December 11, 2024 • 23 mins
Jerry and John, with Adam, doommonger about the future of our national security if Tulsi Gabbard becomes the Director of National Intelligence and Kash Patel becomes the FBI Director. What happens when someone unqualified and inexperienced and unable to pass a background check get put in the leadership of an enormous department that they don’t trust?
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
I'm John Cipher and I'm Jerry O'Shea. I was a
CIA officer stationed around the world in high threat posts
in Europe, Russia, and in Asia.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
And I served in Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East,
and in war zones. We sometimes created conspiracies to deceive
our adversaries.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
Now we're going to use our expertise to deconstruct conspiracy
theories large and small.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Could they be true? Or are we being manipulated?
Speaker 1 (00:26):
This is mission implausible. So here in Washington, Jerry, you
get to avoid it because you're hiding out there in Hawaii.
But here in Washington it is still every day there's
new information about Trump nominees.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Only somebody would write an our editorial in the New
York Times.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
Well I did. I went on a PBS news hour
to talk about this the other day, and today an
article just came out in the New York Times called
running Spies is Not a Game for Amateurs that I
wrote along with former CIA and NSA Director General Michael Hayden,
who we both respect as a great long time intelligence
professional and was it a really excellent director at this CIA.
So this happens to be a lot about what we're
(01:06):
going to talk about today, it's really Jermane Now I
got to reread it.
Speaker 3 (01:09):
I've wanted to talk to you about this for a while.
Telsea Gabbard being nominated to be the Director of National Intelligence,
it freaking a lot of people out, even a lot
of Republicans out. Can we start with it?
Speaker 1 (01:21):
So?
Speaker 3 (01:22):
Was there a Director of National Intelligence but when you
were still in CIA or did that come after it happened?
Speaker 1 (01:29):
If you remember in two thousand and four, after the
nine to eleven when President Bush was running again and
there was a lot of back and forth about how
they were going to respond from nine to eleven, and
a new law came in to create the Director of
National Intelligence, and it was meant to be a way
of making sure that the intelligence community works better together
and all those other kind of things. And so it's
(01:50):
a fairly new, I guess maybe twenty years old now,
organization which is meant to deal with the budgets and
the bigger picture issues about the intelligence community.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
Yeah. She would oversee eighteen intelligence agencies, different ones that
the US has, and she has a budget of about
seventy billion dollars and she serves as the principal advisor
to the President on intelligence matters.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
It includes the intelligence community parts of the military. Now
it's a little different because she doesn't control them, because
they're controlled by the Secretary of Defense. So the NSA
is essentially a part of the Defense Department, as are
the intelligence services in the Marines and Army and Navy
and such, and so the DNI has that role of
working over all of those different eighteen organizations, some of
(02:33):
them directly under the DNI and some of them jointly
with the military, and also the FBI, which is part
of the Justice Department as well.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
And scarily, she, at least in theory d or the
DNI sets like folk guy, what it is we're going
to be focused on. And she can do that through
budgets too, by controlling budgets, So you increase the counter
terrorism budget, so you go after counter terrorism. But if
you've got a conspiracy theorist, anyone who says I want
to spend ten billion dollars dollars saying did the US
(03:03):
support secret bio labs creating pathogens in ukrain which we
didn't complete, lie, you could still spend ten billion dollars
searching for a snipe that doesn't exist. Right, that's where
the danger comes in. And so you still put the
focus on something that either isn't true or doesn't exist or.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
Well, in theory that should be done in coordination with
air Security advisor and in a state department and all these
other types of things. But yes, person has quite a
bit of influence. And what's interesting is I think a
lot of these Trump folks that are coming in, they
have such misperceptions about the agencies they're meant to run,
whether it's the FBI or the DNI, the CIA, And
I think they're going to come in like toilsa geber'
is gonna come in and thinking she's going to be
(03:41):
able to find some deep state thing or some fascinating stuff,
so she's gonna be able to immediately deal with it.
And like the first day, she's going to be sitting
in like a bunch of incredibly boring meetings going over
the Tunisian plan for the next ten years and what
did the analysts say about the economy and signing off
on a variety of products and meetings and things. That's
it's a coordination job. It's they don't run the secret
(04:03):
operations that you think of with the CIA, with the
NSA or the kind of.
Speaker 3 (04:07):
Yeah, I spent some time with the National Economic Council
Chair at the White House. And this is overstating it
that it's a glorified secretary or administrative assistant, because it is.
The person's views do matter, But it really is there's Treasury,
there's the FED, there's the They do the work, and
this is the person who convenes those bodies who know
(04:28):
they do have a lot of access these like the
D and I, the NSC, the National Economic Council Chair,
and in a presidency like the one we're about to
have where the last person in the room has outsized influence.
From all reports, it's not nothing, but yeah, it's a
lot of coordinating. So I want to go through a
couple different things. So one thing is we did this
(04:49):
when we had episodes on President elect Trump. Still hard
to say those words and Russia, where I'd say, what
we concluded is we're not in a position to say
he is an active agent of Russian intelligence. In fact,
we're skeptical that's the case. But at the same time,
if you look at it through a national security lens,
(05:09):
if he was applying for any job other than the
job he happened to get, he would not get a
national security clearance. That we talked about how in a
prosecutorial way, if you want to arrest someone and put
them in jail, you need beyond a reasonable doubt. But counterintelligence,
it's more like, does this person give us the act? So, John,
you tell me, because you spent time in Russia. This
(05:30):
is a person who has pretty openly said she supports that.
