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Frank Gaffney
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Sam Fatis
Foreign.
Frank Gaffney
Welcome to Securing America with me, Frank Gaffney. The program that's a kind of owner's manual for protecting the country we love against all enemies, foreign and domestic, to the glory of God and his kingdom. Well, we're going to be talking about some of those enemies, foreign, yes, and domestic, with one of our great, great contributors to this program. His name is Charles Sam Fatis. He is a career intelligence veteran serving undercover for some 20 years in a lot of very dangerous places. It has honed his skills as well as his mastery of the business of intelligence. And we wanted to catch up with him as to where we stand with respect to the the U.S. intelligence community. SAM is the author, among other books of Beyond Repair, the Decline and Fall of the CIA. And that's a good point on which to pick up, I think. Sam, it's good to have you back. Welcome, my friend.
Sam Fatis
It is great to be here. Thank you.
Frank Gaffney
We have a lot of intel reform related stories floating around. Sam, you've been trying to keep abreast of it all, not least what Tulsi Gabbard, the director of National Intelligence, has been doing to identify misconduct, in fact, criminal behavior, she alleges, as well as firing large numbers of personnel from her own organization and I think trying to weed them out in other parts of the intelligence community. The bast enterprise, as you know that it is. Give us a take on this, Sam, as to how, first of all, how needed are these kinds of reforms? Second of all, is the enterprise really beyond repair, as you've written, and in particular you wrote at your piece nmagazine.substack.com of a fellow by the name of McGonagall, career FBI counter intelligence operative who went bad. Stitch this all together for us if you would.
Sam Fatis
Well, in terms of the the broader issue, like reforming, fixing whatever verbiage you want to throw on at the ic, the intelligence community critical because what we have here are sort of two separate issues, but as usual, they overlap and interact. We have, of course, the issue that I'm sure many viewers of this program are, you know, things that they are focused on, which would be a lot of abuses of power and really unconstitutional actions by folks at senior levels in the IC over the course of what's pretty close to a decade now. Okay, that's kind of a big deal when you've got people at the top of the IC who think they now get to decide who can be president and so forth.
Frank Gaffney
Including taking steps to really depose the one elected by the American people.
Sam Fatis
The way the way I look at it is it's kind of a rolling coup. It began with, you know, way back in 2016 or a little before we got to keep this guy Trump out of the White House. And then it could morphs into, we got to get rid of him, we got to topple him. We literally have to stage a coup onto interfering in the 2020 election to stop him from getting. I mean, this just goes on and on and on. And it's not just a big deal. Right? This is. You know how much I hate the word existential, but in terms of the Republic, it is existential. If so, she obviously is going directly to the heart of that. She's digging. She's. Gabbard is. She's digging into what really happened and divulging things and putting things out there and naming names, and that's critical. But then there's the second issue, which is, you know, the IC has become so bloated and so inefficient and so filled with individuals who are not, in fact, professionals in the practicing of the trade that it's not doing a very good job of what it's supposed to do. You know, you've got. @. CIA is no longer run by operators, by ops officers, by spies. Op CIA is run by people who never leave Northern Virginia and never have. And, you know, not just aren't ops officers, they aren't analysts either. They aren't professionals in the trade in any sense. They. And, well, I mean, look, the operational elements of CIA report to a chief operating officer that Brennan created. I think they've changed the name again, but the position remains the same. Okay. Like a corporation. And that coup is not a career operator. In fact, the first one wasn't even a CIA officer, was brought from corporate America. Okay, so you have every operational element in CIA answering to a guy who's never done the job in any sense. So she's attacking all of this, and she's trying to bring sunlight and tell the truth. McGonagall. McGonagall was an FBI Special agent career officer. He was the head of counterintelligence in the New York field office. New York field office and FBI is by far the largest field office. The guy who runs counterintelligence there is, in effect, pretty close to the country's top spy hunter. This is the guy at the very pinnacle of finding spies in the U.S. government. McGonagall is investigating CEFC China Energy, which is not a real Chinese company. Wasn't. It's now out of existence. It was an intelligence front, and he's investigating it. They're bribing af. They're. They're working for China. And they're bribing officials all over the world and they happen to be bribing African officials in the United States. And McGonagall's guys are investigating. And what do they find? They find that they're also bribing the Bidens. In short, they find that they're hint, plural. I mean, they're handing the money to Hunter, but Hunter is, as Rudy Giuliani says, a bag man. They are handing millions. And the only reason they're handing billions of dollars to them is because it's going to Joe and they're buying something from Joe. In short, McGonagall's guys find that the Chinese are doing with the Bidens with Joe and Hunter and Biden's brother. Exactly what they're doing with foreign officials all over the world. And the template is precisely the same. They know what they're looking at. In the midst of that, McGonagall goes off and meets with an Albanian who works for the Chinese, works for this exact entity, and he takes a quarter of a million dollars in cash. None of this is supposition. McGonagall confessed to all of this and went to prison for all of it. And what happens after he takes the bribe from the Chinese intelligence front company that he's investigating? They charge the Africans and everything in regard to the Bidens goes away. So the guy running the investigation into Chinese intelligence takes a bribe from that entity and buries the Biden investigation. But it's not just. I mean, he's not the only guy who knows this. Right. There are other people involved. The FBI as a whole buries this to the point where when they prosecute the Alban, the Africans, and they have to introduce transcripts of phone taps and so forth, they go through and methodically redact, blackout. All references to the Bidens that, of course, are throughout it. So, and then the FBI.
