#220 Simone Ledeen - Fmr. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Middle East Policy

Summary

Shawn Ryan Show - Episode #220: Simone Ledeen, Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Middle East Policy

Release Date: July 21, 2025

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Introduction

In Episode #220 of the Shawn Ryan Show, host Shawn Ryan engages in a deep and candid conversation with Simone Ledeen, a seasoned national security and intelligence expert. Simone brings a wealth of experience from her roles within the Pentagon, Treasury, and on global battlefields in Iraq and Afghanistan. The episode delves into critical issues surrounding intelligence analysis, Middle East policy, and the intricate dynamics of international relations.

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Simone Ledeen’s Background and Expertise

Shawn Ryan begins by highlighting Simone Ledeen's extensive resume:

"Simone Ledeen, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for the Middle East, National Security, counterterrorism and intelligence expert with a career spanning decades across the Pentagon, treasury and in global battlefields, Iraq and Afghanistan." [00:32]

Simone confirms the accuracy of this portrayal, setting the stage for a comprehensive discussion.

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Critique of Current Intelligence Analysis

One of the central themes of the episode is Simone's critique of the current state of intelligence analysis in the United States.

"A lot of these People are coming from... they're totally indoctrinated and they don't know what they're talking about because they're not properly educated." [03:47]

Simone emphasizes the decline in critical thinking within intelligence communities, attributing it to the indoctrination from certain educational institutions:

"Universities are meant to build critical thinkers, people who can look at a topic from many different points of view and then come to a conclusion instead of only being taught one way." [07:14]

She expresses concern over the lack of diverse perspectives and the repercussions this has on intelligence assessments and decision-making.

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Case Study: Iraq and Afghanistan

Simone shares her firsthand experiences from her deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan, highlighting the systemic failures and unintended consequences of US interventions.

Iraq Deployment (2003-2004)

Simone recounts her role as an advisor to the Ministry of Finance within the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA):

"I was an advisor to the Ministry of Finance... executing the budget, paying out the money." [05:23]

She discusses the mismanagement of Iraqi finances, the disbanding of the Iraqi army, and the rise of insurgent groups fueled by these decisions.

"We did need a new generation of critical thinkers... They arranged... they made money off animals." [15:10]

Simone laments the lack of accountability and foresight in policy decisions that contributed to long-term instability in the region.

Afghanistan Deployment (2004-2005, 2009-2010)

Simone details her involvement in counter-threat finance initiatives, particularly focusing on disrupting the financial networks of terrorist organizations.

"General McChrystal's focus was on countering the financial flows of terrorist groups... we achieved significant successes in intercepting funds." [117:35]

She highlights the successes of the Swift program, an elite financial tracking initiative aimed at monitoring and disrupting terrorist financing.

"The Swift program was instrumental in tracking the finances of high-profile targets like Anders Breivik and Qasem Soleimani." [148:07]

Simone underscores the importance of interagency collaboration and the challenges posed by bureaucratic inertia and policy constraints.

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Challenges in Policy Implementation

Throughout the episodes, Simone discusses the hurdles faced in implementing effective policies within the Department of Defense and other governmental bodies.

"The DoD is such a huge bureaucratic monster... writing a new policy requires coordinating with everyone and can lead to significant delays." [118:56]

She criticizes the micromanagement from higher authorities, particularly during the Obama administration, which she believes hindered swift and decisive action.

"President Obama micromanaged every aspect of the war... adding layers that made operations impossible and more dangerous." [129:37]

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The Swift Program and Counter-Threat Finance

A significant portion of the conversation revolves around the Swift program, a classified initiative under the Patriot Act aimed at tracking terrorist finances through international banking systems.

"Swift is a way to move funds... it's specifically for counterterrorism and cannot be used for anything else." [146:08]

Simone explains how the program allowed for detailed tracking of financial transactions, aiding in the identification and neutralization of terrorist networks.

"We were able to track Anders Breivik's financial activities, proving he acted alone and funding his operations for years." [148:07]

She also touches upon the challenges posed by alternative financial systems like hawala, which circumvent traditional banking protocols:

"Hawala operates outside the formal financial system, making it difficult to track transactions without direct account information." [170:31]

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Iran, Russia, and China's Geopolitical Maneuvers

Simone provides insightful analysis into the complex relationships between Iran, Russia, and China, and their impact on global security.

"Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Quds Force are all proxies funded and trained by Iran... these organizations pose a continuous threat to regional and global stability." [217:13]

She expresses skepticism about alliances like BRICS, emphasizing that economic partnerships do not necessarily translate into military alliances.

"BRICS is still developing... they're largely economic partnerships without a military alliance akin to NATO." [223:01]

Simone warns against underestimating the strategic capabilities of these nations, particularly in their ability to conduct long-term, gray zone operations.

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Afghan Withdrawal and Its Aftermath

Simone criticizes the chaotic withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan, highlighting the lack of planning and the abandonment of Afghan allies.

"The Afghan withdrawal was a catastrophe... we abandoned our partners, leading to prolonged instability and suffering." [246:31]

She recounts the heartbreaking stories of families left behind and the systemic failures that contributed to the Taliban's swift resurgence.

"We trucked Afghans out, some of whom were integral to our operations, but many did not make it out safely." [249:37]

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Conclusion and Reflections

Simone reflects on the lessons learned from her experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan, emphasizing the critical need for informed and accountable policymaking.

"The most important lesson was how easily one can become overly invested in a flawed mission... we need to learn from these mistakes to avoid repeating them." [82:51]

She advocates for a renewed focus on disrupting financial networks of terrorist organizations and maintaining strategic vigilance to safeguard national security interests.

"We must remain proactive in countering threats, using intelligence and financial tracking to neutralize adversaries before they can inflict harm." [152:26]

Simone concludes by stressing the importance of transparency and accountability in government actions to rebuild public trust and ensure effective national security strategies.

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Notable Quotes

• "Universities are meant to build critical thinkers... professors have been driven out, leaving only one perspective." — Simone Ledeen [07:14]

• "We failed to acknowledge the financial networks supporting insurgencies, leading to prolonged conflicts and instability." — Simone Ledeen [15:10]

• "The Swift program was instrumental in tracking the finances of high-profile targets like Anders Breivik and Qasem Soleimani." — Simone Ledeen [148:07]

• "The Afghan withdrawal was a catastrophe... we abandoned our partners, leading to prolonged instability and suffering." — Simone Ledeen [246:31]

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Key Takeaways

1. Decline in Critical Thinking: Simone underscores the erosion of critical thinking in intelligence analysis due to indoctrination from certain educational institutions, leading to flawed assessments and policies.

2. Failures in Iraq and Afghanistan: The mismanagement of financial resources and the disbanding of military forces in Iraq, coupled with chaotic withdrawals from Afghanistan, have had long-lasting negative impacts on regional stability.

3. Effectiveness of Counter-Threat Finance: Initiatives like the Swift program have proven essential in tracking and disrupting terrorist financing, highlighting the need for robust financial intelligence operations.

4. Geopolitical Dynamics: The complex relationships between Iran, Russia, and China present ongoing challenges, emphasizing the need for strategic partnerships and vigilance in national security.

5. Importance of Accountability: Transparent and accountable policymaking is crucial to prevent past mistakes from recurring and to rebuild public trust in intelligence and defense institutions.

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Final Thoughts

Episode #220 of the Shawn Ryan Show offers a profound exploration of the intersections between intelligence analysis, policy-making, and international security. Simone Ledeen's insights provide listeners with a nuanced understanding of the challenges facing national security today and the imperative for informed, critical, and accountable approaches to safeguarding the nation's interests.

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This summary is intended for those who have not listened to the episode and aims to capture the essence of the discussions between Shawn Ryan and Simone Ledeen.

Transcript

[Simone Ledeen]

Jack Daniels is proudly served in fine establishments, questionable joints and everywhere in between.

[Sean]

So no matter where you go in.

[Simone Ledeen]

Every bar, you'll always know someone by name. Jack. Jack and Coke shot at Jack. Jack Daniels, please.

[Sean]

Right away. That's what makes Jack Jack.

[Simone Ledeen]

Please drink responsibly. Responsibility.org Jack Daniels and Old Number 7 are registered trademarks. Copyright 2025 Jack Daniels Tennessee Whiskey. 40% alcohol by volume 80 proof.

[Sean]

At New Balance, we believe if you run, you're a runner.

[Simone Ledeen]

However you choose to do it. Because when you're not worried about doing things the right way, you're free to discover your way. And that's what running is all about. Run your [e-mail] Running.

[Sean]

Simone Ledeen, welcome to the show.

[Simone Ledeen]

Thank you. Great to be here.

[Sean]

It's good to have you here. I've been wanting to have you on for quite a while, but I think right now is the perfect time. So thank you for coming.

[Simone Ledeen]

Thanks for having me.

[Sean]

Hey, it's my pleasure. It's my pleasure. But yeah, lots of things going on in the news right now. I saw a tweet talking about intel analysts and stuff that I'll read off here in a minute that really caught our attention and so I really, I want to dive into that because. Just a lot to talk about. And that. That tweet was. It did. It caught me. So I'm going to start you off with an introduction here. Real quick. Simone Ledeen, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for the Middle East, National Security, counterterrorism and intelligence expert with a career spanning decades across the Pentagon, treasury and in global battlefields, Iraq and Afghanistan. War vet, you led efforts to follow the money fueling insurgencies of former senior civilian leader in the Pentagon during pivotal moments like the Abraham Accords and operations targeting Baghdadi and Soleimani. A pioneer in counter threat finance, coordinating the SWIFT program at the treasury and exposing terrorist financial networks. Testified before Congress on the chaotic Afghanistan withdrawal and Managing Director at Maven Defense Solutions. A senior fellow at UT's Strauss center and an advisor shaping the future of defense technology. Am I missing anything?

[Simone Ledeen]

That's good.

[Sean]

It's quite the resume there. That's quite the resume.

[Simone Ledeen]

Thank you.

[Sean]

But so a couple of things real quick here. Everybody gets a gift.

[Simone Ledeen]

Thank you.

[Sean]

Vigilance Elite Gummy bears legal in all 50 states. So pass your drug test. So. But yeah. So getting into this tweet that caught my attention from you at a fundamental level, a lot of our analytic corps need to be completely destroyed and rebuilt. A lot of these People are coming from, you know, which schools, so they're totally indoctrinated and they don't know what they're. What they're talking about because they're not properly educated. Anyways, that really caught my attention and so I wanted to. I know we're going to dive into this more in a little bit, but I just. What was, what was the premise of that?

[Simone Ledeen]

Well, I said that in the aftermath of the leaked intelligence assessment, right after our strike against Fordow, and the seemed like there was this intelligence product, this assessment that was leaked, that said, and it was like within 24 hours or within 12 hours of the strike occurring, that there was no significant damage. And now I understood later after that tweet that they did. The analysts did characterize it as low, that they had low confidence in their assessment, and that was not included in the original. I think it was CNN that originally published that they left that out. But be that as it may, you know, if you're looking at a satellite image of a bunker buster, you just see the entry point for the bunker buster. You don't see down, down, down, where it actually exploded, and you don't see what the damage is. So there's no possible way of knowing within that time period what the damage was or was not. So that was kind of the context of my tweet. But I also. I also wanted to make the point more broadly because it's a problem that I've seen for a few years now. I don't look at. I'm just a normal person now. I don't look at our intelligence assessments anymore on a regular basis. But I do know these schools, these universities are institutions of higher learning where people go. It's very hard to get in still, they get a brand. You're stamped with a brand of one of these schools, and that means you're supposed to know something. That means that people are supposed to listen to you. And that's been one of the pillars of our society, really has been. We have our different institutions that we have all bowed down to and have all said, yes, these are the people who are our leaders. These people become our presidents and our senators and our titans of business. But we've also seen in the past few years that they're completely indoctrinated by, I always say, Marxists. And they come out saying these, like, political platitudes without actually understanding anything that's behind what they're saying because they're not learning how to think critically. This is really the point. Universities are meant to Build critical thinkers, people who can look at a topic from many different points of view and then come to a conclusion instead of only being taught one way because all the other ways are offensive or all the other ways are put a label on it. The professors that used to teach a lot of those different points of view have been driven out of these universities. And what are you left with? You're left with this one perspective. That's what these students are taught. And then they are released out into the wild. Some of them become intelligence analysts. And what we're left with is intelligence analysis from people who have not been taught how to think critically. Now, I'm not. I don't want to cast aspersions on our entire intelligence community, all analysts in the community, because I have some good friends who are absolutely brilliant and please don't ever leave. But there are a lot of others, unfortunately, and it's a struggle. And the more you have decision makers, this is also how the problem plays out. You have all these decision makers who come from different backgrounds who don't understand these nuances that nerds like me and these intel analysts know. They look at a piece of analysis and they're like, oh, well, the intelligence community says this. They don't understand the nuance of. We assess with low confidence. That doesn't matter to them because they don't know how to read that. And everyone knows that. So everyone who's writing for them knows that. So it's that. That really was the motivation behind my writing that. And there's a lot more. There's a lot more to it. And I'm actually grateful to have this conversation because a lot of people know this is true. I'm not the only one.

[Sean]

I know it's true.

[Simone Ledeen]

Exactly.

[Sean]

I mean, you know, I don't think it's just the universe. I think it's. It's. I don't think it's just Ivy League universities are doing this. I mean, I think this is. This is a broader problem. I mean, everybody wants to live in their own echo chamber, and they only want the perspective that fills whatever there are. There are wants and maybe not needs, but you know what I'm saying? And it's. Man, it's become just like such a problem, man. I mean, I just had Gavin Newsom on my show last week, and I got blasted for it, and I knew I would get blasted for it, but I mean, I'm just so tired of being. It's just everywhere. I mean, you're either right or you're left. You're either MAGA or you're not.

[Simone Ledeen]

You. Your.

[Sean]

I mean, the algorithms of the social media platforms, X, Instagram, Facebook, all of them. I mean, you only get one perspective. Cause the algorithms are so good at, you know, segregating those two camps. And so, you know, I wanted to talk to the other side and just ask some questions, and people are outraged about it. It's crazy to me. It's like, I don't know how to get through this. I mean, nobody's doing it. Nobody's talking to the other side on either side. I mean, how are we supposed to have any civil discussions? You know what I mean? When it's that tribal?

[Simone Ledeen]

We don't. I mean, we don't have. And then we don't have civil discussions right now. I mean, as you see the way you're being attacked, then, you know, with. I mean, with respect to Gavin Newsom, I mean, he just. My perspective is he just says whatever, and he's trying to build a larger platform for himself outside of California. It's probably why people are mad at you, because they might feel like you're giving him that opportunity. But also, why are people not critical thinkers anymore? Can you not hear, like, can you not hear him saying what he's saying and understand what's behind that? That's pretty shocking, to be honest with you. I agree that it's. There should be a plurality of voices out there. And I mean, just going back to intelligence analysts for a minute. Their entire job is to ingest lots of different types of data perspectives and come to a conclusion based on all of the data and all of these different reflections. It's quite alarming. I mean, I served in the first Trump administration, and I still don't understand what a lot of people believe MAGA to be. Ask three people what they think MAGA is, and you'll get five opinions. But the person who started MAGA was Donald Trump. And so does he get to kind of say what MAGA is and not. I'm not, like, deep into the US Politics for a good reason, which is I don't want to be attacked. Like you've been attacked. But, I mean, it's weird. I don't get it. Yeah, it's a mystery to me, too. I campaigned for him and everything, but I don't know. I'm certainly grateful that he won and Kamala Harris lost.

[Sean]

I mean, how do you fix this within the intelligence agencies? I mean, is this a total gut job?

[Simone Ledeen]

Well, that was.

[Sean]

And then where would the new ones come from?

[Simone Ledeen]

This is the problem, I mean, we can't. What are we going to do? We do need a new generation of critical thinkers. And I'm grateful there are different institutions out there now that offer alternatives to some of these woke schools. But also what's great is the government is now going after some of these schools and saying, if you're only going to teach. And this isn't only Ivy Leagues. But the problem is especially bad in the Ivy leagues is if you're going to discriminate based on XYZ categories, that's against the law. You will not get federal funding for that. And that is going to cause change. They must change because the amount of government funding to some of these schools is. They can't survive without it. So that's really motivating. That's how you start to change this. But also, I mean, people that are reading intelligence, you can grade what you're seeing and say, like, this is not useful because xyz. But again, a lot of people who, who ingest that, who are the, what they call the customers, don't actually always understand that they're seeing something that's filtered through this, like woke mind virus. And so, yeah, so it's a problem. But that's why also you have these senior analysts, you have the leaders who are seasoned, but they're also captured. In many cases, they're also captured. And it's hard to fight against a system that only wants you to put out certain things. And you will get in trouble if you say other things. And I've seen people fired for making truthful, publishing truthful assessments that were very unpopular.

[Sean]

Could you give me, could you just give a specific example of that? Just so I want the audience to understand with examples of how this could affect intelligence?

[Simone Ledeen]

Sure. Back in the day, you were not allowed to say that Al Qaeda leadership was living in Iran. You could not say it.

[Sean]

Why?

[Simone Ledeen]

Because we might have had to do something about that. We were in the global war on terror at the time and we were going after Al Qaeda everywhere it was. We didn't want to. I believe our leadership did not want to acknowledge that Al Qaeda leadership was in Iran because then perhaps we would have had to do something about it. So, yeah, I saw reporting on that. That was like highest level of classification, so only very few people could actually ever see it. And so also because it couldn't be published in broader assessments that were going out to more people at lower classification levels. And then, you know, fast forward a couple of years, like I got out of government, went and did Other things came back in and it was. It was like just a thing that everyone acknowledged. Oh, yeah, Al Qaeda's in Iran. Al Qaeda, Al Qaeda senior leadership's living in Iran. They've been there for a long time. It blew my mind. I'm like, oh, we're just saying that now. Like, that's crazy to me. There's someone I know got fired for writing that.

[Sean]

Wow. Wow. So basically what you're saying is when hard intelligence, facts are gathered, if it doesn't fit whatever narrative that is in play at the time, then that will never get reported to who it needs to go to?

[Simone Ledeen]

I wouldn't say that so broadly. But yes, there are. There are definitely times when things are purposely not promulgated out there. Maybe it's like point to point, only a few people know about it because it's so dangerous for that information to get shared more broadly. That's one of the problems that we have. People are working off of sometimes misinformation or not all the information, even though we have it, it's just very, very tightly held for a variety of reasons. Sometimes, to be fair, it's not because it's politically damaging potentially or puts the United States in an uncomfortable position, but because the source, we want to protect the source or how we collected the information in the first place. So it's not always that way. I want to be fair, but it's not always just to protect sources and methods either.

[Sean]

Well, I mean, talking about Al Qaeda camping out in Iran, I mean, Iran just got bombed. Lot a lot of controversy over Israel right now and what's going on over there. So I wanted to unpack a couple of things that are going on in. And. And so let's start with. I mean, I woke up this morning, pulled up X. First thing I saw, Israel bombed Syria. So Israel's bombing Syria, Israel's bombing Iran. Israel is killing lots of people in Gaza. I mean, what. What is going on over there? Let's start with Syria, the latest.

