November 25, 2025 • 21 mins
From March of 2025 - The Best Of Buck Brief
Why is USAID suddenly shredding classified documents in what looks like a last-minute deep state cover-up? Buck Sexton is joined by Mike Benz, Executive Director of the Foundation for Freedom Online, to break down the shocking revelations about USAID’s hidden role in global power plays, funding terrorist groups, and manipulating foreign governments—all while evading oversight. Benz reveals how USAID has been used as a covert intelligence agency, funneling billions to questionable organizations, bypassing presidential approval, and even playing a role in global regime changes. He also exposes the agency’s deep connections to U.S. universities, the media, and unions, raising major questions about taxpayer-funded influence operations.
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Speaker 1 (00:11):
You're listening to the Buck Sexton Show podcast, make sure
you subscribe to the podcast on the iHeartRadio Act or
wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Why is USAID destroying classified documents in some last act
of swamp Hubris? What the heck is going on here?
Our friend Mike Benz joins us now. He is the
executor executive director of the Foundation for Freedom Online. Mike,
what's going on at USA? Well, there's a lot that's
(00:41):
going on USAID, not as much maybe these days as before.
But why would they be destroying classified documents in some
flurry at the end?
Speaker 1 (00:52):
Well, it's a very strange series of events that popped off.
I initially described it as a five alarm fire because
it was a very unusual email that Erica Carr, the
Executive Secretary, sent out, which said that there was going
to be an all day group event yesterday to shred
and burn all the remaining documents in the classified safes
(01:15):
and the personnel records. Erica Carr is someone who joined
USAID during the Obama administration, was named the executive secretary
the first week of the Biden administration, and it's been
kept over by Trump. One after I amplified this issue.
A bunch of folks at USAID who I know and trust,
(01:36):
called me and said, actually, this is normal practice. This
is where we at the politicals who remain here, because
remember they had fourteen thousand employees, it's found to about
two hundred and ninety and picked ones. They said that
this is a relatively standard practice. But the language in
the email was pretty extreme. It was to shred all
(01:56):
documents and to reserve the burn bags for when the
shredder gets overloaded or overheated, effectively that this was a
sort of fire sale. Now, it sort of makes sense
from the perspective that USAID is in the process of
shutting down. They're leaving the building at some point, these
documents need to be handled and the process has to
(02:19):
happen at some point for discarding paper records. But Mike,
I still have lingering concerns about the speed at which
this is being done. You know, it's not usual that
you have this kind of fire sale, you know, going
out of business event where you need to reserve the
burn bags for when the shredder is being used too heavily.
(02:42):
And part of the reassurance that was given to me
by people who are at the agency, is that there
are digital duplicates of the vast majority of these documents,
and that it's rare for USAID to be the originating
agency when it comes to classification. That is, USAID primarily
(03:03):
handles classified documents that come from the State Department or
the CIA or the Department of Defense. But very rare
is not very It's not very comforting to me because
Samantha Power was probably the most crooked USAID administrator in
USAID history, and that's saying a lot. You know, John
Bolton was handed the USAD hand Grenade Award when he
(03:26):
ran policy and budget there in the nineteen eighties, but
Samantha Power fully weaponized that agency. And to me, it's
highly possible that Samantha Power could have classified a significant
number of USAID documents, put them in these safes and
then simply you don't have duplicates at the other agencies
if they weren't shared around, and something like this would
(03:47):
be a way to legally dispose of those documents they
if a digital duplicate was not provided. And also digital
duplicates can have flaws. We saw this with the FBI
during Operation Crossfire Hurricane. They deleted the emails and text
messages off of the special agent phones once John Durham
(04:09):
launched his investigator. We saw this with the corrupted files
at the FBI over the J six Pipe bomber. It's
quite possible that something like that could happen in this
case as well. This is sort of like the electronic
voting machine issue. If you don't have the paper records,
you don't necessarily have a faithful duplicate. Last thing is,
we saw this again with the Whitey Bulger case when
(04:29):
the FBI went to prosecute him and it turned out
that the digital file they produced in court was not
actually the full and correct document on Whitey Bulger that
was kept in the classified safes at the FBI. There
was a paper document that had a whole additional section
attached at the end that completely inverted the history that
(04:49):
was presented originally in court. So, given that there are
going to be no new USAD documents produced, I don't
understand why these can't be moved safely to the national
archives and why there needs to be this rush to
delete it all.
