"Mossad Is Reckless!" - Ex-Spy Andrew Bustamante EXPOSES CIA, Mossad & China's GLOBAL Agenda | PBD Podcast | Ep. 629

Summary

PBD Podcast Episode Summary: "Mossad Is Reckless!" - Ex-Spy Andrew Bustamante EXPOSES CIA, Mossad & China's GLOBAL Agenda | Ep. 629

Release Date: August 14, 2025

In Episode 629 of the PBD Podcast, host Patrick Bet-David engages in a compelling and revealing conversation with Andrew Bustamante, a former CIA officer and staunch supporter of Israel's strategic importance to the United States. The episode delves deep into the intricacies of global intelligence operations, highlighting the perceived recklessness of Mossad compared to the CIA, the dynamics of international alliances, and the evolving landscape of global threats.

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1. Introduction and Guest Background

The episode opens with Patrick expressing surprise at Bustamante's unwavering support for Israel, setting the stage for a candid discussion on international intelligence and geopolitical strategies.

Notable Quote:

• Andrew Bustamante [00:02]: "I am a staunch, staunch supporter of Israel's importance to the United States."

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2. CIA vs. Mossad: Flexibility and Operational Differences

Bustamante contrasts the operational methodologies of Mossad and the CIA, emphasizing Mossad's greater flexibility and willingness to engage in high-risk intelligence operations without stringent oversight.

Key Points:

• Mossad operates with "very experimental, very little oversight" ([00:28]).
• They actively penetrate foreign agencies, similar to the CIA ([00:28]).
• Unlike MI6, Mossad openly advocates for regime change and engages in assassinations ([14:40]).

Notable Quotes:

• Bustamante [00:20]: "Mossad is way more flexible in what they're willing to bring to the table in terms of an intelligence operation other than CIA."
• Bustamante [14:42]: "So Mossad assassinates, openly assassinates, CIA does not openly assassinate Israel."

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3. Future Plans: Disappearance and Digital Transformation

A significant portion of the conversation revolves around Bustamante's future plans to "disappear" by 2027, aiming to protect his family and evade potential threats stemming from his outspoken stance.

Key Points:

• Budamante plans to remove his physical presence by changing his appearance and leveraging AI for content creation ([02:25]-[04:10]).
• Motivations include prioritizing family and safeguarding against increasing opposition ([04:10]-[06:05]).

Notable Quotes:

• Bustamante [02:25]: "So my goal was always to do it before 2030. [...] 2027, you're going to disappear."
• Bustamante [04:11]: "First, I'm a dad, and that's where I want to put my effort first."

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4. Trust Issues and Threat Perception

Bustamante discusses the erosion of trust between the public and intelligence agencies, highlighting how mass opinion and political distractions have become significant threats.

Key Points:

• The average person's distrust poses a greater risk than threats from foreign intelligence agencies ([05:43]-[06:20]).
• Emphasis on "unknown threats" as a persistent CIA principle ([06:20]-[06:40]).

Notable Quotes:

• Bustamante [06:05]: "All rights, all, all opportunity lies with the unknown threat."
• Bustamante [16:26]: "All of the five eyes [...] know Mossad is the most risk tolerant and most aggressive of intelligence agencies."

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5. Intelligence Collaboration and Challenges with Iran

The dialogue delves into the complexities of intelligence collaboration, particularly concerning Iran, and the reliance on third-party agencies like Mossad due to limited CIA presence.

Key Points:

• Limited number of CIA agents in Iran necessitates reliance on Mossad for intelligence ([30:53]-[33:07]).
• Challenges include validating intelligence without direct oversight and the prevalence of dual nationals ([38:04]-[42:07]).

Notable Quotes:

• Bustamante [30:46]: "So what I'm talking about are human sources coming from two allied countries and then a third signals intelligence..."
• Bustamante [33:07]: "Dual nationals are a key component, allowing individuals to operate without immediate suspicion."

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6. Post-9/11 Oversight and Intelligence Failures

Addressing historical intelligence shortcomings, Bustamante attributes the 9/11 failures to lack of effective collaboration between the CIA and FBI, leading to increased Congressional oversight and reduced operational flexibility.

Key Points:

• The 9/11 Commission's findings led to stricter oversight and budget control by Congress ([19:20]-[20:42]).
• Comparison of pre- and post-oversight CIA operational capabilities ([22:00]-[23:06]).

Notable Quotes:

• Bustamante [20:42]: "But if you give increasing permissions and oversight to CIA to be more activist, more risk tolerant, then you kind of invite more pain..."

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7. Role of Israel and International Intelligence Dynamics

A robust defense of Israel's role as a primary defense wall for the U.S., Bustamante emphasizes the pragmatic and self-reliant nature of Israeli intelligence operations, contrasting it with U.S. reliance on allies.

Key Points:

• Israel is portrayed as the "first wall of defense" essential for U.S. security ([49:15]-[50:26]).
• Critique of U.S. support for allies like Saudi Arabia and Ukraine as strategic maneuvers benefiting U.S. interests more than the allies themselves ([49:15]-[52:44]).

Notable Quotes:

• Bustamante [49:16]: "Absolutely. Because they are the first wall of fucking defense for us."
• Bustamante [50:26]: "We continue to support Ukraine because they are weakening Russia. That benefits us, hurts Ukraine."

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8. Geopolitical Tensions: Iran, Russia, and China

The conversation shifts to the current geopolitical tensions involving Iran, Russia, and China, discussing their interrelations and the U.S.'s strategic approaches to each.

Key Points:

• Iran is categorized as a rogue nation, with U.S. intelligence relying heavily on third-party sources like Mossad and allies like Saudi Arabia ([40:36]-[41:38]).
• Russia and China are identified as primary threats, with ongoing manipulations and strategic jockeying in global politics ([55:27]-[57:46]).

Notable Quotes:

• Bustamante [57:09]: "Russia and China want Iran to be dependent on Russia. Strong dependent, predictable partnerships."
• Bustamante [62:30]: "We're standing in the shoes of the Shah, not realizing the true threat because we're still focused on yesterday's threat."

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9. Epstein Case and Intelligence Implications

Andrew Bustamante offers his perspective on the Jeffrey Epstein case, suggesting that Epstein may have been an intelligence asset, likely for Mossad, and posits his death as suspicious but not directly orchestrated by U.S. intelligence agencies.

Key Points:

• Epstein's connections to Mossad are considered more plausible than to the CIA ([13:50]-[14:40]).
• Skepticism about deep-state involvement, attributing Epstein's death to prison-related scenarios ([79:29]-[81:09]).

Notable Quotes:

• Bustamante [13:50]: "The methodology is not that different. [...] the most likely intelligence connection that Jeffrey Epstein had was with Mossad."
• Bustamante [79:29]: "I think the probability is he was killed in prison."

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10. Internal U.S. Politics and Distrust in Intelligence

The discussion touches on how internal U.S. political dynamics and misinformation campaigns distract from genuine intelligence challenges, reinforcing bipartisan divides and hindering effective policy-making.

Key Points:

• Russiagate and related investigations are viewed as distractions perpetuating political divides ([72:13]-[75:46]).
• The manipulation of mass opinion serves both to distract the public and to confuse foreign intelligence efforts ([75:00]-[77:49]).

Notable Quotes:

• Bustamante [75:00]: "The Department of Justice can't do to prove a conspiracy because they couldn't pin conspiracy..."
• Bustamante [77:49]: "Donald Trump is focusing on domestic wins to secure control for the midterms, sidelining complex foreign policies."

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11. Technocracy and Future Threats

Patrick probes Bustamante on the CIA's stance towards emerging threats like technocracy, especially concerning powerful individuals like Elon Musk. Bustamante responds that while the CIA focuses predominantly on foreign threats, internal technological control is managed by other federal processes.

Key Points:

• Technocracy and its potential to shift global power dynamics are discussed, albeit the CIA remains primarily focused on external threats ([113:37]-[116:56]).
• The influence of technology giants is acknowledged, but not deemed a primary concern for CIA operations.

Notable Quotes:

• Bustamante [114:19]: "But I will say that there's a very practical level in federal government where somebody else decides what technology you use."
• Bustamante [116:56]: "So keep focusing on what actually matters, like Trump's ability to deliver campaign promises."

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12. Closing Remarks and Future Endeavors

As the conversation winds down, Bustamante shares his plans to publish a memoir titled "Shadow Cell," detailing his experiences in intelligence operations. He discusses the challenges faced in getting the book approved by the CIA and the strategies employed to ensure its publication.

Key Points:

• "Shadow Cell" is scheduled for release on September 9th, chronicling Bustamante and his wife's covert operations ([117:32]-[119:32]).
• The battle for publication involved legal challenges and negotiations with the CIA, ultimately resulting in permission to publish after asserting First Amendment rights ([117:33]-[119:32]).

Notable Quotes:

• Bustamante [117:55]: "It's our memoir about when we were put on an operation together against one of America's largest adversaries."
• Bustamante [119:21]: "This is the man that got across the finish line."

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13. Audience Engagement and Merchandise Promotion

The episode concludes with Patrick promoting the show's merchandise, encouraging listeners to wear the "Future Looks Bright" gear as a symbol of optimism and free thinking.

Notable Quotes:

• Patrick Bet-David [Highest timestamp]: "If you believe the Future looks bright, if you follow our content and what we represent with Valuetainment with PBD podcast, go to vtmerch.com..."

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Concluding Overview

Episode 629 of the PBD Podcast presents a thought-provoking dialogue between Patrick Bet-David and Andrew Bustamante, exploring the nuanced differences between major intelligence agencies, the strategic importance of Israel, and the challenges posed by current geopolitical tensions. Bustamante's insights as a former CIA officer add a layer of depth to the discussion, offering listeners a glimpse into the complexities of international espionage and the delicate balance of global power.

The episode underscores the importance of adaptable intelligence operations, the significance of safeguarding familial and personal security in high-stakes environments, and the need for the United States to reassess its threat priorities in an ever-evolving global landscape.

Transcript

[Andrew Bustamante]

It's 100% true.

[Patrick Bet-David]

I would have not guessed you would have said that.

[Andrew Bustamante]

So I am. I am a staunch, staunch supporter of Israel's importance to the United States.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Holy sh.

[Andrew Bustamante]

Absolutely. Because we needed to manipulate Europe. NATO is there to protect us. Israel is there to protect us.

[Patrick Bet-David]

How different is an Epstein versus what happens here?

[Andrew Bustamante]

Mossad is way more flexible in what they're willing to bring to the table in terms of an intelligence operation other than CIA.

[Patrick Bet-David]

So tell me more. When you use the word flexible.

[Andrew Bustamante]

Very experimental, very little oversight. Mossad actively tries to penetrate. CIA actively tries to penetrate. I wouldn't be MI6. Thesis. Yeah.

[Patrick Bet-David]

What do you think about Tucker?

[Andrew Bustamante]

So whether or not he was dad's little helper when dad was CIA, I don't know. But he certainly wasn't trained because you can see what it's like when he sits across from a trained intelligence officer.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Wow. Got it. Maybe China's not the naive one. Maybe we're the naive one. Could that be a possibility?

[Andrew Bustamante]

Absolutely. Don't forget about all of our intelligence assets that are not human bot activity, cyber activity. So you create more chaos from known opinions that are already happening in country. So if you really want an argument to get bigger and bigger, all you have to do is fuel both sides of the argument. That's the stuff that we need to pay attention to.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Did you ever think you were making, Adam? What's your point? The future looks bright. My handshake is better than anything I ever saw. It's right here. You are one of one my son's right about.

[Andrew Bustamante]

I don't think I've ever said this before.

[Patrick Bet-David]

The one and only Andrew Bustamente.

[Andrew Bustamante]

What a fucking sick intro, man.

[Patrick Bet-David]

How you doing, man?

[Andrew Bustamante]

Every time I hear that intro, I'm.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Like, this is so pink, my man. So last time we were together, CIA clandestine officer, we sat down, we had a great conversation. It's to the day, I think it's three years to the T end of August is when we did it in 2022 and we had some follow up conversations. You're like, yeah, I'm going to do this with the youth. I want to grow this. I'm going to do this. I'm like, this guy's going to do everything he wants. And then you said in few years I'm going to disappear and no one's going to see me. Right. So are you pretty close to that where you're going to disappear?

[Andrew Bustamante]

Yeah, so my goal was always to do it before 2030.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Okay.

[Andrew Bustamante]

And then this year, in the last three or four months. We were actually to. We were able to hone it down to essentially a series of months in 2027.

[Patrick Bet-David]

So in 2027, you're going to disappear.

[Andrew Bustamante]

Wheels up in 2027. And then basically 2026 is just our chance to get everything rolled up.

[Patrick Bet-David]

So I remember because. So that would have been there. That's why I thought about five years, because 22, you told me five years. So 27, you're gone. So as a person who's been in this world, and by the way, it's going to be tough for you to disappear. I'm kind of wanting to hear about you. See the interviews with you. You've got hundreds of millions of views. Your clips are probably in the billions on TikTok, Instagram, all over the place. The way you tell stories is very interesting. But one, why do you want to disappear? And two, how the hell are you going to do it with that hair that you have?

[Andrew Bustamante]

So the hair is going to go away.

[Patrick Bet-David]

All of it.

[Andrew Bustamante]

So all of it. I've got plans to donate it to a ch children's cancer nonprofit, and I'm super excited about that. That'll actually happen in December. I'll document the whole thing. I will continue to create content, but the content's going to be further and further from the real image of me. So Obviously, post in 2026, I'll create content with a whole new look because the hair will be gone and some other things will change too. And then I'm planning on moving even further back so that I'm using real voice, but. But AI generated image. So I might be a cartoon, I might be a real person, I might be whatever. But I'm gonna experiment and explore with how that goes. Because at the end of the day, you know this as well as I do. We're only here to feed a small percentage of our listeners. So all the virality might be nice, but it's really just a vanity metric. It's the core audience that takes action. That's who we show up for every day. And that audience, they don't really care what I look like. They don't care if I'm a cartoon. If they get the real information, the real knowledge, they move forward.

[Patrick Bet-David]

But why are you doing it?

[Andrew Bustamante]

Two reasons, right? First, I'm a dad, and that's where I want to put my effort first. And I always promised my wife and myself that while I build Everyday Spy, the company that I run, I'm going to make it treat it like a baby, right? Treat it like a newborn. But when my kids get to those teenage years, I want to be able to dedicate myself fully to them. My son's 12 right now. He is still very much a kid at heart, but he's going to get to those hard adolescent years and I want dad to be there for him first.