[Simone Ledeen]

Okay, I would just contextualize all the things that you've. That you've. Like that list that you just ran down. Contextualize that with October 7th, which is really. Was the gen. Like, this is where all this started and where Israel was like, right, we're done. We're done with kind of the way we were doing things before, kicking the can down the road, kind of like trying to deal with situations rather than just completely turn Gaza into a parking lot. But it changed their perspective. And by the way, if you look at internal polling Israeli internal polling. They're very pro. What's going on now? Because they suffered tremendously. I mean, it was horrific. October 7th was terrible. So I just wanted to provide a little bit of context for this. So Syria. Syria. This is not a short answer, Sean. Syria has been. There's so many players. Syria's not just about Syria. Over the past, since the Arab Spring, which was, as we know, not a spring at all, there have been a lot of different forces in Syria fighting each other, plotting external attacks. Some of them. Iran had a very serious foothold in Syria through Hezbollah, and they had cut a deal with Assad, who was threatened. I mean, Assad wouldn't have survived the Arab Spring if it hadn't been for Russia and Iran. And so he became beholden to them. Where is he today? Moscow. So he became beholden to them. He became like their puppet. So also, if you consider the geography, like where Israel and Syria meet, there's only a small area, the Golan Heights, where they share a border. But Israel's been concerned about this for many years. First there was Hezbollah kind of massing there, getting ready to do something. Who knows? There's isis, there's all this. All these different forces in play that ultimately threaten the state of Israel. And again, after October 7th, this became like, we're going to have to do something eventually. I. I don't think that Israel ever thought they would have the opportunity to address these Iranian proxies one by one. I think they always. Their plan was always, how are we going to fight everyone at the same time? So it's worked out well for them, and they've been incredibly masterful at how they've kind of addressed each one of these Iranian proxies. But now there's a new manager in town, formerly a guest of ours at Camp Buka. The new leader of Syria, Jelani, he has turned a new leaf as he is portraying to the world he's no longer wearing his jihadi garb. He wears a suit. He's been welcomed into the international community and our own government, really. We want a new Abraham Accords. With Syria joining the Abraham Accords, we've lifted a lot of sanctions. We want to do business there. And I hope, personally, I hope for that. I hope that that happens. However you got Jelani in Damascus, and then you have kind of his lieutenants or loosely aligned groups that are still sort of running things outside of Damascus, and he needs to get better control over that. Now there's a debate about was he responsible for what's happened over the past few days, which is horrific attacks against the Druze community.

[Sean]

The what community?

[Simone Ledeen]

Druze.

[Sean]

What is that?

[Simone Ledeen]

They're minority. They're a minority group. And they're not just in Syria. They're in Israel as well. They're actually very active in the Israeli security services. They serve in the idf, and they play an important role in Israel and Israeli national security. So they were attacked in a pretty horrific way. There's videos all over social media about, like, murders of hundreds of people that were filmed, the humiliations that were forced on the Druze before they were murdered, including some of their, you know, some of their religious leaders. It's, like, bad. It's not. It's. It's very bad.

[Sean]

And so these are. These are basically. The Druze is basically Muslim Israelis.

[Simone Ledeen]

No, they're not.

[Sean]

Is that correct?

[Simone Ledeen]

They're. They're Druze, so they're. They live in Israel, they live in Syria. They're. They're spread out. Like, if you consider, you know, Kurds who kind of live in a bunch of different countries, they're kind of their own tribal network. That's the Druze. They have their own tribal network. They're spread across Syria, Israel, and maybe more than that, I cannot say. I'm like a deep, deep Syria expert. But what I do know is that they were attacked pretty badly. And there were attacks that. Against Christians prior to that, you know, inside of churches, murders, rapes. And this was the second attack against the Druze under this kind of new Jelani government. And I don't. Actually. I don't want to. It is a Jelani government. They've been acknowledged into, you know, by. By our leadership. So anyway, all that to say Israel acted in defense of the Druze.

[Sean]

Okay.

[Simone Ledeen]

And that was what they did this morning. Apparently, they'd been messaging for a while, like, cut this shit out. This is really bad. We don't like to see this. But it didn't stop. And they had a problem, too, which was, I read a report that said over a thousand Druze from Israel, like, knocked down the fence between Israel and Syria and just, like, went into Syria to fight with their Druze brothers. And Israel was like, whoa, we don't want our citizens to get killed in Syria. They don't want any bigger problems. Do you know what I mean? Everyone wants us to calm down, quiet down. We're going in a good direction. Please stop killing each other. And that was the point of this attack, the Israeli attack today.

[Sean]

Okay.

[Simone Ledeen]

I really. I hope that's the end.

[Sean]

What would you think If US got involved in that, do you think it's our place?

[Simone Ledeen]

No, definitely not.

[Sean]

Do you think it was our place with the Iran stuff?

[Simone Ledeen]

I think specifically targeting for Dao. Nobody else could have done it but us. And President Trump had said for so many years, Iran will not get a nuclear weapon, that he had his own credibility riding on that and he had to. But yes, I do also think it was the right thing to do. I never thought that this would turn into American boots on the ground. It won't. It can't. We're not doing that.

[Sean]

You don't think so?

[Simone Ledeen]

No.

[Sean]

Well, that's good to hear. Cause that was my worry is, you know, and look, I'm not an Israel expert, I'm not an Iran, I'm not a Middle east expert, but, you know, I mean, Trump ran his campaign. We're not going to get into any more forever wars. And that seems to be kicking the hornet's nest in my book. And, you know, and the thing is, I'm not saying Israel was right or wrong in doing what they did, you know, with Iran, but you just mentioned it. I know we're going to dive in a lot more. I mean, Iran has used terrorist organizations as proxies, from what I know, throughout the entire 20, whatever year war.

[Simone Ledeen]

Yep.

[Sean]

Right.

[Simone Ledeen]

Yes.

[Sean]

And we never did a damn thing about it. Nothing. My fucking friends were getting killed out there by this shit. Nobody gave a fuck. You know, now Israel gets involved and all of a sudden it's like at the snap of a finger, fuck it, we're bombing them. And that to me is like a slap in the face. That's like, so when it's Americans that are getting killed, we don't do shit. But when Israel's involved, then we're going to step in and do something. I don't understand that at all. And I'm not getting into the conspiracy stuff about all the shit that you read online, but that's just how I feel. And that's how a very large percentage of the veteran population feels is what's going on. Why weren't you there for us?

[Simone Ledeen]

I mean, I could not agree more in the sense that.

[Sean]

And that goes through Trump's last administration and Obama administration and the Bush administration. That's all of them.

[Simone Ledeen]

Yeah.

[Sean]

And the Biden administration.

[Simone Ledeen]

I mean, we, I was tracking, like, we saw Iranian money moving through, like in early days of Iraq. We were just watching it and, and there were a few things that happened where. Just a deep sigh because of all of the, the terrible loss and missed Opportunities. But I was there during the Bush administration and yeah, I mean, there was a policy decision. Even though we knew what was happening, what they were building, who they were dealing with, we let them. And then they started killing us. And essentially we let them with very few exceptions. And I agree with you, that is messed up. And I mean, we should all be incredibly angry about that. I will also say that, I mean, I'm not making excuses for anybody. Like, I demand accountability like everybody else. You know, we have had none and we deserve it and our dead friends deserve it and their families. But I will say this is not the same thing. You want this regime that creates these terror proxies that we know have killed Americans aggressively gone after us. You want them to have a nuke. You want them to give that nuclear weapon technology to the freaking Houthis and whoever else. I don't. And so just because one thing was wrong doesn't mean this is right or this isn't right. I just like having the, having Iran have a nuclear weapon. Their ballistic missile technology, it's worth saying this too. Their ballistic missile technology is so. Was so sophisticated they were building missiles that could go farther and farther and farther, not just to hit Israel. What were they going to do with those ballistic missiles that could travel so so far they were targeting us or eventually. So it was in our national interest to make sure that they never got a nuclear weapon. And I think if Israel had had the technology to do it themselves, and I think we would have let them and we wouldn't have gotten involved. But unfortunately we are the only ones that have that technology. We have the B2, we have these bunker busters. Maybe we'll start selling those to Israel. Great. But it's in our interest too. They are coming for us too.

[Sean]

I mean, I know they're coming for us. I'm not saying that at all. But there was a couple other things that, that came out. I mean, I know you have a lot of friends and acquaintances still in intelligence and probably a lot more than I do. I still have a couple. But, you know, I talked to one person. They said not one of our 18 intelligence agencies reported that Iran had nuclear capabilities. In fact, you know, March 2025, Tulsi Gabbard, this is her. The IC continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon. And Supreme Leader Khomeini, sorry, I'm butchered. His name has not authorized nuclear weapons program. That he is that he suspended in 2003 and then in June of 25 quoted. America has intelligence that Iran is at the point that it can produce a nuclear weapon within weeks to months if they decide to finalize the assembly. President Trump has been clear that can't happen. And I agree. And so, I mean, how does that, how did this all change? Just within a couple of months, they had no capability. Now all of a sudden, I mean, after years and years of intel, all of a sudden in a couple months, oh shit, they've got nuclear capabilities. We need to take care of this. That didn't come from us, that came from Mossad. Why wouldn't we trust our 18 intelligence agencies more than we trust of foreign governments?

[Simone Ledeen]

Well, that foreign government had completely penetrated Iran and we hadn't. I mean, we, we see their operations potentially ongoing even now. So targeted, so specific. They, we weren't where they were and they saw things that we didn't. And I love a good conspiracy as much as the next person, but like, they have to get this right. I mean, we did not have, we did not have, in my opinion, based on what I saw previously, we did not have that level of penetration that they did. And that was a game changer.

[Sean]

Okay, well, that's good to know. It's just things that I don't understand. Cause I don't have a full picture. And you know, with a lot of the stuff that you could read on the Internet, I mean, it just gets you real.

[Simone Ledeen]

Like it's tough, Sean, because people hear that and they're like, oh, the Israelis told us. So we just believe them and then we're gonna go take out their biggest enemy. You know, I get that. And it, like, it sucks. It also happens to be true. So I don't know, I don't know what to tell you. I mean, it is. I wish that we had better collection inside of Iran, that we had. Had better collection. Now things are changing, but not in terms of us. But what's going to happen with the regime? I don't know anymore because they're totally defenseless right now.

[Sean]

I mean, do you think, just going back on our earlier conversation when we were talking about analysts and intelligence folks, I mean, not knowing what they're doing because of where they came from, from the Ivy League schools. I mean, do you think that played into why we didn't have that type of intelligence?

[Simone Ledeen]

I think that's part of it. Yeah, I think that's part of it. I think just our general risk aversion is overwhelming. And you were in the CIA. You saw institutionally they're risk averse. Hopefully now things are changing there. But I don't know. And I know I was extremely frustrated by how little was going on. I'm like, we. Four years ago, you know, we could see the trajectory of this whole thing with Iran, right, with them building the nukes. Whether you want to parse that they're this close or that close. The intelligence community started playing these games where they're like, well, they can make a. If they decided to make a nuclear weapon, they could do it within, you know, a very short period of time. But it's like with medium. I think at the time, it was like, medium. What do you call it? Sorry, that they. They had medium confidence of that assessment. I'm like, so you don't know anything, basically, Like, I'm supposed to make decisions off of this, or I'm supposed to advise my boss's boss about, like, based on that. That's not that helpful. And of course, having been an intelligence analyst before, I know, like, I get it. And I don't want to beat the dead horse too much. I mean, sometimes you have what you have to work with, unfortunately. But I think at the end of the day, the president in his first term, President Trump, made it clear, no new wars. He didn't want to go to war with Iran. He wanted a deal. There were things that we could have done back then, like, beneath the level of armed conflict, we have authorities that we can use to do certain things that are in the gray zone. Sean, you know about all of that. We could have done that. And I didn't really see anyone who could have done it do it. And unfortunately, it led to a scenario where there was no other option. The only option was this big kinetic public thing. Could we have potentially avoided that earlier with a little more risk taking? I think so. And again, no accountability for any of that at all.

[Sean]

I've spent years on this show pulling back the curtain and trying to reveal what's really happening in this country. And the truth is, there's a double standard here in America. You see time and time again, people defending themselves, defending their family, and then the judicial system goes after them. It's a double standard. And if you don't believe me, check out episode number three with Don Bradley. That is a perfect example of what I'm talking about, because it's not just about what you did, believe it or not. It's how the legal system interprets it. And that's why I'm a USCCA member. The USCCA has over 860,000 members because they know the reality is, after you stop the threat, the real fight begins. Your membership gives you the education, elite training and self defense liability insurance you need for the second fight, the legal one. Plus every member also gets access to to a 24, 7 critical response team and attorney network in the event of a self defense incident. Violent crime happens too often in America. This isn't about living in fear. This is about being prepared when things go sideways. You don't get to schedule danger and with the world changing so fast, you have to do what you can to protect your family. Check out the USCCA's risk free [e-mail] SRS that's uscca.com SRS protect more than just your life, Protect your future. Go right now to uscca.comsrs why are elite athletes and high performers using Armor of Colostrum? Because armor Colostrum is nature's first whole food. With over 400 bioactive nutrients working at the cellular level to help build lean muscle, accelerate recovery and to fuel performance, all without artificial stimulants or synthetic junk, armor can help strengthen immunity, help ignite metabolism and so much more. I've been using armor ever since they sent me some to try. I have more energy and faster recovery after long days and workouts. Whether you're running a business, training hard, or just want an edge, armor can help optimize your body for peak output. I've worked out a special offer for my audience. Receive 30% off your first subscription order. Go to armor.com SRS or enter SRS to get 30% off your first subscription order. That's a R M R A.com SRS these statements and products have not been evaluated by the fda. These products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease or condition. These statements and information are not a substitute for or alternative to seeking care from your health care providers. Yeah, is it, is it, is it true that in Trump's first term he took the inspectors of the nuclear facilities out?

[Simone Ledeen]

I don't know. I don't know about Iran.

[Sean]

Okay. That's something I've been wanting to dive into. But anyways, let's move on. So I want to do. We have a lot of stuff to discuss and I really am excited to get into the Iraq war with you, but I thought it would be good to do somewhat of a life story and then we can go down rabbit holes along the way.

[Simone Ledeen]

Great.

[Sean]

So where did you grow up?

[Simone Ledeen]

Well, my parents are American, but they met and married in Italy. So I spent my. I was born in the US But I spent my early years in Rome and actually Italian's my first language.

[Sean]

Is it really?

[Simone Ledeen]

Yeah, yeah, nice, beautiful, but not that helpful outside of like restaurants and you know, going on nice trips. But yeah. So we moved to D.C. when I was like 4. My father was a university professor at the time and he started getting death threats from the communists. There was the Red Brigades, very active in left wing terrorists, Communist terrorists very active in Italy and they had killed a bunch of people there. And he got a death threat and I was very young and he was like, we out. So we came to the us he got a job at a think tank at Georgetown University. And so I grew up in D.C. in the D.C. area. Swamp creature. Swamp creature, yeah, my mother worked. My parents ended up both working in the Reagan administration. My father went to the State Department and eventually to the National Security Council. And my mother was working at the Pentagon doing technology transfer, like trying to keep the Soviets from getting our best technology.

[Sean]

Interesting.

[Simone Ledeen]

So yeah, that's where I grew up. And then I ended up, my father, unfortunately at the National Security Council, ended up working in the same office with Oliver north and Bud McFarlane and was swept up in the Iran Contra affair. I was 12 when all that happened and I had a pretty uncomfortable exchange with the principal of the school that I was in who asked me if my father was guilty of. And I went home that day and told my mother and she was like, well, you don't have to go back to that school ever again. And so kind of mid year I switched to a new school, very bougie, all girls school, where like everyone's dad was way more important than mine and no one cared. So. And I only learned later, you know, how, how much of a struggle that was for my parents to be able to pay that tuition because it was like one of those borderline things where they didn't qualify for any kind of scholarship and frankly I wasn't a good enough student to get any kind of scholarship, anything. But they sacrificed a lot to pay for my education and I'm very grateful. But anyway, yeah, so I went through high school there and, and then, yeah, off to college.

[Sean]

Where'd you go?

[Simone Ledeen]

I went to a school called Brandeis University in Massachusetts. And I did not do particularly well in school in high school, but when I got to college I realized that I knew more than a lot of other people just because my school was so good. And it all started to make sense, like why did I have to go there and not just public school? So yeah, I remain very grateful for that. But Yeah, I went to Brandeis University, majored in European Cultural Studies just so that I could get credit for a full year overseas. Pretty much always wanted to travel, live overseas, had the wanderlust. And so I went to Italy and did, like, in my mind, I had this Eat, Pray, Love thing, you know, I went to Florence and thought it would be this great adventure, but I made a critical mistake, which was I actually did a program at the University of Florence, which was, like, hard as shit. So I had to do it. It was in Italian. And you go to lec. The way they do it there is like, you go to lectures, you read this whole pile of books, they give you the reading list and like, you have one exam at the end of the year, and it's. It's an oral exam in front of a panel of professors, and it's like half an hour and they can ask you anything. And that sucked. I had no Eat, Pray, Love situation. I had, like, study, study, study. And. But I learned a lot. And Florence was beautiful. And I got out of Brandeis, which already was like, crazy left. Crazy left. Coming from dc, I wanted nothing to do with politics. I just wanted to be like, normal kid, normal experiences. I mean, when I was young, I remember in D.C. we had, like, Jean Kirkpatrick over for dinner one night, and she. My father was, like, delayed at work. So it was like, me and my mom with Jean Kirkpatrick, the ambassador to the United Nations. I mean, if you ever look her up on YouTube, she was like a serious person. Okay? Serious person. And I guess our oven broke. My mom was putting some, like, frozen hors d' oeuvres or whatever in the oven to warm up. And the oven was broken. So she sent me next door, like, to use the next door neighbor's oven. And I got stopped by the Secret Service because I'm running back and forth with food. They're like, what are you doing with the food? And that was my. You know, I had a weird childhood. It was not like a lot of other kids. So when I went to college, I just wanted to be normal. But instead there was just all this craziness already. And, like, we had. I forget what year it was. Maybe my sophomore year, we had a big student event, which was Angela Davis was invited as a speaker. Angela Davis, former vice presidential candidate under the Communist Party. She was briefly on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted list for, like, busting her boyfriend out of court. I think some. I think a judge was killed in the process. So she was invited to speak at my school, and she was being paid out of student funds. And I was like, absolutely not. And that was also. I ended up kind of speaking out about that a little bit because I'm like, this is crazy. And you're not even telling the students who this person is. Like, she's bad news. And anyway, it was. Even back then, it was a problem. And I'm 50 years old, so this was a few years ago. But, yeah, so I. I just. I went overseas for a year, just kind of did that thing and came back. I wrote an honors thesis and got out of there. And I don't think I've ever been back to Boston since then. It was like, way too cold for me and just not. Not great memories. But. But I got through it and I finished, which was my goal. And then. And then I came back to D.C. got a job briefly, like for a tech company. Just kind of feeling my way around. Didn't really know what I wanted to do with my life. And I got this job working for a guy who had invented something that was acquired by a company called Lucent Technologies, which doesn't exist anymore, but he made like over a billion dollars off of it. And he decided that he was going to start up all these related tech companies that would, like, be each other's customers. And I worked for him. I mean, I was like, basically one level above interim, but it was cool. And anyway, from there I went to business school, and I went to business school in Italy, but that was right when 911 happened. It kind of changed my life.

[Sean]

Yeah, I saw that. How did it change your life?

