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- [02:08]
A
Well, welcome to a very special live stream. We're on now a very special live stream of the Rest Is Classified. We're going to be talking about the the nexus between Russia and Jeffrey Epstein and longtime listeners to the POD will notice that Gordon Carrera has been has been deposed and replaced by John Cipher, an American. So this is, this is an American takeover here, which I I greatly, greatly appreciate. And before I fully introduce John to our listeners, I have to say maybe we just lead with this, which is you play a particularly important role in the Inception story around the Rest Is Classified. And I actually think Gordon and I have talked about this a little bit on the main pod, but you and just for those who have arrived for a Epstein Russia conversation, we are going to have that. But before we get into that, John, you connected me And Gordon, back in the day, I think you were actually patient zero in connecting me to Gordon Carrera. And I should say also producer. Lovely producer Becky is reminding me to say. Welcome everybody to this live streamer. We're very grateful that you are here. Thanks for joining us for this. It's going to be a lot of fun.
- [03:35]
D
No, I'm glad to be here. Thanks.
- [03:38]
A
Yeah. So John. John Cipher is a former CIA Senior Intelligence Service officer with 28 years of experience the Agency leading clandestine operations worldwide. He's an expert on Russian intelligence, which is part of why he's here today. He was chief of station cos multiple times all over the world. He's also the co founder of Spycraft Entertainment, a non resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council. He's co host of the iHeart podcast Mission implausible, which I've been on. And I was treated very shabbily, I will say as an analyst. It was a trap because I, John and I worked in different parts of the agency and I think he and his co host Jerry invited me onto the podcast purely for sports. Just bludgeon analysts for about an hour. It was great.
- [04:22]
D
You should have seen that comment, frankly.
- [04:25]
A
Yeah, I was, I was blinded by, you know, this invitation from case officers. I felt like I would, you know, I was being invited to be a fighter pilot too, but it just wasn't to be. John's commentary appears all over the place and his insights on Russia, I have to say, have really shaped mine. And we'll be all over an upcoming series that we're doing for club members looking at the connections between Russia and Donald Trump. So welcome John. We are very excited to have you here today.
- [04:52]
D
I'm glad to be here as well. And I'll try not to attack you personally on your podcast.
- [04:58]
A
I know it's going to be gonna be hard. I know it's, it's gonna be hard. It's gonna be hard. Yeah. Well, I appreciate that. We'll see if you can actually hold your, hold your word on that. I'm. I'm skeptical given that we'll be spending maybe 30 to 45 minutes together.
- [05:13]
D
Well, then maybe we should just go after Gordon since he's not here. Easier for both of us.
- [05:17]
A
It will. And, and frankly, good fun. So I think we should work that, we should work that in as well. Well, so John, we're going to talk today about Russia, which is obviously right in your wheelhouse and, and in particular the, the kind of swirl of connections that Jeffrey Epstein seems to have with Russia and people who seem on the face of it to be affiliated with Russian intelligence. And I think, you know, I should say for listeners to the pod or just if you're joining us for the first time, Gordon and I did a two part series back in January that tried to make sense of the Epstein intelligence connections. And we primarily did that from the standpoint of evaluating his ties or, you know, sort of potential ties to Israel and to Mossad in particular. So that was. We did two episodes on that in January. We are going to focus today on, on some of the new revelations that have come out that, that connect Epstein to Russia. And I think it's probably worth spending a few minutes just up top on what the latest dump of files from the DOJ actually show. And I think, you know, John, jump in here, of course, but this, you know, as you kind of tick through the facts, I mean, what seems to be the case kind of emerging from the files is that after Epstein's 2008 conviction, right. And this kind of somewhat in retrospect, bizarre non prosecution agreement that he strikes down in Florida, Epstein really seems to have viewed Russia as a way to revive his fortunes. And there's lots of contact in these files with Russians, Right. He's sort of Epstein obviously a consummate networker and a lot of that networking is done with Russia. So when you kind of go through it, I mean, it is kind of an interesting role of connections, right, because you've got things like he met regularly with Russia's representative to the UN between like 2006 and 2017, including arranging an internship for his son. In 2014, Epstein schedules meetings with a Russian deputy finance minister and the deputy head of Russia's Central Bank. And then, John, I'm curious for your take on this one, because one of the names that pops up over and over again in these files is Sergey Belyakov, who back in 2014, when Epstein seems to have gotten to know him, was a Deputy Minister of Economic Development. And the reports mention him attending something that is called the FSB Academy. In a lot of the articles that have come out on this. Okay, I mean, before we go further, what does that actually, what does that actually mean in the context of Russian intelligence?
- [08:12]
D
It's a little different than, you know, going to the CIA training school or whatever. Like you and I did different parts of the. Because essentially there's a whole environment around Russian intelligence. It's a much larger. From the Soviet days. You're talking hundreds of thousands of people working in this and. And it was like its own world so if you're in it, your children might then go to the FSB school because they're part of the FSB landscape or what have you. So it's possible to go to the FSB school and not go right into the fsb. But in general, what that means is you're being groomed, you're being trained to go into the Russian intelligence apparat at some point. So. So it is worth. If you see someone that comes from that world, you have to realize they have those kind of connections. But frankly, with Russia, intelligence is like the main form of foreign policy. Like, the intelligence services have been more powerful than the military. It's been the main sword and shield during the. During the Communist days. And so, you know, even if someone like this didn't have a direct tie to Russian intelligence, everybody in that system has to funnel stuff into the Russian intelligence network. So it means something, but it's not everything. You still can be tied to Russian intelligence without being in touch with someone who. At the FSB academy.
