How Trump Broke the ODNI

Summary

SpyTalk Podcast: "How Trump Broke the ODNI"

Episode Summary – June 12, 2026

Host(s): Jeff Stein, Michael Isikoff, Karen Greenberg
Featured Guest: David Kanan, former CIA analyst and Red Cell founding member

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EPISODE OVERVIEW

This episode of the SpyTalk podcast dives into the recent upheavals in U.S. intelligence leadership under a second Trump administration. The main theme centers on how President Trump's controversial appointments and management style have "broken" the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) and, more broadly, destabilized the intelligence community (IC). The show scrutinizes the implications of Trump’s moves for U.S. national security, civil liberties, and alliances, and features an in-depth interview with David Kanan, a thirty-one-year CIA veteran and member of the CIA’s “Red Cell” analytical unit.

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KEY DISCUSSION POINTS & INSIGHTS

1. Leadership Chaos at the ODNI (01:34–10:50)

• The Appointment Shuffle

  • Trump’s initial appointee, Bill Pulte—lacking security experience and clearance—was staunchly opposed by Congress, especially during a period of international tension.
  • Michael Isikoff highlights astonishment at appointing someone who, "never even had a classified security clearance. It would have to be given to him by executive order by the President. And, you know, that totally defies what the law says…" (03:02)
  • After pushback, Trump nominates Jay Clayton, previously SEC chair and U.S. Attorney, causing concerns over his limited intelligence background, though he has managed terror prosecutions.

• Section 702 Expiry Risk

  • Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act, vital for electronic surveillance on foreign threats, is at risk of expiring during a period of heightened threats (including Iranian aggression and public events like the FIFA World Cup).
  • Debate over the warrant requirement for searching data collected on Americans and longstanding civil liberties concerns.
  • Karen Greenberg frames the conflict: "It's the old liberty versus security argument that we've been living with particularly since after 9/11." (07:32)
  • Panel expresses astonishment at Congress's willingness to let Section 702 lapse at such a precarious time.

2. Israeli Eavesdropping and Diplomatic Fallout (10:50–14:29)

• NYT Report on Israeli Collection

  • Discussion of allegations that Israeli signals intelligence (SIGINT) picked up on Trump admin Iran discussions, sparking outcry.
  • The hosts note this kind of incidental collection is standard in international intelligence circles.
  • Michael Isikoff: "Does anybody remember the Snowden revelations where we were eavesdropping on Angela Merkel's phone calls?" (12:10)
  • The leak is interpreted as a deliberate political embarrassment for the Israelis, tied to blame-shifting by Trump.

• U.S.–Kurdish Complications

  • Additional finger-pointing by Trump, now targeting Kurdish allies over operational failures.
  • Hosts underscore the historical tragedy of Kurdish alliances.

3. CIA Security Failures: The David Rush Scandal (14:36–19:41)

• Epic Security Breakdown
  • CIA’s employment of David Rush, a man who fabricated his résumé and experience, passed polygraphs, and stole $40 million in assets.
  • Michael Isikoff: "I've applied for newspaper jobs where they check your resume. This is the friggin CIA and nobody checks…?" (18:39)
  • Panel speculates whether Rush had inside help, citing the stringent clearance process typically required.

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FEATURED INTERVIEW: DAVID KANAN (22:20–61:39)

Career & Red Cell Experience

• Kanan reflects on his 31 years at the CIA, mainly as a Red Cell founder, tasked to challenge agency orthodoxy.
• On the Red Cell’s mission: "Our writ… was that we did not have to use evidence, but we couldn't go against the evidence that existed… We were told our writ at the time was… to get different ideas on the table." (43:28)

Notable Red Cell Insights

• The Red Cell was established after 9/11 to foster alternative views. While it provided critical, dissenting analysis, it could not stop the Iraq WMD intelligence failure.
• There was active internal debate on challenging the WMD case, but: "It was very clear that the Bush administration was going to go to war… and they didn't want to piss him off by sending something saying that." (46:12)
• Some Red Cell warnings reached policymakers, but operational impact was uneven: “Every now and then we had our little victories… At one point, President Bush came back… ‘I really don’t like what you’re writing, but keep doing it.’” (50:39)

Inside the Current IC: The “Regime” Problem

• Trump’s Impact

  • Kanan refers to the current U.S. government as a "regime," emphasizing its lack of policy continuity, focus on loyalty, and punitive management style.
  • “It’s not an administration. They’re not administering anything. All they’re doing is tearing apart the government… This is led by an autocrat who points people that he considers loyal.” (26:43)

• National Security Breakdown

  • The unpredictability of Trump’s leadership—often signaled via social media—makes it nearly impossible for the intelligence community to understand or meet shifting priorities.
  • “The regime seems only to care about punishing people who they don’t like… If that’s the priority, it’s no less easy for an intelligence officer… than for anybody in any part of the government right now.” (25:32)

• Vulnerability and Alliances

  • The Trump approach is described as uniquely devastating to alliances: "It’s not clear we’ve got an alliance structure anymore… We need partnerships more than ever. And by dealing in an unstable situation… we are now in a bad corner.” (27:56)

• FISA 702 Perspective

  • Kanan, a pro-FISA advocate, nonetheless supports withholding its reauthorization while "hatchet men" occupy leadership: "Giving FISA its authority… right now in the context of that individual being brought in, I think is not a good idea." (30:10)
  • He makes explicit his concern that national security tools should not be extended under unqualified, partisan appointees.

Notable Quotes:

• “There was only one adult in the regime and that is Stephen Miller. And that’s not a praise… He’s a very negative, very dark figure…” (31:52, Kanan)
• “Right now, it’s impossible for intelligence to serve much of a purpose in terms of US national security. Because right now, nobody’s looking out for US national security, not in this regime.” (54:40, Kanan)

Ukraine, NATO, and Current Geopolitics (38:05–61:25)

• Kanan’s long view on NATO: once a skeptic of NATO expansion, now insists on further strengthening alliances, especially facing Russian aggression.
• On the Ukraine war: “If Ukrainians can come out with a successful situation in the field… that helps everybody. If they cannot, nothing else is as important.” (38:05)
• Warns that U.S. withdrawal leaves the onus on European allies and the Ukrainians, praising their resilience (Ukrainians now mass-producing military drones).

How Adversaries See America (40:21+)

• Candid recollections of engaging with Russian counterparts—long-term adversarial respect but now viewing America as weak and divided.
• Chinese observers perceive the U.S. as declining, emboldening Beijing.
• “China has reason to be proud of its rise… They can see us weakening. Certainly.” (41:00)

Albanian Protests & Balkan Stability (55:27–59:45)

• Kanan elucidates on unrest in Albania, tying protests to anti-corruption, environmental issues, and failed Trump-family business ventures.
• Warns of continued Balkan instability, undercurrents of patronage and “informality” overshadowing formal government shifts.

