#399 - NEW Directed Energy Weapon Leak, DARPA Dolphins & ‘Ghost Murmur’ Tech | Jack Murphy

Summary

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Danny Jones Podcast #399

Episode Title: NEW Directed Energy Weapon Leak, DARPA Dolphins & ‘Ghost Murmur’ Tech | Jack Murphy
Date: May 25, 2026
Guest: Jack Murphy (investigative journalist, special operations veteran)
Host: Danny Jones

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Episode Overview

In this densely packed, thought-provoking episode, Danny Jones sits down with investigative journalist and former Army Ranger Jack Murphy. Together, they pull back the curtain on the latest leaks about directed energy weapons (like those possibly behind "Havana Syndrome"), clandestine U.S. and Russian intelligence operations, harrowing CIA brain injury cases, DARPA’s sci-fi tech, the secret lives of covert operators, weaponized dolphins, the ongoing Epstein revelations, the current state of journalism, and the psychological and moral costs of geopolitics and covert war. Murphy brings a measured, fact-based perspective shaped by both on-the-ground military experience and years covering shadowy worlds for The High Side newsletter.

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Table of Contents

1. Media, Intelligence, and Journalism Realities
2. Havana Syndrome and New Directed Energy Weapons
3. Harassing Surveillance, Psychological Ops, and Cover-Ups
4. U.S. and Russian Microwave/Behavioral Weapons
5. DARPA, Marine Mammal Program, and Sci-Fi Battlefield Tech
6. Covert Ops, NOCs, and Vulnerabilities in Human Intelligence
7. Recent Headlines: Drones, Data Breaches, Physical and Cyber Threats
8. Society, the Draft, Religion, and Political Apathy
9. Epstein Files, Institutional Corruption, and Public Trust Breakdown
10. The Most Dangerous Man: Jack Murphy’s New Book & Real-Life Inspirations
11. China, Russia, Iran, and the Shifting Map of Power
12. Closing Thoughts & Resources

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1. Media, Intelligence, and Journalism Realities

Timestamps: 01:11–07:21

• CIA–Media Relationship: Murphy details how it's less about direct CIA control and more about a complex relationship—journalists reliant on government sources for inside scoops, often leading to self-censorship and “source capture”.

  "There’s a sort of influence that exists... journalists can become captured by their sources, that they do not want the government to turn that spigot off, that spigot of information, because that's their career." —Jack Murphy (02:03)

• State of the Press: Massive layoffs, press corps eviction from government buildings, and a net loss of public trust, even as “journalism is a net positive overall... much better that it's there than if it was not there.” (04:28–05:29)
• Rise of Alternative Journalism: The proliferation of independent voices (Substacks, podcasts, YouTubers) brings transparency but also chaos—"filtering wheat from the chaff" is more vital than ever.

  "It's getting harder to filter the wheat from the chaff...still better than having just two or three big TV networks piped information straight from the CIA." —Danny (05:34)

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2. Havana Syndrome and New Directed Energy Weapons

Timestamps: 16:11–47:23

• Patient Zero & Global Spread: Murphy recounts in-depth reporting on “Adam,” a CIA officer believed to be the first ‘Havana Syndrome’ case. What started as bizarre, excruciating auditory and vestibular attacks in Cuba quickly spread to Vienna, Moscow, Beijing, and beyond.

  "He described it as like sticking a number two pencil in your ear. It hurt that badly. It went on through the night… and other people in the embassy started coming forward with very similar symptoms." (18:40)

• Weapon Mechanics: Murphy asserts, based on sourcing, that Russian intelligence, often using Cuban proxies, developed pulsed microwave weapons that cause lasting neural injury. The U.S. subsequently acquired one for study.
• Government Denial & Cover-Up: Despite diplomatic and intelligence personnel suffering TBI-like symptoms, the U.S. government consistently downplayed, denied, or gaslit victims. More than physical, the attacks' psychological deterrence threatened to shut down CIA ops globally.

  "Our government has lied through its teeth about it... I'm here to say I know Havana Syndrome is real." (21:11, 24:00)

• Possible Motives: Murphy speculates denial came down to career incentives and fear of a global CIA personnel crisis—a weapon that disables, but does not kill.

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3. Harassing Surveillance, Psychological Ops, and Cover-Ups

Timestamps: 29:37–34:14

• Harassment in the U.S.: Victims returning stateside faced break-ins, "harassing surveillance," and psychological manipulations—a blend of professional and gig-economy actors, ranging from “Uber drivers” to pros.

  "They would do things like take all your jackets and shirts and turn them inside out and put them back on hangers... exactly the kind of surveillance that, when you describe it, you sound like you're paranoid." (31:46)

• Global Espionage Tactics: Examples range from Israel to Cuba; psychological pressure customized for maximum distress—pets harmed, property trashed, even scorpions placed in clothing.
• Cuba's Intelligence Service (DGI): Described as “frighteningly competent” for their size, outsized by the ideological passion of those they recruit.

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4. U.S. and Russian Microwave/Behavioral Weapons

Timestamps: 25:11–44:34

• Russian Superiority: Russia invested more robustly and creatively in microwave weapons. The “Behavior Adjustment Device” is the most comparable U.S. version, designed more for crowd control or flushing out terrorists than targeted brain injury.

  "The Russians invested heavily in microwave weapons in a way we didn't...they use technology we have but in different ways than we would." (25:47)

• Recent Leaks and 60 Minutes Investigation: Multiple sources confirm the existence of Russian-built, miniaturized, concealable microwave weapons programmable for remote attacks—"pulsed microwave radiation," capable of penetrating walls and causing brain injury (40:28–43:16).
• Stealth Upgrades: Newest generations of these weapons inflict injury without any sensory warning.

  "The newer one, you don’t feel anything. You don’t know that you’re under attack." (44:27)

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5. DARPA, Marine Mammal Program, and Sci-Fi Battlefield Tech

Timestamps: 53:08–62:36

• DARPA’s Sci-Fi Tech: Stories include neural networks allowing remote surgery (brain-to-brain control), and "upward-falling payloads" (devices launched from ocean floor via airbag).
• Marine Mammal Saboteurs: U.S. Navy’s classified program trains dolphins to find mines, identify underwater targets, sometimes rumored to deliver weapons.

  "They did deploy the Marine Mammal Program during the Gulf War... the dolphins are trained to go out and identify obstacles underwater." (58:11)

• Wild Tales: Notorious dolphins like "Half Dead Fred" who would "drag you under 25ft of water just to fuck with you." (57:50)
• Challenges of Animal Warfare: Dolphins can’t distinguish friendly from enemy subs; AI may one day decode their language for better coordination.

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6. Covert Ops, NOCs, and Vulnerabilities in Human Intelligence

Timestamps: 70:40–83:56

• NOCs (Non-Official Cover): Murphy outlines the difference between official and non-official cover spies. NOCs, often operating solo and posing as civilians or businesspeople, face the bleakest risks—no diplomatic protection if caught.

  "If you’re an NOC in Russia or Iran—dude, you’re dead." (74:22)

• Modern Challenges—Biometrics and Surveillance: Ubiquitous surveillance, AI facial and gait recognition, DNA sniffers, and global biometric databases have made covert travel and identity fabrication much more challenging.
• Human Weakness: The loneliness, secrecy, and constant pressure drive many NOCs to risky behavior with alcohol and relationships, sometimes compromising entire operations (82:10).
• Big Picture: U.S. reliance on human intelligence increasingly undermined by tech advancements and changing cultural/psychological profiles.

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7. Recent Headlines: Drones, Data Breaches, Physical and Cyber Threats

Timestamps: 104:24–113:06

• Stolen Agro-Drones: A sophisticated heist swiped giant pesticide/fertilizer drones in New Jersey. Fear was they could have been repurposed for terror attacks (e.g., loaded with chemicals or explosives), but were later recovered—possibly dumped after media attention sparked heat.

  "The FBI has some thought that because we published this story, it spooked whoever stole it and they dumped it and ran." (108:56)

• Ukraine & Robots: JSOC quietly operating in Ukraine, ambushing Russian drone operators—a "drone ambush" cat-and-mouse situation.
• Cyber Leaks: Brief mention of OPM (Office of Personnel Management) breach—China’s hack of top secret U.S. clearance applications (79:07).

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8. Society, the Draft, Religion, and Political Apathy

Timestamps: 85:07–98:51

• Declining Faith, Rising Nihilism: Amid revelations like the Epstein files, and the apparent profit-driven morality of the elite, Murphy and Jones discuss a generation facing steep costs, lost optimism, and the “hypernormalized” sense, ala Adam Curtis, that everyone knows the system is hollow.

  "A sense of hopelessness… the American Dream, it’s dead." (91:55)

• Draft and Military Service: Brief foray into policy debates on conscription. Murphy is strongly against a draft except in emergencies, but posits that if all social classes had 'skin in the game,' dumb wars might end sooner.

  "Install the draft and shit gets very real very fast..." (85:35)

• Religion & the Military: Emerging “overt” religiosity among the military/civil service, especially at the officer level—which Murphy sees as concerning and divisive.

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9. Epstein Files, Institutional Corruption, and Public Trust Breakdown

Timestamps: 8:01–140:59

• Epstein Files as Societal Rubicon: Both hosts voice shock at the depravity and unaccountability exposed and the minimal analysis given by authorities ("do with it what you will"). The files, highly redacted, signal (for Murphy) the state’s willingness to shield itself—because the network is "load bearing" for power structures (10:51).
• Corruption, Conspiracies, and Skepticism: Wide-ranging, darkly humorous speculation about whether Epstein is still alive, whether CIA or foreign agencies protected or ran him, and the layers of plausible deniability in global intelligence.

  "The only reason why Epstein was put in prison and prosecuted was because of reporting that Julie Brown did at the Miami Herald." (130:03)

• Public Reaction: Increasing loss of faith; “The Emperor has no clothes” moment; people suspect nothing will ever change or be truthfully exposed.

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10. The Most Dangerous Man: Jack Murphy’s New Book & Real-Life Inspirations

Timestamps: 120:40–128:39

• Book Premise: “The Most Dangerous Man”—a military thriller inspired by the short story “The Most Dangerous Game.” Army Ranger kidnapped by billionaire tech bros and hunted for sport.
• True-Life Horror Parallels: Murphy draws inspiration from real reports of rich elites paying to hunt poachers in Africa—and, more shockingly, claims that wealthy "sniper tourists" paid to kill civilians in Sarajevo during the Bosnian War.

  "Wealthy sniper tourists allegedly paid 9,000 to shoot people during human safari trips to Sarajevo in the 90s. Extra fee for kids...” (128:09)

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11. China, Russia, Iran, and the Shifting Map of Power

Timestamps: 152:05–159:52

• China’s Long Game: Murphy stresses that China is shrewdly playing the long game, mostly content to watch the U.S. flounder domestically and internationally, managing America as a “declining empire”—while expanding regional control through slow “salami-slicing” tactics.

  "They don’t have to do anything. All they have to do is watch us screw up." (153:46)

• The Taiwan Question: U.S. isolationism could enable Taiwan’s gradual peaceful “voting” into union with the mainland; hard power isn’t China’s preferred method.
• Iran & Nuclear Issue: Murphy teases ongoing, underreported stories about Iran’s uranium enrichment and the likelihood of future conflict or extraordinary operations around it.
• Political Theater, Policy Drift: U.S. foreign policy is day-to-day "checkers," not grand "3D chess." Aid to Israel, Ukraine, and other hot-button alliances is less strategic than reactive, often serving internal political needs.

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12. Closing Thoughts & Resources

Timestamps: 160:00–end

• Where to Find More:
  • Jack Murphy’s investigative journalism: The High Side newsletter
  • His novel: “The Most Dangerous Man” (releases June 9, 2026).
  • Podcast: The Team House
• Final Word: Real change and understanding require vigilance, media literacy, and a grown-up skepticism toward insiders and institutions. Murphy underscores the continued need for courageous, independent journalism and the “investment in the human”—both in espionage and in public life.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Havana Syndrome and the Directed Energy Leak:

  "When you cut through all the lies and all the bullshit, something was really done to these people...And our government failed to respond to it." —Jack Murphy, 21:11
  "The newer one, you don't feel anything. You don't know that you're under attack." —Jack Murphy, 44:27

• On CIA/Media Self-Censorship:

  "These journalists can over time become captured by their sources. They do not want the government to turn that spigot off, because that’s their career." —Jack Murphy, 02:03

• On Institutional Decay and American Dream:

  "I think there’s a sense of hopelessness, you know, the American dream, it’s dead...People under 40 have no expectation that their lives are going to get better." —Jack Murphy, 91:54

• On Human Safari Snipers in Bosnia:

  "Wealthy sniper tourists allegedly paid 9,000 to shoot people during human safari trips to Sarajevo...an extra fee for kids." —Danny (128:09, reading an article)

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Essential Timestamps for Major Segments

• Media & CIA relations, state of journalism: 01:11–07:21
• “Havana Syndrome” narrative, patient zero: 16:11–24:52
• Directed energy weapons mechanics and cover-up: 40:28–47:29
• Psychological harassment & surveillance: 29:37–34:14
• DARPA & dolphin war stories: 53:08–62:36
• Non-official cover stories, tech & bio surveillance: 70:40–83:56
• Drone heist, drone warfare: 104:24–113:06
• New norms: faith, the draft, loss of American optimism: 85:07–98:51
• Epstein, institutional rot, Palm Beach Pete: 8:01–140:59
• Book inspiration, human safari in Bosnia: 120:40–128:39
• China/U.S. strategy and future power shifts: 152:05–159:52

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Tone

The tone is direct, unsanitized, often darkly humorous, and steeped in firsthand experience, skepticism, and a shared weariness regarding the institutions and power structures that shape geopolitics and public consciousness.

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This summary reflects the substance and candor of Danny Jones' 399th episode, distilling deep dives across espionage, technology, journalism, and ethics into a resource for listeners hungry for clarity in a noisy world.

Transcript

[Matt]

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[Danny]

Closest metro to you is Union Square, about three blocks away.

[Matt]

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[Danny]

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[Matt]

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[Danny]

This is a bose moment. You're 10 boring blocks from home until the beat drops in Bose clarity and the baseline transforms boring into maybe the best part of your day. Your life deserves music. Your music deserves Bose. Find your perfect [e-mail]. Dude, it's been like three years since you've been here. We were just talking off camera.

[Matt]

Time flies.

[Danny]

It's crazy. A little bit over three years, man. Man, time really does fly.

[Matt]

You have a whole family. Since the last time I've seen, you

[Danny]

know, well, I've at least had two more kids. Since you were here last.

[Matt]

Yeah.

[Danny]

Oh, my God. It's crazy, dude. And the last time you were here, we discussed you, you had come across an insane story regarding the war in the Ukraine. The Ukraine, Russia war. How you had a bunch of sources that were telling you that CIA was working with another intelligence agency inside of Russia.

[Matt]

Right.

[Danny]

To do sabotage operations in Russia. And you were. I've talked about this so many times on this podcast from the last three years. It's insane how you were like working with a huge publication for months on releasing this and then right up to the day, got to the day where you guys were going to launch the whole story on their platform and then you had to have a call with the deputy director of the CIA and they had an off for record agreement. You couldn't publish it. Insane.

[Matt]

Well. Well, that decision was made without me. I mean, ironically, they waited until the moment I was unavailable to have that conversation. And then by the time I got back and got back online, like, oh, yeah. I mean, this is a little bit of like insider baseball, but like, maybe some people would be interested and I think your audience too. You know, there's a belief that the CIA controls the media. Right. For instance, it's not that, that's not how it works, but there is a relationship between the media and large governmental bureaucracies like the CIA. I'm not trying to split hairs here, but I mean, I'll tell you how it works is that you have newspaper Reporters who have to report news, they need to get their stories. And what they do is they have relationships, usually it is with a deputy director or a deputy commander if it's a military command, and they will speak on background, give maybe an off the record quote. And what happens is that these journalists can over time, in some instances, become captured by their sources, that they do not want the government to turn that spigot off, that spigot of information, because that's their career. And look, I mean, again, not to be too cynical, but some of these editors at big news publications, they have mortgages to pay, they have kids to put through college. They're not going to like go out on a limb and risk their career for some, some national security story.

[Danny]

Right.

[Matt]

You know, so there's this, this sort of influence that exists that. Yeah, I mean, I think it's super bad and I don't think it's conducive towards transparency.

[Danny]

No. And it certainly is convenient to the people that work for the big government agencies. Right.

[Matt]

It's convenient for power.

[Danny]

Right. It's convenient for them. They have an unlimited amount of money and the people that are doing this reporting that are relying on them, you know, they, they need that money. It's human nature and it sucks because it's. That's like the antithesis of what journalism really is.

[Matt]

Right, right, right. And yeah, hence, hence the sub stack.

[Danny]

Right. That's why we got people like you out here and, and Tim Dillon people. I get most of my news from Tim Dillon.

[Matt]

I, I love a Tim Dillon rant.

[Danny]

Yeah.

[Matt]

I mean, yeah, the state of the news media is a whole other thing. I mean, you can see everything going on with cbs. Yeah.

[Danny]

You know, the press, Larry Ellison, that

[Matt]

stuff, the press corps getting kicked out of the White House and the Pentagon and I mean, I'm not sure how much of a value add the press corps has been since, you know, maybe the JFK assassination. But nonetheless, I don't agree with, you know, it's press censorship or restricting transparency around the press and then all the layoffs. It's not just a cbs, it's almost all across the board. I mean, so many people have been laid off in journalism and there's some people out there, I get it, there's some people listening to this that are like, screw journalists. And I mean, I have issues with journalism myself. Like I just described their relationship with the government at times. But the thing is that journalism is a net positive overall big picture for society and for the American public. In other words, it's Much better that it's there than if it was not there. If it was not there, we'd be in extremely. In much more trouble than we are now, Right?

[Danny]

Yes.

[Matt]

That's the kind of like counterfactual I'm trying to make that this is why we should value.

[Danny]

And it's hard because in this day and age with technology and the way the Internet's going is it's. We have more and more and more and more journalism, right? We have every. All these new popup journalists everywhere can be on man on the street type interviewers, whether it be like youtubers or just people who post on Twitter all day. It's be. It's getting harder to filter the wheat from the chaff. Right. And to get cut through the noise to what's real, to what's not real, to what's just, you know, lazy journalism. And I still think that's better than having two or three big TV networks who are just getting piped their information straight from the CIA. Right. You just got to you. We have to become as citizens and consumers of the news. We have to become better at filtering out the bullshit.

