April 23, 2025 • 61 mins
What is the difference between bravery and courage? How can members of the military maintain ethical and legal standards in the era of Trump? Malcolm Nance speaks with Commander Bobby Jones of Veterans for Responsible Leadership about values of honor, courage, and commitment and what it means to embody leadership in the face of fear. They also discuss a lack of courage amongst Congress members like Senator Murkowski and the potential danger of an authoritarian shift in the U.S.
Malcolm's "Burn Bag" of the week is Seb Gorka.
If you enjoyed this podcast, be sure to leave a review or share it with a friend!
Follow Commander Bobby Jones on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/navshad42/?hl=en
Follow Malcolm Nanceon X: https://x.com/MalcolmNance
Follow Malcolm Nance on BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/malcolmnance.bsky.social
Follow Malcolm on Substack: https://malcolmnance.substack.com/ and please subscribe to this channel for more updates.
Malcolm's "Burn Bag" of the week is Seb Gorka.
If you enjoyed this podcast, be sure to leave a review or share it with a friend!
Follow Commander Bobby Jones on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/navshad42/?hl=en
Follow Malcolm Nanceon X: https://x.com/MalcolmNance
Follow Malcolm Nance on BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/malcolmnance.bsky.social
Follow Malcolm on Substack: https://malcolmnance.substack.com/ and please subscribe to this channel for more updates.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Being brave means you have no fear. You go into
that burning building. You're just wired that way. Have encourage
means you're scared, but you do your damn job anyway.
I watched Senator Murkowski from Alaska this week said she's scared.
Lad Out said it and said other members of Congress
are scared and listen understandable. If you aren't, then move
(00:20):
the hell out the way and let someone else step
to the forefront. Who's ready to lead when leadership is necessary. See,
everybody wants to be a leader until this time, do
some leadership shit.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
This is black Man Spy.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
Welcome to this week's episode of Black Man Spy. I'm
Malcolm Nance. I'm really glad that you're coming to this
particular edition of Black Man Spy, which I've been doing
on and off for a couple of years now. But
because this is the new and improved version, it's going
to be heard now on Apple, Spotify and wherever your
(01:04):
fine podcasts are heard. And for a long while it
was a video cast and we're doing that too, so
it can be seen on YouTube and also duplicated on substack,
where you can generally find.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
Me these days. So for those of you who have
not heard Black Man's Spy before.
Speaker 3 (01:21):
It is a podcast that is about, how can I
put it, matters of intelligence, geopolitics, and of course espionage.
Now I'm actually speaking about things that are happening in
this world from the perspective of an intelligence practitioner of
(01:43):
you know, well over three decades at this point, as
well as a former TV commentator on MSNBC, which is
where a lot of you know me from, especially you
people who keep stopping me in the airport, and of
course as a New York Times bestselling author who has
written ten books and put four or five of them
on the top ten of the New York Times.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
So I know a little bit of something.
Speaker 3 (02:06):
But more importantly, the things that I do know, I
like to impart and share with the audience. And when
I was at MSNBC, people would say, you're sort of
the spy splainer in chief over there, giving us a
deeper perspective on things, but from a perspective that you
generally are never going to get. And that is from
(02:30):
not just a person who is an intelligence practitioner, but
from an African American man who is in the intelligence
community and the armed forces for a very very long time.
That being said, I'd like to introduce the topic of
this week's episode.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
The United States is.
Speaker 3 (02:50):
Sort of going through a cataclysm with the new presidency.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
For those of you who know, I wrote.
Speaker 3 (02:57):
Four books about the relationship between Dot Trump, his presidency,
Vladimir Putin, and Russian intelligence. The first was written before
the twenty sixteen election. I managed to bang out in
five weeks, called the Plot to Hack America, which was
subtitled how Putin and his spies were Putin and WikiLeaks
(03:18):
tried to steal the twenty sixteen election. There are a
lot of people that think that I should change that subtitle.
Then my next book came out, the Plot to Destroy Democracy,
How Putin and his spies were damaging America and dismantling
the West. Then the Plot to Betray America in my
final book, which is they want to kill Americans, the malicious,
(03:43):
terrorist and deranged ideology of the Trump Insurgency, and that
actually was written before January sixth incident, the riots that
took over the United States Capitol and intended to overthrow
an election.
Speaker 1 (03:59):
But as for.
Speaker 3 (03:59):
Those of you who know me, my entire being is
based on my family's military history, The first Nancers joined
the armed forces of the United States in April of
eighteen sixty four when two young slaves ran away from
slavery joined a group called the First Alabama Volunteers, which
(04:20):
was a slave formed unit that allied themselves with the
Union Army, and it was transformed into the one eleventh
US Colored Troops. At that time, my great great grand
uncle transferred from the US Army to the US Navy,
and at the end of the Civil War transferred back
into the Army and became a Buffalo soldier and the
(04:42):
ninth Cavalry, where he died in service and is still
buried at Fort Leavenworth. From the Spanish American ward to
World War One to World War II, Korea, Vietnam, the
War on Terrorism, and just recently my niece retired from
the US Navy. The Nances have an unbroken century and
(05:02):
a half service to the United States, and there is
one thing we cherish above all else, and that is
our honor. Not just our honor, because our honor is
very important, it's important to me, but it's also our
honor within the context that we are people that came
from an oppressed side, from former slaves who understood that
(05:27):
the American Experiment was a promise to us in our
future generations that things would always progress, no matter how
hard it was for whoever it was that was in
the armed forces at that time. My father went through
Jim Crow. He was born in the Jim Crow era.
(05:47):
He was in World War Two as a fifteen year
old who lied and was on troop ships and amphibious
transports in the Pacific theater of the war.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
And you know, even though.
Speaker 3 (05:59):
He was assaulted and insulted, he loved serving the people
of the United States. And more importantly, he instilled in
me the love of the Constitution, that promise, that document
which binds us all into the belief that America is
(06:20):
the best experiment ever done in the history of mankind,
so long as we obey and maintain the Constitution as
it was written and as it has been interpreted through
its amendments. The problem is, we are now in a
(06:41):
crisis of honor. We are in a world where courage
of the people who were elected to government is gone,
and we are seeing no commitment to defending everything that
the American Experiment has been since the.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
Day that it was thought up.
Speaker 3 (07:04):
We have people today using government to take us back
seventy years to a more racist, openly sexist, and violent
America in which the laws mean nothing, and that we
are being ruled by people who no longer believe in
(07:24):
the values of the First American Revolution.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
I have said it before and I will say it again.
Speaker 3 (07:31):
America is on the cusp of a second revolution, but
not in the way that the right wing extremists think.
I believe that America is about to rise up to
have a second American Revolution to save the values of
the First American Revolution, and that is a massive people
power movement. But first we need to discuss what is
(07:56):
our honor? What is our commitment to this nation? Do
we have the courage to stand up and do what's necessary?
Those are the Navy values, the army values of duty
to your people, duty to.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
The nation, honor and country.
Speaker 3 (08:19):
Are those values more important than the political party that
you voted for.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
And many people who.
Speaker 3 (08:26):
Served in the armed forces and raised their hands and
swore an oath to protect and defend the Constitution are
now swearing oaths and paying allegiance to one man who
is acting like a king. We are coming to a
crisis where it may be that the armed forces and
(08:47):
other branches of government may.
Speaker 2 (08:49):
Have to make a decision about who they.
Speaker 3 (08:51):
Are going to maintain their oath to. Will it be
to the Constitution or will it be to the man
I call mad King Donald the last. The last time
we had this crisis, the person was King George the Third,
(09:12):
and he thought that America was a place which he
ruled through fiat, through whom and through a compliant parliament.
And the American people cast that off and created that
more perfect union, even though it was full of flaws,
even though women, blacks as slaves, and mixed race people
(09:37):
and natives were not included. But every one of them
understood the promise of that Enlightenment era document was that
it could get better and it would not go backwards.
I'm afraid we're going backwards, and I'm more afraid the
Constitution is a document that is.
Speaker 2 (09:57):
Being used as a fig for a fascist, authoritarian government.
Speaker 3 (10:04):
With that, I'd like to introduce my next guest, a
distinguished Navy officer and leader Commander Bobby Jones for Veterans.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
For Responsible Leadership.
Speaker 3 (10:17):
So I'd like you to meet our first guest of
the new iteration of the Black Man Spy Podcast as
well as vidcast. We've had bunches of guests, but to
tell you the truth, you know, we haven't had a
real sit down interview in a while because everything was
(10:38):
not so much Black Man Spy podcast but our emergency
podcasts because of all the craziness that was going on
in politics. So our first guest is Commander Bobby Jones,
the president CEO of Veterans for Responsible Leadership, former Navy commander,
(10:59):
a wealth of knowledge, more importantly, a Naval Academy graduate,
and someone that I would desperately wanted to have this
conversation with. And the conversation point today, Commander, if I
could just you know, call you that, keep calling you that,
even though you know I'm an old, salty, old chief.
I got my coffee cup in my hand. Listen to
(11:20):
he you, commander, And today we need to have a
talk about the core values of the Armed Forces of
the United States and how in these trying times do
we get our young sailors, guardians, marines, and and people
(11:41):
who are in the intelligence community and the you know,
the armed forces, even civil servants working for the armed forces.
There is right now a crisis in the belief in
what we are serving for in whom we work for
and who we serve. And I think it's very very important.
(12:02):
It's really important to me, you know, as senior enlisted,
as a deck plate leader, to know that, you know,
to say that my officers above us are not going
to order us to do anything crazy and who we
actually serve as the people of the United States and
the Constitution. But now I have people coming to me saying, hey,
(12:26):
you know, we may get orders which we think are unlawful.
We may get orders which are unsavory. How do we
go about as leaders? You being a you know, an
officer who has commanded units in vessels, and me as
a deck plate leader, as a senior enlisted who really
(12:48):
has to be that median, you know, the midway point
between a crazy set of orders that comes from above
and the young men and women that may have to
execute that.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
What do you think? Wow?
Speaker 1 (13:02):
So, first, thanks for having me on, Malcolm. I'm been
a fan for years. First thing that I would tell
people is I break this question into two major sections.
Number one, the oath that all of us take right,
that's the individual shaping of how we go about doing
(13:24):
our business. And then number two, for me being you
and I being sailors the United States Navy's model of honor, courage, commitment.
So let's take these two separate but unifying things apart
for a second. Let's start with the oath. You enlisted
into the United States Navy, and you took an oath uh,
(13:49):
and everybody's very familiar with against you know, the defending
Constitution against all enemies born in domestic But for the enlisted,
there's the clause that says to obey the orders of
the President and the office is appointed above me right
given it many times. For re enlistment, the officers take
a similar but not duplicate oath where you support and
(14:12):
defend the Constitution of the United States, and that you
take the obligation freely, without purpose of evasion, etc. You
will see that there is no clause, no clause that
talks to basically obandon orders of the president. And that
is on purpose. The Officer Corps is designed to be
(14:34):
the last sanity check and fail safe against a tyrannical
commander in chief. And I say that not lightly right.
I say that because with the way things are happening
right now, the various people who are worried, and there's
very good reason to be worried. At the end of
(14:55):
the day, you remember your oath. The officer corps has
to re member that they pledged allegiance to the Constitution
and not the individual. The commander in chief will change. Heck,
I want to say, therese what six or seven that
I served under while I was in you know, active
duty forces, and the policies changed. But until this current administration,
(15:20):
we all understood that there was a floor that neither
Republican or Democrats caught would cross when it comes to
their actions. They're overt actions. And it's so powerful that
that that that floor that it is what makes America
a superpower. Everybody talks about our military is the reason
we're a superpower. No, our military being welcomed in over
(15:43):
one hundred and eighty countries and able to reach anywhere
on the planet is what makes us a superpower. And
so the reason we're allowed in all these countries is
because those countries know that we have a floor basis
of ethics and of integrity, of how we will operate ourselves.
