March 2, 2025 • 28 mins
D.C. lawyer Mark Zaid is in the news this week, having been specifically targeted by Trump for representing a whistleblower involved with Trump's first impeachment. As such, we're revisiting this episode from last year in which Mark Zaid talks about the cases he's taken over the years and the fictional concept of The Deep State. As someone recently blueskyed, "If there really was a 'Deep State' it would have shut this s**t show down already!"
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
You remember when Trump came in and he thought the generals
in the Pentagon were making millions of dollars. They told
him like, they make one hundred and fifty thousand dollars
a year, and He's like, what, why would he do that?
Speaker 2 (00:13):
I'm John Cipher and I'm Jerry O'Shea.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
I served in the CIA's Clandestine Service for twenty eight years,
living undercover all around the.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
World, and in my thirty three years with the CIA,
I served in Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
Although we don't usually look at it this way, we
created conspiracies.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
In our operations. We got people to believe things that
weren't true.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
Now we're investigating the conspiracy theories we see in the
news almost every day.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Will break them down for you to determine whether they
could be real or whether we're being manipulated.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
Welcome to Mission Implausible, Adam.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
There's a lot of discussion about the deep state and
what it is and so forth. Why don't you now
that you know John and I, why don't you tell
us just how impressed you are with the deep state
and you know who were in it?
Speaker 3 (01:01):
Sure?
Speaker 4 (01:01):
I mean, I've gotten to know two guys in particular.
I mean, here's how it works. You have a sort
of questionable background, You're somehow attracted to this large bureaucracy,
and apparently if you stick around long enough, you keep
getting promotions, and if anyone's like, well, did you accomplish anything,
you get to say, oh, yes, but it's top secret.
I can't really tell you the specific things I accomplished.
(01:24):
So that's my impression of the deep state.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
Dude, you nailed it.
Speaker 4 (01:27):
I can't argue with You're there pretty accurate.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
The deep state. It is sort of weird though, because
on the one hand people would portray us as incompetent
bureaucradits and on the other were like capable of anything.
Which is it?
Speaker 1 (01:41):
I'll just say I think a lot of it came
because people who don't have an experience in government or
in their security. Things came in and then they just
wondered when they would say things at a whim, whether
they made sense or not, didn't just happen. And so
they said to themselves, well, there must be people there
that are purposely trying to stall and stop the thing
that I'm saying should happen. Now, there is a large
(02:03):
group of professionals in Washington who have laws and regulations
and policies that have been built up over years, and
so it isn't possible when someone just says do this
for it to happen until it's gone through lawyers and
just make sure it's legal and make sure you know
everybody has input into whether it makes sense, because different
(02:23):
organizations and different partner people in the political process have
different opinions on things.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
Teach state people are people who follow the rules and
know what the rules are. And the rules were given
to us by Congress, right, and they're complicate called laws. Laws. Yeah,
so we follow the laws and then we're damned because
we can't ignore the laws.
Speaker 4 (02:45):
If there's a sort of term like bureaucrat or deep state,
or jew or financial elite or whatever it is, a
lot of these are predicated on the idea that they're
all thinking the exact same thing. They're all aligned and unified,
and they're goals and be there like actively working together.
And if you happen to be a member, like I'm
(03:06):
a member of the Jews, I'm a member of the
media elite. I think I'm now officially a member of
the intelligence community, right because I have a podcasts with
you guys, you realize really quickly, like the two of
you don't agree on a lot of stuff. The idea
of there being this not even the same title, but
sort of this a similar kind of title we must
all be working together is I mean it just as absurd.
(03:28):
I mean that seems to be the cornerstone of a
lot of conspiracy.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
There's sort of assumption, like, you know, if you're a
Republican president and you want certain policies that miss mean
the whole deep Stater is all Democrats right and want
of democrats in they must be all Whereas essentially there's
Democrats and Republicans inside all of this deep state. So
the notion that somehow we would all agree on whatever
this political thing is. The thing we agree on is
on the mission of our organization. Our mission of organization was,
(03:51):
you know, to keep Americans safe, but we didn't agree
on the policy of how to do that.
Speaker 4 (03:54):
From things you've told me, it CIA seems filled with
a lot of different pretty left wing people, right wing people,
pretty centrist people, pretty a political people right.
Speaker 2 (04:04):
And today we're going to be taking a look at
conspiracy theories around what some people term is the deep
state and how conspiracies around that have become part and
parcel of our political culture and central to it.
Speaker 1 (04:19):
Our guest is Mark Zaid, a well known lawyer in Washington.
He's an attorney. He's focused on national security issues. He
deals with law, whistleblowers, freedom of speech issues, and he
has some connections to Jerry and I. He went to
the University of Rochester and Jerry's a Rochester native. So Mark,
it's really great to have you here. Thanks for being
with us.
Speaker 3 (04:39):
Oh, it is a pleasure to be with both of
you guys.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
So let me ask the first question. At least these
days and some of the things that I see you
getting involved with. You're a lawyer, You're preparing cases, you
might even have to go to court, and in being
a lawyer is about, you know, following the facts where
they may lead. But so much of what we're seeing
nowadays is politicians sort of spewing and things that just
don't have any relation to reality. And how do you
(05:03):
square those things? How do you defend people when the
chargers are just sort of crazy?
Speaker 3 (05:08):
Yeah, it is always difficult in that sphere, and anyone
who has spent a good amount of time in DC
will tell you how things have changed. I've been here
now for thirty years, and it is a very different
world in DC in politics than it has ever been before,
which has fed a lot of the conspiracy theories. Now
(05:28):
some of it is because of ideology and jerry mandering.
There's a lot more divisiveness in the country in the
political parties because so many seats in politics are safe,
which has led politicians to be more extreme because they
get elected. Now that is really fundamentally important because you
(05:51):
talk to the sort of old timers who were in office,
and Democrats and Republican members of Congress used to share
apartments together because it was expensive to have residents here
in DC. It was also harder to go back home,
more expensive to go back home out of the area,
and you didn't have communication capabilities the way we do now.
So the Internet and the minimization of transportation costs also
(06:15):
has actually fed into these problems that we have today.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
I want to come back to you being an insider.