[Matt]

Yeah, no, which is tough. That's absolutely true. Yeah. Media literacy matters. And you're right, though, it is tough. It's tough for you and I. It's tough. You know, I mean, it's tough for me at times. So you can imagine somebody who's not in journalism and doesn't really follow national defense, how difficult it is to piece these things together, like what sources are viable, which ones aren't. And right now, you know, as you point out, we have like a very libertarian model towards how journalism works. Like almost anyone can jump in and participate and compete on the free market.

[Danny]

Right.

[Matt]

And that has good. There's good aspects and bad aspects of it. I mean, it is conducive to stories getting out there that would not be public published in a major publication normally. So there's that. But yeah, the flip side is just there's so much information out there. Where do you begin?

[Danny]

Right? Exactly. So what have you been working on? I mean, there's no shortage of going on out there in the world right now, right? Dude, it's like, it's so hard. It's like every three hours there's a crazy news story that's coming out, whether it be in regards to the Iran war or these Epstein files are aliens or hantavirus, you name it.

[Matt]

Yeah, yeah. I mean, and our government is even like the purveyor of like UFO leaks now. Like how.

[Danny]

My God. Dude, it reminds me of when the first Epstein file thing came out. Where they came. The influencers came out with the binders that said Epstein files.

[Matt]

Yeah, yeah. And we just seems like a distract. Still only seen like 50% of them. Right.

[Danny]

Of the Epstein files. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. If that. Yeah, fully redacted. Not protecting the victims, only protecting the billionaire PDF files.

[Matt]

Yeah. When that stuff came out, like, I'll get back to the topic. But I mean when the Epstein stuff came out, what we have seen, it was like worse than I thought it would be.

[Danny]

Oh, way worse.

[Matt]

Yeah, like I. I thought. Yeah. I mean, we know he was involved in sex trafficking and he's a really bad guy. I suspected that there are going to be some Israeli intelligence stuff around him.

[Danny]

Yeah.

[Matt]

But all the stuff that like came out about him and the Russians, it's like, whoa, dude, what was going on here? And I can only imagine what's in those unreleased files.

[Danny]

What was the part about him and the Russians again?

[Matt]

He was making like trips to Russia. Even after the Ukraine war began, he was making these like trips to Russia. He was trying to meet with Vlad, Vladimir.

[Danny]

He was trying to meet with Putin. Right?

[Matt]

Yeah, yeah. And he was going over there and I don't even want to know what he was doing over there. I mean, I think we all know what he was doing, but yeah, you can imagine if the Russians had stuff on him.

[Danny]

Yeah.

[Matt]

And who. I mean, God only knows. This whole thing is like such an old man.

[Danny]

Well, I mean his. His not really his father in law, but Ghislaine Maxwell's dad was like a famous triple spy, right? Who?

[Matt]

Robert Maxwell?

[Danny]

Yeah. Robert Maxwell.

[Matt]

Yeah.

[Danny]

Worked for the KGB, MI6 and the Mossad. And allegedly was whacked by a Mossad SEAL team or something.

[Matt]

I mean, I believe the. The story is he like drowned off the back.

[Danny]

That's the story, right?

[Matt]

Yeah. I don't know.

[Danny]

But he was threatening to like expose all their. Right before that.

[Matt]

I. I don't know. I don't know any details about it, but there's a book out there called Gideon Spies. Oh yeah, I read many years. Has like a whole chapter, I think about him.

[Danny]

Yeah, I've heard that was a really good book. I have friends who've read that.

[Matt]

It was interesting.

[Danny]

Yeah. Yeah. The EP stuff's insane. The most insane part about the government dropping this epine files on us and the alien. Well, the alien files, that's all distraction. All that was already public is that like they do it and they give us no context or analysis or anything. It's like they drop it on us and it's like, okay, what's the FBI's conclusion on this?

[Matt]

Right?

[Danny]

You know, like what is like where's your report? No, we're just going to give you all this crazy insane shit about ball and human sacrifice and trafficking people across borders and people being murdered and eating like code words for human flesh and stuff like this. But no, no analysis from the FBI here. This is just do with it what you will.

[Matt]

And going back to what you said about the average person trying to piecemeal like what is accurate information, what is true.

[Danny]

Ye.

[Matt]

The average person has to go through 3.5 million pages of Epstein files.

[Danny]

It's only 2% of the total related data.

[Matt]

That's so wild, man.

[Danny]

Yeah.

[Matt]

And I mean like zoom out like a little bit like big picture. Like what's going on here socially is that our government is basically telling us this is a load bearing child sex trafficking network so it just can't be messed with. Like you can't go in there and start pulling that apart because like the government would collapse. And all these social. Look at the Dao, it's at 50,000.

[Danny]

Do you want the Dow to not be at 50,000?

[Matt]

Why do I hate America?

[Danny]

Tim Dillon said it best on his recent episode. He goes, you know, America used to be the high school quarterback. You know, we were the bully in the hall, we were the quarterback. Now we're the weird kid who may have a gun.

[Matt]

His rant about how like the last aspect of the American dream that's still alive is fantasizing about killing your co workers.

[Danny]

Oh my God, dude. Tim Dillon is a national treasure.

[Matt]

He's off the wall man.

[Danny]

He is. And he gets invited to, he gets invited to dinners from, by like J.D.

[Matt]

vance.

[Danny]

And he, he talks about how like Peter Thiel invited him to dinner and he.

[Matt]

Was he on the island though, Tim?

[Danny]

Yeah, probably. Prob.

[Matt]

Who knows? I don't think he was. No, he wasn't joking.

[Danny]

He, he will purposely not go to these events because he knows that they're trying to get him to parties and dinners just so he won't talk about them. Right. So like he purposely like doesn't do any of that stuff. He's just, he's just, you know, a rogue commentator. Like he, he refuses to be a part of any of those circles just so he has the freedom to like just call it like he sees it, which is really refreshing to see.

[Matt]

I get it. But yeah, man, this stuff has kept me busy you know, not all this other crazy stuff we're talking about. I don't really write about that, but just. Yeah, it's from purely a national security perspective. There's so much stuff going on all the time.

[Danny]

And real briefly, just give people your quick background. 3rd Ranger Battalion.

[Matt]

Yeah, a million years ago, I served in the Army. Yeah, I served in the Ranger Regiment and Special Forces, then got into journalism, you know, probably like 13, 14 years ago at this point. And so I write investigative journalism with my colleague Sean Naylor, who's been on the show. And we have a substack that's called the High side. And we publish a lot of articles about the special operations and the intelligence community. That's sort of our main focus.

[Danny]

Yep, I've been ripping through it for the last couple days. Man. Incredible. Like, you. You guys are really getting the stuff that, like, doesn't boil up to the very, like, top headlines of all, like, the mainstream stuff. You guys are really, like, down, like, turning under rocks, like, figuring out like, the. The nitty gritty of what's going on.

[Matt]

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, there's so much, or. I'm sorry, there's so little of that type of reporting on the intelligence community and the special operations community. It really takes a long time to write that kind of stuff. There's really only a half dozen of us in the country. I'm sorry if that sounds a little pretentious, but there aren't many of us that really work in this field. I feel like maybe you could add a couple people to that, but you can almost count it on one hand.

[Danny]

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[Matt]

I mean, it's a combination of people who are still inside the system and people who are not.

[Danny]

Got it? And I'm sure the people that are not still have connections inside, right?

[Matt]

Yes. I mean they're all, you know, if you're using them as a source, it's because they have some sort of connection.

[Danny]

Right, right, right.

[Matt]

You know, personal or by affiliation or whatever the case may be. Each of these stories we work on has sort of a different origin story. The way that I come to sources and, or the reason why I start working on a story, they're all a little different. The one we did about Havana Syndrome, for instance, incredible.

[Danny]

It was like a movie.

[Matt]

It's crazy, isn't it? It's a wild story. And Sean and I worked for probably the better part of a year or more than a year on that. And I got introduced to the former CIA officer who is known by many as Patient Zero, the first guy that was struck by Havana Syndrome in Cuba and 2016. And I went and visited him and his family, who, they live in a very remote place. That's all I'll say about that. Went out and spent like a day and a half with them and I wanted to see if there was more reporting that can be done on this topic. Havana Syndrome was at that time and still is controversial. So of course I'm digging on that to see if there's more that can be written about it or should be written about.

[Danny]

High level. For people that aren't aware of it, just explain.

[Matt]

It's a, I mean, it's a story that sounds nuts, but it's true. We had a small CIA station in Havana, Cuba around 2016 during the Obama administration. We were normalizing relations with the Cubans and the CIA decided to get a little bit more aggressive in the, in how they recruited sources that they were going to start approaching more people in Cuba and trying to do more recruiting. One day, this source of mine, his name is Adam. In the article we wrote, which is not his real name, the CIA won't let him use his real name, you know, publicly in association with the organization. Yeah.

[Danny]

Is that common?

[Matt]

I would not say it's common, no. Most people have their cover rolled back and they'll say, I, hey, I'm, you know, Joe Smith, and I was in the CIA.

[Danny]

Right.

[Matt]

This is sort of a unique situation.

[Danny]

So he's not allowed to publicly say, like, be in front of a camera and say he works for the CIA.

[Matt]

He cannot say his real name.

[Danny]

Oh, he can just not say his real name so he can have a fake name. Like, oh, hey, I worked for the CIA.

[Matt]

You can say, I'm Adam and I worked for this. Got it.

[Danny]

I understand.

[Matt]

I know the laws and the rules are kind of silly, and I don't really know who they're protecting or aimed at protecting at times, but he was. Went home at the end of a day, while he was in Havana, was laying down on his couch, I believe it was watching It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia on his laptop. And suddenly he had this, like, loud noise that he started getting barraged with. He described it as. It's like sticking a number two pencil in your ear. It hurt that badly. It went on through the night. He had blood coming from the ears, blood coming from the nose when he woke up. And that went off and on, you know, and he would be second guessing himself at certain times, like, oh, you know, the Cubans have bugs. The house, the homes they're staying in are bugs. They know that if they. And you start thinking, like, oh, maybe they're listening in on me or something. That's all it is. So it kind of like ignored it at first, but it got worse and worse. And then other people in the embassy started coming forward with very similar symptoms with a very similar story to Adams. And that's when he realized, like, this is systemic, like, this is something that's being done against us deliberately. And I can say that I know through sourcing that the Cubans were working with the Russians to do this, that they were pulsing these CIA officials with very quick pulses of microwaves, like hundreds or thousands of pulses a second, that creates a sort of cumulative effect inside the human cranium. And it leads to vestibular issues, a lot of symptoms that have similarities to traumatic brain injuries. So people having vertigo, headaches, and from the time that this started in 2016 in Cuba, it then sort of exploded globally. You started having people at the Embassy in Austria, the embassy in Beijing having these problems. We have stuff happening in Vietnam, Indonesia, India.

[Danny]

What about Moscow?

[Matt]

Yes. Mark Polymeropoulos, which is his real name, he's allowed to use. He got hit in Moscow. He went to Russia on a sort of official trip. So the Russians know he's a CIA officer. Declared. Right, declared. And he's going there to do liaison. They're going to have a meeting. I don't know what the meeting was on some sort of cooperation, probably counterterrorism stuff. He went there and he got hit in his hotel room. Got blasted. Wow. And he's still dealing with the effects of that today. So this thing went global, and our government has lied through its teeth about it. They have gaslit the survivors about it. All sorts of really nasty stuff that has gone on. I mean, that article we wrote is pretty extensive. But I'm here to say I know Havana Syndrome is real. When you cut through all the lies and all the bullshit, something was really done to these people, and our government failed to respond to it in a timely or meaningful manner. In fact, they're still trying to cover it up to this day. And this next part is a little bit of speculation because no one really knows why our government has worked so hard to bury this, other than maybe career incentives that just make us.

[Danny]

I mean.

[Matt]

Right.

[Danny]

We already let MK Ultra out. What's.

[Matt]

And that's different. I mean, we were doing unethical testing in that case. Yeah.

[Danny]

Testing innocent people with drugs.

[Matt]

Right. And in this case, it's our people being hit and targeted by a foreign adversary, and we're hiding that.

[Danny]

Yeah.

[Matt]

So the. The speculation when I talk to CIA folks is that essentially it became a personnel issue in the sense that there were already CIA officers telling their bosses, like, you know, they're slated to get deployed to. Not deployed, but stationed in Kazakhstan in, you know, wherever. Wherever it is, in Mombasa. But the CIA guy who was just there came back blasted, microwaved out of his mind. And so this guy is seeing that, and his wife is seeing it, and his wife's like, we're not going there. Are you crazy? So this had the potential to shut down CIA human intelligence operations globally if we just could not work out of embassies anymore, if we could just not send American spies abroad anymore. Because this weapon is very interesting in that it's not an assassination weapon. You're not killing someone, so you're not going over that threshold to lethal operations. But what you are doing is you are rendering. And I'm sorry for the Term, I mean, but they'll tell you themselves. It renders you mentally incompetent, like, you can't remember anything. You can't do your job anymore. So what you're doing by hitting people with this weapon is you're taking chess pieces off the board one by one. They can't be deployed. They can't go anywhere. They can't work as intelligence officers because

[Danny]

you're creating this deterrent where the people that are aware of it, they don't want to travel anywhere.

[Matt]

Right. So one component of it is the actual physical attacks, and then there's another component that is like a psychological operation. Right. And, yeah, I mean, I'd really emphasize that. Yeah, our government was and is lying about it, and it is real. I know it sounds like science fiction, but there is a weapon that. One of these microwave weapons was surreptitiously acquired by the US Government. The Department of Defense was testing it, and there was a recent reconsolidation of the committees that were investigating Havana Syndrome. And the Secretary of Defense, or the Secretary of War, as he prefers to be called, Pete Hegseth was initially, early on in this administration, pretty aggressive about wanting to get to the truth. And then something changed. And I don't know, Ratcliffe is now.

[Danny]

He's really worried about a Kentucky Senate senator.

[Matt]

Yeah. I mean, listen, your guess is as good as mine with these people, but. Yeah, the Havana Syndrome was a really hard story to report on. One of the most difficult ones I've ever worked on. I think Sean would tell you the same.

[Danny]

Well, we had those, you know, during, like, the Philadelphia experiments and all that, you know, when we were doing all those experiments with those types of weapons. Right. Like, we were experimenting on sailors on ships. Right. With, like, beaming these weapons, where they were. They're more like crowd control type weapons. Right. Where like, a loud sound.

[Matt]

L. Rad.

[Danny]

Right, right, right. Which is, you know, it's kind of similar. Not exactly the same.

[Matt]

Right.

[Danny]

So do you think it's possible that we. Like, who do you think got this stuff first?

[Matt]

I think the Russians invested heavily in microwave weapons in a way that we didn't. And I've been told the Russians tend to use technology we have, but in different ways than we would. So I think the. Yes. That the Russians got interested in directed energy a lot sooner than we did and have pursued it more aggressively than we have. However, I did another story about how we have a somewhat similar weapon. It's the guys that use it call it the Behavior Adjustment Device.

[Danny]

I love it.

[Matt]

Yeah. So Perfect. It comes in like a pelican hard case. You open it up, it has a control unit, a battery, and a dish that's a little bit bigger than a tambourine. So it looks sort of similar to the LRAD. And what that does is it beams microwaves over 100ft. And what it's designed to do, the way we use the technology, the idea behind it, and I don't have any accounts of us actually using it in real life, just. Just some rumors that guys maybe flipped it on in Iraq.

[Danny]

But.

[Matt]

Yeah, maybe. But I do know people who have deployed with it and know how it works and what it does. And so the idea being that if you had terrorists hiding in a safe house or something like that, you would bombard them with these microwaves. It would make them very uncomfortable, and that would induce them to do one of two things. Get them. Blast them out of the safe house, get them up and moving. And now you can follow them, see where they're going, or to get them up on comms. So they start making phone calls, which then can be intercepted. So, again, the behavior adjustment device. So we have something similar, but it doesn't work the way the Russians use it. And we didn't build it to do what the Russians have used their weapon

[Danny]

for, so we haven't done. There's no accounts or any testimony of anyone ever doing the same thing that the Cubans did to our people, like beaming it into an embassy and trying to.

[Matt]

Not. Not that I've heard, right? Yeah, No, I haven't. And that does. There could be something out there that I don't know about that's quite possible, but so far, no, I haven't heard any.

[Danny]

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[Matt]

Yes, yes. Harassing surveillance.

[Danny]

Harassing surveillance, right.

[Matt]

And, and that was in Philadelphia. So that's a big part of the story that we broke that had not been reported before is that when these guys came home from Cuba and other places and they started going for treatment at UPenn, seeing vestibular rehabilitation specialists and things like this, they came under really intense surveillance here in the United States. A lot of them had break ins into their hotel rooms, into their private residences from Cubans. In some cases there may have been some traces back to Cuba. This is an interesting thing about the, you know, the modern day version of espionage is that espionage is happening on the gig economy in a lot of ways.

[Danny]

Oh my God.

[Matt]

So it's like Uber drivers and doordash guys and they may not even know what they're doing or who they're working.

[Danny]

Right, right.

[Matt]

They're like, they're hired like, they're like told like, hey, go to the street corner, there's going to be some people there, take some pictures of them and leave, you know, whatever.

[Danny]

Wow.

[Matt]

So yeah, it's a crazy. Yeah, so you get like a lot of like Bangladeshis and you know, people like this who probably don't know what they're doing really. And, but some of these people definitely were pros. They knew what they were doing that they were able to surreptitiously break into homes and they would do like weird things. Again, it's harassing surveillance. So they did stuff like one here in America. Here in America. One of these guys, they got his gun cases out of the attic. They took the cases, but left the guns.

[Danny]

And that's fucking.

[Matt]

In another case. They would take, you know, like the medication out of your medicine cabinet and throw it in your dishwasher. Stories like, you know, they would go into your closet and take all your jackets and shirts and turn them inside out and put them back on the hangar. Now, when you try to describe that kind of surveillance to people, what do you sound like? You sound like someone who's suffering from paranoid schizophrenia. It's very discrediting on the surface, right? Until you realize what's going on here.