We will hold ourselves accountable, and we will recognize human rights,
(16:05):
international law, et cetera. That is why the Soviet Union
back in its say they did not have as many
bases as many countries. They weren't as welcome. We were right.
And so when I focus on the oath and the
power of it, it's not just you're willing to give
your life for it. Officers, you have a dual level
(16:27):
of commitment here. You have to commit to leading your
people ethically the right way and then executing missions the
right way in a legal sense. And that's why it's
not a coincidence that the first thing President Trump did
on his second entry into the office was gut the
jag corps, the judge advocate generals, the military lawyers that
(16:50):
provide that check. That's the first section. The second section.
Each branch of service has their different models. You know,
the Marines, the simple idella, it's always faithful, you know
all this stuff. But in my biased opinion, the United
States Navy has the best model of its service, and
(17:10):
that is honor, courage, commitment, commit Those three things. Those
three things roll up everything it takes to not just
be an effective service member an effective sailor, but it
talks about what it means to be a good American citizen.
And sometimes we kind of forget that we pull our
(17:31):
sailors on the rings, our soldiers, our airmen, our guardsmen,
you know, from society, and then we put them into
this environment of high pressure to reintroduce them to what
it means to be an actual American patriot. And that
thing that happens that they focus on is sacrifice. It's
not about you, it's not about me. It's about honor, courage, commitment.
(17:55):
So let's just real quick talk about this. When we
talk about honor, honor and integrity are completely linked. You
can't have one without the other. Doing what you say,
saying what you do, and doing it with the best
in mind, doing it the right way, doing it. Meaning yes,
(18:16):
if I want to deport somebody, I still go through
due process. I have to prove that they should be
removed and then do it legally and humanly, not something
that I'm trying to scare people or just I'm trying
to send a message, or I just yank someone off
the street and ship off to another country. That's not
how this works, right, the courage aspect, and this is
(18:39):
where I think everything is breaking down in American society
right now. United States Congress is supposed to provide oversight
for the chief executive, being the president, they are addicating
their responsibility. They lack the courage. I'm not saying they
lack the bravery. I'm saying they lack the courage. The
difference between being brave and make greats is very. Being
(19:00):
brave means you have no fear. You go into that
burning building. You're just wired that way. Have encouraged means
you're scared, but you do your damn job anyway, right, right.
And the history of the United States and Navy, the
ones that have been Middle of honor recipients, the ones
that turned the tides of World War Two when everybody
said everything was lost, they were scared shitless, right, average
(19:24):
people doing their job.
Speaker 3 (19:27):
I had this discussion yesterday on another podcast, and somebody says, oh,
you know, you're really courageous.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
I go, no, I'm not. I'm not courageous, all right.
Speaker 3 (19:36):
I know when I have to do my job, right,
I know when things have to be done. You know,
there were a couple of times in my career where
things got a little harry, you know, and in Ukraine
where things were hairy all the time, being bombarded and everything,
and I found that, you know, the moment there is
(19:58):
an actual moment that you can put your finger on
when you realize stuff.
Speaker 2 (20:04):
Must be done.
Speaker 3 (20:05):
Shit must be done, It must be done now, It
must be done definitively. It must be done in such
a way that if I don't do what, others will
be harmed. Right, and you get to this point I
call the ah fuck it point right.
Speaker 2 (20:22):
And you get up and you do it right.
Speaker 3 (20:25):
You know, it's not it's scary, you know, or you
know it's it's it's it's unhealthy, or it's it's it's
it's it's purpose cannot be seen at that moment except
to you and those who you may impact over time.
Courage is observed also, I've I've personally watched when I
was at the Pentagon on nine to eleven. You know,
(20:47):
my one of my personal heroes is at that time
was an Army lieutenant colonel I thought was a doctor,
was actually in fact a combat nurse.
Speaker 4 (20:56):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (20:56):
And I saw her just, you know.
Speaker 3 (20:59):
Create the first tree right at the d ring, you know,
right at the crash site. And I was like, God, damn,
somebody here's more than brave because you know, you know
how I knew when I looked down and saw that
she had been running around a shrapnel filled field with
bear stocking. She had kicked her yeels off to go
(21:22):
find victims. And I was like, I've heard about this.
They talk about people being courageous, and I'm.
Speaker 2 (21:31):
Literally watching it go back and forth.
Speaker 3 (21:34):
By the way, nominated her for the Silver Star, but
they said it wasn't a combat action. I think she
got like the some National Defense Meritorious Medal and the
Art and the Army the Soldier's Medal. But it was
just ridiculous. But I understand what you're saying, and that
comes back to the politics of the day. People are
not courageous.
Speaker 1 (21:55):
Right, right, And it's kind of funny you say that.
I watched Senator Murkowski from the last this week said
she's scared. Lad Out said it and said other members
of Congress are scared and listen. Understandable if you are
then moved the hell out the way and let someone
else step to the forefront. Who's ready to lead when
leadership is necessary? See, everybody wants to be a leader
(22:18):
until it's time to do some leadership shit. I will
believe this. The crisis is on. Oh, I don't want
no parts of that, right, And so I find it hilarious.
You have members of Congress that have been there thirty forty,
fifty years, fifty years who love being in front of
(22:41):
the mic every day MSNBC, Fox, CNN. They love being
there in the forefront. But when it's time to do
your constitutionally designed authorities, you don't want to do it.
And so that leads me to that last part of honor, courage, Commitment,
commit meant come ament is not a part time job.
(23:02):
It is not a switch to turn on and turn off.
It is a dedicated lifestyle, a lifestyle that is not
about you. Sorry, sorry, because you have to find something
else in you that motivates you to go beyond what
you would even do for yourself. I elect my leaders.
(23:25):
I vote for my leaders, whether it's at the local
county commissioner level, all the way up to the White House.
And I asked myself this fundamental question, are they willing
to put it all on the line for me and
my family, for me in my community. You know when
I got commissioned, when I graduated from from from a
naval academy, I wanted to be a marine, but I
(23:46):
had a football injury that stopped me from going Marine.
So I went into the Navy, and my uncle, who
was a gunnery sergeant in the Marine Corps, he says
something to me. I've never forgoten He goes, you know
why we salute officers while senior n CEOs, while we
while we salute y'all. Said no, no, no, no, I
don't why, he said, because when push comes to shove,
(24:08):
the two things I know you're supposed to get done.
You're supposed to finish the mission. And if anybody comes
home in a body bag, it's going to be you first,
not your people. Right, that's the difference between being that leader.
And he goes, as you become a and listen and
become senior enlisted, you sort of assume that role too,
where the officer and the senior enlisted are supposed to
(24:28):
be the ones in the forefront, and they're gone first
before they're junior enlisted. He goes, that's why we salute you.
That's why we tolerate your ignorance sometimes and your stupidity,
because we know at the day you're supposed to be
that dude. And I never forgot it, right, I never
forgot it. And as I look now, if that is
(24:49):
the standard for our armed forces. And mind you, people,
we are military that submits to civilian authority. That is
why you've never seen a military COUNI the States and
all these other countries happened because when George Washington turned
his sword over after the end of the Revolutionary War
in Annapolis, Maryland and rolled all the way back to
Mount Vernon, He's created a separation between the military and
(25:12):
leadership of the country. And I think it's one of
the most underrated historical events in American history. We separated
the two right, and by separating the two, we now
have to find civilian leadership that understands the sacrifice that
it takes to actually be a leader. And listen, We've
(25:33):
had forty six forty five different people sit in that
White House, well, forty five sit in the White House,
but have the position right, And I never have questioned
whether or not the person in that position put the
country before them. They may have different philosophies on how
they think they're supposed to be. But for the first
(25:53):
time in my life, and I think the first time
in America's history, we can legitimately question the current occupants
of sixteen hundred Pennsylvania Avenue puts the country before his
own self interest. And that is a dangerous question to
ask when you were also the commander in chief of
the most lethal military of the world's ever seen.
Speaker 2 (26:14):
Trust me.
Speaker 3 (26:15):
I have written four New York Times bestseller top ten
best sellers about this bizarre relationship between Donald Trump and
Russia's Vladimir Putin in Russian intelligence.
Speaker 2 (26:30):
And you know Vladimir Putin. I learned. I went to his.
Speaker 3 (26:33):
Office where he worked at when he was a junior
spy in Dresden, and I learned some things from the
scholars in Germany who were reading his Stasi file, who
were finding his KGB and you know files there, and
they said, this guy loved the human intelligence game.
Speaker 2 (26:52):
He loved being a manipulator. They say.
Speaker 3 (26:56):
In most meetings where the Stasi were flipping people from
the West, you know, some young kid comes over from
West Germany to East Germany, falls in love with some
chick that they put in.
Speaker 2 (27:06):
Front of him.
Speaker 3 (27:08):
Putin would sit there and he knew that by being
silent and the kid knowing that guy's the KGB guy
and we're doing all the talking, that he was there too.
He knew his mere presence was manipulation. Right, and often yeah,
I want to say, I think you hit it on
(27:29):
the head, Putin. You know how they say some people
are when they play poker. Some people play the cards.
Other people play play the player. That's he plays a person.
He doesn't play the cards right, And because he can
play the person, what he basically did was make sure
(27:49):
that the person that he put in this position in
the United States, helped to put in the position, was
the most playable person.
Speaker 1 (27:55):
He could find. Oh yeah, right, But the cards that
you've been talking about have been policies that have gone
through the Cold War, post Cold blah blah blah. But
for the first time, Putin has someone where he can
play the direct player, and that has changed everything.
Speaker 3 (28:10):
You know, people often ask me, and I've written about
this and at least two books. You know, they and
I speak almost daily now with people that know Donald
Trump personally, Michael Cohen, Lev Parnas, Mary Trump, all these
people that really know him right and see him, and
(28:31):
they almost to a person say Trump is easily manipulable.
But he has this relationship with Putin, which is a
relationship he never had with his father, you know, with
you know, you know, and other people and that he saw.
He sees real power. He sees a power player that
(28:53):
is like a mafia figure, you know, at the state
craft level.
Speaker 2 (29:00):
Admires it deeply.
Speaker 3 (29:01):
He admires the way Kim Jong Unn all the people
clapp in Unison right, and how people will soldiers and
generals will come up to him and get it at
his feet and cry in Unison a thousands soldiers. And
Trump loves this. His ego must have this. And you know,
the typical acronym we use for recruitment is mice right, mice, money, ideology,
(29:30):
coercion or co option, right, ego and excitement. And with
Donald Trump, it's always been about money. First, he sees
billions upon billions upon billions of oligarch money. He has
a spiesed wet dream and to a human manipulator like Putin,
who loved.
Speaker 2 (29:49):
Being a KGV officer.
Speaker 3 (29:52):
When he was thirty, he went to a KGB open
house and said, how can I become a KGB officer?
Speaker 2 (29:58):
And they were like, go to law school, come back,
and he did.
Speaker 3 (30:02):
He did, and then he became a junior officer and
went overseas, went to Germany, and then when he at
the end of the Cold War, he went back to
Saint Petersburg and used those exact same techniques against.
Speaker 2 (30:13):
The Saint Petersburg mafia.
Speaker 3 (30:15):
He helps liquidate the entire city of Saint Petersburg and
made billions upon billions of dollars.
Speaker 2 (30:22):
Off of that.
Speaker 3 (30:23):
But he manipulated individuals. Like you said, he plays the player,
not the game. And it's important for people to understand
Donald Trump thinks he's playing the game when in fact,
the whole freaking table understands that he is an easily
swayed character. So when he thought in twenty twelve when
(30:47):
he went to Miss Universe that he was going to
pitch the one billion dollar Trump Hotel in Moscow, and
he actually said this to somebody, I intend to offer
Vladimir Putin ex KGB officer Vladimir Putin the top two
penthouse floors of Trump Tower, Moscow, and that will He
(31:11):
was like, Wow, I get the top two floors from
Donald Trump and a lifetime passed to the I'm not
joking Ivanka Spa that was supposed to be in the building,
That's what its name was.