[Patrick Bet-David]

So the so, but you wanting to disappear, to no longer be seen so people won't recognize you, why do you want to do that?

[Andrew Bustamante]

That's the second reason. Because success brings wealth, but not enough wealth to be able to actually protect yourself. The most wealth like you have, you know what I'm talking about. You can fly private. If you don't want to be seen, you don't have to be seen. You can have people who do things that are cutouts of the actions that you need to take. I can do some of that. Anybody can do some of that. Right. We can have shell companies, we can have attorneys that do stuff for us. But I'm not wealthy enough to fly private. So when I fly I'm still recognized by dozens of people in the airport. They all want to have a conversation and that's the people who support me. I don't know how many of those people see me and recognize me that don't like me, don't support me. And I'm not going to stop telling the truth as I understand it. So that means the audience that doesn't agree with me and doesn't like me is just going to keep getting bigger. And as I travel with children, as I, as I have to follow certain, certain rules of transparency, it makes me an easier target to reach.

[Patrick Bet-David]

So, so, so it's not, it's got nothing to do with the business that you had because if CIA wants to find you, they're going to be able to find you. They're not going to have a hard time finding you.

[Andrew Bustamante]

And MSS and svr, every intelligence agency out there can find me in a heartbeat.

[Patrick Bet-David]

So your concern isn't any of the intelligence agency. Your, your concern is the average day to day person that doesn't like what you have to say and they disagree with you.

[Andrew Bustamante]

It only takes one.

[Patrick Bet-David]

That's true.

[Andrew Bustamante]

And if there's anything that you learn in the military, in the agency, all rights, all, all opportunity lies with the unknown threat. So as you get more and more unknown threats out there, like the probabilities just continue to grow.

[Patrick Bet-David]

So, so that's interesting you're saying that. So have you so far have people come up to you negatively and said some things to you or nothing yet.

[Andrew Bustamante]

I have only had one or two people say anything negative. Actually, it's interesting. Flying into M yesterday was the first time that I had a really uncomfortable situation.

[Patrick Bet-David]

So that was one of our guys. We intentionally did that.

[Andrew Bustamante]

But I had a local retired private investigator who interrupted my. My movie on the plane multiple times, drug drag. Dragging his granddaughter with him to, like, have a conversation. I was like, I'm trying to politely tell him I don't want to have a conversation. And then after we get off the plane, he's standing there with his family waiting for me to get off the plane to approach me. Again, trying to pitch.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Respectfully, or he's trying to pitch you something.

[Andrew Bustamante]

He's trying to pitch me as his private intelligence business. But I mean, respectfully. As respectfully as pushy can be. Yeah, but still awkward.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Yeah, I can see that. So there's a guy in church that every time I go to church, he just waits all the way at the end, says, can you make this video for me? Can you send this to me? Can you do. I'm like, listen, you do this. Like, I want to come here and I don't want to be bothered, but it's becoming challenging. Okay, just a quick thought. When you're on the plane and you're with your family and kids, your radars are up for protection. What do you like to sit? What do you like to look at? What are you aware of your surroundings? What do you look at?

[Andrew Bustamante]

So we're always within three rows of an exit seat. CIA taught me very early on that you've only got 90 seconds to survive in the event of an airplane accident. So you want to be able to be able to get out of your nearest exit within 90 seconds. So for me, I kind of put 20 to 30 seconds maximum to get past a row of people, especially in a panic. So we're always within three rows of an exit. My son always takes the window seat. He's the. The oldest, so he gets the window. My daughter gets the middle seat. I take the aisle seat. My wife is on the opposite aisle from me. And we both know that in the event of an accident, heads are getting stomped on, people are getting pushed. We're not going to play fair to get off the airplane in the event of an accident. In the event of some sort of hostile character on the plane, then my wife knows that I'm going to engage the hostile character and she's going to protect the kids. So we kind of have multiple different disaster scenarios in terms of probability.

[Patrick Bet-David]

And you guys have talked about this. My answer was like this. It wasn't even a hesitation.

[Andrew Bustamante]

My wife is a catastrophizer, man. She runs through this stuff and she insists that we have a plan for everything.

[Patrick Bet-David]

What was her background?

[Andrew Bustamante]

She was a CIA targeter.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Oh. So, okay, got it. Interest. So that's right, because when I talked to, we brought up the Mendez family, right? The husband and wife, the Jonah Mendez and what was his name? Tony Mendez. Anthony Tony Mendez. And then I just met another CIA, John Kiraku who was here, who also, I think he was married to somebody who was also CIA, dated somebody who was CIA. It seems like that's a pattern where everybody kind of. It's an easier way of doing it. You know, the life. Let's kind of marry each other.

[Andrew Bustamante]

That's exactly it. I mean we, we joke at the agency that it's the most expensive dating service in the world, but you put a bunch of fucking high achieving people together and you make them all work 16 hour days and you can hook up.

[Patrick Bet-David]

John said, man, everybody was hooking up with. Everybody was wild. What he was talking. Okay, so I got a bunch of things I want to go through with you. I want to talk about, you know, there's some stuff going on with Nick Fuentes, with Tucker Carlson, Candace, who's a F. Peter Thiel report about. He's a fed, you know, J.D. vance, you know what happened. There's all these interesting stories that are coming out and then some of the stuff that happened with intelligence this year so far. But before I go into these stories that we have, Trump just said something today about him wanting to go after Schiff and Hillary Clinton with the Russia gate hoax. And then there's also the Epstein stuff that's going on that a lot of people are talking about. I want to hear what you have to say about it, but I want to go to something else. So CIA Andrew. So guy calls me, he says, pat, I'm being offered to be part of CIA to give and tell. Okay. He's in a niche industry that a lot of people have access to him. And he meets a lot of people, think money, finance. You're a lot of. In front of a lot of different interesting people. Why is that appealing to somebody like him to say, yes, I want to do this job versus why? What is the risk for them to say, never ever work with the CIA, even if they're trying to use you for a project like that?

[Andrew Bustamante]

US Citizen. Right?

[Patrick Bet-David]

US Citizen.

[Andrew Bustamante]

So this is, it's such a hard question because even when we're at CIA and we're briefed on these operations. It's really hard to understand why the fuck somebody would say yes. It's so nonsensical to say yes to be an American citizen that works for the CIA, that supports as an asset the CIA. Because the bureaucracy is horrible when you're a badged officer of CIA, a blue badged officer. It's even worse when you're a US citizen that's encrypted, that's under layers of confidentiality and, and compartmentalization. But people say yes. And there's two big reasons why people say yes. One, they truly believe in helping America. Like legit, real blue blood red blood Americans. And they do it a lot, Pat. It's fucking amazing because if CIA were to call me, the only reason I would say yes is because I worked for them in the. But if I was a hundred million dollar business owner and CIA said they wanted me to report, it'd be like, no. How are you guys gonna keep my information safe? How are you gonna keep my business safe? I've built, I spent my whole life building this thing for you guys to piss away in one bad phone call. But they say yes. They say yes. And then oftentimes what ends up happening is the average lifespan for a CIA asset is about five years. We say that's their useful reporting life, not their physical life. Because within five years, CIA fucks up somehow. They, they leak their information. They don't brief the right office, and then an internal investigation takes suit and some FBI person barges through your office door and arrests you on suspicion of working with Russians. And then it's not until you get into an interrogation room where you're like, I'm only talking to the Russians because CIA is paying me to talk to the Russians. And then that whole fucking debacle blows up and it's a mess. It's a mess because government compartmentalizes so heavily. The second reason why people do it is because they believe CIA is going to help them somehow. Help them close a deal, help them get intel, help them get something.

[Patrick Bet-David]

On their last thing you would think about it and then do it.

[Andrew Bustamante]

They're never going to do it.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Okay? So, so, but let's, let's go with that. Where am I going with this? So you think about stories like an Epstein. Okay, so you know, when I say intel, of course I think CIA. But you have Mossad, you have a. My six. You have, you talk highly of India. I think with India's intelligence, I've never heard about until you're starting to really speak, where you're bringing some attention to it. But if a person like an Epstein, okay, where you hear stories about this guy, on what things he's been involved with, you go back history. At this point, people know that him and Bill Barr went to a school together. I don't know if you knew this or not. They went to school together many, many years ago as kids. And then that one of the people from that school is who later on came back and brought Jeffrey Epstein to be a math teacher, even though he didn't have the degree for it. And he kind of grows up to be who he is today. But the story with how he made his money, how he got his connection, his tie to Robert Maxwell, Robert Maxwell's tie back to Mossad. Ghislaine Maxwell, who was trained by her father and Robert Maxwell being a big media mogul person, does a person like Epstein leverage his intel relationship with Mossad to get things from either Mossad or the individuals as a form of a threat and a leverage. That's different than a CIA coming to somebody in America saying we'd like to be an asset to help us out getting information. How different is an Epstein versus what.

[Andrew Bustamante]

Happens here in method, in methodology? It's not that different. And it's not that different. You're basically, you have an intelligence agency that knows as a source of information from an individual, and then they just need to find what they can use to reciprocate that cooperation from the targeted individual. So the methodology is not that different. I would, and I still do openly say the most likely intelligence connection that Jeffrey Epstein had was with Mossad. Most likely, if he was an intelligence asset, it was probably for Mossad, not for CIA. He's too much of a high risk for CIA. And what he would have wanted is something Mossad would have been able to supply him with where the CIA couldn't. Whether that's sex trafficking or something else. Mossad is way more flexible in what they're willing to bring to the table in terms of an intelligence operation other than CIA.

[Patrick Bet-David]

So tell me more when you use the word flexible.

[Andrew Bustamante]

So Mossad assassinates, openly assassinates, CIA does not openly assassinate Israel. And Mossad openly advocate for regime change. CIA does not do that. And then the permissions, the authorities, that kind of, for lack of a better word, handcuff CIA, those authorities don't really exist for Mossad. Mossad is essentially the modern day version of the 1960s era CIA. Very experimental, very flexible, very little oversight because they're surrounded by an ocean of threats, whereas the United States is surrounded by literal ocean and Canada and Mexico. So we have different threat portfolios, profiles. And the difference in that threat profile is what informs our willingness to take high risk actions.

[Patrick Bet-David]

So it's interesting when you say so, are you saying back in the 60s, we were as reckless and aggressive in getting intel as the current Mossad is?

[Andrew Bustamante]

And we were as reckless without being as well trained, well funded or well technologically.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Give me an example of how reckless we were.

[Andrew Bustamante]

MX Ultra, okay, Operation Midnight Climax. I mean, we were, we were actively drugging Americans and then putting them in brothels with American prostitutes to test mind control agents. That's some reckless shit. Trying to get Castro's beard to fall off his face. The whole Bay of Pigs. I mean, that's the kind of shit that, that CIA still can't get off its back because it was so dumb, reckless and ill informed.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Do you think that gives a country an edge? If they're willing to be more reckless than you in gathering intel and you're trying to be more proper than them.

[Andrew Bustamante]

Just a mat. Take it out of the intel world and put it on the fucking school playground, right? Which bully is likely to not get muscled around? The one that will go crazy when you approach him or the one who's trying to play by the rules?

[Patrick Bet-David]

No question about it.

[Andrew Bustamante]

And that's exactly why it works.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Who knows this?

[Andrew Bustamante]

All of the five eyes. The five eyes being the five western intelligence agencies that cooperate. The closest, Canada, America, uk, Australia, New Zealand. All of the five eyes know Mossad is the most risk tolerant and most aggressive of intelligence agencies. And then we also know that because of that recklessness, there's only so much we can do to reel them in. They're so reckless, Pat. They, they collect on us. Mossad actively tries to penetrate. CIA actively tries to penetrate. I wouldn't be MI6. Yeah, yeah.

[Patrick Bet-David]

When John was here, John Kiraku said every time they would come around to us, he said we never trusted Mossad because they would come in, they would give gifts. And we're like, what are you doing giving us gifts? We don't need gifts. You're going to put some recording, we'd find it. We're like, what are you doing? I can tell you want to hear my conversation. What experiences did you have with the Mossad yourself?

[Andrew Bustamante]

So I was lucky to only have a few experiences because the types of operations I worked on were more sensitive than they were willing to expose to Mossad. In my senior years, in my years as a Middle manager, if you will. That's when I had the most overlap with joint operations with Mossad. Always super professional, always very smart, always quiet in the room, always impeccably dressed, and always shockingly good looking. Especially if they were cooperating in an operation with the US because they know our M.O. they know that a beautiful man or a beautiful woman is going to distract us from better judgment. And that's one of the things that we're briefed on before we operate with Mossad. We're like, hey, just expect a bombshell to walk in and expect that they put that bombshell there for a reason.

[Patrick Bet-David]

It's basic principles.

[Andrew Bustamante]

Basic principles. And that's how they work. That's why they're so good. Because they can literally leverage what we call primal instincts. Primal instincts in human beings. They surpass your religious beliefs, they surpass your education level, your age. These primal incentives that they know how to kind of set the dominoes up in place to maximize your cooperation, unless you come in defensive.

[Patrick Bet-David]

So let's go back to it. So let's talk about the recklessness, you're saying, of Mossad, that they're willing to go to levels that, you know, us is not willing to go. We used to back in the 60s. No longer. What event prevented us from being as reckless? Is it because somebody came in and they're like, well, moving forward, the CIA is going to be a very responsible intel agency and we're going to tell everything to America or. No, after the 60s, you know, you got Martin Luther King, you got John F. Kennedy, you got Bobby Kennedy, you got all this stuff that happened, the reputation dropped. Let's find a way to fix this. What was the reasoning why we went more safer than being reckless?

[Andrew Bustamante]

September 11, 2001 so not even 60.

[Patrick Bet-David]

So you're coming straight to 0101.

[Andrew Bustamante]

When we, when CIA and FBI failed to collaborate effectively to prevent 9 11. When that happened, the Congress stepped in and created heavy oversight for both intelligence agencies. The 911 Commission that was completed in 2003 basically outlined how the intelligence agencies were forced to cooperate, forced to grow, how their budget and their operations were, were going to be strictly pursued and over and overseen by a group in the Congress and how everything would have to get briefed up through the executive branch. That transformed CIA.

[Patrick Bet-David]

So they, so they finally had oversight. So prior to that, what was oversight?

[Andrew Bustamante]

The President had. The President controls CIA.

[Patrick Bet-David]

That's always, it's always been the case.

[Andrew Bustamante]

That'S the executive branch.