Speaker 1 (05:36):
Yeah. So I just wrote an opinion piece for the
New York Times along with former CIA in NSA and
DNI Director General Michael Hayden. So Telsea Geerber is interesting
because she really embraces conspiracy theories and she champions Russian disinformation.
And it's not just me. The former Nation Security Advisor
for President Trump, H. R. McMaster said it specifically that
(05:56):
she parrots Putin's talking points and so you could talk
her job. She has no significant experience directing or managing
much of anything. And I'll let Jerry talk about her
background in Hawaii. But in terms of the stuff that
she's done, she's almost like anti national security. She's become
this avatar for that. She's antagonized the intelligence community in
person by writing a bill to protect Russian citizen Edward Snowden,
(06:20):
who ill legally stole as much as two million classified
defense and intelligence documents. She's went to Syria and met
with Syrian Butcher Assad and completely tried to support the
fact that the Russians weren't bombing children and hospitals and things.
And so she's very not only is she not qualified,
she seems to have gone further to be almost working
(06:42):
against our general national security issues.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
If she were to get this job, she would oversee
these eighteen US intelligence agencies who all have different ways
of acquiring intelligences, intelligence and analyzing it. And for the
Assad regime back in twenty seventeen, it and it's Russian
ill is. We're dropping poison gas on civilian populations ile EPO.
(07:06):
And despite the fact that all eighteen agreed that this
was going on, she said, I don't believe it. So
what happens when you gather intelligence, you analyze it. You're
listening to the pilots drop it, You're listening to people
on the ground screaming. You've smuggled out materials that show
that siren gas or poison gas was used, And she says,
(07:26):
I just don't believe it, Well, how do you deal
with that as an intelligence organization? And I think the
answer to that is we don't friggin know because it's
never happened before. Right, This is where you get. There's
intelligence and facts and when you can analyze the different
and it can make you can make mistakes. But then
there's just faith, and you can accept anything on faith.
(07:46):
If you just say I don't believe it, that could
be enough. So I live in Awahu and I know
of through the locals and through the local scuttle but
and people here, if you come to Hawaii and talk
to the locals here and Kaylu on the windward side,
I'll tell you that we know where Colsey Gabord comes from.
It's something called the Science of Identity Foundation, and it's
like Harry Krishna. They were so crazy that that Harry
(08:10):
Krishna's kicked them out. And they have this gurus named
Chris Butler, although he goes with this long Guru something
or other name now. And the sect that she is
affiliated with is anti gay, stream, anti Muslim, which sort
of shows why she's willing to reach out to almost
anybody who's killing Muslims and Stream obedience. You know, there's
(08:32):
really concern that is she loyal to Chris Butler and
her Hindu Hari Krishna offshoot sect, or is she is
she loyal to the Constitution? And it's unfortunately maybe not
a rhetorical question.
Speaker 1 (08:45):
Famously, when she was in Syria after she saw Asad,
she was taken by her minders to go see where
the Russians and the Syrians had bombed civilians and a
famous as she was talking to a bunch of children,
and these children whose families and many of their parents
have been killed and the bombing, were explaining what they'd
been through. And she looked at them and said, I
don't know if I believe you. How can you prove
(09:06):
that this wasn't Isis that did this? And her minder
just almost wanted to explode to say, Isis doesn't have airplanes, right,
they don't have an air force. It's in the Russia.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
And when Russian television haul's her Russia's girlfriend, our adversary
says that she's their Gael freaking take them at their word.
That that makes me more than Leary.
Speaker 1 (09:30):
Culture really matters in our world. You've heard us say
that before that culture is defined by mission, and culture
is really important in an organization. And for example, when
we describe the culture that's different between the CIA and
the FBI, we say that the FBA are cops and
we're robbers, and so we work together, but it's often
difficult because we have a very different way of looking
at the world. But when she's coming in and some
(09:51):
of the other people in the Trump administrations and saying
they won't take background checks, they won't let the FBI
or others do investigations in background checks, oh my goodness,
that's failing leadership one on one, because your entire population
of people who work for you have intrusive background checks,
and they have polygraphs, and they have to report all
your bank money and all the things you own, and
(10:13):
you have to do this every year. You have to
report on every foreigner you meet if you happen to
be dating for and you have to report all those days.
And she's going to come in and say, I don't
need a background check, And that's just crazy.
Speaker 3 (10:24):
And that's true of any culture, right anyone can understand
when everyone has to take a pay cut and you
find out the CEO got a big stock option that
that doesn't go over very well.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
So there's a law called the Pierce Blackledge Doctrine, and
it prohibits the US government from punishing a defendant for
exercising their legal rights right so in your First Amendment
right to assemble or to express an opinion. And close
to Tulca Gambert is also I think we need to
discuss the elephant in the room, Cash Mattel, as well,
because FBI also in a lot of ways more dangerous
(10:56):
because internally it's law enforcement and its intelligence collect and
Cash Prattel famously has said that he is. He has
a list and he's published in his book of people
he's coming for now back to CIA. Among that is
former CIA director right, Gina Hasbell, and current CIA director.
