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On the Media
Hegseth’s Pentagon Axed a Program Meant to Save Civilian Lives
00:50:16
Then the bombing started in Iran
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- [00:01]
Brooke Gladstone
According to Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, in Iran, the US Military is unleashing
- [00:07]
Pete Hegseth
the most lethal and precise air power campaign in history. No stupid rules of engagement.
- [00:13]
Brooke Gladstone
What happens when our president and his warrior in chief throw out the moral codes the military has spent decades trying to strengthen? From WNYC in New York, this is ON the media. I'm Brooke Gladstone. I, upon taking office, Hegseth immediately scuttled a DoD initiative to save civilian lives with tragic results.
- [00:36]
Wes J. Bryant
Nearly 200 young schoolchildren and their teachers have been killed. There's more coming out and there will continue to be more.
- [00:42]
Brooke Gladstone
Plus, how the Epstein files are playing
- [00:45]
David Gilbert
in Magaland, Trump promised to end forever wars and he promised to release the Epstein files. They're two of the biggest things that the MAGA faithful are angry about and they are angered.
- [00:57]
Brooke Gladstone
It's all coming up after this
- [01:00]
Michael Ohinger
on the media. Supported by Progressive Insurance. You chose to hit play on this podcast today. Smart choice. Make another smart choice with Auto Quote Explorer to compare rates from multiple car insurance companies all at once. Try it@progressive.com Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates not available in all states or situations. Prices vary based on how you buy.
- [01:25]
Brooke Gladstone
From WNYC in New York, this is ON the media. I'm Brooke Gladstone.
- [01:30]
Michael Ohinger
And I'm Michael Ohinger. This week, war continues in the Middle East.
- [01:35]
Unnamed Military Official
The United States and Israel are continuing large scale bombings across Iran, where officials say nearly 1,350 civilians have been killed
- [01:46]
Michael Ohinger
in 12 the Pentagon telling NBC News in a statement now that 140American service members have been wounded since the war began. Now we know that seven Americans have already died. The natural question of how long this war will go on has been asked, though not exactly answered.
- [02:04]
Unnamed Military Official
Yesterday, President Trump told CBS News, quote, I think the war is very complete, pretty much. He also said the war would be over soon, but not within a week.
- [02:13]
Wes J. Bryant
What is your current timeline for how long the war will last?
- [02:16]
Unnamed Military Official
So look, as you know, Steve, the president and the US Military's initial timeline was about four to six weeks to achieve the full objectives of Operation Epic Fury.
- [02:25]
Michael Ohinger
Again, White House press secretary Caroline Levitt.
- [02:28]
Unnamed Military Official
But ultimately the operations will end when the commander in chief determines the military objectives have been met, fully realized, and that Iran is in a position of complete and unconditional surrender. Whether they say it or not, actually
- [02:41]
Michael Ohinger
kind of a revealing answer. The war is over when Donald Trump likes how it looks or when it looks really bad. But there's still time to spin it. Meanwhile, flood the zone with propaganda videos mixing actual war footage with Clips of action films. Wake up, Daddy.
- [03:00]
Brooke Gladstone
Tom.
- [03:00]
Wes J. Bryant
Welcome home, sir.
- [03:02]
Michael Ohinger
Strength and honor.
- [03:03]
Wes J. Bryant
Strength and honor. What will you do without freedom? Maverick's inbound.
- [03:08]
Michael Ohinger
Can't conceive of what I'm capable of.
- [03:11]
Wes J. Bryant
Finishing this fight.
- [03:12]
Brooke Gladstone
Maintaining an iron grip on the narrative during the fog of war is easier if you're the one manning the fog machine.
- [03:20]
Unnamed Military Official
Meanwhile, photographers from major news agencies like Reuters, Getty and the Associated Press have been banned from briefings on the war with Iran. Apparently, the Secretary's aides were unhappy with the unflattering pictures that were circulated by the photographers.
- [03:33]
Pete Hegseth
Death and destruction from the sky. All day long. We're playing for keeps. Our warfighters have maximum authorities granted personally by the President and yours truly. Our rules of engagement are bold, precise and designed to unleash American power, not shackle it. This was never meant to be a fair fight, and it is not a fair fight.
- [03:59]
Brooke Gladstone
Testosterone trumps treaties every time.
- [04:02]
Pete Hegseth
Unlike so many of our traditional allies who wring their hands and clutch their pearls, hemming and hawing about the use of force, America, regardless of what so called international institutions say, is unleashing the most lethal and precise air power campaign in history. No stupid rules of engagement, no nation building quagmire.
- [04:22]
Brooke Gladstone
Trouble is, those stupid rules are enshrined in the US Military's ethical code, international law, and the Department of Defense's own law of war, which emphasizes restraint, responsibility and minimizing civilian casualties. Wes J. Bryant, an Air Force combat veteran, was doing exactly that until last spring as senior policy analyst and advisor on precision warfare and civilian harm mitigation at the Defense Department. Welcome to the show, Wes.
- [04:56]
Wes J. Bryant
Thanks for having me.
- [04:58]
Brooke Gladstone
You are enlisted to refine a code to mitigate civilian harm. What was it and what was the process going to be before Trump's Department of Defense scuttled it?
- [05:13]
Wes J. Bryant
Well, yeah, I spent two decades serving in the War on Terror as an enlisted ground warfighter and special operator. I've coordinated and controlled hundreds, even thousands of airstrikes and other types of fires on the battlefield.
