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- [00:01]
Outdoorsy Host
I'll be honest, this summer is stacked between that one big international soccer tournament, America's 250th anniversary, and the Route 66 centennial, people are going to be traveling. What a lot of folks don't realize is that taking a trip in an RV is a whole heck of a lot more enjoyable than TSA lines or stodgy hotels. And you don't even have to own an RV or drive one to take part with Outdoorsy. You can rent an RV or camper almost anywhere in the country. You can drive it, tow it, or have it delivered and set up for you. And these aren't bare bones setups. Many come with full kitchens, bathrooms, showers and real beds. It's often more affordable than hotels, especially for families or groups. And everything includes insurance, 24, 7 support and roadside assistance. If you're thinking about a summer trip or just planning ahead for the rest of 2026, get 10% off when you book using promo code outdoorsy2026 head to outdoorsy.com that's outdoorsy.com promo code outdoorsy2026 summer
- [01:08]
Jeffrey Stern
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- [01:54]
Karen Greenberg
intelligence, foreign policy, national security and military operations.
- [02:02]
Jeff Stein
Hi there, I'm Jeff Stein.
- [02:03]
Karen Greenberg
And I'm Karen Greenberg.
- [02:06]
Jeff Stein
Welcome to another edition of Spy Talk. Mike Hiscough is off this week. Lots to talk about in our corner of the world. Again, the mess at the top of US Intelligence with this guy Bill Pulte taking over as acting director with orders to clean the place out. Maybe look at election irregularities per usual with the Trump theme and maybe, you know, just rifle through all the files for anything that Trump might find interesting. What do you think Karen?
- [02:43]
Karen Greenberg
I think it's dangerous. I think when you say what he might find interesting, how would he know what to find interesting? We don't really know what he knows about the intelligence community or not. So the idea that it would just be find this person, find this kind of information is a little different than looking at something comprehensively and looking for what the Director of National Intelligence should be looking for.
- [03:06]
Jeff Stein
Well, exactly. He has zero experience in national security, much less intelligence. He's never worn a military uniform for a day and he's fired 50 people so far, including William Ruger, the Deputy Director of National Intelligence for mission integration. I mean, this is why the dni, the ODNI was set up, was to integrate the missions of the 18 spy agencies. So I wonder who's advising Pulte? I mean, does he have some sidekick who's telling him who to fire or he just walk into the room and say, you know, u50 step forward.
- [03:53]
Karen Greenberg
Or did he inherit the guru from Tulsi Gabbard who was telling her what to do, as those 25,000 documents showed that were unearthed by the Washington Post writer John Swain. So I mean, it's the same thing. We don't know really what's going on there. We see parts of it being dismantled, some of the most important, you know, missions that the, that the DNI has had totally. And, and just so you know, this is something that constitutional scholars, civil liberties advocates and others warned about from the time ODNI was set up, which is how it could be abused if it was not maintained in a way that was transparent, not about the information it was collecting, but about what it was doing, who was giving the orders and how it was being done.
- [04:39]
Jeff Stein
Yeah, absolutely. To be clear, that thing, as many Democrats as well as Republicans have noted over the years, that thing, thing has swollen and swollen and swollen or swelled, swell, swelled into this sort of monstrous bureaucracy that was well beyond the size that was originated for it. So most everyone has agreed that some cuts were necessary over there, that it was duplicating agency missions and so on and become a self perpetuating bureaucracy. So there is that. But let's talk about Chelsea Gabbard's goodbye gifts to Trump. One of the most troubling is her finding or her report or whatever we want to call it, her term paper on Anthony Fauci denigrating him. What do you say about that?
- [05:35]
Karen Greenberg
I thought it was an interesting parting shot to release these never before seen, or so we have told never before seen documents on Fauci about how he influenced and manipulated, I think were the words used the COVID period. And I and the intelligence assessments community of COVID I'm not really sure where that is going, whether it's going to talk about things that were happening abroad or whether it's going to be talking about things are here. But it sort of came out of the blue and really did surprise me and yet it looked like at the end. Can I just try one more time to do, to show that I'm loyal, to show that I'm really doing what I need to be doing here for the President.
- [06:14]
Jeff Stein
Yeah. And analysts who've looked at this more closely say the documents that she put forward don't support. The points that she trying to make is that Fauci skewered intelligence reports, tried to absolve the Chinese for any responsibility, tried to cover up what was going on inside that Wuhan lab. The fact is, and I did look this up just before we came on the air, so to speak, is that the findings on the Wuhan lab and Covid are still undetermined. We don't know if it came from a wet market or, or was from some kind of illicit research in the lab. And the reason for that is the Chinese won't release documents themselves. They're the COVID up artists, not anyone in the U. S Government, much less Bill Anthony Fauci. The other thing, the other thing that she left on the doorstep was a kind of a phony, a very phony report about the US establishing biowarfare labs in Ukraine. And again people who looked at this much more closely, experts on essay, this is nothing more than a Russian propaganda line that they've put out for years now as part of their justification for invading Ukraine. So here she's a man servant of Putin in, in every way. And of course we know from long, from an in depth profile last week that, that in the Washington Post that she has been taking orders from her guru, her, her kind of rogue Hindu guru in Hawaii. All very, very disturbing.
- [08:12]
Karen Greenberg
Chris Butler of the Science of Identity Foundation.
- [08:16]
Jeff Stein
Yeah, you know we wrote about him a couple of years ago. We did a two part series on him and Tulsi Gabbard.
- [08:24]
Karen Greenberg
Well, you know, I think the, we could focus on either one of these things, whether it's Bill Pulte or Tulsi Gabbard or Chris Butler. But I think the ultimate takeaway is we have a position that's actually crucial to as we would say in the wake of 9, 11, connecting the dots and to as you referred to before, mission integration and sort of information integration.
- [08:46]
Jeff Stein
Yeah.
- [08:46]
Karen Greenberg
And now we're just seeing it's both, it's fragile, it's abused and we really wonder if the kinds of administrative efforts that are being made are enhancing our national Security or not?