[Patrick Bet-David]

But what else did they have another dotted line to somebody else After a.

[Andrew Bustamante]

One, they had a slight. Yeah, after 01, they had dotted lines to multiple people. So they were still under the executive branch, but they had a hard line to the dni and the DNI had a hard line to the CIA, to the executive, the President. So now you have one layer of management in between the two, but then you also have this dotted line to the Congress who controls the purse strings. So prior to that, CIA was controlled exclusively by a black budget. They spend what they want to spend when they want to spend it. Well, now their budget's tied to Congress, black or not.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Do you like that? I mean, do you think there needs to be a department that nobody knows about? Especially when we're dealing with the types of actors in the world today that if they're going to have no rules and they're going to be reckless, we're going to play by the rules, we're going to get our asses handed to us.

[Andrew Bustamante]

And that's my concern, man. I look at this situation and it's kind of both ways. If you take away oversight to CIA, you run the risk of a politicized, weaponized CIA doing whatever the hell it wants to do. And that goes for anybody else, that goes for IRS for all we care. Right. But if you give increasing permissions and oversight to CIA to be more activist, more risk tolerant, then you kind of invite more pain, more public damage, more loss of reputation in the international space. So it's a hard place to be right now. But you're asking the right questions. We, the American people should be asking these questions right now. We're outsourcing these questions to whoever sits in Congress.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Yeah, that's not. I don't trust that. So the recklessness you said after 60s. So are you saying, were we still reckless in the 90s?

[Andrew Bustamante]

We were still without supervision in the 90s, which is a big part of why you started to see, you know, like the Hutus and Tutsis took over.

[Patrick Bet-David]

So, so, so regardless, so the 911 event that took place, whether we were more reckless or not, that couldn't have been prevented is what you're saying.

[Andrew Bustamante]

100% could have been prevented if what? If there would have been. This is the argument in the 911 Commission, if CIA and FBI would have been forced to work together, 911 would have been avoided. And they say that because when in retrospect, they collected all of the intelligence in both agencies and looked at it from 2001 to 2003, they saw that the fulsome profile of both intelligence collection Efforts would have prevented the time, the place, and the Personas involved. But because FBI was sending messages to CIA, CIA was ignoring them. CIA was sending messages to FBI. FBI was ignoring them. They're using two different systems. They're speaking in different languages. They have different encryptions for the same sources. All of this chaos resulted in, in the most important stuff just sitting in the printer.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Did we communicate better in the 50s and 60s? CIA and FBI versus in the 90s, no.

[Andrew Bustamante]

But they had, they had a greater, A greater chasm between responsibilities. So inside United States, FBI, Outside the United States, CIA, law enforcement, FBI, foreign intelligence, CIA, sabotage, CIA, Drug, drug research, drug investigation, CIA. It started to get kind of conflagrate, conflagrated. I think the word is confused in the 90s and into the early 2000s.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Yeah. So this, this, I don't know if. So, okay, the, the level of recklessness of Israel till today, who holds them accountable if they, what is their level of recklessness? They can go to where a commission comes in and say, tribunal, hey, hey, listen, time out. What are we, what are we doing here? Is there anybody that holds all the intel agencies worldwide accountable? Or there's really.

[Andrew Bustamante]

That was what they hoped would come about from the un, that there would be some kind of global organization that we would all voluntarily submit ourselves to and then we would follow that rule. It was actually Clinton who refused to let the United States fall under the jurisdiction of the UN's court, the criminal court. So after he set that precedent, Israel followed, China followed, Russia followed. And that's why we find ourselves where we are now. Where basically anything goes. If you're a strong enough, brave enough leader.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Yeah, I mean, for me, I wouldn't want to be under UN, because I don't even trust UN. UN's going to be having favored. So no matter what it is biases there, no matter who you are, to believe that a person is going to be 100%. Walter Cronkite was the most unbiased. Stop it. He was a liberal. He still had his own bias. Right. All of us have it. So it's. The sooner I. What your biases are and what mine are, the sooner I'm like, yeah, I totally get it. We were talking about, you know, three years ago, about you coming here, doing something. You remember that conversation we had? You know, my biggest thing was you had a timeline. And okay, we do the show, we grow it, it gets millions of subscribers and then somebody has to come after you. Ain't nobody going to be able to want to hear anybody Else but you. I'm like, no, that's not, I'm not let you know, you go do your thing. We had that conversation and I've recommended you to God knows how many people because I think you're phenomenal at what you do. But, but everybody has a bias. Spouse, husband, wife, kids, everybody has some of it. And then you have the character and the trust. But going back to. So I'm kind of glad we're not under the UN jurisdiction and that's what kills us.

[Andrew Bustamante]

Right?

[Patrick Bet-David]

Would you want to do that?

[Andrew Bustamante]

Would you? No, no, no. Personally. Personally, it makes complete sense. But what happens is when you look at what's happening in the headlines and then you put mass opinion on top of what's happening, that mass opinion sometimes drones out the other more rational thought process. Right. So you've got all these people who are like, oh, America committ crimes. Invading Afghanistan and Iraq according to war crime, legal definition. Definition, yeah, we did. All war is illegal according to the war definition. That doesn't stop wars from happening. So who are you going to be? The one that gets invaded or the one that does the invading? I mean, if you kind of look at it as a binary personal decision, it makes total sense. But, but the, our enemies and our own internal politics have made it so that people start to think that somehow a more cooperative world is better for us. When that's. That is a problem that only the richest, wealthiest, healthiest people get to have. Because when you're not the richest, the wealthiest and the healthiest, you don't want to be. Yeah, you don't.

[Patrick Bet-David]

They want it, right? Because the more order, you know, the less chance somebody's going to take them out. Right? You want that order to be in place, but sometimes you need chaos to be able to move up as well. Right? If you don't have the bit of the chaotic situation, how do I come up as a small market? So let's stay on this. Let's stay on this. With the recklessness that they still have today versus we don't have today, okay? If we chose to go be as reckless as them, and we get to a point where the CIA is like, look, do you guys want to. Do we keep going like this? Look what they're doing. They're getting involved. They have control over us. I'm not playing by the rules. You guys can't bully me. I'm going to come in, I'm going to own a bunch of your Congress folks. I'm going to give them a bunch of money. I'm going to use different nos, charities, apac, whatever you want to call it. Trust me, I'm going to get that control over a lot of your guys here. And because I can do that, I'm not doing anything illegal. Everything. I'm going by the books. Yeah, maybe I'll use some of the methods. That's going to be a little bit crazy. And for us, we're trying to be very much amicable and very much, you know, following by the rules, and let's report everything the proper way. It's a. It's a. It's a chaotic situation on how you manage that specific relationship with another intel agency that can break the rules and do whatever they want to do.

[Andrew Bustamante]

And you're. And the thing is, you're not trying to. To manage the relationship in reality. What you're trying to do is leverage the relationship for your own benefit. That's the real reason.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Is that what we do?

[Andrew Bustamante]

That's. That's why intelligence agencies cooperate. The problem is, then it becomes a game of which intelligence officers are more skilled, can move fastest, and can make the bigger promise. And that's where we start to shoot ourselves in the foot again. United States sits at the table in a joint intelligence subcommittee with the Mexicans, which is happening right now to fight cartels. Right. In a situation like that, we bring the bigger budget, we bring the bigger weapons, we bring the better recon infrastructure. The Mexicans are going to listen to us. They're going to do what we want them to do, and we're going to get lots of access into their agencies. That's a good thing. That's a win. But flip this, flip the ticket. Somebody that doesn't have the same need as a Mexican law enforcement agency, and all of a sudden, the rules change, the leverage changes.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Yeah, but what I'm thinking about with this is so if they don't have the rules, they get the intel from us. Like, my kids, my daughter will come and say, my daddy, Senna hit me. Senna hit me. And that's her intel, okay? Then I go in there, and then my son will say, no, she didn't hit her. Brooklyn scratched her back. And then Senna reacted, but Brooklyn started it. And then she'll go like this and give me a look. I'm like, did you do that? And I'm like, two witnesses that I believe, right? So then the question becomes, what if we rely on them for intel, but they come and give us whatever intel that they want us to know, but not the full intel? That makes us overreact but we have to trust the intel because we don't. We can't go to another person that was a witness to say, no, that's not really the full story. This is the real full story. How do you inspect the intel that's being given to you that doesn't have another person holding them accountable?

[Andrew Bustamante]

And you're. Again, you're right on, right on the money with the question. We have a process that we have called the corroboration of intelligence. Corroboration of intelligence. So when an intel report comes in, that is a single sourced intel report, we're looking for corroborating intelligence. A second intel report that says the same thing or nearly the same thing as the first intelligence report, but from a completely separate source. When you have corroboration, that's the two witnesses that you trust. That also lets you know if the first source or the second source is being honest. Because if you have information that's not corroborating and they both say they're telling the truth, you have reason to doubt them both. That is a big part of why you. Well, we have 36 intelligence agencies because Air Force is giving us intel, Navy's giving us intel, NGA is giving us or NSA is giving us intel, NRO is giving us intel, CIA and NSA are giving us intel. So even between the agencies, we're hoping to find corroboration that allows us to validate foreign.

[Patrick Bet-David]

That's actually not what I'm asking. I'm asking if we're dealing with, you know, for example, if we're trying to get intel, how many CIA agents do we have in Iran right now?

[Andrew Bustamante]

Not many. Exactly.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Who do we have? We have Mossad agents in Iran.

[Andrew Bustamante]

Correct.

[Patrick Bet-David]

We can't go in there. Right. We did a skit a couple weeks ago. Not a skit. We're in the middle of the podcast. I'm like, what if we send 200 African American agents to Iran to act like they're Iranian? You know Tyrone Johnson, right? Tyrone Johnson, but they're African American. I don't care if you're speak or anything. They know you're not from Iran. They know you're. It's weird for you to be here, right? So who do we rely on to get intel on what's going on with the scientists that are working on nuclear weapons or where Khamenei is in Iran? We have to rely on somebody else's intel to give to us. And whose intel are we going to rely on? Iraq, Saudi or Mossad? So what I'm saying is if Mossad has, whatever the numbers we've read about, low 700, high 2000, and Iran just kicked out I think 550 of them or they arrested him, something happened to them. Rob, if you want to verify what I'm saying here, how do we know when Mossad's given us intel? We don't have representatives there to check to see if they're telling us the truth or not. Do we just risk believing them?

[Andrew Bustamante]

So the short answer is yes. The short answer is when you don't have intelligence superiority, when you don't have information superiority, you have to start to take risks on the people that you think do have information superiority. Now, there are certain benefits here. Saudi Arabia and Israel both have a threat from Iran, so we would anticipate that both of them would be actively collecting against Iran. However, neither of them fully trust the United States. So we're gonna be getting groomed intelligence from both of them, meaning it's gonna be shaped for what they want us to know, but it's still an opportunity for us to see if one or the other is saying the same thing or something different. Plus, don't forget about all of our intelligence assets that are not human. Right? SIGINT collection, satellite connection, open source collection. There's lots of other collection efforts besides just human beings on the ground that we can use to collect intelligence. So we're now trying to find whether or not the SIGINT corroborates the Saudi report.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Tell me about the second. Tell me about all the three.

[Andrew Bustamante]

So, so what I'm talking about are human sources coming from two allied countries and then a third signals intelligence that's coming from nsa because NSA collects signals worldwide, everywhere.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Okay. So you don't have to be there to get that. And then you said, what was the other two? Sigint.

[Andrew Bustamante]

And then, so there's sigint, there's open source, open source information. Those are all the analysts that can pull things in foreign languages, in English language, academic sources, etc. And then start to cross reference to see what intelligence you can derive from open source information.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Okay, but, but if we're getting it from Mossad and we're not there. Just, just a question for you. Human rights reported that 530 people across Iran that were violating espionage. Israeli Mossad. So this was June 13, 2025. 5:30 that they found that they were going through and they detained a bunch of these guys. But if Mossad gives us the intel, how many CIA agents does America currently physical have in Iran?

[Andrew Bustamante]

Right Now, I don't know the answer. If I knew the answer, it would be classified. But I will say that my assessment less than what fit on two hands.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Damn.

[Andrew Bustamante]

Iran, Russia, China, North Korea. Your sophisticated, or rather your most rogue nations have been systematically kicking Americans out, hunting down anybody who even looks like an asset, and then publicly punishing these people to further instigate and protect themselves against people turning against their country for a long time. Now you'll see, and I mean, it's fantastic. If you do a quick search, you'll see the kind of commercials that CIA, China, Russia and MI6 are putting out there to try to get people to volunteer. The reason those things don't work very well is because your next door neighbor just got arrested because they think he's an American spy. And then you on the Internet see a CIA commercial says, hey, become an American spy. And you're like, fuck, no, I just saw what happened to my neighbor. I can hate the regime all day long without talking to you.

[Patrick Bet-David]

What do we like? Let's just say it's Russia or Iran and somebody reaches out, right? And in China, somebody reaches out. What do we give in return? For them to give intel.

[Andrew Bustamante]

So you're talking about if I, if.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Like so the Russia ad, right? The Russia ad that you have and it tells the story. It's very emotional. By the way. Remember back in the days when your father and he went through this and now you have this, do it for your country. Like this. China has these Russias that they do. Okay, so I want to give intel. What, what is that, Iranian, that Russian, that Chinese person that's sick of their own country, what do they get in return?

[Andrew Bustamante]

This is a lot like our conversation about why would an American support CIA? A huge chunk of their motivation is that they, they believe they're doing the right thing. They'll take the risk believing they're doing the right thing. Now America never wants that. You always want to have leverage. So we try to find a leverage point. Is that leverage point? Money is that leverage point. You know, medicine is that leverage point. A visa to get your family out of the country. We look at all of those options, but we have to give something right away. One of the reasons I really don't like Bitcoin is because bitcoin has become the currency of choice for espionage around the world. If you're a North Korean trying to recruit an American scientist, you're going to pay them in bitcoin. Well, if you're a Chinese person trying to report to American intelligence, you're probably also getting paid in bitcoin.

[Patrick Bet-David]

In a way. I know this is not the answer you're probably expecting to hear from me. In a way that's good, because there is a way to give something that if you do this and it's real, we can send half a bitcoin or we can send a bitcoin over to you. And it's decentralized so it can't be fully tracked of where it's coming from.

[Andrew Bustamante]

Correct.

[Patrick Bet-David]

So part of that is good, but the other part of it is if. Okay, when you were in the CIA and you don't need to give this answer, I'm just trying to see if you knew it, would you guys all know how many actual officers were in any country at any given time? Did you guys know that?