- [05:28]
Brooke Gladstone
And this is where most of the killing in the War on Terror happened, right?
- [05:32]
Wes J. Bryant
Correct. Through the use of air power and what ended up being called the Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response Project. What it was called was an action plan was a culmination of actually various administrations, Obama to the first Trump administration to the Biden administration, directing look backs on the War on Terror. As the War on Terror was kind of winding down, looking at incidents and trends in civilian casualties throughout the War on Terror, we had some really big horrendous incidents. We also had some trends of civilian casualties and we had a whole lot of collateral damage, a whole lot of destruction of infrastructure everywhere we were operating in the Middle East. So this was a program to say, how can we make the force better? How can we learn from our mistakes and not repeat them in the next conflict? That's what the Civilian Harm Mitigation Response Action Plan was for. And it was largely accelerated forward because we had a few very big, very public civilian casualty incidents in the years leading up to that, such as the
- [06:40]
Brooke Gladstone
withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan, which was chaotic. Nearly 300 killed at the airport and many more left behind. Afghans employed by the US as translators and helpers, all left victim to reprisals by the Taliban. But tell me some of the others.
- [07:01]
Wes J. Bryant
Well, you had 2016 through 2017 huge operations against ISIS in Mosul, Iraq and Raqqa, Syria, where we really did level a lot of that infrastructure. Though we did pay attention to mitigating civilian casualties and did, I will say, a far better job than what Israel's doing in Gaza in these dense urban populations.
- [07:24]
Brooke Gladstone
That's a pretty low bar, huh?
- [07:25]
Wes J. Bryant
That is a low, low bar.
- [07:27]
Brooke Gladstone
Yeah.
- [07:27]
Wes J. Bryant
But it was still not good enough for US Military leadership for what we hold our standards to. We finished with those operations and said we could have done a whole hell of a lot better basically in protecting the civilian populace here. And as you mentioned, the withdrawal from Afghanistan where we hit the aid worker, confusing the aid worker and his family, a bunch of children. Right. Confusing him for an ISIS member. And then the fact that Secretary Mattis at the time could not even state what actually happened. It's actually a little reminiscent of right now. At least they acknowledged that we actually did the strike there, which our military can't even do right now.
- [08:07]
Brooke Gladstone
Right. You're referring to the strike on a girls elementary school in Iran.
- [08:13]
Wes J. Bryant
Correct. And looking back on the strike in Kabul, the military acknowledged that they did strike, but they insisted it was against an enemy. And it took the New York Times and they did a fantastic investigation, mind you, to tell the US military. No, actually you didn't. Then the military went back and said, oh, I guess you're right. And there are quite a few big incidents over the years. You know, look back in 2015 in Afghanistan, the incredibly tragic strike on the MSF, the doctors without Borders Hospital in Kunduz, my deployed unit was a part of that. I have friends that were on that mission.
- [08:48]
Brooke Gladstone
How did they feel when they found out?
- [08:50]
Wes J. Bryant
Oh, horrible. You know, nobody wants to be a part of that bombing and gunning down people in this hospital, which is what happened in Kunduz. You feel like a failure. And then there's the moral injury for life.
- [09:03]
Brooke Gladstone
You were one of the chiefs in the Training Assessment and Investigation Cell, which was in broader Civilian Protection center of Excellence. We've got a lot of bureaucracy here. Could you distinguish between the action plan and the Civilian Protection center of Excellence and how this whole years long change management program was gonna work?
- [09:30]
Wes J. Bryant
It was a lot of bureaucracy for sure. There were a lot of clunky acronyms that we could have done a lot better. This was initiated actually under the first Trump administration, Secretary of Defense Esper. It got finalized into policy per DoD and law in Congress under Secretary Austin, under President Biden. And what came with that was called the Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response Action Plan. And that was a directive to the Department of Defense to say we need to fix how we conduct civilian harm mitigation, how we respond to it when it happens. And here's all the specific tasks you're directed to fulfill. One of those tasks was the establishment of a Civilian Protection center of Excellence, which I was recruited into. And that was to serve as the fulcrum of all of this effort. The hub of learning, of training, of advising, of operations, integration of lessons learned
- [10:26]
Brooke Gladstone
and also updating policy, updating legal doctrine, making an intelligence doctrine, creating a whole policy on civilian harm investigations and standards.
- [10:39]
Wes J. Bryant
It started when 2022 is, when it formally was directed. It began standing up in 2023. It wasn't expected to be fully operational, fully stood up until August of 2025. So we essentially had about two years for the entire center to get up on its feet. And that's what we were working toward. We were going around to the combatant commands and giving a week and two week long.
- [11:06]
Brooke Gladstone
So you were out in the field and you were also doing war gaming. Right. Full blown exercises to try and incorporate the lessons learned from the past. Focusing on the incidents from the war on terror.
- [11:20]
Wes J. Bryant
Absolutely. We were collaborating with wargaming, with training with the Central Command, that covers the Middle east, the Southern Command, that covers South America, Africa Command, Europe Command, the Special Operations Command, even Northern Command, that covers the United States.
- [11:38]
Brooke Gladstone
Wow. I was really interested that you had entire teams dedicated to what turned out to be a very difficult problem. Mapping the civilian populations of your adversaries, that in Afghanistan and Iraq the military was there for two decades that still often get it wrong.