Speaker 2 (05:04):
At the end, the fight for life is ongoing day
in and day out, and on the front lines of
it Preborn. Preborn has a network of clinics across the
nation who have a very simple but profoundly important mission,
which is to save the lives of as many tiny
babies as they possibly can. And they do this by
putting their clinics in areas of the country where abortion
(05:25):
rates are highest and offering women an alternative to abortion
with love and care and support. Now, this process usually
starts with an ultrasound, because once mom sees that tiny heartbeat,
she knows the choice here has to be for life.
But Preborn needs your help in this mission. They get
no government funding. All you have to do, and what
(05:46):
you can do right now to help them is go
to preborn dot com slash buck that's preborn dot com.
Slash Buck considered donating twenty eight dollars a month to
be a sponsor for Preborn's incredibly important network saving lives
day in and day out. What do you think is
the most troubling stuff that we have found out now
(06:08):
that Trump has taken the helm and Elon and Doge
have gone in there. What is the stuff that everybody
should remember about what USAID was really doing versus what
the public maybe thought it was doing.
Speaker 1 (06:21):
Well there's so many categories of it, with the public
thinks that it was doing was humanitarian assistance to foreign countries,
and the people who are one level above that in
terms of knowledgeability will appreciate that there's some soft power
role in that. For example, we supply humanitarian assistance to
foreign countries and in return we get influence over the
(06:41):
local governments or the local political movements, or the local
judges or the local indigenous communities. But in fact, there's
really a USA Truman show that where virtually every function
in modern society, whether that's the media, the social media companies,
whether that's the unions, whether that's politicians, judges, prosecutors, and
(07:04):
even terrorist groups and narco cartels drug cartels are all
on USA payroll around the world and even here at home,
which is something that should never be allowed to happen.
There is this domestic foreign firewall that was systematically breached
by USAID, with USAID not only paying media companies but
(07:25):
also paying foundations that do a significant amount of domestic work,
and they're getting tens or sometimes hundreds of millions of
dollars from the USAID to be weaponized against domestic opponents.
But there are still many layers of unexplored terrain here,
given that USAID is effectively an intelligence agency with no
(07:46):
restrictions on it. See, when the CIA does a covert action,
they have to get a presidential finding for it, meaning
there needs to be a written sign off from the
US President to do any act of any covert action.
At the CIA, USAID does not have to go through
with that procedure, which means that USAID is effectively the
clearinghouse when there's a rogue element at CIA or DoD
(08:09):
or state who doesn't think the President will approve, or
if the President doesn't want to be seen as approving.
There's a layer of clause of my ability by simply
calling it democracy promotion at USAID. And I think the
terrorism aspect of this is really significant, given that Syria
is so much in the news these days. You had
a USA funded, you know, terrorist rebel faction effectively take
(08:34):
control of the country. Muhammad al Jalani, the leader of
HTS which overthrew that that government back back in December
of last year. There was a ten million dollar bounty
out for his head under the Trump One State Department.
They then received financial assistance from the USAID and toppled
the government of Syria. They're now the de facto head
(08:57):
of Syria going around executing thousands or tens of thousands
of ethnic minority groups in the country. It's going to
cause huge schisms throughout the Middle East as that situation develops.
And USAID has its fingerprints all over those terrorist groups,
just as they have it all over the Taliban, just
as they have it all over terrorist groups in Africa,
(09:19):
in the Sahel region, as well as in Central Asia
and in Pakistan and particularly in the Western Hemisphere.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
Well, when you say, when you say fingerprints on those groups,
so do we know that there was USAID money meeting
our money but through the PRISM or the cutout of
USAID going directly to those groups.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
Yes, this was actually testified by USAID administrator Folks in
Congress just three weeks ago. There's a Middle East Monitor
and other reporting outlets have also disclosed hundreds of millions
of dollars. I believe it's in the billions of dollars.