[Danny]

This is that story in Annie Jacobson's book about Area 51. When the CIA pilots first started testing the jet planes over Nevada. They would bring. The pilots would go up. The CIA pilots would go up in the jet planes with gorilla masks in the cockpit in case a civilian airplane got in visual distance of them. They'd wear the gorilla ma.

[Matt]

That's awesome.

[Danny]

It's the same thing, right?

[Matt]

That's awesome.

[Danny]

Yeah.

[Matt]

Right. So if the pilot tries to describe what he saw, he sounds like a whack.

[Danny]

Exactly.

[Matt]

Can you imagine, like a journalist publishing that in a newspaper? Like, this is what the pilot says he saw.

[Danny]

Like, sure, buddy. Okay, dude, have another.

[Matt]

Yeah, yeah,

[Danny]

yeah, yeah. I mean, I've heard that story. Similar stories to that. Harassing surveillance before from John kiriakou. He said he had some friends who were. One of them was in the CIA. The wife was. And. Or the husband. Or the wife was CIA, was declared. They went to Israel and the spouse decided to, like, continue their studies there. Like, so. So to like, go to university or whatever. And there was like three or four different occasions where they'd come home. The first time they came home, they were declared. They had in all the toilets unflushed. Like, someone took a. In every single toilet. And then it got so bad, like, at the time they decided to leave, they came. They came home and somebody had, like, cut their dog's tail off and like, bandaged it up and, like, left the tail in the middle of the floor.

[Matt]

This happened in Israel?

[Danny]

Yes.

[Matt]

There must have been something going on politically that they were pissed or the CIA was maybe doing something in another country even that pissed them off.

[Danny]

Interesting.

[Matt]

Yeah, yeah, because, I mean, they're not going to get that aggressive for no reason. Maybe dropping a deuce in the toilet is pretty benign, but, you know, some of the others. Yeah. I mean, in Cuba, they actually. The Cuban intelligence service DGI will actually put Teams of psychologists on each CIA officer and they work it and they're. They basically just stay on that person and figure out what will break them.

[Danny]

Really?

[Matt]

Yeah, yeah. And. And it's different for different people because psychology is different. So if you have a pet, they might take it and throw it out in the rain and you come home and your pet's out there on the brink of death. Reason, they might pile up all your clothes in your living room and piss on them, whatever it is. I mean, there's other things I've heard stories about, like scorpions taped inside the person's clothes.

[Danny]

Oh, my. In Cuba.

[Matt]

In Cuba, yeah. So they will do all kinds of things. I mean, they'll try different things, different techniques to see like, what's going to break you.

[Danny]

How robust is Cuba's intelligence service right now?

[Matt]

It is and has been competent, frighteningly competent for such a small country. That's crazy. Most of the people who have been run against Cuban targets will tell you that DGI has it together. And it's interesting that the kind of recruitments they get when they recruit Americans, they get ideological recruitments, which is interesting because the CIA gets very few ideological recruitments. Usually it's like, hey, we'll let you come to America, we'll pay you some money in an escrow account, this kind of thing.

[Danny]

Right.

[Matt]

But Cuba gets more of the true believers, people who are committed to the.

[Danny]

The revolutionary cause or anti American cause.

[Matt]

But, you know, on the other hand, DGI suffered a pretty catastrophic defeat when their boys that were guarding Maduro got hosed by Delta Force. When they picked up Maduro, there's dozens of DGI paramilitary guys.

[Danny]

Oh, oh, in Venezuela.

[Matt]

Oh, yeah, they went and whacked them. Our guys went in and whacked them. Really? Yeah.

[Danny]

I heard a story that, not verified. This is more of a conspiracy theory that Maduro was working with the CIA from the previous CIA, not the current CIA, but from the previous administration, that he was actually working with them as an asset or somehow they had some sort of an agreement or whatever. And the, the conspiracy part of this is that when they went in to get him, it was not that hard. Kind of got him to agree under the condition that when they get him here, the plan is when he goes on trial, Trump's going to get him to admit that they use their software to steal the election in 2020 and get Trump a third term.

[Matt]

I would not be surprised as exchange

[Danny]

to let him go or get him a better sentence if it came out

[Matt]

that, like Stephen Miller was trying to work that right now, I would not even be surprised. Like, that would not shock me. Do I believe that? No. I mean, it's hard to parse out, like, on the surface level of it. Like, was he an asset or. I don't think he was. But is it possible that the CIA tried to approach Maduro and talk to him? You know, in my reporting, in a lot of these stories, you know, one of the questions that comes out time and time again is, should the CIA talk to terrorists, really bad people? Sometimes people have American blood on their hands. But look, if you want to infiltrate Al Qaeda or some similar organization, you can't go and talk to some choir boy. You have to go and talk to some bad people, of course, because they know the bad guys. So there's this constant, like, push and pull of, like, how far do we go? I worked on one story where the CIA was working on recruiting someone who's involved in the murder of Daniel Pearl, who was a journalist killed in Pakistan early in the war. And they wanted to recruit this guy because they thought he could get them to Zawahiri, who's the number two guy under bin Laden. So, again, this is a very real ethical, immoral issue. And I would. I don't know what the answer is necessarily. I'd pose this to the American public. Would you be comfortable with us working with that guy? I. I mean, that's a tough decision to make, isn't it?

[Danny]

I don't. I don't think so. I, I think that you should have. I mean, in this world of, of covert operations that we live in, you know, you have to have people close to the source of our enemies and of the people who are trying to subvert us, because, I mean, if they're doing the same thing to us, we have to be doing the same thing. It's like a. It's this shadow war of espionage where we have to have as much intelligence as possible. And, you know, if we have people that are willing to get that close, then. Then we should absolutely do that. Because it's better than, you know, just shooting everyone, I think. Right, right.

[Matt]

Yeah. I mean, it's a balance. And, you know, I've. I told a friend of mine, I said, well, why don't you just recruit the guy and then when you get what you want out of him, just drone strike him. He was like, no, we can't do that, dude. Like, what are you talking about?

[Danny]

Right?

[Matt]

I did talk to a Marine Corps intelligence guys and military operates a little differently than the CIA, especially in A war zone. And they had a sort a recruited source who was flirting with the bad guys again. And they kept him in play as long as he was useful. And then they did a strike on him once they were done with him.

[Danny]

Oh, really?

[Matt]

Yeah, yeah.

[Danny]

Wow. Yeah, that's the crazy. What is this? U. S. Military tested device that may be tied to Havana syndrome on rats, sheep, confidential source says. Oh, this was just. This just came out. Was this based on your stuff?

[Matt]

No, I don't. I don't think so.

[Danny]

Okay, 60 minutes, huh?

[Matt]

Let's hear it while they're still around.

[Danny]

Right.

[Matt]

Sorry, man Three independent sources from different agencies tell us that undercover homeland security agents purchased a miniaturized microwave weapon from a complex Russian criminal network. It's classified. We didn't see it. But it has been described to us. We are told it doesn't look anything like a gun. It's designed to be concealed and small enough to be carried by a person. It is silent and doesn't create heat like a microwave oven. Our sources say the device is programmable for different scenarios and can be operated by remote control. The range of the beam is several hundred feet. It can penetrate windows and drywall. The vital components were made in Russia. Our sources say the key is not the hardware but the software. The programming shapes a unique electromagnetic wave that rises and falls abruptly and pulses rapidly. Pulsed microwave radiation. Just what Dr. David Relman's investigations predicted. I've interviewed him.

[Danny]

Oh, really?

[Matt]

Yeah, classified information.

[Danny]

What's his story?

[Matt]

He is one of these guys who's like super smart, you know, a clinical doctor, but also someone who studies, you know, the high level science. And he like bounces between private sector and like White House. Like I think during the Biden administration. He was actually at the White House working on this issue.

[Danny]

Oh, really?

[Matt]

Yeah.

[Danny]

Wow.

[Matt]

Yeah, he knows his stuff.

[Danny]

Keep going, Sue.

[Matt]

And what the Russians spoke about was the importance of the energy being pulsed

[Danny]

in order to have biological effects on humans.

[Matt]

When you produce pulses like this, you can actually stimulate electrically active tissue like brain tissue and the heart for that matter, mimicking what the brain normally does. But now you're driving it with your pulses from the outside. An ideal stealth weapon. Ideal? Ideal because literally the person feels as if this is in my head. Our confidential sources tell us the voice

[Danny]

of God weapon type shit has been

[Matt]

tested in a US military lab for more than a year. Tests on rats and sheep show injuries consistent with those seen in humans. Also, as a separate part of the investigation, security camera videos have been collected that show Americans being hit the videos are classified, but they were described to us in one. A camera in a restaurant in Istanbul captured two FBI agents on vacation sitting at a table with their families. A man with a backpack walks in, and suddenly everyone at the table grabs their head as if in pain.

[Danny]

Oh, my God.

[Matt]

Sources say another video comes from a stairwell in the U. S. Embassy in Vienna. The stairs lead to a secure facility. In the video, two people on the stairs suddenly collapse. Three independent sources. That is. That's almost all of that is totally accurate to what I know. The only thing I would add a little bit to is the Istanbul story. So he's saying that they're at the table. Yeah, yeah. They were FBI agents in Istanbul with their families. So they were saying there that it was like a restaurant camera. It was a Turkish intelligence service. MIT was making recordings. They were doing surveillance on these FBI guys as they're cruising around. And while they were doing that, these guys got hit with this microwave weapon. So the MIT guys, it seems, inadvertently made a video.

[Danny]

Right.

[Matt]

Of them hidden. And I'm told it's really bad. Like, the kids are freaking out and everything. Yeah. So we knew that MIT had made this video, but they didn't want to give it up. So my understanding is that the NSA hacked into MIT and stole it.

[Danny]

No fucking way.

[Matt]

Yeah, yeah, but. But otherwise, I mean, all the problems with, you know, the mainstream media in 60 minutes or CBS, I mean, that's good journalism. That's. That stuff matters. Yeah. I'm glad that, you know, they're out there doing it.

[Danny]

So the story is the guy with the backpack may have been the culprit for that. The guy. They said a guy with a backpack walked in, and then all of a sudden, everyone at the table, the FBI agents and their kids, started grabbing their hands.

[Matt]

It could be. There's also three different generations of this weapon. They've refined it over the years. I'm told that the most recent one, the scary thing about it is, you know, remember Adam describing it as feeling like a number two pencil is stuck in your ear. The newer one, you don't feel anything. You don't know that you're under attack.

[Danny]

Really?

[Matt]

Yeah, yeah. So you'll have those same sort of Havana syndrome effects, but. But you won't know when or where it even happened.

[Danny]

So all of a sudden, you'll start to experience vertigo and memory loss. Right.

[Matt]

Like Dr. Relman said, the perfect stealth weapon. Yeah.

[Danny]

Have you heard of the voice to skull or whatever?

[Matt]

That's the fray effect.

[Danny]

What's that?

[Matt]

It was a Dr. Frey, I'm sorry that I can't remember the guy's full name, but they did experiments, and this is legit science, where they, they beamed. They basically use some sort of beam to transmit someone's voice right into another person's head. And I, yeah, I've been told about it, but I, I haven't studied it in depth.

[Danny]

So. Okay, the guys who were the focus of your, Your and Sean's piece on this, what sort of medical attention were they able to get? Were they able to get, get help with this?

[Matt]

That was literally a nightmare for those guys as the CIA is in denial. But these guys are getting worse and worse. They end up sending them down to Dr. Hoffer down at. He's down in Miami.

[Danny]

I've heard of that guy.

[Matt]

Yeah, he, he did. He did really good work. He was a good guy, Tried to help them out. He wanted to diagnose them with tbi. The CIA, I think, pushed to have them diagnosed with concussions, because anything can cause a concussion. I mean, you can run into a wall and get a concussion. Right. So it's a little more general. Eventually, they stopped the Havana victims from going to see Dr. Hoffer. In time, they finally got in with UPenn. UPenn also did really good work. They studied them. They did a lot of, A lot of, like, science on them, a lot of studying, and they putting them in MRI machines and everything else. I spoke to this woman, Dr. Verma, who did all the FMRI work on them. It's really incredible. But then that ended, and again, these guys are sort of left hanging. Yeah, there's an NHI study, and this is where something that was unethical, if not illegal, happened. The CIA said you have to participate in this NHI study to get treatment. You can't compel somebody to participate in a study like, we're going to hold your health over you.

[Danny]

Right, right.

[Matt]

And that. That study was subsequently shut down because of the ethical considerations. So, I mean, these guys, they suffered, you know, the, the term you hear nowadays is moral injury. All of these guys and women suffered significant moral injury from all of this. They expect the Russians to come at them. Everyone expects that. But they didn't expect the CIA to turn their back on them.

[Danny]

Right. How are they doing now with it? Are they, are their symptoms getting any better or. This is still terrible. Not better.

[Matt]

But the vestibular rehabilitation does help them as, as they have described it to me. It helps them learn to live with their injuries, so the, the effects don't really go away. But they learn to compensate for them better. There. There is a. It does seem that recovery is possible through this vestibular rehabilitation.

[Danny]

It's always crazy when you hear stories about this kind of stuff coming out in the news, you know, because, like, before you hear real stories like what you did, like, half the people dismiss them as, like, oh, okay, sure, like conspiracy theory or whatever.

[Matt]

Like, there are a lot of people out there who are mentally ill who feel that they're being stalked and bombarded with microwaves. And, you know, those people.

[Danny]

Which is a. Which is great for the CIA, because then they're used. They can use those people to write off everybody.

[Matt]

Yeah, yeah. No. Yeah, basically. And those people don't like me. And they don't like the Havana victims really, either, because we don't confirm their worldview, I guess.

[Danny]

Right.

[Matt]

But we have seen, you know, speaking of, like, spooky weapons, on the Maduro raid, you remember President Trump talking about discombobulator ray?

[Danny]

Yep, I do remember that.

[Matt]

So I've talked to a bunch of people about this, and I haven't found anyone who can confirm that we used any sort of novel ray gun on this operation. We do have certain directed energy weapons. We've talked about the L. Rad. We talked about the behavior adjustment device. You know, we have some things. But we didn't use it on this operation because it would have been really hard for us to just blast those Cuban paramilitary guys and not hit the Delta operators that are coming in and storming the house. You'd have, like, a sort of fratricide. So we didn't do that. And then another thing came out when we rescued that weapon system officer out of Iran.

[Danny]

Oh, the murmur. Ghost, ghost, ghost, murmur.

[Matt]

Total.

[Danny]

Is it really?

[Matt]

Oh, God, yeah. They're so. A lot of that.

[Danny]

Where did that story come from? Where did that story originate?

[Matt]

I remember.

[Danny]

I thought it was in the New York Post, but I think somebody asked.

[Matt]

I think it was the Post.

[Danny]

Somebody asked one of the. Like Hegseth or Trump.

[Matt]

I can tell you where it really originated was with Ratcliffe and his chokey voice.

[Danny]

Ratcliffe. That's who it was.

[Matt]

Yeah. That's. That's where the story originated. And it has a lot to do with. I don't want to blame the CIA institutionally, but the director, Ratcliffe, he tried to snag as much credit for that rescue operation as he could and blended his CIA into the narrative in the press. Remember I talked about source capture?

[Danny]

Yes.

[Matt]

That's why that's a problem. So he was out there Showboating and spotlighting, trying to hog some media attention for himself, I'm told. The task force guys, the actual soldiers who were involved in that rescue. I mean, soldiers, airmen, Navy SEALs, Air Force.

[Danny]

Did you talk to any of those dudes?

[Matt]

I've talked to some people who may have been on the periphery of it, yeah. They're pissed that Radcliffe did this.

[Danny]

Really?

[Matt]

Yeah, yeah. That he's, like, trying to sweep in and take credit for it. They're like, this is messed up, man. The.

[Danny]

How much involvement did CIA have in that?

[Matt]

A little bit. So one of the things they did do, which I believe was helpful, was institute a psyop or a deception operation. And they did this using what's called a man in the middle attack. So if you have the enemy, the Iranians, in this case, they're communicating by radio, different elements, headquarters and a unit in the field.

[Danny]

Right.

[Matt]

So what you can do if you have the technology is you can jam headquarters and then start transmitting to the unit on the ground as if you are the headquarters having Persian Farsi speakers masquerading as a Quds Force commander, IRGC or whoever it is, and, like, your orders are to go here and do this and blah, blah, blah. So that's. That's a man in the middle attack. And they did that and convinced the Iranians that the pilot was going to be rescued along the coast, that he was somewhere down. Down by the coast, and we were maybe going to pick. Pick him up on boats or something like that. So it diverted a lot of forces south towards the coast of Iran, towards the Persian Gulf. And I'm told that was at least somewhat helpful.

[Danny]

And wasn't there also, like, a. A huge amount of military planes that were sent out to go in different directions to divert them?

[Matt]

Yeah. Flying all over the place.

[Danny]

Like 150 planes, I heard, or something like that. Combined with helicopters.

[Matt]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That.

[Danny]

That's what Trump said, right?

[Matt]

Yeah. And I mean, it wouldn't surprise me at all. I think they mobilized everything to try to get this guy out, and they did, thank God. But, I mean, it's a. It's a. That's a crazy story in of itself.

[Danny]

So where did this ghost murmur story come from? Where did it originate?

[Matt]

Ratcliffe and his boys.

[Danny]

So they were the first people to say it, or did they say they

[Matt]

leaked it to the press?

[Danny]

They leaked it to the press, and then the press got a hold of it, and then they were asked about it.

[Matt]

I see now there are heartbeat sensors. Like, that's actually kind of like Old, oldish technology. But the idea that you had a heartbeat sensor on a fucking drone at, you know, 50,000ft and it's finding this one guy's heartbeat against all of the background of all the people looking for him and everything else, like, come on, dude. So, yeah, there are some very novel technologies out there. And we develop sometimes these very expensive bespoke technologies that don't really work in the field. They break down very quickly. We've had this problem with laser weapons and microwave weapons over the years, but we do have some things that work.

