← The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show
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- [00:00]
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Buck Sexton
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Clay Travis
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- [01:00]
Buck Sexton
Hey Clay, if there was a summer camp for critical thinking, we'd be the chief counselors.
- [01:05]
Clay Travis
Those jelly heads in June would be intellectual warriors by August.
- [01:09]
Buck Sexton
Be a lot of fun too. Some Bill and Ted's excellent adventure references thrown in this podcast.
- [01:15]
Clay Travis
Like a daily dose of that minus the campfires, archery and pranking the girls.
- [01:19]
Buck Sexton
The bonafide boot camp for critical thinking. You can get in on it for free at the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcast. Just search our names Clay and Balk. Listen and subscribe.
- [01:32]
Mike Benz
You're listening to the Buck Sexton show podcast. Make sure you subscribe to the podcast on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [01:40]
Buck Sexton
Why is USAID destroying classified documents in some last act of swamp hubris? What the heck is going on here? Our friend Mike Benz joins us now. He is the Executive Executive Director of the foundation for Freedom Online. Mike, what's going on at usa? Well, there's a lot that's going on at usaid. Not as much maybe these days as before, but why would they be destroying classified documents in some flurry at the end?
- [02:12]
Mike Benz
Well, it's a very strange series of events that popped off. I initially described it as a five alarm fire because it was a very unusual email that Erica Carr, the Executive Secretary, sent out which said that there was going to be an all day group event yesterday to shred and burn all the remaining documents in the classified safes and the personnel records Erica Carr is someone who joined USAID during the Obama administration, was named the executive Secretary the first week of the Biden administration and it's been kept over by Trump. One after I amplified this issue, a bunch of folks at USAID who I know in trust called me and said, actually this is normal practice. This is where we at the politicals who remain here. Remember they had 14,000 employees. It's down to about 290 hand picked ones. They said that this is a relatively standard practice, but you know, the language in the email was pretty extreme. It was to shred all documents and to reserve the burn bags for when the shredder gets overloaded or overheated, effectively that this was a sort of fire sale. Now it sort of makes sense from the perspective that USAID is in the process of shutting down, they're leaving the building at some point. These documents need to be handled and the process has to happen at some point for discarding paper records. But I still have lingering concerns about the speed at which this is being done. You know, it's not usual that you have this kind of fire sale, you know, going out of business event where you need to reserve the burn bags for when the shredder is being used too heavily. And part of the reassurance that was given to me by people who are at the agency is that there are digital duplicates of the vast majority of these documents and that it's rare for USAID to be the originating agency when it comes to classification. That is, USAID primarily handles classified documents that come from the State Department or the CIA or the Department of Defense. But very rare is not very, it's not very comforting to me because Samantha Power was probably the most crooked USAID administrator in USAID history. And that's saying a lot. You know, John Bolton was handed the, the USAID Hand Grenade Award when he ran Policy and Budget there in the 1980s. But Samantha Power fully weaponized that agency. And to me, it's highly possible that Samantha Power could have classified a significant number of USAID documents, put them in these safes and then simply, you don't have duplicates at the other agencies if they weren't shared around. And something like this would be a way to legally dispose of those documents if a digital duplicate was not provided. And also digital duplicates can, can have flaws. We saw this with the FBI during Operation Crossfire Hurricane. They deleted the emails and text messages off of the special agent phones. Once John Durham launched his investigation, we saw this with the corrupted files at the FBI over the J6 pipe bomber. It's quite possible that something like that could happen in this case as well. This is sort of like the electronic voting machine issue. If you don't have the paper records, you don't necessarily have a faithful duplicate. Last thing is, we saw this again with the Whitey Bulger case when the FBI went to prosecute him. And it turned out that the digital file they produced in court was not actually the full and correct document on on Whitey Bulger that was kept in the classified safes at the FBI. There was a paper document that had a whole additional section attached at the end that completely inverted the history that was presented originally in court. So given that there are going to be no new USAID documents produced, I don't understand why these can't be moved safely to the National Archives and why there needs to be this rush to delete it all at the end.