Because if the CIA wants to support those groups, isis
(10:01):
al Qaeda the alnose for front all these designated terrorist groups,
and the president doesn't want to do it, then they
they can simp. We launder it through USAID and it'll
take the form of logistical funds or shelter in housing
or public health and all these things get laundered through USAI.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
That's an end run on material support to terrorism concerns, right, basically,
that's what that means.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
Oh in fact, US the Inspector General report from a
month ago even showed how there was a fatal flaw
in the contracting system at USAID where grantees, if you're
getting a grant from USAID, you need to go through
with the standard O fact reporting this sort of anti
terrorism financing set of laws, but contractors are not subject
(10:49):
to that. So effectively, contractors can be used to completely
end run the sort of money laundering obligations that banks
are subject to, that anyone who uses the International Swift
system is subject to. And so all this is done
to prop up these paramilitary terrorist proxy groups who, as
Hillary Clinton said Jake Sullivan in the wikileague's email from
(11:13):
twenty eleven when they said Al Qaeda is on our
side in Syria, and now an al Qaeda offshoot now
runs the government of Syria, and you see USAID giving
them something like one hundred and twenty two million dollars
in financing. You can understand how these dirty beds of
state craft are outsourced to USAID.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
What do you think is going to be the next
nasty log that Trump and Doge kick over to see
what's underneath it within the government apparatus.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
Well, there's a few. I'll tell you a couple off
the top that I'd like to see immediately. One of
them is a review of all the USAID, State Department, Pentagon,
National Down for Democracy, and Department of Labor funds that
are given to unions. This is a really nasty element
of rent a riot behavior that has been a part
(12:07):
of the CI toolkit for now fifty some years. When
we switched to a small wars model at the Pentagon,
we transitioned from primarily using tanks and fighter jets to
using street movements, the so called color revolutions or people
powered revolutions, and unions played the major role in being
the muscle on the ground when it comes to surrounding
(12:29):
the Parliament building and violently ousting a president from office,
as was done in the twenty fourteen my don Ku
in Ukraine, as was done by the Biden deministration to
the government of Bangladesh at the end of last year,
as was planned to be done if Trump won the
twenty twenty election by a group called the Transition Integrity
(12:51):
Project run by senior military and intelligence officials here in
the US, and the unions played the dominant role in
net in, particularly the AFLCIO, which is the largest union
here in the US. It used to be known as
the afl CIA by the New Left in the nineteen
sixties and seventies because the revealed pattern of partnerships with
(13:13):
the Cias the aflcio's international branch, it has something like
seventy five international branches and countries around the world and
was a constant partner of the CIA when they were
fomenting street revolution protests abroad and would come to be
weaponized against the anti Vietnam War Left in the nineteen seventies.
(13:35):
They play a major role in statecraft today. The AFLCIO
headquarters has basically parked just a few blocks from the
White House. They had an agreement with the Chamber of
Commerce to shut down the country of Trump won the
electoral college back in twenty twenty. They received tens of
millions of dollars from the National Dowment for Democracy's Solidarity
Center and from the Department of Labour's Bureau of International Affairs.
(13:59):
We saw this, for example, in Brazil, there's this lurking
issue around internet censorship, with all these different countries balkanizing
their Internet to block X. We saw Brazil ban X.
We see the European Union pursuing these well, the unions
all backed Lula in Brazil. Lula was from the Workers
Party and unions, whereas primary backers and I've personally found
(14:23):
tens of millions of dollars flowing directly from the Biden
Department of Labor to these very union groups in Brazil
backing Lula. Now that's just in Brazil, and I think
I've so far found around thirty million dollars just from
the Department of Labor. Now, the afl CIO is also
at war with Elon Musk and Tesla because of the
(14:46):
refusal of Elon to unionize the Tesla workforce. I have
no doubt that the afl CIO has a hand in
these protests against against the Tesla car dealerships, and that's
being coordinated by these groups like Indivisible and move On
and these reed Hoffmann funded groups that all have deep,
deep connections to the unions. And frankly, if it's I
(15:08):
have no problem. I'm not pro or anti union. But
when you're subsidized by US taxpayer dollars and we're paying
to be protested against, that's a course of a different color.
And I think there's a major scandal there just waiting
beneath the surface to be unbound.
Speaker 2 (15:25):
What do you think happens now that it seems about
I don't know. Thirty forty percent of the Department of
Education's workforce has been told pack up your stuff. How
does this play out?