[Simone Ledeen]

Well, one of my mother's best friends was on the plane that hit the Pentagon. And we. At the time, I was like a few blocks away. I was in Pentagon City. And so we, you know, you could feel the apartment building shake when the plane hit. And we already knew. We'd already heard about what had happened in New York City. And I didn't know till later that day that Barbara was on that plane. Barbara Olson was her name. And she. It turned out that she had switched her flight at the last minute. She was supposed to. She was like a political commentator. She. Wrother last book was about Hillary Clinton. Not a fan. And she was on her way. I think she was supposed to go to Bill Maher show. That's why she was on that flight. It was going to Los Angeles. And her husband's birthday was September 11th. So she. @ the last minute, she changed her flight so that she could be with her husband on his. On the Morning of his birthday. And when he got to bed that night, he found that she had left him a note as well. But, yeah, that changed my life. It changed the life of our entire family, my two younger brothers as well. So I was already about to leave. I was about to leave for business school in Milan and everything was grounded. And I had time to think about everything, go to Barbara's memorial service and just kind of be with her widower, with Ted, and just think about like, do I even give a shit about any of this anymore? Like, I had all these plans to go whatever, have more European adventures or whatever. And I'm like, I don't care about any of that anymore. I came from. I've been so lucky. I came from a great family. I have a great education. I need to serve my country now. And I didn't know how, but the seed was planted. And as I thought about it, I realized, like, what is school? You go to school to learn a certain set of tools that you can use however you want. So that's when I started to get the idea, like, there's going to be somebody tracking terrorist money. So I'm going to go to a business school, I'm going to learn about international finance, and then I'm going to figure out how to help do that. And that's what I ended up doing.

[Sean]

Wow. And you deployed to Iraq?

[Simone Ledeen]

I did. 2003. Yep.

[Sean]

How was that?

[Simone Ledeen]

Early days. Well, it was a shit show. It was.

[Sean]

You were there for the invasion?

[Simone Ledeen]

No. No.

[Sean]

Okay.

[Simone Ledeen]

They trucked us into Kuwait in September and we were in Kuwait, or was it late August? I can't remember. We were in Kuwait for like a week. And they had started up this like bizarre week long training in a classroom for civilians who had never done anything like this before. And it was kind of like mop gear. It's important, but you're not going to have any flak vest. Also important. Yours doesn't have any plates. So it was like, cool. But at the time when we got there, I think it was sometime in September that we got to Baghdad. It was still. It was before, right before things started blowing up, like right before the un. The UN thing was like a big turning point when the head of the UN mission there got blown up. So when I first got there, you could still. They had like government Suburbans at the Four Heads palace is what they called it because it had four heads of Saddam Hussein on top of the palace, the presidential palace as it's now known. We could just sign out a car and Drive into the city, go buy some pistachios. It was like that for about five minutes after I got there. And then things started going boom pretty fast. But we, you know, we were housed in the palace. They just put cots in. I don't know if it was like a ballroom. So it's one of the huge rooms. They just put all these cots out and the lights were on 24 7. I saw a baby being made right there in front of like a lot of people. They eventually, the mother and father eventually got married, but it was. There's a lot going on there. A lot going on. Yeah. So, but we, you know, we were, we were trying to do the work that we were given. So I was an advisor in the Coalition Provisional Authority. I was an advisor to the Ministry of Finance.

[Sean]

Oh, good.

[Simone Ledeen]

What does that mean? They basically what they told me my job was going to be was Excel spreadsheets. And like, having just finished my mba, I was like, I know how to do that. They, at the time, there were a lot of countries that were, that wanted to donate to the rebuilding, rebuilding of Iraq. And a lot of people forget this now, but in the early days, there were also a lot of other countries that were there not in combat, but in like, they wanted to show up and give and lend support. Now this, like, fast forward to Afghanistan and you see all these. There were foreign nations that were there who fought with us and bled with us and died with us in Iraq. People showed up. But then pretty quickly this war became very unpopular in their countries and we were kind of on our own. And I saw a lot of these foreign troops kind of peace out. But yeah, so we were specifically, my team was on what they called a budget execution team, which was basically executing the budget, paying out the money. In an environment like that, it's really hard because everything was cash. And the. They also decided, the powers that be decided the old dinars that had Saddam's face on them had to be, you know, they needed to be phased out and there need to be new dinars made. And they were being made in England. And this was after a few months, they were trucked in and we had to trade out the old ones for the new ones and we had to make sure the teachers got paid. But, you know, I remember when, I mean, there's so many things to say about this, I really don't even know where to begin. But I remember when Bremer announced that they were disbanding the Iraqi army. And at the time they said that the Iraqi army soldiers were gonna be given three months pay, and that's it. Go figure out your new life. I mean, I've read books where people tracked, like, when did the insurgency really start? And I remember there were riots. I mean, when they would show up to get their payments. And people like CPA people, not me, but others had to tell them, like, we're done. You're not getting paid anymore. They would riot. And then they started making threats. And then they started following through with those threats. It wasn't hard to see. It's just, you know, there was a very concerted political effort to ignore it. So, for example, I learned later that going back to our intelligence assessment discussion, intelligence analysts were not allowed to use the term insurgency until Donald Rumsfeld left as Secretary of Defense.

[Sean]

What.

[Simone Ledeen]

Unrest? They had to call it unrest. They couldn't call it insurgency. Yeah. Wow. Yeah, so that happened. There were new ministers for all the different Iraqi ministries that were installed. And there was this idea of trying to be fair because obviously the Ba'ath party was all Sunni and they wanted to put in Shia and kind of make it fair. Well, a lot of the Shia were turned out to either become problematic or Iran related or just weak and not popular with the people. So they didn't hang around for that long. But, I mean, I remember working with Iraqi Minister of Finance. So our team, we were out of the Green Zone. Like every day we would travel to the Ministry of Finance for anyone who knows about security. Let me paint this insane picture for you. So we were in a soft vehicle in a Suburban with a Humvee of soldiers in front of us and behind us.

[Sean]

You were in a soft armored vehicle?

[Simone Ledeen]

Yeah. No armored vehicle for many, many, many months. There were no armored vehicles available for us because we were like GS9.

[Sean]

What year is this?

[Simone Ledeen]

040304.

[Sean]

Holy shit.

[Simone Ledeen]

Yeah. And we had flak vests with no plates in them. But we were out like every day. And I felt badly personally, and we felt badly, I know my teammates did, because these soldiers were there protecting us. I'm like, my life isn't worth more than his life. Why? It didn't make sense to me. Why are we doing this? Why can't we all just get in a Toyota and drive over there? No one will know who we are. Why are we doing this? It just seemed crazy. And then we'd be stuck in traffic and there'd be all these apartment buildings all around us. And, you know, so none of that. Nothing ever. None of that ever made sense to me. But we Would have, over time, a decision was made because these ministers, the Iraqi ministers would. They requested security. They'd say, I'm unsafe. Our ministry is not safe. There's no Iraqi army anymore. The American military is not guarding, you know, had no interest in guarding Ministry of whatever. So they wanted their own security. So the decision was made by the cpa, Bremer, I assume, to provide them with their own security force. They could pick their own security force. And in many cases, like, so we could train them, we could equip them, give them firearms. And I mean, imagine this, like new Shia. I mean, these were like, some of them became Shia militias. And we started them. When I Left Iraq in 2004, one of the people that I worked with, he was an advisor in the Ministry of Interior. He was working with. This was called the Facilities Protection Service FPS. He gave me an armband from the FPS and I still have it. I have it in my office at home just to remind me, like, we are a big part of what is wrong. We did it. And a lot of what we're seeing today is like second and third order effects of the very poor decisions that we made and the fact that we refused to acknowledge them at the time and try to address them and try to find some accountability.

[Sean]

Could you elaborate on how we created that problem a little bit more?

[Simone Ledeen]

Yeah. So like I was saying, the FPS in this specific case, the FPS became like militias. Like, they grew. The security forces around these different ministries grew. And there were some ministers, the Shia ones, that some of them were, it turned out, talking to Qasem Soleimani. Qasem Soleimani was already the head of the irgc. Quds Force was already running networks inside of Iraq. And he influenced networks. And this was a point that he picked up on an opportunity. But it also came out, I think it's important also to talk about Ahmad Chalabi. So Ahmed Chalabi, who's that? He was a big figure in the run up to the invasion. He was someone. He was the head of something called the Iraqi National Congress and was one of the main people saying, when you invade Iraq, like, the people will embrace you and throw flowers on you. And he was really embraced by, you know, group like American, like neocons, and of which my father was one. My father was, you know, friends with some of those people and some of the big kind of pro Iraq invasion people. And I grew up around them. And so when I got to Iraq, there were people who worked for him who were like, oh, Simone, Hello. And this was a really big pivot point for me personally, when I just started to see what was going on. And he had this car scheme at the Ministry of Finance, where it was basically like a money laundering scheme of, like, getting cars from the coalition and then selling them and making money off of it and just money laundering.

[Sean]

Wow.

[Simone Ledeen]

And the Iraqi Minister of Finance, one day when I was there working, called me into his office, and he had, like. Turned out Chalabi had, like, someone outside of his office just sitting there watching who came in and out all day. And he called me into his office and shut the door, and he was like, you have to help me. They're gonna kill me. And I'm like, who? You know, I'm 28 years old again. I told you my background. I'm like, what are you talking about? Who? And he wouldn't say the name, but he's like, you see this guy outside? Like, they're trying to make me do all kinds of things. Help me. So I didn't know what to do. I mean, I went back to my leadership and I was like, wrote my little report. And, you know, that guy wasn't finance Minister for very much longer. But I started to see what was going on and what Chalabi in particular was doing. And I told my father, I was like, this is not a good guy. This guy is not one of us. He's not doing pro America stuff, and in fact, he's doing a lot of really shady. A lot of really shady things. And. And my father, from day one, believed me. But a lot of his friends, who I'm sure are going to see this, they always argued with me, and they said he was misunderstood. But now a lot has come out, and I think it's clear that he was an Iranian asset from the beginning. And I think Soleimani was his handler. He traveled to Iran so many times and always tried to explain it away, like, of course I have to deal with them to you. Bullshit. So again, we, like, this is our own willful blindness, and there's been no accountability for that either. But so many people know about it. So many people are angry. We've been betrayed, and we're just sitting here with our anger. You know what I mean? And yet the region and Iraq is not our friend. Syria's doing Syria. I mean, it's still a cauldron, although things have changed, but not because of us. Not really.

[Sean]

Do you think we should have been in Iraq to begin with?

[Simone Ledeen]

No.

[Sean]

What makes you say that? I agree with you. I'M just curious.

[Simone Ledeen]

No, I think Iraq had nothing to do with 9 11. And I was totally radicalized by 9 11. We lost Barbara. I was like, let's go. I recently actually went to the George W. Bush Museum at SMU in Dallas. I don't know if you've ever been. I actually. I don't know if I would recommend it to, like, GWAT veterans. It's strange. It made me really angry because there's a whole, like, GWAT exhibition there or whatever. And it has all these speeches, all the speeches that they gave, like, leading up to the invasion. And I got so angry. I'm like. I was. But I was mad at myself. I'm like, how did I ever believe this? How did I ever believe there was any connection between 911 and Iraq? There was none. What were we even doing?

[Sean]

Kbr, you know, do you think that's what it was? Dick Cheney's?

[Simone Ledeen]

I think it was bigger than that.

[Sean]

You think it was bigger than that? What do you think it was?

[Simone Ledeen]

I think it was. I think that might have been part of it. Because the years of waste, fraud and abuse through KBR was just so egregious. And no one really ever did anything about that. Maybe that was part of it. But I also think there was this hanging. George Bush Sr. Didn't really finish the job in Iraq. He find he got Iraq out of Kuwait. Iraq had invaded Kuwait. He launched the Gulf War to get Iraq out of Kuwait, which was successful. But a lot of people wanted him to go the step further and regime change. Saddam Hussein, and he didn't. But a lot of people in the George W. Bush administration thought now's the opportunity where we can finish that, where we can right that wrong. I think that's very real. And so I think both of those reasons. But it's also important to say that there was a belief that Saddam was trying to was building weapons of mass destruction. Weapons of mass destruction. I don't think. I think a lot of people did believe that. And like, in retrospect, kind of good for him because there had been this long Iran, Iraq war. They were mortal enemies. And he wanted the Iranian regime to think that he was holding onto this huge store of weapons of mass destruction. It got him in the end, but at least it was enough of a thread to pull that they built this whole narrative around it. And I know, I mean, of course he didn't have weapons of mass destruction. He had a large amount of yellowcake uranium that they eventually put on a ship and sent to Canada. But that Was not weapons of mass destruction.

[Sean]

Yeah, yeah. I mean, when you talk about some of the waste, fraud and abuse of kbr, what are you talking about?

[Simone Ledeen]

Oh, man. I mean, I saw this in a lot more detail in Afghanistan than I did in Iraq. But just like I remember the. Just because I was in Iraq in the early days and all that stuff was just getting going where like I said, initially we were housed in the, in the presidential palace. And then eventually they started, you know, bringing in these, these trailers. And the first trailers didn't have bathrooms. So then those trailers were moved out and they got the new trailers that had bathrooms. And then I personally knew a couple of soldiers that were somehow had gotten vehicles through KBR and were like sending them back to conus. Yeah. I mean, obviously breaking the law. And I didn't like I found out about it much later when I didn't even know where anybody was. But it was like, it was stuff like that. There was a lot of deal making, a lot of like people kind of. I don't even know. I mean. And then.

[Sean]

Can you, can you talk about the connection between Dick Cheney and kbr?

[Simone Ledeen]

Well, he was the CEO before he was vice president. Well, he was the CEO of Halliburton, of which KBR was part of Halliburton. And then they spun it off because it looked really bad, didn't it?

[Sean]

Yeah, it looked bad, yeah. I mean, it's so hard to paint a picture of how much money was wasted. I mean, when you're talking about the trailers, you're talking about. You're talking about basically a mobile home. Thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of mobile homes that were put out with no bathroom. And then all of a sudden they're replaced with ones that have a bathroom. I mean, we're. The amount of money that was just. And it's the biggest. I mean they ran from what I know, they ran all logistics, all logistics in Iraq and in Afghanistan. And he was the fucking CEO of IT who's now the vice president who obviously has major poll.

[Simone Ledeen]

Correct? Yeah, correct. I mean I remember at biop Baghdad International Airport we used to go. We used to go there once a week on Fridays when we didn't work. And we used to. Literally insane to think about today, risk our lives to go there to get like Burger King so we wouldn't have to eat whatever, just to get out and try to feel like we were doing something normal. But yeah, there was a Burger King there. They were building all kinds of stuff there. And there was still also the duty free so we were not under General Order 1. We were civilians assigned to the CPA, which was like, basically it was a DoD entity. But anyway, whatever. People bought booze at the airport. But even just in the eight months that I was there, I mean, there was such a huge change in terms of, like, building things out. And the only thing that I saw during that time that was completely egregious was the trailers. And of course they weren't like, we started getting mortared and rocketed pretty quickly after I got there. And so there was no protection for that at all. Like, over time, they started putting sandbags. So at least like, if someone got hit, the shrapnel wouldn't hit someone else. But I mean, it was. That's how it was in those early days. Pretty crazy to think about today. When I finally got home from that deployment, I didn't realize that I was a little rattled. But I remember I was at my parents house for dinner one night and there was like a window that was up and it kind of fell down behind me and I was like, under the table. And I didn't. Even before everyone's like, where's Simone? So going through all that, it wasn't like I was in combat or anything like that. But we got a lot of incoming over time. It just kept getting worse and worse. And a couple of my friends, we had a couple of terrible experiences. We worked very closely with awesome translators. We had these two girls who were. We became good friends of ours. And I remember one day they were coming on base for work and the security was so bad, like, no one really cared about the local nationals that were working with us. It was really sad. And there was a huge line of cars, of their cars waiting to get in through security into the Green Zone every morning. So one day some terrorists in an SV bid just placed himself in the middle of that line of cars and detonated himself. And all the cars caught on fire and people were burned to death, including one of our interpreters and her friend who was in the car with her made it out. We tried to go to the hospital later to just pay our respects and visit. And the families were like, get out of here. Like, we don't want to see you here. Get out of here. And that was like, you know, that was a pretty low, pretty low moment we had. We had. Oh, I know this is kind of a. This is another kind of sad story, I guess. But when I was leaving, I'm not always a rules follower, and you were when we were. In order to leave Iraq As a CPA person, you're supposed to take the rotator out to Kuwait and then back home. But I knew this guy Whoalso, an American who was working on the kind of political side of cpa. And he had lived in the Kurdish region for a long time before the war and had friends up there and was leaving around the same time that I was. So he offered me to go with him. And basically his buddies were just going to come pick him up outside the Green Zone. And he was going to. They were going to drive around, spend like a week in Iraqi Kurdistan and then leave through Turkey on the border just by foot. So I thought that sounded awesome. And so I did that. And we got stopped. First of all, I got in so much trouble for that because it was actually really sad. This woman, Fern Holland, who was doing. She was doing. She was trying to help Iraqi women who were victims of domestic violence. That's a lot to unpack there, okay? But she was there doing that. And God bless her, she was killed. And she was killed right when I kind of like wasn't when I had left. And so for a while there was this Marine colonel who was kind of in charge of me. He didn't know. He thought that might have been me, basically. I didn't give him a lot of information. I think I just left. I'm very sorry about that. But, yeah, we drove. So we get to Baqbah and we got pulled over by police maybe, or just random criminals wearing Iraqi police uniforms. And we had to. They asked us for our IDs and my friend just gave them his library card from the school that he had gone to because we were not gonna show them our CPA or any US stuff. And they got really mad. Anyway, long story short, I think the Kurds, who were our kind of driver shooters, kind of passed them some money and we went on our way. But it was. We went all over Erbil, Dhook. We went to Suleymania and just had an amazing. Did picnics with some of his Kurdish friends and met a lot of people. I actually learned a lot on that trip. And then as we were exiting, we were going into Turkey, I forgot that I had had one spent round in my bag. It was a shell casing that fell into my trailer. The night that everyone was celebrating in Baghdad when we caught Saddam. And what goes out must come down a lot. Some of it came down into our housing. And I was sleeping in the palace that night. When I came back, there was this one spent round. And so I thought it was Cool, I'll keep it. And the Turks at the border crossing were not stoked about that. And I had a little bit of a problem getting in. But anyway, that was my Iraq experience. And I will say I did not. It's taken me years to, I think, properly understand my role, but also what I witnessed. There were some really also just sad things that happened there. Like, in addition to what I said, there was a colonel that I had worked with a lot. He was getting ready to rip out, and his last day, he brought this woman, this Iraqi woman, beautiful, beautiful young woman. And I understood pretty quickly that they had had something going on, and he was trying to find a job for her because he was leaving, he was abandoning her. And, you know, it was just. It was a terrible. He's like, well, maybe, you know, you guys have space for an interpreter or something? And I'm like, no, we don't. You know, Piece of shit. And this woman, probably her whole family knows what you've been up to, and now what's her life gonna be? You know, stuff like that just made me really angry because I'm like, we're leaving. You know, we're not gonna stay here. And anyway. Yeah, yeah.

[Sean]

What are some lessons that you think. What are some lessons you learned from that work?

[Simone Ledeen]

I think I'm still learning lessons from that war. But the important. The most important one for me was how. How easily, like, how you can get your blood heated. How I can, and how easily, in a way, I was. I believed something so strongly that was wrong, and that. That is something that I hope, like, has guided me in the rest of my life, because I so believe that was the right thing. And it's so clear now that it wasn't. And I also want to help to teach people about that, because it's not just we have so many bad feelings about the specifics of what happened and how it happened, but in the broader strategic context, what a huge mistake it was for us, and we're living with the consequences. Today. We're suffering from what that did to us as a country today. Would we be where we are with China if we, you know, if we. We knew what the threat from China was going to be back then, even we did, but maybe not to this extent, but there were smart people who understood where China was headed. Maybe it wasn't clear that they would achieve their goals, but it was clear where they wanted to go. But, yeah, this was. That was the most important lesson of all of that. But there are many, like, micro lessons, too.