- [08:59]
Jeff Stein
Well, it's kind of doubtful at this point because we have a guy who doesn't know what he's doing over at DNI now in Billboard. He has no idea. He doesn't have the slightest connection to or understanding of US Intelligence, we may presume, because he's never worked in that field whatsoever. On a brighter note, in an odd way, we've learned that US Intelligence function pretty well in regard to attacking Iran. They warn the president again and again, as have many previous intelligence leaders here, that Iran would almost certainly respond by blocking the Strait of Hormuz and that they had missile and drone capabilities that could inflict some pretty devastating damage on the Gulf region. So he was warned by US Intelligence, even by a guy, you know, John Ratcliffe was one of his acolytes running the CIA. Apparently, the CIA can function even with the kind of, not to put you kind of term on it, but a bootlegger running CIA, that was his experience when he was at the odni. Radcliffe just did favors for Trump on the Russia investigation stuff. So it shows that our institutions can function even with these miscreants at the top of them. So I suppose that's somewhat good news. So what else is on your mind, Karen?
- [10:34]
Karen Greenberg
Well, speaking of security or the lack thereof, we heard reports this week that the first that the allocation for the East Wing Ballroom that Trump has been building for the past however many months is going to be paid, unlike what he originally said, but with taxpayer money. But interestingly enough, that it now seems to be money that is coming in part from the budget for the Secret Service, which was supposed to be for training and everything affiliated with training and administration of that ilk. And the question is, how do you balance the word security? What does it mean to reduce the funds for training and keeping intact the Secret Service because security is their primary goal, and to take that away in the name of security seems to me something that is really confounding in a way I can't figure out.
- [11:33]
Jeff Stein
It just seems like more crimey behavior from the president and his cronies. And remember, Trump, the reason that the Secret Service was given lots more money for training is because of the multiple assassination plots or attempts against President Trump. They need this money and God knows where it's being siphoned off to. I don't know. Maybe it's used part of us used to build a fence around the reflecting pool.
- [12:06]
Karen Greenberg
I wouldn't know.
- [12:08]
Jeff Stein
That's the latest outrage for those of us who have to live here in Washington. Anyway, let's get on to the business at hand today. Karen, you scored an interview with Jeffrey Stern, who is a very highly accomplished journalist. He's been writing everywhere for years. He's got a new book out or a new ish book called the Warhead the Quest to Build the Perfect Weapon in the Age of Modern Warfare. I unfortunately, was not able to participate in that interview. But tell us a little bit about Jeff Stern before we go on to your interview.
- [12:44]
Karen Greenberg
Well, I think what's really interesting, as you say, he's an award winning author, journalist, he's written for the New York Times Magazine, the Atlantic, Vanity Fair. This is his fifth book. His interests are wide ranging. But this book in particular is really interesting from the point of view that it is. It's called Warhead and it's really about war and about, you know, balancing the equities in war and how we understand the intelligence community, the technological community and takes us all the way from Vietnam all the way up to a 2017 terrorist attack. So it's really quite a broad swath. And he does it in an unusually
- [13:23]
Jeff Stein
unique way by focusing novelistic form, I must say.
- [13:27]
Karen Greenberg
I mean, you're sitting on the edge of your seat in certain, certain parts of it. So I'm really looking forward to this interview.
- [13:33]
Jeff Stein
Right, right. And me too. He starts right in the cockpit with Joseph P. Kennedy, the older brother of John F. Kennedy, who died on a top secret bombing mission en route to Germany. So anyway, I'm really looking forward to your interview and. Well, let's, let's get right to it.
- [13:56]
Outdoorsy Host
Foreign I'll be honest, this summer is stacked between that one big international soccer tournament, America's 250th anniversary, and the Route 66 centennial people are going to be traveling. What a lot of folks don't realize is that taking a trip in an RV is a whole heck of a lot more enjoyable than TSA lines or stodgy hotels. And you don't even have to own an RV or drive one to take part with. Outdoorsy, you can rent an RV or camper almost anywhere in the country. You can drive it, tow it, or have it delivered and set up for you. And these aren't bare bones setups. Many come with full kitchens, bathrooms, showers and real beds. It's often more affordable than hotels, especially for families or groups. And everything includes insurance, 24, 7 support and roadside assistance. If you're thinking about a summer trip or just planning ahead for the rest of 2026, get 10% off when you book using promo code. Outdoorsy2026 Head to outdoorsy.com that's outdoorsy.com promo code Outdoorsy2026
- [15:09]
Jeff Stein
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- [15:15]
Outdoorsy Host
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- [15:20]
Jeff Stein
Our best lineup is here at Lowe's. Lowe's we help you save valid through
- [15:27]
Jeffrey Stern
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- [15:29]
Jeff Stein
See Lowes.com for more details.
- [15:32]
Karen Greenberg
Visit your nearby Lowe's Grainger knows When you're a procurement manager for an office park, you're not managing one building, you're managing all of them. And to stay ahead, you need to see through walls and around corners. Lights about to fail. Filters ready to clog H Vac on its last leg. If you wait until something breaks, you're already behind. Count on Grainger for quality products, easy reordering and 247 support. Call 1-800-GRAINGER click grainger.com or just stop by Grainger for the ones who get it. Jeffrey Stern, welcome to our podcast Spy Talk. It's so nice to have you here and to talk about your new book, the Warhead. I just have to tell you, this book pretends to be about one thing, but is actually about many things. And you cover a tremendous amount of territory, both time wise, personality wise, and issue wise. So I wanted to get started because I have a lot of questions that I think our listeners will really like to the first thing I really want to talk about is the central character of the book, which is not a human, which is Paveway. And so just without getting too technologically specific, tell us what Paveway, which has evolved over the decades, what it actually is.