Speaker 1 (15:38):
I think it's fascinating. I mean the role of the
Department of Education, I think has largely been a pernicious one.
We have not advanced up the piece of score scale.
We have not advanced since the Department of Education's creation.
I think US education has only fallen farther and farther
behind other countries once with far less GDP and a
(16:02):
far lower standard of living. I'm not convinced that there's
a correlation between more Department of Education activity or funding
and how higher education in the US. But what you
do see is a very corrupt nexus between the universities
and their government funding, whether that's from the Department of
Education or whether that's from USAID or DARPA or NIH
(16:24):
the government is there is no free market in the
education system, which makes it very difficult for new entrants
with better ideas or more innovative educational techniques to be
able to make inroads into the market because you can't
compete against these massive endowments and the effectively the government
cartel over education. And so I think breaking that cartel
(16:48):
is an important, an important component in creating a genuine
free market in the education space. We saw, for example,
and I've reported some of this recently because we see
this major issue popping off right now with Columbia and
these other major universities. Well, Columbia is a you know,
there's a funny story around that the group that administers
(17:11):
the Pulitzer Prize, the same Poltzer Prize awarded to the
Russiagate fraudsters in twenty seventeen. They were given a Pulitzer
for essentially fraudulent work. The Pulitzer was awarded to Reuters
in twenty twenty four, Reuters, who got three hundred million
dollars in government contracts and grants during the Biden administration
(17:31):
three hundred million dollars. It's just a huge amount. And
the Pulitzer was given to them for their write up
on misconduct at all of Elon Musk's companies X Neuralink,
SpaceX Tesla. It was basically just a just a hit
piece on Elon Musk and everything he does, and that's
Colombia effectively through the Pulitzer Foundation awarded that prize to
(17:55):
Colombia also is deeply in bed with the Blob, the
foreign policy establishment for all this USAID work, sovietology, the
Russian studies, and area studies, African studies, Asian studies, Latin
American studies, all these common majors at universities really came
(18:17):
from Columbia back in the nineteen fifties when the architect
of this setup, this guy Philip Mosley, who worked closely
with the CIA previously was a high ranking State Department
official before he came to Columbia and set up this
nexus and basically joined these area studies groups at the
universities with the CIA and the State Department in the
(18:39):
Defense Department. By having the major university centers, institutes and
departments serve as an interlocutor role for statecraft. So they
would bring over Russian emigres, they would gather intelligence in
foreign countries, they do the exchange programs and seed people
over there, all while coordinating with the CIA on all
(18:59):
of that. Philip Moseley at a CI security clearance, he
personally consulted Alan Dulles, the head of the CIA at
the time. You now see this in basically every major university,
and the endowments make bank off of all of this.
There's a really sick example from the nineteen nineties when
the Harvard Endowment was together with the George Soros Investment
(19:22):
Fund I think it was the Quantum Fund, were given
special access to the selloff of the Russian state assets
when they transitioned from communism to capitalism. In the nineteen nineties,
Harvard set up something called the Harvard Institute for International Development,
which was given about half a billion dollars by the
US Agency for International Development USAID to be the primary,
(19:45):
effectively USAID contractor to privatize those state assets. And then
the endowment fund of the university got first pick at
all those privatized assets. And so if Harvard was able
to secure hundreds of millions or low billions of dollars
for their endowment through that process. I wonder is Columbia
(20:06):
doing the same thing. Is the University of Pennsylvania, which
housed the pen Biden Center and Amy Gutman, who was
the head of it when I was there back in
the early two thousands and became Joe Biden's ambassador to
Germany during the time we blew up the nord Stream pipeline.
Is the University of Pennsylvania endowment in on that gig.
There needs to be a full review not just of
the Department of Education funding or USAID funding, but really
(20:31):
the role of these endowments and being hitched to the
star of the blob and profiting themselves, pocketing it for themselves.
It doesn't trickle down to the students in terms of
diminished tuition. These are powerhouse businesses, not really five oh
one C three's. They have fifty billion dollars in the
Harvard Endowment, and I think much of that is ill
(20:52):
gotten gains from partnerships with the CIA, the State Department,
the Defense Department, and as Trump World is reorganizing this
entire structure, I think that needs to be looked at closely.