- [09:27]
A
And this will definitely be something that we talk about, I think, at length here, you know, in a few minutes, because I know you've written a lot on this. The idea. We tend to have this view, I think, in the west of kind of, you know, if you need to be an intelligence officer who's actually working for an intelligence agency or you're sort of a recruited agent or asset of that intelligence service, the Russians don't, I think, to put it mildly, have a more complicated and complicated, more elastic view. More elastic view of those relationships. Right. So. But. So Belyakov is someone who. We shouldn't necessarily think of him as an FSB officer necessarily, but he's deeply connected to networks that are, at minimum, adjacent to the fsb, if not actually in it.
- [10:15]
D
And the FSB is the domestic internal service. It would be like the FBI on many heavy doses of steroids.
- [10:23]
A
Yes. Slightly more aggressive form of the. Of the much larger investigation and much larger. That's a good point. So, I mean, interestingly, some of these connections with Belyakov. So Epstein, in one of these exchanges, actually looks for Belyakov's advice on what appears to be a. What Epstein thought of as a blackmail attempt by a Russian woman. I think it was against Leon Black, who is the founder of Apollo Global Management. And that Belyakov, in this case, you know, comes back with some information on the woman, although it's kind of unclear how it was used. And there is this kind of mutually. This is another theme of these connections. It's there's this mutually beneficial arrangement, right, because Belyukov actually helps Epstein arrange a three year multiple entry visa for use to go into Russia. And then Epstein seems to introduce Belyakov to people in his circle, which it seems from the, from the email traffic, they were intending to connect him with people like Peter Thiel, one of the, you know, sort of PayPal co founders, and then Reid Hoffman, who founded LinkedIn. And they also discussed ways of circumventing sanctions. One of the other weird connections here is that Epstein's assistant was Russian, which is kind of interesting, and had a US Visa thanks to a letter of recommendation from Belyakov. You know, there's, there's also, and I'm curious what you make of this. Epstein was trying to meet Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov of Russia, and also seemed to try to convince the Russians that he could somehow help them understand Donald Trump after the 2016 elections. I mean, what do you, you know, and I guess maybe the final point before we get into some bigger questions is there is a really, we should say a very dark undercurrent that runs through the files which shows how Epstein also saw Russia as, as a source, as a trafficking kind of, you know, hub for, you know, for his crimes, essentially. And there's a, there's a, you know, line in there about, you know, he's at one point writes, saudi has oil and Moscow has girls. And there's evidence in the emails that many of these Epstein victims came from Russia, came from Belarus, and that he seems to be using trafficking networks that are also used by Russian organized crime and intelligence, certainly. And very startlingly, I had just come across this while preparing for this, this episode. There was a Senate Finance Committee review of some Treasury Department files that had been collected on Epstein's financial records. And it shows that he had recorded thousands of transfers totaling, it seems like up to $1 billion in Russian, you know, essentially going through Russian banks, many of which are now, are now sanctioned. So with all of these connections, I mean, you know, we have the kind of slightly clickbaity title for this live stream, which is, was Epstein a Russian Spy? But I mean, how should we make sense of all of these different kind of weird Russia connections between, you know, these FSB affiliated people, Russian banks, Russian citizens, and Jeffrey Epstein?
- [13:35]
D
Yeah, there's an overlap of, well, this is. Russia is like this. There's an overlap of intelligence, interests, crime, corruption, dirty dealing people, you know, with important people with money that they want to launder and those type of things. And so, so that's the thing is pulling this all apart to see what it, what, what it means. And so it could mean any and any and all of those things, just by the nature of the Russian system itself is a sort of a corrupt mafia like system. It's run by a sort of an authoritarian leader. And then it has a very, very powerful worldwide intelligence service. So we can sort of parse as we go through what all those things mean. And there's a number of people who've come out. Christopher Steele, who wrote the famous Steele dossier, has been writing some articles saying it's clear that Epstein was a spy. I don't really believe it that way. And we can talk about that as we go through it. The Polish government has decided that they're going to dig into this because they think there's connections that the Russians were using many of Epstein's senior people that he was either blackmailing or putting in compromising positions. And so it's worth paying attention to and worth talking and maybe put it in context. So I think it's good that we're having this discussion.
- [14:49]
A
So before we get into some of the specific, you know, kind of, I think, issues around how the Russians might have seen him and what use he may have been to them do, how should we think about, we teed this up earlier. How should we think about Russian intelligence and how it actually, how it actually functions? Because I think our, the mental models we've discussed for intelligence service and its relationship to assets or agents that we have with the west is really, it's not really useful in the Russian context, is it?
- [15:24]
D
Yeah. So bear with me a little bit here. So like, I mean, yeah, these Western figures like Epstein and I think you're going to end up talking about Donald Trump too, they don't map neatly into sort of our classic Western model of spy handling. And so I'll talk a little bit about how the west looks at and uses its intelligence services in Russia. More might. But the first thing to understand is that since the Bolshevik era, the Russian intelligence security service have played a much larger role and much more important to the regime than they are in the West. So for, for an authoritarian government or a government that came from revolutionary roots, it's all about regime security rather than what we think of as national security. Right. So, so the, the job of security services are to keep the leadership in power at any cost. So that means at home they crush dissent, and then abroad, Russian intelligence, you know, you're talking about a country with the economic size of Portugal that has probably more intelligence operatives overseas than we, the largest and richest country in the history of the world have around the world. And so they play a much more central role in carrying out foreign policy. And they use this, the security services, they use to do all sorts of things, everything from political warfare, information warfare, disinformation, propaganda, supporting violent actors, perception management. So in chaos, whereas in the west, you know, we, we tend to. To collect intelligence, whether it's from satellites or spies or, or diplomats or what have you, and put it to a professional analytic cadre like you worked in that then puts that information to a policymakers hopefully so that they'll make better policy which. Whereas in Russia it's much more of a weapon. It's much more part of their, their foreign policy and domestic policy in protecting the leadership. And so I can talk a little bit more like. So, because, just because you're an analyst, let me say one of the weaknesses of Russian intelligence has always been one of analysis. Right. So it's a system, an authoritarian system run by fear and where they would tell the leader what he wants to hear. Right. So even In World War II they had probably some of the best place spies in the world. You had a good series on Philby. I don't know if you guys have done Richard Sorga yet, who was, who essentially warned Stalin ahead of. Of Nazi invasion. And Stalin didn't want to hear it because he only wants to hear the things that he already believes. And I think we're seeing that here in the United States. And so, so yeah, I'd be glad to talk about how the differences in. So that's the analytical piece, but I'd be interested to talk about the differences sort of in. In collection. Like how does.