Speaker 3 (06:23):
Yeah, So the first thing I have to smirk it
what every time I'm called an insider, and in some
ways i am, But I have never served in the
federal government at all, and I have always represented individuals
I'll say, against the US government, you know, representing folks
like you guys when you're inside the agency and you've
(06:43):
got a security clearance issue, a personnel dispute, an IG complaint,
you're being investigated by security, whatever it might be. Conspiracy
theories actually got me into the world that I work
in today, But it was particularly the Kennedy assassination that
brought me and interested me in dealing with the CIA
and accountability. But because I've represented so many people, one
(07:05):
hundreds thousands over the thirty years, yeah, I guess I'm
part of the deep state, as President Trump would call it, well,
even though that's what I fight against every day, and
I'd say he's more of the deep state than what
he says.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
The question is often cult or conspiracy. Is this like
they're in a cult and this is now what they
believe or is it a conspiracy and like they know
it's not true.
Speaker 3 (07:30):
It is a fair question, you pose. There's no doubt
that there are some who completely know they're spewing crap
and what they're saying is absolutely false, and they're just
doing it for whatever reason to get a rise out
of someone to fuel fundraising, to gain strength in powers
and number, whatever it might be. And then there are
(07:53):
the others, which are probably frankly the majority, generalizing, ignorant, naive,
and fall in line with what they believe. When I
was a freshman in college, I took a course on
the Holocaust. Their maternal grandfather was a rabbi for the
US Army liberated Dacau. We had to do a paper
and the paper was why Germany And thirty five years
(08:16):
ago I had a lot of trouble understanding how this unbelievable, intellectual, cultural,
westernized country, pinnacle of the pinnacle of Europe became what
Hitler turned it into. And obviously it's an extreme that
we thankfully don't have here. But you look at the
early days of national socialism in the late nineteen twenties,
(08:36):
in the early thirties, and I think we have I
do at least a much better sense of how Germany
became what it became in watching how Maga and the
ultimate Trump supporters have become what they are. You know, hey,
Jewish space lacers. You know Marjorie Taylor Green where she
Trump's vice president. Would I have a concern for my
(08:58):
well being as a Jew, as a lawyer, as an
opponent to their beliefs.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
Oh, hell yeah, let's take a break.
Speaker 3 (09:05):
We'll be right back.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
And Rebecca, So, I want.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
To talk a little bit about one of the conspiracies
that seems to be bandied about around a lot nowadays
is about the deep state. And so I know you've
defended whistleblowers for years. Are these people insiders that are
telling us things that we should be worried about with
our national security the agencies?
Speaker 3 (09:30):
So my understanding of what deep states somebody had said
that term to me fifteen years ago. You know, you
got to be careful about the deep state. You know,
that brings to my mind Eisenhower's statement at the end
of his tenure about the military industrial complex taking over
the US government, or thinking about the Gestapo in Nazi Germany,
(09:54):
who are sort of the secret government doing what they
want without any regard to to the rule of law
or the policies and procedures that were in play at
the time. And somehow that term deep state has been
twisted by former President Trump and his supporters to mean
essentially anyone who challenges their authority, even lawfully. You know,
(10:18):
the whole notion of representing whistleblowers and the existence of them.
It is still looked at as a somewhat bad word
and it is not anything I would ever wish upon
someone to be a whistleblower. It is not a fun thing.
You do not generally gain any rewards from it. There
are certain types of cases where you can make a
lot of money as being a whistleblower, but those are
(10:39):
called keytam cases, and those are generally basically revealing fraud
upon the US government by a contractor. That entity is
fined and the whistleblower gets a percentage of that fine,
which could be tens of millions of dollars. But it's
been twisted now of course, the fake whistleblower. And again
because I don't want to just beat up on President Trump,
(11:01):
although there's so much to beat up on. It's both sides.
Speaker 2 (11:05):
The term deep state for me, I struggle with it
strikes me as a meaningless, chivalous that lends itself to
conspiracy theories. The deep state is made up of like
tens of thousands of people who will mostly live in
Northern Virginia, who are your neighbors who have struggled with
mortgages and with their kids and have rules and regulations,
(11:28):
and they're not some coherent group that like secretly rules things.
And so when that term is used, it's like the Illuminati.
It means everything and nothing. And let me ask you
to come in on one just instance in how this
would actually could work in the real world, which I
don't think it does. So President Trump a while ago
(11:52):
retweeted that bin Laden was still alive and that President
Obama had murdered her assas needed all the people who
would supposedly claim to have killed him on Sealed Team six.
In the world that we live in, there would have
to be a deep state that would I mean, think
about this. There's the widows who would all have to
(12:13):
be quiet. The people who carried this out would all
have to be like incredibly loyal after all these years
still to Obama, and where's Osama bin Lad and if
he still kept living? And yet an idea like this
can be put out and explained with two words deep state.
How would you define deep state? And how do you
see it defined?
Speaker 3 (12:34):
Yeah, So, when I first came to d C, I
spent then and I still do now a lot of
time on the Kennedy assassination. I was a sort of
up and coming youngster as a twenty five year old
inheriting the mantle from the first generation who were alive
when Kennedy was killed, and I realized as a result
of all that there is no way that so many
(12:56):
of the conspiracy theories that people believe could be true,
because there's no way the CIA and some of the
other agencies could have pulled it off. And if they
could have pulled it off, there's no way in hell
they could have kept it secret for so many years.
The system just doesn't work that way. Are there really
really cool secrets that are still secret? Yeah? You know,
the three of us know that is absolutely true. We
(13:18):
may know the same cool ones, but for the most part,
it's very seldom that something so momentous has so few
people that every one of them could keep something secret.
One of my favorite conspiracy theories has always been the
Lockness Monster, so much so that when I lived in
England in the late eighties working for the British government,
(13:39):
I went up to Lockness in Inverness, Scotland and spent
hours walking around the lock just looking for NeSSI you know,
turned out to be if you believe that, you know
decades later where these guys came forward and said that
they concocted the whole thing. They made this like paper
mache dinosaur and took photos of it. And then there
was another guy. He had a hippopotamus leg, real hippopoonymous
(14:04):
leg umbrella stand that he would take and walk around
the lock and put footprint in the sand that people
would see. Those were theories or conspiracies that were created
by a small number of people, one to three people,
and usually within the same family, so that they could
keep those secrets until someone's on their deathbed and set
(14:25):
finally says what happened the stuff that we're talking about
with the deep state, as you described this vast military
industrial complex where everybody's involved. It's not the way our
government works. Our government is so bureaucratic. The government is
like an ocean liner or a freight train. It takes
(14:46):
a mile to stop. People think the federal government is
like this one monolithic entity, whereas you could have a
war between one agency versus the other agency. They're not
working together at all. I was them with one case,
a very senior Department of Defense official within the IC agencies,
all sorts of wrongdoing, all sorts of personality problems, that
(15:09):
people didn't like this person, and there was an IG
report that even found a whole bunch of stuff. So
what was done. The person's not fired, they were just
moved to another position.