Speaker 1 (11:17):
Ray FBI director right.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
And so this is without any evidence or anything. He's
telegraphing vindictive prosecutions, which is illegal in the United States,
saying he's coming after them, and it doesn't matter if
there's evidence or not. He says, we'll do it civilly,
we'll do it criminally. And I think for most Americans,
CIA and the intelligence community is important, but almost more
(11:39):
important is rule of law and what they're going to
do about what Trump calls these enemies within and how
our bureau brothers are going to respond to demands that
they for the first time when American history, or certainly
since the nineteen fifties sixties, that the FBI is going
to go after select political and I think that's if.
(12:00):
A bigger question is how law enforcement and intelligence will
work together to either not do that or are there
enough Quizzlings out there who will come forward and say, yeah,
I'll do it.
Speaker 1 (12:10):
These are very powerful organizations and if they're turned against
the American public, it really can be very dangerous.
Speaker 3 (12:15):
The other thing that's been on my mind, this is
not the funniest episode we've ever done. You talked in
an earlier episode about how much of the intelligence that
is essential to our national security comes from allied powers
and whether without a background check. I think, just based
on her own utterances, I don't think I would risk
(12:36):
my life to share information or even risk a sources
life or whatever, knowing that Tulsa Gabbert might know who
gave it to them and who gave it to CIA.
So can you talk about that, like the chilling effect
on collaboration with other nations, with other spy services.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
Yeah, Foreign partners are going to hesitate to share their
most precious secrets with us, and not just because they
think that the leader Tulsea Gabbert or even the president
might not be trustworthy. That's certainly a real problem. But
if these guys get their way, they talk about destroying
these organizations, about putting their own people in these positions.
They're talking about taking all the senior people in the
FBI and CIA and make them take loyalty tests or
(13:13):
pushing them out. Foreign partners are not going to work
with people who aren't professionals but are the tool of
one political party or another. In fact, the CIA has
benefited for years and recruited many a spy who was
disgusted by the corruption and cronyism in their own societies.
So essentially, if we're creating this problem for ourselves, we're
hurting ourselves in two ways. Our partners aren't going to
(13:35):
share with us, and people might actually be able to
recruit American spies to steal things from inside our places.
Speaker 3 (13:41):
And when you're recruiting an agent, you're making a very
long term commitment. Right You're not saying, hey, trust me,
I will do everything in my power for the next
three and a half years to keep you safe. And
then all bets are off right, Like there's an I
assume implied. I don't know how explicit you have to
be saying it doesn't matter the president is, doesn't matter
(14:01):
who controls Congress.
Speaker 2 (14:03):
We've got you, I'll keep you alive. Period.
Speaker 1 (14:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:06):
There's no trauma after that. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
Yeah. And so recruiting and running spies inside the halls
of places in Moscow or Beijing or Tehran, it's not
an amateur's game. And it takes years and years. And
that's another thing about the culture. The CIA and the
intelligenmuti is hierarchical, like the defense department. So you're a privator,
you're a colonel, you're a general, and those things matter,
and it takes years to get from one to the next.
(14:29):
When somebody comes in who's never done any of those
things in that most senior position ahead was a very
low level position, all of a sudden, now they're in
charge of all of these people who put in time, experience,
often in hard places, and now this person is the
boss just because they have political connections. That creates another
sort of cultural friction that's going to be it's going
to be very difficult on allies.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
Famously, in twenty sixteen, George Papadopolos got drunk in London
with the I Commission, the Ambassador, the Australian Ambassador to
Great Britain. George Papadopolis was on Trump's national security team
when he was running for president as an advisor, and
he got drunk and he told him in great detail
(15:14):
that he knows, through a Russian connection because he's talking
to Russian intelligence during an intermediary, that the Russians have
got the goods on the Democratic National Committee. They stolen
the emails and these are the emails that they stole
that both the GRU and the SBR fancy Bear and cozy.
So the Australians came forward to the FBI and said, hey,
(15:35):
not for nothing, but we got this guy saying that
the Russians have stolen Democratic National Committee email and the
FBI goes, oh my god, because they knew they had,
So how did George Poppadopolis know this? This then opens
up whole Russia Russia Russia quote unquote hoax. This is
what kicked it off. And then Papadopolis does the right thing.
(15:56):
He lies to the FBI leads his Facebook accounts that
are incriminating, and he destroys his cell phone so that
the FBI can't check on what he was saying. And
so this and not the Steel dossier is what kicked
off the whole What is the relationship between Russian intelligence
and Trump World through Papadopoulos. I think this time around,
(16:18):
the Australians would be sold, just keep your house shut,
Let the Russians do whatever they want to The Americans,
I think what's going to save us, if anything, and
what I tell myself is their incompetence. If they are
so incompetent and so corrupt and so unable to carry
through cash, Hotel Tulsi, Gabbert Hags, all these guys they
get confirmed. I think what's only going to save us
(16:40):
is bureaucratic sloth and their inability to actually do the
shit that they say they do.
Speaker 1 (16:47):
Also, I wonder populists traditionally often make up enemies to attack, institutions,
to attack to get power, right, But now they're in power.
These are their institutions, right, So now destroying the institutions
that they rely on doesn't make as much sense now.
In the past, obviously they were mad about the Russia
investigations in Hunter Biden's laptop and all those kind of things,
(17:08):
and that's because they were running for election and they
wanted to use those as handy attacks against their political rivals. Well,
now those things don't matter anymore. They're not running for election.
They're in power. They should want these institutions to work
effectively for them, So they should put their loyal people
in charge. So that does it feels comfortable he's got
people in charge, but they shouldn't look to destroy things further,
(17:29):
Like Bannon has said, we're going to destroy the administrative state.