Frank Gaffney
Let me just ignore for a second because I want to press on a particular point here. To my knowledge, you more than anybody who has the kind of chops that you do especially, were very clear and very vocal about what a threat it was to our country to have in the President of the United States.
Sam Fatis
Right.
Frank Gaffney
What you called on this program, among other places, I think a quote, controlled asset of the Chinese Communist Party, namely Joe Biden, president.
Sam Fatis
Yes.
Frank Gaffney
And you're telling me that the counterintelligence apparatus of the United States at the highest levels was not only not prosecuting that case, but was actively suppressing information about it?
Sam Fatis
That is precisely, precisely what I'm saying. And again, McGonagall went to prison. But you got to have dozens and dozens and dozens of other individuals who.
Frank Gaffney
Knew all of this as yet non prosecuted conspirators. We have to take a break. We'll be right back with more with Sam Pattis. Stay tuned.
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Frank Gaffney
We'Re back. So is Sam Fatis. Praise the Lord. We're delighted always to have his visits, but especially, well, as the Bible says, at a time such as this. Sam, you were sharing with us egregious problems with the US Intelligence community, efforts on his part to overthrow the government of the United States, for example, and to conceal information that a president has been compromised by our mortal enemy, the Chinese Communist Party. I want to move from sort of the rear view mirror to what's now before us. And there is a chap, as you know, by the name of Zoran Mamdani, who I spoke recently with Robert Spencer about. He's written a new book about what he calls the intifada on the Hudson that is now coming. If Mamdani, as is widely expected, succeeds, having obtained the Democratic nomination to be the next mayor of the city of New York, actually becomes the next mayor of the city of New York. And I wanted. You've been writing about it in your wonderful and magazine outlet@substack.com for Time Now. But Robert Spencer says this guy is an out andout right? Communist. Point one and point two, he's not just a convert to Islam. He is what is known as a Twelver of the Shia tradition. And Sam, in your last duty station, you were responsible for trying to protect the country from weapons of mass destruction.
Sam Fatis
Right.
Frank Gaffney
Enabled terrorism. And I asked Robert at the end of our conversation, you know, if you have a Twelver, to say nothing of a Communist Twelver running New York City, even if he's not directly involved in a plot to destroy it, which has been an ambition of the the other Twelvers, predominantly in the guys running Iran. Might that be a problem? He seemed to think so. How about you?
Sam Fatis
Yeah. Yeah. There's the understatement of the year. Yeah. You know, I think Americans have a hard time getting their heads around this kind of concept, Frank, because by and large, we live in a society where, look, I'm a Protestant, you're a Catholic, you're a Baptist, I'm a Methodist. And we believe what we believe and we all get along and we go to different churches or we go to synagogue, whatever. And of course, that's not what we're talking about here. We're talking about when you talk about the Twelvers, you're not that particular brand, if you will, of Shia Islam. This is not a go along, get along different kind of thing.
Frank Gaffney
That's putting it miles.
Sam Fatis
Like, that's not at all what we're talking about. And the worldview is so alien that I do think most Americans just have a really hard time understanding it. No, I mean, the belief here is, of course, these are the guys that believe in the Mahdi, who's a. I guess he's 1500 years old now, give or take a few years. An imam who lives at the bottom of a well somehow in Iran and will ride his horse up out of the well and lead them to victory.
Frank Gaffney
And as you may know, Sam, they've actually created a superhighway from the well to Tehran to speed him on his way.
Sam Fatis
There are hotels where you can go and stay and have a view of the well in the hope that you.