- [18:01]
A
Yeah, that's. I think that's fascinating because, you know, in the, in the Epstein series that Gordon and I did back in, in January, you know, when are we going.
- [18:12]
D
To make fun of Gordon, by the way?
- [18:13]
A
We could do it right now.
- [18:14]
D
No, no, we'll do it. Let's wait till the end.
- [18:16]
A
We'll wait till the end. We got to try to weave it or. Yeah, it'll just be a chunk at the end where we just tear into Gordon Carrera.
- [18:23]
D
You do a great job right now, by the way. Ready Podcast now.
- [18:26]
A
Thank you. I make it. It's one of, it's one of my north stars. It is. My north star for the podcast is targeting Gordon. I think, you know, we talked a bit in the series on the Epstein Mossad or you know, examining the sort of Epstein Mossad connection, you know, about how, you know, really? Like, for example, I think I texted like 20 formers from the agency and said, prior to Epstein's conviction, like, how would you have seen this guy? Like, would he have been a viable, you know, sort of target for recruitment?
- [19:05]
D
And I hope everybody said no before the conviction.
- [19:09]
A
Almost everyone said yes, John.
- [19:11]
D
What?
- [19:12]
A
Yes. You were one of the outliers, if I recall.
- [19:15]
D
Well, we don't recruit American citizens for the most part.
- [19:18]
A
Sorry. Putting that aside, I meant, like, just, just the guy himself. Like, would he be a valuable, you know, would you want. Would an intelligence service have an interest in him?
- [19:30]
D
Well, that's what, as we talk here, that. That's also the way to look at Trump, too, is like, it's one thing for someone to have vulnerabilities that make you interested in that person. Oh, my God, they have all these things that I might be able to take advantage of. They huge ego, corruption, they want money, blah, blah, blah. So that's interesting to like, you might have an interest in that person. But also, at some point, the more you look at them, you realize, can they. Is it someone you could actually trust? Are they going to follow your rules? Are they going to follow your control? Are they someone who can, can. When they're giving you information on stuff they have access to, they're not embellishing. Like, so, so it's one thing to like, say, oh, that guy looks, you know, interesting, but then like, you know, I want to have a secret, long term, productive relationship, right, where I trust this guy over a long period of time, and I wouldn't trust either Donald Trump or Jeffrey Epstein.
- [20:21]
A
Yeah, well. And so I guess that makes, I mean, so from the. That's true from the agency side, let's say, but from the Russian side of things, I mean, my understanding would be that just in general, Russian intelligence would have. They would look at a much broader target set as, as potential, not, not necessarily as like, assets in the way we think about them, where it's a clandestine relationship where you've got some control and they produce intelligence that, I mean, essentially they steal secrets for you in secret. Right. That's kind of what we think about when we're talking about a, you know, a case officer, agent or asset relationship. But the Russian view of that is more, I guess, flexible. Maybe you can talk a little bit about that or if I've characterized it right, sure.
- [21:10]
D
Yeah. So let me try to put it in context. Like I said, in the west, we collect intelligence to provide to the analysts, to provide to policymakers, right in Russia, it's much more about keeping leadership in power. So they have a much wider view of how they use their intelligence services. So to go back to in the west or the CIA, for example, we're looking for fully vetted, clandestine controlled sources that word control is important, who reliably follow our tasking and can keep themselves secure and safe. So in the US model, that's a defining feature of agent handling is control. So case officers, that's what we were, that ran spy networks. We really price sources who can deliver unique, sensitive information and they follow, reliably follow direction so the relationship stays covert, secure and productive. So we're looking for positive motivation. We want people who are doing this because it's in their personal interest and they, and they want to keep it secure and safe, just like we do. The Russian approach, as you mentioned, being more elastic or expansive or nuanced is they, they tend to do, and this happened throughout the Soviet period just as well as now. So they draw value from much wider range of individuals and groups that can benefit their interests, whether they operate as witting undercover spies or not. So to leverage everybody from recruited penetrations like we did, to semi witting intermediaries, if you remembered in the Soviet time, there's that term fellow travelers. So it can be periodic enablers, it can be extremists, it can be fringe political actors, propagandists, you know, so they would be interested in talking to journalists or people who may not even realize they're working for Russian intelligence, but they're, they're helping them in some way. And you, I know you've talked about, and you've used this in your podcast, there is a Russian term that they use called useful idiots. Right. So they're looking, they don't just need this super secret motivated person to work for them. They want, they'll meet with a variety of people, some who are super secret spies and some who are, you know, they can just get their propaganda message out. There's some people who would just, you know, believe their bullshit and then regurgitate it. There's, there's people who just are looking to make some money. We see all over Europe now, for example, they're putting these message boards out there to give people money to go do things like spray paint Nazi symbols on, on Jewish synagogues or to, to blow up, you know, trains that are going to Ukraine, all these other kind of things. So they, they use a much wider group of people than, than we do.
