← Camp Gagnon
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- [00:00]
A
There are people who study conspiracy theories or are interested in them, and then there are people who spend 20 years working for the organization at the center of almost every conspiracy theory. And today's guest is that guy, Mike Baker, a former CIA covert operations officer who spent nearly two decades inside the agency's operations directorate working on counterterrorism, narcotics, and places that he almost certainly can still not tell us about. But this episode is not about politics. It is is about secrets. Because somewhere between MK Ultra black budgets, classified aircraft, private contractors, UFO retrieval allegations, and whatever the hell Jeffrey Epstein was actually doing, reality became much stranger than the official explanation. We talk about how secret programs are created, how billions of dollars can disappear into classified projects, and whether anybody, even the President, can actually see the entire picture. We also talk about the most advanced spy technology that Mike believes intelligence agencies could possess, whether MK Ultra ever truly end or simply evolved. And how the CIA decides when manipulating someone is national security or when it's just manipulation. We also asked the question that every podcast listener has ever wondered. Is Mike my official CIA handler? And if he is, can the CIA start helping me book some guests? Mike has spent so much of his life around secrets, but what makes this episode so interesting is not what he knows. It's the stuff that even he still wonders about. So if you were interested in how the CIA actually operates, this is the episode from you. So sit back, relax, and welcome to camp. Mike Baker.
- [01:44]
B
Hey, how are you? I am fine, thank you very much. I'm just. I'm spending all my time looking at all your. Your stuff. Yeah, it's fantastic.
- [01:51]
A
Sa and trinkets in here.
- [01:52]
B
No, it's great.
- [01:53]
A
I really appreciate you joining me.
- [01:54]
B
I am.
- [01:55]
A
I'm a huge fan. I've listened to you for countless hours on.
- [01:58]
B
Sorry about that.
- [01:59]
A
Rogan's podcast for years, and to have you, Jo, is. Is quite an honor.
- [02:02]
B
No, that'.
- [02:03]
A
Man.
- [02:03]
B
No, you'll think differently after we finish, perhaps.
- [02:06]
A
I'm also flattered that now I think technically you're my CIA handler.
- [02:10]
B
I am. Yeah, that's exactly right. That's exactly right. Yeah, we. We had to move on from. From. From Joe.
- [02:15]
A
Yeah.
- [02:16]
B
As as many people have pointed out, which is just so. It's so up.
- [02:19]
A
Right.
- [02:19]
B
It's just like the guy's. The guy's fantastic. I love the guy.
- [02:22]
A
He's a man.
- [02:22]
B
And. And every time, though, that I've been fortunate enough to sit down with him right afterwards, here it comes, right? Oh, God damn it. There's his handler again.
- [02:31]
A
Right.
- [02:32]
B
I'm thinking, like how up is this world?
- [02:34]
A
Yeah, Right.
- [02:35]
B
But. But okay, if that's what you want to think, you think that you can't
- [02:37]
A
have friends with anyone. Okay. Every relationship you have is predicated by this agency connection.
- [02:42]
B
Right? No, I was at the agency. Told me to meet and marry my wife. I mean, that was. No, I'm kidding. It's kind of hard, actually.
- [02:47]
A
I like that.
- [02:48]
B
You gotta marry her. It's a good thing for a show.
- [02:51]
A
Exactly. Right?
- [02:52]
B
Yeah. Yeah, it is.
- [02:53]
A
It is funny how that conversation percolates with everything.
- [02:56]
B
Yes.
- [02:56]
A
And I'm assuming that the undergirding line with that is once you're in the agency, you're never out.
- [03:02]
B
You are, oddly enough. You are. But people think you're not. Right? So that's. So you're right in the sense that that's. That's the narrative, right? So once you're in, of course you're not going to leave. And I'm thinking like, well, yeah, I. You do. For a variety of reasons. Right? And so. But. But I get it. Right? And look, I. I had a great time at the agency. I really did. I. I still have some tremendous friends from those days, and they were very good to me and I've got a very good relationship with them to this day because I've always honored my agreements. Right. And once you sign a secrecy agreement, it doesn't stop when you walk out the door, right? That. That is for life. So you keep that and I keep that because I think that's. It's just what you do. It's like a promise, right? You don't bust that. So. So I've always had a good relationship with him because even though I do a lot of tv, right. I never veer off into sources and methods or anything that's. That's contrary to the secrecy agreements. But. So I get it.
- [04:06]
A
People.
- [04:06]
B
People are going to say, you know, that you never leave, but I'm here to tell you, you do.
- [04:13]
A
Who are the guys that get, I guess, like public clearance, Right? I've spoken with a few different guys, like Bustamante. I've seen John Kiriakou all over on YouTube. My friend Mark, Paula Meropoulos, who's come on the show.
- [04:25]
B
And he's a great guy.
- [04:26]
A
He's great. Mark is awesome.
- [04:27]
B
Y.
- [04:28]
A
And there's a lot of guys that have. It seems like this like, public facing kind of agency, almost like, you know, they're. They're able to have a presence publicly. But then there's thousands of other guys, former operatives and officers that are not public. So who are the guys that are allowed to go public and who's not and what is the sort of.
- [04:46]
B
Well, I mean, you know, really anybody is, right? If they, if they make that request and they're responsible and again, they do the right thing. And there have been a lot of folks who've come out and written books and look, it's not like going to sound like Wilford Brimley. It's not like the old days. In the old days, including when I started, right? That never happened. Guys just, you finished and you walked away, right? And that was. Okay. What'd you do? For 30 years I was in import export or, you know, I was, I was at the State Department or some bullshit, right? So it was never, it was never done. And then it started to shift slightly when I left. I wasn't going to leave overtly, right? So in other words, I wasn't going to leave and be able to say where I had been. But there were some senior folks there who knew that I was leaving. I was taking care of my daughter, I was raising her. And, and I had to find another job. I had to find something where I was home, right? Or, or at least closer to home. And, and so they knew that and they were very good about it. They said, look, here's what you need to do if you're going to start a business, which is what the plan was. I was going to start it with another knucklehead who came out of the British teams. And he said, then this is a good idea, right? You should be able to say where you came from because. And they were smart enough to see that, you know, if I was going into a business where I was in the private sector in strategic intelligence and investigations and, you know, risk management, security services, it's beneficial to say I did that rather than I was selling rugs, you know, or whatever, right? So they were very good to me. And they, and, and, but your agreement is that you don't up that relationship, you don't talk about things you're not supposed to talk about, right? So nowadays it's completely common. And the folks that you mentioned and a whole slew of others, but you're right, a lot of people just get out. And part of it is they just get out and retire, right? Or they get out and they move into some other job, consulting or whatever. So maybe their work doesn't require that they say where they were, right? And so it's, you know, if you move out of the agency and you go to work for Some corporation. Right. In their risk mitigation group or their global security or wherever you're going, you know, you never hear from them, you know, so. Because they're not out in public. And that's, I think, the difference.
- [07:00]
A
Right? Yeah. I've even met guys privately that talk about, like. Yeah, you know, I was former CAA guy, and I'm like, oh, that's cool. And it's hard for me to tell when people are embellishing.
- [07:09]
B
Yes.
- [07:10]
A
Because there's so much secrecy around it. It's hard to tell even what's real. Is there a help?
- [07:14]
B
It's like stolen violence, like seals, you know, suddenly there's 2 million seals out there. Right, Right. Where everybody in England was involved in the QE2. Right. So you're thinking, like, how did all these people. I to. We were in Iraq, and I was walking up the steps of some building on one of the compounds, and. And this was early days, early days of. Of our incursion into Iraq. And the. Had hit the fan, but it wasn't getting bad yet. Awful. Yeah, Let me put it that way. And so. But a lot of private contractors were showing up. And I remember walking up the steps and I saw this guy. And I had spent a long time out in Asia and Southeast Asia, and I'd seen a lot of people. And so there was this Filipino standing at the top, you know, in a standard sort of private security contractor uniform, Right. Khakis, you know, he had. He had his blades on. He was like. He looked, you know, like a standard contractor, but he was Filipino. So I stopped and I said, hey, you know, because I'd spent some time out there during the old days. And I said, hey, you know, how you doing? Who, you know, who are you? And the guy. Guy says. He talks to me a little bit, and then he. I asked him about his background. He says, I'm a Gurkha. And I said, I'm sorry, you're a what? And he said, I'm a Gurkha. And I said, the. You are, you know, you're. What province are you from? And it turns out he's, you know, from up north, Kagan province in the Philippines. Great guy, great people. But what you had was. I know this is a long winded story, but what you had out there in those early days, the private security guys were just trying to, you know, staff up, right? They were filling contracts, they were making money. And so they were just taking anybody. Right. And so you ended up with a whole slew of people out there talking about how they were, you know, they were SEALs or they were SBs or whatever. They were just squatties, right? Or whatever. They, they were puffing up their, their credentials, right? And so it happens. It's not just a thing that happens now or, you know, ever since sort of the SEALs got notoriety and, you know, they're writing books or whatever. It's been going on for a long time.
- [09:07]
A
Is there a way for me, just as like, a dumb layperson to, like, tell. Is there like a type of. Some type of heuristic where I can be like, hey, this, this is feeling, like, embellished. This is feeling a little less certain?
- [09:20]
B
That's a good question. You know, I mean, if you dig into their, you know, the, with the questions, sometimes it's like anything else, right? Sometimes guys start getting a little squirrely because, you know, you're asking for detail. And so sometimes if you spend enough time, if you, you know, if you're so inclined in a conversation, right, you'll start seeing some inconsistencies or, or some of the. That they're saying just doesn't make sense. It's like a fraudster, right? They just don't, you know, they'll talk and talk and talk, but then when you put it all together, you say, what the is this? There's nothing here, right?
- [09:50]
A
They didn't say anything.
- [09:50]
B
They didn't say anything. People accuse me of that all the time. That's sort of a. Can talk forever and not say anything that I can, I can say a lot.
- [09:57]
A
I'm hearing you.
- [09:58]
B
I use a lot of words. But still that. So you can sometimes do it that way in terms of just checking, you know, internally or, you know, like, if I bump up against somebody and they say, oh, yeah, I was, I was in the agency, you know, for a few years and everything. We do have the ability. I, I, you know, I can reach out and call and say, you've got something, because, you know, they also want to know, just like the SEALs and everybody else, they want to know if people are out there bullshitting and, and so you can do that. But if you're just out and, and you don't have an ability to reach in and contact somebody who's in, you know, HR or whatever, then it can be a little bit difficult. But usually when you start talking to people in their story, your gut feeling is really for anybody. If your gut feeling is. It doesn't seem to be adding up, then usually go with your gut feeling, right? Most people, they don't necessarily know it or feel like it. But they've got pretty good radar. Right. When it comes to. But what happens is they tend to ignore that initial feeling.
- [11:01]
A
Right, Right.
- [11:01]
B
And then they kind of run with it. Next thing you know, you've got, you know, you've got what you got. We do, we do a lot of fraud investigations. And a lot of times you'll think, how did you not pick up on this? Right, right. It's like, it's, it's like some of the, that happens today. People say, well, how did Graham Platner get away with, you know, all this baggage? It's because nobody wanted to look. Yeah, Right. And they were so excited about somebody who appeared to be a normal dude on their party ticket that they were willing to look the other way.
- [11:30]
A
Right.
- [11:30]
B
Despite all the kind of red flags that were popping up. And I don't want to get political, but that's not uncommon. Right. When you're, you're dealing with somebody that, you know, for whatever reason you're inclined. No, I really want this guy to work out. I want this person to work out
- [11:43]
A
like musicians all the time. There's music that I love. And then people are like, you know, that musician's actually a terrible person. And I'm like, no, he's not. Come on, I love his stuff. He's got, he's a great musician. There's no way he did all these terrible things, you know?
- [11:53]
B
Yeah, that's a whole nother issue whether someone's a good or a bad person. But in terms of whether their, their credentials stack up.
- [11:58]
A
Sure.
- [12:00]
B
You know, a lot of times, I guess what I'm saying is you got to. People have a better sense of that than they sometimes give themselves credit for, but they tend to ignore those initial feelings.
- [12:09]
A
Right. Do you think the agency, broadly speaking, in the, in its current iteration with like the current director, do you think they like having sort of public facing figures talking on podcasts and shows? Do they? Is it something that's helpful for them or are they just completely agnostic to it?
- [12:25]
B
Well, in a way, they're agnostic. In a way, they, they have, look, they got a Twitter page, an X page.
- [12:31]
A
Yeah.
- [12:31]
B
Still trying to get used to that. They've got an X page. And so in a way they, they, they're better than they were in terms of trying to understand. Okay, well, look, we've actually got to, you know, pull back the curtain a little bit.
- [12:44]
A
Right.
- [12:45]
B
And, and they just know how the world is changing. Right. Doesn't mean necessarily they're going to change at the same Speed. But they understand they have to have. Be a little bit more transparent in terms of. Because just for, if, for no other reason, recruitment purposes. Right, right. To. To get employees. So they've, they have pulled back the curtain a little bit. As long as you're not out there, again, saying things you shouldn't be saying, which means crossing over into sources and methods and other that you just shouldn't be touching on, then they really are kind of agnostic about it. They don't, they don't necessarily care. Right. And again, I, you know, I, I'm very unapologetic. I had a great time. Right. I got a, I got a lot of time for them, you know, not working for them. But hey, if that's, if that's the narrative people want to go with, then great.
- [13:32]
A
Yeah.
- [13:32]
B
So here I'm going to need you to sign a receip.
- [13:35]
A
Now that you.
- [13:36]
B
Now that you're working with me.
- [13:37]
A
Exactly, exactly. So I, It's a funny, It's a funny thing because I think, at least for me, I can only speak for myself personally, there is a bit of a, like a mixed feeling when it comes to CIA where it's like, okay, you have to deal with the legacy of all the crazy stuff in like the 60s and 70s, whether it's like,
- [13:52]
B
well, there was some of that.
- [13:53]
A
Yeah, yeah, MK Ultra, you know, throwing a guy out a window.
- [13:57]
B
Wait a minute, look, we. Eight minutes in and you've already brought up MK Ultra.
- [14:00]
A
Yeah, exactly. Or like deposing some leader. But then also, spies are cool.