Speaker 1 (15:18):
We'd call that passing the trash.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
It's really hard to fire someone.
Speaker 3 (15:21):
I have a lot of clients who might disagree with
that because they got fired.
Speaker 2 (15:24):
But yeah, rule you know, we could talk about someone.
I've tried to get some of those people fired.
Speaker 3 (15:30):
Hey, sometimes I got to tell you. Sometimes I agree
that that my clients should be I will do my
best not to have them fired. But I'm behind the
scenes going, oh man, I can't I get even hired
in the first place.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
I just went you up in and ask for some
free legal advice. So what is a conspiracy legally? If
what you've outlined, If someone knows something is false, a
group of people know it's false, and yet they put
it out there to trick other people to make money,
is that a conspiracy legally?
Speaker 3 (16:02):
So, a conspiracy is generally two or more people who
conspire to engage in an overt conduct. Give an example,
and this is what's frustrating too, the recent Georgia indictment
which has rico charges. You know, it was written to
go after organized crime predominantly, and the notion is you
can have individuals engaged in lawful conduct, but it's part
(16:27):
of an unlawful conspiracy. And there are a lot of
the paragraphs set forth in this complaint of which the
conduct is completely lawful, protected by First Amendment, but it
was in furtherance of an unlawful conspiracy. And you can
see you just look at Twitter or you look at
(16:47):
any right wing media will they'll seize upon the lawful
conduct in the one paragraph to say, oh, now the
Democrats are criminalizing the First Amendment. And no it's not.
This is an established legal precedent to take lawful conduct,
but to carve it into in furtherance of an unlawful conspiracy.
(17:10):
So if you think of money laundering, I just finished
watching Breaking Bad. But you know the notion of you
earn all this money by cooking meth that's illegal. You
take the unlawful money, and you lawfully purchase a car
wash that's lawful. Running the car wash completely lawful. When
(17:32):
the government finds out that you earned that money from
a criminal enterprise. They can seize the lawful car wash
because the lawful transaction relates to the unlawful conspiracy.
Speaker 2 (17:46):
Thanks Mark, it's always great talking to a fellow upstate
New Yorker and wishing you good things in future endeavors.
Now we'd like to welcome back Adam Davidson.
Speaker 4 (17:57):
Can't keep me away. But first we'll take a quick
break and then I'm going to have a bunch of questions.
Welcome back to Mission implausible. So John and Jerry, we
just learned all about the deep state. I mean, you
are exactly the deep state, and.
Speaker 2 (18:16):
It has a great dental plan. I want to get
that out there.
Speaker 4 (18:19):
So one thing that I find so interesting about this
particular conspiracy theory is that there is a bureaucracy. There
are people who work in government. I mean, it's a
kind of conspiracy that's like taking a thing that exists
and giving it more malign intent and coordination than it
really has. But it's not inventing a thing that doesn't exist.
Speaker 1 (18:39):
What's interesting is it's actually a very clever conspiracy. It's
weaponizing sort of concerns that what people have. So if
you're a leader like former President Trump was for example,
and you can't just dictate and get your ways. You
can call it a deep state, but what what I
would call is sort of an existing professional bureaucracy of
public servants who are in phibited by laws, regulations, norms,
(19:03):
professional standards, making sure that everything is written down, everything
is put through processes to get done. You can't just
say invade Syria and expect that the next day are
people going to invade serious So I can imagine that
if you came in from the outside you don't understand
how government works, you say, well, they're not doing exactly
what I said. They think different than me, Their political
(19:24):
enemies are trying to stop what I'm trying to accomplish.
Whereas those of us who worked in that space, we
understand that, No, there's a lot of things. Over time,
civil service rules, regulations have been put in place to
make sure that when the government takes action, it's done openly.
It's done with input from the necessary bureaucracies and other agencies,
(19:44):
but it's not done for nefarious or political reasons, which
is what the term deep state suggests. The US government
is huge, These agencies are complex and complicated. It's so
complex you can't get your head around it. It's easier
just to say, oh, they're evil, or they're working against
my president or what have you.
Speaker 2 (20:03):
And it's dehumanizing as well. It's sort of along the
lines of referring to the honorable opposition as radical Marxist
Democrats or fascist Republicans or Rhinos, when these are just
people that view things differently and do things differently.
Speaker 4 (20:17):
I will say the friends of mine who've been sort
of permanent civil servants, actually I find it almost annoying
when they work for an administration that I know politically
they're not aligned with how obsessively nonpartisan they are. I
can think of one administration fairly recently.
Speaker 2 (20:34):
It's not the current one, but it was.
Speaker 4 (20:36):
Recent where I actually felt like we needed a little
more deep state, We needed more of that civil servant
to say this isn't okay.
Speaker 2 (20:45):
Right. We take an oath on the Constitution, not to
a particular president or political party, and it's not like
we want to have a dictator, like even for a day.
Speaker 4 (20:54):
What is it like when you're we don't even have
to get into what your politics are, but like, have
you had to support or missions that you weren't personally
totally sold.
Speaker 2 (21:03):
On, you know, Iraq War weapons of man's destruction. I
have to admit that I changed my mind on that.
I believed at the time, deeply, truly that we had
the evidence on there.
Speaker 1 (21:14):
Also with the CIA, it's a weird institution, and we
take pride in sometimes actually telling administrations and things they
don't want to hear. And it's our job to come
in and say, well, sir, that's just actually not how
it's playing out here. Your plan is not likely to
work for ab and C reasons. And it allows young
officers to go into very senior places in the government
(21:35):
and tell people that we think that they're wrong or
that we have information that goes against what they would
like it to be.