[Andrew Bustamante]

Only for our. The short answer is yes for the area of responsibility we were working in. The longer answer is there are different categories of officers. Some of them are outside of our need to know. So I would know how many officers of my caliber were there. But then there might be some of a deeper cover that I wouldn't know at all. And there might be some that were barely covered that I also wouldn't know at all.

[Patrick Bet-David]

So above, above your rank, you wouldn't know if they're there or not.

[Andrew Bustamante]

Correct.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Okay, so at the peak ever, if you were to guesstimate, what's the most officers that we had in Iran actually working, what would that be?

[Andrew Bustamante]

I mean, the peak would have probably been under the Shah and 60. Ish.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Still 60. Still not a big number.

[Andrew Bustamante]

Not a big number of American officers.

[Patrick Bet-David]

That's exactly what I'm saying.

[Andrew Bustamante]

Yeah, but they would be running networks of locals.

[Patrick Bet-David]

So. Okay, so if they're there, would they be white guys? Would they be regular guys that look like they could be.

[Andrew Bustamante]

They would be basically whatever the United States. Whatever the United States was hiring at CIA, which was predominantly Caucasian back then, but there could have been women, there could have been blacks, there could have been Asians that were also recruited by CIA at the time.

[Patrick Bet-David]

So it's not like they're going and finding American, Iranian, Iraqi, whatever to be able to leverage them to send them there.

[Andrew Bustamante]

Correct. If anything, they're trying to avoid that because of the instant suspicion.

[Patrick Bet-David]

So what is the population right now of Americans living in Iran today? Do we know that number? Rob, can you pull up what is the population of Caucasian Americans living in Iran today? White Americans living in Iran today? You can put Caucasian. Let's see what it says living in Iran today. Because if I'M Iran. Even if I see one person, it appears there's no publicly available reliable sources. Although exact numbers are not published past this may suggest that thousands of US citizens, including expats, dual national students and business professionals, reside or stay in Iran, often intermittently in mid-2025 during the Rising tension State Department issue. I remember this one the whole time. This is recent. That just happened. 25,000 people. This is right before they attacked the nuclear facility. So you got to get out of there. But what I'm trying to say is, okay, even if one white guy lives in Iran, why are you here? So if I'm Iran and I'm overly paranoid, consistently, I'm going to be like, you're either CIA, you're either somebody that's trying to give intel to another, get him out of here. Right. Or arrest him. Find a way to get. So that's not going to work effectively. So we have to rely. What other intel do we rely on as much as Mossad to get intel from Iran?

[Andrew Bustamante]

So I don't want to think of it as a country. I want to think of it as a rogue nation. A rogue nation means a nation that basically prevents the trans, the transience of American citizens like Iran, like North Korea. These, these are countries where you can't get in if you have an American passport, good luck getting in. And if you do get in, good luck not going to jail right away. So rogue nations, you primarily rely on third country intelligence, like we're talking about with Mossad. You primarily rely on signals intelligence, which you would get from nsa. You primarily rely on military intelligence, which you would get from the intelligence services of your, of your four branches or five branches of military with the Space Force. And those branches of the military are getting a lot of their information from other third party groups. They're getting it from the U.N. they're getting it from military channels. Submarines collect secrets. Airplanes create secret collect secrets. So you've got this conglomerate at all times that are always collecting, but you're primarily relying on signals that you can absorb and intercept. And your human intelligence is coming from a third party.

[Patrick Bet-David]

But aside from Assad, do we have another intel that we trust that would be in Iran to get intel for us, or. No, it would mainly be Mossad.

[Andrew Bustamante]

So the 25,000 people. If you scroll back up again, this is an important two words that often get overlooked. You see the dual nationals.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Yes.

[Andrew Bustamante]

There are only a handful of countries that allow you to have dual citizenship with the United States. Those countries would allow you to have both an American passport and a foreign passport. So you could travel into Iran on the foreign passport and essentially the border agents would never know you're an American citizen.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Who are the five countries?

[Andrew Bustamante]

There's only a handful. Costa Rica allows you to have dual citizenship. Spain allows you to have dual citizenship. I believe Canada might let you have dual citizenship. Rob, can you look that up?

[Patrick Bet-David]

What?

[Andrew Bustamante]

Yeah, thank you. What countries allow Americans to have dual citizenship?

[Patrick Bet-David]

Israel is one of them.

[Andrew Bustamante]

There you go. Canada, Mexico, many in Latin America. Oh, these are. These require that you scroll that up again one more time. These nations do not require that you announce your citizenship. So these are all dual national countries for the United States.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Okay. And then if you go lower, Rob, where is Israel on that list? Because a lot of, you know the criticism that a lot of there it is longer term grants go a little bit lower, Rob. Countries that allow it only in limited circumstances. Japan, Singapore. Countries that generally do not allow dual citizenship. Let's see this list real quick. China, India, Saudi, uae, Qatar, Indonesia, Malaysia. Where is Iran on this list by the way? Did you see anywhere Iran above?

[Andrew Bustamante]

I think Iran allows dual citizenship actually if you. There it is. So scroll up to section one, sir. No, I don't see it under Asia Pacific. I didn't see it under Middle east either. So this is not all encompassing. There's 160something country. So this is not every country.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Iran does not formally recognize dual citizenship. Under Iran, anyone who's considered Iran citizen is treated solely as an Iranian citizen while in Iran, even if they hold another passport. Dual citizenship is legally, isn't legally acknowledged. Iran will not provide conciliar access to dual nationalists from their country while in Iran. If you are an Iranian citizen under Iranian law by birth, Iran assumes you are 100% Iranian in legal matters. Yeah. So, okay, so let me go where I'm going with some of these questions because we're going to come back. We're all over the place right now, but we'll come back to it. So the Shah is the leader of Iran for, I don't know, 37 years. 38 years, 39. Somewhere in the high 30s. Right. He was there. Can you pull up how many years he was in rain? 38 years, 41 to 79. Okay, 38 years. And he improves the economy, allows women to vote, women have freedom. They're not forced to get married at a young age. Nine years old, eight years old, 10 years old, all that stuff gone. Great relationship with the West. People travel in and out. He falls, he leaves, he dies. Khomeini comes in, IRGC comes in. I had the former founder of IRGC here doing a podcast with us a few months ago. And then it's been now 46 years, okay? And everyone's been waiting for his son to go back and bring freedom to Iran. Reza Pahlavi, whose son. We've had him on here a few times as well, and nothing's happened. I think he's a nice guy. I don't think he's his father to be tougher or his grandfather. He's a nice guy, and lots of people have been waiting for him to do it. I don't think he wants to do the job. I don't think he's going to do the job. And he keeps saying, peaceful, peace. We have to do it peacefully, peacefully, peacefully, peacefully, peacefully. But this is not the job of anybody, okay? The revolution of the Shah leaving wasn't peacefully. It was nasty. But they've had control for 46 years. If the CIA and others really wanted Iran to fall the last 46 years, it was a lot easier to do it under the Shah than it would be now. Why hasn't us MI6, Mossad, the Middle east became chaotic after the Shah fell. If we keep hearing these stories about, let me tell you, coup d', et, what's the word I'm looking for, that they got involved to, to create a coup and, you know, whatever the word is, if they have the playbook, if they know how to do it, if they know Iran is chaotic and they call it, what.

[Andrew Bustamante]

The.

[Patrick Bet-David]

What's the phrase they say of terrorism? The. The. There's a. They're the such and such of terrorism. Like they're the ones that generated all over the world. Why has an MI6, Mossad and us work together? State sponsor of terrorism. Yeah. Why haven't they worked together to cause a fall? 46 years, you left them alone. Why?

[Andrew Bustamante]

So this is where uncomfortable truths have to be said, Right?

[Patrick Bet-David]

Sure.

[Andrew Bustamante]

Iran is not a priority for the United States. And when you have friends, like 46.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Years, it's not been a priority.

[Andrew Bustamante]

Why would it be a priority? Russia is not a priority for the United States either anymore. We don't. They don't touch our economy. They don't touch our people. We're militarily insulated against them. And most important of all, Pat, we have friends who they have to go through first. So it's a problem that we outsource. It's Saudi Arabia's problem. It's Israel's problem. It's the UAE's problem. It's Jordan's problem. These are all allies that we have, and we give them money. We have military bases that they host, we feed them intelligence, and they take action on the intelligence. A big part of the reason why Netanyahu, even still to this day, doesn't have to kowtow to the United States is because he understands the leverage he has. He understands that he is the wall that protects the United States and the Western allies from Iran, and it makes it so that we can spend our money on something else. And he spends his money and his lives protecting the rest of us against Iran. If it was a priority for us, like it was on the day that Trump went in and blew up the nuclear sites, when it's a priority for us, we reach right into that cookie jar and do our thing. But when it's not a priority for us, we reach into other cookie jars.

[Patrick Bet-David]

So. So when you say they have to go through somebody else, it's kind of like before you can come fight me, kick this guy's ass. That guy's. Dan, you can come talk to me about. Fine. Okay. It's like a eighth class. You got to come up. Okay, so then if that's the case, in this case, wouldn't that paint Israel as the protector to what Iran could do to others? If that's the case, why are they not seen? And they're getting the level of criticism they've been getting the last two years, two and a half years.

[Andrew Bustamante]

So first of all, it took them two and a half years to get this current level of criticism right. Right now is when you have.

[Patrick Bet-David]

It's been about a year. They're getting destroyed right now online, like the people are going after Israel in a hardcore way.

[Andrew Bustamante]

Online. Online is the masses. The masses have no authority. What I'm concerned about is how does. How do Western leaders treat them? Yeah, the masses don't matter if the masses think they matter, that's why they're the masses.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Israel understands online influencers, YouTubers, podcasters, we.

[Andrew Bustamante]

Can talk and people can carry our voice, but what can we do to affect policy? Man, not a thing. Affecting policy isn't profitable either. So that's why they. YouTube can turn us off if they don't like what we have to say. Right. Facebook can quiet you if they don't like what you have to say. So what power do we really have? Right? We have to avoid certain keywords so that we don't get canceled by the organization, not by the Internet.

[Patrick Bet-David]

But do you. Do you think for a guy that's Very open about the fact that Mossad is extremely reckless. Very open about the fact that, you know, we don't have to solve Iran's problem because that's Israel's problem. We just give them the money and go. You go do it, right? What do you need here? Go do it. It's on you. And you guys pretty much can self.

[Andrew Bustamante]

Sustain yourself even better. We don't give you the money, we sell you the weapons, so we make the profit. But you're still giving us, you're still buying in American dollars.

[Patrick Bet-David]

So do you think the level of criticism Israel's been getting the last two years, people don't know the full story of the role they play that's positive for the world.

[Andrew Bustamante]

100%.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Really?

[Andrew Bustamante]

100%. It's 100% true.

[Patrick Bet-David]

I would have not guessed you would have said that.

[Andrew Bustamante]

So I am, I am a staunch, staunch supporter of Israel's importance to the United States.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Holy shit. Tell me.

[Andrew Bustamante]

Absolutely. Because they are the first wall of fucking defense for us. We, there's a reason that we fucked everybody up so much at the end of World War II, because we had to build walls around the American boundary. We needed to manipulate Europe. NATO is there to protect us. We're not there to help Europe. NATO is there to protect us. Israel's there to protect us. We continue to. Our presidents like Biden call the Saudi Arabian prince all sorts of horrible names and promise justice, but it never happens because Saudi Arabia protects us. Americans for sure don't want to our enemies at the gate. So we let our enemies go to other gates. And then in diplomatic channels, military channels and intelligence channels, we give them the tools to fight the fight. Why is, why do we continue to support Ukraine? Because they are weakening Russia. That benefits us, hurts Ukraine. But as a very pragmatic fact, a Ukraine death does not equal an American death. Not in the eyes of an American, certainly not in the eyes of the American administration.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Okay, so if that's the case and we're going with the role Israel plays, how have they gotten the reputation they have right now that they control American politicians, they fund American politicians, they're doing all this stuff. And by the way, it's documented. AIPAC spends the money. You know, they, they're hardcore or they're always going out there and you know, lobbying and hey, you know, we're this, and we need you to come and we'll travel you and we'll send you this once. How have they gotten the level of criticism they have? And why isn't half the market Believe in them. They're like, no, I'm not with you. I think you guys are. You know, Trump is a puppet to Bibi and Israel. All this stuff that you started here.

[Andrew Bustamante]

So a big part of that is because Israel doesn't trust us. They know we have set them up to take bullets instead of our people. They know that we put them into a country that's surrounded by their enemies. They understand that every proposition and accord that we try to force them into benefits us more than it benefits them. Israel's not stupid. Israelis are very, very smart, very entrepreneurial, very self defensive. Like, they understand that nobody's there to help them. We as Americans, we forget that we have institutions that protect us. We have partnerships that we believe in. We pay health insurance so that we're not going to get sick. Like, we have this false idea that we're safe. Israelis don't carry that idea. They know they're not safe. So they do whatever it takes to get them just an inch more of security. So they reach back into the United States and they do lobby for what they believe in. And they do try to take advantage of markets when they can and leverage relationships when they can. I mean, there's this phenomenal book called Thou Shalt Prosper written by a rabbi about why business benefits from the five, like these five principles of Hebrew of Judaism. Phenomenal book. Every business leader should read this book, but in that he very clearly lays out how the traditional beliefs of Judaism translate directly to business benefit. And the same thing, I guarantee you, applies in some other book to political benefit.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Yeah, that is, that, that is okay. So they know that we set them up. When you're saying we set them up. Where else could have given them their land? That's by Jerusalem. So it's not like it's a setup, Right? That was the location. That's what you're getting. We didn't have to help you. We helped you. You got the land, you're grateful. Explain to me the setup part because I don't understand why they would think that we set them up for failure.

[Andrew Bustamante]

I don't think they think we set them up for failure. I think they know that they can't trust us fully. I think they know that.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Tell me why they don't trust us.

[Andrew Bustamante]

Same reason Taiwan doesn't trust us.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Why?