- [14:05]
B
Yeah.
- [14:06]
A
And you hear about all like the cool spycraft stuff and like all the great things that the CIA does and like, you know, foiling counterterrorism and, or I guess doing counterterrorism and foiling terrorism plots and, you know, like maintaining and rehabilitating nations that are in, you know, some type of dictatorial chaos.
- [14:21]
B
Look, and some of the greatest things are, Are, you know. Yes. Look, you know, there's, there's sort of this, this, this image, right. Of, of the. I'm here to tell you that it's not quite as cool all the time. Sometimes it's very cool. Sometimes you're doing something and you think nobody else is doing this. But a lot of times you're, you know, you're filling out forms because, you know, you lost a piece of kit or something. Right. And so, you know, or you're sitting in a safe out somewhere for what seems like an endless amount of time waiting for somebody on the top floor to make a decision as to whether something's going to happen. Right. There's a lot of downtime and. And also, it's just. There's a lot of. There's a lot of just work that goes into any operation that is kind of just sort of grunt work.
- [15:01]
A
Right.
- [15:01]
B
It's just. There's a lot of effort that goes into making one thing happen. So I think one of the coolest things about. About the outfit is, is what they've done for technology. Right. And so we've got an operation inside the organization, the Science and Technology Group, and they sometimes change the name, but I. I still refer to it as S and T. So S and T, over the years, really, since they opened their doors, right. Have been responsible for technologies that are just incredible. Right. And what happens is they develop it for an operational purpose.
- [15:34]
A
Right.
- [15:35]
B
Maybe they're trying to miniaturize a battery for, you know, a transmitter. Right. For communications purposes. But that miniature battery now has ended up in pacemakers and defibrillators.
- [15:45]
A
Right.
- [15:45]
B
And they were at the cutting edge of that. Or, you know, we needed better satellite imagery. Right. We started basically the whole, you know, effort for SIG and satellite imagery and other things started with S T, and now you can get out there and suddenly you have this earthquake in Venezuela. What do we need? We need immediate images of the destruction so we know where to send emergency response teams or, you know, what. And you know what? That came from the agency.
- [16:15]
A
Right.
- [16:15]
B
So now you can geomap. Now you can. You can. For environmental purposes, you do these. So all this. I know I sound like I'm. I'm a member of the booster club, but it. I mean, it is. It is one of those amazing things that the agency doesn't get credit for the. That they've done over the years from their engineers and all the incredible scientists that have worked there. Again, developing gear. Yeah. For some, you know, operational purposes, but it gets back out into the public and benefits everybody. Right, Right. So that's a good thing. Right? Yeah, sure, we did MK Alter. There was that, but. And have we deposed a handful of, you know, leaders over. Yes, but you know what? It's a. It's a human organization. We made mistakes. There's no doubt about it. And, you know, and sometimes, you know, like any other human endeavor, you're a little slow to admit those mistakes or. Or, you know, but again, I go back to the same thing. You know, you got to balance it out. And I would rather have an organization like that than not have it, because the world's not a Bunch of people holding hands and, you know, singing.
- [17:13]
A
Right. Yeah. I think. I don't know. I truly. At least for me, there is a. There's a mixed feeling where there's like, all right, there's bastard, but there is good stuff. And I think, like, any type of American institution, any type of global governmental institution, what, any country.
- [17:25]
B
Yeah, There's.
- [17:26]
A
It's a mixture of things, and I think trying to delineate things is like 100 good or 100 bad. Lacks nuance, and you miss things.
- [17:33]
B
Yeah.
- [17:34]
A
And I think by people like yourself and other agency folks that are a little bit honest and able to kind of be blunt with, you know, the shortcomings and, you know, being able to comment on that, but then also, like, looking at the cool stuff. I mean, like, dude, we did this crazy operation and got rid of these bad guys. Like, that's awesome.
- [17:48]
B
Show me any operation or any organization out there, no matter what sector or where they're at, that hasn't up at times, but also has done good stuff. Right. That's. That's my point. I, you know, you got to admit, when things go south, but at the same time, collectively, you add it all up, and I feel pretty damn good about what they've done over the years. So I'm not, I'm, you know, I'm. Again, I'm very unapologetic about my time there. And, and also what they do, they. It's a human endeavor. So you're always going to make mistakes. Right. At some point. But, you know, again, people always go, God damn it, what? So, you know, it's not. It's. And it's not. What about ism?
- [18:25]
A
Right.
- [18:25]
B
You know, I'm not saying because. Because you always get that nowadays, too. You always get like, you know, look what they do.
- [18:31]
A
Right.
- [18:31]
B
It's like the political parties do that all the time. You know, people talk about platinum. They go, well, you, you know, look at Trump. Yeah. Like, the interesting thing there is, okay, if you really don't like Trump, and I can. I get why you don't. Look, I'm, you know, I'm. I'm a centrist Republican, but I really not particularly political because of how I grew up. Right. Grew up overseas, and I grew up in the agency. And the agency, despite what people may think is mostly apolitical, but if you can't stand Trump, then your response shouldn't be to say, so it. Let's just get anybody on our side, you know, it doesn't matter how bad they are, because look how bad this is. Yeah, your response should be let's do better. Right. And. But they use it as an excuse for anything and just like the other side does. Both sides are.
- [19:19]
A
Yeah.
- [19:20]
B
You know, if we're going to talk politics, as far as I'm concerned, both sides are.
- [19:23]
A
Yeah. I mean, I'm with you there. No, no doubt about that. Anyway, hey guys, I just want to take a break really quick to tell you about Cash App. I love Cash App. I use it all the time. If you know anything about me, I try to make my life less chaotic because I travel a lot, I got kid, I got a wife, and I'm just doing stuff. I'm buying coffee, I'm just living my life. And Cash App makes it so easy and it just makes my everyday life moments super simple. And the Cash App card is super cool because it's not just a boring debit card. It's not something that your dad got from a 2002. You can customize it, add it to your digital wallet and boop it everywhere and use it for just everyday spending. If I could pick my perfect Cash App discount, I'd probably do like coffee, airport food, and I even customize my card so it has like a little, you know, camp logo on it. It's pretty sick. If you weren't up to speed already, Cash App is way more than just a safe way to send and receive money. With the Cash App card, you unlock perks without all the hidden fees, including discounts on everyday purchases and popular brands you are probably already spending money on. Add your card to your digital wallet to make your money moves easier. Cash App also adds security to your money by declining suspicious card transactions and sending you a notification to make sure the payment is really you. If your card is ever lost or stolen, you can lock it with just one tap right on the app. Spend with confidence with the Cash App card today and new Cash App customers can earn $10 if they use the code CASH APP10, that is CASHAPP10 in their profile at signup and send $5 to a friend within 14 days. Terms apply. Cash App is a financial services platform, not a bank. Banking services provided by Cash App's bank partners. Prepaid debit cards issued by Sutton bank member FDIC visit Cash App Slash Legal Podcast for full disclosures. Thank you so much for Cash App for supporting the show. Now let's get back to it. What's up guys? We're going to take a break real quick because I want to tell you about a brand that I actually love. You've probably Seen ads for it on Instagram and it's Ultra. It's the best. As you already know, I'm super locked in on like fitness and sleep and fasting and all that kind of stuff. And one thing that I care about now is getting energy in focus without feeling like jittery and cracked out and on edge, like my heart is beating out of my chest. And that's why I reached out to Ultra. Ultra pouches have zero nicotine, zero caffeine pouches that give you clean focus and smooth energy when you need to lock in. And a lot of people think pouches are helping them at the gym, but nicotine is actually a vasoconstrictor. It actually narrows your blood vessels and restricts oxygen delivery to your muscles and can actually work against the pump that you're trying to get. It also can raise your heart rate and your blood pressure, which is not exactly what you want when you're already training super hard. Ultra gives you that pouch experience. It's fun, it tastes good, but it's 100 nicotine free. And they use clinically proven nootropics and adaptogens to deliver immediate focus and smooth energy that lasts one to two hours. And if you're fasting or dieting, they actually can help you quiet the cravings and limit the food noise to help keep you locked in. And they have five flavors. Cool Mint, Wintergreen, Watermelon, Tropical Blue razz. My favorite is Blue Blue raspberry and it tastes amazing. I have the watermelon one here because I already finished the Blue Raz. But these are great too. Now Ultra is the ultimate guilt free pouch, delivering instant focus and mental clarity without nicotine or caffeine. And new customers can use the code Camp C A M p to get 15% off when you go to take ultra.com that's take ultra.com for 15% off with the code camp. And after you purchase, they're going to ask you where you heard about them. Please tell them that Mark and Christos from the camp site sent you. Now let's get back to the show. I'm curious. In your early days within the agency, was there a moment where maybe you got briefed in on something that you realize that reality as we know it, that the world that we all share was stranger or not, what you thought that it was?
- [22:59]
B
Yeah. I mean, yeah. Probably the best example was when they, you know, I walked into this conference room out in Nevada and they showed me this alien aircraft. Wow.
- [23:15]
A
We're clipping it, we're Clipping it.
- [23:17]
B
Yeah. No, so that, that did not happen. No, it did happen. It did happen.
- [23:22]
A
Yeah. Yeah, it did. 100.
- [23:23]
B
Of course it happened. Yeah. Yeah. So we all took pictures around it.
- [23:27]
A
You know, we're using that in the intro.
- [23:29]
B
Yeah, I would. No, you know what? No, I don't think there was. I've always been a fairly cynical person, I guess, or pragmatic person. I don't know what you call it. Right. So I've never, when I started early days, it wasn't like I showed up and thought, you know, the world is, you know, black and white, you know, So I, nothing ever surprised me in terms of people's behavior or how bad people can be. I've seen some, some pretty shitty things in terms of how people as a group right. Overseas can treat other people and still didn't surprise me only because I didn't have a really high opinion of how, what human nature is like. Right. I don't, I, you know, I, I, So that sounds very depressing and cynical. But. So, no, I, I don't think there was anything in the early days where I thought, wow, you know, I'm. Now I'm shocked at how the world works.
- [24:34]
A
Sure. Was there a piece of tech that you can disclose that you saw and you were like, oh, shit, we got a microphone on a mosquito. Like, we can, we can do that.
- [24:42]
B
Yeah, yeah. You know, they did actually. It's called insect. The insect. A thopter. Insecter might even be on. Yeah, it might even be on the Internet.
- [24:51]
A
That's a real thing.
- [24:52]
B
Yeah, yeah. If you look up. Insect. A thopter. It was an early effort by S T by the Science Technology Group at the agency to miniaturize a sort of a monitoring device, listening device, if you will. And so they put it on a. What looks like a grasshopper or little bug. There it is. Insectothopter. And it's crazy, but the problem was. So it actually worked. The window, the, the wings worked. Right. And, and it, the whole idea was you would fly it up, you know, outside a window of a whomever, KGB office or whatever, and you'd be able to pick up transmissions. Now the problem was that it was so light that they couldn't control it
- [25:38]
A
in like a little gust of wind.
- [25:39]
B
Yeah. In the, in the real environment. But what it did do, even though it wasn't operationally capable, what it did do was that process of developing something like this helped them understand other things. Right. So you could argue that's one of the very first drones.
- [25:54]
A
Right.
- [25:55]
B
So Again, the amazing things that they do.
- [25:57]
A
So. And I mean, the fact that this is disclosed, party wants to be like, oh, they're not really using this anymore. But yeah, I guess with the nature of surveillance and us all having iPhones and stuff, do you even need this to the same degree or can you just tap someone's phone and listen?
- [26:10]
B
That way you have a lot more options now. You're absolutely right. Right.
- [26:15]
A
Like putting a microphone in a clock that you give as a diplomatic gift, you know, like, is. Are those days gone?
- [26:20]
B
Yeah. And. Or a plaque.
- [26:22]
A
Give it a. Yeah, exactly.
- [26:23]
B
Yeah.
- [26:24]
A
The Russians want to give you a plaque.
- [26:25]
B
Yeah, well, the Russians did. The Russians gave the U.S. ambassador to Mexico this big sort of plaque. Right. And I forget how they, how they cast it. I think it was given by like a, A, like a friendship group during the Cold War. And it was actually. Oh, sorry. It was actually put. So this microphone's real. Okay. It's not just a problem. Okay.
- [26:48]
A
So you pull it back if you need.
- [26:49]
B
Yeah, good. So anyway, they actually, they, they came up with some reason to, to present this gift. A big wall plaque. And it, and that's what it was. It was a receiver. Right. Transmitter. And so the ambassador hung it in the office. And what it would do is it would, it would shut off, it would shut on, it would. And so it was. They. The technology used in that early days was, Was pretty damn good. The KGB during its heyday, because they were so motivated and were spending so much resource, they also were sort of the cutting edge of certain things. And so it was good. Yeah. Again, I, you know, I think the, the technology, other things. And we've got a. I'm actually in the process. We're gonna, we're doing a show, a TV show that we haven't started filming yet, but it is going to highlight, showcase some of the amazing stuff that we've got in a museum that's in the Agency. Right. So inside the headquarters there's a, there's a museum that started years ago just with displaying a few little artifacts from operations and things. Now it's built up into. It's a world class museum. But the thing is nobody gets to see it.
- [28:02]
A
It's not publicly available.
- [28:03]
B
It's not publicly available, so. So the staff gets to see it, which is great. Right. It's a, it's a real, it's a real reminder of the history of the organization all the way back to World War II when it was OSS and then Liaison partners and others that visit, you know, for meetings they'll get walked through it, but nobody else. And so, you know, my point was with the agency was like, we got, you know, if you in fact want to pull back the curtain a little bit, let's tell some of these stories. Right? So that's what we're going to be doing. We're, we're. It's, it's. I think it's going to be a terrific show. When we get a launch date, I'll come back on and absolutely promote it.
- [28:41]
A
Lovely. I would love that.
- [28:42]
B
So, but anyway, that'll, that'll tell a lot of things. We're going to include Insecthopter and. Yeah, talk about the operations. But we'll use the kit, we'll use the, the artifacts that are in there from all these, all these amazing operations to tell the stories about the operations and the people. Right. As opposed to just saying, here's a piece of kit, here's a piece of kit. Yeah, that kit will launch us into those stories. So I'm very excited about the whole process.