Speaker 2 (21:03):
Mike Ben's fascinating stuff. Let's have you back again soon
because we're a time for now. But the Foundation for
Freedom Online is your organization. People should go check out
what you're doing and really interesting. Please come back and
we'll talk to you more about all the dismantling of
the deep state that's going on. People need to know
about this.
Speaker 1 (21:20):
Thank you, Buck
You're listening to the Buck Sexton Show podcast, make sure
you subscribe to the podcast on the iHeartRadio Act or
wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Why is USAID destroying classified documents in some last act
of swamp Hubris? What the heck is going on here?
Our friend Mike Benz joins us now. He is the
executor executive director of the Foundation for Freedom Online. Mike,
what's going on at USA? Well, there's a lot that's
(00:41):
going on USAID, not as much maybe these days as before.
But why would they be destroying classified documents in some
flurry at the end?
Speaker 1 (00:52):
Well, it's a very strange series of events that popped off.
I initially described it as a five alarm fire because
it was a very unusual email that Erica Carr, the
Executive Secretary, sent out, which said that there was going
to be an all day group event yesterday to shred
and burn all the remaining documents in the classified safes
(01:15):
and the personnel records. Erica Carr is someone who joined
USAID during the Obama administration, was named the executive secretary
the first week of the Biden administration, and it's been
kept over by Trump. One after I amplified this issue.
A bunch of folks at USAID who I know and trust,
(01:36):
called me and said, actually, this is normal practice. This
is where we at the politicals who remain here, because
remember they had fourteen thousand employees, it's found to about
two hundred and ninety and picked ones. They said that
this is a relatively standard practice. But the language in
the email was pretty extreme. It was to shred all
(01:56):
documents and to reserve the burn bags for when the
shredder gets overloaded or overheated, effectively that this was a
sort of fire sale. Now, it sort of makes sense
from the perspective that USAID is in the process of
shutting down. They're leaving the building at some point, these
documents need to be handled and the process has to
(02:19):
happen at some point for discarding paper records. But Mike,
I still have lingering concerns about the speed at which
this is being done. You know, it's not usual that
you have this kind of fire sale, you know, going
out of business event where you need to reserve the
burn bags for when the shredder is being used too heavily.
(02:42):
And part of the reassurance that was given to me
by people who are at the agency, is that there
are digital duplicates of the vast majority of these documents,
and that it's rare for USAID to be the originating
agency when it comes to classification. That is, USAID primarily
(03:03):
handles classified documents that come from the State Department or
the CIA or the Department of Defense. But very rare
is not very It's not very comforting to me because
Samantha Power was probably the most crooked USAID administrator in
USAID history, and that's saying a lot. You know, John
Bolton was handed the USAD hand Grenade Award when he
(03:26):
ran policy and budget there in the nineteen eighties, but
Samantha Power fully weaponized that agency. And to me, it's
highly possible that Samantha Power could have classified a significant
number of USAID documents, put them in these safes and
then simply you don't have duplicates at the other agencies
if they weren't shared around, and something like this would
(03:47):
be a way to legally dispose of those documents they
if a digital duplicate was not provided. And also digital
duplicates can have flaws. We saw this with the FBI
during Operation Crossfire Hurricane. They deleted the emails and text
messages off of the special agent phones once John Durham
(04:09):
launched his investigator. We saw this with the corrupted files
at the FBI over the J six Pipe bomber. It's
quite possible that something like that could happen in this
case as well. This is sort of like the electronic
voting machine issue. If you don't have the paper records,
you don't necessarily have a faithful duplicate. Last thing is,
we saw this again with the Whitey Bulger case when
(04:29):
the FBI went to prosecute him and it turned out
that the digital file they produced in court was not
actually the full and correct document on Whitey Bulger that
was kept in the classified safes at the FBI. There
was a paper document that had a whole additional section
attached at the end that completely inverted the history that
(04:49):
was presented originally in court. So, given that there are
going to be no new USAD documents produced, I don't
understand why these can't be moved safely to the national
archives and why there needs to be this rush to
delete it all.