- [23:42]
A
Yeah, and, and, and I guess I Mean, so that, that brings us then directly to the question of Epstein, which is if you put on. You know, I think one of the things we should say is it seems quite unlikely that Epstein or anyone who was handling him or interacting with him from an intelligence service, if indeed that was happening, would have ever been doing this over his, like, G vacation Gmail account. Right. So, like, we're unlikely in many of the files that have come out to ever really be able to substantiate a connection with an intelligence service, because by definition, if we're going to see anything just.
- [24:24]
D
But like you said at the beginning.
- [24:25]
A
Though, separate channel, right?
- [24:27]
D
Yeah, but. But like you said at the beginning, they're willing to use other resources. So if you're the Ambassador Churkin at the un you will do what the. The Kremlin and the intelligence services want you to do. So if they say, hey, listen, you need to go out there and engage with this guy because he's doing things that benefit us and like, put some information into his head or talk to him and see the kind of people he's in touch with, because we want to know about that. So that's part of the sort of more nuanced thing is, like, he's useful to them even if he's not meeting them on a street corner and following your directions. A, B, C, D. Like the world, the dirty world of money and money laundering and girl and. And blackmail and, you know, sleaze is something that they're really interested. They want to know what these important people in the west are doing that's. That's corrupt or criminal.
- [25:18]
A
Yeah. So Russian intel hat on John, which I know you love to put that hat on the, the fur. The. The dog fur Ushanka of Russian intelligence, which I believe you actually do possess, possess a dog for Lushaka, which when I went to.
- [25:33]
D
When I lived in Moscow, I remember going out to look at an election out in the middle of Siberia somewhere. Somewhere. It was very. Obviously, the economic situation was quite bad and people would literally, these old people would stand on the street with, like, their one or two possessions to sell. And this woman had this big, you know, Russian shopka, like big woolen. It was the winter hat and it looked really warm. And I went up to her, I said, oh, yeah, that's nice. How much is it? She was. So this is top quality fur dog fur. Like, oh, dog, okay.
- [26:01]
A
Yeah.
- [26:01]
D
So I have this big, big fur dog hat.
- [26:05]
A
So putting on the big fur dog hat of a Russian, this might be.
- [26:08]
D
A problem for us on the Pod, right.
- [26:10]
A
Yeah, exactly.
- [26:12]
D
Epstein's bad enough, but that dog fur is.
- [26:15]
A
Yeah, exactly. We're going to add animal rights activists to the list of enemies on the podcast. But I guess the question is, Russian intel, hat on? How would you view someone like Epstein? What is he. What is he useful for again, in, in theory, if you're a Russian intelligence officer, Jeffrey Epstein, what's he good for?
- [26:36]
D
Well, he's. He's good for. He obviously is willing to engage with Russians and that, you know, for years that we all knew that Russia was involved in, was that was a enemy of the United States or an antagonist, and they were involved in corruption and money laundering. And his, his comfort in dealing in that world, dealing in the dirty world is one thing. As they learn about what he's doing in the United States and the people he's in touch with and how he's engaged in this sort of dirty business, that's important to them as well. And then there's probably practical things. One of the things he was doing for Bill Yakov or for Churkin and these people, he's probably helping them understand the Western economic situation and financial markets and stuff, right, because they're interested in laundering dirty money and putting their money out. And, you know, his. Not father in law, but, but Ghislaine Maxwell's father, Robert Maxwell, this is the thing he did for the KGB as the Soviet Union was falling apart. The KGB are the ones that ran the dirty money and the banks in the west for their spy cases. So when the Soviet Union fell apart, the KGB was the place that had the money and had the Western money. And people like Robert Maxwell help them protect that money and keep it and invest it and, and launder it and do all those kind of things. And in some ways, they probably were looking at Epstein probably in a more sophisticated way now that they, you know, they're used to dealing with Western bankers and lawyers and things. So he's. Of you. So he's of use to them on a variety of levels. And, and they're of use to him as well because, you know, that's where he got girls. That's where, you know, they can, they can help him on, you know, criminal things. He can hide some of the stuff he's doing. He worked with Russian banks to get money. So, so they're, they're benefiting each other. And so they, the Russians don't need to see this as like, you know, a secret person in the White House, but it's someone who's benefiting, benefiting Russian Interests. Kremlin interests.
- [28:31]
A
Yeah. Well, one of the more, I guess, kind of, I thought, somewhat shocking reports was there's a report in the recent dump, I believe that's from an FBI confidential informant, that claims that Epstein acted as Vladimir Putin's money manager. Which seems, on the face of it, kind of absurd. But then you start talking about the, like, you know, his. Epstein's comfort dealing in this kind of pretty shadowy world of money laundering and kind of semi illicit and illicit banking, I guess. Is it possible that he's handling Russian money or what do you make of that claim?
- [29:14]
D
I think it's possible he's handling Russian money. The notion that he's Putin's banker I find sort of silly. I mean, Putin's maybe the richest man in the world. He can buy and sell like 20, 30, 40, Jeffrey Epstein every day. But as an intelligence officer, playing to someone's ego is like, you know, I'm sure someone's like, oh, you know, we really, you know, your advice on how to avoid sanctions and how to protect money, you know, Vladimir Putin's very interested in that. You know, if you can give us this banking advice, you know, I can imagine the Russians very easily playing to his ego and maybe someone around him or him thinking that, oh, you know, one way to look at him is Putin's banker. Like, yeah, I don't think that's real. And who knows? One random. That's part of the problem with a dump like this is there's like all these random pieces of information that you can run with and create separate conspiracy theories. So it's certainly true that he's dealing in this dirty world of banking, finance and Russian money. But is he Putin's bank or not? I don't buy it.