Speaker 2 (21:43):
Serving an administration, Republican or Democrat is more than just
the executive bridge more than just the president. Right, we
have congressional overlords. They control our budget, and when we
deal with them off the front pages of the newspaper,
when we sit down and we brief congressmen and senators
in our states, or we go up to the hill
and we testify in confidential circumstances, most of them are
(22:05):
pretty reasonable folks, and they get along better than you
might expect Republicans and Democrats certainly on things like national security.
Speaker 4 (22:13):
And as you're doing analysis, and this is true for
journalism or deep state members like yourself. If you're analyzing
I don't know the fighting strength of Ukraine or something
like that, you might have your preferences or whatever, but
if you're really dialed into like the latest talking points
on whatever cable news channel, it messes you up. You
get your analysis is wrong.
Speaker 2 (22:34):
So there's the term deep state. And if you think
about it, what's a shallow state? You know? And we've
served in places with shallow states that don't have deep roots,
where there isn't a rule of law, and where you
know a leader just by whim can change things. And
we don't want to live in those places. I mean,
who wants to live in Somalia or Afghanistan where you
(22:55):
know the next dictator can commit and change everything, and
where civil servants will say anything and do anything, take
any bribe to just make it to the next paycheck.
You know, the deep state, where things are deeply anchored
in law and order and culture.
Speaker 1 (23:11):
That's what we want and expertise, right, So the notions
of a new leader comes in everybody leaves, the intelligence officers,
the diplomats, the military people, everybody leaves because the leader
has his own people, and that goes back and forth
and back and forth. What we've created in this country
over hundreds of years is, you know, a civil service,
a public service that has expertise that's meant to be
(23:32):
there to help inform politicians when they do come in.
And so we've decided that the world is complex and
we need people who are experts and work on issues
for decades rather than just leaving every couple of years.
Speaker 2 (23:44):
I remember in Okay it was it was a rock.
I can say this but this because it's over. But
one of the heads of their law enforcement agencies was
a failed doctor who was only allowed to work on
dead people. He was only allowed to do autopsies, and
he was related to the right person. And so here's
(24:05):
a guy who failed medical school, who has no background
in law enforcement is now running basically one of their
versions of the FBI. Do you really want this guy
running the FBI who doesn't know anything and it is
probably only going to be there for two years. You know,
that's a shallow state, and that's you know, doesn't serve
the Iraqi people, well doesn't serve us.
Speaker 1 (24:25):
Well, now, Betty was good at stealing money for his relative,
you bet.
Speaker 2 (24:29):
You he was. He is two years at the troth
and he was going to take it right.
Speaker 4 (24:32):
And I'm not going to sit here and have the
Iraqi government insulted in this way.
Speaker 2 (24:39):
So yeah, let's coach state.
Speaker 3 (24:40):
You know.
Speaker 4 (24:41):
Well, there's a term in political economy that comes out
of analysis of Middle Eastern governments, and they use the
language of strong states and weak states, and the way
it's defined as a it's a little counterintuitive that a
weak state like Iraq is a state where they have
to continually reen force their power. So, you know, Saddam
(25:02):
or Mubarik or whomever sort of knows they're always an
uprising away from being destroyed, and so they need to
constantly remind people we're big, we're strong. We're big, we're strong.
We're big, we're strong. And that leads to a kind
of violent repression of the people. It leads to the corruption,
et cetera. Because if the mentality is, look, my third
(25:23):
cousin is prime minister now or president now, but that's
not going to last forever. I better get everything I can,
you know, it's like the old pre model in Mexico,
where you have a six year term to make all
the money you're going to make for your life, so
you better use it wisely. Whereas a strong state is
not a strong handed state.
Speaker 3 (25:41):
It's a state.
Speaker 4 (25:42):
Where the state itself is a functioning entity that doesn't
need to be continually reinforced. Resiliency, Yeah, resiliency is built in,
and we may be weirdly trying to destroy that in
the US, or some people are.
Speaker 2 (25:58):
But let's use critical thinking on the demographics of the
deep state. If you're if you are a member of
the civil service, A you're never going to be rich, right,
I mean, you're not going to be poor, but you're
not making lots of money. You're making just enough so
that you're not likely going to be tempted by bribes.
Not that it doesn't happen, but you're making enough so
(26:18):
that you know you're not going to look for like
three hundred bucks to change your opinion on something like
happens in Mexico and some of these other places where
they don't pay their civil servants enough. These are people
who have have agreed to stay in positions for decades
to do the best job they can for a basic
amount of pay. They basically carry out the dictates of
(26:39):
the people in Congress who rail against them. You make
a law, you say this is the way it is.
You tell people this is how you're going to operate,
and then you criticize them for doing so.
Speaker 1 (26:48):
Remember when Trump came in and he thought the generals
in the Pentagon were making millions of dollars, They told
him like, they make one hundred and fifty thousand dollars
a year.
Speaker 3 (26:57):
He's like, what, why would he do that?
Speaker 1 (26:58):
Well, then it says these are oh, they're losers. They're
losers because they could be making more money some other way.
Speaker 4 (27:03):
I was in China once when they happen to release
like the richest fifty richest people in China list a
bunch of business people, and someone I was with was like,
the fifty richest people in China are a bunch of
generals whose names you're never gonna hear.
Speaker 2 (27:16):
The same in Russia, Yeah, it's the rich guys or
the guys of the intelligence community at the generals.
Speaker 1 (27:22):
Yeah, they take pictures of these sort of bureau meetings
and then you look at their watches and they're wearing
like three hundred thousand dollars watches and you know, twenty
thousand dollars suits, and these guys supposedly you're making you know,
sixty thousand dollars a year.
Speaker 4 (27:34):
All right, guys, well, thanks so much for trying to
persuade people you're not part of a vast deep state.
I don't think you pulled it off, but it was
interesting to watch the attempt.
Speaker 2 (27:44):
Adam, will we be sending you an application to join
the Deeps?
Speaker 3 (27:46):
I'd love to.
Speaker 4 (27:47):
I've I've been waiting to be asked.