Speaker 2 (05:04):
At the end, the fight for life is ongoing day
in and day out, and on the front lines of
it Preborn. Preborn has a network of clinics across the
nation who have a very simple but profoundly important mission,
which is to save the lives of as many tiny
babies as they possibly can. And they do this by
putting their clinics in areas of the country where abortion
(05:25):
rates are highest and offering women an alternative to abortion
with love and care and support. Now, this process usually
starts with an ultrasound, because once mom sees that tiny heartbeat,
she knows the choice here has to be for life.
But Preborn needs your help in this mission. They get
no government funding. All you have to do, and what
(05:46):
you can do right now to help them is go
to preborn dot com slash buck that's preborn dot com.
Slash Buck considered donating twenty eight dollars a month to
be a sponsor for Preborn's incredibly important network saving lives
day in and day out. What do you think is
the most troubling stuff that we have found out now
(06:08):
that Trump has taken the helm and Elon and Doge
have gone in there. What is the stuff that everybody
should remember about what USAID was really doing versus what
the public maybe thought it was doing.
Speaker 1 (06:21):
Well there's so many categories of it, with the public
thinks that it was doing was humanitarian assistance to foreign countries,
and the people who are one level above that in
terms of knowledgeability will appreciate that there's some soft power
role in that. For example, we supply humanitarian assistance to
foreign countries and in return we get influence over the
(06:41):
local governments or the local political movements, or the local
judges or the local indigenous communities. But in fact, there's
really a USA Truman show that where virtually every function
in modern society, whether that's the media, the social media companies,
whether that's the unions, whether that's politicians, judges, prosecutors, and
(07:04):
even terrorist groups and narco cartels drug cartels are all
on USA payroll around the world and even here at home,
which is something that should never be allowed to happen.
There is this domestic foreign firewall that was systematically breached
by USAID, with USAID not only paying media companies but
(07:25):
also paying foundations that do a significant amount of domestic work,
and they're getting tens or sometimes hundreds of millions of
dollars from the USAID to be weaponized against domestic opponents.
But there are still many layers of unexplored terrain here,
given that USAID is effectively an intelligence agency with no
(07:46):
restrictions on it. See, when the CIA does a covert action,
they have to get a presidential finding for it, meaning
there needs to be a written sign off from the
US President to do any act of any covert action.
At the CIA, USAID does not have to go through
with that procedure, which means that USAID is effectively the
clearinghouse when there's a rogue element at CIA or DoD
(08:09):
or state who doesn't think the President will approve, or
if the President doesn't want to be seen as approving.
There's a layer of clause of my ability by simply
calling it democracy promotion at USAID. And I think the
terrorism aspect of this is really significant, given that Syria
is so much in the news these days. You had
a USA funded, you know, terrorist rebel faction effectively take
(08:34):
control of the country. Muhammad al Jalani, the leader of
HTS which overthrew that that government back back in December
of last year. There was a ten million dollar bounty
out for his head under the Trump One State Department.
They then received financial assistance from the USAID and toppled
the government of Syria. They're now the de facto head
(08:57):
of Syria going around executing thousands or tens of thousands
of ethnic minority groups in the country. It's going to
cause huge schisms throughout the Middle East as that situation develops.
And USAID has its fingerprints all over those terrorist groups,
just as they have it all over the Taliban, just
as they have it all over terrorist groups in Africa,
(09:19):
in the Sahel region, as well as in Central Asia
and in Pakistan and particularly in the Western Hemisphere.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
Well, when you say, when you say fingerprints on those groups,
so do we know that there was USAID money meeting
our money but through the PRISM or the cutout of
USAID going directly to those groups.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
Yes, this was actually testified by USAID administrator Folks in
Congress just three weeks ago. There's a Middle East Monitor
and other reporting outlets have also disclosed hundreds of millions
of dollars. I believe it's in the billions of dollars.