[Sean]

Do you Think that war was all for nothing.

[Simone Ledeen]

I mean, I want to say no. I want to say no.

[Sean]

I'm with you.

[Simone Ledeen]

And I'm sure maybe if we sit here long enough, we can come up with reasons why it might not have been.

[Sean]

Can you think of any positives?

[Simone Ledeen]

Well, I think it's always. I don't like being totally negative about anything. I think there's always good in everything. You can always find it if you look hard enough. But this was so bad. It was so bad. And I'm thinking in particular of a friend of mine who died by suicide last year, who is a two time Iraq veteran. And I was in his wedding and he was a mentor to my brothers. Both of my brothers served in the Marine Corps, one in Iraq and one in Afghanistan. And that I know that he was very angry about everything and about the war. And I think in his later years he actually, he was a Naval Academy graduate. I think he regretted joining the Naval Academy, regretted his entire military career. And you know, that, that was really, that was really tough. He was struggling for a long time and I know there are a lot of other people who are going through that too. Unfortunately, he was also an addict and I think that addiction really got a hold of him and he wasn't someone who really sought help easily. So. But yeah, I mean, it's. We have a lot of. My brother who served in Iraq, he went through a lot too. And thank God he got help. He's doing amazing now, but he lost Marines. And I, you know, I just, I have a lot of like, compassion and love for veterans and I kind of feel like all of you are my brothers and that's why I love kind of staying in the mix, you know, and why, when I had the opportunity to go back into government in a role where I could potentially take these lessons that I've learned and like maybe try to turn it into something good. That was what I wanted to do. I don't know if I did, if I managed to, but that was, that's kind of my thought process and it kind of guides me today. So, I don't know, I mean, everything bad we go through, we're supposed to learn from it, right? If it doesn't kill you. So hopefully it's made us wiser as a nation. I love to see all these, I love to see all these people commenting now about like, no, no war. No. And I agree. But I also think not every military action is a full blown war. I think it's important to make that, I think that difference is important. And I also think we live like the United States is in the world. We can't just totally bury our heads in the sand. And when we do, things get worse and then in the end we end up having to do something. I was telling you with the Iran stuff. Then we end up being trapped into actually having to take some action if we're not kind of like managing things early on.

[Sean]

Well, Simone, let's take a quick break.

[Simone Ledeen]

Great.

[Sean]

When we come back, we'll get into Afghanistan. Two words that don't typically go together, speed with quality. Like you don't hit the drive through and expect a gourmet meal to go. But there's one exception to this unwritten rule. If you're hiring, you can find candidates fast who are also extremely qualified for your job. Just use ZipRecruiter and right now you can try ZipRecruiter for free at ZipRecruiter.com SRS with ZipRecruiter's advanced resume database, you can find and connect with qualified candidates in minutes. 320,000 new resumes are added monthly so you can reach more potential hires and fill roles sooner. And if you find a candidate you love for the position and want to schedule an in person meeting with them, you can unlock their contact info instantly. Experience hiring speed and quality with ZipRecruiter four out of five employers who post on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate within the first day. And if you go to ZipRecruiter.com SRS right now, you can try it for free again. That's ZipRecruiter.com SRS ZipRecruiter the smartest way to hire Sign up for the four day free trial to begin your paid subscription. For restrictions, terms and conditions, go to ZipRecruiter.com SRS Summer's here and if you're anything like me, you didn't spend the winter just sitting around. You stayed sharp and kept moving. And now it's time your gear caught up. And that's why I want to introduce you to Roka. I've been looking for eyewear that can handle any situation with performance and style. And let me tell you, these aren't your average shades. I've tested them in the real world, from shooting to fishing to off roading, and they hold up. They're lightweight, don't slide around on my face, and can take a hit without falling apart. And the best part? They look good. They're clean and modern. No frills here, just premium eyewear that Performs without compromise. That's something that I respect. And that's also why every time I head out the door, I reach for my Roka shades. Roka is based in Austin, Texas. American designed, no cut corners. The optics are crystal clear, cut through glare and the fit stays comfortable all day long. Need a prescription? They've got you covered with both sunglasses and eyeglasses. Not only does Roka have awesome shades, they also have these that protect you against blue light. I wear these every night when I'm winding down for the day and I still got to look at my phone or my laptop or my iPad. It just helps you wind down and get ready for bed. They are a one stop shop for eyewear that's built to handle whatever life throws at you. Roka is the real deal ready to upgrade your eyewear. Check them out for [e-mail] and use code SRS for 20% off site wide at checkout. That's R O K A.com I always want to provide the best for my family. We think we're doing all the right things to plan for our family's future. But what if the unexpected happens and you're no longer in the picture? Fabric by Gerber Life is term life insurance you can get done today. Made for busy parents like you all online and on your schedule, you could be covered in under 10 minutes with no health exam required. Fabric has partnered with Gerber Life, trusted by millions of families like yours for over 50 years. Fabric works for me because there's no risk. There's a 30 day money back guarantee and you can cancel it anytime. Fabric has more than just life insurance. It's your one stop shop with free digital wills and more. Join the thousands of parents who trust Fabric to help protect their family. Apply today in just [e-mail] Sean that's meetfabric.com Sean me etfabric.com Sean Policies issued by Western Southern Life Assurance Company not available in certain states. Prices subject to underwriting and health questions. All right, Simone, we're back from the break. We're getting ready to get into some Afghanistan stuff. So you get home from Iraq and then you roll back to Afghanistan.

[Simone Ledeen]

Yeah. A little bit of a funny story. So when I was in Iraq, I met the assistant secretary for Defense for Special operations, ASD Solick, who was Tom o' Connell at the time and he was his just a legendary guy in all respects and became a mentor of mine. But anyway he asked me what I was doing after Iraq and I had no Idea. And so he offered me a job at the Pentagon. And so that's what I did when I came back. But funny story, takes a long time to get a security clearance if you've never had one before. And I'd spent some time in Europe and whatever, so I was not able to do any work in that office until I got like a high TS clearance. And I only had a secret clearance. So they put me in another office, which was the Office of Iraq Reconstruction or something like that. And I ended up getting stuck. I mean, that job was so bad, I ended up getting stuck responding to congressional inquiries about, like, just hostile congressional inquiries that was like, you lost $8 billion of Iraqi money. Where did it go? And so I just spent my entire day, every day, responding to really aggressive congressional inquiries. So I volunteered to go to Afghanistan. I was like, that's gotta be better than this.

[Sean]

Wow, I've never heard that comparison. Afghanistan's gotta be better than this. Interesting state. Was it?

[Simone Ledeen]

Yes.

[Sean]

Good, good.

[Simone Ledeen]

Yeah, yeah. So I went in 2004 to Afghanistan. I was there almost the entire year working with. At the time, the US Command was CFC Alpha, Combined Forces Command, Afghanistan. And the commander was Carl Eikenberry, who later became our ambassador to Afghanistan. He was a three star at the time. And so I went there. I was embedded in the plans shop. And the reason I was there was because there was someone, it might have been Doug Feith, I don't know who. Someone in the Pentagon who was important had this idea about. So they were at the time trying to solve this problem which never got solved. How do we leave Afghanistan? With some money? What's their revenue gonna be? Because with Iraq, that wasn't gonna be a problem. Their revenue is oil. But what does Afghanistan have? They have, like, heroin. Yeah. They have opium. So what are the alternatives?

[Sean]

Lithium.

[Simone Ledeen]

Well, at the time. That's right. But at the time, the thought was customs revenue. Afghanistan is kind of the waypoint between east and west, historically, like the old Silk Route. And what if we could actually. So there was no real customs revenue being collected at the border for the country. It was just like all the Afghan border police, you know, taking bribes and backsheet and, like, putting it in their own pockets. But what if. What if we were able to change that up and actually collect revenue for the country? Could that work? Could that cover the budget of the country? So the plan shop built this pilot project and I got embedded into that to basically do the numbers and kind of see, like, what were we collecting before? What were they Collecting before? What are they collecting now? And I was working with, you know, some military guys from the plan shop, Marines and a Ranger who had a whole, they did a whole thing. I mean, they picked a border crossing point which was Islam Kala, which is at the border in the west with Iran, near Herat. And they replaced the border police commander with a border police commander from the east. So he wasn't part of the Western tribal network. So it was harder for him to be corrupt was the whole idea behind it. And then he brought a new force with him that was also from the east. They were better trained, they were better equipped, they had more fuel, they had more money for food and stuff. And so the idea was, let's see if we do all this, will they bring back customs revenue in a meaningful way? And so I was the one who kind of documented it and did all the numbers and the budgets and everything. And, and the answer after three months was yes. And then General Ikenberry. And by the way, it took a long time to get this up and running. But we did get it up and running three months later. And there's a lot of stories to tell in between the trip that the guys took. I didn't go on that trip for obvious reasons, but they drove from Kabul to Herat on the ring road with these Afghans, the Afghan border Police. And that was kind of, you know, they like to talk about. Well, there were a lot of stories from that, but they, you know, they were really part of, I mean they. I don't know what I'm trying to say here. Anyway, the bottom line is it worked.

[Sean]

So basically what you were doing is you were replacing Afghanistan's income with, with borders, with, with customs issues. We were, you're replacing the opium trade with customs.

[Simone Ledeen]

The opium trade, the, the revenue from the opium trade went to like the drug traffickers. And the problem that we were trying to solve was like, how is the government of Afghanistan going to make money that's not ours? That's not like the US taxpayer money, you know, like they need to be self sufficient, like fast. So how are we going to. Somehow that became our problem. That's a different conversation. I just got there when someone was trying to figure out the answer to that question. So, you know, again, I was like GS, whatever. But that was the job. So trying to document how much money did the government collect at the border crossing points. When we were really focused on them and we trained them and all this stuff. Within a three month period, which was the period of the pilot project, it Seemed like at least the initial numbers were pretty good, and the old guys had been moved away. They'd been fired and kind of moved off the border because they weren't effective. They were just corrupt like everybody else.

[Sean]

And that worked.

[Simone Ledeen]

It did.

[Sean]

How many people are coming in and out of there?

[Simone Ledeen]

I mean, so many. It was unbelievable. So many day and night, mostly day. I mean, we also would have people come up to us because the Marines that I was with, obviously, they took off their jackets that had their name tape on it and stuff, and these people would come up to us and be like, are you guys gonna invade Iran? And probably Iranian collectors, for all I know. And they're like, yeah, tomorrow. Get ready, Marines. But, yeah, I mean, it was. There was a lot of money, and it was, you know, for that period of time, we made a. An effort to actually capture the amounts and look over their shoulders a bit. And I think at least the concept was proven. But one of many kind of tragic things that happened was that the commander, we briefed him on the program and how it was successful, and he was like, is this Doug Feith? Is this Doug Feith's idea? I'm like, I don't know. I don't know. We didn't know whose idea it was. It was like, we were told to do this, so we're doing it. But he immediately got political, which was, to me, kind of like a red flag. I'm like, so what? It works? And then he decided that this wasn't a security mission, that it was a bor. Well, it was customs, and therefore, it was a. We needed to transition it over to the embassy. This was not appropriate for the military command to be doing, even though border security. I don't know. Classic security. I mean, security is literally in the name, but. Okay, so we had to transition it to the embassy, which meant that the. The guy that was assigned to it. Nice guy, I guess, like older gentlemen, not part of having trained this guy. The commander, whose name was General Ayyub, wasn't part of that. You know, they. They pulled all of the. All of our military assets that we kind of had just as a show of force kind of around the border police facility. All of that was gone. His. His partner, like this guy Tony, who was his kind of trainer and partner, also pulled back. So predictably, within a pretty short period of time, he was killed. The commander was killed. And, you know, over there was reporting that he was like. He'd started to take a little on the side and do all that, but it's like, man, we abandoned him. We totally abandoned him. And all of the people that from that region and the drug traffickers that he was going after, they did some really significant drug busts during that time. I mean, everyone knew what was going on. They all knew. And that was the end for him. And really, I went back. I went back to. So I came home, like, in November of 04, and I went back to Herat in, like, 2009. My next deployment, I just went out there. I was based in Kabul. I was at ISAF headquarters that time. You couldn't travel outside the base without an mrap. Like, you had to be in an MRAP then because the security situation had changed so much. But in 2004, we had our hiluxes. We'd just drive into Herat. We did, like, tourism. One day. We saw Alexander the Great, had a. There were still remnants. Yeah. And we. We went and visited that. We did, like, some carpet shopping, you know, drank, had some tea, and it was just a totally different experience. And I do think the two are related. I don't think. Of course, when I got back there, the Iranians had built all this. They. They built electricity. They built a lot of new Shia mosques. Herat was beautiful. By far the most like, outside of Kabul. And it might have been even more beautiful than Kabul.

[Sean]

You think Kabul was beautiful compared to.

[Simone Ledeen]

The rest of the country was built up. Let me put it that way. It was built up. And parts of Kabul were beautiful. Yes.

[Sean]

I didn't see those parts. I spent a lot of time in gobble.

[Simone Ledeen]

I mean, I guess it is what you make it, in a way. But I just. There was so the things that I thought were beautiful there were. I mean, I liked. They have all these fruit trees and, you know, there was a lot of flowering things there that I thought were. Made. It made it nice. But obviously, you know, I'm sure you did, too. We were testing the air quality when we were living there, and it was like it was 30% fecal matter or something with.

[Sean]

I remember. I remember the air, especially in the wintertime when everybody was burning tires and shit.

[Simone Ledeen]

Literal shit. Building burning shit.

[Sean]

Yeah. I remember spitting in the sink, and my spit was gray, and I could barely open my eyes if I went out, especially at night in the winter, because that's, you know.

[Simone Ledeen]

Yeah. Yeah. I'm probably romanticizing it a little bit.

[Sean]

Maybe just a tad.

[Simone Ledeen]

Yeah, you're right. Yeah.

[Sean]

But so what were you doing? How does this fit in with special Ops, what you were doing?

[Simone Ledeen]

Well, that was. Here's how it fits in with Special Ops. Great question. I traveled around the country to as many border crossing points as I could doing my assessment. I went with teammates when they could go, but a lot of times it was just me. A lot of the border crossings around the country at the time were like. I had to go meet up with, like, oda, odb, whatever. They were the ones that were controlling that territory. So they. I was not allowed to go south. They would, they would not. They said it was too dangerous. And I never. I never got to see. I never got to see the border crossing points in the south. But yeah, I went out east. In particular, I spent some time with our Special Forces out there, Green Berets. And there's one instance I remember, I think it was Asadabad, not Abbottabad, which was Pakistan, but Asadabad. I went out there and had the opportunity to meet up with this ODA and the ODB commander as well, the Major, and they took me to. We went to the AFPAC border. Just pretty barren. Pretty, pretty crazy. I don't really know why I was. I probably shouldn't have been out there.

[Sean]

In retrospect, I was gonna say that's a pretty dangerous area.

[Simone Ledeen]

It was, it was. And we. We drove through. We drove across this road that was. It was not paved. It was like pebbles. And they were telling me the story about how they lost their buddy, First Sergeant Jeremy Wright. He had been blown up by an IED there. And that there's no way, just because of the way the road was, there was really no way to tell if there was. You couldn't tell if it had been disturbed or not. And they were. I mean, I could see they were still in mourning and that he had been like a great dude and it was awful. And the thing that was really bothering them, aside from just losing their friend, was that that road was a USAID project. Paving that road was a project that had already been approved and paid for by usaid, but the contractor was a Turkish company, and they hadn't shown up yet to do the work. And so these guys, like, every time they wanted to go to the border, which they had to go there a lot, had to drive over the same patch of earth. So I feel like this might have been the only actual good thing that I did my entire deployment. But when I got back to Kabul, one of my. One of my friends there, she was a USAID rep or whatever, and I told her about it. And I actually truly don't know if there was a connection, but I heard from them. Pretty soon after that the construction company came and paved the road. But I was like, why aren't they here? Why haven't they done this? Someone got killed here already. Why wasn't this moved up in the priority? And they're like, oh, everyone's late on everything. It's all late, everything's late. And then I came to find out one of my trips to Herat, the USAID guy who was, he was the USAID rep in Herat. He, someone showed me some reporting that he had accepted like gifts of 40 carpets from these, from these fuel where they like oil and gas traffickers. Basically they built like a underground pipeline which was not legal and not approved so they could move fuel from Iran into Afghanistan. And this guy just let it happen.

[Sean]

No, kid, I had no idea that was going on.

[Simone Ledeen]

Yeah. And so that, I mean it was small, it wasn't like a huge operation, but it was still anyway all that, I mean I saw that, but that was the work that I did with special operations was they supported me when I was, you know, when I was going to do my assessments and collection for this border crossing project and trying to understand like, so if someone comes across like how do you assess a customs duty? Like who is the one who assesses that? No one who's literate, like no one who's, I mean obviously, you know the kind of people they had manning those border crossing points was like anyone who would agree to put on a uniform and his triboy. So like, yeah, I mean that was, that was my experience. But I had met some of their colleagues in Iraq because in Iraq we started getting calls from military units that the money movement, we were moving in US dollars as well as these new dinars, they were finding pallets of US dollars that were still shrink wrapped from the Fed in insurgent rates. And the different military units would call us at the CPA and be like, what do we do with this? We found this says it's like half a million USD, what should we do with it? And yeah, it's like we have no idea what we're doing. We have no idea.

[Sean]

Wow.

[Simone Ledeen]

Where was this money supposed to go? Had a barcode on it too. All of those things that came from the Fed, those pallets of cash, they all had barcodes on them. But anyway, yeah, so I ran into some of the people that I knew from those days. I ran into some of them in Afghanistan and then just kind of kicking around. There's not a lot of mes out in places like that. And you know Firebase Torkham. I remember that place that was on the old Silk Route. Actually kind of a cool place because, like, off in the distance you could see an old English outpost. And again, I'm like, here we are again. You know, we hope it's going to go better this time, I guess. But there was so much traffic coming. I mean, so much traffic and learning about. We basically had no idea who was coming. There could have been like WMD for all we knew, being trucked in and the roads were just. Were completely packed all the time. But my focus at the time again was like, how can attacks be collected against this? It's absurd to think about today that we were actually trying to do that. Absolutely absurd. But that was the mission.

[Sean]

Interesting. So you left Afghanistan Was this 2004, and then went back again in 2009?

[Simone Ledeen]

Yeah.

[Sean]

What did you do in between there?

[Simone Ledeen]

So my clearance did finally come through. So then I did go to Solic, ASD Solic. And that was when I started working on Counter Threat Finance. So Tom o', Connell, he was ASD Solick at the time. Former Green Beret, Vietnam veteran, served in CIA as well. Just a legend. And he believed strongly that Clausewitz and his centers of gravity, his enemy centers of gravity. He felt strongly that money was an enemy center of gravity and we should be focusing on disrupting their financial flows. And that was like, I'd always wanted to do that. Right. That was my original. This is what I'm going to figure out how to do. So very cool opportunity. And when I finally got clear to know everything, I learned that it was a big interagency effort that had already gotten started. And there was an Iraq threat finance cell that was underway that was like a Treasury Department thing. But there were a lot of rice bowl issues because the commander on the ground was like, no, I'm not going to have the Treasury Department leading an effort in my battlefield. Like, I'm in charge. It's like, cool. You don't actually know anything about how to do this, but, like, awesome. Good job. So there was a lot of. There was just a lot of drama over those kind of things. But it was really amazing effort. Both you had not just like treasury and DoD, but you had like intel people, you had law enforcement people. There was, you know, when things really got going, they had like FBI and IRS criminal investigators, like going inside the booth, like interrogation booth, when military units would roll up, like financial people, they would help with interrogation and really get amazing information. Turned out that the money guys didn't get the Same kind of training to withstand interrogation that the operational guys did.

