Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
All right, let's do something completely different. I am very.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
Pleased to welcome back to the show my friend Dan Hoffman.
If if you were on our listener trip to Washington,
DC a couple of years back, you would have had
a chance to meet Dan in person.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Dan is a three time c I, a station chief.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
It has been reported that one of those stations was Moscow.
I won't ask him if it was, because if you
told me, he'd have to he'd have to kill me.
We have actually a surprising amount of stuff relating to
not just Russia, but also to the world of spying
that I wanted to talk about today.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
So Dan, thank you very much for making time for us.
I appreciate it.
Speaker 3 (00:43):
Yeah, thanks for having me on the program. Appreciate it.
Speaker 4 (00:45):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
All right, Before we do all that all that stuff,
I'm gonna ask you the question I was asking my listeners,
what's the what's the first vinyl album you remember owning?
Speaker 3 (00:54):
Wow, that's a really good question.
Speaker 4 (00:58):
Probably Boston because I'm from Boston and the title album
Boston More than a Feeling. That's that's the first one
I remember. It was a beautiful album.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
Excellent call. It was a beautiful album. That was one
of my first ones too. All right, what should we
make of the news? I'll just read a BBC headline
Ukrainian troops now up to thirty kilometers inside of Russia.
So that's, you know, getting close to twenty miles inside
of Russia. So first question is do you think that's true?
(01:28):
And second what should we make of it?
Speaker 4 (01:31):
It's definitely true, and the first thing you want to
make of it full success. You know, the Ukrainians had
to conduct reconnaissance before they launched that attack, and the
Russians apparently never were able to spot that, and then
the Ukrainian military was able to mass at the border
and invade Russia again without any really serious Russian resistance.
(01:52):
That's a huge intelligence failure on the part of the Russians.
Speaker 3 (01:55):
That's the first thing that I would gather from that.
Speaker 4 (01:58):
Again, it's another in a series of serious intelligence failures,
which is ironic because Ladimir Putin fashions himself as the
KGB operative in the Kremlin, an expert on cloak and
dagor espionage. But he's made a lot of mistakes in Ukraine,
and a lot of them are related to the field
he's supposed to know well. Cloak and diagor espionage.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
Yeah, I mean, moving a big enough part of a
military to invade a country is not like moving one
rocket launcher.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
It's the kind of thing that you.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
Would think signals intelligence might find, human intelligence might find
imagery intelligence from a set like every kind of intelligence
should have been able to detect that, right.
Speaker 3 (02:40):
Yep, one hundred percent.
Speaker 4 (02:42):
And Vladimir Putin likes to talk about the VERTI kane
have last, which is vertical of power. So he alone,
you know, takes all the credit for everything that goes right.
Of course, when things go wrong, that doesn't quite apply,
because he's going to look for his local guys on
the ground in Kursk and probably try to blame them.
When Ukraine defended themselves so well against Russia, Putin took
(03:05):
a senior FSB officer, Serghei Bizda, whom I know, and
threw him in jail in.
Speaker 3 (03:10):
The Fortsava for a period of time and used him kind.
Speaker 4 (03:12):
Of as a scapegoat for Russia's intelligence failures. Now, we
weren't so great ourselves because we didn't think Ukraine was
going to last. We gave President Zelenski a planed and
he said, I don't need a flight out.
Speaker 3 (03:24):
I need ammunition the fights here. That was a pretty
fiffy mission statement and he continues to this day.
Speaker 2 (03:29):
Mm hmm, all right, you just said something in passing
that I need to go back to. What was that
guy's name who got thrown into Lafortevo And how did
you know him?
Speaker 3 (03:37):
Sha Biseida. He's a senior FSB officer.
Speaker 4 (03:40):
And you know, in the time that I've spent working
on Russian operations, I got to meet a lot of
Russians and we talked to Russian intelligence officers on a
pre regular basis, and that's how we conducted this prisoner
swap recently and got Evan Gieshkovich out of harms Way
in Russia. And there's been other times, course many throughout
(04:00):
our history when we actually speak to those guys and
try to engage in some very challenging but a discussion
to try to reap some benefit, and they do as well.