Speaker 5 (27:54):
Mission Implausible is produced by Adam Davidson, Jerry Osha, John Cipher,
and Jonathan Sterner. The associate producer is Rachel Harner. Mission
Implausible is a production of Honorable Mention and Abominable Pictures
for iHeartMedia
You remember when Trump came in and he thought the generals
in the Pentagon were making millions of dollars. They told
him like, they make one hundred and fifty thousand dollars
a year, and He's like, what, why would he do that?
Speaker 2 (00:13):
I'm John Cipher and I'm Jerry O'Shea.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
I served in the CIA's Clandestine Service for twenty eight years,
living undercover all around the.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
World, and in my thirty three years with the CIA,
I served in Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
Although we don't usually look at it this way, we
created conspiracies.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
In our operations. We got people to believe things that
weren't true.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
Now we're investigating the conspiracy theories we see in the
news almost every day.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Will break them down for you to determine whether they
could be real or whether we're being manipulated.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
Welcome to Mission Implausible, Adam.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
There's a lot of discussion about the deep state and
what it is and so forth. Why don't you now
that you know John and I, why don't you tell
us just how impressed you are with the deep state
and you know who were in it?
Speaker 3 (01:01):
Sure?
Speaker 4 (01:01):
I mean, I've gotten to know two guys in particular.
I mean, here's how it works. You have a sort
of questionable background, You're somehow attracted to this large bureaucracy,
and apparently if you stick around long enough, you keep
getting promotions, and if anyone's like, well, did you accomplish anything,
you get to say, oh, yes, but it's top secret.
I can't really tell you the specific things I accomplished.
(01:24):
So that's my impression of the deep state.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
Dude, you nailed it.
Speaker 4 (01:27):
I can't argue with You're there pretty accurate.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
The deep state. It is sort of weird though, because
on the one hand people would portray us as incompetent
bureaucradits and on the other were like capable of anything.
Which is it?
Speaker 1 (01:41):
I'll just say I think a lot of it came
because people who don't have an experience in government or
in their security. Things came in and then they just
wondered when they would say things at a whim, whether
they made sense or not, didn't just happen. And so
they said to themselves, well, there must be people there
that are purposely trying to stall and stop the thing
that I'm saying should happen. Now, there is a large
(02:03):
group of professionals in Washington who have laws and regulations
and policies that have been built up over years, and
so it isn't possible when someone just says do this
for it to happen until it's gone through lawyers and
just make sure it's legal and make sure you know
everybody has input into whether it makes sense, because different
(02:23):
organizations and different partner people in the political process have
different opinions on things.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
Teach state people are people who follow the rules and
know what the rules are. And the rules were given
to us by Congress, right, and they're complicate called laws. Laws. Yeah,
so we follow the laws and then we're damned because
we can't ignore the laws.
Speaker 4 (02:45):
If there's a sort of term like bureaucrat or deep state,
or jew or financial elite or whatever it is, a
lot of these are predicated on the idea that they're
all thinking the exact same thing. They're all aligned and unified,
and they're goals and be there like actively working together.
And if you happen to be a member, like I'm
(03:06):
a member of the Jews, I'm a member of the
media elite. I think I'm now officially a member of
the intelligence community, right because I have a podcasts with
you guys, you realize really quickly, like the two of
you don't agree on a lot of stuff. The idea
of there being this not even the same title, but
sort of this a similar kind of title we must
all be working together is I mean it just as absurd.
(03:28):
I mean that seems to be the cornerstone of a
lot of conspiracy.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
There's sort of assumption, like, you know, if you're a
Republican president and you want certain policies that miss mean
the whole deep Stater is all Democrats right and want
of democrats in they must be all Whereas essentially there's
Democrats and Republicans inside all of this deep state. So
the notion that somehow we would all agree on whatever
this political thing is. The thing we agree on is
on the mission of our organization. Our mission of organization was,
(03:51):
you know, to keep Americans safe, but we didn't agree
on the policy of how to do that.
Speaker 4 (03:54):
From things you've told me, it CIA seems filled with
a lot of different pretty left wing people, right wing people,
pretty centrist people, pretty a political people right.
Speaker 2 (04:04):
And today we're going to be taking a look at
conspiracy theories around what some people term is the deep
state and how conspiracies around that have become part and
parcel of our political culture and central to it.
Speaker 1 (04:19):
Our guest is Mark Zaid, a well known lawyer in Washington.
He's an attorney. He's focused on national security issues. He
deals with law, whistleblowers, freedom of speech issues, and he
has some connections to Jerry and I. He went to
the University of Rochester and Jerry's a Rochester native. So Mark,
it's really great to have you here. Thanks for being
with us.
Speaker 3 (04:39):
Oh, it is a pleasure to be with both of
you guys.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
So let me ask the first question. At least these
days and some of the things that I see you
getting involved with. You're a lawyer, You're preparing cases, you
might even have to go to court, and in being
a lawyer is about, you know, following the facts where
they may lead. But so much of what we're seeing
nowadays is politicians sort of spewing and things that just
don't have any relation to reality. And how do you
(05:03):
square those things? How do you defend people when the
chargers are just sort of crazy?
Speaker 3 (05:08):
Yeah, it is always difficult in that sphere, and anyone
who has spent a good amount of time in DC
will tell you how things have changed. I've been here
now for thirty years, and it is a very different
world in DC in politics than it has ever been before,
which has fed a lot of the conspiracy theories. Now
(05:28):
some of it is because of ideology and jerry mandering.
There's a lot more divisiveness in the country in the
political parties because so many seats in politics are safe,
which has led politicians to be more extreme because they
get elected. Now that is really fundamentally important because you
(05:51):
talk to the sort of old timers who were in office,
and Democrats and Republican members of Congress used to share
apartments together because it was expensive to have residents here
in DC. It was also harder to go back home,
more expensive to go back home out of the area,
and you didn't have communication capabilities the way we do now.
So the Internet and the minimization of transportation costs also
(06:15):
has actually fed into these problems that we have today.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
I want to come back to you being an insider.
Speaker 3 (06:23):
Yeah, So the first thing I have to smirk it
what every time I'm called an insider, and in some
ways i am, But I have never served in the
federal government at all, and I have always represented individuals
I'll say, against the US government, you know, representing folks
like you guys when you're inside the agency and you've
(06:43):
got a security clearance issue, a personnel dispute, an IG complaint,
you're being investigated by security, whatever it might be. Conspiracy
theories actually got me into the world that I work
in today, But it was particularly the Kennedy assassination that
brought me and interested me in dealing with the CIA
and accountability. But because I've represented so many people, one
(07:05):
hundreds thousands over the thirty years, yeah, I guess I'm
part of the deep state, as President Trump would call it, well,
even though that's what I fight against every day, and
I'd say he's more of the deep state than what
he says.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
The question is often cult or conspiracy. Is this like
they're in a cult and this is now what they
believe or is it a conspiracy and like they know
it's not true.