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MEMORABLE MOMENTS & QUOTES

• On the ODNI crisis:
  “This is more like a monarchical court… than anything we’ve seen… since we started.” – David Kanan (26:43)

• On FISA under current leadership:
  “Giving FISA its authority… right now in the context of that individual being brought in, I think is not a good idea.” – Kanan (30:10)

• On American alliances:
  “We are now in the bad corner, and it’s exactly the worst time to be throwing our allies out. We need partnerships more than ever.” – Kanan (27:56)

• On intelligence under Trump:
  “Right now, nobody’s looking out for US national security, not in this regime.” – Kanan (54:40)

• Red Cell and policy impact:
  “At one point, President Bush came back… ‘I really don’t like what you’re writing, but keep doing it.’” – Kanan (50:39)

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SIGNIFICANT TIMESTAMPS

• ODNI chaos and 702 debate: 01:34–10:50
• Israeli SIGINT report: 10:50–14:29
• CIA recruitment scandal: 14:36–19:41
• Introduction of guest David Kanan: 22:20
• Kanan on ‘the regime’ and IC dysfunction: 24:22–27:28
• NATO/Ukraine/EU security: 38:05–41:00, 59:45–61:25
• Red Cell origins and challenges: 43:08–54:40
• Albanian Balkans protests: 55:27–59:45

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EPISODE TAKEAWAYS

• The Trump administration’s interventions in the intelligence community—appointment of unvetted, loyalist leaders with minimal experience—are viewed by the panel and guest as deeply damaging to U.S. national security.
• Institutional safeguards like the Red Cell can only be as effective as leaders allow; groupthink and political pressure still impede dissent.
• America’s alliance network is fraying at a perilous time, with adversaries seeing a window of opportunity amidst U.S. instability.
• The debate over surveillance and civil liberties persists; national security tools risk misuse under partisan control.
• Despite internal turmoil, some parts of government and allies abroad (notably Ukraine) demonstrate resiliency and innovation.

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CONCLUSION

This episode offers a sobering, insider’s look into the Trump administration’s impact on the intelligence community, blending recent news with broader historical context and seasoned analysis. The conversation is candid, at times irreverent, and unflinching in its assessment of America’s precarious position—at home and abroad.

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Selected Quotes Attributed with Timestamps; all content paraphrased maintains the original speakers’ tone and candor.

Transcript

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MSW Media. SpyTalk, a podcast at the intersection of enthusiasm, intelligence, foreign policy, national security and military operations.

[Jeff Stein]

Hi there, I'm Jeff Stein.

[Michael Isikoff]

I'm Michael Isikoff.

[Karen Greenberg]

And I'm Taryn Greenbrook.

[Jeff Stein]

Lots going on in our part of the world as usual. But the national security question on everyone's mind today is can the New York Knicks bring us all together?

[Michael Isikoff]

You know, I gotta say, that was some amazing game Wednesday night.

[Karen Greenberg]

It was awesome.

[Jeff Stein]

Man, I'm not even a basketball fan

[Michael Isikoff]

after the first half when they were 20 points behind.

[Jeff Stein]

Anyway, maybe it's a question we should pose to our featured guest today, David Kanan, a 31 year CIA veteran who spent the last 10 years of his life as a member of a unit specifically set up to challenge the agency's intelligence assessments called the Red Cell. But first president appointments were announced. Appointment of Bill Pulte to run national intelligence already had a casualty. The House adjourned today without passing the surveillance electronic surveillance bill known as Section702. And now, just as we're coming on the air, we've learned that he's got another guy. Too late to save 702 for the moment, but he's got another guy. He's going to appoint his head of National Intelligence. What have you learned about that, Mike?

[Michael Isikoff]

Yeah, well, Jay Clayton is the U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York, which is perhaps the premier prosecutorial arm of the Justice Department. He was previously securities and Exchange Commission Chairman. In that sense, this is a little resurrection of the Bill Casey nomination to head the CIA. He had been an SEC chair and then became CIA Director under Ronald Reagan. Right.

[Jeff Stein]

Great mumbler.

[Michael Isikoff]

Look, clearly I think you said that 702 is now off the table. I think this is a desperate move to get 702 back on the table. And, and because, and I gotta say, look, PTI was such A terrible pick. Obviously. No national security experience, no deal. No, never even had a. A classified security clearance. It would have to given to him by executive order by the President. And, you know, that totally defies what the law says, which is the director of DNI should be, should have experience, should have substantial experience with national security

[Karen Greenberg]

or at least a security clearance or at least some sense of what's classified and what isn't.

[Michael Isikoff]

I guess Jay Clayton doesn't have, you know, a intelligence background himself, but I guess as a U.S. attorney, he did preside over terrorism prosecutions.

[Jeff Stein]

Trump gave the marching orders to Pulte. He was very outspoken about it. He said, I want him to root out election corruption. So on that train. Well, not only that, give the same orders to Clayton.

[Michael Isikoff]

Yeah, well, most likely. But not only that, remember that Tulsi Gabbard, when she announced her resignation, said she would be leaving at the end of this month, June. And then Axios reported that Pulte actually called her up earlier this week and said, hey, I'm going to be there next Friday, June 17th, so please clear out

[Jeff Stein]

in the office.

[Michael Isikoff]

Right, right, right. But I gotta say, I mean, at a time when the war in Iran appeared to be ramping up and reviving ceasefire right now, now, you know, small caveat, Trump on True Social just an hour or so ago said he's calling up further strikes because we've reached a deal. Of course, we've all heard that before. But, you know, all that said, this would seem to be the worst time to have FISA 702 expire. I mean, here we have, you know, we're in conflict with a adversarial regime that has shown no compunction about sending agents to the United States to do harm to. Sending agents to do harm, harm to American interests around the world. We've got the FIFA World cup about to start. I mean, I'm just flabbergasted that Congress will let 702 expire at this very moment. Maybe this Jay Clayton appointment will change things. But, Karen, I suspect you have a different perspective.

[Karen Greenberg]

Well, I think it tells you that there's such a thing as a bridge too far. And the idea of appointing a DNI who had no experience in any part of the national security framework, as we

[Michael Isikoff]

all know, and was just a political hatchet man and his main credential who

[Karen Greenberg]

was told that he was going to dismantle the intelligence community and get rid of people and sort of following along those lines and do Trump's bidding was. Was so unacceptable so that there is something that Congress will say no to. And this is actually one of the things I wouldn't have guessed they would have said no to in terms of priority. So I think it's and I also think it may open the door to further discussions about what needs to be done to reform 702, maybe not in this moment, but going forward, because I was surprised. Yeah.

[Carvana Commercial Voice]

Yeah.

[Michael Isikoff]

But what about the dangers of not having electronic eavesdropping on America's enemies at a time as fraught as this one?