[Andrew Bustamante]

Because they see that we have rhetoric that shifts. It shifts every four years with politicians. It shifts every two years with midterm elections. It shifts with the marketplace. And it was the end of World War II that many of these Quote, unquote. You know, new countries were born. Israel obviously doesn't believe they were born after World War II, but many Americans believe that that's when Israel was born. So Taiwan came about as a result of the nationalists being forced out of China. Israel came about as Jewish. Jewish populations were forced out of Europe and they were given this land. That's how so many people believe it. That's not how they see it themselves. And then from that point forward, their economy was kind of forced on them. Their trade with the United States was forced on them. It's the same way with Japan, it's the same way with Germany, it's the same way with France, Poland, all these countries that were devastated after World War II. The United States swept in and was like, hey, we'll help you rebuild and we'll put you in debt and you'll build markets that benefit the United States and this long list of things, including ideologies. You'll have to be a democracy and you'll have to follow our democratic principles. All of that worked, Pat. It worked for a long time, until about 2020, when 20 years of an American conflict in the Middle east started to show that we didn't know as much as we thought we did. And then strongman leadership started to pop up and started to work. People like Putin, people like Netanyahu in other countries of the world. We started to see a shift towards socialist beliefs and socialist practices rather than democracies. And they were working. Economies were building and growing. Militaries were winning in a way other. And America was distracted for 20 years. That's what changed everything recently.

[Patrick Bet-David]

So let's move on from how they feel about us and how we feel about them. How does Russia and China feel about Israel?

[Andrew Bustamante]

I think that Russia and China look at Israel and they see pragmatic decision making. And that is something that our adversaries appreciate because there's no ideology involved there. Whether you like Netanyahu's ideology or not, whether you care that he's a right wing supporter or not, what he is pragmatically doing is destroying step by step, the enemies that surround Israel, which will guarantee Israel's security for five years, a decade, 15 years, 20 years, he's doing as much damage as he can to Israel's enemies, which are all America's enemies, in the time that he can, before he's essentially forced to back off of his war path. And when he has to back off off of his war path, then we'll see what the criminal courts of Israel have to say about him. So he doesn't quite know what the future holds. But other strongmen leaders, China and Russia, see that and they say America's supporting that. So what America says to its people and what America does in policy is not always the same. And how can we use that?

[Patrick Bet-David]

So criminal courts in Israel, when he's done, it could be very nasty for bp, could Bibi, but he could end up being a useful individual for people that want peace there. But to Russia, what issues does Russia have with Iran? Doesn't Russia have a better relationship with Iran than Israel?

[Andrew Bustamante]

Oh, yeah, for sure.

[Patrick Bet-David]

So then does Russia indirectly view Israel as. Would Russia rather see Israel get weaker or Iran get weaker because they help Iran so and Iran buys from them? No, like they go back and forth.

[Andrew Bustamante]

So what, what Russia wants is Israel, is Iran dependent on Russia? And as long as Iran can be hurt, damaged, put in a box, they will just become that much more dependent on Russia. What Russia and China need are strong dependent. I want to call them allies, but allies implies that you have a common ideology. Right. What they want is partnerships that are pragmatically predictable. And as long as Iran has no other friends in the world, they're going to keep going to China and Russia. As long as China has no other friends in the world, it's going to keep going to Russia and vice versa.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Okay. And I know Iran has these drones that they sell to Russia. They're known for the weapon that they're selling. So that's like where the revenue comes from as well for them. But say somebody wants to now flip it. So we just saw the motivation. Why, why would Iran, why would us want to see Iran fall? For what? It's not our problem. Let Israel deal with it. Right? Let somebody else deal with it. But then why did they back then create a coup and allow Iran to fall?

[Andrew Bustamante]

That was. Those were the years before government oversight. So that was the left hand and the right hand not knowing what each other was doing.

[Patrick Bet-David]

And so Kissinger promised Shah that they would help and that they would allow him to use the hospitals and all this other stuff. And at last minute they didn't help him. And there could be a possibility that Kissinger wasn't necessarily reporting everything to Carter, that Kissinger may have been more powerful than Carter was.

[Andrew Bustamante]

And these are all suspicions that can't be validated but are completely probable. And that's what sucks so much about the days before oversight.

[Patrick Bet-David]

This guy was a very powerful guy.

[Andrew Bustamante]

Oh, yeah.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Feared, hated, powerful. Interesting womanizer all in one. Very interesting. Okay, so let's go here. So today, if somebody today wants to see Iran fall and they're in politics, they're actually on the inside. If somebody from the eye of a CIA agent today, knowing, say a former CIA officer, clandestine, that you've been around, how would you be able to succeed today? How would you do it today? Knowing all the players, knowing where people are at, knowing who would want to see it? No one who doesn't give a shit about getting involved. It's not our top 10 problems that we have right now. President Trump sat right there and said to me, yeah, we have so many problems in America. You want me to think about Iran? We have so many things that we're dealing with ourselves, right? How would one go about doing it if they're from the States?

[Andrew Bustamante]

You always have to approach things with multiple avenues, multiple ways in. So you would have, of course, one way in. That's exclusively propaganda, trying to get the people on the inside to take action themselves. Propaganda is alive and well everywhere. Don't just think that it's Russians doing it to us. We do it all over the world as well. We call it information warfare. So one route is through propaganda. Another route is through paramilitary or guerrilla support to known revolutionaries that are in country. That's why you have Green Berets, that's why you have CIA, paramilitary. That's why you have elements of government whose job it is just to support, train, arm, equip known revolutionary forces that are in any given country. But then you would also want to reach in using your intelligence services to create bot activity, cyber, cyber activity, so you could. You could create more chaos from known opinions that are already happening in country. Anywhere you go, there's always people who disagree. So if you really want an argument to get bigger and bigger, all you have to do is fuel both sides of the argument. So hack an algorithm, create a bunch of fake bots that comment and like and whatever else. And now you just made an argument bigger. So you have all three of those elements before you start talking about foreign intelligence partners that do have reach into that country. And when you have a foreign intelligence partner who has reach into that country, sometimes it's just a matter of paying them for operations. Sometimes they already have their own national security policy they're trying to execute, and you can support that national security policy. So there's lots of ways to reach in. But the thing that's so frustrating about Iran specifically is nothing seems to be funded and supported for a long enough period of time to make real progress. All four of Those efforts happen but then they're turned off, they're turned up, they're turned down. All sorts of changes happen all the time. And especially for professional intelligence officers, current and former who have been Iran watchers, it drives them crazy. It drives them crazy because they see success and then there's protests and then they hope that someone's going to continue to fund operations that advance the protests and then they don't. Or they hope that there's going to be some kind of effort to swoop in and do something else and there isn't. And then you've also got instances like, like the B2 bombing raid that happened in that incurred into Iran. A one time attack like that. That's just a big muscle flex. That's not strategic or tactical benefit for a long term operation.

[Patrick Bet-David]

So in other words, in order for it to happen, it's not going to be a peaceful one. It would be a very nasty one.

[Andrew Bustamante]

If it was peaceful, I'd be shocked. It would, it would require somebody to die of natural causes, somebody else not to step up to the plate to take over when, when committee dies and then everybody else to just agree to elections. I will say one thing that shocked all of us was when the least likely president was elected. Right. I forget, I don't know how to say his name but when the current president was elected, nobody saw that coming.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Laisy, who's the current president?

[Andrew Bustamante]

Yeah, it starts with a P. Oh yes, right. Here's a guy that's, he was just.

[Patrick Bet-David]

On tucker 4 weeks ago but pro.

[Andrew Bustamante]

Bull markets minority did not win the majority. Did not. No one expected him to win the majority vote except that so few people voted. He ended up elected in contrast with the religious leadership. With the religious leadership. So this guy is an example of letting these three arms of espionage work, letting covert influence and rebellion and everything. Letting natural things foment can cause change. But then this guy got screwed when we bombed Iran because now all of a sudden he has to choose between supporting the US or supporting Iran. Of course he's going to support Iran.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Yeah, well, we'll see. I thought it was, I thought it was close at one point but there wasn't enough momentum and too many people wanted to play nice and I don't think playing nice would have gotten the job done. And the only time I ever saw Trump flinch, not even flinch but like a little bit nervous, was the day when they attacked those three facilities when he walked up with himself, Vance and Hexit, maybe Rubio next to him as well. It's the shortest. It's the first time he ever said God bless. You know, we hopefully God is looking over us. Never saw him talk like that. He seemed a little bit nervous. Okay. I figured you'd get a kick out of this. So I've been trying to buy this property for three and a half years. Okay, 10, 11 acres on the airport, all this stuff. So one day I find out locally that this was the old CIA, DOD property where Oliver north, soldier, you know, when they were going back and forth with the weapons, Iran Contra. This is the land.

[Andrew Bustamante]

Wow. Yeah.

[Patrick Bet-David]

So we buy the property. After we buy the property, the director of the airport comes up. He says, you know, we've been trying to buy this property. I said, I didn't know that. I said, why are you trying to buy it? Well, nobody wants this property to be in a civilian sand. He says, how much you know about this property?

[Andrew Bustamante]

I said, I've heard a lot of.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Stuff, but I don't know what's what. He said, what have you heard? It's like me and four of their people and in my executive team, I'm like, I've heard some weird things. Well, tell us what you've heard. Is it true that this was the CIA property and DOD and they would do a bunch of things? He says, all of that is true and then some. I said, really? Yeah. He says, when we used to call back in the days when they used to call, you know, cops or whatever they would call, nobody would ever come to this property. Everybody wanted to stay away from this property. So apparently they flew the stuff from this land. This is a tax free zone property. This 11 acres here.

[Andrew Bustamante]

That's badass. When I, when I pulled up and saw the new building and saw the new property backed up against an airport, what I thought was that the airport completely fits the model of a CIA airport.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Really?

[Andrew Bustamante]

Oh, yeah. And there are several CIA airports across the country for various reasons, but the acreage, the location in a downtown city space. It's a small airport that doesn't really have to serve executives, but can serve executives. It's got the right cover reason into being there. It's big enough. It's got the right size landing strip. It's, it's a great, it's a great location for clandestine airborne operations.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Well, I'm glad you said that because the reason why you're here is they've asked me to invite you back to the CIA. I'm the recruiter, so, you know, I'm.

[Andrew Bustamante]

Not getting on that plane.

[Patrick Bet-David]

You're not Open to the idea.

[Andrew Bustamante]

Not on that plane.

[Patrick Bet-David]

They've been watching you closely. They want you back. You're not open to it.

[Andrew Bustamante]

Because if I get on a plane in fucking Florida, man, in like 20 minutes, I'm no longer on American soil.

[Patrick Bet-David]

So then they can do something to you.

[Andrew Bustamante]

Exactly.

[Patrick Bet-David]

All right, well, I guess that offer is off the table. I was going to give it to you, but you rejected it. Folks, you know, now he's not interested. Nowadays, more than ever, the brand you wear reflects and represent who you are. So for us, if you wear a Future Looks bright hat or a valuetainment gear, you're telling the world, I'm optimistic. I'm excited about what's going to be happening. But you're a free thinker. You question things, you like, debate. And by the way, last year, 120,000 people got a piece of Future Looks Bright geared with valuetainment. We have so many new things. The cufflinks are here. New Future Looks Bright. This is my favorite, the green one. Just yesterday, somebody placed an order for a hundred of these. If you watch the PBD podcast, you got a bunch to choose from. White ones, black ones. If you, if you, if you smoke cigars and you come to our cigar lounge, we have this high quality lighter cutter and a holder for the cigars. We got sweaters with the valuetainment logo on it. We got mugs. We got a bunch of different things. But if you believe the Future looks bright, if you follow our content and what we represent with valuetainment with PVD podcast, go to vtmerch.com and by the way, if you order right now, there's going to be a special VT gift insight just for you. So again, go to vtmerch.com, place your order, tell the world that you believe the future looks bright. Let's go to two other issues that's going on. Three other issues that's going on here with us. One is a Russiagate. Okay, Russiagate story's been outworld for a while. It's not like we haven't known when the dossier was paid for 35 million Hillary Clinton. We've all read it. We've seen the story. That's not news. Now, you know, Tulsi Gabbard, who is running dni, is coming out and saying, hey, here's what we're going to be doing. And they're going after Schiff, they're going after Hillary. Here's President Trump today, just five hours ago. Go ahead, Rob. I had to go through the Russia, Russia hoax. And it was actually, it was a strain on the relationship.

[Andrew Bustamante]

I actually told them, I said, you.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Know, they got this phony investigation going on.

[Andrew Bustamante]

Russia, Russia, Russia, totally phony. Created by Adam Schiff, shifty Schiff and.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Hillary Clinton and the whole group of them. And it made it very dangerous for our country because I was unable to really deal with Russia the way we should have been. I'm looking at Pam because I hope something's going to be done about it. These people put our country at great danger.

[Andrew Bustamante]

And Adam Schiff was all made up.

[Patrick Bet-David]

It was a hoax. The Mueller replacement, they all hated me. They had 18 Trump haters and they.

[Andrew Bustamante]

Said I did nothing wrong.

[Patrick Bet-David]

They were, they could, they couldn't believe.

[Andrew Bustamante]

They couldn't find anything after years of investigation.

[Patrick Bet-David]

It was all a hoax.

[Andrew Bustamante]

It was a hoax created by the.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Democrats, but in particular Schiff and crooked Hillary. The whole group. Let me pause right there.

[Andrew Bustamante]

And so what do you think is.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Going to happen here? You think, I mean, at this point, people know, right? Obama knew the. All along we got the reports that shows that Obama knew this was going on, and it kind of looked the other way and he allowed it to happen. What level of accountability do you think will happen here?

[Andrew Bustamante]

This is tricky. So, unfortunately, we are dealing with an issue that will always have information that's confidential, that's classified. We're not ever going to know what they know. We're not going to know what's being leaked that isn't a controlled leak. We're not going to know what's real information versus what's spun information. So because we'll never know, it does two useful things for the current administration. First, it distracts us from whatever else we might be focusing on. And then second, it continues to drive this bipartisan divide, which is going to be very important going into the midterms. So there's lots of benefits from talking about something, even though you and I can't reasonably expect any significant outcome to come of it. The second thing it does is that it allows this, this question about whether or not a president, former or current, can be held accountable, accountable for their actions, for their words, for. For their conspiracies. And that's to, to put a fine point on it, I don't think a president will ever be held accountable for what they did or didn't do, right or wrong, because the office of the president is so representative of freedom around the world that to actually put a president behind bars, to hold them in contempt would be something that basically says, hey, we're America. We made a mistake. We can't do that on the world stage.

[Patrick Bet-David]

But they did it to him, didn't they? They gave him a mugshot. President, what president's ever had a mug shot?

[Andrew Bustamante]

They tried. They certainly tried with, with Donald Trump. And the, the vote of the people on two separate elections four years apart kind of demonstrated the power of the office of the president.