Speaker 3 (07:30):
It is a fair question, you pose. There's no doubt
that there are some who completely know they're spewing crap
and what they're saying is absolutely false, and they're just
doing it for whatever reason to get a rise out
of someone to fuel fundraising, to gain strength in powers
and number, whatever it might be. And then there are
(07:53):
the others, which are probably frankly the majority, generalizing, ignorant, naive,
and fall in line with what they believe. When I
was a freshman in college, I took a course on
the Holocaust. Their maternal grandfather was a rabbi for the
US Army liberated Dacau. We had to do a paper
and the paper was why Germany And thirty five years
(08:16):
ago I had a lot of trouble understanding how this unbelievable, intellectual, cultural,
westernized country, pinnacle of the pinnacle of Europe became what
Hitler turned it into. And obviously it's an extreme that
we thankfully don't have here. But you look at the
early days of national socialism in the late nineteen twenties,
(08:36):
in the early thirties, and I think we have I
do at least a much better sense of how Germany
became what it became in watching how Maga and the
ultimate Trump supporters have become what they are. You know, hey,
Jewish space lacers. You know Marjorie Taylor Green where she
Trump's vice president. Would I have a concern for my
(08:58):
well being as a Jew, as a lawyer, as an
opponent to their beliefs.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
Oh, hell yeah, let's take a break.
Speaker 3 (09:05):
We'll be right back.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
And Rebecca, So, I want.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
To talk a little bit about one of the conspiracies
that seems to be bandied about around a lot nowadays
is about the deep state. And so I know you've
defended whistleblowers for years. Are these people insiders that are
telling us things that we should be worried about with
our national security the agencies?
Speaker 3 (09:30):
So my understanding of what deep states somebody had said
that term to me fifteen years ago. You know, you
got to be careful about the deep state. You know,
that brings to my mind Eisenhower's statement at the end
of his tenure about the military industrial complex taking over
the US government, or thinking about the Gestapo in Nazi Germany,
(09:54):
who are sort of the secret government doing what they
want without any regard to to the rule of law
or the policies and procedures that were in play at
the time. And somehow that term deep state has been
twisted by former President Trump and his supporters to mean
essentially anyone who challenges their authority, even lawfully. You know,
(10:18):
the whole notion of representing whistleblowers and the existence of them.
It is still looked at as a somewhat bad word
and it is not anything I would ever wish upon
someone to be a whistleblower. It is not a fun thing.
You do not generally gain any rewards from it. There
are certain types of cases where you can make a
lot of money as being a whistleblower, but those are
(10:39):
called keytam cases, and those are generally basically revealing fraud
upon the US government by a contractor. That entity is
fined and the whistleblower gets a percentage of that fine,
which could be tens of millions of dollars. But it's
been twisted now of course, the fake whistleblower. And again
because I don't want to just beat up on President Trump,
(11:01):
although there's so much to beat up on. It's both sides.
Speaker 2 (11:05):
The term deep state for me, I struggle with it
strikes me as a meaningless, chivalous that lends itself to
conspiracy theories. The deep state is made up of like
tens of thousands of people who will mostly live in
Northern Virginia, who are your neighbors who have struggled with
mortgages and with their kids and have rules and regulations,
(11:28):
and they're not some coherent group that like secretly rules things.
And so when that term is used, it's like the Illuminati.
It means everything and nothing. And let me ask you
to come in on one just instance in how this
would actually could work in the real world, which I
don't think it does. So President Trump a while ago
(11:52):
retweeted that bin Laden was still alive and that President
Obama had murdered her assas needed all the people who
would supposedly claim to have killed him on Sealed Team six.
In the world that we live in, there would have
to be a deep state that would I mean, think
about this. There's the widows who would all have to
(12:13):
be quiet. The people who carried this out would all
have to be like incredibly loyal after all these years
still to Obama, and where's Osama bin Lad and if
he still kept living? And yet an idea like this
can be put out and explained with two words deep state.
How would you define deep state? And how do you
see it defined?
Speaker 3 (12:34):
Yeah, So, when I first came to d C, I
spent then and I still do now a lot of
time on the Kennedy assassination. I was a sort of
up and coming youngster as a twenty five year old
inheriting the mantle from the first generation who were alive
when Kennedy was killed, and I realized as a result
of all that there is no way that so many
(12:56):
of the conspiracy theories that people believe could be true,
because there's no way the CIA and some of the
other agencies could have pulled it off. And if they
could have pulled it off, there's no way in hell
they could have kept it secret for so many years.
The system just doesn't work that way. Are there really
really cool secrets that are still secret? Yeah? You know,
the three of us know that is absolutely true. We
(13:18):
may know the same cool ones, but for the most part,
it's very seldom that something so momentous has so few
people that every one of them could keep something secret.
One of my favorite conspiracy theories has always been the
Lockness Monster, so much so that when I lived in
England in the late eighties working for the British government,
(13:39):
I went up to Lockness in Inverness, Scotland and spent
hours walking around the lock just looking for NeSSI you know,
turned out to be if you believe that, you know
decades later where these guys came forward and said that
they concocted the whole thing. They made this like paper
mache dinosaur and took photos of it. And then there
was another guy. He had a hippopotamus leg, real hippopoonymous
(14:04):
leg umbrella stand that he would take and walk around
the lock and put footprint in the sand that people
would see. Those were theories or conspiracies that were created
by a small number of people, one to three people,
and usually within the same family, so that they could
keep those secrets until someone's on their deathbed and set
(14:25):
finally says what happened the stuff that we're talking about
with the deep state, as you described this vast military
industrial complex where everybody's involved. It's not the way our
government works. Our government is so bureaucratic. The government is
like an ocean liner or a freight train. It takes
(14:46):
a mile to stop. People think the federal government is
like this one monolithic entity, whereas you could have a
war between one agency versus the other agency. They're not
working together at all. I was them with one case,
a very senior Department of Defense official within the IC agencies,
all sorts of wrongdoing, all sorts of personality problems, that
(15:09):
people didn't like this person, and there was an IG
report that even found a whole bunch of stuff. So
what was done. The person's not fired, they were just
moved to another position.