[Jeff Stein]

Well, let me ask add to that my question, Karen, are there's talk about reforms to the 702. What are the reforms that people want?

[Karen Greenberg]

The biggest reform that people want is a warrant requirement for searching the data that's collected incidentally on American citizens, which is not the purpose of 702. And so the reform that's wanted and has been wanted for years is a warrant requirement to be able to search that to show that there is some fact underlying the reason that you want to look at this particular information on this particular American and under.

[Jeff Stein]

And what about the argument that various administrations, over time, it's very bipartisan legislation. The argument that that takes too long.

[Karen Greenberg]

It doesn't need to take too long and they know that, that there are. When you want to do something more quickly, you can do something more quickly. There are many ways that they can introduce that. And so that was just sort of a car it's seen by many in the civil liberties and constitutional law community by saying, look, this is just a way of that excuse is just a way of trying to make it seem like it'll make us less safe to have a warrant requirement. And it's the old liberty versus security argument that we've been living with particularly since after 9, 11. And there has to be a way to make this work, that you can have a law like this and still have protections for American citizens and the kind of protections they're entitled to under the Constitution.

[Jeff Stein]

So, so it expires as we go on the air, so to speak. What if it expires?

[Karen Greenberg]

Well, I think, I think we'll see if it respond if it expires. I think that, that the appointment, I know it's Friday, but there is this last minute appointment of naming, of nomination of Clayton to be the actual DNI to get confirmed and we'll see what happens in the next, in the next hour.

[Michael Isikoff]

And just a couple of points just to clarify. Trump is nominating. That's what I meant to be a full, you know, to be the actual, to be the full time. Dni Pulte was not nominated. He was just named acting director. It's still a little unclear because obviously it's going to take some time. I think Congress is going out of session for two weeks. Right. The summer vacation or whatever. So it's not going to be an instant confirmation.

[Karen Greenberg]

And the question is, who's in charge between. Between now and then, who's in charge? And is there anybody capable running the show? And what authorities would he have if he stayed. Stayed there until the. So we don't know yet. We don't know the truth.

[Michael Isikoff]

But all that, all that said, I mean, the issues that you're raising, Karen, you know, warrant requirements, civil liberties, I get the point. But this, that has been the status quo now for years. Like what, close to 20? I think that there's been the current FISA with the database that does include incidental collection on some Americans and access is available for law enforcement when it requests it. That's the status quo. It's been talked about at this particular moment when we are in conflict with a regime that, as I said before, you know, has a track record of attacking Americans and plotting to assassinate American officials. Seems like the worst possible time to let this expire.

[Karen Greenberg]

Yeah, I'm not saying they should let it expire. What I'm saying is that I think maybe the door might have been open to really talking about 702 in ways we haven't talked about it before because they were willing to actually stop the. This authorization and extension because of this. And that, to me, is a really interesting moment that it could get to that point.

[Jeff Stein]

Okay, well, to be continued. But speaking of electronic intelligence, New York Times dropped an explosive story last week saying that Israeli intelligence was targeting US Communications, eavesdropping on Trump's Iran war talks, envoy Steve Witkoff and so on. There's always, this is always an incendiary topic and a strong pushback from the Israelis. Say we do not target U.S. officials, period. Some of my sources are saying that this was incidental collection. Speaking of incidental collection, that Israeli unit 8200 was, was eavesdropping on Pakistani communications and Iranian communications, during which they heard Steve Witkoff and company talking. And so they picked up the intelligence that way. And the New York Times story went out of the way to also make a point that Witkoff and company constantly just used their personal cell phones. And so, you know, that's the ether.

[Michael Isikoff]

Come on. All I can think of is the line from Casablanca. Shocked.

[Jeff Stein]

Shocked.

[David Kanan]

I'm shocked.

[Michael Isikoff]

Gambling is going on in this casino. Look, does anybody remember the Snowden revelations where we were eavesdropping on Angela Merkel's phone calls? That was us spying on one of our closest allies in Europe. So I think this is kind of standard par for the course for sophisticated intelligence agencies. They spy on everybody or eavesdrop on everybody they can and vacuum up as much info as they can.

[Karen Greenberg]

Okay, that's true. So that's the thing. So you're not really surprised, right, Jeff? You're not surprised by the story. But my question is, can the story have any impact, whether you expect such policy behavior or behavior or not? Can it have an impact on Israeli American relations?

[Jeff Stein]

Well, some people say, and not just to me, but it's been out there that this whole leak of a DIA report on Israeli spying was meant to embarrass the Israelis. At a time when Trump is trying to shift blame for the shortcomings of the war onto the Israelis. There's that fight is in the open. I mean, we have Trump, you know, his expletive latent telephone call with Bibi Netanyahu, all out in the open for people to, to talk about. So there's a lot of finger pointing going on. And today, even Trump was on Fox News, he was blaming the Kurds. You know, he said, the Kurds really let me down. I mean, there's gotta be some adults gonna come in and take charge.

[Michael Isikoff]

I thought the reason the Kurds didn't go in is because Erdogan in Turkey was like saying, no way. And that that's what curtailed the Kurd element, which was key to the Israeli schem. Better or worse? Most likely fanciful in any case, but the idea was have an armed Curtis force go in there and attack the regime. Regime.

[Jeff Stein]

Well, Trump said today, you know, we gave him arms. And then he just sort of mumbled on, you know, all those Kurds, you know, they really let me down. And sort of, he added sort of like Kurds. If you're listening, I won't forget. So, yeah, well, I think, I think

[Michael Isikoff]

the Kurds, let down by the American, American governments many times over the years.

[Jeff Stein]

Oh yeah, I love poor Kurds. Really, you gotta bleed for em a little bit. Anyway, finally, before we get on to David Canaan, there's that story about. Fascinating story about David Rush, the CIA guy who made up his entire educational and military background and yet got through all the security hoops and a polygraph to not only get employed by CIA, but rise to a very senior level at CIA during his 17 years there. And he Created a fake covert action program of sorts into which he somehow inveigled some people to give him $40 million worth of gold bars. I mean, I think, you know, there's, there's many shoes yet to drop in this story, including did he have inside help in getting the security clearance to start with? And did he have inside help in stealing all this money as the prosecutors say he did? Any thoughts on that?

[Michael Isikoff]

Yeah, well, I thought the piece you had in Spy Talk the other day about what a bullshit artist this guy was, going back to his days as a volunteer in the when Ashburn, Virginia Fire Department, in which he claimed to everybody he was a top gun pilot who had flown missions over Iraq and Afghanistan and even had to bail out at one point. Apparently total fiction. And you know, when you actually read the court filings in this case, which I did this morning, you know, the embellishments, embellishments, the fabrications of Rush are pretty astounding. In his applications to the various US government positions, including at the CIA, he lists himself as having a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics and Information Systems from Clemson University and a Master of Science too, in Computing Technology from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and an undated Master of Science in Computing Technology from the Naval Postgraduate School. He never attended Clemson.