Frank Gaffney
Will be there to see it.
Sam Fatis
So, I mean, as silly as that sounds, I cite that because that's how real this is to these people. This is not a comic book. It's not a fairy tale. It's not a metaphor. And when.
Frank Gaffney
And that it's going to happen on.
Sam Fatis
Their watch, and it's going to happen on their watch. It's going to happen like now. And in fact, the way this has to happen with, to use the. The Christian term, Armageddon, the apocalypse, whatever verbiage, you know, the final cataclysmic battle. And in that battle, everybody who's not on the right side, that is their side in terms of belief, dies horribly and they emerge victorious and rule the earth. And that's literal. So that's the faith that this guy believes in. You know, you can't sugarcoat that and you can't pretend it's not true. And this is one of the issues we always have with people when we're talking to the Iranians. Right. And you're trying to negotiate with the Iranians. Of course they are Twelvers. I mean, the folks that are in charge are Twelvers is you're assuming they want to copy coexist and they want peace and they want us to all do our own thing, and that's not what they want.
Frank Gaffney
And they don't want nuclear weapons with which to bring about the.
Sam Fatis
And of course, they definitely don't want Nuclear weapons, when in fact, obviously, nuclear weapons would be a critical element of creating the cataclysm that they want. In fact, they want to create the cataclysm. So that's what you're. You're talking about here. And this guy is. That's his faith.
Frank Gaffney
Okay, so let me just put a fine point on this. Your business at the end of your distinguished career at the Central Intelligence Agency was preventing precisely this kind of threat from eventuating inside our country. Would you say, as a matter of professional opinion, that it is a mortal peril to have an individual with these certain proclivities, shall we say, in charge of security, for example, among other things, in a city like that of New York.
Sam Fatis
Yeah. Without. Without question. You're talking about somebody who believes in bringing on the end of the world so that his faith can then reign supreme. That's not an abstract. That is the essence of the faith. So you think this guy, if that's what he believes, and that's his God, if you will, you think he's going to now protect the city or tolerate other faiths? Why would you think that? He's telling you straight up what he does, believes.
Frank Gaffney
Well, probably not in quite as many words, but shame on us if we don't understand that that's where he's coming from and where his team.
Sam Fatis
Well, and you're deliberately ignoring it. Look, if the man belonged to a church which was believed that white people were supreme and all other ethnic groups were subhuman and should be exterminated, would you ignore that? You wouldn't ignore that?
Frank Gaffney
I think not.
Sam Fatis
That gives us a clue what he's going to do. Right.
Frank Gaffney
We must not ignore this reality either. Thank you. As always, my friend. I just. I so appreciate your clarity on these kinds of points because at the end of the day, there will be people, and unfortunately, it appears that includes the senior leadership of the Democratic Party.
Sam Fatis
Yes.
Frank Gaffney
From Barack Obama on down, who have explicitly, in many cases, in other cases, sort of implicitly thrown in with this guy and will be supporting his candidacy and seeking his election to this extraordinarily sensitive position. This guy seems to me to be a good candidate for prosecution, not for election. And I hope that Robert Spencer's new book, Intifada on the Hudson, which will shortly be available online pre order as well as purchase, will help prevent that from happening as well. I hope your remarks as well. Sam, let me pivot to one last topic with you, my friend. You had a wonderful piece about the orcs coming for Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Now, the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. Talk us through what you mean by that analogy, of course, to Lord of the Rings and what's coming next. Quickly.
Sam Fatis
Well, look, obviously, obviously I've exposed myself as a, as a closet Tolkien fan. And look, I mean, what's, what's RFK Jr's crime? His crime is he is threatening the profits of Big Pharma and they're making vast, vast, vast sums of money off this vaccine industry and specifically vaccines that they're justifying based on Covid and that they managed to get the government to give them immunity on. That's it. So the politicians that are after him are the ones that work for and are owned by Big Pharma.
Frank Gaffney
Owned is the operative word. Sam Fatis we have to leave it at that. Thank you my friend, for your great work at End magazine, among other services you continue to render to our government, including coming here. Come back soon. Stay tuned folks. I'll be right back with more.
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Tickets take a deep dive into the stories making the news headlines across the world.
Emily Maitlis and John Sopel
The News Agents we're not just here to tell you what's happening, but why? From me, Emily Maitlis and me, John Sopel with Global's award winning podcast, the News Agents Dropping daily covering everything you need to know about politics and current.
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Affairs and the newsagents USA listening to.