Now that may not be the truth. They may actually
believe these things. They may believe that there's terrible people
working against the president there and they need to be
destroyed and all these other kind of things. And if
that's true, that really is dangerous. But perhaps they'll come
around and realize, hey, like why are we destroying this
thing that we rely on. There's going to be crisis,
(17:50):
there's going to be international things that conceivably the administrations
are going to want strong military and a strong counterintelligence
service and a strong intelligence service.
Speaker 3 (17:58):
So I wanted to end on a funny note, and
that John, you really found the funniest possible note that
the entire Trump administration will come in on January twentieth,
and by January twenty third, they'll be like, you know what,
maybe we should just be super competent professionals who run
this thing.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
Really well, let's keep the institution put weaponize them.
Speaker 4 (18:16):
All right, we're going to get right back into that,
but first let's hear this, and we're back with Mission implausible.
Speaker 2 (18:28):
So may you live in interesting times? Is that a
Yiddish curse? Is that a Chinese curse? Who's responsible for that?
Speaker 3 (18:35):
I have heard Chinese, I've never heard it in the
Yiddish context. And there's a lot of conspiracy theories about
US Jews. One thing I can say is if there's
a Yiddish saying, I've heard it. So do you think
President Biden should just pardon the enemy's list? And I
want to make clear you to our enemies, you're on
the enemy's list.
Speaker 1 (18:55):
So this is a.
Speaker 5 (18:55):
Very hard self you and John, Yes, you know I
wouldn't take it because my understanding is the pardon is
you have to admit your guilt before you get the
and we haven't done anything wrong.
Speaker 3 (19:06):
You haven't done this specific thing wrong.
Speaker 1 (19:08):
Yeah, that's true. That's true.
Speaker 3 (19:10):
I'm sure you've done plenty wrong. I feel fairly confident
about that, But I don't know.
Speaker 1 (19:15):
And the issue of pardons, I don't have a great
take on that, Like that seems to me. When we
are an intelligence we were focused on collecting the best
intelligence we could for our policymakers, but we didn't get
into policy ourselves. We didn't try to advise things that
should be having. This seems to be very partisan political things.
And there's a whole Justice Department, FBI checks stuff behind
(19:38):
the whole pardon thing, and I just don't know enough
to say yes, no, should they. We've gotten into this
game where both sides are like thinking the other sides
up to illegal stuff, and they're going to protect their side,
and it just seems skeazy and I just as soon
stay away from it.
Speaker 2 (19:52):
No one's above the law, and I think giving pardons,
especially to relatives, it simply shows that there's one set
of justice for them and another set of justice for
the restless. So when President Trump, then President Trump hardened
Jared Kushner's father who was charged with sixteen tax evasion charges,
(20:13):
and then he was also charged and found guilty and
pled guilty to making a sex tape about his own
brother in law. He lured his own brother in law
into a tryst with a prostitute, paid her twenty five
thousand dollars, filmed it, and tried to blackmail his brother
in law not to testify against him, and pled guilty
to that. Trump pardoned him and has just named him
(20:36):
ambassador to France. I think that's wrong, and I think
it's also I'm sorry, Hunter Barden. I think it's wrong
that he gets a pardon. Oh, and then he gave
the film to the guy's.
Speaker 6 (20:45):
Wife, his mother, his sister. That's right, but he got
pardoned for that. And I don't see that as any
versus Hunter Biden. But I don't think either of them
should have been pardoned.
Speaker 3 (20:56):
Agreed. I think it's you can understand as a dad,
but we're not president.
Speaker 2 (21:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (21:01):
I couldn't agree. More so if Tulsea Gabbard becomes d
and I, would you expect a lot of CIA senior
brass officers to quit? And for that matter, would you
expect agents to say, we get work with you anymore?
We're too afraid.
Speaker 1 (21:19):
In terms of people leaving. I saw that just recently,
the Attorney General gave a talk to the Justice Farm
people encouraging them to stay. The country needs experience, professionals
and a lot of these jobs. Now, like I mentioned before,
like if they truly are going to try to destroy
these organizations and put just rank partisan people with no
experience into these kinds of jobs, lots of people are
(21:40):
going to leave. But it remains to be seen. Some
of these things that people say a cash hotel, I'm
going to go in and I'm going to first day
close the FBI and send everybody else. That's just those
are not realistic things. And oftentimes in the past politicians
have said things that came in and once they realize
what they have and that these people are professionals and
they work for them, things change. So I think there
be people who are at retirement age that we're planning
(22:03):
to stay. A number of them will try to leave
and others will try to stay. But I do think
if the incompetence and the real sort of disdain for
the institutions they run continues, you're going to see not
as much people leaving, but a lot of more leaking.
It's gonna be very interesting to be reading the newspaper
over the next couple of years.
Speaker 2 (22:22):
I think people who followed through on threats like that,
I'm going to defund the police, right. This is the
FBI in this case, and the DOJ. It's people like
pole pot In, like maw Right. They just shut down governments.
It didn't work out well for them. So I don't
think cash Hotel is actually going to follow through on this,
but you can still cause a lot of destruction. I
think a lot of people just go into internal exile
(22:43):
and just try to hang out for four years. I'm
just really proud that I got Smoot Hawley, Senator reads
smooth into a show, right. I've been wanting to do
that forever.
Speaker 7 (22:58):
Mission Implausible produced by Adam Davidson, Jerry O'shay, John Cipher,
and Jonathan Stern. The associate producer is Rachel Harner. Mission
Implausible is a production of Honorable Mention and Abominable pictures
for iHeart Podcasts.