Speaker 2 (04:13):
When you know guys like that, when you talk with
guys like that, how how do you think about them?
Like I'm guessing that you think of Vladimir Putin as
evil and I'm guessing that there were some Russians who
were spies that you met NU talked about who you
thought of as very serious competitors, but not necessarily evil.
Speaker 4 (04:38):
So if you're talking about Russian intelligence officers, the spies
are the ones who work for us. Those are my spies.
They work for me. So if I had a source,
that's a different story. Talking about the Russians stealing secrets
on our behalf. Just to make it clear, if it's
a Russian intelligence officer, yeah, I mean many of those
guys are pipe hitter, bad boys. It doesn't mean that
(05:00):
I can't find some common ground with them. And I
used to you're talking about music today. I used to
have a lot of conversations with Russian and intelligence officers
about the theater, about music, Chekhov, short stories, all kinds
of stuff, films, and we'd find actually common ground on
those things. It didn't mean that I thought they were
great or would want them to like hold my child
(05:22):
or anything. It just meant that we could find a
little bit of a common we albeit a small one,
a common piece of interest there in, something that might
allow us to build some little.
Speaker 3 (05:35):
Bit of rapport.
Speaker 4 (05:36):
But we had, more than anything else, was just a
mutual understanding. Right, I understood what made them tick. They
understood me, and that's why we could sit across the table.
Speaker 3 (05:45):
From each other and hammer stuff out when we had to.
Speaker 4 (05:48):
That's the secret of arms control and negotiations and some
of the other things we've done with the Russians.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
Is it at all surprising to you? Because it was
to me, but I know much less than you. Is
it all surprising that the Russians are admitting that the
Ukrainians are twenty miles into Russia. I mean, the BBC
headline says, Ukrainian troops now up to thirty kilometers inside Russia.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
Moscow says, And for me, I was a.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
Little bit surprised because it's kind of admitting a failure
by Russia.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
How should I think about that?
Speaker 4 (06:21):
Well, they don't have a choice but to admit it
because their own people are absolutely at wits end. If
you just there are people out there with social media
screaming to Vladimir Putin, Hey, mister Tzar, you probably aren't
aware of this, but we've been overrun. You just can't
keep that a secret, especially these days. This isn't like
the old days of the Iron Curtain, where you could
(06:43):
just close things off and not allow people access to information.
Speaker 3 (06:47):
In today's world, it's just not possible.
Speaker 4 (06:49):
So the only option Putin will have will be to
blame it on incompetent subordinates whom he will jail or worse.
Speaker 3 (06:57):
But that's really his only option.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
We're talking with Daniel Hoffman, former three time CIA station chief,
including reportedly Moscow. Let me move away from that a
little bit and go just slightly, but only slightly outside
your usual lane.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
Headline from Reuter's.
Speaker 2 (07:14):
US publicly announces submarine move to Middle East, including Israel
Iran tensions amid Israel Iran tensions. And as you know,
and many of my listeners will know, the US rarely
comments on positioning of or operations of submarines. That stuff
is usually kept very secret. What do you make of
(07:35):
telling the world, Hey, we've got a nuclear sub going
towards let's just put it plainly near Israel and striking
distance of Iran.
Speaker 4 (07:44):
Yeah, yeah, so listen. I am the latter. The early
part of my career is a Russia hand. But the
last decade or so I was all Middle East South Asia,
served in war zones in those places, and I ran
our Near East Division, which was respect wonsible for Middle East,
North Africa and South Asia from our headquarters for a
couple of years. And look, I think it, based on
(08:07):
my experience of having traveled all over the region, I
would say that the United States we believe we have
not deterred Iran from launching a major strike, and the
concern that we would have is that there could be
a miscalculation, there could be mass casualties.
Speaker 3 (08:23):
Israel will then ratchet up, and we're in.
Speaker 4 (08:25):
A cycle of escalation and it's like the opening of
Mission Impossible, where the fuse is going down and it's
going to be a major war in the Middle East
and we're going to get dragged into it.