[Sean]

No kidding.

[Simone Ledeen]

And so they talked, and it turned out a lot of them kept two sets of books too, because they were also skimming.

[Sean]

And.

[Simone Ledeen]

And so then we had leverage. And so it was a really cool and very successful effort. I would say. The kind of pinnacle of that in Iraq was this operation. It led to this big operation at the Beijing oil refinery, where months of work determined that AQI was making a ton of money off of fuel smuggling from the Beijing oil refinery, which is like the big oil refinery in Iraq. And they were like, the trucking company was aqi, and this dude and that dude were being paid off by aqi. And anyway, the team did a phenomenal job of doing a whole network analysis and being like, here are the key nodes. And the military came and rolled them up and stopped it. It was amazing. Of course they aqi, you know, being aqi, they found new and exciting ways to get money, but that was.

[Sean]

What were some of those ways?

[Simone Ledeen]

Kidnapping for ransom, drug smuggling? I mean, that's just a few. I mean, anything you can think of, anything and everything. But fuel smuggling was by far for them. Like, that was the real winner. That was when they were making big money, but they still, like, they would tap into the pipeline, break open the pipeline and just siphon off some gas and sell that. So, yeah, I mean, they're incredibly, incredibly creative. Basically, all kinds of criminal activities that you could imagine. That's what they did. And that's what most of these terrorist groups do. They're criminals, but they have this ideological component. They're engaging in criminal activity for some of them, for ideological purposes, although a lot of them are just straight up criminals. And they're just like, acting as if they're some kind of religious, you know, some type of like, highly moral religious figure. But so we. Yeah, so I started working on that, and that was amazing. I was doing that out of the Pentagon, but I got to go back to Iraq and kind of see what everyone was doing and just advocate for it. And at the time there was. The asd, wanted to kind of codify it because it seemed like such an important part of the effort. And everyone was so complimentary, and the commanders were really happy about what we were turning out. So, yeah, I got tasked with. This is going to be boring for a lot of people, but writing the counter threat finance policy for the DoD, so that took forever because the DoD is such a huge bureaucratic monster. And when you're writing a new policy, you have to get Everything coordinated with everyone who changes every word and everyone gets in fights. And it was a huge. It was a huge thing. And it took a couple years, but there were so many successes behind it. It was undeniable. So in the end, I think today it's been through a lot of revisions since my time, but I think there still is a. A counter Threat finance policy. And we called it that because originally it was just. It was going to be counterterrorism finance. But terrorism, like, the legal definition, like, basically requires, like, you're talking about designated terrorist groups. And in Iraq, there were all kinds of different terrorist groups, but also insurgent groups that hadn't necessarily been named and designated in that way, but they were also included because they were still killing people and killing Americans in some cases, and definitely the enemy. So counter threat finance was the term that we ended up with.

[Sean]

Did you work directly with General McChrystal and General Thwyn?

[Simone Ledeen]

I did.

[Sean]

How was that experience?

[Simone Ledeen]

I worked for them in Afghanistan, 2009, 2010. That was spicy. Spicy.

[Sean]

Why do you say that?

[Simone Ledeen]

Well, I loved working for General McChrystal, and I learned a lot working from General Flynn. Working for General Flynn, I learned a lot from him as well. But I'll tell you, there was a lot of drama always with Flynn. I mean, he was a great boss to me. He understood what I was doing. He supported me. And I'm not just understanding what we were trying to do, myself and our whole team of counter Threat finance people. He was very much on board with that, and so was McChrystal. But, you know, there are things that, like, either you're comfortable with or you're not. So these are guys that, you know from jsoc. They operated in a certain way, and you either had to be comfortable with that or not. Personally, I was. The thing that I remember Flynn always saying was, like, this is war. Like, we're in a war, so we have to do everything that we can to win the war. And that included sometimes sharing information, sharing intelligence that was like, rel. Very small group, or sometimes not even rel. Sharing that with a foreign partner on the battlefield. And by the way, that's like, legally, that's a decision that they're entitled to make. Like, they're legally allowed to do that. But there were some people on the J2 staff who were uncomfortable with that. And I remember one of them actually going home.

[Sean]

Who were you guys sharing intelligence with?

[Simone Ledeen]

Other, like, countries that were fighting with us.

[Sean]

Why would they be opposed to that?

[Simone Ledeen]

Because it was like, you know, Not. Oh, it's not rail. Their country. So we shouldn't be sharing it with them. Like, well, they're going down range with us tomorrow, so they should probably know that this thing is happening.

[Sean]

Yeah. Was it. Was it major pushback about. I mean, I guess. So they sent somebody home?

[Simone Ledeen]

No, someone, like, voluntarily asked to leave. He asked to leave, but. So it was kind of like, this is how we're prosecuting this war. Either you're on board or you're not. It was very clear from the beginning that, like, this was. This was what I believed. And again, I was wrong because we were. We were still there 10 years later. But I felt at the time like this is either gonna change the tide and work or like, we're done here. And I felt that was kind of the sense that I got from the command was like, we gotta turn the ship around right away. But then things started happening like that email. And I regret I don't remember his name now, but there was an email, like, halfway through that year from a soldier to General McChrystal. So McChrystal and Flynn and the J3, the CJ3, they would do, like, battlefield circulation all the time. So they would travel to different parts of the country to kind of talk to people and see what was going on. And this was after the whole counterinsurgency strategy was implemented, which meant a change to the loe. The roe. Excuse me. And that change to the ROE meant that our people were taking more risk and in some cases getting killed because they couldn't respond to something unless all of these conditions were met. And I know a lot of people were very. I had nothing to do with that. A lot of people were very concerned about that, very angry and felt it was the wrong thing to do. And I don't know enough about combat to be like. I wouldn't presume to have an opinion, but I'm sympathetic to that point of view just because of what I saw. So I remember there was an email that came through to, like, everyone on. In the. McChrystal's team who saw his email, saw this note, and it made its way around. I think it got leaked in the media somewhere where there was a soldier who was like, you know, your ROE is a piece of shit, basically. And like, here. Here's like, the 50 reasons why, like, this is terrible. You know, we can't win like this.

[Sean]

Do you remember what the ROE was? I think I was in country when this came out, but.

[Simone Ledeen]

I would have to. I would have to look at it. Specifically.

[Sean]

But, I mean, I remember. This is. If I remember correctly, this is when there was going to be a major push in Marja. Am I correct? Do you remember that?

[Simone Ledeen]

I do remember that.

[Sean]

Lashkar got. Yemen province was really hot at the time. And I remember. And it was right after the coast bombing at the CIA base and the ROE suddenly changed to basically, you can kill an enemy combatant to. If you're shot at and the enemy drops his weapon, then you're not allowed to fire. And that came out right before the Marines were going to do that big offensive push into Marja. I believe it was Marja.

[Simone Ledeen]

Yeah.

[Sean]

And. And they said that that would be the second biggest offensive that the military had done since Fallujah.

[Simone Ledeen]

That's huge.

[Sean]

I mean, detrimental. And not only that, I mean, demoralizing your troops was demoralizing. Demoralizing them. Like, we don't have your back. We don't care what happens. They drop that weapon, you can't shoot. So to have that going on, playing in your head.

[Simone Ledeen]

Yeah.

[Sean]

You know, if I take this shot, am I going to prison for the rest of my life on top of all the other decisions that you have to make in combat? I mean, it was. I was so pissed off about that. And I wasn't even in the military anymore. I was contracting for CIA, so it didn't really affect me.

[Simone Ledeen]

But.

[Sean]

Man, I fell for those guys when that shit came out.

[Simone Ledeen]

I mean, I didn't truly understand until I read that email what it meant. And I also felt for. I felt for them, and I didn't understand why that feedback was received loud and clear. It was discussed, and it was. It didn't change anything. Didn't change anything. They were going to proceed.

[Sean]

But when that didn't come from McChrystal and Flynn. Correct. That Roe.

[Simone Ledeen]

I think it came from McChrystal.

[Sean]

I thought that came straight down from Obama.

[Simone Ledeen]

It might have done. It might have come from Obama. He absolutely micromanaged every aspect of that war.

[Sean]

He did.

[Simone Ledeen]

He absolutely did. Yes. Through the nsc, which grew to, like, an astronomical size because they were micromanaging everything. I mean, I, you know, I was working in counterterrorism in the Pentagon before I. Before I went. I went back to Afghanistan. And so I started to. To understand because I was. Part of my job was just briefing all my seniors every week about new things. And this was at the height of. We were designating terrorists and we were targeting terrorists based on financial intelligence. There was these weekly briefings to the Joint Staff and our political bosses. I was in the room for all those things. And I heard. And so I learned a lot about how the chain of command is supposed to work. And when Obama came in, they just added so many layers, and it was like commanders couldn't make decisions anymore. They had to ask permission from the White House. And it screwed up a lot of things, made a lot of operations impossible. Just ended them before they started, and just made them so much more dangerous as well. Because, I mean, you know, like, sometimes you're dealing with a fleeting target. You got to take the. You got to take the opportunity when you have it. And there was just no appreciation for that. But I will say something that happened that might be interesting. So while I was there during that tour, General McChrystal was, at a certain point, very interested. There had been a lot of rumors about someone named Ahmed Wali Karzai, who was the brother of President Karzai. And there was a lot of rumors, pretty factually based, that he was a narcotics trafficker and was involved in a lot of really bad things and also tied to the Taliban. And so McChrystal set us on a deep dive, like the entire, like, all of his kind of intel team. You guys go out into, you know, go out into the wild and see who has what on awk and, you know, come back. I think I forget how much time we were given, like a month or something. And like, let's everyone get together and let's figure out, like, is this guy, Is he really bad? What are we going to do about it? Let's do this deep dive. So no one. There was nothing, like no smoking gun tying AWK to anything. But also, I will say there was so much circumstantial evidence that it was obvious that he was all of those things. But because the ceiling, you had to meet an impossible level of certainty that we weren't able to meet. We weren't able. No. He never got up on a call and said, I'm gonna traffic some drugs today. Hello, my Taliban friends. Yeah, I mean, that never happened. And he did. I mean, all of his activities were through lieutenants and sub commanders and Stu. So I remember a huge effort to get everything together, and then it just like. And he was assassinated shortly after that, so the problem went away anyway. But that was, at the time, really disappointing because I'm like, it's obvious this is a super bad dude, and it's a problem for the United States. And he might have also been working with us in some way, I don't know. But the other who assassinated him? One of his rivals, I guess.

[Sean]

Do you think it was us?

[Simone Ledeen]

I have no information that it was us. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know, but I think. I think that. Well, yeah, I have no information on that one way or the other, but I know it solved a problem. With respect to you mentioned Marja. So one of the other things that I really. That I remember from that deployment was another kind of directive that came down from McChrystal where he wanted. He wanted a deep dive on Taliban finance. And he said, look, there are all these rumors that people have been saying for years, Gulf. They're getting all their money from the Gulf. And there's a whole. I mean, there's a whole rabbit hole that we can dive down in that. But it's interesting to, like, 10 people. But he wanted a deep dive on Taliban finance. He's like, is their money still really coming from the Gulf, or are there other sources of funding?

[Sean]

How would it become? How's it coming from the Gulf?

[Simone Ledeen]

Well, they would go to the Gulf. The Taliban and Al Qaeda would go, and other terrorist organizations as well would go to the Gulf. Different Gulf countries and individuals who supported what they were doing. And they would go, specifically during Ramadan was like a big fundraising period where Muslims are encouraged to give to charity. And so they would collect, they would raise a lot of money as a charity towards these. Towards their terrorist causes. And they frame it as they're advancing radical Islam and they're fighting the Great Satan or whatever. And so, yeah, they raised a lot of money that way. They also, I mean, there were. In the early days, there were. These were groups that were later designated by the Treasury Department, the State Department. But they were, like, humanitarian. They were masquerading as humanitarian, like Islamic relief or stuff like that. But they were terrorist fronts, and they were raising money through those avenues, and they raised a lot of money. And it also became a political hot potato because the US Government's designating Islamic relief. Like, oh, are you Islamophobic? Like, no, I'm terroristophobic. But that's, you know, that's. There was not a lot. There was enough political will for a period of time to do that, and then it went away. But fast forward. So as JSOC Commander, obviously McChrystal was focused elsewhere, but I'm sure he had enough information to know that when he was JSOC commander, a lot of these funds were coming in that way. So he wanted to know, here I am, commander at isafe. How is the Taliban today making its money. We got. And there were some colleagues of mine from the Treasury Department. And by that point, there was an Afghanistan threat finance cell. And so there were all these interagency folks that were there doing amazing things and put together a really compelling assessment that the Taliban is actually getting its money from us. They're making its money. They are making their money from us. If you consider our logistics supply chain into Afghanistan, they were extorting money on every single link in that supply chain. So we were paying the Taliban.

[Sean]

Are you serious?

[Simone Ledeen]

Yeah.

[Sean]

Can you be a little more descriptive how that was happening?

[Simone Ledeen]

So you have supply trucks coming in for supreme, for the, you know, our food, our fuel, our sustainment, anything for sustainment. It all went through Pakistan because it couldn't go. I mean, if you look at a map, there are only a few ways that that stuff can enter into Afghanistan. So it all came in through Pakistan, and the Taliban are in Pakistan. And they were not just there, but also in Afghanistan. They had locked down these trucking companies. And also not just the trucking companies, but also the individual drivers and sometimes the, like, subcontractors to big American primes that were, like, not necessarily American. They were also being extorted.

[Sean]

Wow.

[Simone Ledeen]

All this came to Light in 2010.

[Sean]

And you uncovered that?

[Simone Ledeen]

Not me personally. Like, I was part of a team. But, yes, we did uncover that, yes.

[Sean]

What happened after that?

[Simone Ledeen]

Well, not relatedly. McChrystal got fired, so he did. Oh, his other question, by the way, that I failed to mention was, is the Taliban making its money off of the narcotics trade? Is that, like a key part of their finance? And we did find that it was a lot less than everyone thought, that this extortion racket was really. That was the key method of how the Taliban was raising its money. But it did give him this whole analysis and link chart that the team did, really gave him a lot of insight into where the key narcotics trafficking nodes were. And so those were included in this Marja operation. It was part of it. So to disrupt Taliban financing, that was part of the end goal of that operation.

[Sean]

How did they. I mean, how did they. How did they act when you got the information to them?

[Simone Ledeen]

I mean, I was in the room when he was briefed on it, and he was shocked.

[Sean]

Did they take action?

[Simone Ledeen]

Yeah. So in addition to this, you know, kinetic targeting, there was also, like, he put his logistics chief, the CJ4, he put him, like, in charge of doing this whole, you know, deep dive into the subcontractors. And how do we. How do we do a better job of vetting and all that. And I'm sure, like, I helped him with it for a bit, but then McChrystal got fired, and I went home. And I know when Petraeus came on board, he brought General McMaster, who stood up like a very public anti corruption task force. That was because of what we had found. But I will say that when. And I'm grateful to him, when McChrystal got fired, General Flynn kind of took me aside and he was like, you should go home now. And he was like, nothing good's gonna happen now. You should just get out of here. Just go home. And I heard later that it wasn't pleasant for all the McChrystal, those who remained. I think Petraeus had a not good view of that team and made sure everyone knew it. So I was kind of grateful that I got rescued from that, but I was so, like, I just felt when McChrystal got fired, I was like, well, it's over. You know, it's over. I mean, I knew Petraeus from Iraq days, and I was like, what are we gonna do in this country anymore? Like, it's the only. To me, the only hope was McChrystal because he also was dealing with Pakistan. And you can't. There was no hope in really changing anything in Afghanistan without addressing the real problem, which it seemed to me was Pakistan and the ISI specifically. So anyway, I was pretty. I never at that time would have imagined that we would have been there another 10 years after that. And we never really addressed any of those problems. And we kept paying, like, in a way secondarily, the Taliban, who kept killing us 10 years after that. And we knew. This is the thing that astounds me. And I'm like, we still have no accountability. Like, all these people knew and did nothing.

[Sean]

Oh, man. Every time I dive into this, I just start getting more and more angry. I mean, especially. We were just talking offline about the 40 to $87 million in cash that we would send Taliban every single week. Thank God Tim Burchett got it passed through the House.

[Simone Ledeen]

Thank God.

[Sean]

And Senator Sheehy's supposed to be introducing it to the Senate. Hopefully that happens soon, but. Oh, man, I just. I don't even know what to think anymore.

[Simone Ledeen]

It's hard to know what to think because at a certain point you have to ask, like, this is all, like, too many coincidences of us helping our sworn enemy. Like, are we really. Are we trying to do that?

[Sean]

Do you think it was. That's actually What I was just gonna ask, not that. Are we trying to prolong the war? I mean, what. What was that?

[Simone Ledeen]

I wonder, too. I wonder, too. I don't. I wish I had answers. I don't. But you have to ask yourself, when you see what I saw and everything just kept going like it was like nothing. What else do you need to know?

[Sean]

I mean, just putting things together. Because this is all in the 2009 time frame, you know.

[Simone Ledeen]

Yeah.

[Sean]

Slash the Roes, cut our troops, legs out from under them, continue to finance them. I mean, then everything that happens later, I mean, it's.

[Simone Ledeen]

And this was Obama years. And so Obama, you know, was very publicly, like, you know, should we surge or should we just, you know, leave? And this was very public and obviously decided. Wanted the public to know that he decided that he was going to surge. And this, the whole catastrophic withdrawal under Biden was Biden being like, you know, finally getting his. He always wanted us to pull out. This was, again, the narrative. He had always wanted us to pull out. And now that he was president, it was gonna happen. And regardless of all the things that happened that could have been prevented, didn't matter. We're out. And that's a victory because that's what he had always wanted. But, yeah, that's been the whole narrative that's been provided to us. I don't have any more insight than that. I have the same questions that you do.

[Sean]

Let's move into the Swift program. What was the Swift program?

[Simone Ledeen]

Well, Swift is a. It's a way to move. To move money, to move funds. And banks use it today all the time. You're basically making. Electronically transferring funds from one bank to another. And it's an international system that's used by many, many countries. This was a very highly classified program for many years that was part of the Patriot act, but part of the classified, part of the Patriot Act. It got blown in the New York Times years ago. It was very successful because you could track if you knew who had which bank account number and which bank. You could see who was doing what, who was sending, what they were sending, where they were sending it. But it was specifically only for counterterrorism, could not be used for anything else. And once the program got blown, a lot of our international partners, especially in Europe, were, you know, they have very different privacy laws in Europe than we do in the United States. And they were very upset. And. But, you know, we. Over the years, it's been a very successful program. Like when I was. When I was at treasury, managing this program, we were able to. I don't know if you remember this horrible child killer in Norway, this guy, Anders Breivik, who just like went to. Just psycho, you know, went to an island of like a kid's summer camp.

[Sean]

Oh, I do remember.

[Simone Ledeen]

Just like murdered all these kids.

[Sean]

I do remember that.

[Simone Ledeen]

And there was a big question about, like, is this a lone wolf guy? What's his motivation? And we were able to look at his bank accounts and tell the Norwegians for sure, this man was saved money for 10 years to be able to fund this operation. There was no one else involved. It was just him. So that program, again, purely for counterterrorism purposes, very misunderstood. But, you know.