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Shout out to Sonos for supporting today's show. I just added the Sonos Arc Ultra to my home theater and folks, it's a game changer. The surround sound is so immersive, I swear I heard the turf crunch during kickoff. And the bass, it hits like a powerhouse running back in the open field. Plus it looks clean. Sleek design that fits right in with my setup Whether I'm watching live games or catching up on film, Sonos makes it feel like I'm in the stadium. If you want sound that performs like a first round pick, Sonos Arc Ultra is the move. Explore the lineup@sonos.com hey there.
Mary Kathryn Ham
I'm Mary Kathryn Ham.
Carol Markowitz
And I'm Carol Markowitz. We've been in political media for a long time.
Mary Kathryn Ham
Long enough to know that it's gotten, well, a little insane.
Carol Markowitz
That's why we started Normalely a podcast for people who are over the hysteria and just want clarity.
Mary Kathryn Ham
We talk about the issues that actually matter to the country without panic, without yelling, and with a healthy dose of humor.
Carol Markowitz
We don't take ourselves too seriously, but we do take the truth seriously.
Mary Kathryn Ham
So if you're into common sense, sanity, and some occasional sass, you're our kind of people. Catch new episodes of Normally every Tuesday.
Carol Markowitz
And Thursday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen.
Frank Gaffney
Welcome back. And we're going to be talking with one of our favorite guests about an extraordinary development in the past few days, and I want to give you a little context for it. Here we go. In a nomination hearing last week, Riley Barnes cited former Senator and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, quote, we are a nation founded on a powerful principle that all men are created equal because our rights come from God, our Creator, not from our laws, not from our governments. Democratic Senator Tim Kaine, evidently unaware that this principle was explicitly enshrined in the Declaration of Independence, found that statement extremely troubling. He declared, quote, the notion that rights don't come from laws and don't come from the government, but come from the Creator. That's what the Iranian government believes. Yesterday, President Trump sharply repudiated Keynes, saying he should be ashamed of himself. He vowed, quote, under the Trump administration, we're defending our rights and restoring our identity as a nation under God. We are one nation under God and we always will be. Unquote, Amen. Well, let's take stock with all of this with our friend Rod Martin, a man of profound faith. He's been a leader of the Southern Baptist Convention for many years. He is also one of the great free range public intellectuals of our time, chairman of the board of our Institute for the American Future, I'm proud to say, as well as a regular contributor to this program. You can follow his writings and great thinking on the Rod martin report@rodmartin.org and I strongly commend you subscribe to it. Rod, welcome back, my friend. It's good to have you with us. Great to be here, I want to say, especially at a time such as this. What do you make of this? Well, apparent contretemps with Tim Kaine. And Donald Trump was holding forth about it at the Museum of the Bible yesterday as we're speaking, and he not only took Cain to task handsomely, but he also made a pretty impressive case for the kinds of things that he's been doing to, well, do precisely what he talked about shoring up this as a nation under God. And I wanted to get your thoughts on that as well.
Rod Martin
Well, you were exactly right that Cain ought to be ashamed, but he isn't, and he isn't gonna be. And it wasn't ignorance. He knows what's in the Declaration. It's his worldview. And more precisely, it is the Marxist worldview. The Democrats have been telling you now for quite some time that they are socialists. Once upon a time, that was an epithet and they denied it vociferously. But as we know, the DNC had to cheat Bernie Sanders to keep him from getting the nomination in 2016. AOC is a likely future presidential nominee of this party. They fully embrace socialism. They're as plain as day. So what does that mean? Well, in our conception of things, rights come from the Creator, whether you believe in the Creator or not, and I absolutely do. But it doesn't matter, because even if it's a theoretical abstraction, what it means is that rights precede government, that government exists to enforce and protect our rights, and that government does not have a right to alter them or remove them. The socialist view is exactly the opposite, that everything we have proceeds from government, that the government may take anything we have away at any time, our life, our liberty, our property. So Tim Kaine is just saying what his party has embraced. And that's the real battle in America today. It's not ours versus versus Ds. It's two absolutely distinct worldviews in combat, and only one can win. So, you know, that's what we're fighting. Do you really have rights at all, or do you only have the rights Tim Kaine says you have, so long as he decides you may have them?
Frank Gaffney
Yeah. And Rod, what do you say in response to this suggestion that people who hold such views about our rights coming from our Creator and being unalienable, are actually really Just, well, like those Iranian mullahs who have a similar view of, you know, a theocratic regimen for their country.
