
Guy, Yeah, we'll get We'll get FBI agents in this
country where they're not supposed to be. That's a huge deal.
Speaker 1 (43:29):
Yeah, yeah, So the FBI, the FBI said, okay, what
happened was, yeah, you know, what had happened was that
the FBI determined that there was an email senior State
Department official request of the FBI to quote re review
this and look at it again. Just make sure that
(43:50):
you know, do your job, but do it again. Is
it classified? Are you sure? Yeah, but you'd have to
look at it again to be sure. Right. That's basically
won went down. And then they say that an FBI
official who was not part of the later Clinton investigation
told the State's apartment, the guy at the State's Department, well,
(44:13):
you know, now that you mention it, I guess I
could look at it again. You know, would really helped
me look at it. If if we could maybe also
address just while I've got you on the line, Yeah,
while I got you on the line, here, pat, if
we could also address our risk that request they keep
(44:35):
putting in for space for additional FBI employees assigned abroad,
because you know, I've sent you several emails and tried
to call them multiple times. Now you answer the phone.
Speaker 2 (44:43):
Well, you know what, I think maybe we can take
care of it. If some of those emails, you know,
ended up being unclassified, right, that sounds like a pretty
good deal to me.
Speaker 1 (44:57):
Sort of a cool.
Speaker 2 (45:02):
Pro quote.
Speaker 1 (45:04):
Well, I'm hanging out. No, no, you hang up? You
hang up?
Speaker 2 (45:08):
Are you still there?
Speaker 1 (45:09):
Are you still there?
Speaker 2 (45:10):
Going to hang up?
Speaker 1 (45:11):
That's how they that's how they had this conversation shortly,
oh man, And.
Speaker 2 (45:16):
They were both recording the whole time, and they were.
Speaker 1 (45:18):
Both recording the whole time. We're being a little bit glib,
but you can see it's it's somewhat the FBI is
making valid distinctions, right, Yes, But of course people would
deny this kind of one hand washes the other sort
of stuff. So, following this call, the FBI officials, now retired,
(45:41):
got with a senior FBI executive who was responsible for
determining classification, and they decided that it was in fact
classified secret the way it was supposed to be. So
FBI guy goes back to the State Department contact he
has and he says, look, it's classified. We looked at
it twice and it's supposed to stay secret, and we
(46:03):
can't change it. And it wasn't changed. It remains classified today.
The FBI concludes, and you can see this on their
own website. Although there was never a quid pro quo,
these allegations were nonetheless referred to the appropriate officials for review.
So they said, look, we know nothing went down, but
just to keep our nose clean, we asked some other
people to look at it, because with the FBI, we're apolitical.
(46:27):
We do our job, they do their job.
Speaker 2 (46:29):
Yeah, and to be fair, there was no quid pro
quo in this instance of these you know exchanges that
we that became public.
Speaker 1 (46:39):
Being very careful with that. Matt, I admire you.
Speaker 2 (46:41):
Right, but no, but come on, that's that's all we've proven, right,
or at least that's all the FBI says. Right.
Speaker 1 (46:48):
There are other alleged activities, other allegations. This same group,
the Seventh Floor Group, or quote unquote shadow government, has
been accused of censoring official reports, of interfering with special investigations,
of providing diplomatic security or protection for certain individuals, shielding
(47:08):
them from criminal charges, and a lot of that stuff.
Once you get into the providing protection and diplomatic security
and stuff for controversial people, often those are going to
come from biased sources.
Speaker 2 (47:22):
Correct. See the Washington Examiner. If you wish, you can
find something on that. And if you search for Hillary's
officials cut criticisms out of State Department reports, you will
find it and you can read all about it.
Speaker 1 (47:39):
You can also while you're reading those reports, you can
go back to what we have kept going back to,
which is the FBI confirming at least maybe not saying
that they believe this exists, but confirming that they spoke
with people who did think it exists.
Speaker 2 (47:55):
He who casually mentioned that it's the seventh Floor Group. No,
it's the Shadow, It's fine, it's fine. What is the
Irish now? I don't know what happened. That's what they're
talking about.
Speaker 1 (48:08):
So this is this is not quite where it ends.
But we do have some conclusions.
Speaker 2 (48:13):
First, Gusifer, are you speaking directly to Gusifer Gucchifer.
Speaker 1 (48:20):
Maybe maybe if you tune into the podcast, we'd love
to hear from you. According to The New York Times,
the hacker who used this name Guccifer, coined the Moniker
to combine the style of Gucci in the light of Lucifer.
He turned out to be a guide named marcel lejal Lazare,
a forty three year old former taxi driver is at
(48:42):
the time unemployed. He did not have expertise in computers.
He didn't have any fancy equipment or tech. He just
had an old Samsung cell phone and ANNC desktop and
all the skills he used in hacking. According to the
official reports, he picked up on the web. So he
was not, as far as we know, some high level
(49:05):
secret state actor.
Speaker 2 (49:06):
Yeah, yeah, according to the official sources.
Speaker 1 (49:10):
Well he's not a botnet king or whatever. But most
of the emails providing the impetus for that second investigation
turned out to be duplicates of stuff they found the
first time around, So in that second investigation there wasn't
apparently that much new stuff. And that lends a little
bit of credence to that October surprise theory, because again,
(49:30):
the timing, you couldn't have planned it better, right, But
the group appears to have been disbanded by Donald Trump's administration,
the syfamous Seventh Floor Shadow Government group. On February seventeenth,
twenty seventeen, CBS reported that much of the Seventh Floor
staff who worked for the Deputy Secretary of State for
Management and Resources these titles Man and the Counselor Offices
(49:54):
were told today that their services were no longer needed.