- [12:01]
Wes J. Bryant
Correct. In many places that we operate, most places, I'd say our understanding and mapping of the Civilian environment and infrastructure is at best reactionary. It happens right before we're about to conduct an operation. We were wargaming actually with Indo Pacific Command in Hawaii shortly before everything shut down. This was early 2025. Look at the geography for that command. If we did have something kick off with China, for example, do you really think that we have all of the gargantuan ness of China and the urban infrastructure well mapped out? Absolutely not. And with that goes what we call a no strike list, where we have databases of entities that should be protected per international law. And that includes things like schools, churches, health care facilities, medical centers, hospitals, places of governance, of culture. Those are historically actually out of date for many areas we operate.
- [13:03]
Brooke Gladstone
You didn't get to work on all this very long. There was already word that the transition team under the new administration and the new DoD under Pete Hegseth would put the civilian protection efforts on the chopping
- [13:20]
Wes J. Bryant
block pretty much from January 20th. It was very obvious that the moves to cut the center were going to come on strong, that we were falling under the whole construct of, quote, woke, right? Because civilian protection is the very first two words in the name, regardless of the good work we were doing. I grew up, I'm a war fighter. I've dropped a whole lot of bombs and killed a whole lot of people. The last thing I want to do is restrain my fellow war fighters. What we were doing was enabling true precision warfare. But it really didn't matter because the name said civilian protection. The emphasis in the end was on better protecting civilians. And that's not something that Hegseth or his people care about.
- [14:07]
Brooke Gladstone
By the end of January, a memo was circulated for dissolving the Civilian Protection center of excellence across the DoD. For the next couple of months, the leadership tried to save the mission. It didn't work. In March, you were told the center would be gone by the end of the week, and anyone who hadn't signed up for deferred resignation would be fired. The Pentagon was putting in a few bodies to sit in the offices at the center because they couldn't just close it. They needed congressional approval for that. You whistle blew to the Washington Post. Tell me about that experience when that
- [14:47]
Wes J. Bryant
word came down that, yes, this is over, guys, the center's being shut down, everything's going to be rescinded, all the policy, all the changes, guidance. So sorry, we put up a good fight. See ya. So I decided at that point to whistleblow to the good people at the Washington Post. I also went public with my name and my Title. I knew the risk there, but I believed it needed to be said as a whistleblower and not be anonymous. So I'm going to stand up and do this.
- [15:16]
Brooke Gladstone
You hadn't been fired yet, but you were immediately put on administrative leave. You got reprimanded, you got a formal memorandum, a letter of admonishment. They tried to do a criminal investigation too.
- [15:29]
Wes J. Bryant
They sure did. And I also published an op ed in the Boston Globe that was critical of Hegseth himself, of his character, and speaking to the dangers of him becoming Secretary of Defense. And that actually really pissed people off in the Pentagon even more than my whistleblowing about the center. There were comments made to the effect that he can't talk about the SecDef like this. You know, we gotta go after him, we gotta burn him pretty much. And yes, they did initially try to pursue a criminal case against me, at least some kind of criminal investigation, under the grounds that I somehow released sensitive information or even classified. Lawyers within the Pentagon really said there's no case for that. But they also tried to put in my record that I could never get another government job of any capacity. That was not pursued. But I was immediately locked out of everything. I was put on administrative leave pending termination or resignation. And then eventually it took a couple months for them to open this, but a investigation against my security clearance was initiated, which is also damaging, not just from a pride standpoint, but for a career for someone like me, who hopes at least eventually to be in government again someday when the smoke is cleared. And I spent the next few months basically getting indirectly threatened as I continued to speak out. It took a while actually to be filed out of the Pentagon. I formally resigned and during that time was told, until you're formally off the books, you better keep your mouth shut, pretty much, or else it's going to get worse for you. These were indirect threats that were relayed to me from conversations that were heard from my. My leadership.
- [17:09]
Brooke Gladstone
By June and July, most of the staffers had quit or been fired.
- [17:14]
Wes J. Bryant
And right now, you know, there's still a handful of people left, but they have no budget, no real mission or mandate except on paper. And they are locked out of all these operations that have been occurring. They don't have any visibility. They're not doing advising on it.
- [17:28]
Brooke Gladstone
The US and Israel strikes. I think it's estimated that 1200 civilians have been killed, including the nearly 200 children at the school. Do you think that the apparent mitigation of interest in civilian harm has affected how the strikes on Iran and elsewhere have been carried out?
- [17:52]
Wes J. Bryant
Oh, absolutely. You have a Secretary of Defense that glorifies violence, he dehumanizes the enemy. He's got an incredible disregard for international law, the Geneva Conventions and any of the practices that have been meant to safeguard the innocent and really enable what we call precision war fighting. He's fired nearly every senior lawyer in the military. He really is proliferating this culture. It's the antithesis of everything that I came up believing we're supposed to stand for as American war fighters. As far as I know, he has not yet anyway changed the Department of Defense Law of War manual. He's not changed the law or the policy written down.
- [18:36]
Brooke Gladstone
You're suggesting he violates it regularly in the Caribbean and elsewhere.