[Sean]

But how was it misunderstood?

[Simone Ledeen]

Well, a lot of. A lot of. Because it was secret and then it got blown. And like, it's not like our. It's not like our government is going to come out and explain everything that it was doing. I think people assign kind of their own. They make up stories. And obviously a lot of people like to think of the United States as kind of this big bad entity. And sometimes I feel the same, but. No.

[Sean]

Sometimes I feel the same.

[Simone Ledeen]

Sometimes I wonder. No, but the reality is, in Europe in particular, if you're European and you've never been here, you don't really understand America. You know, you just read the news. You could think that, like, someone accused us, for example, from a European government of like, trying to track who is gay in Europe. And I'm like, I can promise you, first of all, when you fill out your form to open a bank account, that's not part of it. So that information doesn't exist, number one, tied to a bank account. And two, like, this is a. For counterterrorism purposes only. And the company, the Swift, the company has very strict controls over that, and they actually oversee a lot of that as well, to make sure that every request meets a threshold.

[Sean]

How does it work?

[Simone Ledeen]

I don't know how much I'm allowed to go into that anymore, but. But I think it's very safe to say there's a very formal coordination process where there are multiple layers of approval and oversight. And again, you can't introduce other targets that don't relate, that don't have a direct connection to counterterrorism. But when you see new entities designated as terrorists, for example, the cartels, that's one of the authorities that is now available.

[Sean]

Interesting. So basically you use the SWIFT code. Correct. And you can breach into any bank account, see where money's coming, where it's going to look Is that it? Am I on here?

[Simone Ledeen]

It's way more specific than that. Like you basically, if you have a target, you need to figure out what bank account they're attached to. And then you request any swift transactions from that bank account and then you see what comes up. Okay, so you can't just say like, I want to look at all transactions from Iraq to Iran or vice versa. No, you have to. And you have to write a whole. And again, my information is very, very old now. This is many, many years ago that I was doing this. But you had to write a whole justification for like, why. And you had to include, you know, reporting as part of your justification. This is who this person is. This is what their bank account is. Here's why I know this. This is why they're terrorists. Here's the, here's the justification for that. I'm trying to find out this, this is why I'm trying to find this out. Do you have anything?

[Sean]

Gotcha.

[Simone Ledeen]

It's very, very controlled.

[Sean]

You know, while we're on the subject of Afghanistan, I've got a Patreon, it's a subscription account. And we've turned it into quite the community here. And one of the things I do is I offer them the opportunity to ask each and every guest a question. And so this is from Jim Harmon. Why does it appear that our government intel agencies appear to ignore obvious threats to national security? For instance, the fact that Hamza bin Laden is alive is disputed by officials. So we wanted to go into this and you know, we were talking off camera about my friend Sarah Adams who says that Hans bin Laden is still alive, that he is the leader. He's basically over all of these terrorist organizations was who've united. Then she went on to say that the. I believe it was the UK government also reported through their intel agencies that he was alive. Now, I know you have a different opinion on this.

[Simone Ledeen]

Yes, I, Hamza bin Laden actual is not alive. He is dead. However, I do not dispute the fact that someone calling himself Hamza bin Laden, perhaps even a bin Laden cousin, is doing all of that. But Hamza actual is not alive. How do you know that he is dead? Because I have asked multiple people who would know that I trust and they have told me unequivocally he is dead.

[Sean]

Did they tell you where he was killed?

[Simone Ledeen]

Yes, and I don't remember right now. I know that's a cop out, but it's real.

[Sean]

When Was he killed.

[Simone Ledeen]

Man? 2019. Is that right?

[Sean]

Why do you think the UK government is saying that? He's alive.

[Simone Ledeen]

I mean, there is clearly someone calling himself Hamza bin Laden that is organizing a lot of bad stuff. And I don't dispute that. I just think, like, do you remember in the Princess Bride, the Dredge Pirate Roberts, that there were, like, multiple. When one guy would retire, there'd be another guy that came up. And now he was the Dredge Pirate Roberts. And you're just kind of like, living off of that infamy. That name is so powerful and is a brand in and of itself, and therefore someone's using it to rally, you know, rally the terrorist troops. But no, I will say, like, he's dead. But yes, there are serious concerns about a person calling himself Hamza bin Laden who's organizing some very problematic and troubling things.

[Sean]

Well, that's an interesting twist. That seems like a very realistic scenario.

[Simone Ledeen]

I mean, both things could be right.

[Sean]

How do you think the Afghan withdrawal went?

[Simone Ledeen]

Not well. Not well. It was a catastrophe. And we are still living with the repercussions of that today. Very much so. I. I got pulled into one of these kind of civilian groups, like veterans and former DOD civilians. And I found out later, also active duty folks in special operations who were coordinating with us when they were not supposed to be, but God bless them, I. Someone reached out to me right when things started to get chaotic. And a lawyer friend of mine, and she had a client who was just trying to, you know, trying to get into the airport, trying to get out. Could I help? So I. I don't even remember who. I reached out to someone and someone I thought might know something, and they added me to the Signal chat group that took over my life for weeks. And I know a lot of people had those kind of experiences where all of a sudden I just dropped everything that I was doing. And I do know people and I have my own network and actually was able to help a couple of families that DIA families, actually Afghans that were working for dia, that had worked for DIA for a long time. And we're being abandoned. And amazingly, because of the people on the ground and their heroic efforts, their willingness to work with us, they saved a lot of lives. But the things even sitting in my living room on Signal, just being part of this, I mean, it was so weird because you do. I did feel like I was there sometimes. There was one family we were trying to help. I want to be careful because I don't know what happened to them, but they didn't make it out. I know that was a father and some kids, and they were you know, it was so hot those days, and people were waiting outside for days and days, like, passing out, babies dying. And there was this particular man who had worked for us and was trying to get out with his kids. And there was someone on the wall, like a PJ on the wall, looking for him. And we had already given everyone. You say this, he'll say this. He had a sign that had a word on it. It was holding up the sign. And. And he was right outside. They were right outside of Abbey Gate. And I have a picture of the man and his two beautiful children right before the explosion happened. And we found out later one of the boys was killed.

[Sean]

Oh, man.

[Simone Ledeen]

And that wrecked me. That wrecked me for a while, just looking at that little boy's face, you know, and, like, it was so close. They were so close. And we couldn't get anyone to open the gates. You know, there were all these were like, oh, send them to the Black Gate. Oh, send them to this gate. And they would get there, and there was no gate open. There was no one there to open the gate. It was so much chaos. And then the civilians. There were Americans trying to get out. They were also being given this bad information. No one was. People were supposed to help them, and they. They weren't. So they were getting information from, you know, people in my group, and they were getting beaten by the Taliban badly. They were getting their. US like, blue passports taken from them. And, you know, I was so. I thought your interview of Sergeant Tyler Vargas Andrews was so powerful, and I want to thank you for that and to thank him because there are so many of us who were, like, at home that day just trying to help. And that feeling when that explosion went off, when that guy clacked himself off and 13 Marine or 13 service members. Like, it breaks my heart to this day. You know, I had the opportunity to meet some of the family members, and I can't imagine, you know, I have, again, my two brothers served in the Marine Corps, and they're but for the grace of God. Like, I just. It was so pointless. It was so unnecessary. And that's how we. That was how we left, and that's how the world saw us leave after 20 years of blood and treasure. And so it also was such an encouragement to global jihadists, Jihadis, globally. We lost the jiwad, and they know it, and we just haven't admitted it to ourselves. That's the accountability that we still need. We need to be able to say that we lost, and we need to understand why. But the. It's Just like there's still, I think in the early, like the year or two after the withdrawal, there were still some people who were, you know, a lot of us know, a lot of Afghans who, like, really competent, really competent fighters who served in the Afghan military, like either the SOF units or like the 0 units. I mean, they're just incredibly competent. And some of them really wanted to organize and go back. I mean, I don't really see that happening anymore. And especially when our own relationship with the Taliban is sort of unclear. But I just want to point out that we gave up Bagram. Like, we could have pulled out and kept Bagram, but Bagram we needed for China, and China knows it. And for China to. People talk about China and Afghanistan, like, they get control over all these rare earth minerals and stuff. That's not the biggest problem. The biggest problem is the geography. And how are we look at a map, like, how are we going to do this when we don't have Bagram? Bagram would be a great. Bagram would have been the place. And it just, again, makes no sense. It makes no sense. And all of the after action stuff where people at the embassy were drunk and not wanting to leave. I don't know if you saw that. There was one of the interviews that was done later. I think one of our service members was just knocking on doors at the embassy at the end, just like making sure everyone was evacuating to Hkaya. And someone opened the door. It's an account, you can find it online. Someone opened the door and was like wasted off their ass. Like, this was okay, you know. And when you learn more about kind of who was in control or who was in charge of that effort, it was the State Department. It was the civilians, not the military. So anyway, I have a lot of questions. There's a lot of blame to go around and I'm complaining about a lot. Someone said to me a while ago, a response to one of these op EDS that I wrote was like, well, what about you? What about your own involvement in this stuff? You know, I think we can all stand to look at what we were part of and what our activities were. And I think accountability should be spread far and wide. And I'm not afraid of it. But at the same time, like, I don't. I wasn't part of that. What I do know is at the end of the Trump administrator, the first term, the first Trump administration, we were in a very different place. And we were not. Trump did not order withdrawal. Trump was comfortable with a small Force there that was really doing like advise and assist. And we were doing intel support for the Afghan special operations units who were extremely capable and were conducting operations very successfully. So if we had just, you know, part of me feels if we had just continued that. I mean, if you look at when was the last casualty prior to Abby Gate, it was like a couple years because we weren't doing what we were doing before we were transitioning. So, yeah, the whole thing is just like, you know, mental health crisis, really.

[Sean]

I mean, there's just so many. I just, man, it just seemed like no thought at all went into that. I mean, we have all these jihadist groups that want to kill us. We have zero intelligence on the ground over there anymore. We gave up a strategic air base, which not only for China, but also Iran, you know, because they did use or still do, you know, use terrorist organizations as proxies. The rare minerals. I mean, the fact that we abandoned another ally, or I guess I can't say an ally, but abandoned another, just like Vietnam, we trained them up, we were turning it over. They fought alongside us for what, 20, 21 years? 21 years. And then we're just, mic drop, we're out, done. That's it.

[Simone Ledeen]

I mean, and what to add insult to injury, we trucked all these random Afghans here, some of whom turned out to be like watch listed. And people who actually, like earned the right to be here, who worked with us, worked for us, were abandoned. And we still have a lot of people here that we don't even know who they are.

[Sean]

How do you think that should have gone?

[Simone Ledeen]

They knew. This is where I start to get, you know, they knew months in advance that they were going to leave. They knew. They are government. They knew that we were going to leave through HKAYA and not through Bagram. So in that moment, like, they knew we weren't going to bring anyone out except for us. You know, they. They had, they never had any intention of rescuing, of like saving our partners, even though they said they did. I mean, those factors, like, look at the HKAI is in the middle of the city, you know, and in order to have airlifts for the number of people who needed to be brought out, and then also the, like the immigration kind of requirements, like all of the paperwork and stuff and vetting and all that should have begun months and months and months before. The fact that they didn't do that meant that they were never gonna save anybody. And no one ever. I mean, there were lies during the entire six months from when they announced the Withdrawal to when it happened. Just lie after lie. And. Yeah, that's just. No one's. You can point it out and it doesn't matter. Doesn't change a thing.

[Sean]

Sim raging.

[Simone Ledeen]

Yes.

[Sean]

You know, back to the swift thing. Were you able. I mean, was that instrumental in changing how we target these guys? And.

[Simone Ledeen]

In some cases, by the time I was working on, had already been blown. So I think the enemy had. They'd already changed their ttps a lot. But, for example, bank accounts were one way to move money. But they have this whole underground system. It's not underground, but we don't. It's not part of our Western culture called hawala, where it's a value transfer system. Like the easiest way to explain it. And like, you can. You can go to. Hawala is not a. Not a bank and not even necessarily. It's not a licensed financial institution in many countries. But if you. You can go to, like a corner store somewhere and the guy's a hawalidar, and you can say, well, I want to send, you know, $5,000 to my boy in Islamabad. So that guy will call up, like, some hawala in Islamabad, and they basically arrange between the two of them, because I pay the guy here $5,000. They arrange between the two of them how the money is going to be transferred. But again, it's not necessarily money. It can be carpets, it can be gemstones, it can be other items of value. And then my buddy in Islamabad will go to the place in Islamabad and get $5,000. So you can't track that through the formal financial system.

[Sean]

So it's like a Western union of commodities.

[Simone Ledeen]

Yes, yes, exactly. So that's been a challenge for the intelligence community for many years and law enforcement to try to understand the hawala network, global hawala network, how it works. I was working in banking in UAE for several years, and I worked for a big bank, and we had a relationship with several hawalas that were like banks. They were huge. And they had their own compliance people that were working on doing stuff that bankers all know. Kyc know your customer, kind of trying to understand, like, oh, you're the. This is your name. Your name does not come up on any watch list. This is your address. Your address doesn't come up as any known bad person on the OFAC list. I mean, there's a whole process that's very involved. But the bottom line is some of these hawalas are very big, and they're used across the Middle east and the Islamic world. So they're used Very. They're in places where banks don't really operate because for a variety of reasons and from an enforcement perspective, it's a challenge to figure out like, well, these guys are clearly running bad money through their hawala. But that's also the only way that this entire region can, you know, of this country can, can get access to money. So.

[Sean]

Interesting. I did not know that. Yeah, interesting. Well, Simone, let's take, let's take a quick break and when we come back, we'll get into dia.

[Simone Ledeen]

Great.

[Sean]

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[Simone Ledeen]

Well, I moved over there. Basically, General Flynn became the director of dia, and I went over there with him. I had been at treasury, obviously before that, on the intel side, the Office of Intelligence and Analysis. And General Flynn was standing up. A lot of commanders have their kind of directors, advisory group or whatever they call it. And so he was standing his up, and I had the opportunity to go and be part of that. So, yeah, so that's how I got over to dia.

[Sean]

Right on what kind of stuff were you doing?

[Simone Ledeen]

Well, his big push was when he got over there was the reorganization of dia. But I think it's not a surprise to anyone who knew him to say that he was on a kind of revenge tour after his experience in Afghanistan. He wrote Fixing intel, talking about how the intelligence assessments that were being produced or the information that was being collected even and shared was not helpful to people on the battlefield that it was. They weren't collecting things that we needed to fight the war and to win the war. And he wrote this very controversial. I mean, everyone agreed with it, but the way that it was released, I think Gates, Secretary Gates, he was the SecDef at the time, and others were critical of how it was released. That is, it was released publicly through a think tank. But that was how General Flynn operated. So he didn't really care. I think he wanted to just get it to the widest audience possible because he wanted to make sure that people understood how broken it was. It was really like he could only jump up and down for so long yelling about the same problem. So people have a variety of opinions on that. And I don't know if it was the right thing to do or not, but it certainly got a lot of attention and it did get things to change. So when he came back and took over dia, he wanted to move a lot of people out who had kind of stood in his way and were really were not helpful in prosecuting the war. So there were these announcements that would come out pretty regularly about senior DIA employees who were moving to different jobs and other agencies kind of thing like, oh, they're going to be the liaison at dhs, and things like that. And it Was. I mean, he was moving people out that he did not view as kind of teammates, people who were going to be helpful in what he wanted to do with dia. So there was a lot of kind of, like, rearranging personnel stuff. But the really big effort during that time was reorganizing the agency and putting the collectors and the analysts together in one. So, like, the collection operations for, let's say, Russia, and the analysts for Russia were not, like, they didn't even know each other. They were in different parts of bowling. They were different parts of the world sometimes, and they weren't working together in a coordinated way. So he reorganized EIA to have, like, Russia House, to have, like, China House. And so the, you know, the Americas was another one where you have, again, the people working together so that they can coordinate effectively. So collectors are actually, you know, going after intelligence that. That the analysts really need to answer the key questions. For people who don't know, it's the. Our senior leadership and our government puts out the collection priorities. They put out. Here are the main things that we want to know. Then the intelligence community does an assessment of, well, what can we answer and where are the gaps? And the gaps are really what the intelligence collectors go after, and they need to be working closely with the analysts who are going to really fill those gaps with that information and that intelligence. So it was pretty revolutionary at the time. No one had ever thought about it like that before. CIA reorganized itself in a similar manner not long after that. So I think it was clearly a great idea, but to be part of that. DIA is kind of notoriously bureaucratic, and a lot of people have a lot of bad things to say about dia. But I worked with a lot of people who spent a long time deployed and who really are patriots and, you know, put everything out there, like, left it all on the field, did their best. So I was there for pretty. Not for that long, like, two years, but I. I learned a lot during my time there. I worked with some great analysts. I finished out my time, so I did. I did that. Was working on the reorg for a while under General Flynn. And then I moved to running a small. Like a small unit of analysts. Really. We were focused on something that no one at the time cared about at all. Transnational organized crime in the Americas, cartels. And no one paid attention to us. No one cared. Had a great group of analysts who knew a lot about the subject matter.

[Sean]

And nobody paid any attention to that or cared.

[Simone Ledeen]

No, no, not at that time. No, not at that time. I Mean, it was like checking the box, you know? But we were all focused. Everyone was focused on the Middle east, and we had. I was there. This is really what led me to quit government completely, was Syria, the Obama's Syria red line. So first I was. After all my experiences, Iraq, Afghanistan, I was pretty disgusted by everything, but I still wanted to serve. And I loved what I was doing on a micro level. I loved the people I got to work with. I thought we were working on important things. The fact that I had this kind of financial intelligence background made me a little bit unusual, which I like too. Kind of niche. But I remember, I mean, I don't think I'll ever forget it. Obama gave that famous speech about red lines and Assad not if Assad uses chemical weapons against his own people, that's a red line and we will act. So I think it was on a Friday when Assad for the first time used chemical weapons against the Syrian people. He did it many, many times after. But the first was, I think, on a Friday, because we all showed up to work on Saturday. Like, no one said, come in, but we just showed up because that's, you know how it is. That's like, what you do. Okay, it's going to kick off. We'll just be here to be helpful. And we sat there for hours. And finally one of the bosses came out of his office and was like, y' all should just go home. Nothing's gonna happen. And I really had a. Like, a crisis at that time and just realized I was. I was, like, nearing 40. And I just thought, what am I doing with my life? You know, I had been so focused. It wasn't just a job for me. It was like. Like a life. It was my life. And I just felt like, what am I doing? I don't know what. What am I doing this for? This is crazy. And I. I just. I knew I had to leave. I knew I started paying attention to. I don't know if they still do this, but at the time, DIA would have these, like, email announcements when someone dies and they tell you, like, so and so passed away. People were. I don't know if this is true, but it seemed like people were dying at their desks. And I was like, no way. No way.

[Sean]

What do you mean? People were dying at their desks?

[Simone Ledeen]

Like, you know how it is in the bureaucracy where people just, like, they're gonna hang on till retirement no matter what. Like, gotta get those last years in before you hit retirement. Like, that's such a thing. So you get all your benefits. People were dying at their desks waiting to hit that retirement. It's not funny, but. It's not funny, but it's real. And when I remember telling people that I was out, I was leaving, and no one could believe it because I had all my tickets, I had polygraphs and everything. I had it all. And they're like, you know, your clearance is worth over $200,000. And I'm like, there's more to life. There's just more to life. I'm not gonna do this anymore. So, yeah, that was.

[Sean]

So you didn't believe in the mission anymore, and your values weren't aligned with what was happening.