[Patrick Bet-David]

If, if, if Trump didn't flip those three Supreme Supreme Court justices and it was the other way around, six, three, when they voted for him not, not to be able to be on the ballot in Colorado, if they would have voted the other way and said, yeah, we're going to remove him from ballot in Colorado and five other states follow, he's not winning. Commodore Biden is the right and he would have been in jail or they would have done anything and everything in their power to say that he was a criminal. They would have done that. So we got very close.

[Andrew Bustamante]

Oh yeah.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Without the Supreme Court, we're there.

[Andrew Bustamante]

Without it's, it's at its core, you're right. But there's also other levels that have to essentially other dominoes that are smaller dominoes that also have to fall into place. And we don't really know how any of that would turn out. But I don't pay a lot of attention to these internal divisive politics because it really is, it's a, it's a page out of the political playbook to distract the American people, the masses. It's, it's a tool to distract the masses. It's also a tool to distract your adversaries because all of the Russian intelligence services that are watching open source collection from the United States, they're spending time and money wondering what's going to happen next instead of collecting meaningful intelligence on what the true plans and intentions are of the United States in Mexico with trade tariffs with, with rare earth minerals. Right. So we want to waste our enemies time. We didn't invent this. We borrowed this skill from the ussr. The USSR literally had a playbook that said that they would let their politicians pontificate in multiple hour long meetings because they knew that it would distract the Americans. Support for this podcast and the following message comes from America's Navy. The Navy offers new graduates hands on training and experience in careers like computer science, aviation and medicine. Plus education and sign on bonuses. Parents help your grads start their career. [e-mail] you say you'll never join the.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Navy, that you never track storms brewing in the Atlantic and skydiving could never be part of of your commute. You'd never climb Mount Fuji on a port visit or fly so fast you.

[Andrew Bustamante]

Break the sound barrier. Joining the Navy sounds crazy.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Saying never actually is. Start your [e-mail] America's Navy forged by the sea. Got it. So you don't think there's anything there and not that Trump may be doing something to play everybody else into going in and seeing what's going to happen. What's that? Rudy Giuliani says Obama will invoke presidential immunity over the Rush Oaks investigation. But here's one little problem that could lead to an indictment. You're not immune from the rest for the rest of your life as a president. Obama becomes a problem because he will invoke presidential immunity. Where's this, Rob? Is this a clip from him? It is. Here it is. What is this just now?

[Andrew Bustamante]

August 10th.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Okay, so yesterday, a couple days ago. Let's see. It.

[Andrew Bustamante]

Becomes a problem because he will.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Invoke presidential immunity, the decision the Supreme.

[Andrew Bustamante]

Court made that help Trump. The acts are kind of different, but there's a problem for Obama. It continues after he's president. So starting on January 1, 2017, any participation of him in the conspiracy is not immune. You're not immune for the rest of your life as president. So he'll be immune if whatever allegations against him are contained within his presidency. But if he's helping to assist over.

[Patrick Bet-David]

That three year period that they push.

[Andrew Bustamante]

Russian collusion into 2017 and 2018, then he's of course, he could be indicted for that. Obama becomes a problem.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Speaker 1 Do you agree with them?

[Andrew Bustamante]

So I agree with him on a legal basis. However, the, the operative term that he used was conspiracy. I think if there's anything we all learned from the Diddy investigation, it's that the Department of Justice can't do to prove a conspiracy because they couldn't pin conspiracy on Diddy. They failed to pin conspiracy on multiple players because it's very hard to prove conspiracy. So whether or not there was a conspiracy, whether or not that is backed up with evidence, it's a completely different thing that our Department of Justice can bring the talent and the, and the team together to be able to make a true conviction of conspiracy.

[Patrick Bet-David]

So you don't see much happening here.

[Andrew Bustamante]

I see us getting distracted, man. I see a lot of us being distracted. I see a lot of, of bifurcation of politics. And I want to correct one thing. I don't think it's Trump doing it. I don't think it's Trump sitting in the Oval Office saying You know what we need to do, guys? We need to distract America. I think it's his PR department. I think it's the people who are trying to make sure that the Republicans are still in a good position for the midterms. I think there's all sorts of advisors who are like, we need to do something to get the eyes and ears and. And get all the clicks off of.

[Patrick Bet-David]

But. But a strategic way of telling Trump to protect them or. Because somebody else that's the establishment is telling the PR people to tell the President to say this because they want to distract others. Like, is it direct or indirect?

[Andrew Bustamante]

It's direct.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Oh, it's direct. So he knows that he. It's not a negative. His own teammates are not doing this to distract him.

[Andrew Bustamante]

Correct.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Okay, so it's not a negative thing.

[Andrew Bustamante]

It's not a negative. Yeah, it's just. And it's not a Trump trying to misinform the.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Okay, so let me ask you this as somebody that is in this world where you study deception and you know what's going on, because you've been a part of it as a CIA officer, not been a part of it, but, like, you're in it and you're seeing what they're saying. You're like, now that's bullshit. It's actually not what we're working on. What is worth paying attention to today.

[Andrew Bustamante]

So what you want to watch is you want to watch what Donald Trump is able to do that delivers on his campaign promises, and what is he able to do that makes a demonstrable improvement in the lives of the average American? Because that's going to be what we carry with us into the midterm. And the midterm is going to be critically important, because if Donald Trump wants to continue to make progress, he needs as much control to be Republican held in the Congress as possible at the midterm. So that's the stuff that we need to pay attention to. His foreign policy ambitions are all over the map right now because these strongmen leaders are all jockeying for control. Whether it's Netanyahu or whether it's Putin or whether it's Xi Jinping, they're all manipulating and jockeying in different regions. Europe is kind of tits up. In the last two years, you've got three major economies all dissolving their parliaments, all going through a no confidence vote in France, in Germany and Portugal, you've got Hungary and Bulgaria supporting Russia. You've got Slovakia having a pro Russian president brought in like Europe's in chaos. So foreign policy is going to be something very. And it's too complex for the average person to understand and it's not Trump's priority. Just like he told you here. Why would I worry about Iran? So how does he make domestic wins? That's what he. And that's what the party behind him want to see. Everything else is just something to fill the 24 hour news cycle.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Epstein, did you and I know that's part of 24 hour news cycle? How do you view, Epstein, the list, the, you know, people, the names, the Clinton, the. All these guys, how do you view it?

[Andrew Bustamante]

I view it through a list of probabilities. I think the most probable explanation is that he was killed in prison. Whether he killed himself or whether somebody was hired to kill him or whether he pissed off the wrong person and they killed him because he was an accused sex trafficker for children is kind of irrelevant. I think the probability is he was killed in prison. I don't think that he was in an orchestrated hit by some politician. I don't think that the deep state was involved. I think that if it comes down to whether or not he was an intelligence asset, it is likely that he was on somebody's radar. If not a full blown paid asset, very unlikely that he was a paid asset of the FBI or the DEA or any other US entity. So he had incredible access and incredible value that foreigners would be able to exploit far better than we would. And they wouldn't want him dead. Right? Because they would always want to hold out hope that he was going to get through the trial, come out the other side, maybe spend a couple of years in prison, pay a fine and be right back in the intelligence collection business.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Wouldn't they be worried that maybe he threatened them because he had all the intelligence? If you guys don't take care of me, I'm going to do this. So let's just take him out because he sounds a little bit too emotional and irrational.

[Andrew Bustamante]

The problem with that is that it's very easy to spin one person's story and then you can always destroy that person reputationally, financially afterwards. That's very, very easy to do. Look at John Kiriakou. Very easy to destroy somebody without ever killing them. The flip side is he would only have one shot. He'd have one golden arrow. Right? I'm gonna let this video loose. After that golden arrow is shot. What's he got?

[Patrick Bet-David]

They destroyed him. Nearly a million dollars of pension they took away from him. But he's never gotten till today any of the two years in two years time, I believe, if I'm not mistaken, 23 years. John Kiriakou.

[Andrew Bustamante]

Yeah.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Yeah. So the one shot, they would have said, no, he's emotional, he's this, he's that. So why are they releasing Jalaine Maxwell? Why is she going to a different jail? Why is she out there now? I thought, didn't I see story? Robert, what's the story about her being released or.

[Andrew Bustamante]

Yeah, that came out yesterday.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Maxwell lawyer drops bombshell work release report. This was just released. Go a little bit lower. The lawyer of Jeffrey episode that has denied claims that she's able to leave her security. The report of Maxwell Servant, 20 years of conspiracy has been granted work release privileges. And defiance of federal rules for sex offenders was made by Allison Gill, host of Mueller. She wrote political podcasts. So they're saying what they're saying now that's not correct.

[Andrew Bustamante]

That's what her attorney is saying, that.

[Patrick Bet-David]

She is not released.

[Andrew Bustamante]

Correct.

[Patrick Bet-David]

But she is willing to now talk. And how close do you following the episode?

[Andrew Bustamante]

Not that I don't follow it that closely. I don't follow it that closely and because again, I'm trying to conserve my resources for what I think really matters. And then second, whatever is on the Epstein files, it's just like jfk. It is not going to be complimentary to the US Federal government. They're not going to release it. If it's not going to benefit strategically or tactically, the current administration, it's not going to get released. And what's interesting is each current administration isn't an individual, it's a party. So it's not just Donald Trump, it's the Republican Party. It's not just Barack Obama, it's the Democratic Party. Right. So if it's. If whatever the information that's currently classified, once that sees the light of day, you can't put it back in the box. So it's always better to keep it in the box.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Yeah, but. So. So then. So then what that means is how many people do you think actually know what happened with Epstein? How many people know for a fact who's on that list? How many people are on that. On that list?

[Andrew Bustamante]

Maybe no more than 50. Probably closer to 25.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Closer to 25? No. Of those 25 people, how many of.

[Andrew Bustamante]

Them.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Are in a place where maybe something happened to their daughter or to their kids or maybe to them when they were younger, where they're like, no, I'm going to make sure the world knows about this. Meaning none of them would want to bring that story out to the public.

[Andrew Bustamante]

Really, every one of them would have more invested in their political career than they would in aligning this with their family. And here's the thing, man. When you, when you get to the level where you're dealing with scumbags, first you segregate your family out of just survival need. You can't think of all the FBI officers that have to hunt down child pornography. They can't do their day job and live in a world where they think of their kids. So they have to compartmentalize the job from their family life. It's the same way in politics, you have to compartmentalize your job from your family life. And then second to that, they're also thinking about what does this do to the structure, the institution of the American people? If I release it, XYZ happens. If I keep it confidential or classified, ABC happens. And if it's classified now, somebody else can always come back and release it in the future. And then the blood is on their hands when they release this. So it's just easier for me to kick it down the road to focus on something else.

[Patrick Bet-David]

I mean, there has to be an element of selling the dream. There has to be an element of, hey, look, you're on the inside now. You know, guys, we can't release this. You know, this is America, we have to protect it. If they knew, they would lose their mind. You're at a different level. You're no longer part of the masses. That's the masses. You're now on the inside. What's being said for them to flip? It's a very interesting conversation. When somebody goes in who views themselves as a statement, then they get the intel. What is that script that's being given to them?

[Andrew Bustamante]

So there's a speech that we get when we first join any kind of sworn service. And it's almost always the same topic, even though it has different names. At CIA, the speech was called American Primacy. And the speech was given by this officer at CIA who was a 20 year veteran of CIA. And he got up in front of all of us after we had taken our sworn oath to protect and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. And he gave us this 45 minute lecture about American Primacy and how America has to be the number one superpower in the world, it has to continue that way. We may disagree with it at times, we may come into contact with information that we think is unjust, but it doesn't matter what happens in the moment, because in the arc of global power, competition, the United States needs to remain in the front spot because if we're not, who is? And when somebody else takes the front spot, what does that do to the American people, the 330 million American people? And do you want to be the person whose principles sacrifices the safety of the 330 million people? We all get that speech. What, do you agree with it pragmatically? That's how you do the job. It is what it is. That's. That's part of what you have to do. And if you go against the principles, you're John Kiriakou. If you go against the principles, you're Edward Snowden.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Oh, my God.

[Andrew Bustamante]

You know, it's funny, Pat, because people. And you've seen this, I'm sure people call me like a CIA plant. They accuse me of still working for CIA. It's way more pragmatic than that. Right? I understand why CIA does what they do. I understand what happens if you go counter to what they approve or let you do. So why would you go contrary? Why would you swim against the flow? If swimming with the flow gives you more reach, more wealth, more power, more success, maybe that makes me unprincipled. But pragmatically speaking, it's one road to Rome today.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Have they ever called you and told you, hey, listen, relax. You're talking too much?

[Andrew Bustamante]

I get an email every year that reminds me, in a templated format, that I'm criminally liable for whatever I say and whatever I put on the Internet in print or in digital interface. So that's their way of letting me know someone is still watching you. Someone's still listening to you. I've been up to CIA three times in the last two years, physically, to sit with a panel of people who are talking to me about my content and saying, this is on the line. This is safe. This is not safe.

[Patrick Bet-David]

You're kidding me.

[Andrew Bustamante]

I get those emails. I get phone calls. But at the same time, I also get. I get text messages, I get emails. I get public comments online from people who left CIA and are patting me on the back saying they support me, saying they agree with me. I know my reputation inside the halls of Langley is kind of 50 50. Some people hate the fact that I'm capitalizing on my background. Some people love the fact that I'm out there accurately representing the difficulties, the commitment, the patriotism of the men and women who still serve.

[Patrick Bet-David]

And that those three meetings that they had, how long was it? Was it a few hour meeting? Oh, I figured because they're showing clips.

[Andrew Bustamante]

They don't show clips. It's hilarious. It's hilarious because you can't have your phone, you can't have your computer, you can't have any kind of electrical device.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Do they check to make sure you don't have hearing aids? They check your hair, everything.

[Andrew Bustamante]

So. So when I go in, there's. If you go into any kind of heavily secured federal facility, you drive to a gate, and then at the gate, you park, and then you pass through a pretty rigorous security checkpoint. So you run your bag through checkpoint. You walk through a metal detector. Sometimes you get patted down. They make you sign an affidavit that if you're caught with anything on your person, you're criminally liable for falsifying your. Your report to the security guard. Because they're federal officers. They're not like security guards. They're federal uniformed officers. So when you lie to them, you're lying to a federal agency. So you go through these steps before you're ushered to a secure room. And then in the secure room, you have the conversation, and then you go in reverse on the way out. And that's not just for, you know, publishers and authors and influencers. That's also for people who are retiring. Like when you get your. When you get your high five and your fake Rolex. When you retire from a federal agency, you go through the same rigmarole because you're not. You're not a uniformed officer anymore. You're a nobody who's just allowed in today to get your pat on the back before you leave.