[Danny]

Yeah. I mean, I can't imagine the stuff that DARPA works on, you know, has been working on for years to try to like create more resilient soldiers on the battlefield or to make, make the battlefield operations more effective, you know what I mean? A couple weeks ago I realized I was going through an entire can of nicotine pouches in like two days. My sleep was getting worse, my recovery was getting slower, and I just couldn't figure out why until I picked up some of these Ultra pouches. And I will tell you the difference is incredible. Ultra gives me that same pouch experience. I usually like the burn, the little kick, the flavor. But without nicotine or caffeine, no jitters, no crash and no feeling wired at midnight. And my favorite part is they're packed with natural nootropics to help boost focus and improve mental clarity. And what surprised me the most is how quick my body started to bounce back. Better sleep, better workouts and actual recovery happening again. And this month I'm really digging their Blue Raz flavor. Nicotine messes with blood flow and stress hormones. Ultra does not. It's way smoother flow state, especially if pre workout tends to over stimulate you. So I get to keep the habit without the vice holding me back. Ultra is the ultimate guilt free pouch delivering instant focus and mental clarity without nicotine or caffeine. New customers can use Code danny to get get 15 off at take ultra.com. that's T-A K-E-U-L-T-R-A.com for 15 off with the code Danny. After you purchase they're going to ask where you heard about them. And please help support the show by telling them. We sent you like I had this, we had this one guy on who was a. What was his background? I think he was a scientist. He was a scientist that worked for DARPA and he was a like a neuroscientist and he was talking to us about real technology that's actually already in use. At least being tested already where somebody in Washington can put on this like neural net over their head and somebody in Iran, Iran or Afghanistan or somewhere over there can also put on a neural net and the person here can hijack their brain and like operate, do like a surgical operation on somebody in the field. So like a surgeon can take over your body on the other side of the world and perform surgery.

[Matt]

Like automation.

[Danny]

Yeah.

[Matt]

Like you're controlling a robot.

[Danny]

Like you're hijacking their, their fucking.

[Matt]

They had an experiment that tried to do this.

[Danny]

Yeah. This guy was saying it's real. It's already being like, it's already being done. It's just not like fully like out of the bag yet.

[Matt]

I don't know how, I'm not a scientist. I don't even know how that could be accomplished. But, but yeah, I mean some, some weird things do exist.

[Danny]

Yeah.

[Matt]

It is fun to look at some of the darpest stuff that is like public and declassified things like upward falling payloads.

[Danny]

Well, I haven't heard of that.

[Matt]

So like if you had something at the bottom of the ocean and it had like an airbag, you suddenly inflate it with oxygen. Now it's a payload that falls upwards. It's going, coming way up and when it hits the surface, it'll break above the surface. Oh, whoa. And it could potentially be picked up by an aircraft. It comes on a parachute or something like that. What? I mean you can look this up.

[Danny]

We're talking about bombs.

[Matt]

No, I don't think it would be a bomb. I think it would be more like if you put a recording device on an undersea fiber optic cable, maybe you could use it to do something like get the recordings off the bottom of the ocean.

[Danny]

Okay, I see.

[Matt]

But I mean, I just read the release from darpa. I don't know if this thing was ever how far the experiment got. How you know if it was ever operationalized. I don't know.

[Danny]

Have you seen the DARPA dolphins that are like doing sabotage on undersea cables and stuff?

[Matt]

Oh, those aren't darpa. That's the Marine Mammal Program. The Navy has that.

[Danny]

Oh, that's the Navy. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Matt]

Marine Mammal Program. And I've looked into that a couple of different times and those guys are supposed surprisingly closed lipped about the program. Which is funny because I can get all this stuff out of all these like CIA people that the Marine Mammal Program is. I have yet to crack that nut. But I have heard some pretty funny stories from Navy divers who get assigned to that unit for a little while. One guy was telling me about they had this big dolphin, they called him Half Dead Fred. Yeah, and. And Fred didn't give a. And. And he said too, he's like, get this, all this flipper stuff out of your head that these dolphins, like, they will grab you by the wrist and drag you under 25ft of water just to with you, like just to see what you're made of, you know.

[Danny]

Really?

[Matt]

Yeah, yeah. Why'd they call him Half Dead Friend? Because he didn't give a. And like he, I think he just like roll over on his back and like wave a flipper at them when they told him to do stuff. It's like giving them the bird. And Half Dead Fred disappeared during training one time. It was mating season and he didn't come back for like three months. He was totally awol.

[Danny]

Wow.

[Matt]

Yeah, yeah, Half Dead Fred. And the other interesting thing is they did deploy the marine mammal program during the Gulf War in 1990. And I'm that long and I'm told a couple of the dolphins died actually. I'm sure because it's something to do with the ocean conditions. A couple of them didn't make it. I don't know if they're over in the Persian Gulf now, but actually all this stuff going on with the Straits of her moves would be like tailor made for that program because the dolphins are trained to go out and identify obstacles underwater right there. To go out there by dolphins, find, find the mines, find all that kind of crap and identify it. So then Navy EOD divers would go in and dispose of it and then our ships could go through. So yeah, the dolphins could definitely do that job, I think.

[Danny]

Yeah, it makes me just like wonder, you know, maybe they had dolphins bomb that Nordstream pipeline, you know, Like

[Matt]

I, I have read that we do not have like a. Well, well, there's the story about how they fitted them with nose cones at one point that would shoot out like a spike to kill Soviet divers. That's a story that's floating around out there. But as far as using the dolphins for offensive operations, they, they did some experimenting with the dolphins and having them like lay mines, like go find the enemy submarine and put a mine on it.

[Danny]

Oh, wow.

[Matt]

And what they found is that the dolphins can like, it's wild, like through echolocation, I guess they can identify like metallic and non metallic metals. Like they're very sensitive. But the one thing the dolphins couldn't do is identify the difference between the hull of a Russian submarine and the hull of an American submarine. So my understanding is we never really developed that program because we're afraid of what would happen if we, if we set them loose. They might come back at us.

[Danny]

Right. I mean, think about if we could figure out a way or if the smartest people that are working in the government could figure out a way to communicate with the dolphins because we know they're hyper intelligent. Right. Like the barrier is the.

[Matt]

Like they are, yes.

[Danny]

How?

[Matt]

Like their language is very complex.

[Danny]

If they could figure out the language barrier to figure out how, like to tap into their mind somehow to like see through their. I don't know.

[Matt]

There's. There's an article, I mean, maybe this is neither here nor there. There's an article, I think in the Atlantic a couple years ago about marine biologists looking at using AI to decode the language of whales.

[Danny]

Oh.

[Matt]

So like, could we, could we talk to a sperm whale? And, and what would it say to us? You know, and I, I think, you know what, it just, just me bullshitting, of course. But I mean, I think that if we could talk to a sperm whale, it would probably tell us, fuck, man, it's cold down here. Like, it would probably be pretty disappointing what it would tell us. You know what I mean?

[Danny]

Yeah. It's just so interesting how long we've been interested in trying to use animals to help us in fucking geopolitical feats. Like, there was that story of that guy John Lilly, I don't know if you've heard of him, who got a grant from NASA back in the 80s, I think it was, to try to work on this huge communication between dolphins and humans. He was literally paid by NASA to figure this out. And he was like, he was in Miami I think, when he was doing this, and he was cutting open the heads of dolphins, putting probes in their brains, keeping them in these little tanks and like, sinister experiments. John Lily ended up going off the wheels. He went off the tracks, like went crazy because he was addicted to ketamine and thought he was talking to aliens. He thought it was communicating with like an alien species. Dude, he went totally crazy. Crazy, but like he was doing legit research for NASA way back in the day. This was like during the time of Flipper, like when they were actually making.

[Matt]

70s.

[Danny]

Yeah. Oh, that was the 70s, yeah, yeah, but yeah, dude, that shit's wild. For the straight of Hormuz though. I heard that there's all kinds of like underwater reconnaissance going on under the water. I heard they have like. I heard that the Iranians have, like, port, like, like, many little portals inside under the water, in the rocks, where they can, like, deploy autonomous underwater drones and shit. Have you heard anything about that?

[Matt]

Oh, no, I haven't. I would be surprised if they're that sophisticated. Yeah, they seem pretty good at keeping us at bay with ballistic missiles and so on, but I'm sure that there's. That they've put underwater mines and other underwater obstacles and that we're down there trying to find that stuff. Yeah, it would not surprise me at all.

[Danny]

Yeah, it's. It's insane, man. It's just like. Trying to follow the whole Iran war thing has been difficult because it's just like there's some new twist happening every week, and it just. By and large, it just doesn't seem like. Correct. If I'm wrong that we're anywhere close to a winning situation with this thing. It seems like every. Every week that goes by, we have less opportunities to back out.

[Matt]

Correct. Yeah. I mean, the problem is that there isn't a plan that's linked to any sort of strategic end state. You know, the plan was, well, we're gonna bomb them. Okay, well, that doesn't work. What are we gonna do? We're gonna bomb them some more. All right, that's not working. So what do we do? We'll drop some more bombs, you know, and it just goes on and on. I think that, you know, some of these. These other operations that we've talked about during the Trump 1 administration, there's the Soleimani assassination and the Baghdadi raid. Then during this administration, there was the Maduro raid. There was the first Operation Midnight Hammer, the first bombing run in Iran. There's really no repercussions against us for that.

[Danny]

No, they never. They never retaliated.

[Matt]

And I. I think that the President kind of learned the wrong. The wrong lesson from all of those operations.

[Danny]

So we killed. So in Trump won. Trump killed Solemani with a drone strike, right?

[Matt]

Yes, that's right.

[Danny]

And who. Solemni was, like, a top general or something.

[Matt]

He was the head of Kudz force. He was, like, the head Iranian paramilitary leader. And, like, the kind of critical link between Iran and their proxies, like Hezbollah.

[Danny]

And what was Iran's response?

[Matt]

Nothing that I know of.

[Danny]

Nothing. No retaliation at all?

[Matt]

No, not. Not to my knowledge.

[Danny]

And Midnight Hammer also?

[Matt]

Yeah. And I. I mean, there's some other stories. There's some Iran stuff working that I'm working on that I can't really go into detail on right now because it's very much still A work in progress, because this stuff is still unfolding before our eyes. I would just say this highly enriched uranium issue is not going away. Something's going to be done there at some point, and not necessarily by us, but it's going to be addressed. So I'd keep an eye on that.

[Danny]

What do you mean it's going to be addressed? The highly enriched uranium?

[Matt]

Well, the. The highly enriched uranium that Iran has created. Something supposedly somewhere around 300kg right now. 300kg is a lot, but you only need a couple milligrams to make a really big problem, meaning a dirty bomb or something like that. Right now that stuff is in underground facilities that we bombed. So they're kind of. The entrances appear to be caved in, covered in rubble. But we as Americans, and the Iranians too, for that matter, we're not just going to stand by forever and leave this stuff sitting out there because it's a major national security issue that'll come back to haunt us. It's like some point. Now, I'm not necessarily saying the United States needs to go in and remove it, but something needs to happen. It can't be left unsecured out in the desert indefinitely.

[Danny]

In Iran.

[Matt]

In Iran.

[Danny]

So what do we do? Like, they've been enriching this uranium for how long?

[Matt]

Well, according to Netanyahu, they've been enriching this uranium since I was, you know, three years old.

[Danny]

Well, yeah, I mean, he's been saying that we're weeks, months away from a nuke, forever.

[Matt]

But they've been. They've been working on the. I think what Iran is doing and has been doing is trying to maintain kind of a posture of like, we're not creating a nuclear bomb, but we're retaining the capacity to create one anytime we want.

[Danny]

But wasn't there, like, two big intelligence assessments done recently on Iran's capability, nuclear capabilities? Two big intelligence assessments where they got, like, all the top intelligence people in the US to convene and do a whole assessment of Iran's capabilities, and they all came back both times that they do. They do not have the enrichment to create a nuclear weapon.

[Matt]

Yeah, I mean, yeah, it doesn't seem that they were close to creating a nuclear weapon. Like I said, I think they were interested in retaining the. The ability to plausibly threaten creating one. You know, but, I mean, I think this whole Iran thing is just a huge boondoggle myself. But, yeah, others may disagree.

[Danny]

I also heard that that pilot story could have been a cover.

[Matt]

I. I've heard this story yeah.

[Danny]

For trying to get some. Get some Iranian out of there.

[Matt]

No, it. It. It did happen fairly close to one of those facilities, and they may have even executed on, like, some, like, contingency plans that were set up for that. Like. Like that. That improvised airstrip that they used out in the farm that maybe might have been something that they were looking at for that operation, and they ended up using it for this instead. Like, we got to get this guy out of here. Now, that's a possibility. I can't say I know that for a fact, but I'm just saying it makes sense. They may have used some of those plans. But, no, we were legitimately trying to rescue that guy. We weren't making a play for the uranium.

[Danny]

Okay. And in the plane, though, two guys were in the plane.

[Matt]

Yes.

[Danny]

The wizzo is the one that got rescued. What happened to the other guy?

[Matt]

He got rescued, too, but he got rescued, like, right away, like, a couple hours after.

[Danny]

The other guy was just there.

[Matt]

Yeah, yeah.

[Danny]

The.

[Matt]

The search and rescue team came in. They had. Those guys had some balls go in there. Yeah. By themselves, basically, where they're, like, support aircraft were struggling to catch up with them. They went in there, and they pulled that guy right out.

[Danny]

In helicopters.

[Matt]

In helicopters. And the other guy, the wizzo, the backseater in the aircraft, as I understand it, he received some pretty substantial injuries when he came down, and he was very late, apparently, in getting the authentication code out over the radio.

[Danny]

Right.

[Matt]

To authenticate that to headquarters. You know, this is me. I'm in the wind. Come get me. And it was probably because of his injuries. Once they did identify him, positively identify him, the whole operation, all that machinery launched.

[Danny]

Right.

[Matt]

And they went out there and basically that, you know, the Air Force erected, like, a grid square around where that guy was. And, like, one guy described it to me as like a around and find out square. Like, any Iranians try to come in that square, we're just gonna, like, blast them off the face of the earth.

[Danny]

Wow.

[Matt]

So, yeah, we were, like, smoking dudes around him. There were some, like, paramilitary guys that were, like, getting pretty close to him. And then, of course, you know, little bird pilots got. Got over there with the operators and rescued him and got him back to the improvised airstrip, which a whole bunch of fun erupted there, too, when the aircraft got stuck in. In the soil.

[Danny]

Oh, yeah, Yeah. I heard that dude, like, scaled like seven, like, a huge mountain or something.

[Matt]

I think he went up a ridgeline. Yeah, huge ridgeline, which makes a lot of sense that he was using the terrain to his advantage and making it much harder for the Iranians to get to him.

[Danny]

Right.

[Matt]

As you can imagine, if he's out in the open desert, like, like, yeah, they're going to catch up with you.

[Danny]

This, this is. I bet. I wonder if Mad Dog would know this, but I wonder, like, how many knocks do we have inside of Iran?

[Matt]

So this is a, a separate story that Sean and I just published with our friend, a colleague, Zach Dorfman, about non official cover people. And you're talking about Jim Lawler. He knows way more about Iran.

[Danny]

He's an Iran expert.

[Matt]

Yeah, he knows way more than I do about Iran, Rand. So yeah, you should ask him.

[Danny]

I read your article about the hard knocks this morning. It's amazing.

[Matt]

So the, the CIA does not have a lot of knocks. I'll just say that Zach Dorfman wrote a book about the CIA knock program which is forthcoming. I have nothing further to say about it. You can have Zach on here if you want in when the book is published. And okay, he's going to have some pretty cool stories coming out of that. But, but as he was researching that book, he came across some information also about the Special Operations JSOC NOC program. And he started telling me about what he had and I was like, huh, okay. And he's like, yeah, this doesn't fit into my book, so maybe we can turn it into an article. I was like, okay, well, let me see what I can find out. And fairly quickly I pulled up four, I think four different sources who had had strong firsthand knowledge about. About this subject. I guess. What, you know, for the listeners, we should point out what a knock is.

[Danny]

Yeah. What is a knock and why, why are they important?

[Matt]

So there's two types of COVID There's official cover and non official cover. Official cover is when you are an intelligence operative of some sort, but you are being put under credentials as a State Department person or, well, I mean, whatever the case may be. You could even be like, say you're a Delta Force commando that's trained to be a spy. They could put you in a regular army infantry unit and that would be official cover.

[Danny]

Right.

[Matt]

You're still presenting yourself as an American soldier. Yes, this happened. I remember stories about Delta Force guys in the Balkans doing this where they would be like, you know, the General's psd or they would be like a liaison officer to the Germans, but really they're there for an intelligence operation. That kind of stuff happens all the time. Non official cover is when you're being placed under a commercial cover. Like you're working for a company, Fortune 500 company. Maybe you're working in construction or mining or logistics or whatever's going to get you where you need to go. So the big difference, I mean, there are a couple of big differences. It's a lot harder to put somebody under non official cover under a plausible cover when you're taking. And one of the things in our article that comes out of it is it's really hard to take somebody who is a SEAL or a Ranger or whoever and make them a non official cover guy because their entire life is about working in a team.

[Danny]

Right.

[Matt]

And now they're having to be a lone wolf, which sounds sexy.

[Danny]

You're a civilian, not attached to any government.

[Matt]

Sounds cool on paper, doesn't it? But the reality is that it's a very lonely life and high stress too. You know, you're assuming a lot of risk. Because another big difference here is that if you're under official cover and you get arrested in Russia, even you will be dubbed Persona non grata by the Russian government and deported.

[Danny]

Did Right.

[Matt]

You're sent home. You know, maybe you get a black eye when they pull you off the street, but you're going home. Right. If you're a non official cover and you're in a country like Russia or Iran, especially, dude, you're done, you're dead.

[Danny]

Or you're in jail.

[Matt]

You're dead.

[Danny]

You're dead.

[Matt]

Oh, yeah, you are.

[Danny]

Capital F. So let me ask you this. Jonathan Pollard, what was his. What would you classify him as? Israeli spy?

[Matt]

Yeah, I would classify him as a foreign intelligence asset.

[Danny]

So he wasn't a knock.

[Matt]

I, I don't believe so, no. Okay, for like, for the Israelis, you mean?

[Danny]

Right.

[Matt]

I mean, if he. No, I don't, I don't. I'm not totally familiar with his case, but I don't believe he was. No, I think he was.