- [06:25]
Buck Sexton
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- [07:41]
Mike Benz
Well, there's so many categories of it. What the public thinks that it was doing was humanitarian assistance to foreign countries. And the people who are one level above that in terms of knowledgeability will appreciate that there's some soft power role in that. For example, we supply humanitarian assistance to foreign countries and in return we get influence over the local governments or the local political movements or the local judges or the local indigenous communities. But in fact, there's really a usaid Truman show that where virtually every function in modern society, whether that's the media, the social media companies, whether that's the unions, whether that's politicians, judges, prosecutors and even terrorist groups and narco cartels, drug cartels, are all on USAID payroll around the world. And even here at home, which is something that should never be allowed to happen, there is this domestic foreign firewall that was systematically breached by usaid with USAID not only paying media companies but also paying foundations that do a significant amount of domestic work. And they're getting tens or sometimes hundreds of millions of dollars from USAID to be weaponized against domestic opponents. But there are still many layers of unexplored terrain here, given that USAID is effectively an intelligence agency with no restrictions on it. See, when the CIA does a covert action, they have to get a presidential finding for it, meaning there needs to be a written sign off from the US President to do any act of any covert action at the CIA. USAID does not have to go through with that procedure. Which means that USAID is effectively the clearinghouse. When there's a rogue element at CIA or DOD or State who doesn't think the President will approve, or if the President doesn't want to be seen as approving, there's a layer of plausible deniability by simply calling it democracy promotion at usaid. And I think the terrorism aspect of this is really significant given that Syria is so much in the news these days. You had a USAID funded rebel, you know, terrorist rebel faction effectively take control of the country. Mohamed Al Jelani, the leader of hts, which overthrew that, that government back in, back in December of last year, there was a $10 million bounty out for his head under the Trump won State Department. They then received financial assistance from USAID and toppled the government of Syria. They're now the de facto head of Syria going around executing thousands or tens of thousands of ethnic minority groups in the country. It's going to cause huge schisms throughout the Middle east as that situation develops. And USAID has its fingerprints all over those terrorist groups, just as they have it all over the Taliban, just as they have it all over terrorist groups in Africa, in the Sahel region, as well as in Central Asia and in Pakistan and particularly in the Western Hemisphere.
- [10:46]
Buck Sexton
When you say, when you say fingerprints on those groups. So, so do we know that there was USAID money, meaning our money, but through the prism or the cutout of USAID going directly to those groups?
- [10:58]
Mike Benz
Yes. This was actually testified by USAID administrator Folks in Congress just three weeks ago, there's Middle East Monitor and other reporting outlets have also disclosed hundreds of millions of dollars. I believe it's in the billions of dollars. Because if the CIA wants to support those groups, isis, Al Qaeda, the Al Nusra front, all these designated terrorist groups and the President doesn't want to do it, then they can go, they can simply launder it through USAID and it will take the form of logistical funds or shelter and housing or public health and all these things get laundered through usaid.
- [11:41]
Buck Sexton
That's an end run on, on material support to terrorism concerns, right? Basically that's what that means.
- [11:46]
Mike Benz
Oh, and in fact usaid, the inspector general report from a month ago even showed how there was a fatal flaw in the contracting system at usaid where grantees, if you're getting a grant from usaid, you need to go through with the standard OFAC reporting this sort of anti terrorism financing set of laws. But contractors are not subject to that. So effectively contractors can be used to completely end run the sort of money laundering obligations that banks are subject to that anyone who uses the international SWIFT system is subject to. And so all of this is done to prop up these paramilitary terrorist proxy groups who as Hillary Clinton said to Jake Sullivan in the WikiLeaks email from 2011 when they said al Qaeda is on our side in Syria and now an Al Qaeda offshoot now runs the government of Syria. And you see USAID giving them something like $122 million in, in financing. You can understand how these dirty deeds of statecraft are outsourced to usaid.