- [18:41]
Wes J. Bryant
Correct. He has not changed our targeting doctrine either. But in the precedents that he set, we are violating these policies, even these laws, near daily. First, let's go back to last spring, the Yemen campaign, we can call it. A microcosm of what's happening here in Iran where we hit over a thousand targets within a very short period, within a few days, all in densely populated urban areas and all with very short notice for the planning teams. We not so coincidentally had a massive increase in reports of civilian harm. Hundreds of civilians killed potentially that have not even to this day been addressed by the DoD. No transparency, no accountability. We had one strike against a detention center that killed 61 migrants that still hasn't been accounted for. Incidentally, the reports of civilian harm more than doubled within about a week, maybe a little over a week than in the past 20 years of US operations in Yemen because we had been conducting strikes periodically. Suddenly, you know, it looks almost like a microcosm of what happen Israel's doing in Gaza.
- [19:52]
Michael Ohinger
Coming up, Wes Bryant digs into the current moment and the new rules, which are no rules at all.
- [20:00]
Brooke Gladstone
This is on the media.
- [20:08]
Michael Ohinger
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- [21:12]
Ian Carroll
ever open up your podcast app? Scroll forever and still not know what to listen to. And there are millions of podcasts and most of them they just don't grab you. That's why I created Something you should know. Every episode is built around surprising, useful and fascinating ideas. We're consistently ranked in Apple's top 200 with thousands of five star reviews. Try one episode of something you should know right here on the platform you're listening on right now.
- [21:42]
Michael Ohinger
This is on the Media. I'm Michael Ohinger.
- [21:44]
Brooke Gladstone
And I'm brooke Gladstone. Nearly 16 years ago, General Stanley McChrystal warned that civilian casualties were eroding US credibility in Afghanistan and that each non combatant killed actually created 10 more actual combatants. We had to fight though McChrystal's aide, Commander Sergeant Major Michael hall, told the Marine Times that really the number is closer to 20. It was dubbed insurgent math. Until this past March, Wes Bryant was deeply engaged in advancing targeting precision and civilian harm mitigation when the Defense Department started dismantling his unit. Soon after, as we just heard, the the U.S. operation in Yemen caused an exponential spike in civilian deaths.
- [22:34]
Wes J. Bryant
So from Yemen, where you have this departure in targeting best practices, this de evolution in the precision warfare that we were working on, what seemed to be a higher tolerance for civilian casualties. Then you have the really illegal strikes against at the most drug traffickers in the Caribbean and the Pacific and then the completely unconstitutional and illegal raid on Venezuela, illegal per UN and international law. And then you fast forward it to Iran and this is perhaps the worst so far of all the violations legally. And even if you cross that legal threshold and we did a formal declaration of war, Congress approved it, the UN approved it. The way it's being conducted has an air of recklessness to it in the targeting that I had not seen.
- [23:23]
Brooke Gladstone
Tell me about the recklessness that you witness that the rest of us might be oblivious to. Aside from the school, which we all
- [23:31]
Wes J. Bryant
know about in and of itself, that's enough, truly, because for one, it's nearly 200 young school children along with their teachers that have been killed here. Two, our own Secretary of Defense and the commander of these forces, Admiral Cooper, the Central Command commander, cannot still to this day tell us whether or not they even dropped munitions. They can't tell us our own military command and Secretary of Defense can't tell us where they put their own bombs and missiles. That's ground for firing right there in and of itself. I did a analysis on a March 5 strike in Shiraz, Iran, that hit an emergency medical compound that looks like it was likely a US Strike as well. And there's more coming out and there will continue to be more.
- [24:16]
Brooke Gladstone
Now, with regard to the school, didn't preliminary results from the ongoing military investigation show that the strike on the school building was the result of a targeting mistake and the place was hit by a Tomahawk missile? No one else in the region has those. Hanna alam wrote in ProPublica that if the US is responsible, this would be the most civilians killed in a single US Attack in decades as we speak on Thursday. So far, the President hasn't admitted it was the U.S. nor has the U.S. apologized or offered compensation, as has been standard practice in recent conflicts.
- [25:02]
Wes J. Bryant
Publicly, Secretary of Defense Trump Central Command still has not released any initial findings. The New York Times report on the findings were really from inside sources that say this is what happened. And I can tell you, from the first time I saw this strike, I knew this is either US Or Israeli. And then the video came out of the one Tomahawk hitting one of the buildings in this compound that was verified and correlated with strikes on the compound. And then we had pictures of Tomahawk remnants reportedly taken from the school itself. So all of that combined, it will take a whole lot of convincing for me at this point to say that this was not a US Strike. And I'm very confused still to this day why Secretary of Defense and leadership has not come out and verified this either way.
- [25:50]
Brooke Gladstone
So tell me how the center might have been able to help avert this tragedy.
- [25:57]
Wes J. Bryant
Well, first and foremost, the Central Command would have had a whole team still in place that was primarily responsible for conducting civilian environment mapping. Trump says that this was ordered months ago. Right. So they would have presumably been spending months ensuring that they were mapping out and characterizing the civilian environment in the areas in Iran that we planned on striking. Then also double checking, triple checking the no strike list, places that are not targetable, that are off limits because they're civilian, a school being one of them. It's considered what we call a Category 1 no strike entity in US targeting doctrine, which means it's among the highest of protected entities. We've known for years that in many areas we operate, no strike lists are often out of date. We have old information, sometimes don't even have current buildings on those lists. So that's something that we were directly tackling within this enterprise and from the center of Excellence. Had that momentum kept going, there would have been at the very least more people in place focused just on this problem, double and triple checking that every single entity we were looking at targeting in Iran was actually a valid military target.
- [27:10]
Brooke Gladstone
You also suggested if you didn't have the cultural degradation spurred on by Pete Hegsett as the Secretary of Defense, this wouldn't have happened.