Rod Martin
Well, the irony is rich, because the Ayatollah doesn't believe we have any of those rights. The Ayatollah is a dictator who just absolutely embodies Tim Kaine's vision of the world. Just, you know, the details differ, but the absolutism of his theocratic state. And by theocratic, we don't really mean Allah is the king of Iran. We mean the Ayatollah is the king of Iran. And that's exactly how all of these societies have worked all through history. The king is the law. Rex, Lex. And that's exactly what our English forebears repudiated with Samuel Rutherford and others. Of course, Rutherford wrote, lex, Rex, the law is king. And that's the founding principle of America, that we are all subject to law, and that law ultimately derives from the rights God has given us that government may not infringe and must enforce and protect.
Frank Gaffney
And so, Rod, this brings me to that litany that the President laid out. You know, he is seriously pursuing the restoration of, you know, the protection of our First Amendment freedoms, and particularly the first of those, the freedom of religion. And I must say, I listening to him, you know, deliver a litany of initiatives to that end, I was so gratified and, you know, thankful, truly thankful to God that he is, in fact, the man running things and not the alternative, which pretty much was indistinguishable, wasn't it, from the Kanian approach. I want to turn to a different topic, though, before we run out of time. You've written at your rodmartin.org site a very important piece about something else that the Democrats have been up to, which sounds to me like, well, criminal activity. It's called Act Blue. Tell us what that is and what we now know about it and what might come of the investigations into it.
Rod Martin
Act Blue is the single most important fundraising committee component of the Democrat ecosystem. They have raised over 17 and a half billion dollars for Democrat candidates and causes. It's an online service that has powered the Democratic cause for a very long time. And yes, corrupt as can be. So we have a formal DOJ criminal investigation against them. Now. We have multiple hearings in congressional committees, three just in the House, and we've got 19 state attorneys general investigating them. And here's basically what they did. They reduced their fraud prevention measures to such a ridiculously low level that absolutely anybody could be sending money and they would never catch it. Now I mean, these are fraud, sending.
Frank Gaffney
Money even from overseas, Rod, Especially from overseas.
Rod Martin
And it's just egregious. You know, these are fraud prevention measures that are routine on Amazon, on Substack, for that matter, on Etsy or ebay, but not on ActBlue. Oh, goodness, no. They don't even take a CCV code. They don't do anything to verify. So there are specific cases that have been found, over a thousand cases in which a single straw donor, somebody, frequently on a fixed income, elderly, doesn't have a lot of money and they'll have given ActBlue 200, 400, $500,000 in small increments over a period of a few weeks. Well, that's not real. That's obviously fraudulent. And it's something that Act Blue would have caught if they wanted to catch it. What they're getting, of course, is Chinese money and other illegal money and it's got to stop.
Frank Gaffney
And Rod, to the extent that this money is being plowed into the Democratic Party's coffers, effectively, if not as a party, then as a parallel, as you say, ecosystem, who has been benefiting from this largesse and to what effect?
Rod Martin
Oh, goodness. The entire Democrat ecosystem has been benefiting because, as I said, this is meaning.
Frank Gaffney
Candidates for elective office candidates, but also.
Rod Martin
Causes, because Act Blue is in service of that entire range of things. So whatever the Democrat equivalent is of the Institute for the American Future is as likely to be benefiting as Tim Kaine. And we don't know how high up the Democrat food chain the corruption goes, but we know where the benefits go. And this is just one piece among, oh so many. We know about the $2 billion that the EPA granted out to Stacey Abrams, for heaven's sake, for a brand new nonprofit that had never taken in any money. And it's just going to go do Democrat stuff corruptly with its 501C3. You've got USAID that is using its budget three times the size of the CIA to go out and overthrow governments and sterilize 300,000 native women in Peru and all these transgender programs they had all over the world. These are slush funds. And there are so many of these slush funds, it's hard to wrap your brain around it. But Act Blue is one piece of it that actually has criminal ramifications. And there could actually be major Democrats who go to jail over this.
Frank Gaffney
Let us hope if they deserve to, they do. Rod Martin, I know you will be on the case helping explicate its, its consequences. It's not just, you know, the the news on it. I look forward to talking with you about it. And thank you for giving us this introduction to Act Blue and criminal conduct that appears to be associated with it. Come back to us soon, sir. In the meantime, keep up the great work@rodmartin.org Stay tuned folks. We'll be right back with more.
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Carol Markowitz
That's why we started Normaly a podcast for people who are over the hysteria and just want clarity.
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We talk about the issues that actually matter to the country without panic, without yelling, and with a healthy dose of humor.