- [17:02]
Jeffrey Stern
Yeah, well, thank you for that, for that introduction. So Paveway is arguably the first smart bomb, at least the first kind of widely effective, useful smart bomb or precision guided bomb. It was a, it was a laser guided bomb. It came online for the first time in Vietnam. And there of course, had been lots of attempts before that to essentially build a bomb, a weapon that could steer itself, but for the most part they were too complicated or too expensive or just didn't work that well. And this was really the first one that was extremely effective, relatively easy to use, and sort of revolutionized air power because for the first time you could reliably hit a precise target from relatively far away. And that began to eventually sort of shape war planners to its will.
- [18:00]
Karen Greenberg
Right. So when you say it was a smart bomb, one of the things that you point out in the book, without saying it in exactly these words, because you're kind, is that a smart bomb, in part, relies upon smart people to be able to know where to direct it, when to use it, how to use it. And one of the things that you talk about a lot is the way in which you really do have to have a degree of depth in the skills that you have that understands what can detect a smart bomb, what can dislodge a smart bomb from its purpose, et cetera. So in terms of the biggest failure that you have seen that you write about in the book, in terms of who was not smart enough to use a smart bomb in the way they intended, is there an incident that comes to mind?
- [18:52]
Jeffrey Stern
Well, a lot come to mind, I think. I think perhaps the most spectacular example is the bombing of a bunker during Desert Storm. And it has echoes to at least one incident in almost every conflict, probably most recently opening days of Operation Epic Fury, when we very precisely hit what turned out to be a girls elementary
- [19:19]
Karen Greenberg
school, which is what it made me think of right away. I mean, when I was reading this and the disaster you're about to tell us about, it was just such a, such a predecessor to it. It was amazing. Anyway, go ahead, tell us what happened.
- [19:33]
Jeffrey Stern
So this is, I mean, arguably this is an example of the quote unquote, smartest weapon, the most precise weapon is at best only as precise as the intelligence on the ground. And arguably, you know, Iraq in the 90s and, and during Shock and Awe, it is, there is a direct line between that and, you know, Iran now in that there wasn't a lot of human intel on the ground. We didn't, we didn't have a lot of intelligence. And what, what ended up happening is. And one of the things I think is interesting here is this was a direct, a direct lesson that was applied from Vietnam where the idea of incrementalism and, you know, the idea that we, we have to have really restrictive rules of engagement, we have to go lightly, we can't hit too many things that, that, at least in this telling, prolonged the war and ultimately led to more servicemen and women and more civilians getting hurt. And that when we come to Desert Storm, some of the war planners were really deliberate about trying to be overwhelming, precise, not, you know, not fall victim to half measures and try to, you know, win the war really quickly. And one of the, one of the ways that manifested was we need to hit regime intelligence and military targets, but we also need to make sure they can't retrench so we need to be able to hit secondary targets. Like where might the Mahabharata go if their primary headquarters are destroyed? And there is this network of bunkers around Baghdad. And one of them in a neighborhood called Ameria, which was called Public Shelter 25, which was.
- [21:05]
Karen Greenberg
And what year are we talking? Just remind our, our listeners.
- [21:08]
Jeffrey Stern
This is, I think, February of 91.
- [21:10]
Karen Greenberg
Yes.
- [21:11]
Jeffrey Stern
And so, you know, the opening of the war had gone pretty well. The, the war planners began in the air ops center, began looking at these secondary targets to make sure that the, you know, the military and intelligence apparatus couldn't retrench. And this was a shelter that was in a neighborhood that admittedly was largely populated by, by Ba' Athist functionaries. It was a, you know, it was a relative, it was like a middle upper class neighborhood relative to Iraq, Baghdad at the time. And so there were reasons why the thinking was this is this would be a place where the, where the intelligence service or military advisors might, might hold up. And, you know, there was some sort of circumstantial evidence. There was camouflage on the roof, but there was camouflage everywhere there. But essentially what happened was they, they used a relatively new version of the paveway, the bunker buster, the first bunker buster bomb, which was a paveway, and destroyed this bunker. And it turned out almost 500 civilians were staying in the bunker and a lot of kids. And it was just a sort of horrendous, you know, essentially mass casualty event where not only were a lot of women and children killed, but a lot of people had, had left the shelter to make more room for children. So there were a lot of families that, you know, went home to sort of risk the, to sort of risk what the Americans would do. And then they bombed the shelter that was full of children.
- [22:40]
Karen Greenberg
Yeah. And one of the things you point out is that it wasn't when you talk about the intelligence capacity, what the US Intelligence services could glean about just who was in this, in this building, in this structure, and thinking that it was actually Saddam and his security services. Right. Is that who was in there or not himself?
- [23:01]
Jeffrey Stern
But yeah, the security services.
- [23:02]
Karen Greenberg
Right, the security services apparatus. And so then, but then you start to talk about just how savvy and unexpectedly duplicitous the Iraqi intelligence services were.
- [23:21]
Jeffrey Stern
Right.
- [23:22]
Karen Greenberg
Isn't that one of the points that you try to make in that, that the United States underestimated just how much subterfuge and deception would be going on on the other side of this? Is that, is that a correct.
- [23:34]
Jeffrey Stern
Yeah, I think that Is. Yeah, so. And I was actually thinking about this. I was listening to your episode on Curveball, and this is obviously a different Iraq war and not exactly the same. You know, it's not a. Not a fabricator for the same reason. But essentially, a few months into the war, Saddam's senior advisors realized that, you know, the. The only thing going in their favor was. Or I should say the only thing that had the potential to go in their favor was, you know, as the US Was showing such dominance and the population was sort of at risk of just totally fleeing from any loyalty to. To the Baathist regiment, was civilian casualties. Was that. You know, if we can make it seem like the Americans are causing a lot of civilian casualties, that works in our favor. And so there were. There was a circular. There was. There were sources that were submitting intelligence that made it to Langley that seemed to back up that some of these shelters were, in fact, you know, military regime targets.
- [24:38]
Karen Greenberg
Wow. One of the other things that you're writing about in this book is the evolution, as I said in the beginning, the evolution not just of Paveway and of these bomb delivery systems, but also the evolution of the idea of war. And repeatedly in this book, you come back to this idea of having war without going to war. And I'd like you to expand a little bit on this, because I think it's one of the fundamental takeaways from the book. What does it mean to go to war without having to go to war? And which presidents saw this as why they were attracted to Paveway in the first place?