I'm John Cipher and I'm Jerry O'Shea. I was a
CIA officer stationed around the world in high threat posts
in Europe, Russia, and in Asia.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
And I served in Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East,
and in war zones. We sometimes created conspiracies to deceive
our adversaries.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
Now we're going to use our expertise to deconstruct conspiracy
theories large and small.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Could they be true? Or are we being manipulated?
Speaker 1 (00:26):
This is mission implausible. So here in Washington, Jerry, you
get to avoid it because you're hiding out there in Hawaii.
But here in Washington it is still every day there's
new information about Trump nominees.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Only somebody would write an our editorial in the New
York Times.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
Well I did. I went on a PBS news hour
to talk about this the other day, and today an
article just came out in the New York Times called
running Spies is Not a Game for Amateurs that I
wrote along with former CIA and NSA Director General Michael Hayden,
who we both respect as a great long time intelligence
professional and was it a really excellent director at this CIA.
So this happens to be a lot about what we're
(01:06):
going to talk about today, it's really Jermane Now I
got to reread it.
Speaker 3 (01:09):
I've wanted to talk to you about this for a while.
Telsea Gabbard being nominated to be the Director of National Intelligence,
it freaking a lot of people out, even a lot
of Republicans out. Can we start with it?
Speaker 1 (01:21):
So?
Speaker 3 (01:22):
Was there a Director of National Intelligence but when you
were still in CIA or did that come after it happened?
Speaker 1 (01:29):
If you remember in two thousand and four, after the
nine to eleven when President Bush was running again and
there was a lot of back and forth about how
they were going to respond from nine to eleven, and
a new law came in to create the Director of
National Intelligence, and it was meant to be a way
of making sure that the intelligence community works better together
and all those other kind of things. And so it's
(01:50):
a fairly new, I guess maybe twenty years old now,
organization which is meant to deal with the budgets and
the bigger picture issues about the intelligence community.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
Yeah. She would oversee eighteen intelligence agencies, different ones that
the US has, and she has a budget of about
seventy billion dollars and she serves as the principal advisor
to the President on intelligence matters.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
It includes the intelligence community parts of the military. Now
it's a little different because she doesn't control them, because
they're controlled by the Secretary of Defense. So the NSA
is essentially a part of the Defense Department, as are
the intelligence services in the Marines and Army and Navy
and such, and so the DNI has that role of
working over all of those different eighteen organizations, some of
(02:33):
them directly under the DNI and some of them jointly
with the military, and also the FBI, which is part
of the Justice Department as well.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
And scarily, she, at least in theory d or the
DNI sets like folk guy, what it is we're going
to be focused on. And she can do that through
budgets too, by controlling budgets, So you increase the counter
terrorism budget, so you go after counter terrorism. But if
you've got a conspiracy theorist, anyone who says I want
to spend ten billion dollars dollars saying did the US
(03:03):
support secret bio labs creating pathogens in ukrain which we
didn't complete, lie, you could still spend ten billion dollars
searching for a snipe that doesn't exist. Right, that's where
the danger comes in. And so you still put the
focus on something that either isn't true or doesn't exist or.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
Well, in theory that should be done in coordination with
air Security advisor and in a state department and all these
other types of things. But yes, person has quite a
bit of influence. And what's interesting is I think a
lot of these Trump folks that are coming in, they
have such misperceptions about the agencies they're meant to run,
whether it's the FBI or the DNI, the CIA, And
I think they're going to come in like toilsa geber'
is gonna come in and thinking she's going to be
(03:41):
able to find some deep state thing or some fascinating stuff,
so she's gonna be able to immediately deal with it.
And like the first day, she's going to be sitting
in like a bunch of incredibly boring meetings going over
the Tunisian plan for the next ten years and what
did the analysts say about the economy and signing off
on a variety of products and meetings and things. That's
it's a coordination job. It's they don't run the secret
(04:03):
operations that you think of with the CIA, with the
NSA or the kind of.
Speaker 3 (04:07):
Yeah, I spent some time with the National Economic Council
Chair at the White House. And this is overstating it
that it's a glorified secretary or administrative assistant, because it is.
The person's views do matter, But it really is there's Treasury,
there's the FED, there's the They do the work, and
this is the person who convenes those bodies who know
(04:28):
they do have a lot of access these like the
D and I, the NSC, the National Economic Council Chair,
and in a presidency like the one we're about to
have where the last person in the room has outsized influence.
From all reports, it's not nothing, but yeah, it's a
lot of coordinating. So I want to go through a
couple different things. So one thing is we did this
(04:49):
when we had episodes on President elect Trump. Still hard
to say those words and Russia, where I'd say, what
we concluded is we're not in a position to say
he is an active agent of Russian intelligence. In fact,
we're skeptical that's the case. But at the same time,
if you look at it through a national security lens,
(05:09):
if he was applying for any job other than the
job he happened to get, he would not get a
national security clearance. That we talked about how in a
prosecutorial way, if you want to arrest someone and put
them in jail, you need beyond a reasonable doubt. But counterintelligence,
it's more like, does this person give us the act? So, John,
you tell me, because you spent time in Russia. This
(05:30):
is a person who has pretty openly said she supports that.
Speaker 1 (05:36):
Yeah. So I just wrote an opinion piece for the
New York Times along with former CIA in NSA and
DNI Director General Michael Hayden. So Telsea Geerber is interesting
because she really embraces conspiracy theories and she champions Russian disinformation.