Speaker 3 (08:35):
So what we're.
Speaker 4 (08:36):
Doing is adding military assets and being very open about it.
You're right, we normally don't disclose that we put a
submarine of the sort that we did Uss Georgia into
the into the Gulf.
Speaker 3 (08:48):
But we're doing that to make it.
Speaker 4 (08:50):
One hundred percent clear to everybody watching that we're serious
and we want to deter Iran and his Bulah from
doing the wrong thing. Now, those has Bulah Iran and
the other they're proxy terrorists. They're using weapons of unprecedented scale,
and that's the concern that I have, we are real
close to this thing going sideways. And sometimes to use
(09:13):
the reference to a famous movie you and I know
quite well, Animal House. The end of that movie when
Kevin Bacon the police officers trying to wave everybody to
restore order, and it's not really like that because the
Animal House guys have caused a lot of havoc during
the parade. I kind of when I hear Tony Blaken,
Secretary of State, trying to stop this war, or the
(09:34):
President Biden saying don't, I kind of imagine them as
Kevin Bacon, like waving their hands stuff, but they look
it's already gone off the rails. And what we need
is some US hard power in the region, which is
what we're doing. But I just don't know.
Speaker 3 (09:46):
I don't think it's going to be enough to stop
this impending attack.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
So my next statement is going to sound like a
like a political jab at Biden, and I guess it
could be, but I really mean it more as a
straight up analysis, and I would like you to tell
me whether you think I'm on the right tw page
with Biden having been the guy who said, well, if
Putin does a small incursion into Ukraine, that could be okay,
and the guy who pulled out of Afghanistan the way
(10:11):
that he did. Is it possible that somebody in the
Biden administration, high up in the Biden administration says that
nobody's gonna believe tough talk from this guy. Biden can
say whatever he wants about, like don't do it, and
he says that from time to time you get on
He'll go on TV and says, you know, my word
(10:31):
to them is don't. But I don't think any I
don't believe him. So maybe moving the submarine in this
way and announcing it is is the Biden administration's way
of saying, you really should believe us this time, even
though Biden hasn't been strong in the past.
Speaker 1 (10:50):
Do you think there's anything to that.
Speaker 4 (10:52):
I don't think I would necessarily say passed his prologue
in terms of what we did now Afghanistan or Ukraine
necessarily influencing Iran's calculus in this case.
Speaker 3 (11:05):
But again I'll go back to this.
Speaker 4 (11:06):
We get a lot of reflections and intelligence about what
our adversaries are thinking and what they're plotting and planning.
And I think we assessed that Iran and hisbela were
so not deterred, which is why we're adding military assets
into the region.
Speaker 3 (11:20):
Now.
Speaker 4 (11:21):
One of the things we keep saying, if you just
listen to public statements from this administration just about the
Middle East is don't escalate. Don't escalate, say they're common refrain. Well,
that's a slippery slope to appeasement deterrence. If you read
what President Reagan used to say about deterrence. Deturrence is
all about showing your enemy that if they attack, you're
going to inflict so much harm on them that they
(11:44):
will be sorry they attacked you. That is not what
Iran believed in April when they launched an unprecedented attack
from their territory using drones and cruise missiles. It's arguably
not what they believe today. We need to stop talking
about not wanting to esca lake and instead being.
Speaker 3 (12:02):
Really clear about deterrence.
Speaker 4 (12:03):
That whole idea about walks offt they carry a big stick,
don't talk about de escalating and things like that. Just
put some more military ships in the in the in
the Gulf. But the worst thing ross we haven't stopped
anybody in the Middle East. The Hohosies are disrupting trade.
We haven't the in the Red Sea. We haven't deterred them.
We haven't deterred his Bulla. They continue to launch massive
(12:24):
cross border missile attacks, forcing sixty thousand Israelis to be
displaced from the north.
Speaker 3 (12:30):
That's not deterrence. So we haven't deterred them.