- [29:03]
A
Yeah. It just seems like with the nature of how technology has evolved, you don't really need this, you know, like, I mean, you have like heart murmur technology where you can see someone's heartbeat from space or something. That was what they were using to get fighter pilots out of Iran.
- [29:15]
B
Exactly.
- [29:15]
A
And it's like, if you're able to see my heartbeat on a mountain somewhere, I don't think you need to like plant a microphone in my studio, you know, you can just listen on my phone.
- [29:23]
B
You can. I mean, it's horses for courses. Sometimes you do, right? Sometimes you don't have an option. Sometimes you don't have access. And so you never say never in terms of operational necessity. You never know, right? And, and, but you're right. Technology has completely changed, right? I mean, you used to just. The communications, right? If you were in some shithole somewhere around the world, right, in, in past days, you didn't have a sat phone, you didn't have a way of communicating. Right. You didn't have a way of locating where the. You were, other than a compass and, and, you know, a map and you got to shoot an azimuth and figure out how to get to point C. Right. I mean, it was just like. So the, that part of it has really changed. And you know, we, if you were casing some, you know, operational site, you know, in, in the old days, you literally, I remember this, you'd be, you'd be drawing hand drawing maps of the, of the neighborhood of the, of the target Site for whatever reason. And you. It was incredible, right? Nowadays, boom. Like, I'm going to need some sad images of, of this location. Give, you know, pull down. Here's a live resolution. Yeah, I mean, it's, it's so. It's fantastic.
- [30:31]
A
Could you listen to a conversation or could some intelligence. Do they have the technology to listen to a conversation from satellite?
- [30:39]
B
You know, I'd like to say I'm smart enough to know the answer to that question. I'll bet we can. Would be my. Here's my answer. I hope we can. Yeah.
- [30:46]
A
Right.
- [30:46]
B
Yeah, I think. And, and if we, you know, somebody better get on that right away, you would think, right? Somebody is doing it, whether it's the Chinese or somebody else. But yeah, there's the, the ability now to. And this, I think this, this is interesting. This is where I'm going to venture off into a different area. But, but people always think about this. They always think about, oh, my God, the government's listening in. For the most part, the government doesn't give a shit about us. Right? They really don't. Right. Unless you're engaged in criminal activity, cartel activity, you know, terrorism, treason, you know, if it's a counterintelligence issue. But unless you're engaged in those things, for the most part, the government just doesn't give a. And so I tell you who does is Amazon and Google Meta, right? I mean, the amount of information and data that they collect on individuals that people willingly give away, right? And then they want to say, oh, God, that government, you know, they're gonna. Yeah, okay, you've just signed away everything about you and your family and your friends and your activities and where you go all the time. You've signed all that away, and now you're like, well, I'm really kind of worried about the government. You know, a lot of times, you know, I'm not saying the agency, but the government in general, right? From administration to administration. Right. Not only do they not care, they sometimes have a hard time organizing panic in a doomed submarine. Right. So I, you know, I think sometimes our focus is a little misdirected in terms of where our privacy is being, you know, encroached upon.
- [32:20]
A
Sure, yeah. I mean, I get like a little paranoid about it where I'm like, you know, I'm just like, are people like, is there any privacy? And at a certain point, I hope with this kind of thing where it's like, yeah, no one really cares. Like, the companies care. Someone sell me stuff. But, like, I can live with that. But like, is there, is there anything? Because sometimes it's nice. Sometimes it's nice. You're like, man, I need like, I need like a new fan, you know, and all of a sudden you see like, AD and you're like, oh, this is the exact fan I want.
- [32:43]
B
Yeah, this is actually, damn it, I want that.
- [32:44]
A
The surveillance is actually kind of nice.
- [32:45]
B
Yeah.
- [32:46]
A
But like, is there anything you do on a personal basis to protect your digital footprint or even like the way, you know, your just personal privacy from adversarial use or even from, you know, our own personal government, whether it's, you know, federal or, you know, like a corporate interest is. Do you use like a vpn? Do you.
- [33:03]
B
Yeah, VPN is a good way to go for most people, right. It's relatively, it's accessible, it's simple. It's, you know, it's, it's not overly complicated. Right. If you, the problem is, you know, anytime you. And, and we deal with this a lot with, with my company and on the security services side, sort of the risk mitigation and, and you know, protecting companies proprietary data and all of that. If you over egg the pudding on security protocols, people are just going to bypass them. Right. And it's kind of the same way with individuals worried about their privacy or whatever. If you make it too difficult, eventually people just, you know, it's just too complicated.
- [33:38]
A
Right.
- [33:38]
B
So VPNs are a good way to go if you're, if you're traveling, you know, a lot of times, depending on where you're going, you know, you want to think about, okay, well, you know, should I just take a burner phone? Right, right.
- [33:51]
A
I mean, for you, would you consider it, like, if you're going to a nation that's potentially hostile or even.
- [33:55]
B
Absolutely.
- [33:56]
A
At the very least, like, interested in what you're doing, perhaps as like an XCAA guy?
- [34:00]
B
Yeah.
- [34:00]
A
Like, are they, like, would you. If they're like, hey, we need to, we need to wipe your phone down.
- [34:04]
B
You take clean devices. Yeah.
- [34:06]
A
You would?
- [34:06]
B
Yeah, sure. You leave your devices and your personal devices, you take a burner phone. It's simple enough. Now again, you don't want to over egg that. It's not, you know, people who are going on vacation to Paris don't need to worry about it.
- [34:17]
A
Right.
- [34:17]
B
But if, you know, if you're going, you know, to a more of a challenging environment, Right. Then, you know, if you're traveling to Beijing, that's a good example. Right. Depending on what. But see, and that's the interesting thing I was about to say, depending on what you do for a living. But the truth is they don't care what you do for a living.
- [34:35]
A
You.
- [34:35]
B
They will still probably find you of interest until they decide you're not. And so they've got the. The Chinese services have massive resources and motivation, Right. To hoover up everything and determine whether it's of any interest. Right. And so that's. That's one of those things that, you know, and then people will say, well, the US does it too. And I think, well, sure, yeah, yeah, if we get. If we get a Chinese delegation coming over here, I bet we would be interested in what they're up to. Right? And so, fine. But again, kind of like my theory about. About if Trump's. If your opinion is Trump is really awful, well, then do better. Right? If. If the Chinese are doing this, then, yeah, same thing. We should do better, but.
- [35:15]
A
Right.
- [35:15]
B
I know that's not a good analogy, but you see what, maybe you see what I'm saying? Yeah, I don't know what I was saying.
- [35:20]
A
Yeah.
- [35:20]
B
In.
- [35:20]
A
In a certain regard, like with spycraft, it's like, yeah, you kind of need to maintain a standard because if they're stealing our stuff, it's like, well, are we just gonna, like, sit back and.
- [35:29]
B
It's not a friendly world. Yeah, I guess that's the point. It's a. If we lived in a community of nations and unicorns are flying out everybody's ass and. Fine. But that's not what I've seen in my time. So, again, yeah, people. Because people always say, if, you know, if I'm talking about what one particular country does intrigue to, you know, go over the US or our allies or the UK Then they'll say, well, you know, us does it. The Brits do it. You know, I'm thinking, yeah, of course we do it. I mean, what kind of world do you think we live in? And. And like, somehow if we stop spending money on defense, then everybody else will too.
- [36:05]
A
Yeah.
- [36:05]
B
Oh, thank God they've stopped. Now we can stop. You know, we can all live together in harmony.
- [36:10]
A
Do you think the president's phone is the same as our phone? Like, does he have security measures on there with Apple that are like, hey, your camera doesn't work, or like your microphone's cut off? Like, is it the same thing?
- [36:21]
B
Yeah, look, here's the thing. Do you remember there was a couple of goat ropes with. With people in the administration communicating on. On essentially open lines, signal and others, but also just talking to each other in chat groups.
- [36:37]
A
They accidentally Added a journalist into the group, Something like that.
- [36:40]
B
Yeah, yeah. So you're supposed to. You're supposed to be very buttoned up. Right. If you're. If you're have access to sensitive information. Right. Then you're supposed to be smart enough to use the security protocols and secure devices that you're given. And they do have those devices. Right. But again, to the point earlier about how people kind of bypass that. Or it's like, now I got to carry three phones.
- [37:07]
A
Yeah. Oh, this one has a thumbprint.
- [37:09]
B
Yeah. Check in or they don't check. They. I know that guy doesn't check his, you know, whatever is that secure line. So I'm just gonna text him, call him, and that's the danger. People can get lazy. And so. But yes, the. The president's phone is a little different than ours. Yeah. Yeah.
- [37:26]
A
I saw a picture of Netanyahu's phone, and it had, like, all these, like, it had, like, the cameras were all blacked out. Could you pull up a picture of it? Because it was just an interesting example.
- [37:33]
B
Yeah.
- [37:33]
A
Of like, you know, ahead of a state with a phone that looked ontologically different.
- [37:38]
B
And he had a hello Kitty phone call, which was fantastic, I thought. It softens up his image. Yeah. A little bit, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [37:43]
A
It's a little more appealing, you know, but something like this with, like, all the stickers all over the front. Like, would this be something that's normal for a head of state as far as, like, what their phone looks like, or would the security protocol be different? Like, what do you make of this?
- [37:54]
B
Yeah, I don't know what those. Well, I don't know what those stickers are. That's a good question.
- [38:00]
A
Cameras are covered. There's, like, another one there with, like, all the red tape. Is that enough? It seems like this is like, what, like I did in college.
- [38:06]
B
Yeah, exactly. Put a piece of tape on your. On your laptop camera. Yeah. You know what? Who knows? I have no idea what that device is or how frequently he uses it or what purpose it is or how many other devices he's got. That's interesting, though. It. It seems a little haphazard, but I'm sure it's not because Mossad and. And their internal service is very buttoned up. Right. So I don't think he's. And look, that guy is that, you know, every problem's, you know, a nail, and he wants a hammer. Right. So he's not. He doesn't take anything lightly.
- [38:38]
A
Sure.
- [38:38]
B
So I don't think he's. I Don't think he's playing fast and loose with his communications devices.
- [38:42]
A
Yeah. So anyway, on the technology front, when it comes to developing tech, how do these black budgets work, like, as far as the financials go? Because, like, people kind of hear that and they're like, oh, yeah, they developed this, but, like, the money's not really revealed how it's being allocated, and sometimes it goes out to like a, you know, a cutout and like a contractor. Like, what is the actual flow of that type of money?
- [39:02]
B
Yeah, I mean, it can. It can vary depending on the. The program or the project. And funny you should ask that question, but I, I hosted a series for Discovery Network for a couple of seasons called Black Files to Classified. And the whole concept started for that show by following the money. And we said, okay, if we want to know what those classified programs were like, right. We weren't in the business of. Of exposing classified projects, but we were looking at things that hadn't really been looked at but were at that moment declassified so we could dig into it. Right. Then the, the concept of the show was Follow the Money. And so you're absolutely right. That's how you typically, when you find a thread you can pull on, it's because of the. There's somewhere. There's got to be a line item somewhere hidden in some budget. Right? So as an example, the agency's budget is classified. It's buried inside for a lot of reasons, inside the Defense Department's overall budget. Right. And if somebody's got a program, right, that they're going to like, say the, say the U.S. air Force wants to design a new stealth project. Right. Then, yeah, they're not going to create a new file that says new U.S. air Force stealth plane. Right. And then just put everything in there for purposes of keeping it secret, which, you know, again, the world's not a friendly place. So you want. Actually, you do need to have something skeptical, secret. They may bury that in a completely unrelated project somewhere. And yes, then obviously the entire government works with contractors outside, you know, resources. So it's whether it's a Skunk works or any other organization, Raytheon or anyone ever, there's always that collaboration that goes on. And so Blackfellows to Classify was all about pulling on the threads and trying to figure out where these budgets were and how it was being spent and whether it was a space program, whether it was, you know, again, a super soldier program, whatever it might be, trying to figure out where that project actually existed.
- [41:04]
A
Right.
- [41:04]
B
And then that will tell you Certain things a lot of times. Again, there's not a ton of information sometimes, but it will tell you the size of the program or it may give you a lead on, on a contractor that worked on it, on the aspect of it. Right. Then you can go look at that and try to figure. So it's, it's a process. It's like every other investigation.
- [41:23]
A
Right.
- [41:23]
B
It's got to start with something solid. If you just base an investigation on a theory or a feeling or an allegation, then you're just building on top of sand. Right, Right.
- [41:35]
A
And would these contractors be utilized? Like, what is the biggest benefit to having like a military contractor that does something for the agency? Like why not just have it internal or have like our own development to have it all inside?
- [41:49]
B
Efficiency. Right. In terms of ability to whatever design, manufacture, produce something. Right. The, the government isn't necessarily in the business of, of building necessarily. Right. They're, they're, they're purchasing, they're funding things. Right. But that outside collaboration with businesses is, whatever you want to call it, a military industrial base. It says it's, it actually, it's bloated. There's no doubt about that.
- [42:19]
A
Right.
- [42:19]
B
And, and, and shit isn't as efficient as it should be. It takes us longer to build things. It takes us more money than it should to build things. But it's absolutely critical to have that relationship with the outside world. Right. Because otherwise the military would be stuck. And, and frankly, every government does it. Even, you know, China does it. They've got, you know, admittedly they don't really have a private sector per se. It's all sort of pseudo state owned, but same idea. You go to outside contractors to produce
- [42:46]
A
something and then as far as the understanding of that type of information, is there any one person, like would the director of the agency know everything that's going on or is the information compartmentalized amongst multiple different heads that kind of control different things? This person's in charge of tech, this person in charge of info intel in this part of the world. Like how does the information get compartmentalized?
- [43:06]
B
That's a, that's a, yeah, that's a great question. You're a lot smarter than, than people told me you were. Yeah.
- [43:14]
A
The man bun throws people off. Yeah.
- [43:16]
B
A lot of people were like, yeah, you know, you asked me for a copy because I was gonna ask you some simple questions.
- [43:21]
A
You thought that I worked, worked at a coffee shop. Really? Yeah. This guy's a barista.