And it's not just me. The former Nation Security Advisor
for President Trump, H. R. McMaster said it specifically that
(05:56):
she parrots Putin's talking points and so you could talk
her job. She has no significant experience directing or managing
much of anything. And I'll let Jerry talk about her
background in Hawaii. But in terms of the stuff that
she's done, she's almost like anti national security. She's become
this avatar for that. She's antagonized the intelligence community in
person by writing a bill to protect Russian citizen Edward Snowden,
(06:20):
who ill legally stole as much as two million classified
defense and intelligence documents. She's went to Syria and met
with Syrian Butcher Assad and completely tried to support the
fact that the Russians weren't bombing children and hospitals and things.
And so she's very not only is she not qualified,
she seems to have gone further to be almost working
(06:42):
against our general national security issues.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
If she were to get this job, she would oversee
these eighteen US intelligence agencies who all have different ways
of acquiring intelligences, intelligence and analyzing it. And for the
Assad regime back in twenty seventeen, it and it's Russian
ill is. We're dropping poison gas on civilian populations ile EPO.
(07:06):
And despite the fact that all eighteen agreed that this
was going on, she said, I don't believe it. So
what happens when you gather intelligence, you analyze it. You're
listening to the pilots drop it, You're listening to people
on the ground screaming. You've smuggled out materials that show
that siren gas or poison gas was used, And she says,
(07:26):
I just don't believe it, Well, how do you deal
with that as an intelligence organization? And I think the
answer to that is we don't friggin know because it's
never happened before. Right, This is where you get. There's
intelligence and facts and when you can analyze the different
and it can make you can make mistakes. But then
there's just faith, and you can accept anything on faith.
(07:46):
If you just say I don't believe it, that could
be enough. So I live in Awahu and I know
of through the locals and through the local scuttle but
and people here, if you come to Hawaii and talk
to the locals here and Kaylu on the windward side,
I'll tell you that we know where Colsey Gabord comes from.
It's something called the Science of Identity Foundation, and it's
like Harry Krishna. They were so crazy that that Harry
(08:10):
Krishna's kicked them out. And they have this gurus named
Chris Butler, although he goes with this long Guru something
or other name now. And the sect that she is
affiliated with is anti gay, stream, anti Muslim, which sort
of shows why she's willing to reach out to almost
anybody who's killing Muslims and Stream obedience. You know, there's
(08:32):
really concern that is she loyal to Chris Butler and
her Hindu Hari Krishna offshoot sect, or is she is
she loyal to the Constitution? And it's unfortunately maybe not
a rhetorical question.
Speaker 1 (08:45):
Famously, when she was in Syria after she saw Asad,
she was taken by her minders to go see where
the Russians and the Syrians had bombed civilians and a
famous as she was talking to a bunch of children,
and these children whose families and many of their parents
have been killed and the bombing, were explaining what they'd
been through. And she looked at them and said, I
don't know if I believe you. How can you prove
(09:06):
that this wasn't Isis that did this? And her minder
just almost wanted to explode to say, Isis doesn't have airplanes, right,
they don't have an air force. It's in the Russia.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
And when Russian television haul's her Russia's girlfriend, our adversary
says that she's their Gael freaking take them at their word.
That that makes me more than Leary.
Speaker 1 (09:30):
Culture really matters in our world. You've heard us say
that before that culture is defined by mission, and culture
is really important in an organization. And for example, when
we describe the culture that's different between the CIA and
the FBI, we say that the FBA are cops and
we're robbers, and so we work together, but it's often
difficult because we have a very different way of looking
at the world. But when she's coming in and some
(09:51):
of the other people in the Trump administrations and saying
they won't take background checks, they won't let the FBI
or others do investigations in background checks, oh my goodness,
that's failing leadership one on one, because your entire population
of people who work for you have intrusive background checks,
and they have polygraphs, and they have to report all
your bank money and all the things you own, and
(10:13):
you have to do this every year. You have to
report on every foreigner you meet if you happen to
be dating for and you have to report all those days.
And she's going to come in and say, I don't
need a background check, And that's just crazy.
Speaker 3 (10:24):
And that's true of any culture, right anyone can understand
when everyone has to take a pay cut and you
find out the CEO got a big stock option that
that doesn't go over very well.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
So there's a law called the Pierce Blackledge Doctrine, and
it prohibits the US government from punishing a defendant for
exercising their legal rights right so in your First Amendment
right to assemble or to express an opinion. And close
to Tulca Gambert is also I think we need to
discuss the elephant in the room, Cash Mattel, as well,
because FBI also in a lot of ways more dangerous
(10:56):
because internally it's law enforcement and its intelligence collect and
Cash Prattel famously has said that he is. He has
a list and he's published in his book of people
he's coming for now back to CIA. Among that is
former CIA director right, Gina Hasbell, and current CIA director.
Speaker 1 (11:17):
Ray FBI director right.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
And so this is without any evidence or anything. He's
telegraphing vindictive prosecutions, which is illegal in the United States,
saying he's coming after them, and it doesn't matter if
there's evidence or not. He says, we'll do it civilly,
we'll do it criminally. And I think for most Americans,
CIA and the intelligence community is important, but almost more
(11:39):
important is rule of law and what they're going to
do about what Trump calls these enemies within and how
our bureau brothers are going to respond to demands that
they for the first time when American history, or certainly
since the nineteen fifties sixties, that the FBI is going
to go after select political and I think that's if.