[Jeff Stein]

He was a low level IT guy.

[Michael Isikoff]

Yeah, I mean, and he of course was never a pilot.

[Karen Greenberg]

What does this tell you? I mean, you know, okay, we have this one incident. Is there a fissure here?

[Jeff Stein]

How many others? Right?

[Karen Greenberg]

And so the question is, what's the fix here? I mean, yes, this story is mind boggling, but does it, does it suggest there are other stories like this and other ways that people are getting through? And who's doing the fact checking?

[Jeff Stein]

Yeah, the question is whether this is an institutional failing. Correct. Or whether he had help inside that he was an infiltrator from the very get go with a plan. I mean, he had to, first of all be a sociopath to pass all these tests. And you know, you can't be timid to try to pull something like this off. So some of my sources suggest he had inside help without any evidence, but saying, you know, I went through a top secret security clearance check many decades ago. Believe me, it's very thorough. I mean, they talk to your friends, your neighbors, they quizzed a shoe store owner on Cape Cod where I, who had fired me from my summer job and I got my files later, and he explained that he was no good with women's shoes. That's why.

[Michael Isikoff]

Anyway, look,

[Jeff Stein]

very thorough is the Point.

[Michael Isikoff]

You know, two huge questions that leap out when you look at the file on this guy. Number one is did anybody check his resume?

[Jeff Stein]

That's right.

[Karen Greenberg]

That's what I'm asking.

[Michael Isikoff]

I've applied for like newspaper jobs where they check your resume. This is the friggin CIA and nobody checks the D. Really go to these schools that. Was he really a pilot? And secondly, all those took the FBI.

[Jeff Stein]

It took the FBI two seconds.

[Michael Isikoff]

Yeah, yeah. All, all those gold bars and luxury watches and millions of dollars in cash. He only got them as recently as last. Starting last November through March of 2026. So this was in real time that he was collecting all this stuff. And of course, when they went to look at it at his secure office space at the CIA, it wasn't there. That's what led them to search the house where they discover, you know, all this stuff.

[Jeff Stein]

So where do you get gold bars?

[Michael Isikoff]

Yeah, yeah. And who at the CIA is like checking the expense account for this guy and, you know, asking any questions? What are these for exactly?

[Jeff Stein]

A lot of shoes to drop on yesterday anyway. But let's move on to our guest today. David Canaan spent 31 years at the CIA where among other things, he was a founding member of the Red Cell. As I hinted at before, a uniform to challenge the agency's intelligence analyses and assumptions and offer alternative worldviews to senior policymakers. He holds a PhD from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts. He had a finger in many of the world's crises during his career, particularly in Europe. He's involved with something called the Common Sense Coalition, which is an association of government officials and academics and experts and so on who are raising questions about and worried about current policies during in the Trump administration. Anyway, very impressive resume. You can find the rest of it at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University where he is an adjunct professor. Let's bring on David Cannon right now.

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[Jeff Stein]

David Cannon, welcome to Spy Talk. You've seen a lot in your 31 years at the CIA. I have to ask you about this of David Rush, the guy who allegedly squirreled away $40 million worth of gold bars in his basement cash, watches and so on. In your time at CIA, can you, did you ever hear of or could you imagine someone getting through all the security checks, the polygraph, et cetera, with a made up resume? Virtually everything in it was phony, including his claim that he was a top gun pilot in the Navy.

[David Kanan]

I saw things like this in part, but never like this. Never to the, to the scale. That this was also that he was working with somebody high up in the Pentagon in the regime group in the Pentagon is also a very worrying thing. No, this, this case is way out of bounds in any, well would be out of bounds in any other time but this one.

[Jeff Stein]

Could he get through all these security hoops without inside help?

[David Kanan]

I don't know. I, I don't, I don't know. But it is a remarkable case and terrible job on, on, on all parts.

[Jeff Stein]

Sure. Well, let's turn to the topic of the day or the week or the month. Iran. You spent your most of your career as an analyst at CIA, including leading a Red Cell which checked various administrations assessments on various topics. What can you imagine it's like inside the intelligence branch of CIA today with this on again, off again strategy of President Trump advising what he's going to do on social media like invading Carg Island. What do you make of that? Take us inside the building.

[David Kanan]

Yeah, it's been a while since I've been inside the building, I should say. I was never a leader, the leader of the Red Cell. I was a founding member of it. A founding member and remain so for many years. Intelligence is A service function. It only works when it works for policymakers who give it clear guidance for what priorities are. If we know in the intelligence world what those priorities are and what is demanded of us and how we can help them, we can do it, and we do. In this case, you've got a regime that changes its mind whenever the leader of the regime decides to, which is many times a day. It has to. I can only imagine it's extremely difficult just on the substantive end, leaving out what's really going on, which isn't substantive at all. But on the substantive end, very hard to know priorities when it's not clear the policymakers know their priorities. I other than pleasing the head of the regime, does it work?

[Jeff Stein]

Take us inside the room again. Does the president normally. Does a president say, I want an assessment of what would happen if we try to invade Carg Island? Is that the way it works?

[David Kanan]

That is one way it can work, yes. Each president's different. So if the president wants to work their way, sure. And he will get. The community is very well prepared to serve any president in any way they want to be served. All it needs to know is what does he want or what does she want? How can we serve them best? It's a service function. But now the regime seems only to care about punishing people who they don't like inside, not just intelligence, but throughout the government. When punishing people who rub you the wrong way or have had brush ups with you in the past, if that's the priority, it's no less easy for an intelligence officer, operations, or an analyst to work than it is for anybody in any part of the government right now. Everybody in the government's undergoing the same thing, and it's just awful.

[Michael Isikoff]

I should point out, David, that when you refer to the regime, you're actually talking about the American government, not the Iranian government.

[David Kanan]

That's right. And I am. I am.

[Michael Isikoff]

It's choice of words chosen for a reason there. You want to explain?

[David Kanan]

Sure. A couple things. First, it's not an administration. They're not administering anything. All they're doing is tearing apart the government. And second, this is not a bureaucracy that is working according to procedures led by officials appointed by the president to obey the law and to function the way that they're supposed to function, as an organization. Instead, this is led by an autocrat who points people that he considers loyal to him to serve his priorities whatever they happen to be on any particular day. In other words, it's more like a monarchical court. It's much More like that than it is anything we've seen in this country since we started. So, no, I choose the word regime on purpose.

[Michael Isikoff]

Now, you have participated in this new book, America Didn't Vote for this, which critiques the, as you put it, regime under Donald Trump. And you. You helped write the national security section of this book, which concludes in the introduction. Trump has made the United States and its allies uniquely vulnerable to their enemies. Explain what you mean by that.