- [43:24]
B
Yeah. Where's my latte? You know what? Yeah. It, the answer is that you do have a handful of people who will be read in on everything, right. And that typically, if the director wants to be, he can be. Right. You know, if we're talking just about the Agency, then. But for the most part, it's all compartmentalized, right? So you have a need to know basis of this project over here. And, and that's just makes good common sense. You got a firewall off these things. Otherwise, you know, it would be a show if everybody knew everything that was going on. Right? So you know, this even within, you know, if you've got an office responsible for, in the old days, you know, Soviet Union activity, right. Then you would have. This desk over here would have an operation, maybe an asset. Nobody else in that, that group would know about it, right. You would have a. It would be very tightly controlled, right. Human sources, probably some of the most compartmentalized because people's lives are at risk. Right. And, and so that is. But also technical programs, too, same idea or a specific targeting operation. Those, these things are all, you know, again, compartmentalized firewall, however you want to phrase it, Right. It is a need to know basis. And if you don't need to know, then. And that's why they have a variety of different types of classification. So beyond just top secret, then, you know, if there's a particular project that you need to be working on for whatever reason, then you'll get read in on it and you'll be given that authorization. Right. And otherwise, you know, that's it. You know, you're not going to know about it. Right.
- [45:02]
A
It seems also like a massive, like, opsec liability, right. If one guy knows everything, right? It's like, like, oh, Soviets or Russians, Chinese, they can just like tap this guy's phone. They could just invite this guy to a cool little thing and then get some of his information. If one person knows everything, it seems like a massive issue.
- [45:19]
B
Yeah, yeah. You definitely don't want to be the guy who gets invited to that cool little thing.
- [45:22]
A
Yeah, exactly.
- [45:23]
B
Next thing you know. Yeah. The party down in Palm Beach. Yeah. Wait a second. So you don't really like me as a person. Yeah, it is. And that's, that's, that's part of it. And so the director, you know, even at that level, right. There's just, no, there's no reason to. You know, if somebody came in, appointed as the director of the Agency, and they said, I want to be written on everything, then the response should be, how come? Yeah, yeah. What's that all about? So.
- [45:47]
A
Right.
- [45:48]
B
So even that person, you know, doesn't.
- [45:50]
A
Is there a reason that they wouldn't want to, other than the security thing?
- [45:54]
B
Yeah, I see what you're getting at there. Yeah. He's just a blowback. Yeah, I see what you're saying. Just don't tell me about that. Sounds very, sort of very Jason Bourne. Like, I don't want to know about Treadstone.
- [46:07]
A
I can't handle the truth.
- [46:11]
B
Yeah, no, no.
- [46:14]
A
I mean, security.
- [46:15]
B
Yeah. It's not like you wouldn't get that except in the movies. Somebody said, you know, you don't want to know about this. It's trouble.
- [46:22]
A
Right.
- [46:23]
B
Or someone would say, don't read me in on that, because I don't. I don't want, you know, my handprints on it.
- [46:26]
A
Right.
- [46:28]
B
It's. It comes down to just operational security purposes. Right, right. Why somebody is not read in or is read in. And you can't. You can't ask to be. Right. You can't do that. Now, look, some of these things get up. Like, we had this recent situation, right, with the. The officer who had all the gold bars in his home. Right?
- [46:46]
A
I didn't hear about this.
- [46:47]
B
You didn't know that. Oh, God. Yeah. So we had a. We had an officer who was arrested, right? He was being looked at from an investigative purpose. I'm going to oversimplify this, but just for time's sake, he was being looked at because he had puffed up his resume, right? Now, the guy had already been hired by the agency. He'd been working there for a while. So you have to ask what the hell happened to our. Our background checking? Right. We have very thorough background checking. Well, apparently, this guy snuck through on a couple of things. He had puffed up his academics, he had puffed up his military operations. There's the fella.
- [47:21]
A
And what's his name. This guy looks like the most Italian dude I've ever seen in my life. What's his name?
- [47:28]
B
David Rush.
- [47:29]
A
David Rush.
- [47:30]
B
So he changed it in Ellis Island.
- [47:33]
A
Yeah, it was Rush Galeoni, I think.
- [47:35]
B
Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, so this. So this guy had puffed up his. His military service and his academics. And so there was an investigation that was going on about that. But anyway, what happened was he got arrested because he also had a ton of gold bars and millions of dollars in cash and a lot of luxury watches. What do they call them? Whatever, luxury watches.
- [48:01]
A
Tech Philippe's.
- [48:02]
B
Yeah.
- [48:02]
A
Audemars.
- [48:03]
B
Yeah, yeah, something like that. Who knows? Timexes. Yeah. So. So he had a bunch of these at his home. So the interesting thing was the story broke, right? Like, oh, guys. And now to your point, right, about how sometimes narratives. Maybe you didn't make that point, but you sort of. The immediate thought was, oh, what the agency up to? Right? They got this guy, he's got all this gold bars and money and watches, and there's a little smoke agency.
- [48:34]
A
What's this up to?
- [48:35]
B
I looked at this because I got a call immediately from one of the news networks. They would say, hey, can you come on and talk about this? And I said, well, I don't. You know, they're investigating. I don't have anything. I'd be speculating, but I'm happy to come on and talk about that sort of the process. But when I saw this, the first thought I had was this guy was up to some shit because, you know, again, my company, Portman Square Group, for all your information and intelligence needs, we have a investigative group, right? And we do a lot of fraud investigations. And so you start, you see things, right? And you see how fraudsters work. And so my immediate thought was, okay, he puffed up his resume. Clearly, you know, he's up to some shenanigans on a regular basis, right? That's a real indicator. I know some people just do it, you know, I'll just do this one thing. And it's not. Doesn't make them a fraudster necessarily. But it was enough smoke to your point here to say, okay, this guy was up to some. So what he had done was he had created a project, right? And he had. He had made it sort of a secret project, right? One of these, you know, code word projects where you have to be read in on it, right? And then he would. He would. He was senior enough that he was able to do this and then start requisitioning for asset purposes. Like, I need, you know, the only way we can pay our asset is a luxury watch or, you know, cash or gold bars, right?
- [49:57]
A
When you're talking about an asset, you're talking about some type of information a person has.
- [50:01]
B
An individual. Yeah. So. So in. In. In an agency lingo, an asset is a recruited individual. You know, you don't say a CIA asset to mean the officer, right? It's just an officer.
- [50:11]
A
So this is a guy that's a cook for some, you know, head of state. And he's able to give information. And the way you pay him is not through PayPal.
- [50:18]
B
You give him a watch, Venmo. Yeah, yeah. So you give him a watch. You give them whatever money, gold, Bars. So this guy was busy and he read a couple of younger junior people in because he needed for logistics purposes. So, you know, but this is all very secret. I got to pay these assets. And you know, we got. This is. It was, you know, you could take that activity outside the agency, put it in any commercial operation. I think the fraud profile is the same. Right. It's not much new under the sun when it comes to committing fraud or fraudsters or the personality of a fraudster. Right. Which is a little different from the personality of someone who commits treason like a Hanson or, you know, Edley Howard or Jim Nicholson or these guys. That profile is different, but you still have red flags, indicators that you should be looking for because they tend to be consistent from one case to the next. Anyway, so a very interesting story. The guy's, you know, going to be banged up for a long time.
- [51:16]
A
Yeah. But I mean, millions of dollars in gold bars. I don't even know how you launder that.
- [51:21]
B
Well, he was, he was keeping in his house, right?
- [51:23]
A
Yeah. But you can't take it to Publix and like buy groceries. Like, I don't know how. You're like.
- [51:27]
B
That's right.
- [51:28]
A
How are you offloading your bullying here?
- [51:31]
B
Like a brisket.
- [51:32]
A
Yeah. You're in an old western. You just throw a pound of gold on the counter.
- [51:35]
B
There you go. How much dynamite is this going to buy? So, yeah, it is. It was interesting, but that's bizarre.
- [51:41]
A
And he was kind of able to, I guess, you know, manipulate this black budget kind of feature of the agency.
- [51:47]
B
It's what fraudsters do. They identify a loophole. Right. Because that's how their mind works. They're looking for some angle. Right? Yeah. And he identified a way, you know, he. But again, fraudsters aren't necessarily as smart as people. They do tend to get caught eventually. And, and that's what happened here. He didn't, he, you know, he just didn't look further enough down the road to see what would the obvious result was going to be. Somebody was going to do an audit. Right, Right. And say, okay, what happened? You know, where's all this gone?
- [52:16]
A
Right. Yeah.
- [52:17]
B
And he had collected so much that eventually, you know, that that's what happened.
- [52:21]
A
Yeah.
- [52:21]
B
Very interesting story.
- [52:22]
A
It's hard to screen for this kind of stuff as well. I'm sure when you're in the interview
- [52:24]
B
process, it's not hard to screen for it if you, he, this guy slipped through just like Hanson would slip through their, their, you know, protocols. Alder, James, you know, the, the psychotics Right. Get through the polygraph. People who don't have a sense of right and wrong.
- [52:43]
A
Right.
- [52:43]
B
The polygraph works when you have some, some semblance of right and wrong.
- [52:48]
A
Right.
- [52:48]
B
And you can feel guilty because that's. It's picking up on physical traits.
- [52:51]
A
Lying is a bad thing. So therefore, when I lie, my heart rate goes up.
- [52:54]
B
Exactly. I'm gonna sweat a little bit, my pulse rate's going to go up. I'm going to breathe differently. You know, psychos don't do that. Right. People who have no sense of right and wrong. So that's why, you know, sometimes people say, well, how did you know somebody like Ames get through the polygraphs?
- [53:10]
A
Right.
- [53:11]
B
And also sometimes, again, it's a human endeavor. So people slip through. Right. That these things on his resume should have been caught. Right. But you know, then he got inside. And then, who knows, maybe, I don't know, the, the whole story on this guy's history. Maybe he started having money problems. Right.
- [53:27]
A
Sure.
- [53:28]
B
But that's why we do regular. We do. We say, God damn it, I knew he hadn't left. I still talk in those terms. So, so, so, okay, don't use that as an indicator. You can leave. But the point is that that's why they do regular polygraphs. You don't just get a polygraph when you enter. Right. It's a reoccurring thing. You know, make sure that they'll catch such changes in your life or something that causes you then to become perhaps susceptible. Right. To a foreign service.
- [53:58]
A
Sure.
- [53:59]
B
Yeah.
- [53:59]
A
And when you get in, I mean, they give you like a full personality detail. Right. They say like, hey, here's our profile on you. And they kind of will break down more or less how your brain works. Is that fairly true?
- [54:11]
B
Yeah, I mean, that may be making more of it. You know, they have psychological profiles, but so do, you know, so does Mackenzie.
- [54:19]
A
Right?
- [54:19]
B
Mackenzie.
- [54:20]
A
Okay.
- [54:20]
B
Goldman Sachs. Yeah. I mean, they'll give you a whole battery of. Of personality tests. Right. And some of them are actually pretty entertaining. Right. And, and, but they're standard, Right. They ask the same question throughout, you know, a 50 page questionnaire. Right. To see whether you're consistent or whether you're just, you know, making up and you forgot what you said the previous time. Language tests, they do a variety of things. Right. But you know, there's, there's still no device that can read your mind. I wish there was. That'd be great if they could put a colander on your head and it would tell them one way or the other, because A polygraph is a pain in the ass, right. And it's also a little bit of a soft science, right? In part because, again, it depends on your perspective and life experience and how you process things. So not everybody reacts the same way. But the polygraphers at the agency are very, very good. And you have to use that in concert with with all the other work that you're doing to try to vet somebody. Right. It's a. It's a. It's a complex package, but they don't really then hand you over something that says, well, here's your personality.
- [55:23]
A
Right.
- [55:25]
B
Otherwise I probably wouldn't have gotten it.
- [55:27]
A
Hey, guys, we're gonna take a break really quick because I'm on the road. That's right. My stand up comedy tour continues at the end of this year, and I'm going to a bunch of cities. In October, I'm going to Plano, Texas. I'm going to Chandler, Arizona. In November, I'm going to Pasadena, California. I'm going to San Diego. And in December, I'm going to Detroit, Michigan. And in January, I'll be in Salt Lake City. I genuinely cannot wait to see you guys. I hang out after every single show. I would love to grab a photo with you and just chop it up and talk about the podcast life, whatever it is. So come on out, come hang with me, see the show, and say what's up afterwards. Now let's get back to the podcast, fellas. This episode is sponsored by Blue Chew. Look, life is about preparation. You got to prepare for a camping trip, for your job, for a podcast, and you got to prepare for all of the things happening in your life. And, you know, sometimes when the vibe is right, everyone's, you know, being an adult, you're on the same page. Sometimes people forget to prepare for the bedroom, and that's why you need Blue Chew Gold. Blue Chew Gold is going to take you to the next level in the bedroom. It combines four ingredients into one powerful solution. Two to support you physically, two to support arousal and desire in the brain. And it works in just as fast as 15 minutes and will make you feel more confident with bedroom matters amongst only married relationships. That's how I promote it, okay? I think it only should be within the sanctity of marriage, trying to create children. Okay? I'm a Catholic. That's what I believe. Now, Bluechew is great because if you go to bluechew.com, not only are you going to get the number one brand for better bedroom experiences, you're also going to get A little deal right now. If you buy two months of Bluechew Gold, you're going to get the third month free with the promo code Gagnon. That's G, A, G, N, O, N. You're also going to get an additional 10 off, plus one free overnight shipping on your very first order. When you visit bluechew.com use the promo code Gagnon, and you can check out more details and important safety information. Thanks so much, Bluechew. Let's get back to the show. What do you think was your competitive advantage? Like you had so, so many years at the Agency. What was it about your personality and your affect that made you so valuable to the people in Langley?
- [57:22]
B
I had some on a couple of the senior
- [57:26]
A
charm and good looks.
- [57:27]
B
I mean, I did not. I was a hell of a dresser back then. And now look at you. You got a pocket look at Mr. Check out, Mr. Businessman. Yeah.
- [57:35]
A
You go on Joe's show.
- [57:36]
B
You're right.
- [57:36]
A
David. Shirt. You come in the tent. I know.