[Danny]

Knock is somebody. So basically, if you're a knock and you get caught, the CIA is going to deny you 100.

[Matt]

100.

[Danny]

Yeah. Okay.

[Matt]

Okay. Yeah. The US government's going to say we have no knowledge.

[Danny]

Got it. And can a knock also be like an agent, like a recruit?

[Matt]

So a knock is a. In. Let's.

[Danny]

Or is this like a formally trained. Somebody who's formally trained, like at. In America.

[Matt]

Yes.

[Danny]

Right. To do. And then sent over somewhere.

[Matt]

So they are actual. They are going to be recruited either into the CIA or into the military. And then based on. A lot of times it's based on things like ethnicity, language, Ability, having multiple passports, etc, like somebody incredible backstory, no

[Danny]

holes in your history.

[Matt]

Something, something that we can parlay right into this.

[Danny]

Because this would be way easier just to recruit somebody in that country. Right.

[Matt]

And we do that.

[Danny]

That's right.

[Matt]

Foreign intelligence asset. But in this case, you're putting them through that extensive training and then sending them overseas for a period of time to collect intelligence or set up logistics or whatever the case may be. So, yeah, we wrote this pretty long article about the JSOC program and some of the successes they've had and also some of the failures. Talk about the army putting knocks into Iran in the past during the war on terror years. Successfully.

[Danny]

Wow.

[Matt]

But also how this program, both the CIA side and the military side, are fraught with problems. Also, one of the big ones is like if you heard the term ubiquitous technical surveillance. No UTs. So UTs.

[Danny]

Oh, is this like the DNA? It could be that, right?

[Matt]

Yes. Biometrics, DNA surveillance cameras that are connected up to AI that's looking for you, that every time you go through the airport, they're taking your picture, they're taking your fingerprints. Even small airports in smaller countries now, I mean, everyone's kind of doing it. And that makes it more and more difficult for you to do anything sneaky. Even if you're traveling under a false passport, it's like, okay, but your fingerprints don't change, so it becomes a thing.

[Danny]

In Men in Black, where they put your fingers on that and burn them off. Burns them off.

[Matt]

Yeah. Well, I mean, there's a couple of different workarounds. There have been workarounds in the past. You would just fly the person to a country that they don't have biometrics in the airport, have them buy or rent a car, drive to the third country, you know, rather than fly directly in there, things like that. But it's becoming harder and harder because the technology is ubiquitous, because it's everywhere. Because you have these, you know, large language models that are sifting through data and they're going to pull your identity off the Internet. It's super difficult. And right now, I think especially the military looks at it is like when we put the person through all this training that they're like a one and done or a two and done done. So they'll do like one or two missions and then they're going back to their normal job because. Because of this. Because their, Their identities are going to get burned.

[Danny]

Yeah. I imagine there's some countries that are way harder than others. Like, how do you do this in China where there's like literally cameras that track your gate everywhere.

[Matt]

You don't think I would blend in in China? Yeah, yeah. So there's, there's that, that there's cultural differences, you know, make it difficult for us. But you're correct about the, the technological aspect of it too.

[Danny]

And I wasn't even aware they could do that with DNA. I didn't know they were doing DNA tracking.

[Matt]

So I mean, yes, DNA sniffers, that's a thing. And we, we have all these problems with our data also not being secured, which plays into it. The Office of Personal Management hack, the Chinese got all of the top secret security clearance applications from the United States.

[Danny]

Really?

[Matt]

Yeah. So one of those guys, you try to put them under non official cover, send them to a country like China, what's gonna, what's gonna happen?

[Danny]

When did that happen?

[Matt]

That happened a while ago. That was like 10, 12 years ago maybe.

[Danny]

Oh, wow.

[Matt]

So UTS is making it increasingly difficult for these guys to do their job. And we're at sort of a, an inflection point, I think, where the intelligence community is having to rethink about this and rethink about how we use Knox. And I mean, one proposal I've heard or one thing that we might do in the future is like you kind of pointed out, recruiting foreigners. Like we're going to recruit this guy in Morocco, maybe we bring him back to the United States, maybe we just train him in his home country, give him all the training he needs and now he's going to be our guy. Now he doesn't need a like an elaborate fake backstopped cover because he can just be himself.

[Danny]

Exactly. Right, right.

[Matt]

That's potentially an option.

[Danny]

So one of the things that your article was pointing out was that the difference between actual like CIA knocks and military knocks. Right. And the military knocks have more trouble because, you know, a lot of those guys are more like brute knuckle dragger types. Right? And they're not like, they're not like sly, like.

[Matt]

Right.

[Danny]

Multiple languages, that kind of guy.

[Matt]

So yeah, that the, you know, average special ops guy has a pretty strong physique.

[Danny]

Right.

[Matt]

A kind of body type that stands out. You know, full sleeve tattoos. We like to work out.

[Danny]

Handlebar mustache.

[Matt]

I have, I have tattoos. I'm not talking about talking smack, I get it. But a spy, a successful spy, probably looks like an insurance claim salesman, like, you know, guy that's fat, balding.

[Danny]

Right.

[Matt]

You know, just unassuming person. But there's other things too. I mean, there's military culture, the Way soldiers speak, though, even the way you stand, right? I mean, your posture, if something give you away, when you live in this military culture, it just becomes harder and harder for you to blend in in your own culture, much less someone else's. And as I was saying earlier, I mean, it's also a difficult lifestyle when your entire life has been, you know, working with a platoon of rangers or a platoon of SEALs or a Delta Force team or whatever the case is, and then go into this sort of like very lonely sort of existence. And I, I was, you know, even when I came in and I started. Started first researching the story, I was a little critical, I think, of the stories of Knox who get in trouble with booze and women. It's like, come on, man, where's your, where's your self discipline here? There's a lot. This is kind of important stuff.

[Danny]

Right?

[Matt]

But when, when you start to understand the way the lifestyle these guys have, I think it's. It becomes very natural that they're looking out, they're looking for some sort of human connection.

[Danny]

Right.

[Matt]

Because they're not getting it anymore.

[Danny]

They're starved of it. Right, right, right.

[Matt]

And then, and then, yeah, booze and women. It would. It leads to operations getting compromised. And there, there's a one story in there. I talk about a Conex container with like $3 million worth of clandestine communications equipment that we put in a country in Africa. And the NOC that was running the logistics company got drunk and revealed a bit more than he should have to a woman.

[Danny]

Oh, no.

[Matt]

And as far as I know, and the people I know, no, that Conex container is still sitting in a Conex yard in Africa somewhere. They just like abandoned it. Oh my God.

[Danny]

That's crazy, dude. Jesus Christ. Well, I mean, that's like the whole thing, I mean, that's the story. That's the Havana syndrome story is like the main, the main thing about this, the biggest problem is the human intelligence part of it, because that we're the most vulnerable. We're the most vulnerable to being. Not just. Just because we're these biological entities that can be injured multiple ways, but we have like these human desires and instincts and things like this and, and vulnerabilities to where it's not optimal. Right. It's better to. It's better to use satellites and drones and dolphins.

[Matt]

Yeah. I mean, you're right that as Americans, I think we're much more comfortable with that. Right. Like laser guided precision munitions, laser beams, you know, high tech dollar death race. We love all that.

[Danny]

Yeah.

[Matt]

But I mean, it's really important to invest in the human being because the human being is the weapon, right? The, the, the. All this other stuff, they're just tools and I, I think sometimes we overlook that and we don't want to put the hard work into investing in the human.

[Danny]

Well, how do you find humans? I, it doesn't seem like we're built like Chechnyans, right? Like America, like America is going the way of like tick. We're built for tick tock. Yeah. As Tim Dillon would probably say. And like, how do you find Billy Waz in this day and age? You know, like, how do you find guys like that? Who they, they. That's. This is what they yearn for. They yearn to go over there and be the surprise, kill, vanish guys.

[Matt]

You know, I think those people are still there. I think there are a lot of, of young American men that grow up wanting to do that.

[Danny]

Really?

[Matt]

Yeah, yeah, I think so.

[Danny]

Even with the way how the, the lies of the Iraq war and the Afghanistan war, like, how that's all come out and like these guys, like, I mean, I've had a lot of guys in here who, you know, ended up going over there and they came back here and like regretted it. Like, not just because of all the, not just because of, you know, all of the, the hyper vigilance and the PTSD and stuff that's involved with that in the Depression, but like compiling onto that is like, oh, wow, this was all sold on a lie or whatever. And like it was, we didn't. It was Vietnam basically all over.

[Matt]

I mean, I feel the same way in a lot of regards. Like, we should learn from history. You know, we see this stuff happening over and over again. We should maybe be more skeptical about this war in Iran right now.

[Danny]

Right.

[Matt]

Because our government, I don't, I think

[Danny]

everyone, I mean, I don't think there's many people who are, that do believe in this war in Iran.

[Matt]

But I mean, the military doesn't seem like it's having huge issues with recruitment right now. They're having some, as I recall.

[Danny]

Well, you see, they're talking about the draft now.

[Matt]

Yeah, I mean, I don't think that's a possibility. That's, that's like, you know, you were saying about like the tick tock generation stuff. You install the draft and shit gets very real very fast for a lot of people, including wealthy people and people who are politically connected.

[Danny]

Yeah, well, because Palantir came out with their manifesto saying they want to bring back the draft and then the The.

[Matt]

Thank you Palantir. Appreciate that.

[Danny]

Yeah, right, exactly.

[Matt]

And, and all the Alex Carp's on the front lines.

[Danny]

Yes.

[Matt]

John Wayne in it with his helmet strap off.

[Danny]

Right, right.

[Matt]

Cigar in the corner of his lip

[Danny]

with his fentanyl laced urine. And then the guy who's running against Thomas Massey in Kentucky also recently said that they think he any like other than the fact that the reason he's running in Kentucky is because he wants us to be more dominant and lethal in war. But he also thinks that it's, it would be optimal if we brought back conscription. So it seems like there's. Whether, you know, whether it's possible or not, whether it's likely or not, it seems like people are talking about this more.

[Matt]

I mean there is an argument to be made about, you know, national service. You know, should young people, you know, spend a year or two in some sort of national service? I mean, I'm against it myself. You know, conscription is like something you do in an emergency situation.

[Danny]

Right.

[Matt]

But you know, I think the counter argument of course is if you had conscription, it gets the entire society invested in our foreign policy and in our war. And maybe a lot of these stupid wars wouldn't be happening if we had a conscription, if we had some sort of a draft. Because now rich people's kids are going into the military too. Like I said, this gets very serious very fast for a lot of people.

[Danny]

Yeah, that, that's interesting.

[Matt]

The fact that we have an all volunteer force and we have a tick tock society that's so disengaged is what allows a lot of this stupid shit to happen. In my opinion, that's what allows us to be in Afghanistan for 20 years just spinning our wheels. And maybe if Americans were being drafted into the military and deployed to Afghanistan, that war would be over in like a year or two.

[Danny]

Interesting, right? I mean if you have the same people who are lobbying literally for this war to happen, have their kids be drafted.

[Matt]

A little bit different, isn't it?

[Danny]

How does that play out?

[Matt]

A little bit different. Different.

[Danny]

It doesn't seem like people are going to. Like, I don't think people are going to. Maybe I'm seeing something differently than you are, but people are going to volunteer to do that kind of work.

[Matt]

I think what you're seeing is some of the trepidation maybe from military veterans or from, from older people who were at least engaged, you know, and paying attention to these wars as they unfolded. But man, there's something about youth when a human being is born, it's like Pressing the reset button on history and the experience, the military experience is like so profound, especially in men. I think there's always going to be a population that's going to want to join up and try to, you know, prove something to themselves.

[Danny]

Yeah.

[Matt]

You know, Steven Pressfield, the author, has this whole story about how he got drafted in the Marine Corps during Vietnam and he was like an anti war hippie. He didn't want to be there. This is bullshit. He's like, by the time we got to the graduation from Marine Corps boot camp, he's like, I had tears in my eyes because, like, it was such a profoundly emotional experience. It's like in our DNA.

[Danny]

Yeah.

[Matt]

And that's good. We need people like that. Right. You know, people that are. Want to be Billy Law, you know, and be that, be that kind of dude. But we, you know, now, you know, me as a 42 year old and other Americans out there who vote and pay taxes. We need to make sure we're doing the best thing for those soldiers, for those service members, and that when we deploy them them, we're deploying them in furtherance of achievable strategic goals.

[Danny]

Right.

[Matt]

We're not just sending them out there to just drive around until they get IED. Like, that's irresponsible and unethical.

[Danny]

Yeah. Yeah. 100. If you enjoy watching our show on Spotify or YouTube and you want to be more involved, I encourage you to please come check out our Patreon community. Not only does our Patreon community get every episode you see on YouTube early, fully uncensored and ad free, but we're also doing Patreon exclusive episodes as well as live Q&As. And you can get your personal questions answered by our guests every single week. For me, being able to collaborate and communicate back and forth with our Patreon community every week has been huge. And this is my way of saying thank you for the cost of a cup of coffee a month. Now back to the show. There feels like more of a separation between that political layer of people and the actual people, the citizens of this country. Right. Especially when you have this like Epstein file stuff come out. And, you know, it's like we can see plain as day email saying that these people are just trying to find a way to profit off of civil wars in different countries and profit off of arms trafficking with the freaking Trilateral Commission, which you've been laughed out of a room for talking about the Trilateral Commission three years ago.

[Matt]

Are they even still around, though?

[Danny]

I think so. Yeah, they have a full website with, like, a member list on it. And like. Yeah, like, they. Who was. We just had somebody on here.

[Matt]

I think you're right, though, that in, like, in big picture overall, there's an increasing skepticism towards government. The emperor has no clothes. People are seeing it. Whatever metaphor you want to use, the Epstein files plays a big role in that. And, you know, making people feel nihilistic, like, does anything really matter? Like, we don't even prosecute this then. And what. What do we go after? What do we stand for? A feeling that America is just this giant shopping spree.

[Danny]

Yeah.

[Matt]

Everything's up for grabs. Shove $100 bills in your pockets, you know, get rich while you can.

[Danny]

Right.

[Matt]

And just this overall loss in. Loss of faith in the institutions of government. And I think that people younger than me. So let's say people under 40. I think they have no expectation that their lives are going to get better.

[Danny]

Right.

[Matt]

I think they. I think there's a sense of hopelessness, you know, in the American dream. It's dead. I mean, we see that in the.

[Danny]

Dad. Well, I mean. Yeah, you can't.

[Matt]

You.

[Danny]

They can't pay off their high school, their college debt. They're going to college for all these years so they can, what, drive Uber? Deliver. Deliver Caesar salads just so they can afford rent. They'll never be able to. People are never going to be able to afford to buy a house. It's. It's insanity. You know, it. It reminds me of. There's this great documentary done by a guy named Adam Curtis called Hypernormalization.

[Matt]

I love that documentary, man. I've watched it twice.

[Danny]

Me, too.

[Matt]

Yeah.

[Danny]

And it reminds me exactly of this moment.

[Matt]

Correct? Yep. Yep.

[Danny]

Where the people have just lost faith. They've lost faith. They know. They know the government is fake.

[Matt]

They don't know what comes next.

[Danny]

Right.

[Matt]

You know, that's the aspect, you know, the documentary about. It's about the Soviet Union for people who haven't seen it.

[Danny]

Right.

[Matt]

And how the Soviet Union was collapsing. And people knew it was collapsing. They knew communism didn't work, but they continued going through the motions because no one had a clue what was going to come next or what should come next. And you're absolutely right. We are in that moment where the, you know, the. The artifice of society is kind of collapsing or at least it's being hollowed out of any meaningful content. But nobody knows, including me. I don't. I don't know. What is the next system of governance? What is the next system of Economics that is supposed to prevail. The only thing we're being told right now is AI. Like AI?

[Danny]

Yeah, exactly.

[Matt]

AI is like the new ghost in the machine. It's like some sort of demigod that's going to create a post scarcity society. It's like what, like what do you even.

[Danny]

I think they, I think the tech overlords are just going to try to turn this country into subscription model, like

[Matt]

Blade Runner shit, man.

[Danny]

Yeah, it's gonna be. You just pay a subscription. You pay a certain percentage of your income to be, to be a part of America and you have to give them your, give them a sample of your DNA, all that, and they completely control every aspect of your life.

[Matt]

The sad thing is if we don't push back on it, like. Yes, that's exactly what they'll do.

[Danny]

When you really like dig down and figure out like how much money that these tech companies are getting and like the sort of narrative they're also trying to push out, it's very, it's very creepy. You know, like they're trying to paint everything that's happening under this guise of Christianity and in Silicon Valley, particularly with Peter Thiel and he's also doing these antichrist lectures. And then at the same time they're doing this in the military.

[Matt]

They're, they're secular Christian fundamentalists.

[Danny]

Right.

[Matt]

That they believe the singularity is coming, which is just like a different version of the rapture.

[Danny]

Yes, right.

[Matt]

It's the same sort of like magical.

[Danny]

And they also, they also want to live forever.

[Matt]

Yeah.

[Danny]

Which is like, that's not very Christian, you know. Did you see the whole story about all those people in the military like blowing the whistle about their superiors telling them that this Holy Ron war was like a Trump's the next coming of Christ and we need to do this.

[Matt]

I did, I did see that come out. I don't know if it's true or not, but I, I remember when that

[Danny]

we talked to the guy.

[Matt]

Oh, did you? What was the guy, Weinstein?

[Danny]

Yes, Weinstein, yeah. What did you think? Well, he seems to be, he has an organization that is like dedicated to keeping religion out of the military. Right. And he was telling me that he talked to a bunch of the whistleblowers about this stuff and it was totally real that the, the, the, their superiors were all telling them this. There was like, like over 50. Over 50 people in, in the military that were, came out and said the same thing. That from different aspects of the military.

[Matt]

Yeah, different.

[Danny]

They said their superiors told them that this is like a religious war that we need to that Trump was anointed by Christ.

[Matt]

Well, I'll tell you, there is a very strong and I look, I don't have any problem with, oh, 15.

[Danny]

Okay.

[Matt]

I don't have any problem with Christianity or with Christians or anything like that. But there's amongst especially the officer class in the military.

[Danny]

I have a problem with baking that into your military.