Speaker 4 (12:32):
We haven't deterred a Rond's proxy terrorists in Iraq from
shooting at US at our bases or shooting at US
in our in our base in Syria, which is those
are small numbers of our counter terrorism operators out there.
So deterrence is failing in the Middle East. That's where
I focus. That's the concern.
Speaker 2 (12:49):
I'm gonna mention one quick story for listeners, and then
I'm going to ask Dan a question about something else.
There's a piece in the Wall Street Journal today entitled
the Dangerous New Iranian Nuclear Reality, and basically what they're
saying is they think that Iran is much closer to
a nuclear bomb than people have been thinking, that they've
been keeping it hidden very very well, and that not
knowing just when the breakout might happen changes the calculus
(13:12):
about how to react to Iran. And I'll get Dan
probably back another time to talk about that. Dan I
want to ask you one last question though, about something
we haven't talked about yet. You wrote a piece just
last week for The Washington Times entitled CIA officers sacrifice
shows need to crack Havana syndrome mystery. So I'm just
gonna ask you to say anything you want to say
(13:35):
about Havana syndrome in this article.
Speaker 3 (13:37):
Well, I would encourage folks to read that article.
Speaker 4 (13:39):
I appreciate you highlighting it. I've gotten a lot of
positive feedback on it. If you look for me on Twitter,
Daniel Hoffman DC, you can find it there on LinkedIn.
But what I would say is that Havana syndrome is
an intelligence failure. It's a gap we haven't failed. We
still haven't proven that it was Russia, even though there's
a lot of circumstantial evidence that points to Russia. But
yet those attacks have continued, and we have a lot
(14:01):
of people who are suffering from pretty serious effects damage
to their brains as a result. And it's really up
to our intelligence community, in particular the CIA, to recruit
the sources worldwide, but in Russia, I think, in particular,
to prove who the culprit is so we can take
(14:21):
action against them. And ensure that no one is able
to carry on these attacks against us, and that's the
highest priority. When Secretary Gates used to be asked like
what kept him up at night, people expected him to say,
Iran nuclear program, North Korea launching a new terrorism, Russia, China, Iran, whatever.
(14:42):
He would say, No, no, no, all of my soldiers
on the front lines.
Speaker 3 (14:46):
That's what keeps me up at night.
Speaker 4 (14:47):
I'm worried about them, and we got to do everything
we can to keep them safe. That's what I believe
about Havana syndrome.
Speaker 3 (14:53):
We're not doing enough, all right, And.
Speaker 2 (14:55):
Just real quick, give me seventeen seconds because I like
prime numbers on what havana syndrome is, because I don't
want to assume that every listener knows what we're talking about.
Speaker 4 (15:04):
Yeah, well, folks should look it up on the internet,
use your Google machine.
Speaker 3 (15:08):
But it is a pulse. People say that, a high pitched.
Speaker 4 (15:12):
Sound that causes people to experience vertigo and sometimes blurred vision,
and it's traumatic brain anger. I've got friends who had
to retire from serving at the CIA because they suffered
from havana syndrome attack. Look at my friend Mark Paul Moreopolis,
I know that's a lot of it's a long Greek
name man, but you can find him on the internet.
Mark was hit when he was in Moscow, so that's
(15:34):
some not so circumstantial evidence there and had to retire
from the CIA's.
Speaker 3 (15:38):
Receive treatment at Walter Reed.
Speaker 4 (15:39):
So folks who are interested do some research about it
and talk to your congressman and where'm men about it
and ask them to step up and do what's right
to protect our people.
Speaker 2 (15:48):
Daniel Hoffman former three time CIA station chief, including probably Moscow.
You can follow him on Twitter or x at Daniel
Hoffman with two s DC Daniel Hoffman in DC.
Speaker 1 (16:01):
I encourage you to follow Dan there again.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
If you were with me on that DC trip, you
would have met him in person. Dan, thank you as
always for your time, and thank you even more for
your service to our country. It's uh an honor to
talk to you, my friend, the.
Speaker 3 (16:13):
Honors mine as well. Thank you very much. Have a
great rest of your day, all right, you two
All right, let's do something completely different. I am very.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
Pleased to welcome back to the show my friend Dan Hoffman.
