Emily (6:18)
So this is the question I think few people are actually talking about, which is if you have people like Cash Patel and Dan Bongino and Pam Bondi coming in hot to the Trump administration in the case of Patel and Bongino, they have years of really strong statements about what the government is hiding in the case of Jeffrey Epstein and why the government may be hiding it. What incentive do they have to come into the government and look nakedly cynical and ridiculous by making such a bold about face and asking the public to trust them, as Kash Patel did on Joe Rogan's show when he said, listen, do you think Dan Bonginuimi would come in here and tell you this if it weren't true? Well, the intelligence community in the United States of America has a long and fairly fascinating and I think often flattened history of lying or omitting for the sake of the greater good. And that's why I wanted to talk about the way Megan Framed that question to Ben. This is the central, I think this is the central question of the broader conversation about why these parts of our government are allowed to operate in such secrecy in ways that affect foreign policy, not just in ways that are sort of short term. We need to, you know, not put the sirens on when we're going to make this arrest because it might spook the, the perp. It's not like that in these cases. These are often years long operations, some of which have, have crept into the public and I hate to say this, some of which have been committed by patriots, have been schemed up by patriots. One of the most interesting memoirs you can read is Oliver North's. Oliver North's memoirs as they relate to the Iran Contra scandal are well worth revisiting. Howard Hunt, another great memoir of the Cold War that's well worth revisiting because these are stories we in many cases don't learn about until years and years and years later. Later. Now, I don't know if you've heard of the story of an actress named Jean Seberg. Let me put this up on the screen. This is a New York Times article. You can see the date there. September 15, 1979. And I believe you can see the headline as well. FBI admits planting a rumor to discredit Jean Seberg in 1970. So this is nine years after it happened. You have an article in the New York Times on a memoir that became public that was one of the most, if we're talking about individual stories, especially less high profile individual stories, I mean, there's more known about what J. Edgar Hoover did to Martin Luther King, for example, and other surveillance targets, the Black Panther Party in general. But if you look at the case of Gene Seberg, and I'm going to share another article here because it puts it really well. This is from the Independent on the occasion of a movie featuring Kristen Stewart, actually that came out a few years ago about Gene Seberg and kind of revisiting the case. And they put it all very clearly here. This is a quote from the article. In 1970, the FBI planted the false rumor that Seberg was pregnant by a Black Panther Party member in order to, quote, cause her embarrassment and, quote, cheapen her image with the American public. Their plan worked. It was dispiriting but inevitable that some gossip columnist followed the false leads that the FBI dangled in front of them. From the FBI's point of view, she was involved in radical politics, had contributed financially to the Black Panthers and was therefore fair game. The story was picked up by the. By gossip columnist Joyce Haber, who referred obliquely to it in the Los Angeles Times. And then Newsweek also wrote about it and named Seberg. I mean, what the FBI did to Gene Seberg ultimately, I think pretty clearly ended in her overdose. That was ruled a suicide. She did lose the baby in this case. It is an incredibly tragic, personal story, and there are all kinds. I used to assign the memo itself to journalism students when I was teaching young journalists, because you can see how you have the FBI calling you up and you're over there at Newsweek, and they are your source on a gossip story. Of course, it's not something you or I would ever do, but you, you know, the FBI had some contacts that they were well aware they could go to with information like this. But why would the FBI, why would the American government do something so sick? Well, it's that greater good question. And they came to a conclusion that is abhorrent to me. Abhorrent to me. But if we don't understand it, then we don't understand the motivations that drive people to make decisions for national security that involve government secrets for the sake of the greater good. So I have no idea if this is what happened in the case of the Trump administration. I have my own personal theory, and I'll test out a hypothetical on you here without having reported this out myself. This is nothing from sources. It's purely a hypothetical. I think it's possible. I think it's plausible. But what I would say is if we assume whatever you think of the character of Cash Patel and Dan Bongino, and I don't know either of them, whatever you think of their character, if they come into the Trump administration and they are MAGA loyalists and they are people who are sick, as they have said for years and years of foreign policy, as usual, and of the American deep state, why would they then end up covering for the deep state? Well, that memo was leaked to. The original Bondi memo was leaked to Axios the day before Benjamin Netanyahu was in town. Benjamin Netanyahu was going to be touting intelligence. We know this because just a couple of days later, the New York Times published a story that was sourced to an Israeli official that said they determined the enriched. Not all of the enriched uranium had been destroyed in Iran. Well, we know that our intelligence, a lot of our intelligence, our critical intelligence about Iran's nuclear weapons program has come from Mossad. So say you are Dan Bongino and Cash Patel, and this is just me trying to fill in the possible details of A story here so that we can understand potentially where they're coming from. If you are them and the choice are Pam Bondi or Donald Trump, the choice is reveal this humiliating and devastating secret of the spy agency that is currently feeding you information on potential nuclear weapons development and on a hostile foreign enemy. Or, you know, keep trying to kick the can down the road, keep trying to get away with just closing the files and moving it on. I don't know if that's the decision that they're making, but I know it's a decision that people in the intelligence community made over and over and over again. This is one of my greatest frustrations. As important as the retelling of the history is of intelligence officials, J. Edgar Hoover, especially Allen Dulles, all of these men, as important as it is to revisit their awful legacies, one thing that we forget is that we are about 100 years less than 100 years, less than some people's lifetimes into the history of nuclear weapons. It is the blink of an eye in the scope and span of human life on this planet. We have not nearly adapted to what it's like to live with that awesome. And I mean that literally, that awesome technology at our fingertips as world leaders. We have borderless wars now where you can launch nuclear devastation from thousands and thousands and thousands of miles away without immediately losing any of your own people. This is new to human civilization. And the history of the Cold War is. And the history of Cold War intelligence communities is the history of people making really awful decisions and abusing their power because they were terrified that nuclear conflict that had kids, maybe some of you, diving under their desks during the school days to practice nuclear drills, because that's how urgent the threat of utter chaos was, especially when you think about Cuba, for example. So J. Edgar Hoover is terrified of the Black Panther Party because he's terrified that they're a conduit for nuclear enemies and that they're making it easier and easier for your nuclear enemies to, for example, set a base around the country, to weaken the country from the inside, and to ultimately destroy your civilization. He made abhorrent decisions, and we are learning more about them every single day, and we should continue to learn more about them every single day. But don't dismiss for a moment, given all of the leaks over the years, the possibility that that's what's happening behind closed doors with Jeffrey Epstein right now. That was a long rant, but I hope that sort of. It sort of explained where I'm coming from on all of this, which is. I've been talking about this for years, as have many, many, many people. And now to see the media acting like it's the most important story, more important than people's grocery bills, because suddenly it makes Trump look bad. It does. Look. Does make Trump look bad. It is very important. And yet it seems that we are still so far from understanding what's actually happening behind closed doors, how it could actually be influencing American foreign policy and why it can actually be influencing American foreign policy and what the heck to do about it. So on that note, I'm gonna head into the chat and I give you my conversation earlier today with Benny Johnson. I'm so happy to be joined now by the one and only Benny Johnson, host of the Benny Show. Benny. How many times can I say Benny in 10 seconds? Thank you for being here. Fun to say, you know, it is. It is. It's a good one. It's a strong one.