[Patrick Bet-David]

That's. That's wild. Because I can see if you. If you're going out there talking, doing what you're doing, they're like, hey, what is crossing the line? What? Crossing the line is given actual details of a mission you were a part of, right? Is that crossing the line specific to missions that you were.

[Andrew Bustamante]

The. The terminology is sources and methods, that you yourself are sources and methods of active intelligence collection. That's. That's the key word that makes it criminal. Anything other than that, they can pursue you on civil charges for contract violation, et cetera. But John Kiriakou was inside that sources and methods space.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Okay, so next question for you with threats. Who. Who is the biggest threat that they look at in the CIA? Is it a religion? Hey, look at what's going on with Islam in UK and Europe and look at the damage they're doing. They're coming over here next. We gotta be careful with a religion, right? Is it a region? Is it a community? Is it a mindset? How does CIA, you know, rank threats? And are any of those that I sit on the list, like how do they look and say the number one threat is this? Number two threat is this. How would they view it?

[Andrew Bustamante]

The number one threat is China still. And that's not just how CIA views it. That's in the published national security assessment that comes from the dni. Number one threat is China. Number two threat is Russian influence and chaos in Europe. That's the number two threat, I'm pretty sure, according to the dni. And then I think after that it goes into more transnational threats, cyber threats. I am certain that the next year's assessment is going to include fentanyl or, or something with Mexican cartels. But that's essentially how they, how they rack and stack the threats. And it's because one threat has multiple sub threats. China is a military threat to the United States. It is a regional threat to a US Allies including the Philippines, Japan, South Korea. It is an economic threat because it's growing its economic capability to compete with America one to one, whether it's telecommunications, whether it's chip manufacture, whether it's electronic vehicles. It's a national, it's a logistics threat with, with the movement of materials as well as rare earth minerals. So these compounding sub threats make China the number one threat.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Did they ever bring up the religion of Islam or. No.

[Andrew Bustamante]

So is radical, radical? Islam was absolutely on that top 10 list during the global war on terror because we were, we were concerned about the radicalization of Islam. Not Islam writ large, but that radicalization of Islam. What we've seen since then is that anybody can be radicalized. It doesn't have to be Muslim. You can radicalize an angry kid in a basement in Pennsylvania. Right. So there's ways to radicalize all sorts of different people. So we've, we've moved away from being fearful of religions and moved into recognizing that it's the weaponization of ideology that's used by radical groups. Yeah, I would be surprised, Pat, if there's anybody in government that sees Islam as a threat. I would be surprised because that's, that is a way that was. China does, but China's not the U.

[Patrick Bet-David]

S. No, I know that, but China does.

[Andrew Bustamante]

Yeah, because. And, and Go ahead, sir.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Go ahead.

[Andrew Bustamante]

I was just going to say it's a level, it shows how, how not sophisticated China is that they still view that as a fear, as a national security concern. Right. They haven't evolved to the place where they actually can identify a true threat.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Yeah, I'm reading the Shah's book again for the God knows how many times. Can you pull up his book? Not this one. Go to images. I'll show you which one it is. It's the last one he wrote before he died. Second row, second book right there? Yeah, that one right there. And he opens it up in the first chapter and talks about his bigger concern because this could have been a blind spot that he had. He was more worried about communism in the 70s than he was about Khomeini. He thought because of the whole, you know, Russia, ussr, Soviet Union and hey, you know, Karl Marx, Stalin, Lenin, all that and they were moving to Iran. So his bigger threat was the two day party. Saddam Hussein I think offered to kill Khomeini for him. Can you verify this, Rob? I think Saddam Hussein offered to kill Khomeini and he didn't think of Khomeini as a threat. Right. And some say he mismanaged the threat. He saw an ideology philosophy like communism as a bigger threat than who's Khomeini? He's going to come and do something to Iran. You're nobody. You can't do anything to me. And Saddam, who was a little bit more reckless than he was, kind of like you were talking about Mossad as a CIA earlier. Saddam's like, hey man, you want us to take this guy out? Because you don't seem to be too threatened by him. No. Okay, so he doesn't. And that offer was made by a few different people. It wasn't just him that was the offer was made. I'd ask you Rob, if you can verify that. I really want to see if that offer was made because I don't want to just make claims and it's not. I thought I saw this somewhere. Saddam Hussein threaten to kill. So somebody offered to kill. When Saddam Hussein was consolidating with Iraq under President Shah forced Khomeini to leave Najaf. Khomeini forced to France. Some accounts suggest Iraqi authorities harassed Khomeini and warn him to stop as anti shah activists. But there's no verifi. Of course there's not going to be a verified record. But Saddam had a position. He saw Khomeini as an existential threat to Iraq and went to war. So he apparently from. I have some friends that were former SAVAK guys from back in the days and I've spoken to some of the guys. They're all older right now. The former deputy director of SAVAK is somebody that's. I've had meetings with he's visited the house. And Saddam had a better eye for threat maybe than the Shah because he knew that guy you have to worry about. And because Iraq and Iran weren't having problems under the Shah, he wanted to eliminate a future threat. He didn't. The moment the Shah fell, what does Iraq do Saddam do? Attack Iran. I lived in Iran when Saddam attacked us. I'll never forget the attacks we would hear, these are wrong. So the lights would go out and tabaju, tabaju, Alamatik, red sick signal shows that somebody's crossed or bordering. Who was it? It was always Saddam and he's sending his people over. Do you think it's naive to not sit there and be seeing some people that view Iran, view us as the enemy, that they want to destroy this country and our Western ideology and say no? It's more we have to worry about socialists, we have to worry about communists, we have to worry about Chinese, we have to worry about this. Maybe China's not the naive one. Maybe you were the naive one. Could that be a possibility?

[Andrew Bustamante]

Absolutely. Because if you think about it, September 11, 2001 happened because the federal government thought communism was a bigger threat than radical Islam. And it wasn't until people were jumping out of towers that we woke up to the fact that we have a whole new threat that we didn't take seriously. So in many ways we're standing in the shoes of the Shah, not realizing the true threat because we're still focused on yesterday's threat. I think where we stand right now is best defined especially for people who understand how to shoot a gun. You've got your 5 meter target and then you've got your 15 meter target. China's our 5 meter target. China's right in front of us, getting closer and making gains every day. If we start using our ammunition on the 15 meter target, we're going to continue to lose ground at the 5 meter target. So let's take out the 5 meter target and move on. Or let's put 80% of our effort into the 5 meter target, 20% of our effort in the 15 meter target. Let's not make the same mistake where you invest 100% of our effort into fighting communism and then lose two of our buildings.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Yeah, because Saddam was a was, it wasn't the nicest guy, but he had.

[Andrew Bustamante]

Decent instincts because the dude fucking got power. In a history of other people just killing each other.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Think about that.

[Andrew Bustamante]

I mean, one of the things I loved about living in the Middle east was that everybody knows what it's like to fight for survival. So they never take it for granted. Whereas here in the United States, you walk down the street, you go to Publix, the grocery store. Here in Florida, everybody walking in at Publix has no fucking clue how to fight for survival. Even if they're carrying a weapon, it's there because they think it's gonna help them, but they don't know how to actually fight for their survival. I mean, there you've got Bedouin people who they didn't even have technology in the 1950s and now it's 2025 and they've got the most modern cities in the world. That's an incredible amount of transformation that has happened in the lifespan of basically two generations. They still remember what it's like to be under the hot sun with nothing.

[Patrick Bet-David]

No, I mean that's the. You know, you said earlier with Israel, Israel has an edge because they're always in in not flight fight mode because they have to stay protected. America, we're so lucky. Who are you worried about? America, Canada or Mexico? We don't go to sim. Oh my God. What if Canada taxes tomorrow they cross the border, right? Hey, Canada's here. No one worries about that, right? It's a very different threat that we have. I don't know, I was just kind of asking to see if there was always conversations about certain sex, certain religions, certain communities, certain calls to be ready of. And. And how do you watch what they're doing? Who's here, who lives here, who from isis, who from this, who from Hamas, who from, you know, Houthis. Where are they at in the States? It would be something I would think about. Story came out about Tucker. I don't know if you agree with him on this one or not. Rob, you want to pull that one up with the not owning a computer. So he said about a month ago, Tucker Carlson says he doesn't own a computer because the CIA plants kitty porn. Do you agree with him here?

[Andrew Bustamante]

I don't. I don't agree with Tucker Carlson saying here, here. I understand why he's trying to do what he does, make alarmist claims get attention. I actually think he's trying to back this one off, which makes sense because this is a big stupid claim to make.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Really?

[Andrew Bustamante]

Yeah. CIA, first of all, CIA, it's against their authorities to plant evidence on American citizens, period. Against their actual federal authorities. So if they were to do it and then that person went to trial, once it was shown that CIA worked in any way against that person, then the whole trial would be debunked. So that is a ridiculous claim in many, many ways, just administratively, let alone ethically.

[Patrick Bet-David]

So in the last 30 days, story came out about, well, you know, I didn't know my father was CIA. And then when he passed away, I learned that my father was CIA. Right? And then I think Nick Fuentes or somebody showed a clip. Somebody showed a clip of him on Sean Ryan saying he knew his father was part of CIA. Dick Carlson, Richard Carlson. And now there is the. Well, Nick Fuentes is fed. No, well, this is this and this is that. So, you know, was, was Tucker CIA? He went on some interesting trips. There's some pictures with him with a. I don't know if it's an AK47, but I think it's not an M4, it's not an M16, I don't. He's holding something. Were you here? Were you there? Somebody's asking. You were just on traveling with your father here and there. So what do you know about Tucker, you know, affiliation with CIA, father being part of CIA? How do you view all these stories that are coming up right now?

[Andrew Bustamante]

So I don't know. Personally, I don't know anything one way or the other about Tucker Carlson specifically, because there's the overlap. He's old enough that there's the overlap with, with 9, 11 and the crazier looser days of CIA. So prior to September 11, 2001, really anything is kind of possible because there was no oversight. Records would have easily been destroyed. I mean, if there's anything we learned from, from the Obama years of CIA, it's that when that records could have been recorded, but they can still be destroyed. And even when we were looking at Guantanamo, there were still the director of CIA at the time, I forget her name, she was the temporary director. It'll come to me later. But. But even she was directed to destroy Guantanamo Bay records and she did. Thank you, Gina Haspel. Look at that, that smiling face of destroying classified information just because you're told to. That's a. That is principles.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Second, country over your principles.

[Andrew Bustamante]

Country over your principles, bro. That's a. That. She got the same fucking speech I got and she delivered. Hoorah.

[Patrick Bet-David]

So what the question is, who cares if he was, you know, I'm saying like what's the big deal if he was?

[Andrew Bustamante]

I don't.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Is it just a big deal that, you know, you're maybe using assets to, you know, give information back and reacting like you're innocent? Oh, shucks, I didn't know about it. What's the, what's the criticism of it? That's what I'm trying to find out. I think the Fed, I get the informant, I get the CIA. Slightly different, no.

[Andrew Bustamante]

Yeah, because what happens here and what happens so often with CIA is because they've shrouded themselves in secrecy, people don't trust them. And especially when you mash up a media, a strong media presence with CIA affiliation, that's, that's like, that's hot sauce on a jalapeno. That's a guaranteed conversation. It's a guaranteed viral issue on the Internet. Right. Because people already suspect that CIA is shaping the information that we read. They're already thinking that they're messing with our minds and running disinformation campaigns. So when you put a media Persona like Tucker Carlson together with a CIA affiliation, it's out of this world. The same thing happens with anybody like me with a CIA affiliation.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Yeah, it's a crazy question for you. You know, sometimes I'll talk to a guy and they'll say, you know, they'll say, oh, that guy gives me the vibes of being a Scientologist. Why? Because the way he asks questions, I feel like he went through certain levels to learn how to do the assist where you're, you know, trying to get information out of people and he's very. Were you ever Scientologist? No. You know what? That you speak like a Mormon. Were you ever part of church of a latter day since. Because you give me the vibes. Even the way you talk to me, like it's, it's, it's a Mormon vibe you give me. Right. Or you know, that that person gives me the vibes of, you know, being a former, you know, such and such. When you hear people talk and their mannerisms and the way they explain things, do you ever watch and say it could have been an ass in. Yeah, you know what I'm saying? I know exactly what trigger gives it away. What? What?

[Andrew Bustamante]

So yeah, it's a great question. So in our world, we call it spotting the spook when you spot a spook. Because there are absolutely verbal and non verbal indicators that let you know when you're talking to somebody who is trained. So we kind of separate the world in the trained and untrained. Untrained is all the people who went to the school of hard knocks and trained is the people who went to some kind of systematic education about how to interrogate, ask questions, collect information, protect personal information, etc. So just as a real quick aside, if you watch Tucker Carlson's interview with Vladimir Putin. Perfect chance to watch Spock the spot the spook take place because you can see and hear how. How trained Putin is and how untrained Tucker Carlson is. So whether or not he was dad's little helper when dad was CIA, I don't know, but he certainly wasn't trained because you can see what it's like when he sits across from a trained intelligence officer.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Wow. Got it.

[Andrew Bustamante]

So.

[Patrick Bet-David]

So Putin's interview with Tucker gave it away to you, that he was never CIA himself, and he says he wanted to be one. They didn't hire him. He talks about it open. Even Putin said it right off the bat.

[Andrew Bustamante]

Right. And you can really see it take place when you watch that. And I love that he did that interview. As much of a train wreck as it was. I love that he did an interview because it's such a phenomenal lesson in espionage for anybody who chooses to watch it. And you can see Putin control the conversation, control the pace of questions. You can see him get his agenda across the line, no matter what Tucker Carlson's asking. You can see Tucker struggle for control and then ultimately cave in because he's. He's trying to maneuver into a different type of question category. It's such a brilliant piece of. Of, you know, KGB skill.

[Patrick Bet-David]

What do you think about Tucker?

[Andrew Bustamante]

I think Tucker's trying to make it in a world where. Where media is changing. He knows he needs FaceTime. He knows he needs coverage. He knows he's not the best of all journalists or the best of all interviewers. He's got his five minutes in the spotlight, and he knows that eventually that spotlight's gonna. Gonna dim out. So he's got to collect what he can while he can. Sorry, Tucker, wherever you are.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Have you been on.