Because if the CIA wants to support those groups, isis
(10:01):
al Qaeda the alnose for front all these designated terrorist groups,
and the president doesn't want to do it, then they
they can simp. We launder it through USAID and it'll
take the form of logistical funds or shelter in housing
or public health and all these things get laundered through USAI.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
That's an end run on material support to terrorism concerns, right, basically,
that's what that means.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
Oh in fact, US the Inspector General report from a
month ago even showed how there was a fatal flaw
in the contracting system at USAID where grantees, if you're
getting a grant from USAID, you need to go through
with the standard O fact reporting this sort of anti
terrorism financing set of laws, but contractors are not subject
(10:49):
to that. So effectively, contractors can be used to completely
end run the sort of money laundering obligations that banks
are subject to, that anyone who uses the International Swift
system is subject to. And so all this is done
to prop up these paramilitary terrorist proxy groups who, as
Hillary Clinton said Jake Sullivan in the wikileague's email from
(11:13):
twenty eleven when they said Al Qaeda is on our
side in Syria, and now an al Qaeda offshoot now
runs the government of Syria, and you see USAID giving
them something like one hundred and twenty two million dollars
in financing. You can understand how these dirty beds of
state craft are outsourced to USAID.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
What do you think is going to be the next
nasty log that Trump and Doge kick over to see
what's underneath it within the government apparatus.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
Well, there's a few. I'll tell you a couple off
the top that I'd like to see immediately. One of
them is a review of all the USAID, State Department, Pentagon,
National Down for Democracy, and Department of Labor funds that
are given to unions. This is a really nasty element
of rent a riot behavior that has been a part
(12:07):
of the CI toolkit for now fifty some years. When
we switched to a small wars model at the Pentagon,
we transitioned from primarily using tanks and fighter jets to
using street movements, the so called color revolutions or people
powered revolutions, and unions played the major role in being
the muscle on the ground when it comes to surrounding
(12:29):
the Parliament building and violently ousting a president from office,
as was done in the twenty fourteen my don Ku
in Ukraine, as was done by the Biden deministration to
the government of Bangladesh at the end of last year,
as was planned to be done if Trump won the
twenty twenty election by a group called the Transition Integrity
(12:51):
Project run by senior military and intelligence officials here in
the US, and the unions played the dominant role in
net in, particularly the AFLCIO, which is the largest union
here in the US. It used to be known as
the afl CIA by the New Left in the nineteen
sixties and seventies because the revealed pattern of partnerships with
(13:13):
the Cias the aflcio's international branch, it has something like
seventy five international branches and countries around the world and
was a constant partner of the CIA when they were
fomenting street revolution protests abroad and would come to be
weaponized against the anti Vietnam War Left in the nineteen seventies.
(13:35):
They play a major role in statecraft today. The AFLCIO
headquarters has basically parked just a few blocks from the
White House. They had an agreement with the Chamber of
Commerce to shut down the country of Trump won the
electoral college back in twenty twenty. They received tens of
millions of dollars from the National Dowment for Democracy's Solidarity
Center and from the Department of Labour's Bureau of International Affairs.
(13:59):
We saw this, for example, in Brazil, there's this lurking
issue around internet censorship, with all these different countries balkanizing
their Internet to block X. We saw Brazil ban X.
We see the European Union pursuing these well, the unions
all backed Lula in Brazil. Lula was from the Workers
Party and unions, whereas primary backers and I've personally found
(14:23):
tens of millions of dollars flowing directly from the Biden
Department of Labor to these very union groups in Brazil
backing Lula. Now that's just in Brazil, and I think
I've so far found around thirty million dollars just from
the Department of Labor. Now, the afl CIO is also
at war with Elon Musk and Tesla because of the
(14:46):
refusal of Elon to unionize the Tesla workforce. I have
no doubt that the afl CIO has a hand in
these protests against against the Tesla car dealerships, and that's
being coordinated by these groups like Indivisible and move On
and these reed Hoffmann funded groups that all have deep,
deep connections to the unions. And frankly, if it's I
(15:08):
have no problem. I'm not pro or anti union. But
when you're subsidized by US taxpayer dollars and we're paying
to be protested against, that's a course of a different color.
And I think there's a major scandal there just waiting
beneath the surface to be unbound.
Speaker 2 (15:25):
What do you think happens now that it seems about
I don't know. Thirty forty percent of the Department of
Education's workforce has been told pack up your stuff. How
does this play out?
Speaker 1 (15:38):
I think it's fascinating. I mean the role of the
Department of Education, I think has largely been a pernicious one.
We have not advanced up the piece of score scale.
We have not advanced since the Department of Education's creation.