- [57:38]
B
I was actually gonna. I was gonna wear my normal clothes, but I. I did have. I legitimately had business meetings this morning. I should explain. I should have explained the very beginning why I'm wearing a suit in a tent. But, you know, it's. I do this when I go camping anyway.
- [57:52]
A
Right, Exactly.
- [57:53]
B
Yeah, we do this all the time. Go fly fishing. I'm wearing my linen slacks.
- [57:57]
A
That's what I call it. Fly fishing.
- [58:00]
B
I see what you did there. Yeah. So I. You know what? I. I don't know. They're looking for a whole variety of people, right? But I think the consistencies are. They're looking for people who have some level of discipline, some. Some ability to. To work well individually in a team. They're.
- [58:22]
A
Baseline iq, I'm sure, is helpful.
- [58:23]
B
Baseline iq. Although, you know, I've told this story before. My wife hates it when I tell this story. But. But last interview I had with the outfit, before I found out whether they were going to accept me or not, the fellow who was doing it, who was a very. A very wonderful officer, great officer, probably one of the best we've. We've ever had. And he was kind of doing the last interview, and he looked at me and he said, you have the lowest GPA of anybody we've ever recruited into this organization, into this directorate. And, yeah, it was. And I knew he was right because I was. I was a terrible goddamn student.
- [59:00]
A
But that's the only. That's more interesting because. What are you bringing that they say, hey, this is completely.
- [59:05]
B
That was my Question after that.
- [59:06]
A
This is inside of our purview. Yeah, but you have, you have an intangible skill that you, I, it sits above the 99 percentile.
- [59:15]
B
Yeah. You know what? I, I don't overthink things. That was certainly true of my academic career, so maybe that was helpful. But you're just happy to be here. Yeah, I was just happy. I'm happy to be here. Look at this. No, I was, I was ecstatic when I, when I finally got to nod. I couldn't have been happier. I couldn't believe it. How lucky I was. Right. And so, but yeah, I, who knows? They look for all sorts of things, right. In, in an individual, sometimes it's just straight line experience. Right. Have you been in the military? Have you been overseas most of your life? Life. Do you, are you good with languages? Right? Do. Have you come out of the finance world? Because they're looking for people who can work on the asset tracing side of things, tracking money funds for terrorism groups or cartels or whatever. They're looking for specific service lines. Right. Of, of activity and, but a personality wise, you know, they're looking for people with a clean background. Right. You know, I, I didn't have a problem with that. Hadn't done drugs. Right. Was. Kept my nose clean.
- [60:16]
A
Never even smoked weed or anything by the time you did the interview?
- [60:18]
B
No.
- [60:19]
A
Wow.
- [60:19]
B
No, it was, it was never a, it wasn't. Just wasn't a thing, you know, And I was lucky. It was, I've got older brothers. I was lucky. It wasn't a thing for them either. Right. Because it was kind of how you, how you adjust your, your expectations. Where'd you grow up overseas in, In England, then Australia. The US I went to a year of high school in the US University in the US and had a great time. Yeah. But, but it was, it was interesting because when I got there, the drug thing is harder now for trying to find applicants who have never smoked weed or anything. Right. And they understand that. So they have adjusted their perspective on that lifestyle issue. But having said that, and the bureau, the FBI, which is a great organization, I know a lot of people are going to disagree with me on that one, but they're kind of the same way. They've adjusted. But the thing is they have so many applicants that they, you know, they understand the change in lifestyles and how the world's evolved, but they don't have
- [61:24]
A
to necessarily go with it, still maintain
- [61:26]
B
that standard because it still maintain the standard because they've got so many applicants. So when I Have I get. I talk to a lot of young people who are interested in a career there in the intel community, and my first comment to them is always the same. Well, if you want that, no matter how smart you are, how many languages you know, whatever it is, you got to have kept your nose clean. Clean. Yeah. Literally. Yeah.
- [61:45]
A
It just feels a little arbitrary at times where it's like, you know, you're getting an interview from some officer and he's got a glass of whiskey and he's smoking a cigar. He's like, oh, you drink? He's like, yeah, I get faced all the time. He's like, oh, same. Wait, you smoked weed when you were 19? Hold on. Wait, what are you doing?
- [61:59]
B
Yeah, that can't work.
- [62:01]
A
I know I'm not a big weed
- [62:02]
B
guy, but like, it's, it is a, it is a. Yeah, you're right. And there's no doubt about it. It's, it's, it's a, what do they say? A conundrum. It's a, it's a contradiction.
- [62:13]
A
Mean. It's also a contradiction within American society.
- [62:16]
B
It is that you can advertise beer
- [62:17]
A
at the World cup, but if you, you know, are selling a gram of weed, you go to jail for 20 years.
- [62:22]
B
Yeah, exactly.
- [62:23]
A
An American.
- [62:23]
B
Yeah, that the weed thing's got to change. They can't. But, but I think that the, the point being is they don't have to necessarily because they get so many applicants and so they're willing to stick with their. And again, the bureau is the same way. The bureau will say, yeah, we, we understand that the world's changed, you know, because they see all these young people with very good qualifications and they've been, they've used drugs during college, right? Now, was it once or was it a consistent, you know, daily habit? Was it a weekly thing? That's also kind of taken into consideration if there are specific skills or abilities or, you know, they're looking for somebody in particular so they can look at that and go, okay, if it was a one time thing, we get it. Or, you know, but they still, they, they still hold the line. Yeah, yeah, because they consider it. But in part, and you're right, you can't argue there's a, there's, there's a contradiction there. But they consider it a bit of a discipline thing. But yeah, you're right, they could. Then that same person could go out and get hammered. Right. And you think, well, okay, well, that's. Yeah.
- [63:23]
A
Is this why you guys love the, the BYU boys? I mean, this is Something I've always heard, and it makes so much sense. Y' all love the, the LDS folks, the Mormons, for they do get through
- [63:33]
B
the lifestyle polygraph pretty quickly.
- [63:35]
A
Lifestyle polygraph, discipline.
- [63:36]
B
Yeah.
- [63:37]
A
Multiple language.
- [63:38]
B
But I. Here's the thing. It is interesting, and I don't know whether it's still true or not, but for quite a while, it seemed like the polygraph division. Right. And which is it's a very tough job, but the polygraph division was staffed with a lot of Mormons. And the problem there is. And it's not just Mormons.
- [64:01]
A
Right.
- [64:01]
B
I've got a lot of respect for Mormons. I knew a lot of folks, young folks, and they got a great youth program. Keep the kids out of trouble. Right. Great, great, great basketball. Every. Every damn one of their churches has a full size basketball court. How good is that?
- [64:13]
A
I always tell people, like, I'm not. I'm not Mormon. I'm not lds, but I will raise my kids lds. Culturally.
- [64:18]
B
Yeah.
- [64:18]
A
Because they make awesome people, you know,
- [64:21]
B
stay out of trouble.
- [64:22]
A
Out of trouble.
- [64:23]
B
Yeah.
- [64:23]
A
They're all like, they're all sober. So, like, their skin is great. They love being outside. Like, they all look amazing. Skin is like, they don't gain all this puffy weight from drinking all the time. They go to the Philippines and learn, you know, Filipino.
- [64:35]
B
They've got a great language program. Great language.
- [64:37]
A
They come back. They, they intrinsically understand a culture that most Americans have never even heard of.
- [64:41]
B
Yeah.
- [64:42]
A
Like, oh, yeah, I was in Laos for two years. You're like, what?
- [64:44]
B
Really? Yeah. What is that place? What? You. They taught you how to speak Chinese.
- [64:48]
A
Really?
- [64:48]
B
Seriously? So, so, yeah, that, that's absolutely true. And, and also, if you're traveling overseas and you really need to go out and ball it up, you can find a basketball court.
- [64:57]
A
Yeah.
- [64:57]
B
Just by finding the Mormon Church.
- [64:59]
A
These boys will hoop on you too.
- [65:00]
B
Yeah.
- [65:01]
A
Full tie and dress shoes.
- [65:02]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [65:03]
A
That's amazing.
- [65:04]
B
Wingtips. Yeah. How do you jump so high in those things? So, but the, the, the, the, the downside. This is my, this was my observation for whether I could be completely full of. But the, the observation I had was that any religion tends to see things in black and white, and that's not how the world is. Right. So when you're a polygrapher, you. And you're a Mormon. My observation was they would see things in black and white.
- [65:30]
A
Right.
- [65:31]
B
They would, it would just be like, okay, and. But you're living as an operations person. You're living in a very gray world. Very gray. Right. And so you'd go in and it was either right, wrong, inclusive, inconclusive. You know, you're thinking what. You know, I had a, I had a polygapher. And again, look, I, I love my time at the agency, so I, that's, I'm gonna say that right up, but I had a plugger for one time say, look at me and say, I'd been in for a while. So you seem to know a lot of foreigners.
- [66:01]
A
They said that to you?
- [66:02]
B
Yeah, I was like, I, I, all I could think of, it was like I had Tourette's. I looked at them and I said, do you know what I do for a living? What? And so. But it was, it was, yeah, it was, it was. That kind of was one of those questions where I thought maybe, maybe we need to get you, you folks out more. Yeah. Yeah, we need to. And, and, and, and so it is, it is interesting, but they do a very tough job.
- [66:31]
A
Right?
- [66:31]
B
And so do they.
- [66:34]
A
Do they sort of maintain a different role within the agency where they're like, oh, you can be like, as an analyst, you're able to sort of read these documents in the native language. You can understand the cultural nuance, but maybe not in the field as much or something to that effect.
- [66:44]
B
No, if you, you're in a, you're in a job, right. If you're a polygrapher, you're a polygrapher, right. You're not also then doing a side gig there as a, as an analyst or whatever. Whatever. There's movement, you can move around. Right. But typically it's, it is tough to move around if you go into the Intelligence directorate where you're an analyst. Right. It's very difficult to move from that position into the operations directorate. Right. To do whatever you know you want to do. It's, it's so you can move within your, your own element, your own directorate. But it's very tough to cross over because it's just, just, you know, there's. So anyway, it is, it is interesting. But yeah, the, the Mormon side of things. Look, I've got my oldest boy, Scooter, has, has, you know, a handful of friends who are Mormons off on missionaries now, on missions now.
- [67:32]
A
Yeah, Idaho is massive.
- [67:34]
B
Yeah, Exactly. Idaho, Utah, 10 to be. You know, that's a, that's a ground zero, a big spot. Rexburg. Yeah. Yeah. Look at you.
- [67:41]
A
Shout out my lds, boys. Come on out. It is a, it's interesting though. Like, yeah, my favorite store. And this is, I mean, gonna slightly bag on the Latter Day Saints, but like Richard Miller. I don't know if you're familiar with this guy. This was a guy that infamously. Could you pull up a photograph of Richard Miller, former BYU grad?
- [67:59]
B
Okay.
- [68:00]
A
Goes into the agency. I think he's like an analyst or something. I don't know all the details. And gets honey potted. Oh. Beautiful Russian meets him at a bar and goes, you've been overlooked by every woman in your life. And he's a kind of a big old fat guy, like, lives with his mom or something. And they're like, you've been overlooked.
- [68:15]
B
Sounds like a catch.
- [68:16]
A
Yeah, exactly. And he's like, you know what? I have been overlooked, now that you bring it up. And I think I deserve a beautiful Russian model. And she's like, yes, you do.
- [68:24]
B
Yes, you do.
- [68:25]
A
And then she starts getting some information and gives over, you know, a bunch of state secrets. And he was just like this example of, like, oh, that's how you can get honey potted, right? Like.
- [68:35]
B
Yeah, I don't. That's interesting. I don't. I don't recognize the name. I thought I knew just about all our. Our CI problems.
- [68:41]
A
I might be off on this.
- [68:42]
B
No, no, no, no.
- [68:43]
A
I think.
- [68:44]
B
But that's exactly how it happens, right? Because you're looking for, you know, a target. And those guys, somebody like that kind of, you know, they got a beacon over their head, right? If they walk into a bar, you know, so it is. It's exactly what happens. And we've seen it. The. The. The Chinese service is very good at that as well. Here we go. Here we go.
- [69:08]
A
We got something here. Is it. Is this our boy? Ah, there he is. The legend himself. Was that. Was I basically accurate on that story? I. I don't want to completely throw false information out here about our boy. Says he was charged for spying the Soviet Union. Yeah. Charged for spying for the Soviet Union.
- [69:22]
B
Okay.
- [69:22]
A
Yeah. And he was CIA, FBI.
- [69:27]
B
Oh, see, that's me.
- [69:30]
A
That's on me. My apologies. My apologies.
- [69:33]
B
He had a novel defense. Well, I was horny. I want to bang this chick. That's my defense.
- [69:39]
A
And I think he was ldl. He might not have. I might have just made up this entire story. So I. Okay. He was okay. But, yeah, it's the honeypot thing seems, like, so tricky, right?
- [69:48]
B
Yeah, it's. It. The, you know, people, again, aren't going to believe it, but the agency doesn't do that, Right? There's. There's certain things that are completely prescribed. Right. And so the honey pot idea, recruiting religious figures, right? Recruiting journalists. Which I'm sure people are going to say, well, that can't be right. But there's. There's certain things that you just, you operationally, you just are off limits. And, and part of it is self preservation. Right. Because of how bad it would be if it goes south.
- [70:17]
A
Right.
- [70:18]
B
In terms of just the optic. Right. The, the, you know, the. So that a lot of it is. Okay, well, look, we want to do the right thing in part because we want to stay off the front page of the Washington Post. I don't even know if the Washington Post still has a print edition.
- [70:30]
A
Maybe.
- [70:30]
B
Wow.
- [70:31]
A
But it'll be in like the next legacy of Ashes or something.
- [70:34]
B
But look, I mean, some girl walking in a bar, she's going to look at that guy and she's going to. Of course. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It is funny.
- [70:39]
A
We.
- [70:42]
B
There's a, There's a bar in Moscow. There used to be a bar in Moscow called Night Flight, and it was basically all hookers. Right. And it's just, it's one of those places where they would be there, but if you, if you were there, it wasn't like you walked in and go, oh, these are all hookers. They just all look like club goers. Right. And so they're global. So the whole idea was, from the Russians perspective, was, yeah, we're going to get, we're going to get a ton of Western businessmen showing up at this place, right. It's going to develop this reputation. They're all going to come in and a lot of these guys were doing the same thing that this guy was doing, which is like, you know, oh, I'm on fire tonight.