- [30:15]
A
Yeah, yeah. Do you think. I mean, and we'll label this very clearly as speculation, but do you. Again with that Russian intelligence officer hat on. Like it. See, it strikes me if I put on the dog for Ushanka, that there would almost be. There would almost be. It would almost be like malpractice for someone somewhere inside the FSB or some other piece of the Russian intelligence kind of world to at some point have not asked somebody to ask Jeffrey Epstein to do something for them, it seems, you know, and by the way, I'd probably make the same case at this point on Mossad, right? Where just this is a guy who's operating in. In with a bunch of overlapping adjacent networks that are all connected in some indirect way to intelligence services. And he's the guy that's Strikes me as kind of, you know, he's like a deep pockets guy who can do stuff for you, even if he's not a, you know, he's not a handled and recruited asset. I mean, does that what say you to that? It just seems like if I would have less respect for the FSB if they hadn't, you know what I mean? If they hadn't asked him to do something at some point. Right. It just seems implausible. What do you think?
- [31:34]
D
I'm certain that Russian intelligence was interested in utilizing Jeffrey Epstein in some way. And so it goes back to the thing. So in the, in the US if there's some person out there who's of some value to the United States, you know, that the CIA might play a role in that, the State Department might, depending on what's going on, the Commerce Department, usaid, like there's all these different things that play a role in our system. But the Russian intelligence is the main player in foreign policy for, you know, so like if a Ministry of Foreign affairs person meets him or a banking person meets them, that's is going to get into the Russian intelligence system. Like they're not as separated as ours and the Russian intelligence dominates all the others. You got a KGB president of the country, mind you, and you have a system. I mean, let me just give a sense of the, of the Russian system to understand how.
- [32:26]
A
Yeah, please.
- [32:27]
D
This sort of plays, right? So there's a word called systema and there's a really good article. The guy who does the podcast with us, who you may know, Adam Davidson, writes for the New Yorker and he wrote this piece Maybe back in 2017 called the theory of Trump Compromise, I think, and he talked about this thing called the system of the Russian system. So in the Russian system, legal safeguards are weak or non existent. They're whatever the Kremlin wants them to be. And power is personalized, right? So all elites and intermediaries, everybody behaves like they're under constant threat of personal political or financial exposure. So like the whole system is this informal corruption based hierarchy structured around who holds compromise on whom. So it's think of it more like a mafia system, right, where power and money and who has the goods on everybody else, right? So stability in that system, such as it is, rests on the dependency and fear, right? So everybody's complicit, everybody has some information on anybody else. You don't know what people have on you, they don't know what you have on them. So everybody's sort of vulnerable. And so you want to be careful about attacking someone because you don't know what they might have on you. You can't count on judges, law system processes. It's this sort of informal kompromat, laundromat, if you will, Mafia system. So in that kind of system, people like Jeffrey Epstein and those guys are sort of perfect, Donald Trump is too. They're comfortable working, you know, with sort of money and criminals and corruption and, you know, whatever it takes to get what you want, you know, and, and you know, you people might use compromise against you, but they're not. They might hold it and never use it. It's more subtle and vice versa. So you have to understand that system before you understand the how someone might look at somebody like Jeffrey Epstein.
- [34:15]
A
Well, I guess in that sense they, you know, a Russian intelligence officer, a target or looking at, at him would have, would have said this guy seems like a fellow traveler. It's very similar kind of mafia type networks, right, where this is a guy who is sort of playing and he's, he's kind of swimming around in the same cesspool as. Absolutely.
- [34:38]
D
They know, you know, he's got these Russian girls and sex things. They know that, you know, he's with Ghislaine Maxwell, whose father played this was likely spying for the Russians and helping them financially playing these same criminal networks. So like, you know, this person is the perfect person for them to be interested in how they use him. That's where it differs from the Western system. Right. So they can use him informally, semi witting. Witting, you know, whether he's like a, a spy or whether he's just beneficial to them. So that's the part that we're not going to know until somebody opens up Russian, you know, intelligence files or something. Yeah, and that's part of the problem with a dump like this. You just don't know what.
- [35:19]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, and you know, I should say also for our viewers, please do use the chat function to pass along any other questions you've got. John and I will, will. We'll deal with some of them toward the end of this time. So please do put any questions in that you've got. I know, indeed, I want to ask you about, you talk about Kompromat and I like the way you described it because I think usually you think about Kompromat as some poor businessman ends up getting entrapped in a hotel room and the Russians take pictures of him with a poor prostitute and then they go and tell the businessman or the politician or Whomever they've got the goods on him, and then he's under their control. Right. Which I guess certainly that could be a form of compromise.
- [36:07]
D
Yes.
- [36:08]
A
But it. The way you described it is much more subtle and kind of systemic. Right. And the. The. I think really maybe the heart of some of these theories around Epstein's connection to the intelligence world, be it Russia or. Or Mossad, are that he was running a kind of kompromat in, like, factory. Right. And he's. It's this nexus of the intelligence world with his criminality and him using, you know, video photos, his own knowledge of what his associates have done on his island or at his, you know, penthouse in Manhattan, and then being able to use that to benefit, in this case, Moscow. Right. What do you make of that claim? Because I think that is the most sort of, I guess, direct way of stating the case that I think many of our listeners have probably heard, which is there's a real nexus between the criminality of Jeffrey Epstein and his intelligence work.