- [25:14]
Jeffrey Stern
Yeah, it's a really good question. I'm glad. And I'm glad you picked up on that. I mean, I think it's sort of a natural impulse that, you know, I would like to dispatch of all the bad guys without having to deal with the political fallout, getting Congress, getting allies, without putting, you know, our own young men and women in harm's way. So both for practical reasons and political reasons, it's really alluring. They're sort of an intoxicating idea that you could push a button, dispatch bad guys, spare the civilians, and spare yourself the cost, both the literal financial cost and the. Potentially the political cost, the human cost. And I think. I mean, arguably this has always been the case since we were using trebuchets or whatever and trying to throw things over the castle walls instead of going up there and risking ourselves. But I think that it. It. I think that the push really accelerated in the. In the height of the Cold War, where, you know, we have Two nuclear poles. There is a escalatory risk, and everybody knows that as much as we'd like to, you know, for example, defeat the Soviet Union, if we confront them too directly, it risks escalating and, you know, nuclear Armageddon. So we have to find ways to fight without really fighting. And there's a variety of. I mean, there's terrorism, there's, you know, irregular, there's. There's supporting proxy wars, but there's also using precision weapons that can be deployed with relatively little hardware. You know, you no longer need to dispatch, you know, three battalions to. And two carrier strike groups or whatever to. In order to hit a target within a foreign country. So we can begin to. We can begin to engage targets in other countries and do it very precisely and with less risk. Less risk. You know, for example, that this weapon arguably was invented as much to solve a political problem as a tactical or strategic one, because the push to invent it during Vietnam was largely because there were restrictive rules of engagement that said you can't hit MIGs when they're on the ground because there might be Russian or Chinese advisors nearby, and you can't hit the surface to air missile sites because there might be Russian or Chinese advisors nearby. And it put American airmen in harm's way because they didn't have a weapon to engage. They had to get really low. They had to. And those things, MIGs, surface air missiles or whatever were terrorizing them in the air. So we end up developing this weapon that allows us to, you know, stay really high and still engage those precise targets on the ground, and then we begin finding more ways to use it.
- [27:49]
Karen Greenberg
So not just getting around the rules of war and the rules of engagement, but also getting if in this kind of weaponry, what does the American public know about what's being done in its name? And. And do you want to talk about that a little bit?
- [28:04]
Jeffrey Stern
Yeah, I think that's a real. It's like, really salient point, especially now. I think this really started with Reagan after the Lebel bombing in Berlin in the 80s when he launched this relatively large air raid on Libya. And because of Paveway and other weapons that did sort of evolve from the Paveway revolution, was able to carry out this strike very far away with. It wasn't just that he didn't need congressional approval, practically. Didn't need. I mean, legally, I would ask you that question, but practically he didn't need congressional approval.
- [28:44]
Karen Greenberg
Well, legally, that's one of the reasons I brought it up is because of the War Powers act and can you go to war without telling Congress, which he did. And it's so interesting to see this in the past when it's so much on our plate, the present. But yes.
- [28:59]
Jeffrey Stern
Yeah, yeah. So this was, this was the first quote, unquote, preemptive strike. And it came out of national security decision directive 138, which essentially set the groundwork for being able to engage a target in a country with which you're not at war if it has carried out or is threatening to carry out, you know, acts of terrorism. But because of this capability, because of that, but also largely because of this practical capability with Paveway, with long range aircraft and with other guided weapons, he carried out this attack. It's not even that he didn't let any allies know except for the UK because some of the planes took off from, from the uk. No other allies, no. No one in Congress. And even the majority of White House staff and even National Security staff didn't know it was happening until the planes were already on the way back. And I think the ability to, so again, I keep talking about the practical, but you know, a few decades before that, aside from the political question, it just wouldn't have practically been possible. You would have had to put so many troops, so much hardware in order to engage any kind of target. You, you, there wouldn't be an argument available. You weren't at war with a country and you couldn't do that in secret. Now we have this capability. It's, it's beginning to argue for its own use. And every president since then has, has used that to some extent. And I think that, I think that right now, you know, the, the, the beginning of the second Trump administration is, is the, you know, is the sort of caricature of what this means where, oh, we have this ability, we can do it, we can do it almost unilaterally. It's, it's war without war. It's magic. You know, we won't hurt any civilians, we won't put any American troops in harm's way, we'll go into Iran, we'll get rid of the irgc, whatever, and we'll be back, you know, by breakfast.
- [30:52]
Karen Greenberg
But you also point in the book, as we discussed, a bit about how important it is to have experts in charge and experts who know what they're doing. And so, I mean, that's one, been one of the big concerns about national security in general warfare. Just who's, who's, do we have the right people calling the shots technically as well as strategically? And so do you think so? So I'm just putting that out there. Do you think that that's a concern?
- [31:20]
Jeffrey Stern
Yeah, and I think there's a tension here. I remember a general saying something one time and the, you know, you don't want to be an 8,000 mile screwdriver. I think was the idea of like, we should devolve more authority into the people who are on the front lines. And yet part of the thing that, that this capability allows in a very technical sense is the thing dynamic targeting, which means that the, especially the modern Paveways are capable of doing all sorts of different things. They can engage different targets, they can engage this kind of target, they can be bunker busters, they can, you know, they can explode above the target. And so what it means is you can now put people on station, they, you know, or that or, or, or just doing sort of recon, but if they see a target, they can very easily engage it. So in some sense that's probably good, but in some sense that means that you have younger and younger people with less and less authority and training making lethal decisions.
- [32:17]
Karen Greenberg
You know, one of the ways you organize this book or the way you organize this book is really quite unusual and I think works very well, which is to pick certain individuals and to just let them take you through different parts of the stories from different, different perspectives. And I wanted to talk about two of them in particular, just because the trajectory of their experience is so unexpected. And so I wanted to start with Luis Rueda and maybe you could just tell us a little bit about his story and why you focused on him. Although once you tell the story, you're like, of course he should focus on him. But anyway, how you figured out to focus on him and tell us about him.