Speaker 5 (31:23):
And you're like, this man liquidated a Soviet city. He's
worth possibly two hundred or three hundred billion dollars.
Speaker 3 (31:34):
You cannot manipulate him. He is trained in the art
of manipulation. He got rid of every Russian oligarch and
stole their assets and turned all the rest of them
into psychophants.
Speaker 2 (31:47):
And he has four thousand.
Speaker 3 (31:49):
Atomic bombs offering him a penthouse. He gave Putin the
knowledge base of understanding how this man is a and
morons are easily manipulable.
Speaker 2 (32:03):
And I have this joke.
Speaker 3 (32:04):
This goes back to the spy world where Putin goes,
bring me this guy's dosier, and they don't bring in
a dosier, they bring in three wheelbarrows. An intelligence collection
that started in nineteen seventy seven when he married Ivana
Trump and sued and went after Ivana Trump, who is
(32:24):
a Czech citizen that was part of Czechoslovakia People's Republic
right back in the old days. And her father was
the spy for Czech intelligence. And how do we know
this Czech television today Prague has all the actual physical
records from Czech intelligence. For ten years they reported on
(32:45):
this guy. Then in eighty seven he went to Moscow
and they reported on him then, and they have been
manipulating him with the promise and the lure of money
and hot Eastern or Eastern European chicks. He married a
Slovenian which was part of the yukas Love Federation, which
was a communist country. And he just has this fascination
(33:06):
with the East and that they have that they must
be suckers who they can get money out of. They,
on the other hand, have three decades decades of reel
barrows of collection against him, and goo, this guy, Let's
offer him money and.
Speaker 2 (33:22):
He'll come along. He'll do anything we want.
Speaker 3 (33:24):
And we have this phrase meta narrative framing or reflexive
control where they will. The Russians did not adopt Donald
Trump's worldview. They built Donald Trump's worldview of Russia around him,
to where now Russia's worldview is Donald Trump's worldview, and
(33:45):
what is good for Russia is good for the potential
money pool of Donald Trump, and so that you have
money ideology because now he is aligned with their ideology.
I don't think they have ever coerced him. I don't
think there's a ppe tape, even though I've met you know,
you know, you know, I've talked to people about this.
(34:08):
I think he wasn't coerced. I think he's co opted.
They just brought him on board. Donald, you are one
of us. We love you, no bullshit, kiss me. And
then the last one is eat both ego and excitement
that he in nineteen eighty seven, he took out a
full page ad in the New York Times wanting to
(34:30):
be the peace treaty negotiator for the start to ballistic
missile treaty treaties. And he said, make me the negotiator,
and he talked to people about winning the Nobel Prize
on this. The Russians know all of this, and they
manipulate them. So today here we are where you and
(34:51):
I people who have sworn an oath to protect and
defend the Constitution of the United States above all. I mean,
you know, I do just think I called the son
of Philadelphia red. I am a son of Philadelphia, all right.
I take this. I'm an originalist. I take this very
very seriously. I am steep in Philadelphia tea and anything
(35:13):
that crosses the it looks like you're gonna betray the
constitution line you get the full chief out of me.
So you know, but this cuts over to and what
I'd like to do is you know play this cut
of General Millie's statement a year ago, where he said,
we don't take an oath to a king, we don't
(35:35):
take an oath to a queen. We don't take an
oath to a dictator or even a wannabe dictator.
Speaker 4 (35:42):
We in uniform are unique. We are unique among the
world's armies. We are unique among the world's militaries. We
don't take an oath to a country. We don't take
an oath to a tribe. We don't take an oath
to a religion. We don't take an oath to a
king or queen, or to tyrant or a dictator.
Speaker 1 (36:07):
And we don't take an oath to a wanna be dictator.
Speaker 4 (36:09):
We don't take an oath to an individual. We take
an oath to the Constitution, and we take an oath
to the idea of it as America, and we're willing
to die to protect him.
Speaker 3 (36:22):
I live in upstate New York right now. I'm sorry, Philadelphia,
but very near me is Newburgh, New York. And this
is where, at the end of the American Revolution, because
people weren't getting paid, the army mustered all of its
senior officers in Newburgh. They were in Campden, Newburgh, and
(36:44):
at that time the Officers Corps was talking, maybe this
Congress Constitution thing is.
Speaker 2 (36:52):
That we're developing isn't so great. Why don't we just appoint.
Speaker 3 (36:56):
General Washington king and he can use this army and
take over. And Washington's speech at Newburgh, which is a
fascinating building because it's in this old brick building down there,
where he said, we.
Speaker 2 (37:11):
Didn't just fight this war.
Speaker 3 (37:15):
Just so that you could just point another king, and
I beseech you, I entreat you all to maintain your
loyalty to your oaths and the meaning of the sacrifice
of this war we just went through. And people say,
I know at West Point and other academies, they say,
Washington's speech at Newburgh may be the finest speech of
(37:37):
appealing to the loyalty of the armed forces of the
United States at a time of critical crisis. They weren't
getting paid, they were going to disroll, they were going
to take.
Speaker 2 (37:46):
Their rifles, go home and start rebellion again.
Speaker 1 (37:48):
Right.
Speaker 3 (37:50):
I have said this on air, and I'll say it again,
and we'll have a little discussion about that before we end.
Speaker 2 (37:57):
I think General Millie speaks, which.
Speaker 3 (38:02):
On who we take an oath to is second only
to George Washington's speech at Newbergh. I have watched a
lot of speeches in my time. MacArthur's speech, you know,
you know, after leaving the Philippines, you know, patents speeches
as he was coming back into Europe, you know, Dwight
(38:26):
Eisenhower's speech after the landings in Normandy, all stirring, stirring speeches.
Speaker 2 (38:33):
One of the ones I love the most, which.
Speaker 3 (38:34):
You might appreciate, was done by General schwartzkof as an
Army Navy commercial you know, called Character Incompetence, you know,
And I love that commercial. It's an army commercial, you know,
And and he's it's General schwartz Call's speech about.
Speaker 2 (38:55):
Where are the MacArthur's of today? Where are the patents
of today? Where are you know, the Eisenhowers of today?
Speaker 3 (39:03):
And he says, they exist, They're here, They're here in you.
But it requires two things to be a leader of
men and women today in the United States Armed Forces,
and that is character and competence. And to have character,
you must have the belief and love of duty, honor country.
(39:26):
And you must believe in you don't see it, but
around the ceiling of my room in gold letters is honor, courage,
and commitment in ten inch letters.
Speaker 2 (39:35):
All right, I bled the navy motto.
Speaker 3 (39:39):
I also believe in unity, navigation, and leadership, right, which
is the Navy Chief's philosophy. So it's important that we
believe that these people who believe in duty, honor, country
understand that your character defines you, yes, as a leader.
Speaker 6 (39:59):
You.
Speaker 3 (40:00):
I mean, the first moment I met you, I was like, man,
this is a freaking real leader. You know, you're You're
a Navy through it through. You're almost as much Navy
as me. But by the way, I have a dog
here named Jane. And my wife when when we got her, said, oh, Malcolm,
this this dog's.
Speaker 2 (40:19):
Name is Jane.
Speaker 1 (40:19):
I said, no, it's not.
Speaker 2 (40:21):
She says it's not.
Speaker 3 (40:22):
What is it?
Speaker 2 (40:22):
I go, it's Jane Paul Jones.
Speaker 3 (40:26):
Because I always said if I have a child, a girl,
I will name her Jane Paul Jones and make sure
that she goes to the Naval Academy so that at
some point there is an Admiral Jane Paul Jones. I
did not have a girl. I do have a beagle.
But more importantly, I have read an enormous amount about
(40:50):
about the qualities of leadership, and as a chief, I
took it very, very very seriously. I have joked that
I'm America's chief. I have blade handed people on television.
Speaker 2 (41:00):
You know.
Speaker 3 (41:01):
I maintain the dignity and the values of the chief's
mess even though I am long out of the Navy,
and I actually have to recalibrate chiefs around that come
out there and talk about bypassing Trump's competence, ignoring his character,
and it's like, and you expect people to follow him,
(41:24):
where does this prit us, commander? Where if an unlawful order,
a patently unlawful order comes to me as a chief,
you can be sure this is the first words out
of my mouth.
Speaker 2 (41:35):
I say this every time I'm on air.
Speaker 3 (41:38):
I will be god damned if I cross the Constitution
of the United States and you think you're gonna make
me do something that breaks the law, breaks my moral fiber,
and brings my sailor's honor into disrepute and my family's
honor one hundred and fifty two years honoring to disrepute.
Speaker 2 (41:59):
I will not do it right right, right?
Speaker 1 (42:03):
And that's what do you say?
Speaker 2 (42:05):
You're an officer in the.
Speaker 1 (42:09):
Yeah, and let me let me give you your viewers
some context. I'm an you know, tire Naval officer, wife,
Annapolis graduate Naval officer, brother, Air Force Academy graduate, Air
Force pilot. You know, grandfather Korean War vet. My wife's grandfather,
Tusky government. So we live, eat, and breathe this mentality, right,
This is not just oh, this is a fly by.
(42:30):
It's not an occupation. It's not a job it is
it is a lifestyle. It is a way that you
do business. You want to know why officers are held
to such a high center, to the point where what
they do in their quote off time will will get
them fired. It's because of what you're saying right there.
Because when orders are presented to them, they cannot turn
on the morality turn it off. They cannot turn on
(42:52):
an integrity turn off. But most importantly, the legality and
the method of how they execute orders, Matt. And that
starts with the orders they receive. If they get unlawful orders,
it is their duty to say, I will not comply.
This is unlawful, all right, and if that means sacrifice
(43:13):
in your career, unfortunately, that's the job. To quote Sean
Connery in the untouchables. That's the job, right when they
I'll never forget. During the first tour of the first
term for President Trump, they ask Stratcom actual, if the
President of the United States orders a preemptm nuclear strike
on North Korea, will you execute it?
Speaker 2 (43:34):
Track call.
Speaker 3 (43:34):
I'm looking around, like is this a real question now?
Speaker 1 (43:37):
But I said so, almost said no, and con was like, Okay,
this is before the poisoning of the well had really
taken effect. But he recognized that his moral and ethical
obligation to include international law as well as the mess law.
(44:00):
Said no, that is not the protocol, right. I remember
that moment so vividly because I was like, the fact
that we're even having to ask this question means things
are changing, right, Things are changing right. And now we're
almost a decade later, eight years later, and we're having
these questions come up. And now, when Congress asked members
(44:24):
of the cabinet to include the Secretary of Defense, these
very simple, phistorically slam dunk questions, they evaded like cockroaches
when the lights turn on. I was like, what are
we doing? What are we doing? And I'm not saying
this to scare Americans. I'm saying it to terrify Americans
(44:48):
because the only restraint and constraints on American military has
been America.
Speaker 2 (44:55):
Right.
Speaker 1 (44:55):
So what happens when the leadership says the hell with that,
do what I want. That's the fundamental problem. So it's
up to officers and senior you know, noncommissioned officers who
basically are the backbone of our American military. Is not
the officers, it's those guys, the chiefs, mess, the gunnies,
the sergeant first classes, they're the ones, you know, the
(45:17):
chief technical stargant. Those are the guys and girls that
have been the backbone of this for since seventeen seventy five. Yeah, absolutely,
and they're the ones who have to remind the officers
with that caliber, hey, hey, we ain't supposed to be
doing this, and it's up to the office, Like you're white,
We're not doing it. That's the job. So I would
love to you know, I got Annapolis classmates that are
(45:40):
still in they're old sixes now they're captains, are colonels
and maybe in the Marine Corps looking at making admiral
in general. And congratulations to them, but remember not just
your oath, but your ethical training that started all the
way back in the damn nineties that brought you to
this point. You have an obligation to your people, to
(46:02):
your unit, to the country, and most importantly to yourself
to do the right thing with the authority you've been given.