- [37:19]
D
Yeah. So the Russian system is built on, like I mentioned, that system of that compromise of who has what on people. That's more of mafia, criminal kind of network. And I apologize for this phrase, but it's a Russian phrase which is ugly, but it makes. Makes some sense. There's a Russian phrase saying you should beat your wife, even if you don't know what she's done, she does. And so compromise sort of is like.
- [37:41]
A
In that there's actually a rush. That is a Russian. There's a Russian phrase.
- [37:45]
D
Right. But that's the notion is, it's like, for example, there was all this talk about Donald Trump in 2016. It's like, oh, they might have compromised on them. The thing, the beauty of the system, not the beauty the system is, is such that, like, if you're working in that criminal, dirty world, like, you're like, yeah, I know I've done things. I don't know what they have on me, like Donald Trump. It may not be with a pee tape or something like that, but it might be he's done deals or whatever, and he doesn't know. Know where he's gotten help or what's happening. But I just, you know, again, the stability is kept by the fact that, like, I don't know what people have on me, what do I have on them. I just sort of let it go. So kompromat is much more subtle. Like, if. If Donald Trump knows he did something illegal that the Russians might know about, or when he was in Russia, the Russians don't have to say, we know this. You already know it. Right? You're like, okay, I just, you know, I'm not going to mess with you because, yeah, you probably. You may know or have this other stuff you could use against me. So it's, it's that informal, criminal sort of view of things. And so they're interested in. And Jeffrey Epstein is number one. He's shown he's willing to play in that world of sort of criminality and girls and stuff. It would be wonderful to get into, even just to get into his computer and his system to see the kind of stuff he has. And if he's traveling to Russia, that's. That's cake. You can get it, you know, just go into his hotel room and get his stuff from him. You then might realize that he's willing to sort of play dirty games on the side that are valuable to. To you. And it doesn't even. You don't have to direct him to do things. He's already doing them. And then he can help. He's helping you with, with, you know, financial, money things. So there's, there's a variety of things here that are likely that are interested. Interest to the Russians and interested. Interesting to Jeffrey Epstein. And so in the Russian system, he. He's definitely an asset in the word, in the definition of how we talk about an asset of benefit to the Russians.
- [39:34]
A
But do you think. What would you make of the claim that this is. Because what I'm getting from you is the sense that this is all.
- [39:42]
D
Yeah. More informal, right?
- [39:44]
A
Yeah, it's more informal. Which makes the answer less satisfactory, you know, less satisfying, is because you want. You want the centralized, like, FSB guy goes to Jeffrey Epstein and says, we have an idea for a massive blackmail operation that you will be the centerpiece of and we will be collecting everything from it and then using that intentionally to gain control over a large number of elite scientists and business people and politicians in the US and elsewhere. I think that's kind of the cartoonish world that maybe it'd just be easier to understand, I think, if that were the case. But I kind of want to. What I'm hearing you say is that's probably not the best way, the best lens to, you know, through which to view Epstein.
- [40:30]
D
Yeah, I don't think they need to. I think they benefit without having to do that. So the Russian system, like, you got some people that are just spotting your nonsense. They don't know any better on social media. They got some people you're putting crap out there and they're just buying it and they're spreading it. That's good for you. You got some journalists that you talk with and spend and try to like, get over to your side of things are helping you out. You got someone like Jeffrey Epstein who's doing what you would want him to do anyway. You know, you can just nudge him. What's that book in economics? Nudge. Right. You don't need to, you know, say, okay, here's the deal. Sit down. You're going to do this, this, this, and I'm going to give you that, that, that. I mean, it's sort of implied. You know, criminals and Mafia people understand this implied world. It's certainly possible. And some people have, you know, there's that French historian woman who wrote a big article, last name's Tom, I think. But. And, and Steel and the. In the polls are looking at it suggests there might be an explicit thing here. But as far as I've seen from the dump, and frankly, I haven't read 3 million pages of whatever there is is that, you know, that he would there and I suspect there won't be a smoking gun of, you know, he specifically did this at their tasking, blah, blah, blah. But. But what. What I'm trying to say is it doesn't matter there. He's doing stuff that's in their interest and they're. And he. And anyway, so. And that's the same argument with Donald Trump is right. He doesn't have to meet on the street corner and get a piece of paper says you got to do A, B, C and D or we're going to do this to you. It's like he already gets it and he's already benefiting them in all sorts of positive ways for them. No Re. No reason to push him and have them say no.
- [42:03]
A
Right. And to point you raised earlier, but we didn't fully kind of flesh it out, I take it your view of Jeffrey Epstein as kind of a target, as a. To be an asset in a kind of controlled, secretive way that feels hard given his personality and who he is. Like you wouldn't with your case officer sort of brain on, you would not look at him as, oh, I want to recruit Epstein and run him secretly and have a combo plan where I communicate. We communicate with each other secretly and he responds to tasking. That's not. They don't need to. And it'd be hard given who he is.
- [42:44]
D
I guess they don't need to. And yeah, in our world, you want someone who's doing something, they're motivated to do it. They know why they're doing it, whether it's they need money, they need something for their kids, they hate their boss, they want to work with the United States to, To. To reform their system. Something that. So a spy who's working for me or when I was in CIA is, you know, they're. They're working positive. That's why we don't use. People always talk to CIA, use blackmail. We never blackmail. Because you want sources who want to work with you. If you blackmail people or use sex or something like that with them, they're going to look to get out of it. They're going to look to screw you at the first chance they get. We want people who know what they're doing, willing to do it for a long period of time, follow our direction, you know, and, and, you know, give us stuff that is the specific access they have, and we can sort of trust what they're giving us and can check it out. Whereas you look at Jeffrey Epstein, there's a Russian intelligence officer might say, oh, this guy looks really good to recruit. And the more you learn about him, you're like, he's a little too sleety. Like, he's playing. He's constantly playing everybody against everybody, which means he'll probably play us. If I try to, like, say, you know, you give me this, I'll give you this money. Like. Like, I. I think it's better to keep him as an informal person who's benefiting you than trying to control him, because he's probably. It probably actually would make it harder and worse for you in the process.