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And Thursday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen.
Frank Gaffney
Welcome back. What a delight to be able to say welcome once again to one of our favorite contributors to this program. His name is Dr. David Wormser. He generally addresses with us issues involving a part of the world in which he is arguably one of the preeminent experts in our country, namely the Middle East. His expertise has been sufficiently valued that he has been a senior advisor to an undersecretary of state, a national security advisor, and a vice president of the United States. He is also a naval intelligence officer I training, now retired as a lieutenant commander. He has been for some time as well the senior analyst responsible for the Mideast programs at the center for Security Policy. David, welcome back. It's so good to have you with us, my friend.
David Wormser
Thanks for having me.
Frank Gaffney
Well, as we are speaking, there is breaking news that Israel has done it again. They have reached out and touched some of its enemies in Qatar, a safe haven to this point for Hamas and other bad actors. This is a strike that the preliminary reports are still coming in and I'm very anxious to get your take on both who was hit, with what effect and what are the implications, as you see it, both perhaps for Hamas and for this conflict with Israel.
David Wormser
Sure. So let's first, what happened was Qatar is 1,800 plus miles away from Israel. So this is actually a distance comparable, if not slightly larger than many targets in Iran. And one has to remember the airspace of Qatar is essentially extension of the Iranian airspace. So once again, the Israelis are operating with impunity over the airspace of Iran. And how they got there would either have to have been over Saudi Arabia or over Iraq and Iran. So one can only imagine the strategic questions there. If they came over Iraq, Iran, again, it shows how with impunity they navigate over that. And if it's over, Saudi Arabia attests to some very serious strategic coordination between Israel and Saudi Arabia, which also is a major strategic event. Now, who has been killed? It was a meeting of the top leadership, the top leadership of Hamas abroad, which is the top leadership of Hamas. The people killed were Khalil Al Hayy, who is nominally he was the same position as Yahya Sinwar, the head of Hamas Gaza. The second one is Zuhair Jabarin, who is head of Hamas West Bank. So he's the guy who does all these operations, including yesterday's suicide attack that killed six Israelis. Then there's Nizar Awadallah, who's one of the top five leaders of Hamas. He is one of the main figures in the politburo of Hamas in Qatar. Then there's Razi Khaled as military commander. And then Khalid Mashal was to have been at the meeting. We do not have confirmation that he has been killed, although the Saudis are reporting that he has been killed. Been killed. The Israelis are simply not yet confirming it, nor are the Qataris. But it's quite possible that Khalid Michelle, the head, the number one of Hamas, has been killed. So that's what happened.
Frank Gaffney
And, and Israel is confirming that or Qatar is the deaths of the others that you've mentioned.
David Wormser
Yes, those are, those are confirmed.
Frank Gaffney
Extraordinary thing. And, and it speaks to something that you talked about about in a very important webinar of our committee on the present danger, China last Friday, David, which is the, well, the Israeli way of war, one might say that has been perfected in succession in, well, Lebanon and Hamas quarters in Gaza, of course, in Iran and now in both the Houthi capital in Yemen and in, in Qatar. To the extent that the action took place in Qatar, is there any indication how the US Government has felt about it?
David Wormser
Well, I'm not sure how they felt about it, but they were told ahead of time and they approved ahead of time, which they gave the green light. So I would assume that this was a decision made by President Trump himself, that he's lost patience with the Qatari government over its behavior toward the Hamas, the hostage situation and so forth. So I think this indicates a major shift by the United States, not only by Israel. And by the way, if the planes came over Saudi Arabia, that also would most likely involve American approval.
Frank Gaffney
Well, and as you said, certainly Saudi approval. And David, you often talk about tectonic shifts in the region. This would seem to be a magnitude 7 or 8 such shift. And I can't express adequately my admiration for Prime Minister Netanyahu who taking this step and for all of those who made it possible. This is, I presume, going to prove to be a critical, you know, help to finishing off Hamas in Gaza as well. And I wanted to talk with you a little bit about that. Next. There is, as we're speaking, evidently, a bit of a row going on between Prime Minister Netanyahu and the leader of the Israel Defense Forces. That is, as I understand it, over this question of whether or not to, well, finish the job in Gaza. Can you give us a quick start on a longer conversation? We'll have after a short break here in a minute.