(12:00):
A bigger question is how law enforcement and intelligence will
work together to either not do that or are there
enough Quizzlings out there who will come forward and say, yeah,
I'll do it.
Speaker 1 (12:10):
These are very powerful organizations and if they're turned against
the American public, it really can be very dangerous.
Speaker 3 (12:15):
The other thing that's been on my mind, this is
not the funniest episode we've ever done. You talked in
an earlier episode about how much of the intelligence that
is essential to our national security comes from allied powers
and whether without a background check. I think, just based
on her own utterances, I don't think I would risk
(12:36):
my life to share information or even risk a sources
life or whatever, knowing that Tulsa Gabbert might know who
gave it to them and who gave it to CIA.
So can you talk about that, like the chilling effect
on collaboration with other nations, with other spy services.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
Yeah, Foreign partners are going to hesitate to share their
most precious secrets with us, and not just because they
think that the leader Tulsea Gabbert or even the president
might not be trustworthy. That's certainly a real problem. But
if these guys get their way, they talk about destroying
these organizations, about putting their own people in these positions.
They're talking about taking all the senior people in the
FBI and CIA and make them take loyalty tests or
(13:13):
pushing them out. Foreign partners are not going to work
with people who aren't professionals but are the tool of
one political party or another. In fact, the CIA has
benefited for years and recruited many a spy who was
disgusted by the corruption and cronyism in their own societies.
So essentially, if we're creating this problem for ourselves, we're
hurting ourselves in two ways. Our partners aren't going to
(13:35):
share with us, and people might actually be able to
recruit American spies to steal things from inside our places.
Speaker 3 (13:41):
And when you're recruiting an agent, you're making a very
long term commitment. Right You're not saying, hey, trust me,
I will do everything in my power for the next
three and a half years to keep you safe. And
then all bets are off right, Like there's an I
assume implied. I don't know how explicit you have to
be saying it doesn't matter the president is, doesn't matter
(14:01):
who controls Congress.
Speaker 2 (14:03):
We've got you, I'll keep you alive. Period.
Speaker 1 (14:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:06):
There's no trauma after that. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
Yeah. And so recruiting and running spies inside the halls
of places in Moscow or Beijing or Tehran, it's not
an amateur's game. And it takes years and years. And
that's another thing about the culture. The CIA and the
intelligenmuti is hierarchical, like the defense department. So you're a privator,
you're a colonel, you're a general, and those things matter,
and it takes years to get from one to the next.
(14:29):
When somebody comes in who's never done any of those
things in that most senior position ahead was a very
low level position, all of a sudden, now they're in
charge of all of these people who put in time, experience,
often in hard places, and now this person is the
boss just because they have political connections. That creates another
sort of cultural friction that's going to be it's going
to be very difficult on allies.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
Famously, in twenty sixteen, George Papadopolos got drunk in London
with the I Commission, the Ambassador, the Australian Ambassador to
Great Britain. George Papadopolis was on Trump's national security team
when he was running for president as an advisor, and
he got drunk and he told him in great detail
(15:14):
that he knows, through a Russian connection because he's talking
to Russian intelligence during an intermediary, that the Russians have
got the goods on the Democratic National Committee. They stolen
the emails and these are the emails that they stole
that both the GRU and the SBR fancy Bear and cozy.
So the Australians came forward to the FBI and said, hey,
(15:35):
not for nothing, but we got this guy saying that
the Russians have stolen Democratic National Committee email and the
FBI goes, oh my god, because they knew they had,
So how did George Poppadopolis know this? This then opens
up whole Russia Russia Russia quote unquote hoax. This is
what kicked it off. And then Papadopolis does the right thing.
(15:56):
He lies to the FBI leads his Facebook accounts that
are incriminating, and he destroys his cell phone so that
the FBI can't check on what he was saying. And
so this and not the Steel dossier is what kicked
off the whole What is the relationship between Russian intelligence
and Trump World through Papadopoulos. I think this time around,
(16:18):
the Australians would be sold, just keep your house shut,
Let the Russians do whatever they want to The Americans,
I think what's going to save us, if anything, and
what I tell myself is their incompetence. If they are
so incompetent and so corrupt and so unable to carry
through cash, Hotel Tulsi, Gabbert Hags, all these guys they
get confirmed. I think what's only going to save us
(16:40):
is bureaucratic sloth and their inability to actually do the
shit that they say they do.
Speaker 1 (16:47):
Also, I wonder populists traditionally often make up enemies to attack, institutions,
to attack to get power, right, But now they're in power.
These are their institutions, right, So now destroying the institutions
that they rely on doesn't make as much sense now.
In the past, obviously they were mad about the Russia
investigations in Hunter Biden's laptop and all those kind of things,
(17:08):
and that's because they were running for election and they
wanted to use those as handy attacks against their political rivals. Well,
now those things don't matter anymore. They're not running for election.
They're in power. They should want these institutions to work
effectively for them, So they should put their loyal people
in charge. So that does it feels comfortable he's got
people in charge, but they shouldn't look to destroy things further,
(17:29):
Like Bannon has said, we're going to destroy the administrative state.
Now that may not be the truth. They may actually
believe these things. They may believe that there's terrible people
working against the president there and they need to be
destroyed and all these other kind of things. And if
that's true, that really is dangerous. But perhaps they'll come
around and realize, hey, like why are we destroying this
thing that we rely on. There's going to be crisis,
(17:50):
there's going to be international things that conceivably the administrations
are going to want strong military and a strong counterintelligence
service and a strong intelligence service.