[David Kanan]

It's a couple of different things. First of all, it's not clear we've got an alliance structure anymore. The weakening of the alliance makes all members of that alliance more vulnerable on their own. And as a group, it's not clear anymore that our allies can rely on us to be an ally. That's the first thing. The second thing is it's important, I think, to understand that we're in a period of unusual weakness. In the great power structure, the number is three, which is always two against one. George Orwell taught us that in 1984, last part of the Cold War was the United States and China against the Soviet Union. Now it's Russia and China against us. So we are now in the bad corner, and it's exactly the worst time to be throwing our allies out. We need partnerships more than ever. And by dealing in an unstable situation where our power, in my view, is relatively less than it was, and China certainly is relatively more, Russia's another case we could discuss. It's a very dangerous and unstable situation. We need our alliances, our allies. We are throwing them away. And I believe we're vulnerable on a number of fronts because of that.

[Michael Isikoff]

Now, on the subject of making America more vulnerable, I know this isn't what you wrote about, but as we speak here taping this on Thursday afternoon, the FISA 702 authority is now slated to expire at midnight Friday, I believe. And this is the tool that the intelligence community has used to listen in and decipher potential threats from America's enemies. There's a lot of reasons we can go into as to why Congress has at least so far refused to do this. But is that a concern as far as you see it, that will weaken us at a very critical time when we're in an overseas conflict with an Iranian regime that has shown a willingness to send people to the United States to do harm to American officials?

[David Kanan]

I'm going to answer that, but I need to put it in context. You mentioned the book Betrayed America. Didn't vote for this. You can find it on commonsensecoalition.net, it's a stand back assessment of all the damage the Trump regime is doing across the board. So when we talk about intelligence and we'll talk about fisa now, keep in mind that this is one small piece of a cascading bunch of damage being done by a regime that's really weakening us on all fronts. Now, fisa, I've always been very much in favor of fisa. It serves a real national security need. The problem is right now, this whole question is irrelevant because Trump has put a hatchet man at the DNI whose only job is to fire some employees and intimidate all the rest of them, just like throughout the rest of the government. In my view, giving FISA its authority, resuming its authority right now in the context of that individual being brought in, I think is not a good idea.

[Michael Isikoff]

So if you were in Congress, you would have voted to reject the reauthorization of the.

[David Kanan]

I would vote to reject it as long as Pulte is on the table, because I'm sorry, this is just not acceptable. He is a danger to the people who work for him. He's a danger to the national security because he knows nothing about it. And to renew these powers in that context, in my view, is not a good idea.

[Jeff Stein]

Do you have any guess about what John Ratcliffe might be saying about this to the President? He's a total. He's been a bootlicker in the past, not to put too fine a point on it, but he has. Do you think there's any adult in the room saying, you gotta stop this? Withdraw disappointment.

[David Kanan]

There was only one adult in the regime and that is Stephen Miller. And that's a very. That's not a praise. He is what he does. He's the adult and he's a very negative, very dark figure, really dark. All the others are not to be taken seriously. Radcliffe. Now, my understanding is, to be honest, is that Ratcliffe is actually working with the agent as head of the agency, better than a number of the other Trump appointees are. So I don't want to tar him with the same brush that I'm tiring. Pulte. What he is saying about all this, I don't know, but there's no sign that any of Trump's appointees are willing to say anything to him that would threaten their position in the court. So I don't know that he's saying anything.

[Michael Isikoff]

I should point out that as we are taping, we have new news on this front that Trump just announced that he's nominated Jay Clayton, the current U.S. attorney for the Southern District in New York to be the permanent Director of National Intelligence. So that seems to be a response and perhaps done in hopes of getting FISA authorized with this move.

[David Kanan]

It may be. Of course, it depends. Okay. There are a few details to wonder about, and it's first time hearing of this. Clayton, of course, will be vetted, and that's fine that he's the appointee. We'll see how it goes. But does it mean that Pulte is still going to function temporarily while this is going on? Doesn't mean that Pulte is being pulled back. If Pulte does come in, what is he going to be authorized to do by Trump? To me, all these things need to be answered. If it was me, I'd want all those questions answered before I decided about fisa.

[Jeff Stein]

Trump has said he wants him to dig into election corruption.

[David Kanan]

Yeah, that's right. And we so did it with Gabbard when she went down to Atlanta. So. So if all those things are off the table, if Mr. Clayton has now been nominated and Pulte's out, okay, that's something else. If, however, Pulte is still on the table, then for me, FISA should still be in question. But that's just me.

[Jeff Stein]

Karen, what are your thoughts about 702 now with this first chaos?

[Karen Greenberg]

First, my thoughts about 702. My thoughts about 702 is that I think probably the pushback probably succeeded in getting this new name put forward, but we'll just see how far that goes. I think that they were willing to take it to the brink, and that tells you a lot about the amount of pushback there is against Trump right now.

[David Kanan]

He may well get, may well get enough Republican votes now with this happening, just to get it through. That's possible.

[Karen Greenberg]

That's possible. Listen, I wanted to ask you a couple of things. I went back and looked at some of the interviews you did and some of the things you, you had written in the past. And I noticed that you were less concerned about some of the powers that this regime was putting into place months and months ago. And I'm just wondering was. So this is my first question, was there a turning point? Was there something that happened in particular that made you just say, this is just so toxic and so destructive? So that was my first question. And my second question, kind of in the same thing, is that with all of these dismissals and reorientation of priorities within, in the intelligence community, do you still think they have a red cell?

[David Kanan]

The second one, when I last. I knew they did. It was going. I hope it's still going. I don't know in what form it's still going. If it is, I don't know. I don't know that it is. I haven't been in the building for a while. I hope it is. We had a lot of fun, for one thing, but it was. It was. But intellectually, it was extremely. It was great. And we did. We were able to kick around a lot of ideas and suggest some alternatives. Some of them were not helpful. Some line were helpful. So I hope that that is still around. It's not a matter of a turning point with Trump. He was always damaging, but the question to me was, how much would the second Trump term look like the first one? In the first one, there were some adults in the room, at least at first. And I thought, for example, Rex Tillerson learned his. I mean, he didn't know much about national security, but I thought he did a credible job as Secretary of State in very difficult circumstances. Of course, it didn't last all that long. So in the first term, there were some adults other than Miller, who could be something of a break on that individual's influence. It became clear pretty quickly that that was not the case with the regime this time. So whereas before I thought the performance of the first Trump term in terms of social cohesion in the United States, the real issue for me is that he's tearing the country apart internally. That's really where, as a society, we're being torn to pieces. It started in the first term, but I thought it ranked somewhere down there with Andrew Johnson's ability after the Civil War to restore power to the white planter class. That was where things were then. Now it's much worse now. I think he's ripping us apart to the extent where we can barely function. And when we talked. Get back to Michael's question earlier about sort of getting to the damage that's being done, why a regime, this regime either doesn't understand the way the country works or doesn't care. And they're tearing apart the institutions and structures and these associations we used to have that Tocqueville wrote about and that's been written about more recently. He's tearing all the formal and informal associational aspects of American culture apart along with the institutions. And because we don't have a titular ethnic nationality that carries a state on its back, we don't have that. We have no safety net if our structures are torn apart. And that's where we're going As I

[Karen Greenberg]

see it, that all has to do with us internally. And I get it, that sort of pivots to where you are now. But you've also expressed some deep concerns about the international. Our relationships with the international world. And in talking about great powers and where we stand in terms of singularly by ourselves right now, I was curious to know how you thought about things you've written in the past, but bring us up to date on how you think right now about the. Particularly with Europe, Eastern Europe, that area of the world that you've dealt with about the issue of NATO and NATO expansion. And I'm just kind of curious where you stand on this Right. Right now.