[Matt]

Yes. There's a pretty strong strain of it. And I remember, I can actually remember the date of this because it was September 11, 2005. I was in Iraq. Kayak gets my flight, hotel and rental car right. So I can tune out travel advice. That's just plain wrong, bro. Sky coin way better than points never fly during a Scorpio full moon. Just tell the manager you'll sue. Instant room upgrade.

[Danny]

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[Matt]

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[Danny]

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[Matt]

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[Danny]

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[Danny]

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[Danny]

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[Matt]

With Ranger battalion and our platoon decided to have sort of like a memorial event to the people who are lost in 9 11, which is totally, I think, reasonable for soldiers to do something like that. The chaplain was invited to come and like give a speech or whatever. And when he started giving his spiel, he told us straight up, he's like, this is a religious war, men. And make no mistake of it, this is a religious war. I like. And I'm, I'm very atheist, quite frankly. And again, I don't have any problem with my Christian teammates, but when I hear stuff like that, I'm like, oh, okay, all right, man.

[Danny]

Right? Yeah, that, that's, that's a big problem with it because you have people, I'm sure in the military who are of many different religions or like atheists or skeptical of religion. And when you start to do that, you drive a divide between your teammates.

[Matt]

Right? And I mean, this is a. That, that was good lord. That was over 20 years ago now, but now you're seeing it quite overtly, you know, and like homeland security, social media accounts and stuff like that. One nation under God and all this sort of kind of it's. And we're. When it's. When it crosses that threshold and it becomes something that's kind of creepy. You know it when you see it, I guess.

[Danny]

Yeah, yeah, it's very odd. I don't know why. I don't know why they're doing that, but it seems to be a coordinated effort. Hurt, you know, with Hexas. Hexath is one of the big people that are. That's behind it.

[Matt]

Well, yeah. I mean, I'm probably not supposed to go too deep into partisan politics, but I mean, that's just bad. People will try to hijack religion for their own cause.

[Danny]

Yes, exactly.

[Matt]

Throughout history.

[Danny]

Yep, A hundred percent. Man, you're totally right about that. So going back to all this stuff with Iran and we were talking about Venezuela before that, you also, you did a story on this ghost mothership or something like this. This mothership that was found in Diego Garcia, was that you that did that or was that. Or was that on? It was on. It was on the higher side sub stack, but I was reading that.

[Matt]

No, we didn't do that story. But I know what you're talking about. It's sort of the, like, it's not necessarily covert, but it's like kind of a low key special operations platform. Yeah, it was down at Diego Garcia. Yep, I remember that.

[Danny]

So that's crazy. So that thing was allegedly off the coast of Venezuela before that Venezuelan raid.

[Matt]

Yes, I believe it was.

[Danny]

And something about that ship is like, if they can track where that thing is, that means like some sort of big operation's about to go down.

[Matt]

Yeah, they can. They can launch platforms off of there. So. Yeah.

[Danny]

Like what kind of platforms? What do you mean?

[Matt]

I'm not sure if it's does like amphibious vehicles? I don't think so, but I think they can get like ribs, like smaller boats, like SEAL delivery vehicles.

[Danny]

Oh, really?

[Matt]

Type stuff.

[Danny]

Diego Garcia is like in the middle of nowhere.

[Matt]

Yes, it is.

[Danny]

So why would it be way down there? Just like.

[Matt]

So Diego Garcia is like a major resupply point. I believe it's actually a British island, but the United States has like bunkers there with all munitions and stuff like that.

[Danny]

It's a crazy looking island. It's an atoll. Right. Where it's like.

[Matt]

It's a classic collapse volcano. Oh.

[Danny]

Oh, yeah.

[Matt]

It's like a. So it's like circle.

[Danny]

It's a circular island and the inside of it, it's all water. Right, Right. Bizarre looking.

[Matt]

Yeah. I had a A friend there recently.

[Danny]

Oh, really?

[Matt]

Yeah, yeah. He was there when the Iranians lobbed the ballistic missile at. At Diego Garcia.

[Danny]

Really? What happened to that ballistic missile?

[Matt]

Oh, just landed harmlessly in the ocean. It wasn't even close to them.

[Danny]

Wow.

[Matt]

But yeah, pull up a.

[Danny]

Pull up like a. A global map of it to show. Give people, like, the context of, like,

[Matt]

how there's a little town on there. And he got pissed because when the ballistic missile came in, they stopped selling alcohol at the little shop there on Da.

[Danny]

No way.

[Matt]

Yeah, they shut down alcohol. They're like, we're on a war footing, men. No more alcohol.

[Danny]

Wow.

[Matt]

So he was really butt hurt about that.

[Danny]

How far is that from Iran? That's pretty damn far, bro.

[Matt]

That's a ways.

[Danny]

That's a long way. I wonder how far that missile went. That's insane.

[Matt]

I mean, hundreds of miles, I heard.

[Danny]

I had somebody tell me that Diego Garcia was the area 51 of the ocean, that they have all kinds of spooky stuff out there. They might flying saucers, and that'd be a better place to hide it. Not Area 51.

[Matt]

True.

[Danny]

You know, Area 51 is kind of known for this stuff, so if you want to really hide that stuff, you should put it down.

[Matt]

There's a lot of too spooky stuff down in, like, the Panama City area of Florida. I think a lot of the Operation Ivy Bell stuff was run out of there when we were tapping. We first started tapping Soviet undersea cables back in the 1970s.

[Danny]

Oh, really?

[Matt]

Yeah. I ever tell you that story?

[Danny]

No.

[Matt]

So I talked to one of these divers on the phone years ago, and. And basically they took the submarine. They went into the bay in Kamchatka in far flung eastern Russia, and they were looking for signs and stuff along the coast that would say, caution, be careful. There's an underwater cable here. Okay, we know there's a cable in the area, and they went down. And the way he was describing it to me, he was one of the divers that locked out of the submarine. And he was telling me the story about the tap was already on the line. He had to go and recover the recordings. And the recordings, this is back in the day, they were analog, so they were like huge tape cassettes. And the tap was also like the size of this table almost. And it was really warm because he told me it was powered by a small nuclear reactor. And so when he came up to it, he said because of the warmth, it was just covered in, like, snow crabs. They're just all over it. And he'd like. It would take me like an hour to peel all the crabs off and like, zip tie them to something else to keep them away. What? And then he'd have to recover the recordings. And he said it was amazing. He's like, I guess with those fiber optic cables, like, you can dial down through each level of the fiber optics and listen to the different lines that are going through. And he was like. We'd hear like a Soviet soldier, like, playing Elvis songs on his guitar to his girlfriend over the phone who's in Moscow. Like, just all kinds of wild stuff. And the Navy got a lot of intelligence off of that. But, yeah, a lot of that stuff, I think, was focused out of the Panama City area, which is also where a lot of the CIA spooky maritime stuff is based out of also. And I think maybe we talked about it the last time I was on about the guys in the South China Sea that were killed.

[Danny]

Oh, yeah.

[Matt]

In a hurricane.

[Danny]

Yes, yes.

[Matt]

We talk about that CIA op that unfortunately went wrong.

[Danny]

Yeah. That's crazy. What about that. That story that you did about those drones that were stolen.

[Matt]

Oh,

[Danny]

so there's these big agricultural. Agricultural drones that were supposed to spray fertilizer.

[Matt]

This happened maybe like a month and a half ago now. Yeah. It was a company, Ceres, that manufactures these big agricultural drones. They can carry something like 40 gallons of liquid on them and disperse them within like eight or nine minutes or something like this, so they can aerosolize it. And there's a legitimate use of this. You'd use it to spray, like, pesticides on crops or whatever. And this is becoming increasingly common. And so they were sitting at a warehouse in New Jersey, a bunch of these drones.

[Danny]

When was this?

[Matt]

This is like a month and a half ago that they were stolen.

[Danny]

Okay.

[Matt]

A driver. So it's. It's like a holding warehouse. You know, New Jersey people drop off pallets, and then the buyer sends a driver, transportation transporter to come and pick it up and, you know, bill of lading and all that stuff. So. So box truck pulls up to pick up these drones. The guy has paperwork, he has a driver's license, everything. The bill of lading, everything looks totally legit. They're like, here's your drones, bro. Put it on the truck. He gets on and drives off. And so the warehouse calls up the company and is like, hey, the guy just came to pick up your drones. And the company was like, what guy? And at that point, everyone does a big fire drill. They're like, oh, shit it. And it turned out that the guy used a fake driver's license. The Department of Transportation number on the side of the truck was fake. The license plates were either fake or stolen. And they. Someone also hacked into the computer system to make it look like, you know, this was a legit driver. There is some sort of digital manipulation also.

[Danny]

Oh, Jesus.

[Matt]

So it's pretty sophisticated in how this happened. You know, they're called transit hubs, heists. And now these drones are in the wind, and the FBI gets involved.

[Danny]

Like, $50,000 drones, each of them.

[Matt]

I don't know how much they cost, but they're pretty robust.

[Danny]

Yeah, I thought it said it was like something like 50 or 60,000.

[Matt]

So drones like that could be used for nefarious purposes if you were to load them full of poison, some sort of chemical or biological agent, and spray them over a civilian.

[Danny]

Whoa, look at that, bro. Yeah, that's huge.

[Matt]

It's a unit.

[Danny]

Jesus.

[Matt]

Good Lord.

[Danny]

Okay. It has a huge tank to hold the chemicals right underneath it.

[Matt]

So the FBI is bricks looking for these things.

[Danny]

They get.

[Matt]

The ATF even gets involved in case, you know, they're to track fertilizer because they're afraid they might put conventional bombs on these. This is something that law enforcement's been looking at for a while, is like, you know, the use of drones for terrorism and even, like, assassination. You know, if you think about that, like, Luigi, dude that killed the healthcare CEO, like, if somebody wanted to do that, you send, like, two drones, and, like, one would blow the glass out in the building, and then the second drone would go into the office and kill the guy. So the. The police are looking at things like that a lot now.

[Danny]

Now

[Matt]

they're doing this whole fire drill looking for the drone or drones. About a month after they were stolen, I published that article with. With Sean on the high side, and that got picked up by, I don't know, probably like a dozen different media outlets picked up on it, including some big ones like it was in the New York Post and elsewhere. And so a couple days later, the drones were recovered. They were found just laying in a warehouse.

[Danny]

Oh, really?

[Matt]

A different warehouse in New Jersey? Yeah. And my. I know, a person I know told me if somebody just comes and dumps, like, pallets in a warehouse, like, everything's tracked digitally nowadays. If there's, like, something that's not supposed to be there, like, that's not going to go undiscovered, covered for more than a few hours. So the idea that it was sitting there for weeks and nobody noticed is, like, ridiculous. But the Thought I, I have heard a little update to this story. The FBI has some thought that because we published this story, it spooked whoever stole it and they dumped it and ran. I don't know though.

[Danny]

I mean, the, the most scary idea is that it was some sort of like Iranian.

[Matt]

That's what the fear was.

[Danny]

Yeah, yeah. That was going to conduct some sort of a terrorist attack. But it was so sophisticated. Right. Like, how would they do something so damn sophisticated like that? You know, with the scrubbing of the, or the having the fake DOT numbers, the driver's license, well, transit heists. And they would have to almost be in communication with the people who were supposed to pick it up to know exactly when they were coming.

[Matt]

I, I have been told the FBI is looking at that as well, that there's like an insider threat.

[Danny]

Right. Or it could just be, you know, it could just be as simple as like a, just a ploy to make money, you know, to fake that they were stolen, maybe get an insurance claim on it or something. Who knows?

[Matt]

Oh, oh, I don't want to accuse the company of that. I don't have any evidence of that.

[Danny]

But I mean, companies do do that. Like it's happened before.

[Matt]

I believe it. And also, you know, the, it's, it's New Jersey things have been falling off the back of trucks for a very long time. Our Italian American community may or may not have been involved in those, those activities in the past.

[Danny]

Right, right. Yeah, the drones. Ukraine is very good at drones, allegedly. Those videos that are coming, I think factually. No, the, the stuff that they've been doing with the drones, like the videos that I've been seeing that, that are, are horrific of how they've been using those drones to blow up. And, and there was also something that recently came out of. They're selling their technology to us now with their drone technology.

[Matt]

Probably their expertise. Their expertise or whatever. Yeah. You know, I don't follow the Ukraine war like day to day super carefully, but, you know, something you get might be interested in. I heard recently that we are sending JSOC guys to Ukraine and what they're doing over there was described to me as playing hide and seek with robots. So basically what they've been doing over there at the tactical level is like, kind of like sending out decoys that are going to draw in the Russian drones and then when they draw them in, they'll disable them or shoot them down or whatever they're going to do.

[Danny]

Oh, really?

[Matt]

Yeah. And meanwhile the Ukrainians have their drone operators that are out there looking for the. The Russian drone operators. So for the. The Ukrainians are looking for the Russian drone pilots while the J Sock guys are, like, disabling the drones themselves. Oh, interesting.

[Danny]

Trying to lure them out.

[Matt]

It's like. Yeah, it's basically like a drone ambush.

[Danny]

Wow, that's insane, man. Yeah, I. That. You don't hear anything about that. That conflict anymore. Like, does it seem like it's a priority?

[Matt]

Yeah, I mean, I just. I. I think a lot of that is because of this administration just in the headlines every single day with some new thing. The war in Ukraine, unfortunately, has kind of maybe taken a back seat. I was recently at an awards dinner for journalists, and a few of our CIA stories were nominated in one of the categories. But, I mean, the thing I noticed was that across the board, in all of the categories, immigration stories played a huge focus on the. On, you know, which. Not just the ones that were nominated, but also won. So, I mean, that's just to give an idea of, like, I think where people's heads are at. I think that immigration stuff is pretty serious. Maybe there was, like, one story out of Ukraine that won an award.

[Danny]

You know, immigration stories are getting the most attention.

[Matt]

Yeah. Like ICE and detention facilities and all that kind of stuff.

[Danny]

Stuff. Yeah. Like, how long ago was this?

[Matt]

This was a week ago.

[Danny]

Really?

[Matt]

Yeah.

[Danny]

I feel like I haven't heard a lot about immigration in the last couple. In the last month or so. I feel like the Iran war and the aliens have been taking up all the.

[Matt]

Well, in fairness, the awards are for the previous year.

[Danny]

Ah, I see.

[Matt]

That might be part of it, too.

[Danny]

That makes sense. That makes a lot of sense.

[Matt]

Yeah. Which I. I get that. I. I mean. Yeah.

[Danny]

Right. Hold that thought. I got to take a leak real quick.

[Matt]

Okay.

[Danny]

We'll be right back. I've never seen so much attention on something like this before on a congressman, on a.

[Matt]

On a.

[Danny]

On. On a election for a primary for a congressional person. Like, I feel like this Thomas Massie thing is. Is got so many people riled up.

[Matt]

Yeah. I wish I could speak coherently about.

[Danny]

Yeah. Have you paid any attention to it at all?

[Matt]

Not this.

[Danny]

Well, it's interesting because it's because Miriam Adelon is donated $20 million to the person that's challenging him.

[Matt]

Okay.

[Danny]

And Mar Adelon is also the person who donated $200 million to the Trump campaign. And she's basically an Israeli who. Trump famously joked about her. He was with her, I think, in Tel Aviv when they were doing some sort of A dinner. And he's like, you know, Miriam, I think you, like, you care about Israel a lot more than you care about the United States. And he was like joking about it, but he was being serious because everybody knows that's the case, you know, if you watch the BB Files or you pay attention to their history. So it's crazy that Kentucky, one of the poorest states in our country, is getting $20 million funded in the opposition of Thomas Massie, the guy who is explicitly calling out no more foreign funding and wants to get out the Epstein files. And he has the whole wrath of the administration coming down against him too.

[Matt]

It's a, Yeah, I mean, Israel is a whole other can of worms, but that's a, that's also a generational thing. Over the next 10, 20 years, I think you're going to see a lot more opposition to Israel.

[Danny]

And I think that I, I, I've talked about this, you know, recently. I don't understand how the next president, whoever runs for the president next in this country is not going to have to have that and be a main point of their campaign. Like, look, no more foreign aid to,

[Matt]

or, or at least like, not like being all in. Like, anything you want from us will give it to you. Anything you want to do with our weapons will allow it. You know, like.

[Danny]

Right.

[Matt]

Like somebody who's like pumping the brakes a little bit.

[Danny]

H. Yeah. And like, I don't blame, like, that's, the whole thing is like Israel is doing what they should do. Right. That's, they're, they're doing what they think is their bet in their best interests. I blame the people here who work, who are politicians in this country who just take the money and they, and they pretend like they are working for us when they're really not.

[Matt]

I mean, I, I think it's debatable if, you know, ethnic cleansing is really in, in Israel's best interest long term, but.

[Danny]

Right.

[Matt]

I see what you, I see there, I see what you're saying.

[Danny]

I mean, when it comes to subverting our people.

[Matt]

Yeah, yeah. I mean, we pay taxes to the United States government, we don't pay taxes to Israel.

[Danny]

Exactly.

[Matt]

We expect our representatives to represent us, not some foreign country.

[Danny]

Exactly.

[Matt]

Yeah.

[Danny]

Yeah. And that's, it seems like the younger generations are becoming more and more aware of this, that more than ever.

[Matt]

Yeah.

[Danny]

Now, yeah.

[Matt]

The, the Israel stuff is really becoming like cement slippers for, for politicians, I feel like.

[Danny]

That's a good way of putting it. Yeah, that's a good way of putting it. And you Know, this Massey guy, I mean, he's just getting like, like grassroots support from everybody. Like he's getting donations from people on. Like he's just posting on Twitter, doing interviews, talking about like, what's going on. And he's getting ambushed by, by like the mainstream media saying, like, you know, you're pretending to be a Republican, you're a rhino, you don't vote for a Republican. And like he says straight up, he's like, I've voted with my party on 95 of the issues except for foreign aid and to APAC and to Israel and the Epstein files. Like, those are the only two things that I go against my party on. And it's now it's getting to the point where like, okay, this crazy Israel, like in, in our country now is getting so out of hand. They should have foreseen this. So it's like, maybe they, this is intentional now.