Speaker 1 (15:18):
We'd call that passing the trash.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
It's really hard to fire someone.
Speaker 3 (15:21):
I have a lot of clients who might disagree with
that because they got fired.
Speaker 2 (15:24):
But yeah, rule you know, we could talk about someone.
I've tried to get some of those people fired.
Speaker 3 (15:30):
Hey, sometimes I got to tell you. Sometimes I agree
that that my clients should be I will do my
best not to have them fired. But I'm behind the
scenes going, oh man, I can't I get even hired
in the first place.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
I just went you up in and ask for some
free legal advice. So what is a conspiracy legally? If
what you've outlined, If someone knows something is false, a
group of people know it's false, and yet they put
it out there to trick other people to make money,
is that a conspiracy legally?
Speaker 3 (16:02):
So, a conspiracy is generally two or more people who
conspire to engage in an overt conduct. Give an example,
and this is what's frustrating too, the recent Georgia indictment
which has rico charges. You know, it was written to
go after organized crime predominantly, and the notion is you
can have individuals engaged in lawful conduct, but it's part
(16:27):
of an unlawful conspiracy. And there are a lot of
the paragraphs set forth in this complaint of which the
conduct is completely lawful, protected by First Amendment, but it
was in furtherance of an unlawful conspiracy. And you can
see you just look at Twitter or you look at
(16:47):
any right wing media will they'll seize upon the lawful
conduct in the one paragraph to say, oh, now the
Democrats are criminalizing the First Amendment. And no it's not.
This is an established legal precedent to take lawful conduct,
but to carve it into in furtherance of an unlawful conspiracy.
(17:10):
So if you think of money laundering, I just finished
watching Breaking Bad. But you know the notion of you
earn all this money by cooking meth that's illegal. You
take the unlawful money, and you lawfully purchase a car
wash that's lawful. Running the car wash completely lawful. When
(17:32):
the government finds out that you earned that money from
a criminal enterprise. They can seize the lawful car wash
because the lawful transaction relates to the unlawful conspiracy.
Speaker 2 (17:46):
Thanks Mark, it's always great talking to a fellow upstate
New Yorker and wishing you good things in future endeavors.
Now we'd like to welcome back Adam Davidson.
Speaker 4 (17:57):
Can't keep me away. But first we'll take a quick
break and then I'm going to have a bunch of questions.
Welcome back to Mission implausible. So John and Jerry, we
just learned all about the deep state. I mean, you
are exactly the deep state, and.
Speaker 2 (18:16):
It has a great dental plan. I want to get
that out there.
Speaker 4 (18:19):
So one thing that I find so interesting about this
particular conspiracy theory is that there is a bureaucracy. There
are people who work in government. I mean, it's a
kind of conspiracy that's like taking a thing that exists
and giving it more malign intent and coordination than it
really has. But it's not inventing a thing that doesn't exist.
Speaker 1 (18:39):
What's interesting is it's actually a very clever conspiracy. It's
weaponizing sort of concerns that what people have. So if
you're a leader like former President Trump was for example,
and you can't just dictate and get your ways. You
can call it a deep state, but what what I
would call is sort of an existing professional bureaucracy of
public servants who are in phibited by laws, regulations, norms,
(19:03):
professional standards, making sure that everything is written down, everything
is put through processes to get done. You can't just
say invade Syria and expect that the next day are
people going to invade serious So I can imagine that
if you came in from the outside you don't understand
how government works, you say, well, they're not doing exactly
what I said. They think different than me, Their political
(19:24):
enemies are trying to stop what I'm trying to accomplish.
Whereas those of us who worked in that space, we
understand that, No, there's a lot of things. Over time,
civil service rules, regulations have been put in place to
make sure that when the government takes action, it's done openly.
It's done with input from the necessary bureaucracies and other agencies,
(19:44):
but it's not done for nefarious or political reasons, which
is what the term deep state suggests. The US government
is huge, These agencies are complex and complicated. It's so
complex you can't get your head around it. It's easier
just to say, oh, they're evil, or they're working against
my president or what have you.
Speaker 2 (20:03):
And it's dehumanizing as well. It's sort of along the
lines of referring to the honorable opposition as radical Marxist
Democrats or fascist Republicans or Rhinos, when these are just
people that view things differently and do things differently.
Speaker 4 (20:17):
I will say the friends of mine who've been sort
of permanent civil servants, actually I find it almost annoying
when they work for an administration that I know politically
they're not aligned with how obsessively nonpartisan they are. I
can think of one administration fairly recently.
Speaker 2 (20:34):
It's not the current one, but it was.
Speaker 4 (20:36):
Recent where I actually felt like we needed a little
more deep state, We needed more of that civil servant
to say this isn't okay.
Speaker 2 (20:45):
Right. We take an oath on the Constitution, not to
a particular president or political party, and it's not like
we want to have a dictator, like even for a day.
Speaker 4 (20:54):
What is it like when you're we don't even have
to get into what your politics are, but like, have
you had to support or missions that you weren't personally
totally sold.
Speaker 2 (21:03):
On, you know, Iraq War weapons of man's destruction. I
have to admit that I changed my mind on that.
I believed at the time, deeply, truly that we had
the evidence on there.
Speaker 1 (21:14):
Also with the CIA, it's a weird institution, and we
take pride in sometimes actually telling administrations and things they
don't want to hear. And it's our job to come
in and say, well, sir, that's just actually not how
it's playing out here. Your plan is not likely to
work for ab and C reasons. And it allows young
officers to go into very senior places in the government
(21:35):
and tell people that we think that they're wrong or
that we have information that goes against what they would
like it to be.
Speaker 2 (21:43):
Serving an administration, Republican or Democrat is more than just
the executive bridge more than just the president. Right, we
have congressional overlords. They control our budget, and when we
deal with them off the front pages of the newspaper,
when we sit down and we brief congressmen and senators
in our states, or we go up to the hill
and we testify in confidential circumstances, most of them are
(22:05):
pretty reasonable folks, and they get along better than you
might expect Republicans and Democrats certainly on things like national security.