[David Kanan]

There's an irony here because I was against enlarging when it happened. I was against it because of actually what happened. I thought we had a chance for a constructive relationship with Russia. And the way we enlarged NATO was to ensure that Russia would remain the chief adversary. That was a victory of Polish foreign policy. And I credit them. It was in their interest, given their history. But what we did then is set it up for when Putin came in. So I made a big mistake. That said, now that we are where we are, now that Putin has done what he has done, we need to strengthen the alliance as we have it and to at least associate Ukraine with it as soon as possible. The Ukraine war is everything right now. How that works out is everything in Europe. And frankly, the Biden administration did not support Ukraine as strongly as they should have, in my view. They helped helped Ukraine not lose, did not help them win. I'm not the only one with that view. Trump is trying to get them to lose. That's the difference. Because he just wants to get credit for whatever with his pal Putin. But Ukrainians are fighting brilliantly. The Europeans are now stepping up, and that's the good news. If Ukrainians can come out with a successful situation in the field, that leads to. Leads to an agreement that is better than the Minsk Agreement of 2014, which is a disaster, bad thing that enabled Russia to do what it's doing now. If Ukraine can come out with a positive result, that helps everybody. If they cannot, nothing else is as important.

[Jeff Stein]

I want to ask you about how the other side sees us, David, but we have to step away for just a minute. Okay, we're back. David, you spent three decades as an analyst. I was wondering if you ever met with your former adversaries counterparts in Moscow or Beijing, and what do you think they're saying right now to Xi Jinping and. And the Gremlin I mean, our. How do they see us? The way you're talking about it, Is this a very weakened state? But anyway, answer the first part first, if you can.

[David Kanan]

Actually, I'll answer, starting with the Russians, because I did have some meetings with the Russians in the 90s in Moscow, in here. Loved them. It was interesting. When I say loved it. It was the discussions that didn't love the people. They didn't love me. It doesn't matter. The point is that the discussions were very interesting. We had the same general universe of information, and it was interesting to see how they assessed it versus how we assessed it. I thought that was very useful, and I was sorry that those were cut off after a certain point. Now, as I say that there's a danger in those discussions because you can kind of get to know each other very well. Not a danger, but there's a piece of this. I knew very well some arms control analysts who saw Russians a lot more than I did, or Soviets more than I did. They got to know each other so well that they came to trust each other more than they trusted their own governments. And because they spoke the same language and because they shared bureaucratic problems, they shared various points of view about their masters, some of them continued to meet after the Soviet Union fell. There's a certain. You can get a certain professional respect just having those arrangements. And I gained a. I gained respect for my counterparts in Russia. I don't know what they thought of me and the others of us. So that was my experience regarding what the Chinese may be thinking. I have Chinese students in the class I teach. I've had them the last several years. I can tell you they're thinking the same thing that I mentioned to you. They see us weakening. They're here. They can see what's happening. China has reason to be proud of its rise, in a sense, in a way. They can feel about themselves something like we felt about ourselves at the turn of the 20th century. We were pretty full of ourselves. John Philip Souza's music reflected the way we felt about ourselves. There is some of that in China, and it's understandable they can see us weakening. Certainly. I believe the media greatly understated how poor a job Trump did in Beijing. Xi Jinping. Trump got the party and he said his happy talk. Xi Jinping started out with Taiwan, said that could be. That's the issue. And that became the issue. Trump, on the way home, says he's going to delay deciding whether to give weapons to Taiwan. Then he gets home and he warns Taiwan not to declare independence. What other message can the Chinese get? What message can they get other than the United States will not defend Taiwan? That's where all the signals Trump's been sending. Now, of course, this is Trump, and they have to know that maybe those won't hold, either through the administration or afterwards, the regime or afterwards. But I really do think Trump did a very poor job in Beijing. And right now, the Chinese really have the upper hand again, especially given what's going on in the Middle East.

[Michael Isikoff]

So we've mentioned a couple of times the Red Cell, which you helped found at the CIA. Can you flesh this out a little bit? When was it founded?

[Karen Greenberg]

Why?

[Michael Isikoff]

What did it do? And what were some of the issues that you took on as one of the leaders of said Red Cell?

[David Kanan]

Again, I was just a member of it. I was a founding member, but just a member of a group. We started on September 13, 2001, two days after 9, 11. I say I'm a founding member, but I couldn't get home until the 18th because I was in the. I was in Slovenia at the time. Got home, I was put on. I was at my desk. I used to get to work very early in the morning. I was called on my desk 15 minutes after I got in, and I was told, you're on the Red Cell. What is that? We found out George Tenet, who was the d, who at the time was Director of CIA and National Intelligence, he liked pitting analysts against each other. And that's not in a hostile way. It's not like Trump's doing. He liked having the intellectual exchange, not just among people who didn't agree with each other, but among people who didn't work on the same things. And I think he was absolutely right about that. When I was doing the Balkans, he brought somebody in to second guess us. Well, now I was brought in to second guess people who knew about Afghanistan, knew about terrorism. He got people together who'd been around the block a few times because he knew the analysts on the mainstream analyst wouldn't like us because we're coming in second guessing them. And so they didn't like us. Or some didn't. Some took to it pretty well. And we were told our writ at the time was that we did not have to use evidence, but we couldn't go against the evidence that existed. We did not have to be expert on things, and we had to check with mainstream analysts to make sure we got our facts right. Right. And we, of course, did that. But if we came to a conclusion, we would stay with that conclusion and the corporate analysts could not stop us from writing, which is not the way the intelligence system works. Corporate structure, you don't just publish what you want, you vet it. You clear with people and it has to be vetted. Gone up the line. This was meant to skip all that, just with an eye toward getting different ideas on the table. It started just as a couple talking points down to the President. He liked it, showed it to the other principals, they liked it. Became a one page document, then a two page document, then a three page document. We tried four pages, had no, nope, three's it. And that's how it became what it became.