[Matt]

I mean, I don't think politicians, theirs or ours are really capable of like that kind of long term thought. And I mean, you hear the term all the time, you know, ascribed to Trump and others. You know, they're playing 3D chess, they're playing three dimensional chess. Let me tell you something, there's nobody in the world competent enough to play three dimensional chess. On a good day. On a good day, the United States can play chess. Most days, day to day, we're just playing checkers. Just day to day decisions.

[Danny]

Yeah.

[Matt]

So, yeah, when you hear, I know I'm very skeptical about, I think Netanyahu's trying to save his own ass, Trump trying to save his own ass. It's just. Yeah, these are politicians, it's what they do.

[Danny]

Yeah. Well, he came out on the media the other day and he said, I want to, I want to start weaning off of the aid from, from America. Right now it's 4 billion. And he's like, over the next, I think 10 years we can completely wean off that foreign aid. Yeah, I'll believe it when I say 10 years, huh? How about cold turkey?

[Matt]

Yeah.

[Danny]

What about all the money we paid already? Like, do we get a disc? Do we get a refund?

[Matt]

Yeah, well, Mike Huckabee making his whole, whole little spiel is like, if you don't support Israel, you won't have computers anymore, you won't have cherry tomatoes. It's like, dude, what?

[Danny]

Oh my God.

[Matt]

You see that, that interview he did, he's our, he's our ambassador to Israel right now. I should point out out he did that interview where he's like, Yeah, I don't. Yeah. Where he's like, I don't mind if Israel takes over everything from the Nile to the Euphrates, because, like, the Bible says that's their land.

[Danny]

Yeah.

[Matt]

It's like, bro, like, again, I don't have a problem with religious people, Christian or Jew, but when you hear, like, that's, that has political repercussions.

[Danny]

Oh, yeah.

[Matt]

I'm like, I'm not really on board with this, man.

[Danny]

Yeah. They want to turn Israel into ancient Babylon. They want to bring back the ancient baby. The borders of ancient Babylon.

[Matt]

Well, I mean, and you saw the thing. Mike Johnson and the Red Heers.

[Danny]

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Matt]

I wish that was a conspiracy theory. I wish that wasn't true.

[Danny]

Yeah. The red heifer. And there's like the, the thing about the Dome of the Rock, too. Like, the Dome of the Rock needs to be destroyed or something.

[Matt]

God, or.

[Danny]

What is the real name for that? The Alaka Mosque.

[Matt]

These people are so nuts.

[Danny]

Yeah, the, the, this. It's just, just, it feels so weird, man. All of the, all the religious zealots that are, like, intertwined with this whole Israel thing, you know, like, with. Not just like the E. There's the evangelicals. You know how they've like, gotten all the evangelicals. There's a whole evangelical lobby here, apparently. And now they're all going, going over there and they're somehow, like, convincing them that they, you know, the Jews and the evangelicals, it's this religious cohesion where we need to bring back the second coming of Christ. And it's just like, whoa, dude, this feels like the Waco thing.

[Matt]

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, again, I'm not religious, but I think, like, you know, if there's going to be a second coming, if there's going to be a rapture, I think that's kind of like on God to figure that out. It's like, it's not up to us to usher it in.

[Danny]

Well, we gotta. Yeah, we gotta hasten it.

[Matt]

It.

[Danny]

We got to hurry it up.

[Matt]

They're accelerationists.

[Danny]

They're trying to accelerate the coming of the Antichrist.

[Matt]

Yeah, I don't, I don't think I'm

[Danny]

on board with this. No. Yeah. I, I hope this is all over soon. I do. I'm not up. I'm not optimistic, but God damn. I, I, Yeah, I don't know.

[Matt]

Do, do you want to talk about the book a little bit? Yeah, there are some, like, real life stories in there I think people might get a kick out of.

[Danny]

Is this book out yet?

[Matt]

No, it comes out June 9th.

[Danny]

Okay. The most Dangerous Man.

[Matt]

Yeah. So the book, it's a military thriller, a novel that I wrote that's coming out in June, and it's based off of a premise that everyone's familiar with. It's the classic short story written over a hundred years ago, the Most Dangerous Game, which is where the title the Most Dangerous man comes from. And the premise, again, people have seen it in movies, if nothing else before. The concept of human beings hunting other human beings for sport. And in this book, a group of tech bro billionaires have a Army Ranger kidnapped in West Africa, and they hunt him for sport. So there are characters in there, bad guys, villains, who might be inspired by real life, people you might be able to pick out. And I think it's a lean, mean novel, really. I didn't want to blue ball the audience. You know, we get right to it. There's not a lot of bullshit in there. And you know the nicest thing, I ran into Mark Graney, one of my favorite authors, and I ran into him at a conference the other day, and he read it on an airplane and was like, it was exactly what I wanted it to be be. I was like, all right, that's amazing. Yeah, accomplish the mission. But to maybe get into, like, some of the real life stuff, that kind of inspired me to write this novel. It wasn't just that I enjoyed that short story that I read in high school going back over a decade. At this point, I was having lunch with a ranger buddy of mine. I was in college at the time. He was contracting, doing maritime security stuff. And so we sit down and we're having something to eat. And he tells me this story that he's hearing through his contractor buddies working in Africa, that there are these African safari guides that take wealthy people big game hunting.

[Danny]

Yeah.

[Matt]

And they also have contracts to do counter poaching stuff. So they're trying to stop people from killing the elephants on national game reserves and things like that. And he said what one guy did was he combined the two business models. So he started taking his wealthy clientele hunting poachers for money.

[Danny]

Is this the Vet Paw?

[Matt]

No, I. I believe that's a real life organization. So. No, I. I don't. I. I've never heard them mentioned with that kind of activity.

[Danny]

The Vet Paw is an organization that they take military veterans out to Africa and they basically they hunt poachers. They like, they kid, they. They render them. They go to their house and they pull them out of their.

[Matt]

I've heard of some of them, these groups, I don't know them to be involved in what I'm describing.

[Danny]

Okay.

[Matt]

But I thought that was really interesting when my buddy told me that. And so, again, like, 10 years go by, and more recently, another friend told me a story kind of out of the blue. And this person had not direct knowledge, but they knew a European royal family that had gone down to West Africa and done this. And it was described to me like, you know those videos of, like, people hunting hogs from helicopters? It was basically that. But they were hunting poachers.

[Danny]

Oh.

[Matt]

And I was like, yeah, just mowing them down. That's exactly my reaction. I was like, no, man.

[Danny]

Like the native poachers there.

[Matt]

Yeah. So that went into the inspiration for this. For this novel. And then towards the end of writing it, actually what came up on my radar, it actually popped in the news. A news story about people during the Bosnian war in the 1990s. Wealthy people from Russia, the United States and Italy and perhaps elsewhere paying a lot of money to certain people in Serbia to go to the outskirts of Sarajevo and shoot civilians for, like, they were. They were, like, game hunters. And they paid money for this. They actually say they. They paid a tariff on the people they killed. What? And they paid the highest tariff for.

[Danny]

Where was this?

[Matt]

Sarajevo.

[Danny]

Where's that?

[Matt]

In Bosnia.

[Danny]

In Bosnia. Why were they doing this?

[Matt]

For sport. There's competitions. To shoot the prettiest girl, they had to pay the highest tariff for shooting kids. Yeah. This came out in, like, the Guardian and stuff like that. And a lot of it is based off of a documentary called Sarajevo Safari. And I went and found the documentary, and I watched it towards, like, the end of editing this book, actually. And it's horrifying what's described in that. They interview a mother who's like. Like, her daughter was, like, 2. She was just learning the walk. And a sniper targeted them at the park and killed her daughter.

[Danny]

What?

[Matt]

It's horrifying. It's horrifying stuff. And this scenario, what I'm describing to you, is working its way through the Italian court system right now, because I don't know exactly what's going to come of it, if they're going to try to prosecute people or not. In the Sarajevo Safari documentary. Yeah. There is Times of London. They interview, like, Bosnian intelligence officers and other people. They interview one of the fixers. His, like, face is blacked out, but he was, like, the intermediary that would, like, bring the people to Serbia. And they were wearing, like, all their hunting gear, and they'd have their bolt action rifles and everything. Yeah,

[Danny]

wealthy Europeans were paying. Paying, like, who were the people that they were paying to do this?

[Matt]

The Serbs, allegedly.

[Danny]

And what. And so did they want the bodies or they want footage of it or, like, what did they.

[Matt]

I don't know if they were making footage of it, but I think they were just. They were hunting human beings the way, you know. And did these people.

[Danny]

Did these wealthy people want the bodies?

[Matt]

Not that I don't think they could recover the bodies because that would have. That require them to go into the city.

[Danny]

Right.

[Matt]

So, I mean, all of that kind of played into the influence for this book and. Holy. Yeah, there's. There's a group of tech bro hunters in the. In the book. And there's a European royal family shows up later on.

[Danny]

Wow. I can't believe I've never heard of this.

[Matt]

Dude, It's. Yeah, it's pretty sickening, actually. Like, I almost feel a little bad talking about it because, like, this book is fictional and it's.

[Danny]

It's.

[Matt]

There's a bit of social commentary in there, but it was intentionally, you know, supposed to be, you know, an entertaining novel. And then when you read this, it's like, yeah, that's just horrible. It's not entertaining at all.

[Danny]

Rich sniper tourists allegedly paid 90,000 to shoot civilians, including kids, during human safari trips to Sarajevo. Wild claims allege. This is just reported last November.

[Matt]

Go down.

[Danny]

Wealthy sniper tourists allegedly played 9,000 to shoot people during human safari trips to Sarajevo in the 90s. Extra fee for kids. Including wild claims of being probed by Italian prosecutors. More than 10,000 were killed in Sarajevo by snipers and shelling between 92 and 96.

[Matt]

Yeah, but during the. I mean, it's just a small number that would have been, you know, most of them killed by. By, you know, military snipers.

[Danny]

By military stuff.

[Matt]

Right, right. Who. But who knows, really, how many of those were killed by people there for commercial purposes? Right.

[Danny]

Oh, my God. Dude.

[Matt]

Was it tens? Was it hundreds? I. I don't think anyone knows.

[Danny]

You know, like, you hear stories of this, too. You see this stuff in like. Like, show, like, TV shows, and, like, you hear, like, the crazy, like, occult stories of, like, rich people that, like, okay, we're gonna chase you through the woods, and we go on this, like, ritualistic hunting thing where you have to run from us and we try to hunt you. And, like, you never think that this stuff is actually real, dude. I mean, this is like Epstein Files type.

[Matt]

Yeah, it's. It's like the Degeneracy of it.

[Danny]

Right. Which has been happening, you know, murdering

[Matt]

innocent people for your own vanity. Dude.

[Danny]

Like, what is it about people. What. What is it about people that. That drives them to do this kind of thing? You know? Is it. Is it. Because it always seems to be, like, the. The top tier of society or, like, richest people who are like royalty or.

[Matt]

Well, there are psychopaths, you know, at the bottom strata of society, too, but we lock them up in prison, you know, or in mental institutions or whatever. But when you're rich, you got a get out of free jail card Again, get out of jail free card in a lot of ways. Jeffrey Epstein had one of those, for example, until, again, back to our conversation about why journalism matters. The only reason why Epstein was put in prison and prosecuted was because of reporting that Julie Brown did at the Miami Herald.

[Danny]

Julie K. Brown?

[Matt]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. She's great. Otherwise, he'd. He'd still be walking free today.

[Danny]

Yeah. I always wonder. I wonder. I wonder when the CIA caught wind of him, you know, because we knew that when that one guy, the. The guy in Florida who was working for Trump came out and said that we know he's intelligence, and basically that's why, like, we can't release any of his stuff because he belonged to intelligence. He wouldn't have known if he was foreign intelligence. Right. He had to have been.

[Matt]

Who was this?

[Danny]

It was. He was a Florida politician, and he worked under Trump's first administration.

[Matt]

Okay.

[Danny]

Latino guy. He. He has the famous quote saying that we knew we had information regarding Epstein and we can't disclose it because that it's. We are aware that he belonged to intelligence and he tried to.

[Matt]

Yeah.

[Danny]

Which means what he sensed has tried to walk that back. Acosta.

[Matt]

Okay.

[Danny]

Alexander Acosta. Yes. And he's the guy that had to

[Matt]

step down, didn't he?

[Danny]

Did he? I'm not sure. Did Acosta have to step down?

[Matt]

He wasn't he, like, the AG or something like that?

[Danny]

Yeah, that sounds right.

[Matt]

And he had to step down because he was involved in, like, this sweetheart deal that Epstein got.

[Danny]

Yes, yes, yes.

[Matt]

Yeah, yeah. He had to resign over that during the first Trump administration.

[Danny]

Yeah. So I'm wondering, like, at what point, because the claim is that, you know, he. The CIA was aware of him, and he was clearly, you know, working with, you know, he worked with Ahud Barak, who's legendary, you know, Volmer, head of Israel. Real. And so, you know, it's like, at what point did the CIA become aware of him? And why did the CIA choose to work with Him.

[Matt]

Well, I don't think the CIA worked with him, but given his international connections and the people, like, again, like, if you're an American and you're trying to have a sit down meeting with Putin, you're going to come up on intelligence interceptions like, like they're going to become aware of you. But the CIA can't actually like, monitor American citizens or, or recruit them for as like an intelligence asset, so.

[Danny]

But they can't monitor American citizens. But we know they do, right?

[Matt]

Not the CIA. What happens is like, outgoing stuff gets captured. Instant, instant. And so like, if I, as an American citizen am trying to talk to bin Laden or something like that, right? My, my information will be intercepted in the process of that because they're watching bin Laden, not me.

[Danny]

Oh, I see.

[Matt]

But then, but then when they see that I'm talking to them, probable cause right now, now that's gonna go to the FBI and the FBI is gonna start working that.

[Danny]

Right, right, right, right. But my thing with, with the Epstein thing is like, like he clearly had undeniable ties to Israel and he was getting all these powerful people together and quite obviously getting lots of valuable blackmail on them. All kinds of knowledge on our getting scientists over there, heads of state over there and compromising them. Presidents, fucking Bill Clinton. So like, don't you think it would be possible that once the CIA became aware of him, which I'm sure they did, way earlier than he got arrested, like, if the CIA was not aware, they're, they're so incompetent, it's not even funny. But like, if they, when they, whenever they did become aware of what he was doing and his operation, is it possible that they were like, listen, we see what you're doing, we know what you're doing. We're not going to let you do this anymore unless you pay us a tax, like give us some of this stuff, like we're gonna start getting some intel. I don't know.

[Matt]

I mean, I've heard these allegations for years that like, the CIA is running global drug trafficking. I'm like, these guys. I mean, the thing about the CIA is on one hand it's very interesting, but on the other hand, it's not as interesting as a lot of people think it is. One of the funniest descriptions I ever heard was that it's like the post office but with spies.

[Danny]

Right?

[Matt]

That's not entirely accurate. Maybe the more accurate thing I heard is a former agency guy told me he's like, the job is 99% bureaucratic bullshit. And 1%. Holy shit. I can't believe we're doing this. That's probably more in the ballpark of what it's really like.

[Danny]

Yeah, yeah. I think from the files, I think it became clear. I think he was above the intelligence layer. You know what I mean?

[Matt]

I mean, he's above every layer in a sense when it comes to any sort of accountability.

[Danny]

Oh, sure. And I think he's probably still alive.

[Matt]

Really?

[Danny]

Yeah.

[Matt]

You think he's hanging out with like, Tupac and Biggie?

[Danny]

No, I think he's probably in Israel. I think he probably got a face, a facial reconstruction, and he's, he's probably back there somewhere or on another island somewhere.

[Matt]

Maybe he's in Las Vegas with Elvis. I don't think, I don't think maybe

[Danny]

he's Palm Beach Pete, bro. Have you seen Palm Beach Pete? You haven't seen Palm Beach Pete?

[Matt]

No. Oh, my God.

[Danny]

Show him Palm Beach Pete, Pete. Palm Beach Pete is a, a super celebrity living in South Florida because he looks just like Jeffrey Epstein.

[Matt]

Oh, really?

[Danny]

And he actually met Jeffrey Epstein. He talks just like Jeffrey Epstein and he's like, he's going on like late night talk shows.

[Matt]

Oh, my God.

[Danny]

He has a cameo account. People are paying him. Look, this is him. Put your headphones.

[Matt]

Oh, yeah, man,

[Danny]

Check this guy out. Oh.

[Matt]

Some dude randomly filmed me while I was driving on I95, unbeknownst to me. And the next thing I know, I'm a viral sensation. It's pretty crazy. I want to thank everybody for the positive comments I got from saying I'm not Jeffrey Epstein. I'm just Palm Beach Pete. Going to play some tennis today, going into town, have lunch. I'm so not Jeffrey Epstein. I'm just me being me. And it's a crazy phenomenon that has went really viral. And I really appreciate all the support and just want to reiterate. I'm Peter from Palm beach. Have nothing to do with Jeffrey Epstein. He's a very bad person. What he did, obviously. And he is dead and I'm alive.

[Danny]

He ain't dead, mother.

[Matt]

Dude, that's hilarious.

[Danny]

He's alive. I'm convinced he's alive.

[Matt]

I, I, I think, man, this is getting off topic, but I, I mean, Jeff Epstein is the type of guy, like, he could not have done prison time. Like a dude like that, you put him in the box and I think he chose his own way out.

[Danny]

So number one, they're in the Epstein files and in recorded depositions with him, he has stated that he does not have a prostate. There was Emails with him and his doctor talking about medications he was going to go on and all this stuff. And he was explaining the reason why he's on these medications is because he doesn't have a prostate. And he has got his prostate removed like early on in life, Right. In his official autopsy, there's a full examination of his prostate.

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[Matt]

That is. Yes. If that's true. It's quite odd.

[Danny]

Quite odd. Also the, the new note that came out.

[Matt]

Yeah, from. From the.

[Danny]

That freaking juiced up gorilla that they put in his. The cop killer.

[Matt]

Yeah, well, he's a cop that smoked.

[Danny]

Like a cop that smoked four people. Like. Yeah, killed four people. And the dude looks like he's injecting gasoline into his veins. He's so big. They put that guy in his cell after he assaulted. Or was it the story that he allegedly. Like, I forget what the first story was, but I guess I think he was assaulted by the guy first. And then now after all these years, the guy comes out his law off, his lawyers come out with this note that's allegedly a suicide note. And it's definitely Jeffrey Epstein's handwriting too. Like, we know this. Like, why wouldn't you release that six years ago, you know?