- [27:22]
Wes J. Bryant
Aside from the capabilities that were lost here that could have helped the situation, this was pure negligence. I mean, this was not a fog of war situation. It was a failure in foundational targeting practices at many levels. That speaks to culture more than anything.
- [27:38]
Brooke Gladstone
I just wonder what you think it means that the government has not apologized, has not condoled with the families, has not offered a payment, as has been the custom.
- [27:55]
Wes J. Bryant
The response here from our government, Secretary of Defense, specifically, Trump specifically, has been nothing short of shameful. And even if when it first happened, they were suspecting that it could have actually been Iran not expressing any kind of condolence for the fact that it happened in the first place, when one of the claimed precedents for going into Iran is to free the oppressed people and population of Iran, what that says is, actually, we don't really care about you. We couldn't really care less.
- [28:29]
Brooke Gladstone
Let's talk about the harms to Iranian civilians that don't directly result from their roofs caving in the destruction of desalination plants or oil infrastructure. Are those protected under the Geneva Convention?
- [28:45]
Wes J. Bryant
Those are protected. These are vital essential services to a civilian population. And so per international law, they're only allowed to be targeted if they've been taken over for military use. There is some gray area where if they're being used to some capacity for the military, well, then they can be targetable. But you have to take that into account with the principles of necessity and proportionality. These were problems that we were looking at at the center of excellence. These things what we called second and third order effects of hitting essential services. And so now we see just want and destruction of these things which is going to have massive effects immediately to the civilian populace and then economically as well. And then you have fallout that's against international law violation fallout from hitting these oil facilities. Right. You have the release of toxic materials into waterways airways that is also in Its own right. A violation of international law.
- [29:45]
Brooke Gladstone
What are your thoughts about the messaging around the war? The Department of War X account posted this week that, quote, we have only just begun to fight with an image that says no mercy. Hegseth has boasted about fighting unconstrained by the rules of engagement and the, quote, politically correct wars of the past. I mean, I know these talking points have a certain political salience, but do they make sense in a military context?
- [30:16]
Wes J. Bryant
Not at all. And air power itself strikes themselves do not win wars. They don't win anywhere. That's not even how we won against isis. We had an entire ground campaign. There is no real reason or strategy here.
- [30:32]
Brooke Gladstone
This week, Hegseth posted a video on X saying he's ordered a full review of the legal services within the military for too long.
- [30:41]
Pete Hegseth
Over 20 years, legal shops across the services have grown bloated, duplicative. They've muddied lines of authority and pulled critical judge advocates away from what matters most, advising commanders in the fight.
- [30:55]
Brooke Gladstone
So these are lawyers within the military who advise on things like what's legal for the military to do. What are your thoughts on this?
- [31:03]
Wes J. Bryant
I mean, frankly, that's all just bull. It is hyperbole. It's really ad hominem, if you will, attacks on every single lawyer, every single in the military.
- [31:14]
Brooke Gladstone
What does Hagseth call them?
- [31:15]
Wes J. Bryant
JAG offs? He really has no idea what he's talking about. There's always been a healthy relationship between operational forces and your lawyers. You know, I ran strike cells extensively. We always had a lawyer right there on staff for everything we were doing. And I myself have had arguments where sometimes I was right and sometimes the lawyer was right, and it was up to the commander to make a decision. But that's healthy. That's actually what we need to ensure that we are carrying out missions in support of American ideals, in accordance with American values. You know the types who would say, we don't need lawyers, they just stop us from dropping bombs. Those are the ones that will be celebrating this.
- [31:58]
Brooke Gladstone
The US Military remains one of the institutions that Americans have had the most confidence in. It's too early to tell whether the public perception of the military is changing because of what Trump and Pete Hegseth. Well, their shenanigans in the past year.
- [32:17]
Wes J. Bryant
I can tell you, I knew it would be bad under Hegseth. I am shocked to how bad it's gotten so quickly, to the point where I frankly, at times feel ashamed I even ever wore the uniform. I don't even recognize what this military is doing. Right now and what it stands for. I have hope for the future that we can come out of this and square away really our entire government and all our institutions, one of the most vital of which is the US Military. I mean, it's the most powerful military in the world. Trump and Hegseth like to often say it really is. And with that comes the level of responsibility that we are just not displaying.
- [32:57]
Brooke Gladstone
Thank you so much Wes, for your time.
- [33:00]
Wes J. Bryant
Thank you. It's great being here.
- [33:02]
Brooke Gladstone
Wes J. Bryant is a former senior policy analyst and advisor at the Pentagon, where he worked in civilian harm mitigation.
- [33:12]
Michael Ohinger
Coming up, what the war in Iran and the Epstein files have in common.
- [33:17]
Brooke Gladstone
This is on the media.
- [33:26]
Michael Ohinger
Onthemedia is supported by Smalls. January is when we all try to reset. Why not extend that to your cat? It's 2026, so don't be feeding your cat like it's 1926. That's where Smalls comes in. Smalls cat food is protein packed recipes made with preservative free ingredients you'd find in your fridge and it's delivered right to your door. Starting with Smalls is easy. Just share info about your cat's diet, health and food preferences. Then Smalls puts together a personalized sampler for your cat. No more picking between random brands at the store. Smalls has the right food to satisfy any cat's cravings. That's why cats.com named Smalls their best overall cat food. Make 2026 your cat's healthiest year yet. For a limited time because you're an on the Media listener, get 60% off your first order plus free shipping when you head to smalls.com OTM one last time. That's 60% off your first order plus Free Shipping when you head to smalls.comm
- [34:29]
Ian Carroll
ever open up your podcast app? Scroll forever and still not know what to listen to. And there are millions of podcasts and most of them, they just don't grab you. That's why I created Something you should know. Every episode is built around surprising, useful and fascinating ideas. We're consistently ranked in Apple's top 200 with thousands of five star reviews. Try one episode of something you should know right here on the platform you're listening on right now.