If if you were on our listener trip to Washington,
DC a couple of years back, you would have had
a chance to meet Dan in person.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Dan is a three time c I, a station chief.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
It has been reported that one of those stations was Moscow.
I won't ask him if it was, because if you
told me, he'd have to he'd have to kill me.
We have actually a surprising amount of stuff relating to
not just Russia, but also to the world of spying
that I wanted to talk about today.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
So Dan, thank you very much for making time for us.
I appreciate it.
Speaker 3 (00:43):
Yeah, thanks for having me on the program. Appreciate it.
Speaker 4 (00:45):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
All right, Before we do all that all that stuff,
I'm gonna ask you the question I was asking my listeners,
what's the what's the first vinyl album you remember owning?
Speaker 3 (00:54):
Wow, that's a really good question.
Speaker 4 (00:58):
Probably Boston because I'm from Boston and the title album
Boston More than a Feeling. That's that's the first one
I remember. It was a beautiful album.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
Excellent call. It was a beautiful album. That was one
of my first ones too. All right, what should we
make of the news? I'll just read a BBC headline
Ukrainian troops now up to thirty kilometers inside of Russia.
So that's, you know, getting close to twenty miles inside
of Russia. So first question is do you think that's true?
(01:28):
And second what should we make of it?
Speaker 4 (01:31):
It's definitely true, and the first thing you want to
make of it full success. You know, the Ukrainians had
to conduct reconnaissance before they launched that attack, and the
Russians apparently never were able to spot that, and then
the Ukrainian military was able to mass at the border
and invade Russia again without any really serious Russian resistance.
(01:52):
That's a huge intelligence failure on the part of the Russians.
Speaker 3 (01:55):
That's the first thing that I would gather from that.
Speaker 4 (01:58):
Again, it's another in a series of serious intelligence failures,
which is ironic because Ladimir Putin fashions himself as the
KGB operative in the Kremlin, an expert on cloak and
dagor espionage. But he's made a lot of mistakes in Ukraine,
and a lot of them are related to the field
he's supposed to know well. Cloak and diagor espionage.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
Yeah, I mean, moving a big enough part of a
military to invade a country is not like moving one
rocket launcher.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
It's the kind of thing that you.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
Would think signals intelligence might find, human intelligence might find
imagery intelligence from a set like every kind of intelligence
should have been able to detect that, right.
Speaker 3 (02:40):
Yep, one hundred percent.
Speaker 4 (02:42):
And Vladimir Putin likes to talk about the VERTI kane
have last, which is vertical of power. So he alone,
you know, takes all the credit for everything that goes right.
Of course, when things go wrong, that doesn't quite apply,
because he's going to look for his local guys on
the ground in Kursk and probably try to blame them.
When Ukraine defended themselves so well against Russia, Putin took
(03:05):
a senior FSB officer, Serghei Bizda, whom I know, and
threw him in jail in.
Speaker 3 (03:10):
The Fortsava for a period of time and used him kind.
Speaker 4 (03:12):
Of as a scapegoat for Russia's intelligence failures. Now, we
weren't so great ourselves because we didn't think Ukraine was
going to last. We gave President Zelenski a planed and
he said, I don't need a flight out.
Speaker 3 (03:24):
I need ammunition the fights here. That was a pretty
fiffy mission statement and he continues to this day.
Speaker 2 (03:29):
Mm hmm, all right, you just said something in passing
that I need to go back to. What was that
guy's name who got thrown into Lafortevo And how did
you know him?
Speaker 3 (03:37):
Sha Biseida. He's a senior FSB officer.
Speaker 4 (03:40):
And you know, in the time that I've spent working
on Russian operations, I got to meet a lot of
Russians and we talked to Russian intelligence officers on a
pre regular basis, and that's how we conducted this prisoner
swap recently and got Evan Gieshkovich out of harms Way
in Russia. And there's been other times, course many throughout
(04:00):
our history when we actually speak to those guys and
try to engage in some very challenging but a discussion
to try to reap some benefit, and they do as well.