- [32:57]
Jeffrey Stern
So there was a very technical reason to focus on him, which is that I thought the near miss of Saddam at the, in the opening days, actually the day before Shock and AW was supposed to start and there was a decapitation strike against Saddam with what was at that time the newest version of Paveway, which was both laser and GPS guided and a bunker buster. And it meant a lot for Raytheon, which had recently taken over Paveway. So there I wanted to be able to tell a story that would intersect with that.
- [33:30]
Karen Greenberg
And just so to make it clear, this is a different episode with Saddam Hussein. This is the, you know, war on terror moment rather than the earlier moment you talked about.
- [33:40]
Jeffrey Stern
Yeah, right then, I mean, part of, part of the way I thought to try to make this so, you know, it was engaging to read and interesting rather than just, rather than just sort of a military history, was to tell individual, kind of character driven stories about a conflict we all know about, but an angle that most of us don't know about. I, before looking into this, had no idea. I knew this was probably something that you were very aware of, but I had no idea that there was this strike that became very close to killing Saddam, which would have meant arguably avoiding the rest of shock and awe and everything that derives from that. I mean, it's interesting counterfactual. Arguably we wouldn't really have isis, we wouldn't have, you know, an ascendant Iran. And. But Roweda, I know you've talked to him, so he's just such an interesting, compelling person to talk to. But his story was almost, you know, Shakespearean from. So he was born in Cuba. He was I think 3 or 4 years old during the Bay of Pigs. And so has this, has this experience of sort of a, you know, not quite formed, you know, intelligent being yet who's sort of witnessing this bizarre change in, in, in his environment, in his. And of course the, the, the Bay of Pigs is arguably one of the biggest intelligence failures in the CIA's history. And it's partly because of that. So, so he goes, he ends up, you know, as a refugee in the U.S. his family, except for his mom, are all, you know, ardent kind of cold warriors, even more so that, you know, he's like these Americans, the family's like these Americans, they know that, you know, that communism is bad, but they have no idea what it's really like, you know, and we got to do our part. So everyone in the family joins the military. He want to do cool, he want to do James Bond stuff. He joins the CIA. He wants to do the denied access stuff because that seems the coolest. But he gets sent to the LA division, to Latin America division because he speaks Spanish and ends up doing seven tours in the field, which apparently is, is relatively unusual. Get sent back to headquarters and he's like dying because he's so bored. And he ends up as the, as a, essentially the second to John McLaughlin and you know, so he's on the seventh floor, which I guess should be kind of cool, but he's just so bored. He wants to be in the field. He's looking for something interesting to do. The Bush administration comes in and he starts seeing these memos for meetings on Persian Gulf affairs. And he has no idea what this means. And this is obviously well before 9, 11, but it's the, it's, it's Condoleezza Rice and sort of the neocon establishment within the Bush administration who are already trying to set the table for some kind of engagement in Iraq. He once, once he finds out what this is about, he volunteers because he figures, okay, if we're gonna, if we're doing something in Iraq, they're gonna need, you know, there's essentially no intelligence presence in, in Iraq at the time. So he figures, you know, that we're gonna need to build something. So long story slightly shorter. He ends up becoming the director of the Iraq Operations Group and finds that, that there's just, there's just nothing on the ground. 9, 11 happens, everything gets reoriented towards counter terror. I, I also found this interesting because I think the narrative that I and most of us have is, you know, some sort of cartoon version of like the CIA is pushing for Iraq and it's all the CIA's fault. And he talks about being in Langley and everything is going to counter terror. And when he tries to get resources for Iraq, everyone's like, what are you talking about? There's no way we're going to do anything with Iraq. We're doing all this. That's stupid. So he's sort of fighting, he's doing the sort of bureaucratic fight within Langley to try to get resources. He's trying to figure out how to stand up a covert action plan program in Iraq where there is nothing and ends up, he's, he's largely just in Langley, travels a little bit. But his team ends up coming across this group of Sufis in Iraq called the Kaznazanis. And it's this, you know, they, they're, they do this sort of self mutilation routine. They, they cut themselves. They, you know, it sort of brings them ecstasy and closer to God. And they have a sheik who had been at one time close to Saddam and was sort of part of Saddam's way of kind of pacifying the Kurdish areas because they, the Kazmazanis had a lot of influence in the Kurdish areas. There had been a big falling out and the Kazmazanis essentially fled. But they don't, they don't necessarily look different from, you know, any other sort of Sunni or bath or whatever. There's no like visual. The only thing that's really distinctive is the, is their religious practice. So a good number of them just kind of put their heads down, stopped practicing in public and continued to rise up in the military intelligence apparatus within Iraq. And long story just Slightly shorter. Again, Rueda's team is able to turn, turn them into assets and a lot of them are really close to Saddam and suddenly he has this essentially pre built network intelligence network within, relatively highly placed within the regime. But the moment they begin providing intelligence, Ruada begins to worry. First of all, he sees sort of cold feet within, within the Bush administration. He thinks they don't understand the risk that the assets are, are at. You know, in, in Ruida's telling, this is the most ruthlessly effective regime protection mechanism that ever existed. It makes Russia look like, you know, JV and I, I'm perhaps projecting a little bit, but he, but he talks in a way that he's been there, he's been, you know, the, the, the Cuban emigres who agreed with the CIA and, and agreed to go invade Cuba with the understanding that there was going to be a, you know, a couple of naval destroyers backing them up. But then once they started losing, never came and they were slaughtered and arrested on the beach, he sees that happening again. And so because Roeda, for all of his, you know, he's, he's profane, he talks fast, he's sort of, he's impolite but you can tell he's a, he has a, he's a really ethical, you know, kind of moral person. And so I end up in a position as I'm sort of hearing his story of like, man, I hope we invade. Man, I hope we invade Iraq. Like I'm worried about what's going to happen to these people. And so that's sort of what I'm trying to convey is like have the reader find themselves weirdly hoping that, you know, we invade Iraq so that our, our, these people who've done nothing except help us don't turn into the human emigres on the beach Bay of Pigs.