- [35:00]
Brooke Gladstone
This is ON the Media. I'm Brooke Gladstone.
- [35:03]
Michael Ohinger
And I'm Michael Ohinger. This week a survey from Dropsite News, Zetao and Data for Progress found that a majority of American voters, 52%, believe that Donald Trump was at least partially motivated to launch the war in Iran to lure attention away from the Epstein files. Even a quarter of Republican respondents to the survey said that they think the war is a distraction.
- [35:29]
Wes J. Bryant
Yesterday, Republican Congressman Thomas Massie tweeted, bombing a country on the other side of the globe won't make the Epstein files go away any more than the dow going above 50,000 will. This war of choice may even be useful as a distraction from the Epstein files that have not been fully disclosed.
- [35:47]
David Gilbert
Early Saturday morning, just after midnight, the Pentagon launched what they are calling Operation Epic Fury, which is different from its original title, which was Operation Epstino Distracto.
- [36:00]
Wes J. Bryant
When we talk about this war in Iran, I have to wonder sometimes whether this is the Epstein War. Right? This is a war that is created to have us not talk about it. Just as the intersection of Donald Trump and the Epstein files started to emerge, all of a sudden we got a war we have to talk about.
- [36:16]
Michael Ohinger
While this distraction narrative exploded among Trump critics and some select Republican legislators, much of the loyalist MAGA camp has largely stayed silent on the Epstein stuff or pointed fingers elsewhere. And those folks had their very own distraction exercise in the form of closed door depositions by the House oversight committee of MAGA and QAnon's favorite villains, the Clintons. Under oath, Bill Clinton said his relationship with Epstein was quote, unquote, cordial and that he'd never visited the island. Hillary Clinton said that she had never met the man.
- [36:54]
David Gilbert
But no matter anything said in those depositions, any testimony that came out didn't really matter. All that mattered was the fact that they were being questioned. And therefore that was enough for them to say, well, this is proof that there is something there and we're finally going to get the revelation that we've all been waiting for.
- [37:13]
Michael Ohinger
David Gilbert is a reporter at Wired covering disinformation and online extremism. I asked him what narratives had emerged about the Clintons in the right wing media following the depositions.
- [37:26]
David Gilbert
If you're looking at the more mainstream right wing media like Fox News, then you're seeing reporting on it something that hasn't really happened on Fox News for the last year. We haven't seen them investigate these files. We haven't seen them dive into them or question anybody who's really been exposed by the files being released on more fringe right wing outlets. We've seen them talking about the Clintons as part of this cabal of elites who have been conducting child sex trafficking for the best part of a decade now. And they're willing to do that because they know their audience has been primed to hear that they have been listening to this for years, not only from the same right wing networks, but also from a lot of GOP lawmakers.
- [38:12]
Michael Ohinger
Ahead of the Clinton testimonies, you wrote much of the right wing media were rarely touching on the Epstein story. In your piece, you referenced a poll conducted by Marquette Law School earlier this year that found that 49% of those who relied on conservative TV for news had heard, quote, a lot about Epstein, compared to 75% who relied on other TV channels. In October, Fox News host Jesse Waters told viewers to not, quote, take the bait on the Epstein story. And another Fox host, Will Cain, said the files are something that apparently not very many people are interested in. Right. This is all in stark contrast to the excitement that I saw on Fox News prior to the massive drop of three plus million emails. Right. So is it fair to say this is an about face?
- [39:03]
David Gilbert
I guess it is. Like if you look back at the way that this has played out initially, when Trump came back into office in January and Pam Bondi was appointed as Attorney General, she told Fox News that she had the Epstein client list on her desk and it was sitting there ready for her to review it. Now that turns out that that wasn't actually true. And Kash Patel said eventually that there is no actual client list. And so come the summer the government had shut it down and they said there is no there there. We've done the investigations and there's nothing to really look at anymore. So let's move on. And the right wing media did move on. A lot of mainstream outlets continued to investigate, continued to champion the cause of the victims and the DOJ was ultimately forced to release those files. So while I think it's a bit of an about face in terms of Fox News kind of saying, oh yeah, come the files and then saying, oh no, there's nothing there, they were kind of forced into that position. I think Fox News would have been happy to just completely ignore the Epstein files and never mention Epstein again because that is the edict coming down from the White House.
- [40:06]
Michael Ohinger
But of course there's only so much that the right wing media can do to keep the anger and the suspicion about the Epstein files at bay among MAGA supporters. Right. Cuz a lot of them are not buying it.
- [40:21]
David Gilbert
I think it's similar to the Iran situation at the moment that if you take a kind of a broad look at how right wing media has responded to this situation in Iran, it's kind of been positive for the President. But if you look below the line a little bit, if you look at the comments on articles. If you look at the replies to posts on X, if you look at right wing message boards, they see the attack on Iran. And this Epstein falls in a very similar way. They view them as breaking promises that Trump made in his 2024 campaign. He promised to end forever wars, not to get the US Involved in any more overseas engagements, and he promised to release the Epstein files. They're two of the biggest things that the MAGA faithful are angry about and they are angered. The anger is simmering at the moment, I would say, and I think it's not going to take much for it to kind of bubble over and become a real problem for the administration and the president.