Speaker 2 (04:13):
When you know guys like that, when you talk with
guys like that, how how do you think about them?
Like I'm guessing that you think of Vladimir Putin as
evil and I'm guessing that there were some Russians who
were spies that you met NU talked about who you
thought of as very serious competitors, but not necessarily evil.
Speaker 4 (04:38):
So if you're talking about Russian intelligence officers, the spies
are the ones who work for us. Those are my spies.
They work for me. So if I had a source,
that's a different story. Talking about the Russians stealing secrets
on our behalf. Just to make it clear, if it's
a Russian intelligence officer, yeah, I mean many of those
guys are pipe hitter, bad boys. It doesn't mean that
(05:00):
I can't find some common ground with them. And I
used to you're talking about music today. I used to
have a lot of conversations with Russian and intelligence officers
about the theater, about music, Chekhov, short stories, all kinds
of stuff, films, and we'd find actually common ground on
those things. It didn't mean that I thought they were
great or would want them to like hold my child
(05:22):
or anything. It just meant that we could find a
little bit of a common we albeit a small one,
a common piece of interest there in, something that might
allow us to build some little.
Speaker 3 (05:35):
Bit of rapport.
Speaker 4 (05:36):
But we had, more than anything else, was just a
mutual understanding. Right, I understood what made them tick. They
understood me, and that's why we could sit across the table.
Speaker 3 (05:45):
From each other and hammer stuff out when we had to.
Speaker 4 (05:48):
That's the secret of arms control and negotiations and some
of the other things we've done with the Russians.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
Is it at all surprising to you? Because it was
to me, but I know much less than you. Is
it all surprising that the Russians are admitting that the
Ukrainians are twenty miles into Russia. I mean, the BBC
headline says, Ukrainian troops now up to thirty kilometers inside Russia.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
Moscow says, And for me, I was a.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
Little bit surprised because it's kind of admitting a failure
by Russia.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
How should I think about that?
Speaker 4 (06:21):
Well, they don't have a choice but to admit it
because their own people are absolutely at wits end. If
you just there are people out there with social media
screaming to Vladimir Putin, Hey, mister Tzar, you probably aren't
aware of this, but we've been overrun. You just can't
keep that a secret, especially these days. This isn't like
the old days of the Iron Curtain, where you could
(06:43):
just close things off and not allow people access to information.
Speaker 3 (06:47):
In today's world, it's just not possible.
Speaker 4 (06:49):
So the only option Putin will have will be to
blame it on incompetent subordinates whom he will jail or worse.
Speaker 3 (06:57):
But that's really his only option.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
We're talking with Daniel Hoffman, former three time CIA station chief,
including reportedly Moscow. Let me move away from that a
little bit and go just slightly, but only slightly outside
your usual lane.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
Headline from Reuter's.
Speaker 2 (07:14):
US publicly announces submarine move to Middle East, including Israel
Iran tensions amid Israel Iran tensions. And as you know,
and many of my listeners will know, the US rarely
comments on positioning of or operations of submarines. That stuff
is usually kept very secret. What do you make of
(07:35):
telling the world, Hey, we've got a nuclear sub going
towards let's just put it plainly near Israel and striking
distance of Iran.
Speaker 4 (07:44):
Yeah, yeah, so listen. I am the latter. The early
part of my career is a Russia hand. But the
last decade or so I was all Middle East South Asia,
served in war zones in those places, and I ran
our Near East Division, which was respect wonsible for Middle East,
North Africa and South Asia from our headquarters for a
couple of years. And look, I think it, based on
(08:07):
my experience of having traveled all over the region, I
would say that the United States we believe we have
not deterred Iran from launching a major strike, and the
concern that we would have is that there could be
a miscalculation, there could be mass casualties.
Speaker 3 (08:23):
Israel will then ratchet up, and we're in.
Speaker 4 (08:25):
A cycle of escalation and it's like the opening of
Mission Impossible, where the fuse is going down and it's
going to be a major war in the Middle East
and we're going to get dragged into it.