- [71:20]
A
Yeah.
- [71:20]
B
I can't say something wrong. I, you know, must be the way I'm dressed or, you know, and so they wouldn't. Without realizing that all these women were working, you know, in part for the, the service, the intel service.
- [71:31]
A
And how does that work? Are the professionals, the professional women here, are they escorts, whatever the correct word is, are they contracted by fsb? Are they working for a mafia that then has a tie to an oligarch that then has a tie to Russian intelligence?
- [71:46]
B
It's Pro. Oh, there's 25 years of night flight. Yeah, it's. There's nothing like night flight back home. My God, why don't we have a bar like this where the girls find me attractive?
- [71:56]
A
Sounds nice.
- [71:56]
B
Yeah.
- [71:57]
A
Yeah.
- [71:57]
B
So that's what we should go. We should do a whole week of shows from there.
- [72:00]
A
Yeah. What do you think?
- [72:03]
B
God, yeah. To answer your question, I, I suspect it's It's a, it's all those things, right? The FSB or the, at the time the KGB probably contracted with a couple of criminal elements that were running the girls. And there was a, it was a symbiotic relationship, right? So hey, we'll not prosecute you guys.
- [72:21]
A
You can kind of operate the scheme, you know, thing, but you got to turn over information when we need it from these guys.
- [72:27]
B
Girls are going to be cooperative contact or we're going to tell you we've got, you know, three guys from Boeing coming in tonight, you know, that we've identified because we've got wired up their room. We know that they're going to come out here for the evening. So you know, here's what we want you to do. You know, spay, pay attention to them. Not that they wouldn't, but pay attention to them. And, and you're going to be a cooperative contact.
- [72:45]
A
I mean, so set up a camera maybe.
- [72:47]
B
Yeah, sure. Everybody, everybody in, in. Certainly in the old days it's changed, right? I mean then just like the rest of the world. But, but the KGB had it easy, right? Because everybody could be co opted on the street. Whether it was some char woman who, you know, would be standing on the corner as a lookout for surveillance purposes. Everybody was susceptible to being used by the services. And so they had enormously easy in those days because I mean, in the old days, obviously they didn't have CCTV footage, right? Now, I mean, look at some of these cities, right? London, you want to pick up somebody in Marble Arch and follow them all the way out to Wimbledon, you can do it, right? And non stop coverage. So. But in the old days you'd co opt all these people. Yeah, so the Soviets, Chinese, to be fair, they had it easy too. They did the same thing.
- [73:37]
A
How would a foreign adversary try to co opt an American influencer? Like let's say there's someone that has an American, maybe a podcast like this one, or maybe they do like a new show online and they talk about news and current events and they have a massive audience and they're able to be a mouthpiece to all these people. How would the Russians or the Chinese or any other type of counterintelligence, how would they come in and basically take hold of someone's money?
- [74:02]
B
Well, there was an Arcadia, I mean a recent case. Look, there's a Chinese counterintelligence case every day basically that the FBI has to open up. But there was a case, the mayor of, of Arcadia, California. I think that's, that's where it was, yes. Yeah. And so part of what she was doing was pushing particular points of view. Right. Not just, you know, from a, because she was a mayor. Right. But their hope was eventually maybe you're gonna get, you know, you're gonna be, you know, something more maybe you'll get in the State House. Right. And so it can be very subtle, Right. How they would get somebody to start pushing information. Whether it's a particular narrative, it doesn't have to be disinformation, doesn't have to be misinformation. It could just be bringing a story up to the forefront. Right. From their perspective, that's actually a good thing. Or pushing, pushing other ideas or stories down.
- [74:53]
A
Right. Eileen Wang. Yeah. Now it seems like she, because she's of Chinese descent, has maybe some, some type of sympathy or something like that. I don't want to say that all Chinese people obviously in America have CCP sympathies, but that one seems, maybe has a little bit more connection. But someone like me, like, if the Chinese wanted to infiltrate me and be like, hey, like, would they blackmail me? Would they try to.
- [75:16]
B
No, they wouldn't blackmail you. They would, they would. You know, first of all, with, with somebody like Eileen Wang, that is fairly standard for Chinese intel service to go after first, second, third generation Chinese Americans and appeal to sort of their sense of the home country. Right. And so that is a very standard practice. And they, they're firmly convinced that it works for them. Because it does.
- [75:39]
A
Yeah.
- [75:40]
B
And so, but otherwise, if, if that's not the case, then they'll look for other, they're not going to blackmail most, most intel services, frankly, even the ones that do it, like the Russians, they don't like to do it because they know it. It's not, it's, it's like beating somebody over the head with a two by four. Right. It's only going to work for so long. Right. And so know, they know that they're going to, you know, there's a, there's a shelf life on any recruited asset. Right. Once you, once you get somebody to start telling you things or doing things for you, that's against what their country wants or, you know, so they're spying against their country, their organization, their company. Right. If you're getting economic intelligence from somebody who works inside a corporation, right. Then there's a, there's a window that starts closing because that's a very debilitating thing eventually over a period of time, unless you've just recruited a complete psychotic, in which case now you've Got security problems because you don't know how they're going to act, and you can't control them. And so, but anyway, yeah, you know what? I'm getting too far into the weeds in terms of like. And people are like, I didn't come on here to learn how to do this. We came on it. Listen, listen to, you know, people accuse
- [76:53]
A
people of doing this all the time. There would be a podcaster or a media personality that says something. Then people are like, oh, they got to them.
- [76:58]
B
Yeah.
- [76:59]
A
Oh, they paid them off. They did this and that. And sometimes it's true. I mean, there was like a case of a bunch of, you know, guys that were accepting money from, like, some Russian corporation or something to that effect. I don't know all the details, so I don't. I don't want to line anyone, but something like that where it's like, hey, we're going to sponsor you with our company. And if all of a sudden you start saying this stuff that's a little maybe not what we want, then maybe we might retract that sponsorship.
- [77:20]
B
Yeah.
- [77:20]
A
So it's not overt, but it's kind of like the soft power using thing.
- [77:23]
B
It is very soft power, and it's also very subtle, and it's based on, you know, people's human nature and greed, frankly. You know, okay, I mean, you're gonna pay me $200,000 a year, and all I got to do is, you know, make sure occasionally I talk about these stories. Right.
- [77:41]
A
Or not talk about.
- [77:42]
B
Or not talk about.
- [77:43]
A
That's great.
- [77:43]
B
Yeah, exactly. So. And. And people don't do a lot of digging. Right. I mean, the first thing they should have been doing, in that case you've cited, is they should have been really digging in and saying, okay, who. Who's behind all of this? Right. What. What's. What's this? Because it's not that tough in today's world to peel back all those layers on the onion and figure out what the going on. But people aren't inclined necessarily to do that. Right. Because they're just incurious or they. They like the gig, the money, or they don't want to know. Right. So, yeah, it's. It's like everything else. When you read something, I tell people all the time that you read something online, first question you ask is, where is this coming from? Right. And even if it seems innocuous, just at least spend a little moment of time figuring out where the information's coming from. Can you corroborate it from another source? Is it actual or is it just right? And so much of the crap on, on the Internet nowadays is just complete. Yeah, but people are just not inclined. Maybe they're busy, right? And I get that, right. Everyone's putting food on the tables, right.
- [78:46]
A
And then also with like, bots and stuff. Like, I mean, I'm scrolling on Instagram and I don't even know if the person that's commenting is real, right. Is this an actual human being? Is this someone that is coming from foreign intelligence? I mean, like the. Yeah, what is it? The great hack on, on Netflix kind of showed a little bit of how this works where you have like, Russian intelligence coming in, commenting, making things seem, you know, a little astroturfed.
- [79:09]
B
Yeah.
- [79:10]
A
Is there. Do you, do you deal with this when you're reading stuff or you're like, is this real?
- [79:13]
B
Yeah, you have to ask yourself that. And you also have to read a lot of different things, right? And that's what also how, how you can play off of this, right? Like if you're, if you're a foreign and a foreign government. Let's. I, I keep saying the Chinese, because they're the, the most logical one. They've got the most resources, they're the most motivated. They working very hard to try to get to the top of the food chain. So they understand a lot. They've spent a lot of time looking at America and understanding how we work and, you know, how we deal with information. So they know that most people, People aren't going to take the time to dig through information and find out what the actual source of it is. They also know most people are siloed nowadays. So they just read what, you know, confirms their opinion, right? People, when you, when you say, well, you know, if you say someone who's on the hard, right? And you say, yeah, you should read the New York Times. You should read that. That, yeah. Not reading that. You know, you think like, well, then, okay, I, you know, I don't know how you're forming your opinions if you haven't looked at it from all sides. That's just, that's a simple equation. So, so that, but people don't do that. And so an organization like the, you know, the Chinese pla, Intel Operations or whomever will. They understand that, right? And they can play off of that. And the, the Russians are very good at it as well. And they understand what our buttons are, right. So they can play off of issues like, like race, Right. They're very good at sort of kind of feeding into that and creating sort of this divisive thing because now they've got thousands of bots out there putting out about some story that never actually happened and. Right. But people are getting all spun up about it. Right. And now they're creating. Sometimes the goal is just to create chaos, Right? Sure.
- [80:52]
A
With a couple thousand dollars, you can create a protest.
- [80:55]
B
Yes.
- [80:55]
A
Right.
- [80:56]
B
Like, absolutely.
- [80:56]
A
Because you don't need to fabricate necessarily. You just need to highlight and instigate something that already exists.
- [81:02]
B
Yeah.
- [81:02]
A
So there's like a little, you know, there's some type of, of racially charged event that happens and it's small and regional and localized and it's murky what exactly happened. But then all of a sudden you start pumping thousands of dollars into fomenting a protest.
- [81:14]
B
Right.
- [81:15]
A
And then a counter protest. And you're going to put them both at the same place.
- [81:18]
B
Yeah. The best disinformation is based on something that's actually factual. Right, sure. So you keep it just like, you know, if you're building a, if you're building a cover story.
- [81:28]
A
Right.
- [81:28]
B
You got to base it on, on, on something that, you know. Right. So you base it on truth and then you kind of, you get. It's. So that it has to be there. There has to be a level of foundation there. And so the best disinformation campaigns are usually ones where, you know, there's an element of truth there, and then you build off of that and then you very subtly move it in a direction that you want. Right. So yeah, it's. It is, it's unfortunate. You know, that's one of the downsides, one of the many downsides, as far as I'm concerned, of, of, of the Internet nowadays.
- [82:00]
A
And do you see how, how the Russians and the Chinese use it? Whether it's like, you know, Yandex or Du Yen or whatever their localized platforms are that don't really let Western influence into them. Right. But then we're over here using Google, Facebook and everyone's kind of on it.
- [82:13]
B
Absolutely.
- [82:13]
A
Is there a party that's like, hey, what? Why do they get to do it and we can't, you know?
- [82:18]
B
Yeah. I mean, people never really ask that question. It's like with TikTok, you know, and they, you know, they never say, well, how come the, the Chinese didn't you just, you know, throw tick tock all over China, let, you know, let their population play with tick tock Right. On the way that we do? There was a reason for that because they consider it to be, you know, in its own way, a negative force. On society or at least could be utilized. It can be utilized that way. And so I don't know. I mean, the Elvis has left the building. So, you know, I, I'm a bit of a Luddite, I admit it. Because kind of when I grew up, up and to this day, right, like if one of my folks in my company needs to send me something and if they send it, and I don't even understand the terminology, you know, this is going to make me sound so old. But you know, they'll say we put it in a, you know, in a Dropbox or a share file or something. I'm saying, well, how about you just fax it?
- [83:12]
A
Yeah. How about a drop site?
- [83:14]
B
Yeah, I want you to, you know, put it in a, in a fake turd and set it under a bush on the intersection of whatever. You know, it's just like, you know, there was a, there was a simplicity, you know, and, and I get it. There's a. So there's so many upsides to technology. Obviously. That's the, what the. Yeah, that's a rocket science statement. But, but being a parent, right, and having raised kids, I got three teenage boys, I got an older daughter who's wonderful and three teenage boys. But having raised my daughter in an era when we didn't have this level of social media and all that comes with it, and then raising the boys who are much younger through this period of time, I kind of do this comparative analysis and we're not doing ourselves any favors.
- [84:05]
A
Do you advise your children in any specific ways? Not only just because they're, you know, teenagers on the Internet, but also because they are your kids and I'm sure some type of intelligence would want to know what you are up to.
- [84:16]
B
Yeah.
- [84:16]
A
Befriending your kids online, being like, hey, where's your dad this weekend? And making it seem like a friend. And then all of a sudden you're doing some type of.
- [84:22]
B
Yeah.
- [84:23]
A
You know, work. Like, do you advise them?
- [84:25]
B
No, you know what? I, we advise them, but we do probably the same thing every other parent does, which is just, you know, hey, don't be a knucklehead online. Right. Understand that it always, everything you do online exists forever, ever. Right. And is always there no matter what people say.
- [84:38]
A
Right.
- [84:39]
B
Wow, this message disappears. Right? It doesn't.
- [84:42]
A
No.
- [84:42]
B
You know, even, even, even private companies with enough resource can, can dig up everything exists. It used to be just a government, you know, state owned enterprise could, could do that, but now it's just, it's ridiculous. So yeah, we're saying the same thing the parents are saying, which is don't do anything stupid online. Keep your screen time down to a minimum. But as far as a security. No, no, because I'm, you know, I'm running a business. Right. I'm doing a podcast. And, you know, I'd say, you know, if some Syrian hit team wants to come find me, you know, then I think they can figure out where I live.
- [85:13]
A
Sure.
- [85:14]
B
So I'm. I don't know why I picked on the serious. Yeah, come on. That's an old. That's an old guard.
- [85:20]
A
Yeah. They're trying their best.
- [85:21]
B
Yeah.
- [85:22]
A
This is gonna. You'll probably have talked about this ad nauseam at this point. I've even seen clips of you and Joe talking about it. But like with Epstein, for example.