- [41:17]
Michael Ohinger
You say that a lot of the right wing media have tried to stay in Trump's good graces by bending the knee and kind of laying off the Epstein stuff, but Nick Fuentes in particular has done no such thing. He said, what does this administration do other than cover up the Epstein files, embezzle money through government contracts and bring us to war for Israel? This administration needs to be shut down immediately. Do not vote in the midterms. And if you do vote for Democrats,
- [41:47]
David Gilbert
he is an outlier. In terms of the extreme nature of his comments, like the idea that the administration needs to be disbanded and that people should support Democrats, that's a pretty extreme position. But there are other people in the right wing movement who hold very similar views. They just don't express it as strongly as Fuentes does. And so I think while he is an outlier, he is also an indication that there is this anger that I was talking about, this simmering anger among a lot of Trump supporters.
- [42:19]
Michael Ohinger
At the risk of sounding naive, why do you think that these Epstein revelations have seemingly done very little to Trump's support among his followers? Coup have been, you know, fixated on Epstein for longer than probably the majority of the country.
- [42:37]
David Gilbert
Yeah, I am actually even someone who's been tracking this kind of stuff for a decade now. I'm surprised at how little damage it's done to him. But I guess the reason is that Trump told him that he was exonerated. That's the word he used. I think it was in an interview on Air Force One last month. He said he'd been exonerated and that's all that matters. Like it shows again how little he cares about the actual victims in this, that he doesn't want to get justice for them and really find out who is to blame. Even if he is not going to be prosecuted for Anthony, even if there Is nothing incriminating in relation to him in those files. Surely he'd want justice for the victims in this case. But the fact that he was exonerated and the fact that he says that's it, everyone should move on in a lot of cases, that's what his supporters do. They still want the Epstein files released. They still want Kash Patel to do a better job or Pam Bondi. But they are swayed by Trump's declaration that he has been exonerated, and that's enough for them. And so they will move on.
- [43:38]
Michael Ohinger
Steve Bannon, he's been named quite a bit in the Epstein files. Even a cursory viewing of his correspondence with the billionaire would show that they were pretty chummy. Maybe it would be useful if you're able to just talk a little bit about the nature of their relationship.
- [43:54]
David Gilbert
Steve Bannon and Jeffrey Epstein, I think, finally kind of connected over email in 2017. And their email showed that they were talking about quite a lot of different topics. One of them was the MeToo movement, but also they were talking about the Internet and cryptocurrency and how both technologies could be used to upend democracy effectively and fast track revolutions. And they discussed this idea that they could create a far right populist movement in Europe because Bannon had made connections at that point, like in 2018 with Matteo Salvini in Italy and the AfD party in Germany and Viktor Orban in Hungary. And Epstein was clearly interested in this as well. And they were talking about Russia's influence on far right politics in Europe. I guess there were scheming is probably one way to do it over a course of like six months in 27, 2018, trying to get this coalition in Europe together to effectively disrupt the EU and then see exactly what advantage they could take of the fallout. I think the question is, and we don't really have an answer for this, is how serious Bannon and Epstein were about going through with what they were talking about or were they just, you know, larping? Were they just protecting, tending to be these guys who could potentially overthrow the world?
- [45:17]
Michael Ohinger
Just egomaniacal ramblings of people who saw themselves as more important than they are?
- [45:23]
David Gilbert
It's difficult to say, but I think there are definitely indications in here that they, whether they thought they could actually do it or not, they definitely wanted it to happen.
- [45:33]
Michael Ohinger
On the subject of conspiracy theorists ignoring or contorting their worldview to this post, Epstein drop reality. Let's talk a little bit about Pizzagate. Lauren Boebert using her opportunity during the Hillary Clinton deposition asked her about Pizzagate.
- [45:54]
Unnamed Military Official
Have you reviewed any 2025, 2026 Epstein files that were released that you believe reference or relate to those specific 2016 claims regarding the Podesta emails? Comet Ping Pong pizza used as code, possibly. Pizzagate was totally made up. It was an outrageous allegation that ended up hurting a number of people that caused a deranged young man to show up with his assault rifle and shoot up a local pizzeria. I can't believe you're even referencing it. You should be.
- [46:31]
David Gilbert
Pizzagate happened a long time ago, but it's been picked up again now after the document dump happened because there are several mentions of the word pizza in the documents which like, I think no matter if there was 3 million documents of emails or whatever dumped from anyone, there would be some mention of pizza somewhere in it. But it didn't matter because the people who want Pizzagate to be true, despite all the evidence showing it's not, will see the evidence anyway. So a lot of QAnon conspiracy theorists picked up on it, started sharing it on X. Then former Fox News host Tucker Carlson dedicated an entire show to it with Ian Carroll, another conspiracy theorist. And I think Tucker Carlson said something like, basically, Pizzagate is true.
- [47:15]
Wes J. Bryant
Maybe the long debunked conspiracy theory about Pizzagate wasn't actually debunked. And maybe someone should take a closer look at this.