- [12:54]
Buck Sexton
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- [13:59]
Mike Benz
Well, there's a few, I'll tell you a couple off the top that I'd like to see immediately. One of them is a review of all the usaid, State Department, Pentagon, National Endowment for Democracy and Department of Labor funds that are given to unions. This is a really nasty element of rent a riot behavior that has been a part of the CIA Toolkit for now 50 some years. When we switched to a small wars model at the Pentagon, we transitioned from primarily using tanks and fighter jets to using street movements, the so called color revolutions or people powered revolutions. And unions played the major role in being the muscle on the ground when it comes to surrounding the parliament building and violently ousting a president from office, as was done in the 2014 Maidan coup in Ukraine, as was done by the Biden administration to the government of Bangladesh at the end of last year, as was planned to be done if Trump won the 2020 election by a group called the Transition Integrity Project, run by senior military and intelligence officials here in the US and the unions played the dominant role in that. In particular, the AFL CIO, which is the largest union here in the U.S. used to be known as the AFL CIA by the New left in the 1960s and 70s because the revealed pattern of partnerships with the CIA's international the AFL CIO's international branch, it has something like 75 international branches in countries around the world and was a constant partner of the CIA when they were fomenting street revolution protests abroad and would come to be weaponized against the anti Vietnam War left in the 1970s. They play a major role in statecraft today. The AFL CIO headquarters is basically parked just a few blocks from the White House. They had an agreement with the Chamber of Commerce to shut down the country if Trump won the Electoral College back in 2020, they received tens of millions of dollars from the National Endowment for Democracy Solidarity center and from the Department of Labor's Bureau of International Affairs. We saw this, for example, in Brazil. There's this lurking issue around Internet censorship with all these different countries balkanizing their Internet to block X. We saw Brazil ban X. We see the European Union pursuing these. Well, the unions all backed Lula in Brazil. Lula was from the Workers Party and unions were his primary backers. And I've personally found tens of Millions of dollars flowing directly from the Biden Department of Labor to these very union groups in Brazil backing Lula. Now that's just in Brazil. And I think I've so far found around $30 million just from the Department of Labor. Now, the AFL CIO is also at war with Elon Musk and Tesla because of the refusal of Elon to unionize the Tesla workforce. I have no doubt that the AFL CIO has a hand in these protests against, against the Tesla car dealerships. And that's being coordinated by these groups like Indivisible and MoveOn and these Reid Hoffman funded groups that all have deep, deep connections to the unions. And frankly, I have no problem. I'm not pro or anti union. But when you're subsidized by US Taxpayer dollars and we're paying to be protested against, that's a horse of a different color. And I think there's a major scandal there waiting, just waiting beneath the surface to be, to be unbound.
- [17:39]
Buck Sexton
What do you think happens now that it seems about, I don't know, 30, 40% of the department of Education's workforce has been told, pack up your stuff. How does, how does this play out?