- [44:05]
A
Yeah. I did want to ask you about your thoughts on the actual dump of files itself. And, And I guess how. What do you think about the way that the information came out? And then I guess my second question is, given that you as an intelligence officer, spent a lot of time dealing in a world of incomplete and fragmentary information, how should people actually view the files themselves? And the information that's come out, like, what's. What's the way to think about it?
- [44:34]
D
Yeah, I think it's worth having that discussion. So, like, you mentioned the podcast that you came on, or we have a podcast called Mission Implausible that talks about conspiracy theories, and we recently did a series on the JFK assassination. Right.
- [44:47]
A
Yeah.
- [44:47]
D
And so, you know, a mass release turns what otherwise would be investigatory material with a professional investigative agency and a Justice Department into a public scavenger hunt. Right. So the more we get publicly, the More we insist that we need and we're never satisfied. It just fits into more and more consistent conspiracy theories. And I need more and more. So Donald Trump just released all of the CIA files on JFK. We've had like 50 years of JFK. Non stop books, podcasts, movies, there's all these crazy things happening. So now it's all out there and it did nothing. People will still say, ah, there must be other stuff, you know, they've created. So the problem with these dumps is when people dismantle, demand this wholesale disclosure so that, so we can finally know, you know, they mean well. But what they're signaling is they don't believe the system is capable of doing its job. Like we want a serious justice law enforcement system that can do, can pull these things, that can push stuff that doesn't make sense, that can then take a piece of information that doesn't understand and then can go out and query it, find it, look into the system, question people. So now I worry that if our standard of justice becomes just dump everything and let the Internet sort it out out, we're not strengthening accountability, we're just making it to this freaking spectacle. So, so I, I, I, I'm against this kind of thing, but, but the Trump administration, sadly, I don't want to make this political, but they, they made the Justice Department into a political weapon that can't be trusted. So, so the answer is then just give us this information and we'll figure it out. But like, frankly, we're not gonna, we're not gonna figure it out. And even if all the information is out, no one's going to be trusted. It's all out.
- [46:26]
A
Out. Yeah. Yeah. It does also seem to just reflect the sense that if there was a, you know, a massive DOJ report on this that was done based off of the files, the emails, whatever, all the evidence.
- [46:40]
D
Yeah.
- [46:41]
A
That there, there would be huge segments of the population that just would dismiss it.
- [46:45]
D
Yeah.
- [46:45]
A
Outright lost trust. They're hiding, they're hiding something. Right. And we can't, we can't trust the institutions anymore. You know, I mean, I think one of the questions, I mean, and I thought there was one earlier actually, I'm scrolling, I'm scrolling through some of them, which this will give, I think, John, I want you to address this one is earlier, Vuchko, Ukraine had commented in the chat about how the FSB is not just internal to Russia, they operate here in Ukraine and most former Soviet republics and also do cyber attacks and burnout warehouses in Europe. Also the SVR we talked, I think, a lot about the FSB sort of domestically, which obviously is true, but can you talk a bit about kind of Russian intelligence more broadly? What are the major agencies and kind of how. Excuse me, how do they operate? Because my understanding is, yeah, the FSB internal also operates a lot.
- [47:35]
D
So essentially during the Soviet period, it was the kgb and it had other names before that. So when, you know, when the bolsheviks took over 1917, the first thing it did is create this security system which was essentially was a terrorist operation to kill off all the opposition and keep the leadership in power. And then it created a foreign piece of this that would do the same to their overseas enemies. And it grew and grew and grew. So the, the Russian KGB, the security services, you're talking like 600, 700,000 people, like, massive, compared to, like the, the US Security and Intelligence system. So when the Soviet Union broke up, it took those pieces of the KGB and made them into separate organizations. Like, so the domestic part of the KGB was the second Chief Directorate that, you know, squished opposition and, you know, watched everybody inside and all those type of things that became the fsb, the external service, like the CIA piece of that became what's called the svr. These are just the Russian acronyms for. And then it created, I had like an NSA version of a text technical thing. It had, you know, a security thing that protected the leadership. It had. So there's a variety of, of places that came out of the old kgb, and the main ones are this fsb, domestic, svr, foreign, and then a variety of technical and other places. So what, what's interesting is it just shows the Russian mentality is when the Soviet Union broke up and those in Ukraine became a separate country and all these other former republics became separate company countries, they often use the FSB for what we would think of as foreign intelligence, but in those countries because in their mind, they still belong to us. Like Ukraine is still part of Russia and we belong. So the, the FSB played a much bigger role, even though in our system we'd see that as a foreign country. That should be the SVR operating in. So, and the FSB is far larger, more powerful because it's the thing that's closest to Putin and, and protecting his regime. And he was the director of the FSB before he became president. And so that's the difference between these different things. And so the, the, the person who commented is right. The FSB was in charge of Ukraine and was sort of preparing the invasion of Ukraine. It was the intelligence Service. They're very brutal, very ugly, very terrorist organization. And so the, the svr, like the fsb, has a role in other places around the country. Country, like they do have FSB people who work in, work in the United States that would coordinate with the FBI and other things on sort of police and law enforcement stuff. But the SVR is the main one for most foreign countries.