- [47:25]
Michael Ohinger
Can we just pause on that for a second? Because this was really brain melting for me. Ian Carroll argues that the man who traveled to Comet Ping Pong upon shooting his weapon inside the pizza parlor. Fortunately he didn't kill anyone, but one of his bullets did hit, allegedly like some kind of computer or hard drive. And Ian Carroll argues that this is evidence that this conspiracy theorist was actually like a plant and that he was sent there to undermine any actual investigation. I mean, just like, like, can't you
- [47:58]
David Gilbert
just take the L. Edgar Walch, actually the guy who went from North Carolina to D.C. brandishing a gun into Comet Ping Pong. He actually died a year ago because he was shot by police in an altercation at the time that was used as evidence that they're cleaning up their evidence and they're covering their trail and whatever. So the interview between Tucker Carlson and Ian Carroll is just so difficult to listen to because none of it is based in reality, none of it is true. It's so deeply disturbing and, and upsetting to listen to it because, you know, millions and millions of people are listening to it. Tucker Carlson is using his veneer of credibility that he got from being a part of Fox News for so long and using that to platform Ian Carroll, who has been shown repeatedly to be an anti semitic conspiracy theorist and giving him free rein to say whatever he wants without questioning it. And the idea that Pizzagate is once again a real thing is just incredible to me, given it was a decade ago that I was covering it. And I thought I may never have to do it again. But sadly, time is a circle and here we are.
- [49:02]
Michael Ohinger
Let's talk about QAnon, how they're feeling about this. If you were to be extraordinarily generous and squint your eyes, you could say that the files so far provide some confirmation for the broad outline of the conspiracy theory that there was in fact an elite cohort of politicians and businessmen who were at the very least friends with a prolific sex trafficker. And that's certainly how Bill Maher, the political commentator host on HBO, is seeing it.
- [49:32]
Wes J. Bryant
QAnon said there's this vast elite around the world conspiracy to traffic kids and pedophiles. And they were more right than I let on than I thought they were. Okay, so that's what I'm giving you.
- [49:46]
Michael Ohinger
But there's a ton from this conspiracy theory that remains unproven and flat out wrong and outrageous. Right?
- [49:54]
David Gilbert
Yeah. It's interesting to watch the QAnon community wrestle with this because in a lot of cases, they have higher standards for what they will accept as evidence than people like Ian Carroll and Tucker Carlson. They were not duped by those binders that Pam Bondi gave last year. They are not going to be duped into believing something that's not real. At the same time, the fact that there is evidence that that there is a global child sex trafficking ring, the fact that the Clintons were being questioned, there's a lot of things that tie up for QAnon that they believe show that at least some of what Q told them in those posts was real. And of course, then you get the revelation that Jeffrey Epstein met the founder of 4chan.
- [50:38]
Michael Ohinger
4chan years after Epstein met its founder would become a hub for Gamergate, the alt right. And then eventually the very beginnings of QAnon. It's hard to like follow these points and not feel like a conspiracy theorist yourself. Here is a child sex trafficking billionaire Epstein meeting with the guy who hosts a forum that gives rise to a right wing conspiracy theory about sex trafficking billionaires. I mean, if you wrote this, it
- [51:08]
David Gilbert
would be a little dumb for QAnon adherence. It shows that there was a connection between 4chan and Epstein and child sex trafficking and it means something. But because it's based in emails and documents that have been released by the US government, it just seems too nice and too easy. And because this conspiracy thinking is so deeply ingrained, they want to know like, okay, well that's what they want us to think. What is the actual story? What's really behind this? And they just think that this must be just another layer of the COVID up or the conspiracy. And it's fascinating to watch them struggle with this and try and figure it out.
- [51:47]
Michael Ohinger
That's what's wild. I mean, I understand that given how much secrecy there has been about a lot of this for so long, people might feel like the truth is always gonna be held out of view. But now that there's at least some semblance of transparency insufficient, but some reality is quite alarming and salacious. How is reality not enough here?
- [52:11]
David Gilbert
Reality's not enough because it hasn't been enough for them for quite some time now. And if you have been in these conspiracy communities and online for the last 10 years speaking to people on a daily basis and believing everything and anything from the global financial system crash coming intermeshing with apocalyptic Christian beliefs about the Rapture, the reality is never going to be able to live up to what you envisioned. These people don't want their communities to disappear. They don't want it wrapped up in neat bow an online community that gives them support, that backs them up when they make crazy claims online things their family won't do for them. And so it will never be resolved for these communities no matter how much evidence is produced. The deep state is trying to trick us again.
- [53:04]
Michael Ohinger
David, thank you very much.
- [53:05]
David Gilbert
Micah, thanks for having me.
- [53:07]
Michael Ohinger
David Gilbert is a reporter at Wired covering disinformation and online extremists. That's it for this week's show on the media is produced by Molly Rosen, Rebecca Clark Callender and Candice Wong. Travis Manning is our video producer.
- [53:27]
Brooke Gladstone
Our technical director is Jennifer Munson with engineering from Jared Paul. Eloise Blondio is our senior producer and our executive producer is Katya Rogers. On the Media is producer produced by wnyc. I'm Brooke Gladstone.
- [53:42]
Michael Ohinger
And I'm Michael Olinger.
- [53:48]
Unnamed Military Official
Whether it's news from around the world or the latest from your neighborhood, New Yorkers engage with WNYC studios for the information and connection they can only get from our programming. Be a part of that conversation through your business's support. Learn more@sporship.wnyc.org.