[Simone Ledeen]

What was the mission, Sean?

[Sean]

You're asking the wrong person that. I'm still trying to figure that one out.

[Simone Ledeen]

I mean, I didn't see it. I didn't see it. And, you know, I just felt I've given years of my life to this. And, you know, I wasn't married, didn't have kids, and I was like, there's more to life. So, yeah, so I had. I had no job to go to, but I just. I did have. They were offering early outs, you know, they called it Vera visip. Basically, the. They pay you a lump sum for your retirement, and that's it. You're done in the. And your billet is gone. So I was expensive. By that time, I was like a GS15, step five, which in the DC area is a lot of money, relatively. For the government. It was like 100. Something like 100. I don't remember. Maybe in the 190s. Yeah. So I just. But the VRV SIP was like a lump sum payment. And I just, after tax, took the money and left. I went to Italy. I had a friend that I had reconnected with. One of my brothers got married in Italy, and I had reconnected with this friend of mine there. And he was a friend from business school days. I went to business school in Milan, and he had this luxury villa on the Amalfi Coast. And he's like, do you want to help me? And I just thought, I mean, are you serious? Because I. Seriously. Yes, I would. So I ended up doing that. I just went. I went to Sorrento, Italy. And it's funny in retrospect, but it was really what I needed. And I just helped him run his luxury villa. We started this boat tour company where we would take guests to Capri on day trips. And I was like the first mate on the boat and worked for tips.

[Sean]

Wow.

[Simone Ledeen]

It was awesome.

[Sean]

Quite the Change, huh?

[Simone Ledeen]

I needed it. Yeah. Needed like swim in the ocean every day, be outside the skiff, just be. Experience life. You know what I mean? So it was good until I ran out of money around later in the year and I got to actually go back to real job in real life. But yeah, it was amazing. And I think in retrospect, seeing how a lot of my friends kind of have flamed out when they've had the kind of similar realization that I had.

[Sean]

Were a lot of people leaving like you?

[Simone Ledeen]

In different ways. Yeah, in different ways.

[Sean]

What were the discussions like?

[Simone Ledeen]

I mean, when I was telling my friends in the intelligence community that I was leaving and why? I mean, maybe people I worked with didn't fully, like on my team didn't understand, but my friends understood 100% and some of them had already left. Yeah, people got it. I mean, if you look back now at our, like on the analytics side, the analysts, like senior analysts that we have who served in gwat, Very, very few. Most everyone's got. Everyone's gone. Like there was on Iraq specifically. Everyone cleared out. Everyone, man. There's no. But how sad is that too? Because there's very, very limited institutional memory of so many things, things that are important for the institution to remember. That's one of the big challenges, I think. And sure, the army did Iraq, the after action, kind of deep dive into Iraq. What went wrong? I've heard there's one on Afghanistan, but it's classified.

[Sean]

Go figure.

[Simone Ledeen]

But it's still, you know, that's great for the army, but who's gonna. It's so specific to the military, and there's a lot more to it than that. I mean, there have been so many people have written books and they've covered different sides of this, but yeah, no, the basic fact is the people who are like, mentally healthy enough. And I feel like I was borderline at that point. I don't. I was not mentally healthy at that point. I knew it enough to not even try to find another job, just to, like, clear my head and try to just get myself back a little bit. And then also the reality was I was doing really well. I would have advanced to an sas, but I had to do another deployment probably to Djibouti. And I just had zero. I was like, I'm going to burn my sleeping bag. I am not doing that again. It was done.

[Sean]

I want to burn my sleeping bag.

[Simone Ledeen]

I was. That thing smelled so bad. But it was. It was just time, you know, it was just enough. It was enough. You and I Both know people who. That's all they can do now with their lives. They can only exist in places and situations like that, and they can't live in the normal world. And I kind of recognized that I was like, slapping up against that, and I didn't want to become that. And talking to other people that I had served with, everyone kind of understood that because the adrenaline is real and the feeling that you're working on something important and you're, you know, the mission and all that. And so it had to get really bad for me to understand that. I had to just pull the rip cord and save myself. And that's what I did.

[Sean]

Where did you go from Italy?

[Simone Ledeen]

I went to the UAE and I got a job working for a big bank that had gotten itself in trouble, violating Iran sanctions. And it was. I mean, they egregiously violated Iran sanctions.

[Sean]

How so?

[Simone Ledeen]

They created a manual for their clients on how to like, hide details about transactions like, holy shit. Yeah.

[Sean]

And you were working for that bank afterwards.

[Simone Ledeen]

So I guess they forgot about the NSA can find that sort of thing. And so they got in very serious trouble with ofAC and the DOJ. So they had to pay over a billion dollars in fines. They almost lost their US dollar access. And they had to create a whole new compliance program focused on our laws, the Bank Secrecy act. And so how to, like, the controls around US dollars, US dollar transactions. And so my job, I covered Africa, Middle east and Pakistan from Dubai. I was based in Dubai. And so I. I was like all over the region for years doing my job, which was basically conducting investigations, doing train, like training thousands and thousands of bank employees and then interacting a lot with our regulators as well. Just kind of like letting them know what was going on, answering questions, stuff like that.

[Sean]

So you're living in Dubai?

[Simone Ledeen]

Yeah.

[Sean]

Okay. How was that? We just went there about a month ago, I think. Ish. I've been there several times. Yeah, all. It's like all expats.

[Simone Ledeen]

It is, it is. Did you. What did you think? Did you like it?

[Sean]

I love it there.

[Simone Ledeen]

Yeah.

[Sean]

I think the architecture is amazing. I think it's one of the most impressive cities in the world. I don't know what I would do there if I lived there other than shop, because they got some great shopping there.

[Simone Ledeen]

They do, they do.

[Sean]

But, yeah. What's it like living there?

[Simone Ledeen]

I mean, I loved was. I was on the road a lot, so I can see what you're saying, but I loved it. I just thought the people were so nice. I made a lot of friends it was beautiful. It's safe and it's just incredibly impressive. The first time that I was there was early days, like maybe 2004.

[Sean]

Oh, okay.

[Simone Ledeen]

And so to see what it became so quick, quickly, what they built there, what they made is just really, it's. It's like got a vibe, you know, it's. And it's. Now that I'm older, you know, I kind of like Abu Dhabi. It's a little more chill, you know, I'm like in bed at 9 o' clock person now. So Dubai's can be a lot. But it's amazing. It truly is amazing. And I really enjoyed my time there. My job was super interesting too. I mean, I got to do. We were in Zimbabwe when the Mugabe regime was falling. We were there, myself and some of my colleagues from New York City, because at the time we were the only bank that still had access to US dollars. But because the Mugabe regime was sanctioned by ofac, by the Treasury Department, we had to wall them off from any US dollar anything. So we were just. Anyway, we were there during kind of a crazy time for the country. And I had never been there before. And so it was really interesting. We found out, I think the secret police were like on the two floors above us in our hotel. And yeah, it was just. Thank God nothing bad happened to anybody. But it definitely could have. You could tell it was one of those situations where things could pop off in a second. And I was the only one that had my sort of background there. So I brought a ton of cash with me also because I knew, I saw that there were lines for the ATMs and you can't rely on an ATM in a situation like that. So I brought a significant amount of cash and it turned out that all my banker colleagues from New York City had like zero cash.

[Sean]

How do you wall a bank off from US Dollars?

[Simone Ledeen]

Well, it's all electronic, so the bank itself wasn't. Obviously our bank was not walled off, but a certain set of bank customers who could have access to other denomination, not denominations, but other currencies, but just not US dollars. So you can mark like it's, you know, inside the system. I haven't been in a bank system in a long time. But you can say like, this account is for this currency and that currency, and this account is for that currency and that currency. And then these accounts are US dollar accounts.

[Sean]

Gotcha.

[Simone Ledeen]

So you can, for example, have multiple accounts in the same bank for different currencies, or one account that has multiple currencies.

[Sean]

Interesting. And then you get appointed to the Pentagon in 2019.

[Simone Ledeen]

Yes.

[Sean]

How did that happen?

[Simone Ledeen]

Well, General Flynn called me and we had been in touch since I left. Kind of the biggest communication that he and I had had was when I was in Italy. I got contacted by a reporter friend, one of the few who called me to tell me that Flynn was going to Russia and going to this RT dinner and I should talk to him about that because it was a bad idea. And I was like, no, he's not. There's no way he's doing that. Like, shut up. Yeah, he did that. And I did call him or text him, I don't remember anymore. And he told me that it was, thank you very much for your concern. I know what I'm doing, it's all under control. And I really pleaded with him and I just said, you know, you're retired. I know you're probably excited to. You're free and you can do what you want. But like, you're a retired three star. Like, you still have those three stars, like, mean something. And like, by the way, don't f all the rest of us that, you know, had in some way, like, were tied to you. I mean, I worked for him for like five years in different capacities. So I was kind of like trying to save myself at the same time. But yeah, he did him and he did that. But anyway, fast forward, he put me up for an assistant secretary job at treasury at the time. Here's what happened. He called me, I was in Dubai and he's like, I need you. What jobs do you want? And in the past I'd been like, yes, sir. But this time, the way that banking, you know, salaries and stuff work is you get your salary payment, but then you get a bonus. And the bonus, if you're lucky, is like a lot of money. And because I was living overseas, you know, tax, your taxes aren't like taken out automatically like they are here. So my bonus was going to pay for all my taxes and the bonus is paid out in March. So the election was in November. And so I was like, can I, can I come a little later this time? Like, I'm not going to be there day one, thank God. And so that's what happened. So the treasury job went away because Flynn went away and all the treasury deciding people were like, I basically was, you know, I was, I was like, stray, kind of stray voltage on the Flynn thing, which was fine. Which was fine. So I just continued on doing what I was doing. About a year later, I got this opportunity at The Pentagon. I guess my name was kind of still on list. Still. My resume was still in there. So I got contacted by the DoD liaison to the White House, and he said this opportunity, they were looking for someone for the office where I had started back in Solic. In ASD Solic. That they needed a deputy under the DASD to run that special operations and combating terrorism. So I thought, how cool. And I didn't. You know, I had been overseas during the whole election, so I didn't really. I didn't know anything really about Trump. I got my information from, you know, overseas news, and I just assumed that Hillary would win. And when she didn't win, I was like, whoa, great. Now what? Like, cool. But, yeah, so. And then when, you know, everything got crazy really fast, obviously that's a pretty damn important position. Yeah, yeah. At S.O.C.T. yeah, it was. I got there. There was. The dazzy was still there. He. He moved on a little bit later. But, yeah, we. We were in the thick of it. And it was really. It was the greatest privilege of my life to work with that. That group of warriors.

[Sean]

I mean, what kind of stuff were you doing? So. So C. T. Special operations and combating terrorism during Baghdadi and Suleimani operations. I mean, that's like.

[Simone Ledeen]

Yeah, I. All impressive to the men and women who executed those operations. You know, I. I got to see the video of Baghdadi, the Baghdaddy app. Like, afterwards. You know, they had this whole. They're. They're. Those guys are very good at, you know, their marketing, marketing themselves to the right people. So they. They made a video of their operation. It's classified, but, you know, you get to go down. They even had really cool music. And so that was. But. But being part of it really meant planning process, lose. No, no, I wasn't. I wasn't. That's all the military. The military does the planning. You know, if there's any, like, approvals that sometimes there's ancillary things that need to be approved, like they need to go up a chain. But the big thing that I had to do with the Baghdadi operation was briefing Congress after the fact and briefing members and the staffs. And what was really awesome. I mean, this was my favorite part of it, and I sound like a fan girl, because I am. Was going. It was myself, my joint staff counterpart. He was a very highly decorated Ranger and the director of CTC at the agency. And it was really, for the most part, the two of them explaining in detail what happened. So I really can't say very Much. But the CTC guy, the CIA Counterterrorism Center's director, I mean, that's some movie shit, what happened there. And the first time that I learned it just being real was like, when I heard him briefing on the Hill. And. That's right. I had zero need to know about how they got to Baghdadi and how they figured out it was him and how they. How they got eyes on. But I did.

[Sean]

Is there any of that, or is that all sealed up?

[Simone Ledeen]

I mean, I wouldn't want to be the one to tell that story. That's someone else's story.

[Sean]

Okay.

[Simone Ledeen]

But God bless them. And what was amazing, one of the many, many amazing things about that operation was they had. I mean, it was boots on the ground and no one was even injured. The dog. Oh, super funny story about the dog. Okay, I can tell that. So Conan. Conan the dog. So there's a huge public interest in Conan the Dog. That was part of the operation. Got injured in the operation, but was fine, mostly. So when the time came to give the unit an award, there was some kind of. There was something. I don't even remember what exactly, but there's some type of ceremony at the White House. But, you know, that unit, that's a special mission unit, so none of those guys can be identified. Oh. But they wanted to showcase the dog. So the dog had a different handler for that event because the real handler, you know, couldn't be on camera. And we were watching in the office, and he was standing. The dog was. The vice president was standing next to the dog, and the vice president started moving his hand, like, to pet this thing. This is not dog that you pet. Do you know what I'm saying? This dog has titanium teeth and is like. Like, probably, like, definitely ripped, like, many throats out. And the vice president's like. We just watch his hand. Like, we were all like, no, but. And not with his regular handler either. So, like, oh, my God. But it all worked out. Pence has both his hands still. But that was just to be part of that in a small way and help tell the story of what these guys did was truly amazing. And we all knew the story of Kayla Mueller and what she had endured and what he had done to her. Turning her into just not. Let's not even say it, but just so horrific. Was so meaningful to be able to, you know, we couldn't save her, but we did, like, bring justice for her family at the end of the day. And, like, I believe in that. I was really proud to be even just be the explainer at the, like, at the end of that, explain to our lawmakers what happened. That was awesome. And then Soleimani. Well, I'll just say there were a lot of people in the first Trump administration who said a lot of things about being involved, and they're on a lot of lists now. And I was not involved other than that. I was in that office when it happened. And so, like, yeah, we knew. We knew about it. I knew about it. My. I don't think my team did until I told them. But, you know, it was. It was a task force operation. And so, like, you know, we were. We were prized a bit and we. We had to deal with a lot of stuff after the fact. But I remember how stressful it was with all the different operational details as we were learning them. There was just so many things that could have gone wrong, as usual, on an operation like that. And to see at the end, his hand on social media, his hand with his famous ring, and knowing. Knowing the story of Qasem Soleimani and how much American blood he had on his hands, how many Americans he'd been involved in killing over the years. And of him really being like, this evil mastermind and removing him from the battlefield was really profound. And I had nothing to do with it other than to be in that job at that time, but was very, very proud. And I just. I know a lot of the folks who were involved and will never take credit or talk about it, and they're amazing. Yeah. But. Yeah, that. Also not my story to tell, but just an amazing, amazing operation. And we got a bonus, too. We got. I'm sorry, I'm blanking on his name. He also was responsible for a lot of. Mohandas was in the vehicle with Soleimani, which wasn't. We didn't know in advance, but that was his day, too.

[Sean]

Who was he?

[Simone Ledeen]

He was a terrorist leader in Iraqi. So Qasem Soleimani basically ruled Iraq after we left in 2011. From the. The politicians really answered to him in many ways, but he also had stood up. So there were a lot of different Shia militia groups. Some were directly like Quds Force affiliated. And then there were some that were more like Iraqi Shia, but still funded and aligned with Iran and the Quds Force. And they became the pmf, the popular military front, which still to this day, I believe, gets paid through the Iraqi budget. They're part of Iraq's military force now. Iraq became a satellite of Iran after we pulled out. I don't know if you know that, but after we pulled out in 2011. That's what happened. And that was really in large part thanks to Qasem Soleimani. But he was a mastermind from the beginning. These EFPs, the explosively. Oh, yeah, I remember those projectiles that killed a lot of people, a lot of our people. That was like. That was his, you know, that was his mastermind. So. And Mohandas was one of his lieutenants in Iraq, and so to see them both taken out was just felt great. Yeah, it felt great. And knowing everything that they had done to so many of our friends, you know, it's just. It felt good.

[Sean]

There was a lot of backlash over that, if I remember correctly, wasn't there?

[Simone Ledeen]

Yeah, people freaked out and were like, World War Three.

[Sean]

It was like, 2020.

[Simone Ledeen]

Yeah, yeah, 2020. They freaked out and said, it's gonna be World War iii. It was definitely a ballsy move. And it definitely. Look, the President. When the President asked for options, there are a lot of options that are provided to the President, but on that particular day, that was the option that he picked. And was everyone shocked? Pretty much, yeah. Because no one had ever. I mean, no president before Trump would have made a decision like that.

[Sean]

How would that have. Back then, I kind of lived in an echo chamber, so I didn't really explore any of the other ideas. How would that have triggered World War Three?

[Simone Ledeen]

In my mind, it wasn't going to. But there are a lot of people, a lot of people in Washington who are always advocating for a diplomatic approach, which, by the way, I don't discount the efficacy of diplomacy in the right situation. But Iran had just killed an American. That was the backdrop for this. I think it was a US contractor that was killed on a base that Iran. A U.S. base in Iraq that Iran attacked, if I recall correctly. Drone. I don't know. I'm sorry, my memory is not great. But what I do remember is an American contractor was killed and President Trump was going to do something about it because enough was enough, and you can't just get away with killing Americans, which is right, by the way. Thank you. So he's presented with a list of different options. The military puts that together. At the time, it was, I guess, Milley. And we went through a bunch of sec defs at that time.

[Sean]

Esper.

[Simone Ledeen]

But, yeah, I believe it was Esper. So they put together these options, probably mostly Millie, but together presented them to the President. And the President decided to go with strike on Soleimani. Not all of them, by the way, are necessarily, like, individual. You know, take this Guy out or take that guy out. Some of them are like more strategic. But yeah, that was that. He want, he went with that one. And for, you know, there were people in our government who had been tracking Soleimani for years, like many, many years. And the Israelis were tracking him for many, many years as well and shared a lot of really vital intelligence with us at that time. So they did not, to my knowledge, take part in that strike, other than perhaps providing some intelligence. But we can see today how deeply they penetrated into Iran, into Quds Force, into their multiple terror proxies. It's pretty extraordinary. I'm super jealous. I just like, I wish that we were, you know, that could really.

[Sean]

How many terrorist organizations is Iran using as proxies? Do you have any idea?

[Simone Ledeen]

Well, there's Iraq, I mean, you want to call these little groups in Iraq, like one, there's a couple, like kind of key ones, but they've, they've changed, merged, etc. Over time. But you've got the Houthis in Yemen, you've got Hezbollah in Lebanon, you've got Gaza, you've got Hamas, which is funny because. Not funny, but a lot of people were saying, oh well, they're Muslim Brotherhood, that is Sunni. So therefore they can't be aligned with Iran. They can't be accepting like money and training and stuff from Iran because they're Sunni. Well, go back to what we were talking about, Al Qaeda leadership being in Iran. Like those guys work with each other. And this was another example where Hamas was clearly taking, they were clearly partners with Iran and Iran was clearly providing funding and training and equipment. So anyway, those are like the main ones. But you know, Hezbollah is a global organization. Obviously they're based in Lebanon. But you have Hezbollah operating Venezuela. They're operating in the, in that tri border region and historically they have been for a long time. And then of course you have the Quds Force, which is the only Iranian, Iranian one. And they're. Oh, and I'm sorry, Hezbollah also operating in Syria. They had a big operation in Syria. So yeah, I mean they've been wreaking havoc globally for such a long time. And this is the same organization. Hezbollah killed Marines in BEIRUT in the 80s, you know, held a station chief hostage and, and tortured him and murdered him. I mean, this is the same. Anyway, all that to say they built, and Qasem Soleimani was the mastermind behind this. They had Israel essentially surrounded. They built this huge terror network, but it wasn't only for Israel because they used it to attack us. A lot. And there was no real successor to him. There was no one else like him. So taking him out was quite significant. But, yeah, a lot of people freaked out and said it was going to be World War Three, and that never happened. And there's like, very little reflection I've seen from those people who said that about why that didn't happen and what does that mean about their own assumptions? And maybe I should revise what I think, because when we attacked for now recently, it was like the same thing all over again. Oh, World War Three. I mean, obviously, when we attacked who, sorry, Fordow. The Iranian nuclear program, when we bombed their nuclear. When we bombed for now, that was. There was like another round of people freaking out about World War iii. And.