[Andrew Bustamante]

You know, it's true.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Have you done Tucker or No? No, you've pretty much done everybody. You've done. You've done Friedman, because that one did very well. You've done Diary of CEO. I think you've done Ryan.

[Andrew Bustamante]

Yep.

[Patrick Bet-David]

So you haven't done Tucker. You. You've not. You've not done Rogan.

[Andrew Bustamante]

I've not done Rogan.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Why haven't you done Rogan?

[Andrew Bustamante]

So Rogan actually knowingly is passing me up. Yeah. So I have a book coming out. I know we've. We've talked about it off camera. I have a book coming up. My publisher actually reached out to the Joe Rogan show to make sure they were aware of me in my upcoming book. And their producer wrote back and said, joe Knows Andy. Joe's been tracking Andy, and Joe does not want to talk to Andy.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Very interesting.

[Andrew Bustamante]

I don't know why. I have a silly theory, because when I interviewed with Lex, and I have tremendous respect for Lex Friedman, When I interviewed with Lex, it was before I really understood that during these interviews, there's a bit of a game that you play with the host. Right. So I made Lex look bad on his own show. And a lot of the comments that came out afterwards, a lot of the reason that that show did so well is because people are commenting on. On what their opinions are for the ways that I made Lex look bad. And there are apparently a lot of people out there that liked Lex looking bad. And then when that started going to Twitter and that started going to Instagram, I actually got some messages from Lex saying, why would you. Why would you encourage people to say such mean things?

[Patrick Bet-David]

He said that to you?

[Andrew Bustamante]

Yeah.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Lex said that?

[Andrew Bustamante]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I went back and I. I didn't. I wasn't even tracking social media, right? So I went back into my social media feed and I saw where people were saying bad things, and I saw where I clicked thumbs up on whatever they were saying just because I was clicking, you know, like, to everything. And I actually wrote Lex back, and I was like, hey, man, I don't really know what I'm doing. I apologize for hurting your feelings. Let me go back and recant it. And there's actually on Twitter, you can see me going back and saying, hey, Lex was a great interviewer. If you think I looked good on this interview, it's only because he was asking good questions. And. But nevertheless, when I left Lex's studio, he and. And Joe Rogan are good friends. And he was like, joe's just down the street. I bet Joe would love to have a conversation with you. And then just a few days later, everything went tits up on the Internet and Lex stopped talking to me. So if. If there's.

[Patrick Bet-David]

That makes sense, because I don't. I don't see. Joe is very loyal to his friends, very loyal to his core. Core friends, very loyal to him. So I'm not surprised that that's probably what could have happened, because he really likes Lex and they have a very good relationship together. It could be as simple as that.

[Andrew Bustamante]

Yeah.

[Patrick Bet-David]

So I actually think Joe would very much enjoy talking to you. So. But one thing about. I love about Joe, Joe said the following. The first time I went on Joe Rogan, Joe reached out. I didn't reach out. I'm like, hey, oh, we Had a conversation exchange. Like, hey, you want to do a podcast? I'm like, sure. Boom. And then we went out there, and that's kind of how it happened. And then the second time, Ron, he opened up his club. I wanted to go see his club. And then he said, hey, if you're down here, you want to do a podcast? Sure, let's do podcasts. And I gave him the few gifts, which, by the way, man, let me tell you, I don't know if you saw when I gave him the gifts, the comment section, they were not. I will never, ever give anybody a gift. After my. You know, if you go back and look at my history of me having, like, when I had Kobe Bryant, I gave him a gift. He was trying to be a producer. I gave him a signed copy of all the Star wars people signing there. When I had mark Cuban on 10 or 11 years ago, I gave him a gift. I know he's an Atlas Shrug guy. I give him original first print, first cover, everything. Like, you can't find that. It's a very tough book to find. He didn't have one. He was thankful. We're always giving gifts from the Middle Eastern side. Sean Ryan gives gifts as well, I think. But I'm like, yeah, next time, if I got a gift for Joe, can you turn off the camera, man? I'm gonna give it to you afterwards. But, yeah, I mean, look, hopefully that'll happen eventually. Fed. You hear stories with Fed, by the way, some people even say Lex. It's like, Lex. You know, that's. Everybody has a criticism that they get. You know, that guy take the. We take money from Assad. I've never, you know, I've never taken money. 100. Financed by my own company. I sold my insurance company, and now everything I'm doing here, pretty much financed by us. But everybody has their own criticism. Tucker took money from Qatar. Those guys took money from Assad. You know, Ben Shapiro got this. This was done. Got this. What do you know about the. The Back and Forth with Peter Thiel story? Came out 20, 23. He's a fed. Did you read that story or no? It.

[Andrew Bustamante]

I didn't read the story. I know what you're talking about. And Peter Thiel has been a topic of.

[Patrick Bet-David]

For a while.

[Andrew Bustamante]

For a long time. A federal debate for a long time. And, you know, he. What I know about Peter's company and where it intersects government I'm pretty sure is still classified, so I can't talk about it, but I can see why people would accuse him of Being tied up with.

[Patrick Bet-David]

I'm assuming you're talking about Palantir again.

[Andrew Bustamante]

And I don't know how much is public or not public. So you said it, not me. But. But that's pretty much where I can and can't talk.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Yeah, I had a guy, the recent theory that a guy said. And then I saw a video that the guy showed today on the podcast with Nick, that J.D. came out of nowhere. Okay. J.D. vance, he was a guy that came from Thiel. And then Elon went in with the Doge and they got the intel that they needed. And Palantir now is getting a contract with the government and this may be a direction for technocracy and all this other stuff. Does the CIA sit there and worry about technocracies? Does the CIA sit there and say, well, listen, the direction we may be going, these guys are no longer billionaires. They're not worth a hundred, now they're worth hundreds. Elon's going to be a trillionaire in the next 12 to 36 months. I think it'll be worth a trillion dollars in the next 12 to 36 months. A trillionaire. You can buy, countries you can buy. It's a very different world when you make that kind of money. Is there the fear of a technocracy and some of these guys coming out and overtaking control?

[Andrew Bustamante]

Not at CIA, not widespread at CIA. Keep in mind CIA's focus is almost exclusively foreign. Yeah, right. If it's. If they're looking inside the United States, it's because a foreign threat has made it inside the United States. So they don't worry about that. But I will say that there's a very practical level in federal government where somebody else decides what technology you use. And whether you like it or not, whether it's good or bad technology, you're stuck with it. Because some, you know, some acquisitions officer said, this is what we're buying. I spent a lot of time on Windows 98 when it was shitty, man. Are you feeling more fulfilled now that.

[Patrick Bet-David]

You'Re back to work this Friday?

[Andrew Bustamante]

No, I need a vacation.

[Patrick Bet-David]

See the movie that critics are saying is an awesome. Look at that crowd pleasing, fist pumping all out brawl of a film.

[Andrew Bustamante]

Right.

[Patrick Bet-David]

About that. They're coming after our family. Go fix this. Oh my. Nobody 2, rated R. Only in theaters Friday. It's a different. That's a different story than what we got here. Rob, what is the one clip we had, I don't know if you've seen this one where this lady's on Stephen Colbert and she starts Talking about, have you seen this thing? I don't think so. Okay, so this is interesting. So she's sitting in all of a sudden, I think the conversation said, did you ever work with CIA for the movie and all this other stuff?

[Andrew Bustamante]

She did a show called Homeland on Showtime, I believe, Claire Danes, where it was about intelligence agencies tracking terrorists. And here's what she said for us producers and writers and.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Really? Yeah.

[Andrew Bustamante]

Is it like.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Yeah.

[Andrew Bustamante]

So we park ourselves in a club.

[Patrick Bet-David]

In George, Georgetown, and talk to, like, real spooks and, you know, people in.

[Andrew Bustamante]

The intelligence community and the State Department and journalists and people who really.

[Patrick Bet-David]

They tell you that, like, what's the most surprising thing that they've told you about their jobs or something you would need to know.

[Andrew Bustamante]

Well, every year it's different, right? We've been at it for a while.

[Patrick Bet-David]

And the climate has been, has changed.

[Andrew Bustamante]

But this year it was all about, you know, the distrust between the administration.

[Patrick Bet-David]

And the intelligence world. And, and the intelligence community was suddenly.

[Andrew Bustamante]

Kind of allying itself with journalists, which.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Usually they're start shooting this, this season, Spike. So they're saying he interrupted so quickly because a producer on the back end was like, yo, stop. She's given too much information. Is that likely or now is it. Is it just.

[Andrew Bustamante]

So I can see why a producer would redirect her for sure. I can also see how that may have just been. He was excited. What year? What year or what month was that? I'd have to go back and check because what she's saying is, is 100% accurate. We don't call it spy camp, but. But there are definitely moments where CIA officers who are no longer undercover will meet in restaurants around the D.C. area with actors, actresses, investors, you know, market movers, anybody who can get the, can get the approval to sit with them. So seven and a half, 2018. So 2018 is two years after the Trump administration and Trump was keeping CIA at a distance, if you recall, back then. So she's telling the truth. And that is the kind of stuff that they talk about. And that's, that's what happens at these camps. I, silly enough, I actually am hosting my own spy camp for a uk, a major UK newspaper in my home in August. In later August, yeah, where I'll be doing the same thing. I'll run them through a mock surveillance operation. I'll run them through and teach them tradecraft and show them how to do things in the field so that they can be informed when they write their article.

[Patrick Bet-David]

That's wild, man. That is fully wild. So your book, when is the book coming out?

[Andrew Bustamante]

The book comes out September 9th.

[Patrick Bet-David]

September 9th.

[Andrew Bustamante]

Yep. It's called Shadow Cell. We discussed it earlier. And, and it was three and a half years in the making, man. Not because it took me three and a half years to write it, but because it took three, two and a half years for CIA to finally like bend on letting it be published.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Oh, wow.

[Andrew Bustamante]

Yeah, they.

[Patrick Bet-David]

This is, this is. So you and your wife wrote it together?

[Andrew Bustamante]

Yes, sir. It's, it's our memoir about when we were put on an operation together against one of America's largest adversaries. And CIA really did not want us telling that story. They gave us initial permission to write the manuscript. We submitted the manuscript in 2022. They came back and they said everything in this manuscript is classified. This will never see the light of day. So we went through about a six month process of trying to understand what they didn't like about our manuscript so we could edit it and fine, tooth change it. We asked for redactions, anything that would give us a way of getting to publicity or to publication. And they just kept saying no. So we ended up having to hire an attorney. And I'm totally happy to tell the world Mark Zaid is a fucking miracle worker when it comes to getting a classified organization to understand and listen to the author. And, and after getting to the place where we, we realized we had a case for first amendment lawsuit against CIA. When we presented that to them, that's when they were like, publish your book? No, because the, the content of the book is about a mole hunt where my wife and I were used as bait to get a mole from a foreign country to make a mistake. And in the process of us building our operations, we also were being targeted by this mole. And because we were put in harm's way intentionally, we had a first amendment right to tell the story.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Are you joking?

[Andrew Bustamante]

Nope. Dead serious. And this is the man that got across the finish line. And I will, I will support Mark Zade until the day I stop producing content.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Do you feel safe from the CIA?

[Andrew Bustamante]

I do. Because there are American.

[Patrick Bet-David]

A little bit. You?

[Andrew Bustamante]

Because I feel safe. I feel safe in my life and well in my, my health. I don't feel safe that they won't one day take all of my money and destroy my reputation and then leave me humiliated on the side of the street. I hope that they won't. I hope that they see that what I do is better than, you know, being destroyed like they did to John. But it's always a risk Is that.

[Patrick Bet-David]

One of the reasons why you're going, you know, out of 20, 26, so you're part of not even a public. It's more what CIA than it is actually what's possible with regular day to day people.

[Andrew Bustamante]

It's both. It's both. It's.

[Patrick Bet-David]

It's partly the average person doesn't do what you're doing though. There's a lot of podcasters and YouTubers. But the only thing that makes you different than everybody else is your former CIA.

[Andrew Bustamante]

Correct. Correct. And, and honestly, if we were at a different point in history where, where expressing your assessments, expressing your opinions, expressing your, your in your sights, your truth was more accepted then I would probably keep producing. But there's always a risk now where someone's going to disagree with you and if they won't take violent action, some agency might.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Well listen, that's pretty wild to be in a situation like that. But you know what, Rob? What I do like is if you want to have the crew come in with the scissors. Andrew has agreed for me to cut his hair today. And, and I'm looking forward to this when that day happens. And all of a sudden. What's the last line in Usual suspects. And then he disappeared. Kaiser. So say. Right. Bustamante is soon to be Kaiser Sosey. Right. We run a podcast called the Unusual Suspects. Not the usual suspect, the unusual Suspect, but three year anniversary. So most likely we will not be doing this again. So this probably the last time we're doing this.

[Andrew Bustamante]

I'll give you a call, I'll give you a call before we leave the country in 2017.

[Patrick Bet-David]

That'd be great. Yeah, I'd love to do one last one before you leave because of what's happened with your story. Right after you left with us, you flipping blew up. I would get messages like, hey, can you help this guy? Come speak at our event. We're really trying to get a hold of him. Does he do speaking? Because I'm like, look, just talk to him. Don't even reach out to me. Let me put you guys in contact with each other. But it's been a blast talking to you again.

[Andrew Bustamante]

I appreciate you brother.

[Patrick Bet-David]

And to all our CIA friends, leave this man alone. Let him just go sell some books and enjoy his time with his family. Appreciate you. Take care everybody. God bless. Bye bye. Bye bye. Nowadays, more than ever, the brand you wear reflects and represent who you are. So for us, if you wear a future looks, bright hat or valuetainment gear, you're telling the world, I'm optimistic I'm excited about what's going to be happening. But you're a free thinker. You question things, you like, debate. And by the way, last year, 120,000 people got a piece of Future Looks Bright geared with valuetainment. We have so many new things. The cufflinks are here. New Future looks bright. This is my favorite, the green one. Just yesterday, somebody placed an order for a hundred of these. If you watch the PBD podcast, you got a bunch to choose from. White ones, black ones. If you, if you, if you smoke cigars and you come to our cigar lounge, we have this high quality lighter cutter and a holder for the cigars. We got sweaters with the valuetainment logo on it. We got mugs. We got a bunch of different things. But if you believe the future looks bright, if you follow our content and what we represent with valuetainment with PBD podcast, go to vtmerch.com and by the way, if you order right now, there's going to be a special VT gift inside just for you. So again, go to vtmerch.com, place your order, tell the world that you believe the future looks bright.