You have, you know how the native leadership trying. We
have authority, accountability and responsibility. Right. Everybody loves talking about
the authority, but the accountability and the responsibility is what
stirs the drink for our military, right and absolutely whose
(46:25):
officers to remember that moving forward?
Speaker 2 (46:27):
Yeah, you know, I have this this to close.
Speaker 3 (46:31):
I have this horrible feeling that at some point in
the next four years, we are going to see for
the first time, well maybe the second time, because there
was one in World War Two.
Speaker 2 (46:44):
A lawful utiny.
Speaker 3 (46:47):
Where soldiers sailors will be given an impossible task, right,
you know, I hark back to the Maylin massacre in
Vietnam where these guys are told, hey, just kill these
three four hundred civilians, and they were just like, load
them up, just start shooting, right, conscripts mainly people who
weren't given the moral code that we are now given,
(47:10):
you know.
Speaker 2 (47:10):
And the person who.
Speaker 3 (47:13):
Really lived up to their honor was the helicopter pilot
who landed his helicopter gunship between the civilians and the
massacurring soldiers right it got out, was like the fuck
you dolly, right, and they still let Lieutenant Kali off.
Speaker 2 (47:33):
Right. No one wanted to hold him accountable.
Speaker 3 (47:36):
And I'm afraid that at some point we're going to
have that, and I have this nightmare scenario. You know,
when I was in Ukraine, I had the rank of
a private, but I was essentially the you know, the
the the acting sergeant major of my battalion because I
was wore daddy. I was the old guy, and I
had the most experience. And I'm afraid that some chief
(47:58):
is going to have to is going to get some
ridiculous order. The war room's gonna go, okay, you know this,
the captain, We're gonna invade Greenland, and if any civilian
shoot at us, we're gonna shoot back using the twenty
five millimeter you know, while these Eskimo, these Inuits are
up there with thirty caliber you know, hunting rifles because
(48:18):
you're invading their country. And the first thing I could
just imagine is is that if I was chief, I'd
be like commander.
Speaker 2 (48:26):
A word you know or not mine.
Speaker 1 (48:32):
You know, it's even scary about that, Malcolm. The reason
why that and people all you're exaggerating. We watched over
sixteen hundred people storm the Capitol on January sixth, and
all of them got part. It's got part by the
same commander in chief. We have watched war criminals from
the g wide era, the global Termrism era be defended,
(48:54):
cases dropped, whatever under this commander in chief. Okay, So
don't sit there and tell me that we're exaggerating with
our concern. We have the evidence, we have the proof. Okay. Again,
they tried to burn the capital to the ground because
(49:15):
of lies dealing with the election. Okay, And now you're
telling me he's going to show some restraint or some judgment.
You know, when Bannon talks about he's going to have
a third term and he's being very coy on how
that's going to happen, make no mistake that the full
array of options are on the table to include violence.
Speaker 3 (49:39):
Tara Stepmeyer made a great comment the other day where
she said, do not underestimate the horrible imaginings.
Speaker 2 (49:47):
That you have that could occur here.
Speaker 3 (49:50):
It's all of the groundwork have been laid up for that,
and it's the members of our armed forces. And this
is where I'm really afraid. I'm afraid they're not going
to use the armed forces. They're gonna use, you know,
private security contractors. Eric Prince has been floated twenty five
billion dollars to actually create a hunter force in the
United States that's deputized.
Speaker 2 (50:09):
So people in the armed forces be of good cheer.
Speaker 3 (50:13):
There are good officers like Commander Jones, and then there's ruthless,
kick ass chiefs like myself, and I suspect there will
be even splits in the wardroom and the chiefs mess.
And the question is who will who will stand with
the Constitution and who will betray their oaths in real
(50:33):
time out of loyalty to an individual who's, as they
said in the Declaration of Independence, who's every act defines
a tyrant.
Speaker 1 (50:43):
Two things. I just want to end with number one
to remind people who Eric Prince is. He is the
guy that created Blackwater, that was so god dang out
of hotcarm that they were thrown out of a war.
Speaker 7 (50:55):
Zone, kicked out, kicked out of a war that matterally,
we were thrown out of the war zone in Afghanistan
and irection unbelievable.
Speaker 1 (51:06):
Right, and then go on to your final point. The
reason I focus on that commitment piece so much. The
oath that you take, the dedication to the Constitution, is
not something out of convenience. It's not something that you
uphold when it's convenient for you or you feel like
doing it, or the people in power you agree with.
Speaker 3 (51:26):
No.
Speaker 1 (51:27):
No, you execute it regardless, because that is the bedrock.
Speaker 2 (51:32):
Right.
Speaker 1 (51:33):
We have a thing going on here in Georgia April
twenty fifth where we have a veterans town hall and
if you go to our website Veterans Responsible Leadership, just
google it and you'll see it. Here's why I want
people to understand. We're going to remind people of how
powerful that oath is. You made an oath, usually around
eighteen nineteen, twenty seven years old, and you thought that
(51:57):
the enemy that you had to worry about most would
be foreign. But I'm here to tell you it may
be domestic, and it may be right here writing. Where
do you stand? Where do you stand? Doctor King said it,
Doctor Mark Luther King said it. You know, you judge
a man not where they stand in times of comfort,
but in times of controversy and will you be a
leader of consequence? At Morehouse Colleges album moto, they talk
(52:20):
about creating men and leaders of consequence. Again, going back
to what I said earlier, everybody wants to be a
leader to time. Do some leadership shit right now. America
needs leaders to step up.
Speaker 2 (52:30):
Step up.
Speaker 3 (52:30):
Well, thank you, Thank you commander for coming on here.
I am so honored that I could speak to you,
that I can call you my shipmate. You are truly
a man that is, as my motto of my Man's
skiff says, forged by the sea. And we have a
lot of heavy roles I'm afraid that we're going to
(52:52):
have to take here in the future. But thank you
for being a voice for our young men and women
and the leaders within you know, our beloved sea service.
And also thank you for going to the Naval Academy
and complaining about them ripping books out of the library.
Speaker 2 (53:11):
I'm sure they haven't gotten around to taking my.
Speaker 3 (53:13):
Books out of the library yet, but you know, this
is the sort of stuff that John Paul Jones, our
beloved John Paul Jones, would spin in the grave for because,
as a sea captain in that period, his motto would
have been this is bullshit.
Speaker 2 (53:26):
Get the fuck to work. Yes, So.
Speaker 3 (53:30):
Thank you again for coming on black Man's spine.
Speaker 2 (53:33):
I'm honored and.
Speaker 3 (53:34):
Hopefully hopefully we'll be reporting from Greenland. Suit We'll see, yeah,
we'll see. Okay, thank you, Thank you, Commander Jones. And
now I have a special segment that I call burn
bag of the Week. Malcolm, what's a burn bag?
Speaker 2 (53:51):
Funny?
Speaker 3 (53:51):
You should ask that in the US intelligence community we
have these paper receptacles in which we throw out useless tops, documents,
or useless materials that should not fall into the hands
of the enemy lest it compromise us or it gives
someone else' stupid idea that we don't want to see replicated.
(54:13):
So this week's burn back of the week is Sebastian Gorka.
Seb Gorka. Who is Seb Gorka? Funny? You should ask
that Seb Gorka now fills the role as Special Advisor
to the President on counter terrorism, But Seb Gorka is
really an ex British Army reservist who for a couple
(54:35):
of years acted as a Hungarian interpreter and somehow parlayed
that really lame ass job that involved no secrets and
no working with anybody of significance, into a British accented
job where he gave lectures at the Marine Corps University
(54:55):
in Quantico and went around and used that to get
a talk show host job, essentially in right wing extremist world.
He was named by President Trump as the director or
as this advisor for counter terrorism, and.
Speaker 8 (55:12):
Then today he said this, they dumped all of this
into this country. Millions and millions of people were dumped
into this country intentionally. It was flagrant, it was treasonous.
And now you have the same party that did this
to us are sitting back and watching as the White
House tries to go through this almost impossible process of
(55:35):
deporting millions of people, and they're trying to find any
problem they can that they can jump on, you know,
to vilify the White House as they try to do
the almost impossible mandate that was given to them by
the American people of how do you figure out how
to deport fifteen million people that were invited in by
the last president.
Speaker 6 (55:51):
I came up with this over a year ago when
I had my show on news Max Robin. I realized
that the taxonomy of politics in America is dead. It's
not and right, it's not even Republican or Democrat. There's
one line that divides us. Do you love America or
do you hate America. It's really quite that simple. And
we have people who love America, like the President, like
his cabinet, like the directors of his agencies, who want
(56:14):
to protect Americans. And then there is the other side
that is on the side of the cartel members, on
the side of the illegal aliens, on the side of
the terrorists. And you have to ask yourself, are they
technically aiding and abetting them? Because aiding and abetting criminals
and terrorists is a crime in federal statute.
Speaker 3 (56:36):
Rob Now, if you heard what I heard, what you
heard was, and let me use technical intelligence parlance that
is not just exclusive to black Man's spy, but to
all of the US intelligence community. The words that set
Gorka spewed out there today about people who are not
(56:57):
loyal to President.
Speaker 2 (56:58):
Trump gives us analytically, we would use the term.
Speaker 1 (57:06):
A fucking idiot.
Speaker 3 (57:10):
No one, no one who how this British naturalized Hungarian
born citizen who is a suspected neo Nazi can come
here and work in the job where he is supposedly
serving the people of the United States and say something
(57:31):
so ludicrous as this is beyond me, and so like
every other piece of waste that we have inside the
intelligence community, Seb Gorka goes straight into the burn bag
and it's a swoosh and a hit.
Speaker 2 (57:47):
We fold it.
Speaker 3 (57:48):
Over, we staple it up, and we throw it away
into the furnace, which burns useless refuse like the things
that Seb Gorka said about America today. And with that,
I am going to go and have another double espresso
(58:08):
so that I can wash that stupidity out of my mouth.
Speaker 2 (58:13):
Thank you for listening, Thank you for coming to and
enduring and.
Speaker 3 (58:21):
Exciting and challenging and emotional episode of Black Men's Spy. Usually,
at the end of every episode, I like to go
out with a quote by someone who I love and
admire as a writer, as a philosopher, as an intelligence officer,
(58:41):
you know, and as a man of the world who
has taught many of us some of the core philosophy
of what it's like to be a human being. And
that's author and former spy Rudyard Kipling. But today I
have to choose another quote, so there will be no.
(59:04):
To my fellow members of the Kipling Society of which
I'm a member, please forgive me. But today I would
like to end on a quote that comes from the
Declaration of Independence.
Speaker 2 (59:16):
And you might recall in.
Speaker 3 (59:17):
Twenty seventeen, after Donald Trump was elected, on the fourth
of July, National Public Radio read the Declaration of Independence,
as they do every July fourth, and it was for
some strange reason that year the right wing extremist followers
of Donald Trump heard it and assumed it was liberal claptrap,
(59:41):
insulting President Trump. A declaration of Independence. And so as
we enter our two hundred and forty ninth year of
this nation, I would like to give a quote that
I think typifies what is going on in this crisis
of honor that we are having today with Donald Trump
(01:00:04):
and the people who are in the intelligence community. I
do not want to even say that Tulsa Gabbard is
a member of the intelligence community. She is a person
who has been appointed to the job. But I would
like to go out with a quote from the Declaration
of Independence.
Speaker 2 (01:00:24):
And that is this quote.