I think US education has only fallen farther and farther
behind other countries once with far less GDP and a
(16:02):
far lower standard of living. I'm not convinced that there's
a correlation between more Department of Education activity or funding
and how higher education in the US. But what you
do see is a very corrupt nexus between the universities
and their government funding, whether that's from the Department of
Education or whether that's from USAID or DARPA or NIH
(16:24):
the government is there is no free market in the
education system, which makes it very difficult for new entrants
with better ideas or more innovative educational techniques to be
able to make inroads into the market because you can't
compete against these massive endowments and the effectively the government
cartel over education. And so I think breaking that cartel
(16:48):
is an important, an important component in creating a genuine
free market in the education space. We saw, for example,
and I've reported some of this recently because we see
this major issue popping off right now with Columbia and
these other major universities. Well, Columbia is a you know,
there's a funny story around that the group that administers
(17:11):
the Pulitzer Prize, the same Poltzer Prize awarded to the
Russiagate fraudsters in twenty seventeen. They were given a Pulitzer
for essentially fraudulent work. The Pulitzer was awarded to Reuters
in twenty twenty four, Reuters, who got three hundred million
dollars in government contracts and grants during the Biden administration
(17:31):
three hundred million dollars. It's just a huge amount. And
the Pulitzer was given to them for their write up
on misconduct at all of Elon Musk's companies X Neuralink,
SpaceX Tesla. It was basically just a just a hit
piece on Elon Musk and everything he does, and that's
Colombia effectively through the Pulitzer Foundation awarded that prize to
(17:55):
Colombia also is deeply in bed with the Blob, the
foreign policy establishment for all this USAID work, sovietology, the
Russian studies, and area studies, African studies, Asian studies, Latin
American studies, all these common majors at universities really came
(18:17):
from Columbia back in the nineteen fifties when the architect
of this setup, this guy Philip Mosley, who worked closely
with the CIA previously was a high ranking State Department
official before he came to Columbia and set up this
nexus and basically joined these area studies groups at the
universities with the CIA and the State Department in the
(18:39):
Defense Department. By having the major university centers, institutes and
departments serve as an interlocutor role for statecraft. So they
would bring over Russian emigres, they would gather intelligence in
foreign countries, they do the exchange programs and seed people
over there, all while coordinating with the CIA on all
(18:59):
of that. Philip Moseley at a CI security clearance, he
personally consulted Alan Dulles, the head of the CIA at
the time. You now see this in basically every major university,
and the endowments make bank off of all of this.
There's a really sick example from the nineteen nineties when
the Harvard Endowment was together with the George Soros Investment
(19:22):
Fund I think it was the Quantum Fund, were given
special access to the selloff of the Russian state assets
when they transitioned from communism to capitalism. In the nineteen nineties,
Harvard set up something called the Harvard Institute for International Development,
which was given about half a billion dollars by the
US Agency for International Development USAID to be the primary,
(19:45):
effectively USAID contractor to privatize those state assets. And then
the endowment fund of the university got first pick at
all those privatized assets. And so if Harvard was able
to secure hundreds of millions or low billions of dollars
for their endowment through that process. I wonder is Columbia
(20:06):
doing the same thing. Is the University of Pennsylvania, which
housed the pen Biden Center and Amy Gutman, who was
the head of it when I was there back in
the early two thousands and became Joe Biden's ambassador to
Germany during the time we blew up the nord Stream pipeline.
Is the University of Pennsylvania endowment in on that gig.
There needs to be a full review not just of
the Department of Education funding or USAID funding, but really
(20:31):
the role of these endowments and being hitched to the
star of the blob and profiting themselves, pocketing it for themselves.
It doesn't trickle down to the students in terms of
diminished tuition. These are powerhouse businesses, not really five oh
one C three's. They have fifty billion dollars in the
Harvard Endowment, and I think much of that is ill
(20:52):
gotten gains from partnerships with the CIA, the State Department,
the Defense Department, and as Trump World is reorganizing this
entire structure, I think that needs to be looked at closely.
Speaker 2 (21:03):
Mike Ben's fascinating stuff. Let's have you back again soon
because we're a time for now. But the Foundation for
Freedom Online is your organization. People should go check out
what you're doing and really interesting. Please come back and
we'll talk to you more about all the dismantling of
the deep state that's going on. People need to know
about this.
Speaker 1 (21:20):
Thank you, Buck
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Clay Travis
Buck Sexton
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