- [85:28]
B
Example. Oh, yeah.
- [85:29]
A
Do you think, you know, many people have speculated he was working with intelligence at a certain time in history. You weren't so sure that, like, the connection was there.
- [85:36]
B
Right.
- [85:36]
A
Given everything that's come out with, you know, the recent file drops and the Epstein files, as they're sort of called colloquially, do you think that there's any more of a intelligence tie either to US Intelligence or foreign intelligence?
- [85:48]
B
Yeah, here's. I. I'll say the same thing that. That Joe and I have talked about a handful of times, and. And again, to the point where people just, like, rush to say any old bullshit on. On social media after we have these conversations about Epstein. I always make the same point, and it always gets misconstrued. Right. And so. But my point is, I don't know whether Epstein was working for any intel service, but my point is that any intel service with the resources and the ability would find Epstein of real interest as a target. Right. Because of his very wide circle of influential people that he knows. Right. And if you're an intel service with any type of resource, you probably already would have known about his proclivities. Right. And his problems. And so that's a weakness, right. That's something you can leverage if you're starting to talk about going after somebody, particularly if you're. If you're a foreign service and you look at that and you think, he knows a lot of influential Americans, right?
- [86:47]
A
Sure.
- [86:48]
B
Right. So. But that always gets misconstrued. And people say, like, God damn it, he's. He knows that we're working from Assad. Nobody has it. You know, if somebody actually has that evidence, and fine, come on out with it and do that. Whether he worked for Mossad, the agency, Chinese intel, who knows what I'm saying I have no clue. But what I'm saying is he would be an interesting target for an intelligence organization, an interesting recruitment target because of his access. Right. And maybe you wouldn't know necessarily which of his contacts you wanted to pursue, but you'd look at it and go, he knows so many people. There's a real reason to bump up next to him, develop a relationship, see if you can't find some, some weaknesses if you didn't already know, and see whether you can turn this guy, you know, get him on side. That's my point. But then it always gets misconstrued and people say, well, he's saying he wasn't working for intel or he was working for intel, but of course he was working for the. And so it always goes sideways.
- [87:49]
A
Sure.
- [87:49]
B
And I get that because people hear, hear whatever they already believe, and then, you know, then, then nobody stops and actually listens to what somebody says. Joe gets that all the time, too. I'm sure you do as well. You say something and the next thing you know, people are saying, he said this, and you think, like, I'm pretty sure you can go back and listen. And those were not my words. Right. But nobody does it.
- [88:08]
A
Exactly. My, my assumption is that he, you know, beyond just being a, you know, criminal monster and his proclivities with, you know, young girls, you know, was atrocious. But, but I think that, like, to your point, so many different intelligence organizations would be interested in courting him in some capacity that I think that in a way, he was probably working for everyone. Yeah, that's my assumption. I think he was probably working with some agency guys, working with some FBI guys, working with some FSB dudes and then some Assad guys on the side, because ultimately he was trying to achieve his own ends.
- [88:39]
B
Yeah, he was. Again, going back to that conversation about fraudsters and sort of personalities and profiles and indicators of individuals. Yeah. I mean, if you were looking to recruit somebody and you play off of that guy's ego. Right. And you'd also kind of play off the fact that, you know, he's engaged in criminal activity.
- [88:57]
A
Yeah.
- [88:58]
B
And so, yeah, I, again, I, I agree. There's every indication he, it's not like he was going to be some sort of uber patriotic person who says, I'm only going to work for this person. He probably didn't give a. Because he was always looking to see what's in it for him.
- [89:11]
A
Sure.
- [89:11]
B
Right. So now, hey, look, I got this contact with whomever, right. From whatever service that's Good for me, too. Right. And then they probably played it that way if they did, so. Yeah, but again, it's always that. It's always that thing where people, people, people never are more sure about their opinions than they are on social media. Of course, without any evidence.
- [89:30]
A
Of course. Yeah, I'm. I'm averse to certainty. I'm not going to sit here and say that I know exactly what happened, but just kind of like pulling things together. I look at him almost like a. Like an arms dealer, you know, like an illegal arms dealer where, you know, he's working in a country, but then someone's like, hey, can you funnel these weapons to this rebel group, this South American nation? And they're like, sure. How much are you going to pay me?
- [89:50]
B
Yeah.
- [89:50]
A
And they're just willing to operate criminality in the criminal sort of fray because they're already doing that, but they're already doing it.
- [89:57]
B
And again, there's this lack of right and wrong, and that creates sort of this, this. This, again, this profile of a personality that you. You tend to look for. So that's what that's always been my point with, with Epstein is that, yeah, if you were an intelligence service, you would definitely look at that guy and say, interesting. Yeah, there's a target. Yeah, right.
- [90:20]
A
And people like to silo him in one or the other. Or, you know, they try to say, like, oh, he's obviously CIA, but then he has like, an email where he's talking to, like, some Russian guys, and it's like, oh, he was obviously Russian. But then he's like, wearing like a, you know, like a massage shirt, and you're like, well, it's definitely massage.
- [90:34]
B
Definitely massage.
- [90:34]
A
Look at it.
- [90:35]
B
Look at this. Look at all his Israeli friends. And do you think, okay, well, he. He was all over the map. Map. That's. But again, you know, people speak with certainty. So God bless him, you know, like, if, you know, great.
- [90:46]
A
An illegal passport that was found on his property. I forget from where it was issued, but, like, to me, I'm like, okay, yeah, he's cutting deals with whoever's going to give him money and ultimately give him cover for his criminal enterprise.
- [90:56]
B
Best thing the government could have done was just release every goddamn thing they had. Everything. Don't redact any of. Unless you got like a. A current, you know, case going on, litigation, and you're protecting the identity of one of the. These poor girls or women at this stage. Just release everything.
- [91:13]
A
My concern with that, though, is that if CIA or FBI is some way, you know, aware of his operation and they're using it for some other greater means. It's a very utilitarian perspective. Like, hey, the benefit that we get from the access is worth overlooking these terrible crimes. If that's the case. I don't know if the American public wants to know these things. Like, at least they, they do want to know them, like I want to know them, but it would make me feel bad.
- [91:36]
B
Well, personally, I don't believe that. I mean, again, you have to base it on your life experience. And my life experience was a lot of years inside the organization. And so I'm saying, you know, from my perspective, I, I, I don't believe that would be the case at all.
- [91:50]
A
Right.
- [91:51]
B
I get now people are going to go, of course he's protecting the agency. I knew that, I knew it. And so you think, ah, off. But, but here's the caveat. And people are going to say if I'm, I'm a big fan of transparency when you're not, you know, blowing up an asset, right? When you're not doing so, wrongdoing, I think needs to be exposed, needs to be transparent. You have to admit mistakes, right? So if that were the case, and again, I don't believe it is the case. If it were the case, and I think you do need to shine light on this. And so because otherwise you, you know, we already know from years past, you know, you don't want to bury problems, right? The worst thing you can do is, is build on a lie, right? You have to, and we used to say this to, to new officers all the time. You got to admit your mistakes immediately, right? It's how you protect yourself and the organization, right? Is you've got to say if you up, you got to come say you're up. Right? That's the, that's number one rule. Right. And, and so, yeah, that's, that's why I think transparency is important. Again, without crossing into sources and methods and risking assets. Sure, yeah.
- [92:59]
A
Were there any operations you were involved in that you couldn't talk about at the time? Obviously, I imagine most that now you are able to discuss. Has enough time gone by that you're able to talk about the particulars of what you were involved in?
- [93:13]
B
No, because I'm not so old that they've declassified shit yet. With all due respect, if we get back to like 15 years, you know, when I'm, when I'm come in here with a walker, then yeah, then we may get to the point where they, they've declassified things, but otherwise Like I said, you, you sign a secrecy agreement and that's your agreement, right? You know, there's no, there's no. Okay, well, maybe I can fudget a little bit here and talk about this or that. I just, I'm not. You know, that's why I, I wrote a, A short book because I didn't know a lot of words, but I wrote a book about what I learned from the agency that helped build a business.
- [93:49]
A
Right?
- [93:49]
B
Because I've been lucky enough to keep a business growing and breathing and, you know, moving in the right direction for a number of years. And frankly, a lot of people in the agency thought that was never going to happen. I had a guy tell me when I said, look, I think it's time for me to leave. You know, I'd been there about 20 years. I think it's time I gotta, you know, again, I was. I needed to find something where I could be home. For the most part, it turns out kids just, you know, want you to sit on the floor and play Legos. They don't care how cool your job is. Right. So. But I remember one guy looked at me and says, what, what, what the hell are you going to do? You know, and he didn't mean it disparagingly. He was just like, what are you going to do out there? Yeah, right. And I was like, you know, I didn't want to tell him. I had no idea, but I thought, okay, it's a, it's a fair question. But yeah, I, I don't know. There's. It. They don't necessarily prepare you. They do a better job now than they used to. To. They don't necessarily prepare you for sort of life outside.
- [94:47]
A
Right.
- [94:47]
B
But they do a better job now.
- [94:50]
A
And what kind of people with your company are you interfacing with? Are these like high level corporate executives? Are these the kind of like regular people that have a security need? Like generally, who are you courting?
- [95:02]
B
Well, I'm glad you asked.
- [95:04]
A
It's partially.
- [95:05]
B
But also I'm partially sponsored by Portman Square Group. So, yeah, psg, which always gets mixed up with Paris Intermediate Man Football Club, Great team, Champions League. And, and it's delightful because our, our company's, you know, acronym PSG is, is the same. So, you know, we can, I can go anytime in Paris and buy a PSG kit and, you know.
- [95:24]
A
Yeah, yeah, to give us business expense.
- [95:26]
B
Pretty damn good. Yeah. So we do a variety of things. So there's investigative services, there's asset tracing, there's strategic intelligence collection, there's risk mitigation, there's security services, risk and threat assessments, training. There's a lot of things that go on. Right. We have a crisis communications group, but we, so we, because of all of that, we tend to work with a lot of different things. We work with large corporations, multinationals, we work with Fortune 50 companies. We work with large law firms who have a lot of litigation concerns. We work with financial institutions, private equity groups, hedge funds, some high net wealth. But I'll tell you, working for high net wealth individuals, rules is a, is a pain in the ass.
- [96:07]
A
Why is that?
- [96:07]
B
Because they a company. You work for a corporation, right. You work for a large business. There's a process. Right. And, and you're dealing with professionals. You're dealing with global security officers, you're dealing with people who run risk and intelligence shops inside this large corporation that's got entities and people all over the world, there's a process. You work with a high net wealth individual. It's a personality. Right. And they could be a douchebag. Right. And so, you know, that's, that's the problem. I, I, you know, I've never, I've never liked it. I never liked working with, you know, that sort of client. So we tend to steer away from, from them.
- [96:45]
A
Right.
- [96:47]
B
Working with law firms. Great. Because again, it's a process.
- [96:50]
A
Right.
- [96:50]
B
And you know, and, but you know, some billionaire, you know, who's got to stick up his ass about some, some competitor or somebody else or, you know, wants to, you know, figure out what his spouse is doing, all that, that you get, you gotta stay away. Yeah. If you're gonna have a billing issue trying to collect money, it's going to be from some guy with a few billion dollars who doesn't want to cough up. Yeah, of course, you know, whatever, you know, you guys worked very hard for. So again, that's, that's, again, we're in the weeds on business issues here.
- [97:19]
A
But would, would a government agency be, you like, interested? Like, would the IRS want to be like, hey, we're trying to, to figure out this thing with this fraud case. Can you help us with that?
- [97:29]
B
Not really. Because they've got so many investigators, you know, not just the irs, but really any, you know, whomever. Right. Government organization, they've got their own operation. Right. They don't. It's not like the military going out and subbing to a contractor for, you know, producing a plane. Right. It's, they've got their own personnel.
- [97:46]
A
Right.
- [97:47]
B
So, and also working, working for the government is kind of an interesting you know, that's, that's a whole, whole nother business, right? Federal marketing. You got to have a whole team that understands contracts and how do you, how do you get in there for a request for proposal? And it's a pain in the ass
- [98:03]
A
in a way, but the money's pretty good.
- [98:05]
B
The money can be good, I guess, but we've never, with the exception of maybe once or twice, we've never really done any federal marketing because it, it's just easier working in the private sector. It's just so much easier working for that. And also we've never been so big big that we've developed an entire federal marketing group. Right. Which is what you have to do to chase down these contracts. Right.
- [98:29]
A
I assume with like your wherewithal and understanding of how like even the CIA works, having someone that you used to work with be like, hey, can you just help us out with this thing? It would be like obvious.
- [98:39]
B
They, it would be, I mean, yeah, I get it. And it sound, it does sound like a TV show, but it, the reality is, you know, that's not how it works. Typically those conversations aren't two way streets, right? So like if, if we come across a fraud being committed that crosses jurisdictions, goes overseas, we've got, you know, assets being, you know, dumped and we start thinking, okay, there's money laundering issues here, you know, we don't know where that money is going to maybe be going to criminal organizations or, or whomever. And then we may, we may package that up and say, look, this is getting outside our domain. Right, because we're, and then we'll try to, you know, see, okay, can we hand it over? But it's not like, then they come back and they start telling, okay, this is how we're doing it with our investigation. Right. It's a one way street for the most part, for reasons of. Right. Compartmentalization and, and whatever investigative purposes. You don't, it's the same thing for intelligence. You don't, you don't have to read everybody in.
- [99:41]
A
Right.
- [99:41]
B
And so you never, you never, you know, go to the, the government expecting that they're going to come back and you suddenly are in this two way conversation where they're sharing information because it's not appropriate. So I, I don't, I don't ping. I know people are going to say that's, but I don't, I don't ask the agency for assistance for anything because it's not fair to them. Right? They're not supposed to be doing that. And, and I Know, and so me asking. That's not going to happen happen because it's the intel community. Law enforcement may be a little bit different. It's a little bit better of a old boy network sort of thing where you may get some assistance, but it's still limited because again of the requirements that they can't do it. So again, I realize people listening to this are going to go, that Joe's handler's talking again. And now Mark's handler's talking. God damn it. I'm flattered to have this guy's all over the place. This is awesome. He keeps recruiting these people.