Speaker 3 (01:00:27):
We should explain where we are today in how you
should view the crisis, which is it at hand? The
declaration wrote, a prince whose character, thus marked by every
act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be
(01:00:47):
the ruler of a free people. I want you to
think about that. Thank you for coming to this episode
A black Man Spy. I want to thank you for
giving me your time listening to Commander Jones, giving this
(01:01:09):
podcast some thought, because as much fun as I like
to put into it, as much excitement as I like
to stir, we are in a crisis, and so I
want you to continue listening. You can find this on YouTube.
You can find me in my long form writing on substack.
(01:01:30):
You can become a subscriber to YouTube and substack, as
well as to this podcast, which you can find on Apple, Spotify,
and wherever you find other fine podcasts, you will also
find mine. So thanks again for coming to Black Man's Spy.
I will see you next week.
Being brave means you have no fear. You go into
that burning building. You're just wired that way. Have encourage
means you're scared, but you do your damn job anyway.
I watched Senator Murkowski from Alaska this week said she's scared.
Lad Out said it and said other members of Congress
are scared and listen understandable. If you aren't, then move
(00:20):
the hell out the way and let someone else step
to the forefront. Who's ready to lead when leadership is necessary. See,
everybody wants to be a leader until this time, do
some leadership shit.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
This is black Man Spy.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
Welcome to this week's episode of Black Man Spy. I'm
Malcolm Nance. I'm really glad that you're coming to this
particular edition of Black Man Spy, which I've been doing
on and off for a couple of years now. But
because this is the new and improved version, it's going
to be heard now on Apple, Spotify and wherever your
(01:04):
fine podcasts are heard. And for a long while it
was a video cast and we're doing that too, so
it can be seen on YouTube and also duplicated on substack,
where you can generally find.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
Me these days. So for those of you who have
not heard Black Man's Spy before.
Speaker 3 (01:21):
It is a podcast that is about, how can I
put it, matters of intelligence, geopolitics, and of course espionage.
Now I'm actually speaking about things that are happening in
this world from the perspective of an intelligence practitioner of
(01:43):
you know, well over three decades at this point, as
well as a former TV commentator on MSNBC, which is
where a lot of you know me from, especially you
people who keep stopping me in the airport, and of
course as a New York Times bestselling author who has
written ten books and put four or five of them
on the top ten of the New York Times.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
So I know a little bit of something.
Speaker 3 (02:06):
But more importantly, the things that I do know, I
like to impart and share with the audience. And when
I was at MSNBC, people would say, you're sort of
the spy splainer in chief over there, giving us a
deeper perspective on things, but from a perspective that you
generally are never going to get. And that is from
(02:30):
not just a person who is an intelligence practitioner, but
from an African American man who is in the intelligence
community and the armed forces for a very very long time.
That being said, I'd like to introduce the topic of
this week's episode.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
The United States is.
Speaker 3 (02:50):
Sort of going through a cataclysm with the new presidency.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
For those of you who know, I wrote.
Speaker 3 (02:57):
Four books about the relationship between Dot Trump, his presidency,
Vladimir Putin, and Russian intelligence. The first was written before
the twenty sixteen election. I managed to bang out in
five weeks, called the Plot to Hack America, which was
subtitled how Putin and his spies were Putin and WikiLeaks
(03:18):
tried to steal the twenty sixteen election. There are a
lot of people that think that I should change that subtitle.
Then my next book came out, the Plot to Destroy Democracy,
How Putin and his spies were damaging America and dismantling
the West. Then the Plot to Betray America in my
final book, which is they want to kill Americans, the malicious,
(03:43):
terrorist and deranged ideology of the Trump Insurgency, and that
actually was written before January sixth incident, the riots that
took over the United States Capitol and intended to overthrow
an election.
Speaker 1 (03:59):
But as for.
Speaker 3 (03:59):
Those of you who know me, my entire being is
based on my family's military history, The first Nancers joined
the armed forces of the United States in April of
eighteen sixty four when two young slaves ran away from
slavery joined a group called the First Alabama Volunteers, which
(04:20):
was a slave formed unit that allied themselves with the
Union Army, and it was transformed into the one eleventh
US Colored Troops. At that time, my great great grand
uncle transferred from the US Army to the US Navy,
and at the end of the Civil War transferred back
into the Army and became a Buffalo soldier and the
(04:42):
ninth Cavalry, where he died in service and is still
buried at Fort Leavenworth. From the Spanish American ward to
World War One to World War II, Korea, Vietnam, the
War on Terrorism, and just recently my niece retired from
the US Navy. The Nances have an unbroken century and
(05:02):
a half service to the United States, and there is
one thing we cherish above all else, and that is
our honor. Not just our honor, because our honor is
very important, it's important to me, but it's also our
honor within the context that we are people that came
from an oppressed side, from former slaves who understood that
(05:27):
the American Experiment was a promise to us in our
future generations that things would always progress, no matter how
hard it was for whoever it was that was in
the armed forces at that time. My father went through
Jim Crow. He was born in the Jim Crow era.
(05:47):
He was in World War Two as a fifteen year
old who lied and was on troop ships and amphibious
transports in the Pacific theater of the war.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
And you know, even though.
Speaker 3 (05:59):
He was assaulted and insulted, he loved serving the people
of the United States. And more importantly, he instilled in
me the love of the Constitution, that promise, that document
which binds us all into the belief that America is
(06:20):
the best experiment ever done in the history of mankind,
so long as we obey and maintain the Constitution as
it was written and as it has been interpreted through
its amendments. The problem is, we are now in a
(06:41):
crisis of honor. We are in a world where courage
of the people who were elected to government is gone,
and we are seeing no commitment to defending everything that
the American Experiment has been since the.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
Day that it was thought up.
Speaker 3 (07:04):
We have people today using government to take us back
seventy years to a more racist, openly sexist, and violent
America in which the laws mean nothing, and that we
are being ruled by people who no longer believe in
(07:24):
the values of the First American Revolution.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
I have said it before and I will say it again.
Speaker 3 (07:31):
America is on the cusp of a second revolution, but
not in the way that the right wing extremists think.
I believe that America is about to rise up to
have a second American Revolution to save the values of
the First American Revolution, and that is a massive people
power movement. But first we need to discuss what is
(07:56):
our honor? What is our commitment to this nation? Do
we have the courage to stand up and do what's necessary?
Those are the Navy values, the army values of duty
to your people, duty to.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
The nation, honor and country.
Speaker 3 (08:19):
Are those values more important than the political party that
you voted for.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
And many people who.
Speaker 3 (08:26):
Served in the armed forces and raised their hands and
swore an oath to protect and defend the Constitution are
now swearing oaths and paying allegiance to one man who
is acting like a king. We are coming to a
crisis where it may be that the armed forces and
(08:47):
other branches of government may.
Speaker 2 (08:49):
Have to make a decision about who they.
Speaker 3 (08:51):
Are going to maintain their oath to. Will it be
to the Constitution or will it be to the man
I call mad King Donald the last. The last time
we had this crisis, the person was King George the Third,
(09:12):
and he thought that America was a place which he
ruled through fiat, through whom and through a compliant parliament.
And the American people cast that off and created that
more perfect union, even though it was full of flaws,
even though women, blacks as slaves, and mixed race people
(09:37):
and natives were not included. But every one of them
understood the promise of that Enlightenment era document was that
it could get better and it would not go backwards.
I'm afraid we're going backwards, and I'm more afraid the
Constitution is a document that is.
Speaker 2 (09:57):
Being used as a fig for a fascist, authoritarian government.
Speaker 3 (10:04):
With that, I'd like to introduce my next guest, a
distinguished Navy officer and leader Commander Bobby Jones for Veterans.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
For Responsible Leadership.
Speaker 3 (10:17):
So I'd like you to meet our first guest of
the new iteration of the Black Man Spy Podcast as
well as vidcast. We've had bunches of guests, but to
tell you the truth, you know, we haven't had a
real sit down interview in a while because everything was
(10:38):
not so much Black Man Spy podcast but our emergency
podcasts because of all the craziness that was going on
in politics. So our first guest is Commander Bobby Jones,
the president CEO of Veterans for Responsible Leadership, former Navy commander,
(10:59):
a wealth of knowledge, more importantly, a Naval Academy graduate,
and someone that I would desperately wanted to have this
conversation with. And the conversation point today, Commander, if I
could just you know, call you that, keep calling you that,
even though you know I'm an old, salty, old chief.
I got my coffee cup in my hand. Listen to
(11:20):
he you, commander, And today we need to have a
talk about the core values of the Armed Forces of
the United States and how in these trying times do
we get our young sailors, guardians, marines, and and people
(11:41):
who are in the intelligence community and the you know,
the armed forces, even civil servants working for the armed forces.
There is right now a crisis in the belief in
what we are serving for in whom we work for
and who we serve. And I think it's very very important.
(12:02):
It's really important to me, you know, as senior enlisted,
as a deck plate leader, to know that, you know,
to say that my officers above us are not going
to order us to do anything crazy and who we
actually serve as the people of the United States and
the Constitution. But now I have people coming to me saying, hey,
(12:26):
you know, we may get orders which we think are unlawful.
We may get orders which are unsavory. How do we
go about as leaders? You being a you know, an
officer who has commanded units in vessels, and me as
a deck plate leader, as a senior enlisted who really
(12:48):
has to be that median, you know, the midway point
between a crazy set of orders that comes from above
and the young men and women that may have to
execute that.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
What do you think? Wow?
Speaker 1 (13:02):
So, first, thanks for having me on, Malcolm. I'm been
a fan for years. First thing that I would tell
people is I break this question into two major sections.
Number one, the oath that all of us take right,
that's the individual shaping of how we go about doing
(13:24):
our business. And then number two, for me being you
and I being sailors the United States Navy's model of honor, courage, commitment.
So let's take these two separate but unifying things apart
for a second. Let's start with the oath. You enlisted
into the United States Navy, and you took an oath uh,
(13:49):
and everybody's very familiar with against you know, the defending
Constitution against all enemies born in domestic But for the enlisted,
there's the clause that says to obey the orders of
the President and the office is appointed above me right
given it many times. For re enlistment, the officers take
a similar but not duplicate oath where you support and
(14:12):
defend the Constitution of the United States, and that you
take the obligation freely, without purpose of evasion, etc. You
will see that there is no clause, no clause that
talks to basically obandon orders of the president. And that
is on purpose. The Officer Corps is designed to be
(14:34):
the last sanity check and fail safe against a tyrannical
commander in chief. And I say that not lightly right.
I say that because with the way things are happening
right now, the various people who are worried, and there's
very good reason to be worried. At the end of
(14:55):
the day, you remember your oath. The officer corps has
to re member that they pledged allegiance to the Constitution
and not the individual. The commander in chief will change. Heck,
I want to say, therese what six or seven that
I served under while I was in you know, active
duty forces, and the policies changed. But until this current administration,
(15:20):
we all understood that there was a floor that neither
Republican or Democrats caught would cross when it comes to
their actions. They're overt actions. And it's so powerful that
that that that floor that it is what makes America
a superpower. Everybody talks about our military is the reason
we're a superpower. No, our military being welcomed in over
(15:43):
one hundred and eighty countries and able to reach anywhere
on the planet is what makes us a superpower. And
so the reason we're allowed in all these countries is
because those countries know that we have a floor basis
of ethics and of integrity, of how we will operate ourselves.
We will hold ourselves accountable, and we will recognize human rights,
(16:05):
international law, et cetera. That is why the Soviet Union
back in its say they did not have as many
bases as many countries. They weren't as welcome. We were right.
And so when I focus on the oath and the
power of it, it's not just you're willing to give
your life for it. Officers, you have a dual level
(16:27):
of commitment here. You have to commit to leading your
people ethically the right way and then executing missions the
right way in a legal sense. And that's why it's
not a coincidence that the first thing President Trump did
on his second entry into the office was gut the
jag corps, the judge advocate generals, the military lawyers that
(16:50):
provide that check. That's the first section. The second section.