- [17:53]
Mike Benz
I think it's fascinating. I mean, the role of the Department of Education, I think, has largely been a pernicious one. We have not advanced up the PISA score scale. We have not advanced since the Department of Education's creation. I think US Education has only fallen farther and farther behind other countries, ones with far less GDP and a far lower standard of living. I'm not convinced that there's a correlation between more Department of Education activity or funding and higher education in the U.S. but what you do see is a very corrupt nexus between the universities and their government funding, whether that's from the Department of Education or whether that's from USAID or DARPA or nih. The government is. There is no free market in the education system, which makes it very difficult for new entrants with better ideas or more innovative educational techniques to be able to make inroads into the market because you can't compete against these massive endowments and effectively the government cartel over education. And so I think breaking that cartel is an important component in creating a genuine free market in the education space. We saw, for example, and I reported some of this recently, because we see this major issue popping off right now with Columbia and these other major universities. Well, Columbia is a, you know, there's a funny story around that they're the group that administers the Pulitzer Prize. The same Pulitzer Prize awarded to the Russiagate fraudsters in 2017, they were given a Pulitzer for essentially fraudulent work. The Pulitzer was awarded to Reuters in 2024. Reuters, who got $300 million in government contracts and grants during the Biden administration. $300 million. It's just a huge amount. And the Pulitzer was given to them for their write up on misconduct at all of Elon Musk's companies. X, Neuralink, SpaceX, Tesla. It was basically just a, just a hit piece on Elon Musk and everything he does. And that's who Columbia effectively through the Pulitzer foundation awarded that prize to. Colombia also is deeply in bed with the Blob, the foreign policy establishment for all this USAID work. Sovietology, the Russian Studies and Area Studies, African Studies, Asian Studies, Latin American Studies, all these common majors at universities really came from Columbia back in the 1950s when the architect of this setup this guy Philip Moseley, who worked closely with the CIA, he previously was a high ranking State Department official before he came to Columbia and set up this nexus and basically joined these area studies groups at the universities with the CIA and the State Department and the Defense Department by having the major university centers, institutes and departments serve as an interlocutor role for statecraft. So they would bring over Russian emigres, they would gather intelligence in foreign countries, they do the exchange programs and seed people over there, all while coordinating with the CIA on all of that. Philip Mosley had a CIA security clearance. He personally consulted Alan Dulles, the head of the CIA at the time. You now see this in basically every major university. And the endowments make bank off of all of this. There's a really sick example from the 1990s when the Harvard endowment was together with the George Soros Investment fund, I think it was the Quantum Fund, were given special access to the, the sell off of the Russian state assets when they transitioned from communism to capitalism. In the 1990s, Harvard set up something called the Harvard Institute for International Development which was given about half a billion dollars by the US Agency for International Development, usaid to be the primary, effectively USAID contractor to privatize those state assets. And then the endowment fund of the university got first pick at all those privatized assets. So if Harvard was able to secure hundreds of millions or low billions of dollars for their endowment through that process, I wonder is Columbia doing the same thing? Is the University of Pennsylvania which housed the Penn Biden center. And Amy Gutman, who was the head of it when I was there back in the early 2000s and became Joe Biden's ambassador to Germany during the time we blew up the Nord Stream pipeline. Is the University of Pennsylvania Endowment in on that gig? There needs to be a full review, not just of the Department of Education funding or USAID funding, but really the role of these endowments being hitched to the Star of the Blob and profiting themselves, pocketing it for themselves. It doesn't trickle down to the students in terms of diminished tuition. These are powerhouse businesses, not really 501C3s. They have $50 billion in the Harvard Endowment and I think much of that is ill gotten gains from partnerships with the CIA, the State Department, the Defense Department, and as Trump World is reorganizing this entire structure, I think that needs to be looked at closely.
- [23:18]
Buck Sexton
Mike Benz Fascinating stuff. Let's have you back again soon because we're at time for now, but the foundation for Freedom Online is your organization. People should go check out what you're doing and really interesting. Please come back and we'll talk to you more about all the dismantling of the deep state that's going on. People need to know about this.
- [23:35]
Mike Benz
Thank you. Buck.
- [23:41]
Clay Travis
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- [24:05]
Mike Benz
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- [24:40]
Buck Sexton
Hey Clay, if there was a summer camp for critical thinking, we'd be the chief counselors.
- [24:45]
Clay Travis
Those jelly heads in June would be intellectual warriors by August.
- [24:50]
Buck Sexton
Be a lot of fun too. Some Bill and Ted's excellent adventure references thrown in this podcast.
- [24:55]
Clay Travis
Like a daily dose of that minus the campfires, archery and pranking the Girls.
- [24:59]
Buck Sexton
The bona fide boot camp for critical thinking. You can get in on it for free at the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcast. Just search our names, Play and Buck. Listen and subscribe.