[Sean]

Well, I mean, I can. So I can. If you don't mind, I'd like to share my opinion on that. But I mean, I think it was just a different, you know, the Soleimani days, geopolitics was a lot different. And, you know, today we have, I think a lot of people know about brics, you know, about brics, you know, throwing the US dollar off the world reserve currency. And we have Russia, Ukraine going on, we have China, we have the China problem, also China, Taiwan, then we have all the shit going on in the Middle East. And if you look at the BRICS alliance, I mean, it's Russia, it's Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, and the last time I checked, There were like 22 other countries that had joined that. And, you know, and, and so right there, Russia, China, Iran, I believe is part of that. You know what I mean? So China, Russia, Iran, it's, I think the. At least for me, you know, when I look at it, I'm like, oh, like we're not just messing with Iran right now. We're also messing with China, with Russia, with India, with all these other players that are also nuclear powers. So it's not just. But I wasn't as tuned in back then either with Soleimani as I am now. That's my fear is. It's maybe a little bit of a bold statement here, but, I mean, it seems like the counter to NATO, you know what I mean? What do you think? How close are we to World War Three?

[Simone Ledeen]

I don't know. I mean, hopefully very far away. What do I think of brics? I mean, I think they're trying to make BRICS a thing. I don't think it's yet still developing. I think there are a few. If I recall correctly, there are a couple of countries that have actually pulled out of brics.

[Sean]

I haven't heard that.

[Simone Ledeen]

I think they have, which is great. So brics is tbd. I mean we're still the United States. We're definitely weaker. We're definitely in a, we've been headed in a bad direction. But when an American president says this country cannot ever have a nuclear weapon, you kind of put yourself in a situation where the American president has to. If they're about to get that the country's about to get a nuclear weapon and the American president has said they can't get a nuclear weapon, you kind of put yourself in a box. And again, I'm glad he did for all the reasons that we discussed. But BRICS doesn't mean that any one of those countries is going to be like, how dare you attack our great partner? They don't have a, it's a economic partnership right now. There's no real like military alliance behind it. Like there is with Article 5 in NATO where like if you attack, if anyone attacks a NATO partner, then all NATO partners are supposed to like come to their aid. Which in my opinion, I don't actually know if that would ever happen.

[Sean]

Sorry, I mean, I'm not going to disagree with you there. But do you think that China, Russia could have used, let's say that I'm kind of alluding the fact that Iran would have blown up a little bigger than, you know, that situation would have blown up a little bit bigger than it would. I mean, do you think that China and Russia would have used Iran as a proxy to get, you know, to smuggle weapons in there, to aid them, to train them, outfit them? You know, if that would have turned into something bigger than what actually happened?

[Simone Ledeen]

I mean their, they have proven themselves to not be allies. They just, they're like, it's a cynical partnership.

[Sean]

How have they proven not to be allies?

[Simone Ledeen]

Well, they didn't come to their aid, did they? Israel was hammering them for like months and months and achieved air superiority over a period of days. And like China and Russia didn't come and help Iran. So if they were real allies then they would have come to their aid. Right? That's what an ally does. So I think it also showed that the fear that a lot of people have of this, like they signed this hundred year agreement or something, didn't they? Iran and China and Russia, I believe they signed 50 years, maybe, I don't know about that. They signed an agreement there was like very public that they were going to cooperate on all kinds of things and now they're real partners. But it's turned out so far to be economic in nature and nothing else. I mean, even China. So China, what is China get from a partnership with Iran?

[Sean]

It gets a proxy against us.

[Simone Ledeen]

It gets a proxy against us. Yes, but it gets like directly it gets energy. It gets like oil, but it doesn't get the majority of it from Iran. I mean China has enormous energy needs. It gets the majority. It gets its energy from Iran, but mostly Saudi Arabia. So even if they lost completely Iran's access to Iran's oil and gas, they still would be okay. So that's also a calculation for them. It's like, is it worth it for you to go into like a full on kinetic situation with the United States right now? Like they want to do that at a time and place of their choosing and like this ain't it. They have their grand plans and so. But they would love to see us dragged down into the Middle east again. Cause that was so beneficial for them the last time. That's why we can never do that again.

[Sean]

And every day how was it beneficial for them?

[Simone Ledeen]

We drained our blood and treasure. We're very demoralized. A lot of the infighting that is occurring here in the US is all beneficial to them. We're fighting ourselves. Have you noticed that X is so crazy recently?

[Sean]

Have I noticed?

[Simone Ledeen]

It's so crazy. But how many. There's so many foreign bot operations and they're focused on like dividing us. And I wish like Elon, please put like. I think there's a way of identifying, even if they use vpn like of identifying where these accounts are coming from. It would be so helpful if they could start being flagged and at least we would know like maga, America, American flag. American flag is actually based in China, you know. Super helpful. But anyway, I think it's not. I'm not saying that these countries are not in a real partnership, but so far it hasn't extended to anything military and they're certainly not gonna risk their own positions for Iran. Also very helpful to highlight the fact that Russia's air defense system completely failed against our stuff, which the Israelis have. And I mean the Israelis obviously have their own stuff, but against our F35. We won. Good to know.

[Sean]

I mean, I don't know. Did you. I'm not even saying a kinetic operation, but I mean, you know, China sends all the precursors to fentanyl into Mexico and that comes up and I mean, I think all of this stuff plays into some type of a, you know, some type of a Master plan.

[Simone Ledeen]

I wouldn't be surprised if it did. I mean, China is really focused on these gray zone operations, and they're killing. I mean, I guess bad analogy, appropriate analogy. They're killing it. I mean, look at all of these people folded over, all over our cities. You know, that's China. And they're very effective at what they do. And they've been partnering with the cartels, and they're. Not only are they providing precursor chemicals, but they're also the money launderers for the cartels.

[Sean]

How so?

[Simone Ledeen]

Cartels laundering their money through these Chinese gangs.

[Sean]

I didn't know that.

[Simone Ledeen]

Yeah. And sanctioned by the ccp. Yep. And now did you know I'm you.

[Sean]

You had mentioned you were. Was it dia you were doing the Americas? Is that. Did you know this all the way back then?

[Simone Ledeen]

No, I didn't. No. I've learned that in the last couple years. I don't know if they were doing that back then, honestly, but they are now, big time.

[Sean]

I mean, it's hard to think like them because we're so reactionary and immediate, and they appear to be very good at a longer game.

[Simone Ledeen]

What they've been doing is very deliberate, and that's why it's important. That's another reason why I really support what Israel's been doing against Iran. Because we need to not have to worry about that anymore. And just like, willing it away doesn't change the fact that there is a real threat there and they have been killing Americans and we can't take our eye off the ball. But we have another bigger problem. And I. I don't disagree. I mean, there's so many especially, like, veterans of our era are, like, enough. No more. Like, no more Middle East. I feel you, you know, and I would like for this to be resolved. And I see a way that it can be resolved. So hopefully soon. Hopefully soon. But, yes, we need to be as deliberate as China is being. But there's a number of things that we still have to do that we were not doing yet, unfortunately.

[Sean]

Beck, I'm sorry, I'm switching gears. I just have all these things popping in my head. But we talk about with Sarah, she says that there are at least 1,000 sleeper cells, terrorist organizations within the US borders right now. Do you have any insight into that or opinions or.

[Simone Ledeen]

I mean, I don't know. Anything's possible. But even in. At their height, Al Qaeda and ISIS didn't have those numbers. So I'm skeptical.

[Sean]

Do you think they're strengthening again?

[Simone Ledeen]

They absolutely are. They absolutely are.

[Sean]

Why do you think so many gwat veterans are. Are. They don't want to go back to war, they don't want to go back over there. They're done with the Middle East. What do you think that is? Do you think it's because of all the shit that we just talked about with Iraq? It was all for nothing in Afghanistan, which was a loss.

[Simone Ledeen]

Yeah, 100%.

[Sean]

I mean, I think. I think that the G wad generation is just so frustrated with. You know, we talked about stricter Roes, we talked about all kinds of stuff. And then when you do that, it's like, now you want me to go over there and do this fucking thing?

[Simone Ledeen]

We funded the Taliban.

[Sean]

Yeah.

[Simone Ledeen]

I mean. Yeah. And apparently we still are. I don't know. But I think.

[Sean]

No, I think Rubio stopped it, but it's temporary, but it has to get through the Senate. So, Tim Sheehy, please, please hurry up and get that damn thing pushed through.

[Simone Ledeen]

Amen. Amen. But, yeah, I do think ultimately that they're not wrong. I mean, I agree with that sentiment that we can't do that again. And it was in many ways a huge waste and created bigger problems. But that doesn't mean that we can't address, like, we now should stop addressing any threat. You know, there's a balance, and we just can't. We can't send big armies to address threats. It doesn't. First of all, it doesn't work. We're not good at it. And second of all, we have bigger. You know, we have bigger fish to fry. But again, maybe I'm, like, trying to thread the needle too much. But what I'm trying to say is we. I'm not isolationist. I'm just. I look at where we've come from, what we've done, all the things that I personally saw and learned. I agree. I agree with you and with everyone else who's been speaking out about no new wars, but I don't think that's what this is. I think taking, like, a targeted strike is different from that. And the fact that Israel is doing all this other. Like, that's what partners are for. Like, they're helping us. Like, let's let them finish what they're doing now. Doing that in the most humanitarian way possible is. Means finishing it as quickly as possible. The more this drags on, the more people suffer, the more people die. You know, you have this horrible, tragic situation unfolding in Gaza. People are doing their best. We have, you know, us humanitarian workers there now, which, you know, it's Hard to see the way things are organized right now, how that's going to be successful and not like a PR disaster ultimately for us. But I hope for the best, you know what I mean? Like, I'm rooting for us.

[Sean]

It's just fucking crazy, man. I mean, here we. I mean, all these other terrorist organizations have ties to Iran. I'm sure the Taliban has ties to Iran, some one way or another as well. We're funding them who are funded probably by Iran, but we're bombing Iran and it's like, dude, pick what, what, what are we doing here? Like, we're funding the people that killed us for 20 fucking years. Like, who are, who are tied to Iran and then we go and bomb our. It's. It's. I, I just.

[Simone Ledeen]

You said it.

[Sean]

Like, what, what the fuck are we doing? Like, what the fuck are we doing, man? It's just. It just makes no sense. Like, how about you stop the fucking funding? And like.

[Simone Ledeen]

Or if not, it's just asinine. Why don't you tell the American people why you're continuing it? Why don't you justify it? You know, that's the other thing. Like, I would love to hear from people like, like, we're doing X, here's Y. No one does that anymore. Remember when we used to have like the, you know, our leaders. Address the American people and explain, I'm doing this. Here's why. I would love for that to. Not that anyone would probably believe it anymore. Cause we all have like zero. We have problems with authority now given everything that's happened to us. But, you know, I still think at least give it a try. It's hard to know who to believe these days. It really is. I'm challenged by that as well. I just, we gotta keep going and this is still worth fighting for. As messed up as things have gotten, our way of life is really important to continue. And we're still a beacon. That doesn't mean we're defending everyone or paying for everything, but we have to retain that.

[Sean]

We are the beacon. We are the beacon. The only fucking beacon.

[Simone Ledeen]

Amen.

[Sean]

So.

[Simone Ledeen]

Doesn't mean everyone can move here though.

[Sean]

Oh, man. So then you got promoted?

[Simone Ledeen]

Yeah.

[Sean]

To DadsD.

[Simone Ledeen]

I did.

[Sean]

What is that?

[Simone Ledeen]

Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Middle East. So it's just like what it sounds like. Basically the DOD's kind of policy lead for the region, for the Middle East. So in reality, just a staff officer job at a higher level. But I still had many people in my chain of command that I had to prep for. Meetings, and I had to send them memos explaining things and ask them to do things. So there was a lot of that in that job. But it was amazing job, amazing opportunity, amazing time to be there during the Abraham Accords. So. Yeah. But I was there during COVID so it was also a little bit crazy we had coming from Special Operations, where Covid didn't change anything. You know, we all went to work every day. Everyone showed up. No one wore masks. We just. It was the same. But when I moved over to, like, the traditional policy world, I had many. Most of my office was not there. Oh. And they started this campaign. I ended up kind of, I think, making peace with a lot of the staff, but, you know, they're like traditional government bureaucrats, and a lot of them had gone to these schools that I referred to and were very concerned about me coming to be their boss. And so they actually. There was a story in Politico about me before I even got into the job. And it was kind of sad because it wasn't even about me. It was about my parents. And. And it was just like, oh, you know, we're just really scared about what this means. Okay. So I show up there. There was a guy wearing this mask. Literally, like, I think it was a rebreather mask or something. Like, just the most insane. Okay. Hi. And he. I think he wrote me up at one point because I had my own office, and I would go in my office, I would not wear a mask, and. And I would just do my work. And that apparently was like, an unsafe work environment thing. And I. Even though I was alone in my office, I had to wear a mask. No. And also, I had a buddy on the COVID task force who told me, like, early days masks are bullshit. Like, they don't do anything. So I'm like, this whole thing is. It's like a performance. It's not real. So I did my best to kind of refuse to take part in it, but it was impossible because people, they'll tell you, you have to. Where's your mask? Put your mask on. And it was tough. Maybe I should have pushed back more. I have a lot of respect for people who did in that environment. It was really, really hard. But, you know, I. So it limited what I was able to do. You know, the travel, Usually a lot of travel in that job, my travel was limited. And when I did travel, it was. There was like, you know, tests every minute and quarantine.

[Sean]

Oh, bad.

[Simone Ledeen]

So it was a huge pain in the butt. But the job itself was amazing. We still had a lot of visitors and was there during the Abraham Accords.

[Sean]

How was that? And then my understanding of the Abraham Accords is it's some type of a treaty in between Middle Eastern countries and Israel. Basically a peace deal. Correct. Can you elaborate on that a little bit for people that don't know?

[Simone Ledeen]

Sure. So essentially they don't. Since the formation and the foundation of the State of Israel in 1948, all the countries in the Arab League never recognized the state of Israel. It was never formally recognized. And in fact there are two different wars where Israel's neighbors attacked it and Israel won.

[Sean]

And.

[Simone Ledeen]

But there's never been peace. The only, there's been individual peace with like Egypt and Jordan who have benefited like they benefited greatly from Jordan, in particular from Israel's kind of like security assurances, whatever. They share a lot of intelligence with Jordan. They do a lot quietly a lot of stuff to together and in Egypt, I don't want to. I think things have gotten a little more challenged since October 7th and since it was revealed that the number and size of tunnels going between Egypt and the Gaza Strip, where Egypt was supposed to be maintaining security there anyway. But the Abraham Accords were when several countries, uae, Bahrain, Morocco, Sudan, I think the Sudan all formally acknowledged the state of Israel and as such established diplomatic relations, economic ties, military ties. So it was such a huge, momentous, earth shattering event. Truly. We had the opportunity after that to move Israel into centcom. Israel because its neighbors were always either fighting it or at minimum hated it and wouldn't acknowledge its existence. Israel was always part of eucom. But during the first Trump administration, after the Abraham Accords, Israel joined centcom. And so that's also been a huge change that a lot of people don't realize where they're doing so many joint exercises now that they were never able to do before. And Israel hopefully can become like the premier security guarantor in the region. And that is a great thing for us.

[Sean]

You were a part of that.

[Simone Ledeen]

I was part of the. So I just want to be careful. This was another thing where like many people have written books and have claimed that they've, you know, I'm not, I was part of the arms deal afterwards. So yes, I definitely was involved in the like second and third order things that happened after the agreement was signed. But no, I wasn't part of the diplomatic effort. There were only really a few people who were and just a, just a monumental game changing thing. It's truly extraordinary to see the changes in the region even since Then just a few years ago, really amazing and hopeful, and I'm hoping things are a little crazy right now, but we were on track. I think Syria was on track to joining the Abraham Accords. And I know Israel bombed it this morning, but I know this sounds weird to say, but I'm still kind of hopeful that they will. Jelani has condemned what his people ostensibly did and they've made some kind of ceasefire. So I hope it holds and I hope long term that, I mean, that's how this is solved. There needs to be a broader piece. A lot of people have questions about what happened in the last few days against the Druze and if it was somehow orchestrated by Iran. I've seen people on X kind of raise that as a potential something that could potentially be the case.

[Sean]

Interesting.

[Simone Ledeen]

Iran is known for doing stuff like that, so it's possible they don't have a lot of cards at this time. So instigating this kind of unrest, like, obviously Abraham Accords is the worst possible thing that could happen to them. And October 7th was a direct result of Saudi Arabia being very, very close to joining the Abraham Accords. And Iran obviously scuttled that with the Hamas attack against Israel. So we'll see what happens. But, man, these people have been in war for so long and there's just so much suffering. But we need to keep a very clear eyed view into, like, what is in our US Interests, where do our interests lie? What do we want to influence and how while understanding that at a base level it's not going to involve troops on the ground, like that's off the table, that's just not. That's not real. What I do think is possible, though is, you know, we have authorities for other things. You know, we have surrogates, we have partner units, like, maybe not in this case, but maybe in the future in other instances. That's something that our government could think about, but I don't really see that playing out right now.

[Sean]

Well, I hope you're right. But, Simone, we're wrapping up the interview. I know you got a flight to catch, so I don't want to keep you too long. So one last question.

[Simone Ledeen]

Yes?

[Sean]

There's three people you could see on this show. Who would they be?

[Simone Ledeen]

Great question. I need to think about that. I don't have an immediate answer. Do you need one right now?

[Sean]

Rattle one off.

[Simone Ledeen]

I really. I'm sorry, I'm drawing a blank. All right, I apologize. I left it all on the field. Sean.

[Sean]

That was the toughest question of the interview. Well, Simone, I. I just really appreciate you coming here and I loved chatting with you and getting to know you and going down all those different rabbit holes and.

[Simone Ledeen]

Thank you.

[Sean]

I don't think you give yourself enough credit, but very impressive career.

[Simone Ledeen]

I want to be careful because you and I both know that community and, you know, God forbid, I would never want to take any like, they did the real work. You know what I mean? I think it's important to acknowledge that. But thank you very much.

[Sean]

Thank you.

[Simone Ledeen]

This has been fun.

[Sean]

All right. Cheers.

[Simone Ledeen]

Yeah, cheers. Jim Rome takes on sports. Why?

[Sean]

Because you're not playing me with rapid fire takes and a lot to get to, and I'm not sure you're gonna like all of it. Honestly, I don't even care if you like all of it or not. I have a job to do. Scorching debates on any given week. You have lots to beef about. Take advantage of it. Get up in here. He's the spitfire of sports. Smack. She's not my fault. We will get to all of that. The Jim Rome show podcast. Get up in here and we'll beef later on. What's your beef? Follow and listen on your favorite platform. You've been warned.