Each branch of service has their different models. You know,
the Marines, the simple idella, it's always faithful, you know
all this stuff. But in my biased opinion, the United
States Navy has the best model of its service, and
(17:10):
that is honor, courage, commitment, commit Those three things. Those
three things roll up everything it takes to not just
be an effective service member an effective sailor, but it
talks about what it means to be a good American citizen.
And sometimes we kind of forget that we pull our
(17:31):
sailors on the rings, our soldiers, our airmen, our guardsmen,
you know, from society, and then we put them into
this environment of high pressure to reintroduce them to what
it means to be an actual American patriot. And that
thing that happens that they focus on is sacrifice. It's
not about you, it's not about me. It's about honor, courage, commitment.
(17:55):
So let's just real quick talk about this. When we
talk about honor, honor and integrity are completely linked. You
can't have one without the other. Doing what you say,
saying what you do, and doing it with the best
in mind, doing it the right way, doing it. Meaning yes,
(18:16):
if I want to deport somebody, I still go through
due process. I have to prove that they should be
removed and then do it legally and humanly, not something
that I'm trying to scare people or just I'm trying
to send a message, or I just yank someone off
the street and ship off to another country. That's not
how this works, right, the courage aspect, and this is
(18:39):
where I think everything is breaking down in American society
right now. United States Congress is supposed to provide oversight
for the chief executive, being the president, they are addicating
their responsibility. They lack the courage. I'm not saying they
lack the bravery. I'm saying they lack the courage. The
difference between being brave and make greats is very. Being
(19:00):
brave means you have no fear. You go into that
burning building. You're just wired that way. Have encouraged means
you're scared, but you do your damn job anyway, right, right.
And the history of the United States and Navy, the
ones that have been Middle of honor recipients, the ones
that turned the tides of World War Two when everybody
said everything was lost, they were scared shitless, right, average
(19:24):
people doing their job.
Speaker 3 (19:27):
I had this discussion yesterday on another podcast, and somebody says, oh,
you know, you're really courageous.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
I go, no, I'm not. I'm not courageous, all right.
Speaker 3 (19:36):
I know when I have to do my job, right,
I know when things have to be done. You know,
there were a couple of times in my career where
things got a little harry, you know, and in Ukraine
where things were hairy all the time, being bombarded and everything,
and I found that, you know, the moment there is
(19:58):
an actual moment that you can put your finger on
when you realize stuff.
Speaker 2 (20:04):
Must be done.
Speaker 3 (20:05):
Shit must be done, It must be done now, It
must be done definitively. It must be done in such
a way that if I don't do what, others will
be harmed. Right, and you get to this point I
call the ah fuck it point right.
Speaker 2 (20:22):
And you get up and you do it right.
Speaker 3 (20:25):
You know, it's not it's scary, you know, or you
know it's it's it's it's unhealthy, or it's it's it's
it's it's purpose cannot be seen at that moment except
to you and those who you may impact over time.
Courage is observed also, I've I've personally watched when I
was at the Pentagon on nine to eleven. You know,
(20:47):
my one of my personal heroes is at that time
was an Army lieutenant colonel I thought was a doctor,
was actually in fact a combat nurse.
Speaker 4 (20:56):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (20:56):
And I saw her just, you know.
Speaker 3 (20:59):
Create the first tree right at the d ring, you know,
right at the crash site. And I was like, God, damn,
somebody here's more than brave because you know, you know
how I knew when I looked down and saw that
she had been running around a shrapnel filled field with
bear stocking. She had kicked her yeels off to go
(21:22):
find victims. And I was like, I've heard about this.
They talk about people being courageous, and I'm.
Speaker 2 (21:31):
Literally watching it go back and forth.
Speaker 3 (21:34):
By the way, nominated her for the Silver Star, but
they said it wasn't a combat action. I think she
got like the some National Defense Meritorious Medal and the
Art and the Army the Soldier's Medal. But it was
just ridiculous. But I understand what you're saying, and that
comes back to the politics of the day. People are
not courageous.
Speaker 1 (21:55):
Right, right, And it's kind of funny you say that.
I watched Senator Murkowski from the last this week said
she's scared. Lad Out said it and said other members
of Congress are scared and listen. Understandable if you are
then moved the hell out the way and let someone
else step to the forefront. Who's ready to lead when
leadership is necessary? See, everybody wants to be a leader
(22:18):
until it's time to do some leadership shit. I will
believe this. The crisis is on. Oh, I don't want
no parts of that, right, And so I find it hilarious.
You have members of Congress that have been there thirty forty,
fifty years, fifty years who love being in front of
(22:41):
the mic every day MSNBC, Fox, CNN. They love being
there in the forefront. But when it's time to do
your constitutionally designed authorities, you don't want to do it.
And so that leads me to that last part of honor, courage, Commitment,
commit meant come ament is not a part time job.
(23:02):
It is not a switch to turn on and turn off.
It is a dedicated lifestyle, a lifestyle that is not
about you. Sorry, sorry, because you have to find something
else in you that motivates you to go beyond what
you would even do for yourself. I elect my leaders.
(23:25):
I vote for my leaders, whether it's at the local
county commissioner level, all the way up to the White House.
And I asked myself this fundamental question, are they willing
to put it all on the line for me and
my family, for me in my community. You know when
I got commissioned, when I graduated from from from a
naval academy, I wanted to be a marine, but I
(23:46):
had a football injury that stopped me from going Marine.
So I went into the Navy, and my uncle, who
was a gunnery sergeant in the Marine Corps, he says
something to me. I've never forgoten He goes, you know
why we salute officers while senior n CEOs, while we
while we salute y'all. Said no, no, no, no, I
don't why, he said, because when push comes to shove,
(24:08):
the two things I know you're supposed to get done.
You're supposed to finish the mission. And if anybody comes
home in a body bag, it's going to be you first,
not your people. Right, that's the difference between being that leader.
And he goes, as you become a and listen and
become senior enlisted, you sort of assume that role too,
where the officer and the senior enlisted are supposed to
(24:28):
be the ones in the forefront, and they're gone first
before they're junior enlisted. He goes, that's why we salute you.
That's why we tolerate your ignorance sometimes and your stupidity,
because we know at the day you're supposed to be
that dude. And I never forgot it, right, I never
forgot it. And as I look now, if that is
(24:49):
the standard for our armed forces. And mind you, people,
we are military that submits to civilian authority. That is
why you've never seen a military COUNI the States and
all these other countries happened because when George Washington turned
his sword over after the end of the Revolutionary War
in Annapolis, Maryland and rolled all the way back to
Mount Vernon, He's created a separation between the military and
(25:12):
leadership of the country. And I think it's one of
the most underrated historical events in American history. We separated
the two right, and by separating the two, we now
have to find civilian leadership that understands the sacrifice that
it takes to actually be a leader. And listen, We've
(25:33):
had forty six forty five different people sit in that
White House, well, forty five sit in the White House,
but have the position right, And I never have questioned
whether or not the person in that position put the
country before them. They may have different philosophies on how
they think they're supposed to be. But for the first
(25:53):
time in my life, and I think the first time
in America's history, we can legitimately question the current occupants
of sixteen hundred Pennsylvania Avenue puts the country before his
own self interest. And that is a dangerous question to
ask when you were also the commander in chief of
the most lethal military of the world's ever seen.
Speaker 2 (26:14):
Trust me.
Speaker 3 (26:15):
I have written four New York Times bestseller top ten
best sellers about this bizarre relationship between Donald Trump and
Russia's Vladimir Putin in Russian intelligence.
Speaker 2 (26:30):
And you know Vladimir Putin. I learned. I went to his.
Speaker 3 (26:33):
Office where he worked at when he was a junior
spy in Dresden, and I learned some things from the
scholars in Germany who were reading his Stasi file, who
were finding his KGB and you know files there, and
they said, this guy loved the human intelligence game.
Speaker 2 (26:52):
He loved being a manipulator. They say.
Speaker 3 (26:56):
In most meetings where the Stasi were flipping people from
the West, you know, some young kid comes over from
West Germany to East Germany, falls in love with some
chick that they put in.
Speaker 2 (27:06):
Front of him.
Speaker 3 (27:08):
Putin would sit there and he knew that by being
silent and the kid knowing that guy's the KGB guy
and we're doing all the talking, that he was there too.
He knew his mere presence was manipulation. Right, and often yeah,
I want to say, I think you hit it on
(27:29):
the head, Putin. You know how they say some people
are when they play poker. Some people play the cards.
Other people play play the player. That's he plays a person.
He doesn't play the cards right, And because he can
play the person, what he basically did was make sure
(27:49):
that the person that he put in this position in
the United States, helped to put in the position, was
the most playable person.
Speaker 1 (27:55):
He could find. Oh yeah, right, But the cards that
you've been talking about have been policies that have gone
through the Cold War, post Cold blah blah blah. But
for the first time, Putin has someone where he can
play the direct player, and that has changed everything.
Speaker 3 (28:10):
You know, people often ask me, and I've written about
this and at least two books. You know, they and
I speak almost daily now with people that know Donald
Trump personally, Michael Cohen, Lev Parnas, Mary Trump, all these
people that really know him right and see him, and
(28:31):
they almost to a person say Trump is easily manipulable.
But he has this relationship with Putin, which is a
relationship he never had with his father, you know, with
you know, you know, and other people and that he saw.
He sees real power. He sees a power player that
(28:53):
is like a mafia figure, you know, at the state
craft level.
Speaker 2 (29:00):
Admires it deeply.
Speaker 3 (29:01):
He admires the way Kim Jong Unn all the people
clapp in Unison right, and how people will soldiers and
generals will come up to him and get it at
his feet and cry in Unison a thousands soldiers. And
Trump loves this. His ego must have this. And you know,
the typical acronym we use for recruitment is mice right, mice, money, ideology,
(29:30):
coercion or co option, right, ego and excitement. And with
Donald Trump, it's always been about money. First, he sees
billions upon billions upon billions of oligarch money. He has
a spiesed wet dream and to a human manipulator like Putin,
who loved.
Speaker 2 (29:49):
Being a KGV officer.
Speaker 3 (29:52):
When he was thirty, he went to a KGB open
house and said, how can I become a KGB officer?
Speaker 2 (29:58):
And they were like, go to law school, come back,
and he did.
Speaker 3 (30:02):
He did, and then he became a junior officer and
went overseas, went to Germany, and then when he at
the end of the Cold War, he went back to
Saint Petersburg and used those exact same techniques against.
Speaker 2 (30:13):
The Saint Petersburg mafia.
Speaker 3 (30:15):
He helps liquidate the entire city of Saint Petersburg and
made billions upon billions of dollars.
Speaker 2 (30:22):
Off of that.
Speaker 3 (30:23):
But he manipulated individuals. Like you said, he plays the player,
not the game. And it's important for people to understand
Donald Trump thinks he's playing the game when in fact,
the whole freaking table understands that he is an easily
swayed character. So when he thought in twenty twelve when
(30:47):
he went to Miss Universe that he was going to
pitch the one billion dollar Trump Hotel in Moscow, and
he actually said this to somebody, I intend to offer
Vladimir Putin ex KGB officer Vladimir Putin the top two
penthouse floors of Trump Tower, Moscow, and that will He
(31:11):
was like, Wow, I get the top two floors from
Donald Trump and a lifetime passed to the I'm not
joking Ivanka Spa that was supposed to be in the building,
That's what its name was.
Speaker 5 (31:23):
And you're like, this man liquidated a Soviet city. He's
worth possibly two hundred or three hundred billion dollars.
Speaker 3 (31:34):
You cannot manipulate him. He is trained in the art
of manipulation. He got rid of every Russian oligarch and
stole their assets and turned all the rest of them
into psychophants.
Speaker 2 (31:47):
And he has four thousand.