Speaker 3 (17:58):
So I wanted to end on a funny note, and
that John, you really found the funniest possible note that
the entire Trump administration will come in on January twentieth,
and by January twenty third, they'll be like, you know what,
maybe we should just be super competent professionals who run
this thing.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
Really well, let's keep the institution put weaponize them.
Speaker 4 (18:16):
All right, we're going to get right back into that,
but first let's hear this, and we're back with Mission implausible.
Speaker 2 (18:28):
So may you live in interesting times? Is that a
Yiddish curse? Is that a Chinese curse? Who's responsible for that?
Speaker 3 (18:35):
I have heard Chinese, I've never heard it in the
Yiddish context. And there's a lot of conspiracy theories about
US Jews. One thing I can say is if there's
a Yiddish saying, I've heard it. So do you think
President Biden should just pardon the enemy's list? And I
want to make clear you to our enemies, you're on
the enemy's list.
Speaker 1 (18:55):
So this is a.
Speaker 5 (18:55):
Very hard self you and John, Yes, you know I
wouldn't take it because my understanding is the pardon is
you have to admit your guilt before you get the
and we haven't done anything wrong.
Speaker 3 (19:06):
You haven't done this specific thing wrong.
Speaker 1 (19:08):
Yeah, that's true. That's true.
Speaker 3 (19:10):
I'm sure you've done plenty wrong. I feel fairly confident
about that, But I don't know.
Speaker 1 (19:15):
And the issue of pardons, I don't have a great
take on that, Like that seems to me. When we
are an intelligence we were focused on collecting the best
intelligence we could for our policymakers, but we didn't get
into policy ourselves. We didn't try to advise things that
should be having. This seems to be very partisan political things.
And there's a whole Justice Department, FBI checks stuff behind
(19:38):
the whole pardon thing, and I just don't know enough
to say yes, no, should they. We've gotten into this
game where both sides are like thinking the other sides
up to illegal stuff, and they're going to protect their side,
and it just seems skeazy and I just as soon
stay away from it.
Speaker 2 (19:52):
No one's above the law, and I think giving pardons,
especially to relatives, it simply shows that there's one set
of justice for them and another set of justice for
the restless. So when President Trump, then President Trump hardened
Jared Kushner's father who was charged with sixteen tax evasion charges,
(20:13):
and then he was also charged and found guilty and
pled guilty to making a sex tape about his own
brother in law. He lured his own brother in law
into a tryst with a prostitute, paid her twenty five
thousand dollars, filmed it, and tried to blackmail his brother
in law not to testify against him, and pled guilty
to that. Trump pardoned him and has just named him
(20:36):
ambassador to France. I think that's wrong, and I think
it's also I'm sorry, Hunter Barden. I think it's wrong
that he gets a pardon. Oh, and then he gave
the film to the guy's.
Speaker 6 (20:45):
Wife, his mother, his sister. That's right, but he got
pardoned for that. And I don't see that as any
versus Hunter Biden. But I don't think either of them
should have been pardoned.
Speaker 3 (20:56):
Agreed. I think it's you can understand as a dad,
but we're not president.
Speaker 2 (21:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (21:01):
I couldn't agree. More so if Tulsea Gabbard becomes d
and I, would you expect a lot of CIA senior
brass officers to quit? And for that matter, would you
expect agents to say, we get work with you anymore?
We're too afraid.
Speaker 1 (21:19):
In terms of people leaving. I saw that just recently,
the Attorney General gave a talk to the Justice Farm
people encouraging them to stay. The country needs experience, professionals
and a lot of these jobs. Now, like I mentioned before,
like if they truly are going to try to destroy
these organizations and put just rank partisan people with no
experience into these kinds of jobs, lots of people are
(21:40):
going to leave. But it remains to be seen. Some
of these things that people say a cash hotel, I'm
going to go in and I'm going to first day
close the FBI and send everybody else. That's just those
are not realistic things. And oftentimes in the past politicians
have said things that came in and once they realize
what they have and that these people are professionals and
they work for them, things change. So I think there
be people who are at retirement age that we're planning
(22:03):
to stay. A number of them will try to leave
and others will try to stay. But I do think
if the incompetence and the real sort of disdain for
the institutions they run continues, you're going to see not
as much people leaving, but a lot of more leaking.
It's gonna be very interesting to be reading the newspaper
over the next couple of years.
Speaker 2 (22:22):
I think people who followed through on threats like that,
I'm going to defund the police, right. This is the
FBI in this case, and the DOJ. It's people like
pole pot In, like maw Right. They just shut down governments.
It didn't work out well for them. So I don't
think cash Hotel is actually going to follow through on this,
but you can still cause a lot of destruction. I
think a lot of people just go into internal exile
(22:43):
and just try to hang out for four years. I'm
just really proud that I got Smoot Hawley, Senator reads
smooth into a show, right. I've been wanting to do
that forever.
Speaker 7 (22:58):
Mission Implausible produced by Adam Davidson, Jerry O'shay, John Cipher,
and Jonathan Stern. The associate producer is Rachel Harner. Mission
Implausible is a production of Honorable Mention and Abominable pictures
for iHeart Podcasts.
Hosts And Creators
Adam Davidson
John Sipher
Jerry O'Shea
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