David Wormser
Well, it's something that matters also for the United States because I think we have the same problem here with our military, which is that there's an ethos that has infested the military over the last three, four decades that even the replacing of the chief of staff has done nothing to really fix. And that ethos is always to negotiate. There's no military solution to anything. You always have to negotiate. The military is only there for pressure and leverage. It's not actually a solution to anything. Root problems have the root causes have to be addressed to solve root problems and so on and so forth. So the Israeli military is still under the impression that a negotiated settlement with Hamas is the only way to solve this, not full victory and occupation of Gaza. And that is a tension between the political leadership and the military leadership. And it expresses itself all the time.
Frank Gaffney
And to the extent that we're. Let me stop. We've got to take a break. We'll be right back with David Worms right after this. Stay tuned.
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Tickets take a deep dive into the stories making the news headlines across the world.
Emily Maitlis and John Sopel
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Shout out to Sonos for supporting today's show. I just added the Sonos Arc Ultra to my home theater and folks, it's a game changer. The surround sound is so immersive, I swear I heard the turf crunch during kickoff. And the bass, it hits like a powerhouse running back in the open field. Plus it looks clean. Sleek design that fits right in with my setup. Whether I'm watching live games or catching up on film, Sonos makes it feel like I'm in the stadium. If you want sound that performs like a first round pick, Sonos Arc Ultra is the move. Explore the lineup@sonos.com hey there, I'm Mary.
Carol Markowitz
Kathryn Ham and I'm Carol Markowitz. We've been in political media for a long time.
Mary Kathryn Ham
Long enough to know that it's gotten, well, a little insane.
Carol Markowitz
That's why we started normalely a podcast for people who are over the hysteria and just want clarity.
Mary Kathryn Ham
We talk about the issues that actually matter to the country without panic, without yelling, and with a healthy dose of humor.
Carol Markowitz
We don't take ourselves too seriously, but we do take the truth seriously.
Mary Kathryn Ham
So if you're into common sense, sanity, and some occasional sass, you're our kind of people. Catch new episodes of Normally every Tuesday.
Carol Markowitz
And Thursday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen.
Frank Gaffney
Welcome back. David Wernzer and I are talking about very, very significant developments in the Middle east in the context of what is next in the war against Hamas in Gaza, with a very, very important development in a strike against the Hamas leadership that has operated with impunity from Qatar, waging the war remotely and continuing it with the help of their hosts, the Qatari regime. As, by the way, have essentially all of the other jihadists in the world, especially the terrorist branded ones. They've all benefited from the Qatari largess that has made Sharia supremacism a viable thing. From, you know, Turkey and Iran to our own shores, right here in the the United States for that matter. David, so you've indicated that the difference between Benjamin Netanyahu and the chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces is fundamentally over this question of whether or not there can be a military solution in Gaza that would entail the physical destruction of of the Hamas enterprise. What's left of it, at least including its infrastructure, underground tunnels and the like, with the possibility that hostages that are still in the hands of Hamas, a dwindling number of whom are still believed to be alive, maybe 20 of them, I think, could, you know, lose their lives in the course of this final assault. But that. That's what's necessary under the circumstances. Could you walk through this, this, you know, very, very obviously wrenching issue and how it's sorting out in Israel politically as well as strategically?
David Wormser
Sure. Well, obviously there's a whole camp that is against Natan Netanyahu that's been using the hostage issue to bring him down. So they will. They will take whatever position is necessary to embarrass him, whether it's. If he goes for a full deal only, they'll say, well, if you can get a partial deal, you need to go for it. But the moment he goes for a partial deal, they say, why aren't you asking for everybody? So there's an opposition which we can set aside for a moment, because that's just what they do. But there's a real question here whether it's not a false dictator dichotomy here between Israel going on the aggressive offensive and the lives of the hostages. It may be that an operation like this in Qatar, as well as the Israeli ground offensive, will lead to a hopelessness among some of the captive holders and that they may just give up or decide to save themselves now that it's certain that Israel will go all the way. The more certain they are that Israel will win and be over their heads soon, the more likely you're going to see some of them cut a deal to give up the hostages. So I actually think that the military pressure is the most likely way to get hostages out at this point, even though it will risk some. But the idea that all of them will come home alive, I think Hamas has no intention of doing that. It's their life insurance policy. And as a result, the idea that you can keep negotiating and keep negotiating, in the end, you're going to negotiate for one or two living semi corpses and all the rest will be dead.
Frank Gaffney
It's really come to and at the price, David, The. The demands that still are reflected in the latest offering, as I understand it, are exorbitant in terms of release of terrorists from Israeli prisons, in terms of relinquishing the territory that has been, you know, taken by Israel and, you know, rid of Hamas and enabling them to come back. If that's. Is it your assessment, David, that with this strike, that all of that is now essentially irrelevant, that that option is simply not going to be pursued any further. Or is it going to be preferred pursued with intensified fervor, do you think?