So if you can read it in other articles of
the time where the headline something like Rex Tillerson kicks
out seventh floor group or fires a bunch of diplomats,
and the State Department did encounter a purge at that time.
Speaker 2 (50:09):
Yeah, but who knows if they're the the seventh floor group, right,
or maybe the people just met up on the seventh floor.
Maybe they lived on the fourth floor. Right.
Speaker 1 (50:22):
It's weird because some of us listening are convinced there's
much more to the stories. Some of us listening or
convinced it's it's just media theater solely meant to discredit someone.
Speaker 2 (50:38):
Right.
Speaker 1 (50:38):
It was a very divisive issue then, and to a degree,
it's still a divisive issue today. But oddly enough, several
of the original media reports have been deleted.
Speaker 2 (50:51):
The FBI vault files literally don't exist unless you go
to the wayback machine.
Speaker 1 (50:56):
Right, But not to be too much of a devil's advocate,
but couldn't the FBI clean out the wayback machine if
they wanted to?
Speaker 2 (51:07):
Maybe? I don't know if they.
Speaker 1 (51:09):
The NSA could do it, probably because Gucci f could
do Uh. The Wikipedia page was also scrupped. If you
go into the talk, it's a really interesting thing about Wikipedia, uh,
which is maybe not so much the articles themselves. But
if you look at Wikipedia, you're gonna see two taps.
(51:30):
Let's see a tab at the top left with the article,
and a tab just to the right of that called
talk right and talk is where the editors of Wikipedia
and the contributors of Wikipedia argue about whether or not
something should be an article, or something should be included
in that article. Wikipedia is a world at war because
(51:53):
numerous numerous debates of geopolitical sandwiches, you know, tragedies, all
sorts of things are currently being furiously edited by one
person or another with differing views. In the case of
(52:13):
the Wikipedia page, from what we found, the reason given
for its deletion was that there were not multiple primary sources,
so they said, you need you need more than one
source for this to even be entertained as the truth.
But you can still find it in Matt Frederick's trusty
(52:34):
wayback machine. I think that's a great T shirt idea.
Speaker 2 (52:37):
By the way, it's not mine, it's archive dot org.
Speaker 1 (52:42):
That's true. That's true. So the FBI does appear to
confirm the existence of this group, while not confirming that
they cooperated with them. There is a real there was
a real shadow government, or at least a real group
referred to as the Shadow Government, and they apparently no
longer work for the state to apartment. But it leads
us to the end of today's episode and a question,
(53:04):
a disturbing question.
Speaker 2 (53:08):
Even if this wasn't that big of a deal, there's
still a group of people that were not elected officials
that were hanging out in you know, someplace making decisions
about what you and I and everyone listening as the
public get to hear or know about an elected official.
How many other groups like that exist that are gatekeepers
(53:32):
of information for the public, that are maybe making bigger
decisions even than that, about geopolitics, about foods we eat,
about the types of polyester mixed clothing we get.
Speaker 1 (53:49):
To wear, how much your dollar is worth.
Speaker 2 (53:51):
Ooh, that's a big one. That's more important than the
type of clothing we get to wear.
Speaker 1 (53:56):
Yeah, I don't know. These all seem pretty important, right.
Thank you so much for checking out this episode. We
know this would be a little divisive for people who
have really dug deep into this. We did give a
high level. Look, because we wanted to provide enough of
a view of the forest for us to understand what
(54:19):
the seventh floor group is. Yeah, why it matters. And again,
why would you why would you call yourself the shadow
government just.
Speaker 2 (54:29):
Even for funzis? I don't know, that seems that seems
a little dangerous.
Speaker 1 (54:32):
I mean, I guess we could do it, but everybody
would probably know that we're not We're not making moves
as representatives of Uncle Sam or a foreign power exactly.
Speaker 2 (54:43):
And I would say, if you want to keep going
down this rabbit hole, a great and exciting fun thing
to do is to go to the Wikipedia page for
the Hillary Clinton email controversy and then go all the
way down to the bottom and just you know, after
looking at the talk thing and all the other stuff,
go all the way down the bottom and just start
clicking through sources down there. Cuz it's crazy just the
(55:04):
amount of media that was generated through this scandal, the
amount of sourcing that exists on that one Wiki page.
It's an intense slog. Good luck to you, enjoy yourself,
make sure you got a drink, and.
Speaker 1 (55:21):
Let us know what other examples of shadow governments you
have found, not just here in the US, but in
other countries or in other groups of countries. Right we
want to hear those stories that you think your fellow
listeners would enjoy about what goes on behind the curtain.
You can tell and that's our classic episode for this evening.
(55:42):
We can't wait to hear your thoughts. We try to
be easy to find online. Find this in the handle
conspiracy Stuff, where we exist on Facebook X and YouTube
on Instagram and TikTok where Conspiracy Stuff show.
Speaker 2 (55:52):
Call our number. It's one eight three three std WYTK,
leave a voicemail.
Speaker 1 (55:58):
And if you have more to say, we can't wait
to hear from you at our good old fashioned email
address where we are conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2 (56:07):
Stuff they Don't Want You to Know is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Stuff They Don't Want You To Know News
Hosts And Creators
Matt Frederick
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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