Speaker 3 (08:35):
So what we're.
Speaker 4 (08:36):
Doing is adding military assets and being very open about it.
You're right, we normally don't disclose that we put a
submarine of the sort that we did Uss Georgia into
the into the Gulf.
Speaker 3 (08:48):
But we're doing that to make it.
Speaker 4 (08:50):
One hundred percent clear to everybody watching that we're serious
and we want to deter Iran and his Bulah from
doing the wrong thing. Now, those has Bulah Iran and
the other they're proxy terrorists. They're using weapons of unprecedented scale,
and that's the concern that I have, we are real
close to this thing going sideways. And sometimes to use
(09:13):
the reference to a famous movie you and I know
quite well, Animal House. The end of that movie when
Kevin Bacon the police officers trying to wave everybody to
restore order, and it's not really like that because the
Animal House guys have caused a lot of havoc during
the parade. I kind of when I hear Tony Blaken,
Secretary of State, trying to stop this war, or the
(09:34):
President Biden saying don't, I kind of imagine them as
Kevin Bacon, like waving their hands stuff, but they look
it's already gone off the rails. And what we need
is some US hard power in the region, which is
what we're doing. But I just don't know.
Speaker 3 (09:46):
I don't think it's going to be enough to stop
this impending attack.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
So my next statement is going to sound like a
like a political jab at Biden, and I guess it
could be, but I really mean it more as a
straight up analysis, and I would like you to tell
me whether you think I'm on the right tw page
with Biden having been the guy who said, well, if
Putin does a small incursion into Ukraine, that could be okay,
and the guy who pulled out of Afghanistan the way
(10:11):
that he did. Is it possible that somebody in the
Biden administration, high up in the Biden administration says that
nobody's gonna believe tough talk from this guy. Biden can
say whatever he wants about, like don't do it, and
he says that from time to time you get on
He'll go on TV and says, you know, my word
(10:31):
to them is don't. But I don't think any I
don't believe him. So maybe moving the submarine in this
way and announcing it is is the Biden administration's way
of saying, you really should believe us this time, even
though Biden hasn't been strong in the past.
Speaker 1 (10:50):
Do you think there's anything to that.
Speaker 4 (10:52):
I don't think I would necessarily say passed his prologue
in terms of what we did now Afghanistan or Ukraine
necessarily influencing Iran's calculus in this case.
Speaker 3 (11:05):
But again I'll go back to this.
Speaker 4 (11:06):
We get a lot of reflections and intelligence about what
our adversaries are thinking and what they're plotting and planning.
And I think we assessed that Iran and hisbela were
so not deterred, which is why we're adding military assets
into the region.
Speaker 3 (11:20):
Now.
Speaker 4 (11:21):
One of the things we keep saying, if you just
listen to public statements from this administration just about the
Middle East is don't escalate. Don't escalate, say they're common refrain. Well,
that's a slippery slope to appeasement deterrence. If you read
what President Reagan used to say about deterrence. Deturrence is
all about showing your enemy that if they attack, you're
going to inflict so much harm on them that they
(11:44):
will be sorry they attacked you. That is not what
Iran believed in April when they launched an unprecedented attack
from their territory using drones and cruise missiles. It's arguably
not what they believe today. We need to stop talking
about not wanting to esca lake and instead being.
Speaker 3 (12:02):
Really clear about deterrence.
Speaker 4 (12:03):
That whole idea about walks offt they carry a big stick,
don't talk about de escalating and things like that. Just
put some more military ships in the in the in
the Gulf. But the worst thing ross we haven't stopped
anybody in the Middle East. The Hohosies are disrupting trade.
We haven't the in the Red Sea. We haven't deterred them.
We haven't deterred his Bulla. They continue to launch massive
(12:24):
cross border missile attacks, forcing sixty thousand Israelis to be
displaced from the north.
Speaker 3 (12:30):
That's not deterrence. So we haven't deterred them.