- [40:36]
Karen Greenberg
We have to take a break and then we will come back to hear more about all these interesting individuals that you've sort of unearthed for us. When you're a maintenance engineer in a
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Jeffrey Stern
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Karen Greenberg
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Jeffrey Stern
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- [41:43]
Jeffrey Stern
Yeah. So one of the, one of the Kazmozani assets that had originally seemed kind of worthless was an officer who was stationed at the Telecoms ministry in, in Baghdad. And at a certain point he noticed, so there was a board, there was essentially a switchboard with lights that represented different, different the telecom network in different parts of Baghdad. And he noticed that one of these lights kept switching to. I think it was from green to red. I think green is like the network is working well and red means it's offline. And at a certain point he put together that, that the region of the board that turned red, he always found out a day or two later that Saddam had been in that region and it turned out was likely happening was that when Saddam traveled they were jamming the telecoms signal in order to prevent someone close to him from informing on his position. But what the telecoms officer realized was that it was essentially doing the exact opposite. So other assets were the, the roeda's network that was based in northern Iraq and Kurdistan was starting to put this intelligence together. They had another asset who was traveling with, with Saddam and eventually realized that they now had a beat on his almost real time location. And there was some intelligence that there was going to be a meeting at a, at a place called D. Who was Duria. It was essentially an orchard complex where he had one of his homes. Was that there was going to be a meeting and this was going to happen a day before, a day before Shakina was, was set to start. So this intelligence gets packaged, sent to Langley and then from Langley to the Situation Room and then from the situation up to the Oval Office.
- [43:38]
Karen Greenberg
You tell this great story of everybody hopping into their cars, you know, you know, George 10 at Donald Rumsfeld hopping into their cars to get to the White House' quickly as they can to discuss this. Right?
- [43:48]
Jeffrey Stern
Yeah, right. And so they end up. And so Rueda is in this very surreal position. I mean, this is the kind of thing you see in movies. It doesn't really happen where everyone's in the Oval Office talking about what do we do? What do we do? As, as intelligence is coming. And it's also, I mean, this is, you know, 2003, but it's so I, I find it really Remarkable that it's coming from this orchard complex to the telecoms ministry in Baghdad, up to the headquarters in Kurdistan, across to Langley to the situation room where someone's running up like, you know, little sheets with, with the latest to Ruada and he's, and he's telling Bush in real time. They start talking about how they're going to attack. And it seems the most obvious, the most obvious way is cruise missiles. But a certain point the, the chairman of the Joint Thief is there, the Joint Chiefs is there and says I don't think that's going to work. This is a, there's a bunker. One of the assets had reported seeing some kind of cable being unrolled and then taken down into the, taken down into a bunker. So if it's a reinforced bunker, cruise missile isn't going to work. And so what they decide, they decide they need some kind of weapon that has bunker busting capabilities. The newest Paveway, which is this, it's the one that's laser guided but also GPS guided is the ideal weapon for it. But it's not ready yet. It hasn't, it's, it's, they've pre. Positioned them.
- [45:13]
Karen Greenberg
Was that Paveway 3?
- [45:15]
Jeffrey Stern
That's. Yeah, it's Paveway 3.
- [45:16]
Karen Greenberg
Yep, yep.
- [45:18]
Jeffrey Stern
That, the designation is E is. So the, the designation for the bombs is gbu, a guided bomb unit and then a number and this one is egbu. So I think it's enhanced gbu. The bunker buster that was used in, in Desert storm was also Paveway 3. But this is like the latest and greatest. So they, they're getting, there's a call that goes into the testing facility, the Air Force base that's like, is this, can we use this? It hasn't been certified for combat and essentially it's certified in combat, like in real time. The last testing is just happening. So they dispatch stealth bombers armed with this latest Paveway over Baghdad and strike this target where Saddam is supposed to be meeting with his, with his sons and some other regime officials. The Kazmozani asset, the crypto name is Rockstar. They call it DB Rockstar. The Rockstar that's there reports seeing, you know, roughly six foot tall guy with a mustache being, being wheeled out on a stretcher. And it seems like they got Saddam, but it's not confirmed. And the intelligence isn't, isn't certain enough to call off this sort of massive shock and a campaign that's about to start. And so the, the, the campaign begins. Obviously it turns out that Saddam hadn't been there. He'd apparently left slightly like just, just before. So they just missed killing Saddam in the. Before Shakanai even started.
- [47:00]
Karen Greenberg
Yeah, and you tell that really well and it's worth reading in its entirety. One of the themes through the book, before we get to another one of the characters is the defense industry. So, you know, you start out with technology with Texas Instruments, which is the company that really designs the first Paveway. Is that right? Paveway 1, correct.
- [47:25]
Jeff Stein
Yeah.
- [47:26]
Karen Greenberg
Right. And then, but then as things gets bigger and Paveway gets more important and companies grow and the technological advances become more and more and more in these first decades of the 21st century, there are other companies that are brought to the table by the US Government and that want part of this. And one of them is Raytheon. Right. And I'm. And, and there are ways in which Raytheon missteps when they first have this in their, in their basket of things to pay attention to. And I just wondered if you wanted to talk a little bit about just how, how long it took for the military industrial complex, as we call it, to begin to see what this, what Paveway was and to want a piece of it, and how that was both a plus and a minus when it comes to thinking about the arms themselves, the weapons themselves.