David Wormser
I hope it's off the table. I hope that the Israelis simply have an ultimatum which is just give them up. No conditions, full surrender. And full surrender, like what we imposed on Japan and Germany at the end of the war. This is no longer should be a negotiation where Israel has to give up to get. This is now a point. Now, if that's what the terms are going forward, fine. But my fear is that there's still too much residual hope that you can negotiate with Hamas to get rid of Hamas in the end, but to get the hostages back in the meantime. But you have to give them something to give it up. And I think every time Israel does that, it reinforces the idea in Hamas that Israel is not willing to go all the way, which actually decreases the ability for Israel to get all the hostages.
Frank Gaffney
And David, I think you've made this point here before, but just to reiterate it, is it your view that anything short of the decisive defeat, the unconditional surrender, not just of the hostages, but of Hamas units, you know, the dead enders that are left, will be construed by Hamas and others in the region as a victory?
David Wormser
It will be. And it'd be a validation for the entire strategy of taking hostages. So we can't just think of the cost to the hostages that are currently held. What about the hundreds of hostages that will be taken? American, Israeli, European hostages, countless others?
Sam Fatis
It works.
Frank Gaffney
Yeah, David, I take this point and I think it's, it's absolutely at the core of how we have to look at this. And I understand that the, the Trump administration is, you know, making known that it is reverting to our historic policy that we don't negotiate over hostages. Talk more generally, if you could, in a 45 seconds here, David, about where the US government seems to be having greenlighted this strike in Qatar.
David Wormser
Well, Trump essentially put forth an ultimatum, but it was again an ultimatum that also the Israelis would have to give something in order to get the hostages. I think that that ultimatum ran out which green lighted this operation, but I'm still not sure whether the administration didn't agree to this operation in order to again go back and see did that work? Will Hamas give in? And that's a problem still. But overall, this is a major shift in American policy toward Qatar, which is the funder of Western terrorism and anti Semitism and radicalism.
Frank Gaffney
It's a huge and I think very positive development. David and I take thank you so much for taking the time to catch us up on it. We'll look forward to your further reporting in the days to come. God bless you my friend. Folks, we have to leave it at that. Come back to us next time if you would. Until then, go forth and multiply.
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Tickets Take a deep dive into the stories making the news headlines across the world.
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The News Agents we're not just here to tell you what's happening, but why. From me, Emily Maitlis and me, John Sopel with Global's award winning podcast the News Agents Dropping daily covering everything you need to know about politics and current.
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Securing America with Frank Gaffney – September 13, 2025
Host: Frank Gaffney | Guests: Charles Sam Faddis, Rod Martin, Dr. David Wormser
Network: Real America’s Voice (iHeartPodcasts)
Release Date: September 13, 2025
This episode of "Securing America" with Frank Gaffney presents a hard-hitting analysis of today’s national security and political landscape. The episode features in-depth conversations with intelligence veteran Charles Sam Faddis, faith and policy leader Rod Martin, and Middle East expert Dr. David Wormser. Topics include major reforms and internal scandals in the U.S. intelligence community, threats posed by potential political leaders with radical ideologies, corruption allegations against Democratic donor network Act Blue, the ongoing battle for the American soul over foundational rights, and a breaking news analysis about Israeli counterterrorism operations with significant regional and global consequences.
Guest: Charles Sam Faddis (03:00–12:23; 15:36–25:08)
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Guest: Charles Sam Faddis (15:36–24:35)
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Guest: Charles Sam Faddis (24:35–25:08)
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Guest: Rod Martin (28:24–39:36)
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Guest: Rod Martin (35:45–39:36)
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Guest: Dr. David Wormser (43:10–61:28)
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This episode blends high-level security analysis, fierce political critique, and breaking international news. Frank Gaffney and guests warn about internal threats to American institutions, corruption and manipulation of the electoral process, ideological subversion via radical candidates, and geopolitical crises in the Middle East. The show positions itself as an urgent, unapologetic “owner’s manual” for defending America, sounding alarms over issues from intelligence corruption, foreign influence operations, progressive fundraising scandals (ActBlue), to existential global threats via terrorism and state actors.
Listeners leave with a strong sense of the stakes—both in the halls of power in Washington and in the embattled cities of Israel and beyond.
Produced by Real America’s Voice/iHeartPodcasts