Speaker 3 (31:49):
Atomic bombs offering him a penthouse. He gave Putin the
knowledge base of understanding how this man is a and
morons are easily manipulable.
Speaker 2 (32:03):
And I have this joke.
Speaker 3 (32:04):
This goes back to the spy world where Putin goes,
bring me this guy's dosier, and they don't bring in
a dosier, they bring in three wheelbarrows. An intelligence collection
that started in nineteen seventy seven when he married Ivana
Trump and sued and went after Ivana Trump, who is
(32:24):
a Czech citizen that was part of Czechoslovakia People's Republic
right back in the old days. And her father was
the spy for Czech intelligence. And how do we know
this Czech television today Prague has all the actual physical
records from Czech intelligence. For ten years they reported on
(32:45):
this guy. Then in eighty seven he went to Moscow
and they reported on him then, and they have been
manipulating him with the promise and the lure of money
and hot Eastern or Eastern European chicks. He married a
Slovenian which was part of the yukas Love Federation, which
was a communist country. And he just has this fascination
(33:06):
with the East and that they have that they must
be suckers who they can get money out of. They,
on the other hand, have three decades decades of reel
barrows of collection against him, and goo, this guy, Let's
offer him money and.
Speaker 2 (33:22):
He'll come along. He'll do anything we want.
Speaker 3 (33:24):
And we have this phrase meta narrative framing or reflexive
control where they will. The Russians did not adopt Donald
Trump's worldview. They built Donald Trump's worldview of Russia around him,
to where now Russia's worldview is Donald Trump's worldview, and
(33:45):
what is good for Russia is good for the potential
money pool of Donald Trump, and so that you have
money ideology because now he is aligned with their ideology.
I don't think they have ever coerced him. I don't
think there's a ppe tape, even though I've met you know,
you know, you know, I've talked to people about this.
(34:08):
I think he wasn't coerced. I think he's co opted.
They just brought him on board. Donald, you are one
of us. We love you, no bullshit, kiss me. And
then the last one is eat both ego and excitement
that he in nineteen eighty seven, he took out a
full page ad in the New York Times wanting to
(34:30):
be the peace treaty negotiator for the start to ballistic
missile treaty treaties. And he said, make me the negotiator,
and he talked to people about winning the Nobel Prize
on this. The Russians know all of this, and they
manipulate them. So today here we are where you and
(34:51):
I people who have sworn an oath to protect and
defend the Constitution of the United States above all. I mean,
you know, I do just think I called the son
of Philadelphia red. I am a son of Philadelphia, all right.
I take this. I'm an originalist. I take this very
very seriously. I am steep in Philadelphia tea and anything
(35:13):
that crosses the it looks like you're gonna betray the
constitution line you get the full chief out of me.
So you know, but this cuts over to and what
I'd like to do is you know play this cut
of General Millie's statement a year ago, where he said,
we don't take an oath to a king, we don't
(35:35):
take an oath to a queen. We don't take an
oath to a dictator or even a wannabe dictator.
Speaker 4 (35:42):
We in uniform are unique. We are unique among the
world's armies. We are unique among the world's militaries. We
don't take an oath to a country. We don't take
an oath to a tribe. We don't take an oath
to a religion. We don't take an oath to a
king or queen, or to tyrant or a dictator.
Speaker 1 (36:07):
And we don't take an oath to a wanna be dictator.
Speaker 4 (36:09):
We don't take an oath to an individual. We take
an oath to the Constitution, and we take an oath
to the idea of it as America, and we're willing
to die to protect him.
Speaker 3 (36:22):
I live in upstate New York right now. I'm sorry, Philadelphia,
but very near me is Newburgh, New York. And this
is where, at the end of the American Revolution, because
people weren't getting paid, the army mustered all of its
senior officers in Newburgh. They were in Campden, Newburgh, and
(36:44):
at that time the Officers Corps was talking, maybe this
Congress Constitution thing is.
Speaker 2 (36:52):
That we're developing isn't so great. Why don't we just appoint.
Speaker 3 (36:56):
General Washington king and he can use this army and
take over. And Washington's speech at Newburgh, which is a
fascinating building because it's in this old brick building down there,
where he said, we.
Speaker 2 (37:11):
Didn't just fight this war.
Speaker 3 (37:15):
Just so that you could just point another king, and
I beseech you, I entreat you all to maintain your
loyalty to your oaths and the meaning of the sacrifice
of this war we just went through. And people say,
I know at West Point and other academies, they say,
Washington's speech at Newburgh may be the finest speech of
(37:37):
appealing to the loyalty of the armed forces of the
United States at a time of critical crisis. They weren't
getting paid, they were going to disroll, they were going
to take.
Speaker 2 (37:46):
Their rifles, go home and start rebellion again.
Speaker 1 (37:48):
Right.
Speaker 3 (37:50):
I have said this on air, and I'll say it again,
and we'll have a little discussion about that before we end.
Speaker 2 (37:57):
I think General Millie speaks, which.
Speaker 3 (38:02):
On who we take an oath to is second only
to George Washington's speech at Newbergh. I have watched a
lot of speeches in my time. MacArthur's speech, you know,
you know, after leaving the Philippines, you know, patents speeches
as he was coming back into Europe, you know, Dwight
(38:26):
Eisenhower's speech after the landings in Normandy, all stirring, stirring speeches.
Speaker 2 (38:33):
One of the ones I love the most, which.
Speaker 3 (38:34):
You might appreciate, was done by General schwartzkof as an
Army Navy commercial you know, called Character Incompetence, you know,
And I love that commercial. It's an army commercial, you know,
And and he's it's General schwartz Call's speech about.
Speaker 2 (38:55):
Where are the MacArthur's of today? Where are the patents
of today? Where are you know, the Eisenhowers of today?
Speaker 3 (39:03):
And he says, they exist, They're here, They're here in you.
But it requires two things to be a leader of
men and women today in the United States Armed Forces,
and that is character and competence. And to have character,
you must have the belief and love of duty, honor country.
(39:26):
And you must believe in you don't see it, but
around the ceiling of my room in gold letters is honor, courage,
and commitment in ten inch letters.
Speaker 2 (39:35):
All right, I bled the navy motto.
Speaker 3 (39:39):
I also believe in unity, navigation, and leadership, right, which
is the Navy Chief's philosophy. So it's important that we
believe that these people who believe in duty, honor, country
understand that your character defines you, yes, as a leader.
Speaker 6 (39:59):
You.
Speaker 3 (40:00):
I mean, the first moment I met you, I was like, man,
this is a freaking real leader. You know, you're You're
a Navy through it through. You're almost as much Navy
as me. But by the way, I have a dog
here named Jane. And my wife when when we got her, said, oh, Malcolm,
this this dog's.
Speaker 2 (40:19):
Name is Jane.
Speaker 1 (40:19):
I said, no, it's not.
Speaker 2 (40:21):
She says it's not.
Speaker 3 (40:22):
What is it?
Speaker 2 (40:22):
I go, it's Jane Paul Jones.
Speaker 3 (40:26):
Because I always said if I have a child, a girl,
I will name her Jane Paul Jones and make sure
that she goes to the Naval Academy so that at
some point there is an Admiral Jane Paul Jones. I
did not have a girl. I do have a beagle.
But more importantly, I have read an enormous amount about
(40:50):
about the qualities of leadership, and as a chief, I
took it very, very very seriously. I have joked that
I'm America's chief. I have blade handed people on television.
Speaker 2 (41:00):
You know.
Speaker 3 (41:01):
I maintain the dignity and the values of the chief's
mess even though I am long out of the Navy,
and I actually have to recalibrate chiefs around that come
out there and talk about bypassing Trump's competence, ignoring his character,
and it's like, and you expect people to follow him,
(41:24):
where does this prit us, commander? Where if an unlawful order,
a patently unlawful order comes to me as a chief,
you can be sure this is the first words out
of my mouth.
Speaker 2 (41:35):
I say this every time I'm on air.
Speaker 3 (41:38):
I will be god damned if I cross the Constitution
of the United States and you think you're gonna make
me do something that breaks the law, breaks my moral fiber,
and brings my sailor's honor into disrepute and my family's
honor one hundred and fifty two years honoring to disrepute.
Speaker 2 (41:59):
I will not do it right right, right?
Speaker 1 (42:03):
And that's what do you say?
Speaker 2 (42:05):
You're an officer in the.
Speaker 1 (42:09):
Yeah, and let me let me give you your viewers
some context. I'm an you know, tire Naval officer, wife,
Annapolis graduate Naval officer, brother, Air Force Academy graduate, Air
Force pilot. You know, grandfather Korean War vet. My wife's grandfather,
Tusky government. So we live, eat, and breathe this mentality, right,
This is not just oh, this is a fly by.
(42:30):
It's not an occupation. It's not a job it is
it is a lifestyle. It is a way that you
do business. You want to know why officers are held
to such a high center, to the point where what
they do in their quote off time will will get
them fired. It's because of what you're saying right there.
Because when orders are presented to them, they cannot turn
on the morality turn it off. They cannot turn on
(42:52):
an integrity turn off. But most importantly, the legality and
the method of how they execute orders, Matt. And that
starts with the orders they receive. If they get unlawful orders,
it is their duty to say, I will not comply.
This is unlawful, all right, and if that means sacrifice
(43:13):
in your career, unfortunately, that's the job. To quote Sean
Connery in the untouchables. That's the job, right when they
I'll never forget. During the first tour of the first
term for President Trump, they ask Stratcom actual, if the
President of the United States orders a preemptm nuclear strike
on North Korea, will you execute it?
Speaker 2 (43:34):
Track call.
Speaker 3 (43:34):
I'm looking around, like is this a real question now?
Speaker 1 (43:37):
But I said so, almost said no, and con was like, Okay,
this is before the poisoning of the well had really
taken effect. But he recognized that his moral and ethical
obligation to include international law as well as the mess law.
(44:00):
Said no, that is not the protocol, right. I remember
that moment so vividly because I was like, the fact
that we're even having to ask this question means things
are changing, right, Things are changing right. And now we're
almost a decade later, eight years later, and we're having
these questions come up. And now, when Congress asked members
(44:24):
of the cabinet to include the Secretary of Defense, these
very simple, phistorically slam dunk questions, they evaded like cockroaches
when the lights turn on. I was like, what are
we doing? What are we doing? And I'm not saying
this to scare Americans. I'm saying it to terrify Americans
(44:48):
because the only restraint and constraints on American military has
been America.
Speaker 2 (44:55):
Right.
Speaker 1 (44:55):
So what happens when the leadership says the hell with that,
do what I want. That's the fundamental problem. So it's
up to officers and senior you know, noncommissioned officers who
basically are the backbone of our American military. Is not
the officers, it's those guys, the chiefs, mess, the gunnies,
the sergeant first classes, they're the ones, you know, the
(45:17):
chief technical stargant. Those are the guys and girls that
have been the backbone of this for since seventeen seventy five. Yeah, absolutely,
and they're the ones who have to remind the officers
with that caliber, hey, hey, we ain't supposed to be
doing this, and it's up to the office, Like you're white,
We're not doing it. That's the job. So I would
love to you know, I got Annapolis classmates that are
(45:40):
still in they're old sixes now they're captains, are colonels
and maybe in the Marine Corps looking at making admiral
in general. And congratulations to them, but remember not just
your oath, but your ethical training that started all the
way back in the damn nineties that brought you to
this point. You have an obligation to your people, to
(46:02):
your unit, to the country, and most importantly to yourself
to do the right thing with the authority you've been given.
You have, you know how the native leadership trying. We
have authority, accountability and responsibility. Right. Everybody loves talking about
the authority, but the accountability and the responsibility is what
stirs the drink for our military, right and absolutely whose
(46:25):
officers to remember that moving forward?
Speaker 2 (46:27):
Yeah, you know, I have this this to close.