[Michael Isikoff]

So obvious question here. This gets set up after 9, 11. But of course in the next two years the CIA had the greatest intelligence failure likely in its history with supplying the claims of dangerous weapons of mass destruction in Iraq which turned out not to exist. Did the Red Cell take that on? Did you challenge the conclusions that the CIA had provided the White House about wmd and I mean that would seem to have been front and center in what should have been the Red Cell's work.

[David Kanan]

We challenged it informally, formally, however, and this was the decision that was made and I was part of that decision. Up the line was decided that it was very clear that the Bush administration was going to go to war in Iran, in Iraq. There was no question about it. And they didn't want to piss him off by sending something saying that's ascribed

[Jeff Stein]

mostly to George Tenet. Excuse me, David.

[David Kanan]

No, no, I don't want to blame him on that. That was that.

[Commercial Voice]

Actually.

[Jeff Stein]

No, I'm just saying that generally that has been ascribed to George Tenet, not,

[David Kanan]

not a Red Cell, the slam dunk thing. That's what he said. We all there, there's plenty of blame or, or in retrospect analysis to go along. But I don't want to put all the blame on him.

[Jeff Stein]

No, no, no. I'm just asking you for clarifying.

[David Kanan]

There were those. There were those. There was a difference in our group. A couple of us really wanted to put this in print even though it would piss them off. Others thought it did not want to, not because they were afraid of the administration, but because we had a lot of other things we were working on and we wanted, and there are other things to focus. They felt we should focus on that because those would get the ears of the policymakers and this would not. You can judge that as you wish, but that's what happened.

[Michael Isikoff]

So who, who made the call? Let's not put this in writing and Was it that explicit? We don't want to piss them off because we know what they want to hear and this isn't what they want to hear.

[David Kanan]

It was. I'm not sure exactly where it was. It was not that far above my pay grade. It was not all the way at the top. And it was. And again, there were differences among the. Within the group, differences among people just above us. You have to keep in mind. You don't have to. I keep in mind that this was the worst performance I saw in my time at CIA. And worst. I mean, in terms of the hostility, the anger of analysts going at each other about whether there was a pro. A program, weapons of mass destruction program. Was Curveball a real analyst, a real source? Was it. Were there circular sources going on? There was a lot of fighting about that. And because the administration was relying, in this case, this was going to be the excuse to go to war, the presence of the weapons of mass destruction program was going to be the reason to go to war. So our judgment on that was central. And people really went at each other over this. It was a real mess.

[Michael Isikoff]

On some of these most problematic examples, you mentioned Curveball, who turned out to be a complete fabricator, and yet his claims were front and center. And Secretary of State Powell's speech to the United Nations.

[David Kanan]

Right.

[Michael Isikoff]

I mean, you were onto this in real time, before the invasion, before Powell's speech, and some of you were challenging the reliance on Curveball. Can we be that granular here? And we were.

[David Kanan]

We. There were those of us who were concerned that that on that. That we're relying on a single source, that there were those who tried to make it look like there were more sources, but it really always came back fact. It was circular reporting, in my view. That was not everybody's view. There were differences about that. This was not the first time that there have been those kinds of discussions about something like this. But it's the only time in my experience where the administration had their thumb on the scale, where they really had. It was very clear, A, they were going to go to war and B, the intelligence assessment was going to be the support for that war.

[Jeff Stein]

And the Red Cell was set up specifically to stop this locomotive, this massive decision which turned out to be a disaster for the United States, not to mention.

[Michael Isikoff]

Well, it was set up to challenge groupthink, which was the.

[David Kanan]

That's right. That's the whole point.

[Jeff Stein]

And it felt.

[David Kanan]

That's not the same thing. But Michael said is what it was set up to do, to challenge things. We never ran over any locomotives. We never stopped any locomotives. What we did was provide analysis of alternatives to the prevailing view for what they were worth. They went into the mix. No one ever said to us, this is the way the corporation, the corporate judgments are going, or this is the way the policymaking train is going and you are going to stop it. That was never the point. All we did was to provide alternatives to other points of view. That's it.

[Karen Greenberg]

But did you find. Did you find that the curveball aside, that often the points of view that you were presenting ended up affecting decisions and policy?

[David Kanan]

Every now and then we had our little victories. Every now and then we get something back. At one point, President Bush came back and says, I really. I really don't like what you're writing, but keep doing it. He was paying enough attention to it that he was taking it seriously enough that he wanted to keep getting it, and he deserves credit for that. There were times when we did have some impact on the policy making process in certain specific areas. I can think of one time when we had an impact that we did not want to have. Early on, we did not know this thing was going out electronically. At some point. I still don't know when, because we weren't told. We thought we were just sending pieces of paper down to the principals, the President and the Secretaries of state, all the principals. Right. At one point we get a message back telling us that Marines in a particular part of the world are making an operational preparation based on a report we sent out. We had to go out. I only learned this because the CIA rep in the field there, somebody I knew. So I saw her in the hall. He said, david, they love your stuff and the Marines are doing xyz. I said. I said to her, we made that up. It was just. It's just an alternative. This is not. No. This is not a formal corporate intelligence judgment. Some people in the field, when they started to get this electronically, didn't understand the difference. They didn't understand that this was not the same as regular intelligence analysis. And we had to get. We literally went out there electronic. We stopped something. We stopped some planning in its early stages, fortunately, based on something that we wrote. So we had an impact in that way, in a negative way.

[Jeff Stein]

Can you be any more specific about that, David?

[David Kanan]

No.

[Jeff Stein]

What was that incident?

[David Kanan]

No, no.

[Jeff Stein]

That you stopped.

[David Kanan]

Nope, nope, nope.

[Michael Isikoff]

All right, well, I got another one for you. You indicated before that you had some questions about expansion of NATO in the 90s when. After the fall of the Soviet Union. And yet that was American policy at the highest levels through, you know, Clinton, Bush, to pursue an expansion of NATO for Eastern European countries. Was that a matter that the Red Cell took on? And did it perhaps warn that there could be a potential blowback from the Russians over this?

[David Kanan]

There was no red cell in 1996. 97, 98. We only started in 2001, so we did. It was nothing like that. Post 2001, those of us who did feel that way, when I was working, we did feel that way again, informally. We would go up the line with the concerns. And yeah, I knew some people downstate in the Pentagon, and we give them a little call and just say. I might say, you know, you might want to think about this. But that's as far as any of that goes.

[Michael Isikoff]

I mean, can I just say just this last point on this, like, what's the use of the Red Cell if informally you're going to tube, you know, controversial positions that might upset the powers that be on Pennsylvania Avenue?