- [48:15]
Jeffrey Stern
Really interesting question. You know, one of the things that really distinguishes Paveway, aside from the fact that it was so effective, was that it always been kind of remarkably inexpensive and that that was by design. I mean, from the very beginning, the team developing it said this has to cost, you know, roughly what a mid sized family sedan costs. And for the most part it held true to that. One of the guys, Steve Romerman, who was an early Texas Instruments engineer, who and was very helpful in putting the book together, used the, I think it was a Doritos tagline or some chip company. It was like, eat as much as you want, we'll make more. So that was sort of the idea also that if you can make it inexpensively enough, then the military could practice with it and if they practice with it, be more comfortable with it, and then it would be used more. When after the Cold War there was this big consolidation because the, you know, the defense industry had had this reliable adversary. Part of the push from the defense industry, from the, from the Pentagon to the defense industry during the Cold War was sort of anti Paveway. It was as much, how do we deliver as much mass as deep into enemy territory as possible. So Paveway was Sort of an outlier. But there began to be talk of, you know, the peace dividend. That, okay, it, it may be that the reason we defeated the Soviet Union was not that we out fought them, but that we outspent them, that we baited them into. Into bankrupting themselves because we built so many big, fast planes and big fast missiles and nuclear weapons or whatever. And they tried to keep up and bankrupt themselves. So now it's time that, you know, American citizens get the benefit and we have to reinvest in American citizens. And also, if there's not this reliable adversary, then what are we building weapons for? So the defense industry began to consolidate. And to oversimplify a little bit, one of the categories that was sort of projected to still be valuable even if we are contracting, is high technology. Because even if you aren't at war, of course you want to maintain an edge and precise weapons, smaller, precise weapons, because as we learned, even during the Cold War, we were still using them. So that made Texas Instruments their Texas entrance to missile systems, of which Paveway was arguably kind of the flagship, actually a really valuable acquisition target. And so there was a bit of a bidding war. Raytheon ended up winning and acquired not all of Texas Instruments, but the. But its defense systems, its missile business. But Raytheon had also acquired the Hughes, the Howard Hughes company. The Hughes Missile Systems, I think, was the name of the company. They had their headquarters out in Tucson, and Raytheon wanted to kind of consolidate their acquisitions. So they wanted to move Paveway first out of the part of Texas where it was being built to another part of Texas, and then all the way to. To Arizona. And in the process, they just kind of lost the recipe. A lot of people who had worked on Paveway decided, like, why would I want to travel? I'll stay here. At the time, there was kind of a booming tech sector in Texas. And so there was a lot of jobs. So a lot of people stayed. And the recipe kind of got lost in the trip to Arizona. Paveways started coming off the line with problems. Production collapsed. The Defense Department knew that they. Even in the, you know, the. Even post Cold War, they wanted to have a lot of this weapons. And so they opened up the license to Lockheed and Lockheed began making Paveway as well. And it was part. It was partly because of that that Raytheon decided to put a lot of chips behind the new enhanced Paveway 3, like a new flagship thing that's really special that, you know, that no one else has as a way to almost, you know, sort of restore the luster to the, to the Paveway brand and Karatheon who had kind of bungled the transition. And that's how you end up with this weapon that almost takes Saddam out on the eve of shock and. Aw.
- [52:27]
Karen Greenberg
Yeah, there's another character in the book and I know we don't have time to talk about everyone. I just want to. Because it's. You take us basically from an incident in World War II, right, where they didn't have Paveway, right where Joe Kennedy, John F. Kennedy's brother is killed essentially, I mean effectively, and then to all the way to the war on terror and some of the more recent incidents in the war on terror. And I think the story of Salman is really interesting because it's so different in terms of thinking about countries, national security apparatuses in different countries, et cetera. So how does his story tie to the evolution of what you call generically the warhead? And if you could just tell us from experientially from who he is, you know, as a younger person and then who he becomes when he becomes the bomber in the Manchester bombing in 2017 at the Ariana Grande concert.
- [53:29]
Jeffrey Stern
Yeah, so, so Salmon is a, is a, is a Libyan British kid living in Manchester where there's a big Libyan population, I think the biggest outside of Libya and is in a way having, having a somewhat stereotypical, you know, second generation immigrant experience. The, you know, the school he goes to is under construction, is sort of dilapidated and is deemed unsafe. There's not a ton of opportunity. The Arab Spring starts and there's protests in Libya like, you know, like everywhere else in the air world essentially. And, and Gaddafi of course cracks down really brutally. Obama at the time is of course trying to draw down, I mean he's come into office trying to end wars, not start them. The, the British are, are concerned about what's happening and want to engage and essentially the, what they agree and they get a UN resolution to institute a no fly zone and air support for, to, to combat Gaddafi. But part of that, part of that, part of the, the, the sanction is that there can't be any NATO boots on the ground. And that's not really perceived to be a problem because we have precision air power. We're just going to go and destroy regime technicals and facilities. We don't need to have boots on the ground. This is, to me, this is sort of war without war. And this is also what we get the sort of leading from behind idea that you know, we're going to help with Libya, but we're not going to be. We don't, of course, we don't even need to invade. Why, why would we? But what they find, what the generals start finding, is that, yeah, we are pretty effective at, you know, destroying regime vehicles and driving regime forces back from, from their positions. But then they just come back and we actually. You actually do need boots on the ground. And if you're going to preserve any of the gains you make. But we are, we are prevented from putting NATO boots on the ground. Even if we had the domestic political will. It's, it's not. We don't have the legal cover to do it. And what ends up filling the breach is people like Salman Young, Libyans living abroad, primarily in Manchester, who travel to Libya and become rebels. And so they're on our side, but a lot of them are young, untrained. They're seeing really horrible things they're not prepared for. And like every other conflict, we sort of eventually move on and lose interest. Libya becomes, you know, from one of the most hopeful examples of the, of the Arab Spring, becomes a failed state with a really brutal civil war, eventually becomes as we are, as we are carrying out an air campaign in Iraq and Syria against ice, isis. Excuse me. As we're carrying out a, an air campaign in Libya and Iraq against isis, ISIS is looking around for another safe haven. And Libya is a perfect place because we've, you know, we've helped to destabilize it. And it's now totally chaotic as, as Salman goes back and forth, he becomes radicalized. He probably comes across ISIS in, in Libya. And another thing that's happening is despite the fact that the, the, a lot of NATO countries were really salutary to the, to the rebels, to the, to the young men and women traveling from especially Manchester to Libya, initially it was even after Gaddafi or after the regime fell, before Gaddafi was killed. But after the regime was driven out of, out of Tripoli, the French and British prime ministers came and gave a speech where they said, you guys are an inspiration. And hopefully, you know, in Syria they can take a lesson from what you guys have done. But a lot of those people came back and within a couple of years found themselves at odds with Western intelligence services. You know, a lot of them at least claimed to be following up on that, on that pledge and helping to support rebels in Syria and then being accused of supporting ISIS repairs in Syria. So Salman had friends who, one friend who had been paralyzed, who had been paralyzed from the waist down fighting Gaddafi in Libya, who then was imprisoned for, you know, material support of terrorism in Syria. So Gaddafi is. Salman is. Has. Is now. Salman is now in contact with. With members of what's essentially kind of the ISIS shock troops that the department or whatever of ISIS that carries out attacks in Europe and the west and ends up carrying out this terrorist attack against the Ariana Grande concert, the Manchester Arena.