Speaker 3 (46:31):
I have this horrible feeling that at some point in
the next four years, we are going to see for
the first time, well maybe the second time, because there
was one in World War Two.
Speaker 2 (46:44):
A lawful utiny.
Speaker 3 (46:47):
Where soldiers sailors will be given an impossible task, right,
you know, I hark back to the Maylin massacre in
Vietnam where these guys are told, hey, just kill these
three four hundred civilians, and they were just like, load
them up, just start shooting, right, conscripts mainly people who
weren't given the moral code that we are now given,
(47:10):
you know.
Speaker 2 (47:10):
And the person who.
Speaker 3 (47:13):
Really lived up to their honor was the helicopter pilot
who landed his helicopter gunship between the civilians and the
massacurring soldiers right it got out, was like the fuck
you dolly, right, and they still let Lieutenant Kali off.
Speaker 2 (47:33):
Right. No one wanted to hold him accountable.
Speaker 3 (47:36):
And I'm afraid that at some point we're going to
have that, and I have this nightmare scenario. You know,
when I was in Ukraine, I had the rank of
a private, but I was essentially the you know, the
the the acting sergeant major of my battalion because I
was wore daddy. I was the old guy, and I
had the most experience. And I'm afraid that some chief
(47:58):
is going to have to is going to get some
ridiculous order. The war room's gonna go, okay, you know this,
the captain, We're gonna invade Greenland, and if any civilian
shoot at us, we're gonna shoot back using the twenty
five millimeter you know, while these Eskimo, these Inuits are
up there with thirty caliber you know, hunting rifles because
(48:18):
you're invading their country. And the first thing I could
just imagine is is that if I was chief, I'd
be like commander.
Speaker 2 (48:26):
A word you know or not mine.
Speaker 1 (48:32):
You know, it's even scary about that, Malcolm. The reason
why that and people all you're exaggerating. We watched over
sixteen hundred people storm the Capitol on January sixth, and
all of them got part. It's got part by the
same commander in chief. We have watched war criminals from
the g wide era, the global Termrism era be defended,
(48:54):
cases dropped, whatever under this commander in chief. Okay, So
don't sit there and tell me that we're exaggerating with
our concern. We have the evidence, we have the proof. Okay. Again,
they tried to burn the capital to the ground because
(49:15):
of lies dealing with the election. Okay, And now you're
telling me he's going to show some restraint or some judgment.
You know, when Bannon talks about he's going to have
a third term and he's being very coy on how
that's going to happen, make no mistake that the full
array of options are on the table to include violence.
Speaker 3 (49:39):
Tara Stepmeyer made a great comment the other day where
she said, do not underestimate the horrible imaginings.
Speaker 2 (49:47):
That you have that could occur here.
Speaker 3 (49:50):
It's all of the groundwork have been laid up for that,
and it's the members of our armed forces. And this
is where I'm really afraid. I'm afraid they're not going
to use the armed forces. They're gonna use, you know,
private security contractors. Eric Prince has been floated twenty five
billion dollars to actually create a hunter force in the
United States that's deputized.
Speaker 2 (50:09):
So people in the armed forces be of good cheer.
Speaker 3 (50:13):
There are good officers like Commander Jones, and then there's ruthless,
kick ass chiefs like myself, and I suspect there will
be even splits in the wardroom and the chiefs mess.
And the question is who will who will stand with
the Constitution and who will betray their oaths in real
(50:33):
time out of loyalty to an individual who's, as they
said in the Declaration of Independence, who's every act defines
a tyrant.
Speaker 1 (50:43):
Two things. I just want to end with number one
to remind people who Eric Prince is. He is the
guy that created Blackwater, that was so god dang out
of hotcarm that they were thrown out of a war.
Speaker 7 (50:55):
Zone, kicked out, kicked out of a war that matterally,
we were thrown out of the war zone in Afghanistan
and irection unbelievable.
Speaker 1 (51:06):
Right, and then go on to your final point. The
reason I focus on that commitment piece so much. The
oath that you take, the dedication to the Constitution, is
not something out of convenience. It's not something that you
uphold when it's convenient for you or you feel like
doing it, or the people in power you agree with.
Speaker 3 (51:26):
No.
Speaker 1 (51:27):
No, you execute it regardless, because that is the bedrock.
Speaker 2 (51:32):
Right.
Speaker 1 (51:33):
We have a thing going on here in Georgia April
twenty fifth where we have a veterans town hall and
if you go to our website Veterans Responsible Leadership, just
google it and you'll see it. Here's why I want
people to understand. We're going to remind people of how
powerful that oath is. You made an oath, usually around
eighteen nineteen, twenty seven years old, and you thought that
(51:57):
the enemy that you had to worry about most would
be foreign. But I'm here to tell you it may
be domestic, and it may be right here writing. Where
do you stand? Where do you stand? Doctor King said it,
Doctor Mark Luther King said it. You know, you judge
a man not where they stand in times of comfort,
but in times of controversy and will you be a
leader of consequence? At Morehouse Colleges album moto, they talk
(52:20):
about creating men and leaders of consequence. Again, going back
to what I said earlier, everybody wants to be a
leader to time. Do some leadership shit right now. America
needs leaders to step up.
Speaker 2 (52:30):
Step up.
Speaker 3 (52:30):
Well, thank you, Thank you commander for coming on here.
I am so honored that I could speak to you,
that I can call you my shipmate. You are truly
a man that is, as my motto of my Man's
skiff says, forged by the sea. And we have a
lot of heavy roles I'm afraid that we're going to
(52:52):
have to take here in the future. But thank you
for being a voice for our young men and women
and the leaders within you know, our beloved sea service.
And also thank you for going to the Naval Academy
and complaining about them ripping books out of the library.
Speaker 2 (53:11):
I'm sure they haven't gotten around to taking my.
Speaker 3 (53:13):
Books out of the library yet, but you know, this
is the sort of stuff that John Paul Jones, our
beloved John Paul Jones, would spin in the grave for because,
as a sea captain in that period, his motto would
have been this is bullshit.
Speaker 2 (53:26):
Get the fuck to work. Yes, So.
Speaker 3 (53:30):
Thank you again for coming on black Man's spine.
Speaker 2 (53:33):
I'm honored and.
Speaker 3 (53:34):
Hopefully hopefully we'll be reporting from Greenland. Suit We'll see, yeah,
we'll see. Okay, thank you, Thank you, Commander Jones. And
now I have a special segment that I call burn
bag of the Week. Malcolm, what's a burn bag?
Speaker 2 (53:51):
Funny?
Speaker 3 (53:51):
You should ask that in the US intelligence community we
have these paper receptacles in which we throw out useless tops, documents,
or useless materials that should not fall into the hands
of the enemy lest it compromise us or it gives
someone else' stupid idea that we don't want to see replicated.
(54:13):
So this week's burn back of the week is Sebastian Gorka.
Seb Gorka. Who is Seb Gorka? Funny? You should ask
that Seb Gorka now fills the role as Special Advisor
to the President on counter terrorism, But Seb Gorka is
really an ex British Army reservist who for a couple
(54:35):
of years acted as a Hungarian interpreter and somehow parlayed
that really lame ass job that involved no secrets and
no working with anybody of significance, into a British accented
job where he gave lectures at the Marine Corps University
(54:55):
in Quantico and went around and used that to get
a talk show host job, essentially in right wing extremist world.
He was named by President Trump as the director or
as this advisor for counter terrorism, and.
Speaker 8 (55:12):
Then today he said this, they dumped all of this
into this country. Millions and millions of people were dumped
into this country intentionally. It was flagrant, it was treasonous.
And now you have the same party that did this
to us are sitting back and watching as the White
House tries to go through this almost impossible process of
(55:35):
deporting millions of people, and they're trying to find any
problem they can that they can jump on, you know,
to vilify the White House as they try to do
the almost impossible mandate that was given to them by
the American people of how do you figure out how
to deport fifteen million people that were invited in by
the last president.
Speaker 6 (55:51):
I came up with this over a year ago when
I had my show on news Max Robin. I realized
that the taxonomy of politics in America is dead. It's
not and right, it's not even Republican or Democrat. There's
one line that divides us. Do you love America or
do you hate America. It's really quite that simple. And
we have people who love America, like the President, like
his cabinet, like the directors of his agencies, who want
(56:14):
to protect Americans. And then there is the other side
that is on the side of the cartel members, on
the side of the illegal aliens, on the side of
the terrorists. And you have to ask yourself, are they
technically aiding and abetting them? Because aiding and abetting criminals
and terrorists is a crime in federal statute.
Speaker 3 (56:36):
Rob Now, if you heard what I heard, what you
heard was, and let me use technical intelligence parlance that
is not just exclusive to black Man's spy, but to
all of the US intelligence community. The words that set
Gorka spewed out there today about people who are not
(56:57):
loyal to President.
Speaker 2 (56:58):
Trump gives us analytically, we would use the term.
Speaker 1 (57:06):
A fucking idiot.
Speaker 3 (57:10):
No one, no one who how this British naturalized Hungarian
born citizen who is a suspected neo Nazi can come
here and work in the job where he is supposedly
serving the people of the United States and say something
(57:31):
so ludicrous as this is beyond me, and so like
every other piece of waste that we have inside the
intelligence community, Seb Gorka goes straight into the burn bag
and it's a swoosh and a hit.
Speaker 2 (57:47):
We fold it.
Speaker 3 (57:48):
Over, we staple it up, and we throw it away
into the furnace, which burns useless refuse like the things
that Seb Gorka said about America today. And with that,
I am going to go and have another double espresso
(58:08):
so that I can wash that stupidity out of my mouth.
Speaker 2 (58:13):
Thank you for listening, Thank you for coming to and
enduring and.
Speaker 3 (58:21):
Exciting and challenging and emotional episode of Black Men's Spy. Usually,
at the end of every episode, I like to go
out with a quote by someone who I love and
admire as a writer, as a philosopher, as an intelligence officer,
(58:41):
you know, and as a man of the world who
has taught many of us some of the core philosophy
of what it's like to be a human being. And
that's author and former spy Rudyard Kipling. But today I
have to choose another quote, so there will be no.
(59:04):
To my fellow members of the Kipling Society of which
I'm a member, please forgive me. But today I would
like to end on a quote that comes from the
Declaration of Independence.
Speaker 2 (59:16):
And you might recall in.
Speaker 3 (59:17):
Twenty seventeen, after Donald Trump was elected, on the fourth
of July, National Public Radio read the Declaration of Independence,
as they do every July fourth, and it was for
some strange reason that year the right wing extremist followers
of Donald Trump heard it and assumed it was liberal claptrap,
(59:41):
insulting President Trump. A declaration of Independence. And so as
we enter our two hundred and forty ninth year of
this nation, I would like to give a quote that
I think typifies what is going on in this crisis
of honor that we are having today with Donald Trump
(01:00:04):
and the people who are in the intelligence community. I
do not want to even say that Tulsa Gabbard is
a member of the intelligence community. She is a person
who has been appointed to the job. But I would
like to go out with a quote from the Declaration
of Independence.
Speaker 2 (01:00:24):
And that is this quote.
Speaker 3 (01:00:27):
We should explain where we are today in how you
should view the crisis, which is it at hand? The
declaration wrote, a prince whose character, thus marked by every
act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be
(01:00:47):
the ruler of a free people. I want you to
think about that. Thank you for coming to this episode
A black Man Spy. I want to thank you for
giving me your time listening to Commander Jones, giving this
(01:01:09):
podcast some thought, because as much fun as I like
to put into it, as much excitement as I like
to stir, we are in a crisis, and so I
want you to continue listening. You can find this on YouTube.
You can find me in my long form writing on substack.
(01:01:30):
You can become a subscriber to YouTube and substack, as
well as to this podcast, which you can find on Apple, Spotify,
and wherever you find other fine podcasts, you will also
find mine. So thanks again for coming to Black Man's Spy.
I will see you next week.
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