- [100:26]
A
Okay, we have like 10 minutes left, so before we get you out of it.
- [100:29]
B
Yeah, sorry about that.
- [100:30]
A
I need to ask you. And I knew you knew that this was coming.
- [100:33]
B
Oh boy.
- [100:34]
A
Why, why is old Trump dog putting out all these UFO files? I know you've, you've kind of touted yourself and I don't want to, I don't want to put words in your mouth but like maybe UFO skeptical perhaps.
- [100:46]
B
I'm, I'm UFO skeptical in the sense that I don't believe the government could keep it a secret. Right. Because it's just, just shit gets out after a while. People open their apps, they can't help themselves. And so at some point, point gets out. Right. So if it was kept secret in the sense that we actually were sitting on a couple of alien spacecraft and you know, the cadavers of some aliens that landed in Nevada or wherever, I don't think we're keeping that secret all this time. Right. But I'm not skeptical in the sense that I, I believe that there is something else out there. I think it would be incredibly pompous of us to think that we're the only life forms out there.
- [101:27]
A
This is more of a Fermi paradox appeal to say like there's a high statistical likelihood, there's other type of.
- [101:33]
B
Exactly.
- [101:33]
A
But to say that they're interfacing and coming to Earth would be far fetched for you.
- [101:38]
B
Well, yeah, yeah, I, I, Whether they would be passing by or take a look and go off that.
- [101:44]
A
Yeah.
- [101:45]
B
But I don't think that, I don't think we're sitting on evidence. So occasionally you'll get, you'll get like this. Somebody will show up on Capitol Hill in one of these much touted briefings. We're going to have a UFO briefing and then somebody will say something like, you didn't really actually say shit yet. Right. And well, I can't talk about it, but we, I've Seen some things. Can't talk about it, right? You're like, you talk about it, right? I mean, you, you're sitting on the most important news of, of, of.
- [102:11]
A
That'd be so annoying if someone did that, right, Mike?
- [102:14]
B
Yeah.
- [102:14]
A
They were on a podcast, said they couldn't share secrets.
- [102:16]
B
Yeah.
- [102:17]
A
My God.
- [102:18]
B
I know, I know. So, so, okay, fine. Yeah, we, we do have ev. No, I'm kidding.
- [102:24]
A
Yeah.
- [102:25]
B
So that's. But my, my skepticism only goes to that aspect of it. I only. Because I, you just, you people just can't keep secrets forever. Right? So if they had something dating back to whenever, we would have figured that out. I think someone would have talked about
- [102:40]
A
these testimonies from like David Grush coming out, sitting in like a congressional hearing, being like, we have. I think his words were non human biologics.
- [102:47]
B
Yeah.
- [102:48]
A
And crash retrievals, some of which are archaeological digs.
- [102:52]
B
Yeah.
- [102:52]
A
It's a pretty astounding claim. And I hear it and I go, okay, this is happening like what he's saying is happening right now. So either he's lying, maybe he's a little crazy, maybe he's telling the truth, or maybe he's being fed information to make people believe something in a certain way.
- [103:10]
B
Yeah. I don't think he's. I don't think he's being fed information. I don't think he'd be crazy. I think he's just. There may just be, you know, some puffery going on. I don't know, you know, non human material. You should, you should talk to. There's a great, Such a good friend and he's been on the, like the Black Files show, the show with me a few times. Great scientist, Ben McGee. And he's got a very level headed view on all of this. Right. And he's very open minded. Right. And he's not. So he's not just on, on things. He's approaching it from a real science perspective. And, and Ben's just a terrific guy. And so I'd say you should, you should have him on the show.
- [103:50]
A
We will have them. Get him in here. Call him right now.
- [103:52]
B
Yeah, call him right now. Get him on the phone. So, so I, I just think that why is this happening? You know, in terms. Yeah, I wanted to go back. I wanted to go back to the. Your question, which was the why is Trump releasing the files? Part of it is, I think he finds it entertaining. Right. Part of it is, is there like a look over here, don't look over there element, you know, like a little
- [104:18]
A
distraction, maybe a War going on, some Epstein files.
- [104:22]
B
Oh, look, UFO files. And he knows what's going to happen. Everybody's got to go. God, UFO files.
- [104:27]
A
Flood the plan.
- [104:28]
B
Dig through them and there's not. But look, there's. There's been some incidents, right? David Fraver, the pilot, you know, I've talked to him a handful of times. Great guy, incredible experience.
- [104:38]
A
He doesn't strike me as a liar.
- [104:39]
B
He is not.
- [104:40]
A
He doesn't strike me as someone that's crazy or suffering delusion.
- [104:42]
B
This guy is. This guy. And, and he's one of those just small number of. Of events or cases that I think, you know, you can't explain that yet, right? So because you can't explain it, you can't dismiss it. And you can't also dismiss the idea that there is something going on out there. We just aren't, you know, privy to it, aware of it, whatever. But there's always a reason to investigate all of these sightings because you never know, right? You don't know. Could it be a adversarial state that's developed a new form of propulsion? Well, we probably should figure that out, right? So it makes perfect sense that the Pentagon's got a tip or, you know, whatever they've followed that on with as an office to investigate these things.
- [105:18]
A
Things.
- [105:20]
B
But again, only because I'm just. I'm basing it on the fact that I just don't think they. We could keep it secret, right? It's. It's too big. If we had the evidence and it was specific evidence. And so anybody who goes up on Capitol Hill to say, I've seen things, I just can't talk about them. Right? To your point, not quite the same thing as saying I've signed a secrecy agreement, you know, he hasn't signed it. You know, I. I don't think there's anything prohibiting him from saying this is specifically what I've seen. Maybe, maybe I'm wrong about that. Maybe he's got a secrecy agreement hidden somewhere in a drawer and he can't talk about it. But, you know, I don't think he's crazy. I don't think he's any. I just think it's. It's not verifiable, right? So.
- [106:01]
A
And for someone to say we don't know what this is isn't the same as saying this is non human intelligence, which I think is a leap that sometimes people should. People make that. I think we should be careful.
- [106:09]
B
But also, shit crashes into the earth all the time from outer space, right? And, and and it's its minerals, materials, and there are some things that have landed that, you know, aren't native to the US or. Sorry, to the, to the, to Earth. So, you know, is that what he's talking about? I have no idea. But, yeah, I, I definitely believe this. There's. There's something out there. I just, you know, I'm, I'm here to tell you in my time. I, you know, if we have something in a closet, they didn't show it to me. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [106:40]
A
And maybe for good reason. They're like, this guy's going on podcasts. We're not going to show him.
- [106:42]
B
We can't tell this guy.
- [106:43]
A
You crazy.
- [106:44]
B
Next thing you know, he's telling Mark,
- [106:45]
A
yeah, he's got a low gpa.
- [106:47]
B
He said, well, maybe they would show it to me because I got a low gpa. He's not going to understand this anyway.
- [106:52]
A
If there's a, if there's like a story or some type of event or any type of even like conspiracy or mystery that exists in the world, that you could have the full unfiltered truth, though, just dropped into your brain.
- [107:05]
B
Brain.
- [107:06]
A
Is there anyone that you're like, I would love to know the total truth of this. It can be as banal as some type of conflict or as grand as, you know, aliens or something. What would it be?
- [107:16]
B
Jesus. Yeah, I'd like to know. You know, I'm not a, you know, I'm not one of those persons that's going to say, I know for a fact. Right. I mean, I think there's something going on out there. Right. Kind of like, kind of like the UFOs. It's just God with us, right? Occasionally sending something down. Yeah, yeah, I would say that would be the one thing I'd like to. That I would like to see that. And, and people are saying, well, you don't have to. You shouldn't have to see it. Right. I think, isn't that like a religious thing?
- [107:44]
A
Sure.
- [107:44]
B
You shouldn't have to see it to believe it. I'm thinking, hey, but if you're asking, what's the one thing I'd like to know. Yeah, I'd like to know. Yeah, that would be life changing, right?
- [107:53]
A
To say like this. This is a, A true being that existed, you know, fully man, fully God that resurrected.
- [107:59]
B
Truly, if that was the. If, yeah, that would be it. Right. But then I, you know, I'd be privy to the pretty important secret there, so.
- [108:05]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah, but that's a good thing.
- [108:08]
B
Talk about the ratings for the podcast.
- [108:09]
A
That's a. That's a good secret. You should come out and say, like, great news.
- [108:12]
B
Yeah.
- [108:13]
A
Jesus is real and he loves you.
- [108:14]
B
Yeah.
- [108:14]
A
Yeah.
- [108:15]
B
People are gonna go, like, okay, tell me something new, right? Because I passed a guy in the street corner in Brooklyn that told me that as I walked by him, I said, okay, maybe he.
- [108:22]
A
He might not.
- [108:22]
B
Yeah, he might know.
- [108:23]
A
Yeah.
- [108:24]
B
Anyway, no, it's. But it's a great question. But yeah, that would probably be the one.
- [108:28]
A
Yeah. Yeah. What about you, man? There's so many.
- [108:30]
B
Many.
- [108:31]
A
Jesus is a great one, but I can't steal yours. I'm like, oh, man, there's so many. To be honest with you. Like, the alien stuff would be great. Like, just to know. Like, just to be like, hey, there's nothing. Oh, there's a interdimensional thing going on that's, like, connected to our consciousness that's somehow overlaying these weird kind of parallel universe things. We're actually in a simulation. I think it would clear up a lot of stuff.
- [108:52]
B
Yeah.
- [108:53]
A
Which would be very interesting. All of it is happening at once. I mean, almost to the Jesus point. Like, hey, these actually aren't aliens. These are actually demons. Fun fact. And you can.
- [108:59]
B
Hell, that's a bad thought.
- [109:00]
A
That. That'd be a little sketchy, right?
- [109:02]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [109:03]
A
So there's that. Which would be. Which would be great. I mean, I mean, JFK would be. Just be great to know.
- [109:08]
B
Yeah.
- [109:08]
A
You know, that you guys killed him if you could.
- [109:11]
B
God damn it. You told me before we started the show you were not going to let on.
- [109:15]
A
Okay. All right, we'll fix that. Okay, good. That. That he was killed by a guy.
- [109:20]
B
Yeah, there was a guy. He's a grassy knoll.
- [109:23]
A
I mean, that would be a great one to know because that. That one just. There's so much dubiousness around it that
- [109:27]
B
I'm like, I tell you, I've talked about this before with, With a variety of folks. I agree with JFK that that is still out there. Right. But the one that real. I'm convinced is. Is mlk Martin Luther King. I am absolutely convinced that that was not one dude.
- [109:49]
A
Right.
- [109:50]
B
Who, I mean, it just. There's too many indicators when you talk about an investigation. Right. You got to.
- [109:55]
A
Right.
- [109:55]
B
So there's just. But there's too many indicators there to say there was one, you know, guy who wasn't even a successful low level criminal. Right. And then managed to do this and then managed to get to Europe. And, you know, there were a lot of little points in this guy's timeline that don't add up. Yeah, right. And so that one. Yeah, that would be good.
- [110:16]
A
I would love to know. Yeah, like, that one. I mean, even, like, 9, 11 to an extent, where it's like. There's just little things where it's like, okay, the passport show up. Just.
- [110:23]
B
Why.
- [110:23]
A
Why are the passports fully intact? Things like that. Like, okay, why is, like, you know, how the. How they all get trained? Like, what exactly is going on? How does the. How do the buildings fall in that way? Like, just knowing the full truth, whatever it may be. I'm truly. I have no agenda where I'm like, yeah, yeah, this. But just to have the totality of
- [110:39]
B
unfiltered truth with one event, with one thing, then in theory, you should be able to do it with everything. So, you know, now this is like a genie and three wishes and. Okay, I should be able to do this with all this shit. Yeah, yeah. Then. Then you'd have absolute power, and then you could like, oh, pyramids.
- [110:56]
A
And pyramids. You go, oh, that's how they did it.
- [110:57]
B
They.
- [110:58]
A
They had pulleys I met. They had pulleys the whole time.
- [111:01]
B
Well, they also had hundreds of thousands of slaves that probably helped.
- [111:03]
A
Yeah, some slaves, you know.
- [111:05]
B
Yeah. Very lack of concern for their. For their employees.
- [111:08]
A
Yeah, exactly. I don't know what HR was.
- [111:10]
B
How'd they move that rock? I don't know. Let's go ask all the thousands of people that are dead over there in that pile. Yeah. Anyway, I gotta tell you something. This has been great, man.
- [111:19]
A
I had a wonderful time. Well, Mike, truly, thank you so much.
- [111:22]
B
This was terrific.
- [111:23]
A
This was a joy.
- [111:24]
B
Do you mind if I mentioned our podcast?
- [111:25]
A
Yeah, please.
- [111:26]
B
It's the President's Daily Brief, and it's twice a day, and we just. We tell you what's happening. We don't tell you how to think about it. That's my entire marketing pitch, but it's on all the various podcast platforms. We're on YouTube at President's Daily Brief, and it's a great team behind it. The folks I started working with, them, the organization called Red Seat Ventures. Great guys. But the team that works on that podcast are terrific. Horrific. Couldn't think highly or more highly of them.
- [111:54]
A
And the episode released twice a day.
- [111:56]
B
Twice a day. It's a morning version of 20 minutes. It's an afternoon version of 10 minutes. We're hitting the key. Three or four stories that are happening out there. It's all based on geopolitics, what's going on overseas that impacts the US Allies and so we don't cover politics. We don't touch on that. And again it's just here's what's happening happening. You can think about it how you
- [112:19]
A
want to and it's a great thing to add just to the daily information diet.
- [112:23]
B
Yeah. And it's quick and that's the best part of it.
- [112:25]
A
I'm listening to the Daily from New York Times. You know what's crazy about this podcast is that it's actually in the description of this episode right now as people are listening to this. The link is right there.
- [112:35]
B
You know what else is crazy? I haven't looked like that for at least 15 years. Anyway, listen, thank you man.
- [112:42]
A
Thank you so much. I really appreciate it and I can't wait to see you again when you have to correct me and handle me. Okay.
- [112:48]
B
That's right.
- [112:48]
A
God bless.
- [112:49]
B
Came out wrong. Okay. I talked to you.