[David Kanan]

The Red Cell, like anything else in the intelligence community, is of use to policymakers if they want it to be and when they want it to be. It is abuse. Like everything else in the all other intelligence analysis, we're talking about the Red Cell. Cause I was on the Red Cell. Keep in mind the universe of intelligence analysis, of which the Red Cell's a part can be quite useful if intelligence, the intelligence community is clued in to what the policymakers want, and the policymakers are interested in what we have to say about it. When that happens, things work very well. It doesn't always lead to success, but it does mean that the system can work really quite well. Right now, we've got a regime that doesn't work well on any level, in any place. So right now, it's impossible for intelligence to serve much of a purpose in terms of US national security. Because right now, nobody's looking out for you as national security, not in this regime.

[Jeff Stein]

Bill Burns wrote in his memoir that not speaking up more strongly on Iraq was the greatest professional failure of his career.

[David Kanan]

I think, you know, I have the same, honestly, in terms of my own performance and things and the way things worked. I absolutely wish I had done things differently. Yes.

[Karen Greenberg]

Before we go, we were talking before we started the show about what's happening right now on the streets of Albania. And just as Eastern Europe is your bailiwick and you know so much, could you just explain to us what's happening and whether it matters and how the family of the White House is involved and what's happening?

[David Kanan]

Family of The White House is involved first in general for Eastern Europe. Ukraine's what matters. Everywhere from the Baltic to the Aegean. Ukraine's what matters. The Balkans as a region is a backwater until the day it's not. And even now, people continue to write about the run up to World War I and the Balkans, and they're trying to compare things to what's going on now so it can become important. Yes, the. Kushner's arrangements in Serbia have fallen apart. There was an effort to turn.

[Jeff Stein]

Let's just back up for a second and say what it is. Kushner and his wife want to develop an island into a big resort that's in Albania.

[David Kanan]

That's still something they're trying to do, but they're kind of big pushback for environmental reasons, political reasons. It's a mess for them, but that's not the first mess they've had in Serbia. Pushner had this project to turn the shell of the former General Staff headquarters in Belgrade into some kind of big development that was left in ruins on purpose as a monument to remind everybody of the NATO bombing campaign, which the Serbs hated, still hate. So that failed. Kushner had to back out. We will see how this one goes. The reason, in general, though, and it's still unsettled, there's no war, thank God. That's just fine. The internationals still have a great deal of influence, but now they're working across purposes south of the Sava river, that is to say, in Bosnia and then in Serbia, Albania, Kosovo, North Macedonia is what it's called now, Bulgaria, even Romania. Things really are not settled. And there are dangers that exist. There is a great deal of informality. The area is run by patronage bosses and patronage networks. They, in my view, are more important than the governments. Often they're the same as the governments or they overlap the governments.

[Michael Isikoff]

But what are the reasons for the protests in Albania? Can you explain that?

[David Kanan]

Some people who are protesting don't like Edirama, who is the Stroma, who's the president of Albania. His political opponents are part of the demonstrators. Some are people who actually have claim on the land that is being given to Kushner. They have claim going back to the 30s or before. Families thrown out either by the fascist government or King Zog's government. The fascist government, the Communists seized a lot of it right. Those families had real titles, and they're still trying to get their land back. That's another part of the demonstrations. Others are students and young people who have no jobs, have no future in the area. They see nothing but corruption. That's another part of the demonstrators. And there are those who are really concerned, believe it or not, with flamingos who might be white, would probably be wiped out if this thing is built. These protests are umbrella protests, as they are often in the region. A lot of different unhappy people with a lot of different reasons for being unhappy are unhappy with their government, in this case Albania.

[Jeff Stein]

Any threat to bring to the government, could these metastasize?

[David Kanan]

Rama seems pretty secure to me right now. The opposition politicians are just as crooked, and so there's really nothing in the political class that is much offered to anybody outside the patronage networks. In Serbia, Aleksandr Vucic for the first time, is vulnerable because of something involving the Chinese and. And a train station in Novi side where some people were killed because of shoddy workmanship and, let's just say, less than transparent contracting with the Chinese. So this has led to huge demonstrations, which he's mishandled, unusually for him.

[Jeff Stein]

And he's cozied up to Putin as well.

[David Kanan]

Vucic has kept everybody at arm's length. He's been very skillful in balancing his relationship with the Americans, especially with Trump, with the Europeans, with the Russians and with the Chinese. Yes, there is a relationship with Russia, but it can be often much overstated. Putin is sometimes happy with Vucic and sometimes not. Vucic refuses to go along with sanctions on Russia, but he's also arming Ukraine. So Vuchi is very skillful with this. The problem he's got now is that internally, for the first time, he's got a real problem.

[Jeff Stein]

Well, fine, let's. Let's swing back briefly before we go to Ukraine, which your passion is mine as well. Can Ukraine prevail, force Russia to peace talks without stronger US Support? Can the Europeans help him enough to fend off these attacks and again make Putin retreat?

[David Kanan]

We're going to find out because the Americans are out pretty much. The Europeans are stepping up, but the Ukrainians themselves are producing millions of drones. The revolution in military affairs that we used to talk about here, it's going on in Ukraine right now. And I saw recently Times had a report they're making 5,000 drones a month just for the intermediate range. Right? And they're the cutting edge, the tip of the spear. Call it what you want. Ukrainians have performed magnificently. Whether they can prevail is still in question, but the fact that it's in question more than four years after it started is really real praise for them. The Europeans should be using the Ukrainians as their teachers. We should too, but we're too arrogant to do it, I think. But the Europeans should be using Ukrainians and build a European military capability, learning from them, one that would be heavily automated, heavily droned, heavily roboticized, with actually not that many people necessary to run the thing. If they do that, then that's going to be a real revolution in military affairs. Something like that is coming somewhere. We are way behind with our dreadnought Navy and dreadnought Air Force, but that's

[Jeff Stein]

getting and who knows what's going to happen to Vladimir Putin and his future if he's had to retreat. Anyway, we have to leave it at that. David, thanks so much for spending the time with us on the Spy Talk podcast. We really appreciate it.

[David Kanan]

I appreciate you taking the time to have me on. I enjoyed the opportunity to meet you all very much.

[Jeff Stein]

And that's it for this week's Spy Talk. Be sure to check out our complete podcast archive on Apple or wherever you get your podcasts. And if you haven't already, do check out out the SpyTalk Co news site on Substack, where we offer a steady diet of scoops and original analyses from the intersection of intelligence, foreign policy and military operations. Just Google Spy Talk and you'll quickly find your way there. This edition of the Spy Talk Podcast was smoothly produced, as always by Kanai and expertly edited by Molly Hawkey for msworth. That's it. See you around. I'm Jeff Stein.

[Michael Isikoff]

I'm Michael Zigoff.

[Karen Greenberg]

I'm Karen Greenberg.

[Jeff Stein]

Thanks for listening.

[Narrator/Announcer]

For more original reporting and insights like this, subscribe to SpyTalk Co on substack and follow us on Twitter tokorespy. If you enjoyed our podcast, subscribe and leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Msw media.

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