Speaker 4 (12:32):
We haven't deterred a Rond's proxy terrorists in Iraq from
shooting at US at our bases or shooting at US
in our in our base in Syria, which is those
are small numbers of our counter terrorism operators out there.
So deterrence is failing in the Middle East. That's where
I focus. That's the concern.
Speaker 2 (12:49):
I'm gonna mention one quick story for listeners, and then
I'm going to ask Dan a question about something else.
There's a piece in the Wall Street Journal today entitled
the Dangerous New Iranian Nuclear Reality, and basically what they're
saying is they think that Iran is much closer to
a nuclear bomb than people have been thinking, that they've
been keeping it hidden very very well, and that not
knowing just when the breakout might happen changes the calculus
(13:12):
about how to react to Iran. And I'll get Dan
probably back another time to talk about that. Dan I
want to ask you one last question though, about something
we haven't talked about yet. You wrote a piece just
last week for The Washington Times entitled CIA officers sacrifice
shows need to crack Havana syndrome mystery. So I'm just
gonna ask you to say anything you want to say
(13:35):
about Havana syndrome in this article.
Speaker 3 (13:37):
Well, I would encourage folks to read that article.
Speaker 4 (13:39):
I appreciate you highlighting it. I've gotten a lot of
positive feedback on it. If you look for me on Twitter,
Daniel Hoffman DC, you can find it there on LinkedIn.
But what I would say is that Havana syndrome is
an intelligence failure. It's a gap we haven't failed. We
still haven't proven that it was Russia, even though there's
a lot of circumstantial evidence that points to Russia. But
yet those attacks have continued, and we have a lot
(14:01):
of people who are suffering from pretty serious effects damage
to their brains as a result. And it's really up
to our intelligence community, in particular the CIA, to recruit
the sources worldwide, but in Russia, I think, in particular,
to prove who the culprit is so we can take
(14:21):
action against them. And ensure that no one is able
to carry on these attacks against us, and that's the
highest priority. When Secretary Gates used to be asked like
what kept him up at night, people expected him to say,
Iran nuclear program, North Korea launching a new terrorism, Russia, China, Iran, whatever.
(14:42):
He would say, No, no, no, all of my soldiers
on the front lines.
Speaker 3 (14:46):
That's what keeps me up at night.
Speaker 4 (14:47):
I'm worried about them, and we got to do everything
we can to keep them safe. That's what I believe
about Havana syndrome.
Speaker 3 (14:53):
We're not doing enough, all right, And.
Speaker 2 (14:55):
Just real quick, give me seventeen seconds because I like
prime numbers on what havana syndrome is, because I don't
want to assume that every listener knows what we're talking about.
Speaker 4 (15:04):
Yeah, well, folks should look it up on the internet,
use your Google machine.
Speaker 3 (15:08):
But it is a pulse. People say that, a high pitched.
Speaker 4 (15:12):
Sound that causes people to experience vertigo and sometimes blurred vision,
and it's traumatic brain anger. I've got friends who had
to retire from serving at the CIA because they suffered
from havana syndrome attack. Look at my friend Mark Paul Moreopolis,
I know that's a lot of it's a long Greek
name man, but you can find him on the internet.
Mark was hit when he was in Moscow, so that's
(15:34):
some not so circumstantial evidence there and had to retire
from the CIA's.
Speaker 3 (15:38):
Receive treatment at Walter Reed.
Speaker 4 (15:39):
So folks who are interested do some research about it
and talk to your congressman and where'm men about it
and ask them to step up and do what's right
to protect our people.
Speaker 2 (15:48):
Daniel Hoffman former three time CIA station chief, including probably Moscow.
You can follow him on Twitter or x at Daniel
Hoffman with two s DC Daniel Hoffman in DC.
Speaker 1 (16:01):
I encourage you to follow Dan there again.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
If you were with me on that DC trip, you
would have met him in person. Dan, thank you as
always for your time, and thank you even more for
your service to our country. It's uh an honor to
talk to you, my friend, the.
Speaker 3 (16:13):
Honors mine as well. Thank you very much. Have a
great rest of your day, all right, you two
The Ross Kaminsky Show News
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