Speaker 4 (22:13):
And as you're doing analysis, and this is true for
journalism or deep state members like yourself. If you're analyzing
I don't know the fighting strength of Ukraine or something
like that, you might have your preferences or whatever, but
if you're really dialed into like the latest talking points
on whatever cable news channel, it messes you up. You
get your analysis is wrong.
Speaker 2 (22:34):
So there's the term deep state. And if you think
about it, what's a shallow state? You know? And we've
served in places with shallow states that don't have deep roots,
where there isn't a rule of law, and where you
know a leader just by whim can change things. And
we don't want to live in those places. I mean,
who wants to live in Somalia or Afghanistan where you
(22:55):
know the next dictator can commit and change everything, and
where civil servants will say anything and do anything, take
any bribe to just make it to the next paycheck.
You know, the deep state, where things are deeply anchored
in law and order and culture.
Speaker 1 (23:11):
That's what we want and expertise, right, So the notions
of a new leader comes in everybody leaves, the intelligence officers,
the diplomats, the military people, everybody leaves because the leader
has his own people, and that goes back and forth
and back and forth. What we've created in this country
over hundreds of years is, you know, a civil service,
a public service that has expertise that's meant to be
(23:32):
there to help inform politicians when they do come in.
And so we've decided that the world is complex and
we need people who are experts and work on issues
for decades rather than just leaving every couple of years.
Speaker 2 (23:44):
I remember in Okay it was it was a rock.
I can say this but this because it's over. But
one of the heads of their law enforcement agencies was
a failed doctor who was only allowed to work on
dead people. He was only allowed to do autopsies, and
he was related to the right person. And so here's
(24:05):
a guy who failed medical school, who has no background
in law enforcement is now running basically one of their
versions of the FBI. Do you really want this guy
running the FBI who doesn't know anything and it is
probably only going to be there for two years. You know,
that's a shallow state, and that's you know, doesn't serve
the Iraqi people, well doesn't serve us.
Speaker 1 (24:25):
Well, now, Betty was good at stealing money for his relative,
you bet.
Speaker 2 (24:29):
You he was. He is two years at the troth
and he was going to take it right.
Speaker 4 (24:32):
And I'm not going to sit here and have the
Iraqi government insulted in this way.
Speaker 2 (24:39):
So yeah, let's coach state.
Speaker 3 (24:40):
You know.
Speaker 4 (24:41):
Well, there's a term in political economy that comes out
of analysis of Middle Eastern governments, and they use the
language of strong states and weak states, and the way
it's defined as a it's a little counterintuitive that a
weak state like Iraq is a state where they have
to continually reen force their power. So, you know, Saddam
(25:02):
or Mubarik or whomever sort of knows they're always an
uprising away from being destroyed, and so they need to
constantly remind people we're big, we're strong. We're big, we're strong.
We're big, we're strong. And that leads to a kind
of violent repression of the people. It leads to the corruption,
et cetera. Because if the mentality is, look, my third
(25:23):
cousin is prime minister now or president now, but that's
not going to last forever. I better get everything I can,
you know, it's like the old pre model in Mexico,
where you have a six year term to make all
the money you're going to make for your life, so
you better use it wisely. Whereas a strong state is
not a strong handed state.
Speaker 3 (25:41):
It's a state.
Speaker 4 (25:42):
Where the state itself is a functioning entity that doesn't
need to be continually reinforced. Resiliency, Yeah, resiliency is built in,
and we may be weirdly trying to destroy that in
the US, or some people are.
Speaker 2 (25:58):
But let's use critical thinking on the demographics of the
deep state. If you're if you are a member of
the civil service, A you're never going to be rich, right,
I mean, you're not going to be poor, but you're
not making lots of money. You're making just enough so
that you're not likely going to be tempted by bribes.
Not that it doesn't happen, but you're making enough so
(26:18):
that you know you're not going to look for like
three hundred bucks to change your opinion on something like
happens in Mexico and some of these other places where
they don't pay their civil servants enough. These are people
who have have agreed to stay in positions for decades
to do the best job they can for a basic
amount of pay. They basically carry out the dictates of
(26:39):
the people in Congress who rail against them. You make
a law, you say this is the way it is.
You tell people this is how you're going to operate,
and then you criticize them for doing so.
Speaker 1 (26:48):
Remember when Trump came in and he thought the generals
in the Pentagon were making millions of dollars, They told
him like, they make one hundred and fifty thousand dollars
a year.
Speaker 3 (26:57):
He's like, what, why would he do that?
Speaker 1 (26:58):
Well, then it says these are oh, they're losers. They're
losers because they could be making more money some other way.
Speaker 4 (27:03):
I was in China once when they happen to release
like the richest fifty richest people in China list a
bunch of business people, and someone I was with was like,
the fifty richest people in China are a bunch of
generals whose names you're never gonna hear.
Speaker 2 (27:16):
The same in Russia, Yeah, it's the rich guys or
the guys of the intelligence community at the generals.
Speaker 1 (27:22):
Yeah, they take pictures of these sort of bureau meetings
and then you look at their watches and they're wearing
like three hundred thousand dollars watches and you know, twenty
thousand dollars suits, and these guys supposedly you're making you know,
sixty thousand dollars a year.
Speaker 4 (27:34):
All right, guys, well, thanks so much for trying to
persuade people you're not part of a vast deep state.
I don't think you pulled it off, but it was
interesting to watch the attempt.
Speaker 2 (27:44):
Adam, will we be sending you an application to join
the Deeps?
Speaker 3 (27:46):
I'd love to.
Speaker 4 (27:47):
I've I've been waiting to be asked.
Speaker 5 (27:54):
Mission Implausible is produced by Adam Davidson, Jerry Osha, John Cipher,
and Jonathan Sterner. The associate producer is Rachel Harner. Mission
Implausible is a production of Honorable Mention and Abominable Pictures
for iHeartMedia
Hosts And Creators
Adam Davidson
John Sipher
Jerry O'Shea
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
Ridiculous History
History is beautiful, brutal and, often, ridiculous. Join Ben Bowlin and Noel Brown as they dive into some of the weirdest stories from across the span of human civilization in Ridiculous History, a podcast by iHeartRadio.