- [58:27]
Karen Greenberg
Yeah, I mean, it's one of those stories of just sort of, how do you track how this actually happens and how impactful world events can be on an individual who can start out helping one agenda and then end up helping the. The other agenda. And it's sort of, you know, your idea of there are so many different consequences of what happens because of this warhead that's developed and that it's hard to really follow. Follow everything. And you have. And I think that's really good. I wanted to ask you a question before we close, which is, you know, we're living in a time where we are at war or on a pause for more and about to have a treaty or a memo of understanding with Iran. We have similar conflicts elsewhere around the world, not to mention the war in Ukraine and the war in Gaza. So my question is to you. What do you think the lessons. And by this, I don't mean the technical lessons. What do you think the political and moral lessons are from your book for where we are at this moment in time?
- [59:38]
Jeffrey Stern
Yeah, thank you. I think that's a really good question. And one of the lines I draw from the Salman story to Iran is we have this capability that purports to prevent us from having to put our own. Put troops, boots on the ground. And one of the things I think Salman's story really illustrates is that not only does that not always happen, but it can draw boots onto the ground. It can create the need to. And this seems like a million years ago, but a few days into Operation Epic Fury, there was real discussion about putting a significant number of troops on the ground in Iran. You know, I don't know how close we doing that, but that was inconceivable, you know, a few days before we started bombing. So I think one of the lessons is there often is just not a substitute for boots on the ground. And we should probably plan, we should probably take into consideration that if we're going to begin any kind of kinetic exercise anywhere, we should be prepared to put boots on the ground. And I suspect that might often mean we don't engage, and that's probably the right decision. Often, I think that the other one of the lessons is just in general technology, military technology, but really any application does seem to have this ability to kind of argue for its own use. It sort of has this sort of like godlike intoxicating power to, to, you know, the idea of like the trigger can pull the finger. We have this thing, we should use it, or we have this problem. Well, we have this tool that's perfectly suited, that we could use essentially without cost. And that is a fallacy. It's always a fallacy because even if, you know it's a, it's a kid in a air conditioned trailer, Creech Air Force Base, pulling the trigger, that's launching something from a drone, that bomb is exploding somewhere, and even if it hits a bad guy on the top of the head, there might be a good guy standing nearby. Often there is. This is a bit of a tangent, but of course, like in the drone wars, often the way we determine militants is just military aged male. It's a relatively imprecise way of evaluating. And I suspect that a lot of the military age males that weren't militants eventually became them. There's that Rumsfeld memo during Shock and Aw where he says, are we creating more terrorists than we're killing? So I think there needs to be a reverence not just for the technology, but for the technology's ability to sort of bend us to its will. And then I, I think that there's, I think that there's just no substitute for deliberation. I think they're, they're with just a little bit of awareness that that the practical ability now that we have to essentially fight wars without declaring wars or without doing a lot of the things that require a lot of support and therefore a lot of deliberation before going to war. No longer necessary. That, that doesn't mean that those decisions don't require deliberation.
- [62:47]
Karen Greenberg
I mean, that's what. So thank you for that. And I think those are the lessons and the takeaways from the book, but it's basically a book about war in all of its. The capacities that have been built up around war with sort of a current running through of why we should avoid war at any cost. And that that definition of war includes strategic bombings, includes moments where we haven't declared war, et cetera, and that the consequences are just so more vast than we imagine, and that they come down to the personal and that the personal can have ramifications that we might not think about. Anyway, thank you so much, Jeffrey Stern, for writing this book and for joining us on the podcast.
- [63:34]
Jeffrey Stern
Thank you so much Karen. This was great. Thank you.
- [63:37]
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 the SpyTalk Co news site on Substack where we offer steady diet of scoops and original analyses from the in intersection of intelligence, foreign policy and military operations. Just Google Spy Talk, 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 MSW Media. That's it. See you around. I'm Jeff Stein.
- [64:16]
Karen Greenberg
I'm Karen Greenberg.
- [64:18]
Jeff Stein
Thanks for listening.
- [64:19]
Jeffrey Stern
For more original reporting and insights like
- [64:22]
Karen Greenberg
this, subscribe to SpyTalk Co on Substack and follow us on Twitter hawkspy. If you enjoyed our podcast, subscribe and leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify
- [64:34]
Jeffrey Stern
or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [64:41]
Karen Greenberg
Msw media.
- [64:48]
Jeffrey Stern
It's Sunday morning and that wonderfully relaxed
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Jeff Stein
feeling of a long, lazy day lingers in the air.
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Jeffrey Stern
If you want to make the moment last, may I suggest the perfect solution,
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Jeff Stein
the Martin Sheen Podcast. Join me, your host, Martin Sheen, for
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Jeffrey Stern
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Jeff Stein
So make this your weekly moment of
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Jeffrey Stern
calm as we explore faith, hope, love and what it means to be human. And know this, this journey is ever unfolding as I invite you to see what's next with me, Martin Sheen.
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Jeff Stein
And thank you.