[Matt]

Yeah, correct. I mean, the thing is that, you know, this is like the new JFK assassination that, you know, we were. I mean, actually it's a lot worse, you know, but I Think that this guy escaped accountability for so long, so many people could have stopped him and should have.

[Danny]

Right.

[Matt]

We were lied for. And we're. I think they're probably still lying to us about what this guy was up to. Goes back to that loss of faith in the institutions that we were talking about. That now you, you can't help but wonder, like, what else are you lying to me about? What else is going on is how many other Jeffrey Epstein are there out there?

[Danny]

Right.

[Matt]

You know, like people, people wonder about that. And I'm not saying there are others out there, but it's quite natural to, to ask that question.

[Danny]

Yeah, it is. And that's a good question. How many more people are still like that, that are out there operating, that we have no clue exist? You know, like they haven't, they haven't even started to excavate the surface layer of this whole thing. And I don't think that we'll probably ever know the truth about it because it's like a, it's like civilization ending type. You know, the people that were involved

[Matt]

solved Fall of Rome type.

[Danny]

It's Fall of Rome type. It really is. It's like the same Tiberius was doing, you know, with like, like these crazy stories of these sadistic ancient Roman emperors that were just like killing and torturing people all the time.

[Matt]

Yeah. For fun.

[Danny]

For fun. And like I said, going back to what you were saying about your book about those people that are hunting people, it's like the level of like psychopath, psychopathic and, and sociopathy that are in these people. That's in these people. It's just like it's a, it's a tale as old as time with people that are the top layer of society doing this kind of the, the extreme wealth and power.

[Matt]

I mean, it definitely seems to have a negative consequence for these people.

[Danny]

What is this, Steve? Oh, this, this is the, the, oh, the prostate email. Okay.

[Matt]

Oh, where he's saying in the deputies.

[Danny]

So Richard says. Exactly. And it's not clear, clear what other effects those hormones might be having that aren't replacing the testosterone. And so the advantage of, to taking testosterone. There are two different things. You can have high testosterone and still have a need for Viagra because you don't have a prostate. Right. Jeffrey Epstein. Correct. So that's an extreme example. And then, and then this is the autopsy description of his bladder contains approximately 5 ML of cloudy yellow urine. The prostate is slightly and diffusely enlarged with mark with marked enlargement of the. Whatever that word is. And the testes are unremarkable.

[Matt]

Yeah, I wonder what. I mean, I'm horrified that we're having such an in depth conversation about Jeffrey Epstein's prostate.

[Danny]

Right.

[Matt]

But, yeah, I wonder what was going on there.

[Danny]

Yeah, nothing to see here, bro. There's also a. There's a crazy show that was done with, I think it was Discovery maybe where that guy, Andy Bustamante, that, like, famous YouTube spy, he. He did this series on or like one episode of this show that they're doing where they, they got the blueprints of the cell that he was in and like the official blueprints and then they like reconstructed it and tried to like, simulate how to hang yourself, and there was like virtually no way to kill yourself. And that's unless, like, they. He tried doing it like with the exact rope or the exact cloth tied around his neck within the confines of that cell. And he's like, there's no way you could jump off this bump without hitting that wall and like smashing your head on the wall and you'd have a huge contusion on your head. He's like, there's no way he could have, like, reasonably like, strangled himself to death. So. And then there was also like a, a separate little area of that cell that was like a cutout into the room where like the wall came in at like a 90 degree angle. And he's like, that's weird. He's like, this part of the cell isn't on the official blueprints. He's like, but it is there. So he's like, why would there be. Why would this be different in the blueprints and from like, what the actual dimensions of the cell are? And they're speculating that it could have been like a, a secret room that he could have been in, like exfiltrated out of. And he's like, yeah, it wouldn't have been hard to do this, you know, but who knows?

[Matt]

Yeah, I mean, it starts to sound like magic bullet theories at a certain point, but.

[Danny]

Yeah, yeah, it does. Did you. Speaking of the magic bullet, did you see the stuff that just came out about allegedly the DNI office, like the CIA stole a bunch of files out of the DNI office?

[Matt]

Yeah, I did. It's. I saw that, like, coming out on, in the, in social media and stuff. I mean, I don't see how that could possibly be true. Yeah, like, who's the CIA going to send to the DNI to confiscate files? And why. For what, what purpose?

[Danny]

I. Yeah, so it was supposed to be A bunch of MK Ultra files, JFK files, and something else.

[Matt]

I think, especially with this administration, you have to be cautious about, like what we were talking about with Rat Code Cliff, where, you know, there are all these little chai boys around the administration who are all competing with one another for the King's favor. And I. I think that's where a lot of these, like, leaks and stories and stuff sometimes come from.

[Danny]

Yeah, well, I was watching something about that, and it was saying that that happened a year ago, but the story is now somehow just hitting the news about the DNI office. Who is the. I mean, the head of the. The DNI is Tulsi Gabbard. Right. She's the head of Director of National Intelligence.

[Matt]

Whatever Tulsi's saying about it.

[Danny]

Yeah, yeah. What did Tulsi say about that? Find out what Tulsi said about that. Because I heard that that actually happened a year ago, but now all of a sudden it's in the news and the Anna Palina Luna lady was on TV demanding that the CIA return the documents. Like, you have 24 hours to return these documents or else.

[Matt]

I mean, the sad thing is, like, I know people are hoping that the U.S. government has these, like, documents on the JFK assassination that are going to, like, offer clarity and bring about some sort of, like, resolution. And I'm sorry, like, I'm that guy that's probably gonna piss off a lot of your listeners. Like, those documents don't exist. Like, we don't have them. You know, Trump keeps talking about this stuff that he's going to release this and release that and even the other stuff that he talks about, like the election being rigged. He's the President. He has this whole apparatus under him. He can declassify anything he wants, order investigations into things.

[Danny]

Where.

[Matt]

Where are these documents? Where's the proof? And again, it's just these documents don't exist. And it's very similar to the whole, like, UFO disclosure thing.

[Danny]

Yes.

[Matt]

Disclosure is right around the corner. It's coming.

[Danny]

Well, I think if there's. I think at that point, stuff's real. I don't think the President has access to it. So Tulsi Gabard says her office denies the Florida lawmakers claim of CIA rating and seizing JFK and MK Ultra documents. Okay.

[Matt]

I seem to.

[Danny]

I found this with this all. Feels like a big, limited hangout.

[Matt]

It. It's probably just some person in that lawmaker's office trying to get the boss into the headlines or something.

[Danny]

Right.

[Matt]

Maybe that's the problem again, like talking about like the issues with journalism is. Especially when you work for big publications, you know, the New York Times.

[Danny]

Is that the best you could find is Fox 9? There's only three articles I could find and they're all odd. This is another one I weon whoever we on is it's China. Same information. It's just Tulsi Gabber's office denies whistleblower claims on CIA red. Okay, okay.

[Matt]

Is that when governmental offices are leaking something to the press, to. To especially newspapers and so on, sometimes those leaks are. Contain some accurate information, but they're also being leaked for political reasons. Like someone, Someone. Someone in the office is trying to screw over someone else in the office. And you don't know who those people are or even what their motivations are. So like, yeah, you see a story like this hit the press and like, you say they're kind of weird. Like, it seems like a weird article with kind of like opaque information. And maybe that's what's going on there.

[Danny]

John Karaku told me that the reason that the FBI. And he says he has sources that are like, very tight in, like, still has like, very tight sources in, in the Agency and like in the White House and stuff. And he told me on this podcast that the reason that they're not going to release the JFK files is because they point to a very specific country, basically saying Israel. He's saying that Israel's.

[Matt]

There's some stuff. I think it has more to do with Cuba. We had probably assets in Cuba. And I think that's the last stuff that they're hesitant to declassify because they don't like to give up their sources and methods. Look, you can. I'll be here on camera, on audio, saying there is not going to be any new revelations from any government files about the JFK assassination.

[Danny]

I'm with you. I don't think there will be either.

[Matt]

You know, that's. That sucks. I know there's a lot of people out there who want some sort of resolution to this. It's like an open wound for a lot of Americans even all these years later. But I don't think we're going to really get any deeper information than we have today.

[Danny]

Yeah, I think the person that I've talked to who has like, the most, most like smoking gun evidence I've ever seen is this guy named John Newman. I don't know if you've ever heard of him. No, he, he was a consultant, actually, on the first JFK film with Oliver Stone.

[Matt]

Okay.

[Danny]

And I've had multiple JFK experts on here, and I've asked all of them, I'm like, who's, like the number one, like, de facto, most educated person on this whole thing, who's like, read all the documents and. And been studying this longer than anyone, and they all say that this John Newman dude is. So I had him in here, and he was telling me this crazy story on how he actually tracked down a. A cable. This doesn't prove who did it, but it does prove that who was involved. He says he tracked down a cable between the FBI and the CIA, the CIA's Mexico City desk and the FBI, basically, that shows that there was this thing called a flash stop on Oswald's record. Meaning it was like a. Like a. An alarm siren.

[Matt]

Yeah, they were watching him.

[Danny]

They were watching him very closely. And a couple days or maybe a week before JFK was assassinated, the flash stop was removed off of his file trial because he said that, like, that flash stop, if. If he was anywhere near that area during that day, it would have set off all the alarm bells and he would have been in the equivalent of a. A fleet at a Lysol convention.

[Matt]

But in the 1960s, how would they know if he was there or not?

[Danny]

I don't know.

[Matt]

Nowadays with license plate readers and everything else, I mean, but he found.

[Danny]

So he found the CIA lady who signed off, off on that cable, that CIA cable. And he went. Her name was Jane Roman. And he went and interviewed her at her home before she died. And she's like, what is this? What. What do you make of this cable? What. Can you explain this? And she goes, it's very indicative of some sort of close interest in Oswald. That is way above my pay grade. And she's like, I didn't ask any questions, but it's very odd.

[Matt]

I mean, I'm not a JFK expert either, but I. I mean, I believe that. That they were interested in him because he was approaching the Soviets at one point.

[Danny]

Yeah, he defected, right?

[Matt]

Yeah. Or something like this. I mean, I recall the story. So, I mean, it makes sense that they would have an interest in him. In retrospect, of course, maybe they should have had more of an interest in him.

[Danny]

Right.

[Matt]

Yeah.

[Danny]

Yeah. One of the things we haven't talked about yet is China. What. What do you. What is your, like, overall view of how. How China is doing on, like, the geopolitical stage compared to when we're involved in this Iran thing? I know they're definitely affected quite a bit by this. And then Trump just went and visited China and Had a bunch of nice things to say about them and wants to work very closely with them. I mean, obviously we don't want to get into a punching match with China.

[Matt]

Yeah, absolutely. I don't think the Chinese want that either. Yeah, I mean, I think China is very shrewdly playing a longer game here than we are. The first Trump administration was pretty antagonistic towards the Chinese. Biden came in and also was pretty antagonistic and about nationalizing critical industries and things like that, getting away from Chinese dependence. Trump, too, seems like they want reconciliation with both Russia and China. Maybe. I guess they want them as trade partners. Well, I don't have to guess. I mean, look at who he brought with them on that trip to China.

[Danny]

Every CEO known to man, everyone looking

[Matt]

to cash in, shove $100 bills in their pockets. Must be nice to have those kinds of political connections.

[Danny]

The videos of them walking around like

[Matt]

the kids jumping up and down, it's shameful, really. But, I mean, I think the Chinese are pretty content to sit back and watch the chaos unfold in the United States because they don't have to do anything. All they have to do is watch us screw up.

[Danny]

Yeah.

[Matt]

And the Chinese have, in some documents in the past, describe their approach towards America as trying to manage a declining empire, because empires in decline lash out and they get violent. Violent. And they try to blame other people for their problems. Now, I'm not trying to downplay the threat that the Chinese pose in some ways to the United States, but they're not wrong either. Right. I think they feel that they can kind of sit back and just watch us implode from within. They don't really have to compete with us, never mind get into a shooting war with us. Is that really necessary?

[Danny]

Right.

[Matt]

The way America is right now. If China did invade Taiwan, would we. What would we do? Would we do anything?

[Danny]

Would they even have to invade? Invade? Do you think they could just, like, buy off those politicians? It seems like there. There's some diplomacy happening, right?

[Matt]

Yes. I mean, a lot of that's already in the works. And kmt, the Chinese Nationalist Party, is leaning towards unification with the Chinese mainland. So, yeah, I think from China's point of view, they would much rather have Taiwan vote itself back into the mainland.

[Danny]

Right.

[Matt]

Yeah, I don't think. I don't think China is, like, hankering for a war or anything like that. That's not their prerogative.

[Danny]

And is. Do you think that's a. Like, how is that a problem for us?

[Matt]

Well, that they're not looking for a War is not a problem.

[Danny]

I mean, I mean that they unify with Taiwan. Well, take Taiwan however you want to say it.

[Matt]

Taiwan is interesting in the sense that these Chinese nationalists escaped from China during the Cultural Revolution during, you know, when the Chinese civil war essentially escaped to Taiwan. And Taiwan represents a Chinese population, very close, that has embraced democracy and capitalism and makes it work, work. And it kind of flies in the face of the party line, literally the party line of the Chinese Communist Party, that freedom can't work for Chinese people. Taiwan contradicts that. So it's a problem for the Chinese from the United States. From our perspective, as we become isolationist or increasingly non interventionist, maybe we don't care. Okay, if the Chinese control the shipping lanes in and out of Asia, do we care about that? Does that impact us? You know, if they start, they're already taking over these artificial islands or actual existing islands from the Philippines. It's a strategy that has been described as slicing the salami. You're just changing norms very slowly, very incrementally.

[Danny]

Yes.

[Matt]

And then by the time somebody's like, oh shit, the Chinese can control, you know, half of Southeast Asia. And it's like, oh, well, what are you going to do about it now?

[Danny]

Yeah, it's like a soft power strategy. I mean, like the Belt and Road,

[Matt]

some, some, some hard power. I mean, annexing Filipino territory is hard power, but there's, there's a lot of soft power, you're right, and a lot of diplomacy. So ideally, I mean, we could reach some sort of modus vivendi, a sort of normalization of things, of relations with China. But the reality is America sees itself as a hegemon. The Chinese see themselves as a hegemon. Like we're going to collide and we should probably be realistic about that. But I mean, again, back to the Taiwan issue. If China did invade Taiwan or did reintegrated into the mainland, ask the average American why that matters to them.

[Danny]

Right?

[Matt]

They're probably like, where's Taiwan? What's that?

[Danny]

Right.

[Matt]

So I mean.

[Danny]

Yeah, well, the big thing is like the chips, right?

[Matt]

The semiconductors.

[Danny]

The semiconductors, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Matt]

And I mean, if you care about democracy, you know, a lot of people seem not to. So.

[Danny]

Yeah, and they also, they manufacture like 90% of our pharmaceuticals, our pharmaceutical products there. They own a huge ton of our debt. It's like we're really in no position to challenge them whatsoever.

[Matt]

The, the Taiwanese or the Chinese.

[Danny]

The Chinese.

[Matt]

Oh, yeah, that, that. So that's a lot of the, like, stuff that we were trying to do to bring some of that industry back to the United States so that we're less reliant on the Chinese. Honestly, I don't even know where those policies and where those programs are under a second Trump administration. I'm not, I'm not sure. They may not exist.

[Danny]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it, you know, it's kind of like, it's strange. And then, and then Trump's also talking about taking Cuba. People are saying that he's going to try to take over Cuba in, like, the next month or so. I don't know. It's how that works. I don't know what the, you know, some people think it's good. Like, oh, great, we'll have more vacation spots. But, like, how logistic, how, how real is that? Is that going to be as easy as Venezuela?

[Matt]

I mean, I think Trump has brainwashed himself into thinking he can chalk up these easy military wins like we were talking about earlier, and then he pat himself on the back, give him one of these, be like, oh, yeah, we won.

[Danny]

Yeah.

[Matt]

So you see him, like, going and with like, Denmark over Greenland.

[Danny]

Right.

[Matt]

Or like the Canadians.

[Danny]

Right? Like, what, what's the strategic benefit of any of this? Like, we have military all over Greenland already.

[Matt]

If you want to put a new military base on Greenland, just ask the Danes. They'll be out. Okay. Seriously, they want to work with us. So I think especially as this administration goes on and after midterms, he's going to be totally constrained as far as what he can do domestically. So I think you're going to probably see it increase rather than decrease his desire to use the military to achieve quick, easy political wins. And as we've seen in Iran, they're not always so quick and so easy.

[Danny]

Right? Right. Yeah, man. It's crazy times. Thanks for doing this, bro. This has been awesome.

[Matt]

Thanks for having me. I, I, I hope the interview was

[Danny]

useful and, oh, hell yeah, man.

[Matt]

Listeners like it.

[Danny]

Amazing. What else can people look forward to coming out? Obviously your book's coming out soon, right?

[Matt]

Yeah. The Most Dangerous Man.

[Danny]

Yeah. Hold it up so people can see

[Matt]

the COVID coming out June 9th, Kindle, Hard Copy, whatever you want, want. And, and then new stories. You're working on new stories. We're working on stuff at the high side. Sean and I have a few things working. One of them, I'll just say the uranium enrichment is something that I'm watching. The, the uranium issue in Iran. Otherwise, the podcast, the team house, that's still going strong, interviewing all kinds of special ops guys I get a lot of my.

[Danny]

I get a lot of my guests from your podcast.

[Matt]

Oh, do you really?

[Danny]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Matt]

I mean, if you ever want me to introduce you to any of those folks, just let me know. And so that. Yeah, that's it. Otherwise, I'm moving to another part of the city this summer, and that's going to.

[Danny]

Getting out of Brooklyn.

[Matt]

I'm still going to be in right on the sort of the edge of Brooklyn and Queens. Okay. I'm staying in the area.

[Danny]

Love it, man.

[Matt]

Yeah.

[Danny]

Well, thanks again, dude. This has been super fun. We'll link all your stuff below people to check it out. Yeah.

[Matt]

Thank you, Danny.

[Danny]

All right. Right. Good night, everybody.

[Matt]

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