- [50:07]
A
Yeah, yeah. And there's another question here. I think this is worth addressing because I've actually scanned through a lot of the comments in here and many of them, even though, of course, we started.
- [50:15]
D
The conversation, you analysts are good at scanning through stuff.
- [50:18]
A
We're good at scanning things. That's right. We started the conversation by saying we're going to have a conversation about the Epstein Russia connections. There are many comments in here like, ah, Epstein and Mossad and a couple things I'll just say on this, Gordon and I, you know, and the actual question here is that, you know, Gordon and I covered this recently in our series. It seems like you guys ruled out this Mossad connection. And I, I think, I think it's maybe worth a little. I don't know if we ruled it out. What I said on the pod, if I remember correctly, was that I thought the idea of Mossad in a similar way that we've talked about with Russia running Epstein as a controlled asset and using Epstein as a sort of industrial feedback of blackmail in a centralized way and using that as to kind of, you know, get control over a large number of American politicians, scientists and businessmen. I don't buy that. I don't buy that. I think the risk reward on. From Assad's. Yeah, if they get any sense.
- [51:23]
D
Yeah. If they get caught doing that, I mean, running an American citizen against American interests, like the, like they're supposed to be our friend. Like, I think again, more informally, it would benefit them to do that without doing it formally. Because if you get caught running him as a spy in the United States, I mean, that turns the, you know, we're friends working together to like you're actually trying to screw us.
- [51:45]
A
Yeah. And so I think, I don't, I don't buy the kind of centralized, you know, Mossad running him and running the blackmail operation. I just don't. To me, the risk reward doesn't make it. The risk reward makes more sense from the Russian standpoint because it's a very high.
- [52:01]
D
Yeah, they don't care.
- [52:02]
A
The Israelis, of course, do attempt. The Israelis, of course, do attempt to spy on us and have in the past, but they, they have to balance that with the fact that they're also a friend. Like, it's. It's an allied service, right? It's a friendly service, and so they're the risk reward. Doesn't make sense to me from the Mossad angle. But what does make sense is similar to the way we've talked about Epstein from the Russian side, seen from, you know, sort of the fsb, as like, a guy who could potentially be useful in certain circumstances. I think the same. You'd have to make the same case from the Mossad side as well, that this is a guy who's got a bunch of, to them, interesting connections, who has the ability to move money, who has the ability to do things for you on an ad hoc basis. If someone asks to me, Epstein's operating in these networks of, you scratch my back, I scratch yours. We've all got some dirt on each other, maybe. And so it's kind of these mafia type networks we're talking about, or these certainly, like, kind of below the waterline networks. He's bumping up against all kinds of intelligence adjacent people and networks in his sort of daily life. And it makes a lot of sense to me that any global intelligence service would have seen him as someone who might be willing to do something for them. But to your point. Exactly. It's not like, hey, I'm blah, blah, blah from Mossad or blah, blah, blah from the fsb, and I'm here to tell you to do this thing. It's like you find someone who knows him, who can be. Who, in pattern, could ask him to do something that's beneficial to you. And that feels like. It just. That feels to me like what the story is so far, which, again, is, like, not satisfying. It's hard. It's. I think it's hard to kind of wrap your head around exactly what that is. And it's.
- [54:01]
D
When we were at. In training, one of the sort of things you talk about as you develop relationships with people is called give to get right. So if you're trying to network and meet people and you. You. You know, you have to give something yourself for them to start talking to you. And if. If anything, Epstein was a great networker. He tried. He was trying to pull in big people all around, and then some of them, he would, you know, then maybe maybe put them in compromising positions or that he could then maybe use other places. So probably Israelis would. They could talk to him, and he would probably give all sorts of information that was valuable to them without them even having to, like, request it. Or ask it or something. He's networking, he's in this group. He's trying to like, you know, he's. He's with the former Israeli Prime Minister. He's given this kind of stuff. And so, yeah, I tend to look at it this same way, is they benefit. Whether they direct him to do things or not, he's likely to give them stuff that's of value to them.
- [54:55]
A
Yeah, no, I, I absolutely agree with that. And I think that is insofar as maybe this is a good place to, to end the conversation. I mean, I think insofar as we've seen from these files, we're probably not going to get much more than this. Right. I mean, at least on. And I'm talking here specifically of the intelligence story because, I mean, let's just say, John, maybe we close it with this, which is what. How would, how would an intelligence service have communicated with him? Because my sense is we're never going to see that in these files. You're going to. You would have to. You'd have to have the FSB turn, you know, turn over its cable traffic to essentially ever be able to really demonstrably prove that they asked him to do something. Because it's going to, you know, before we get there, before we ever get to that, you know, all we're going to have are just sort of, you know, these kind of email. Email traffic between these different networks of people with stuff that by definition, they were willing to put in electronic communications.
- [55:59]
D
Yeah. So my guess would be, and again, I don't. I don't know, but my guess would be, you know, know, like, if he was spying for us, we would. Then, you know, we'd meet him on a street corner or in a hotel, or I'd go on alias to meet him in a third country. Or we might have a super secret, you know, way to communicate through fancy device or a computer, secret encryption and computer, like, that's how you handle real spies. But in this, I think some of the clues are there. Like, so there's Vitaly Churkin, there's Guy Belyaka. So if I'm the Russian intelligence and I'm looking for kind of stuff and I'm reminding you again that they are the main players, if the Russian intelligence goes to the, the ambassador in the UN Cherkin, and says, go see him, you know, tell us what he's thinking, ask these kind of questions, tell him that, you know, we'd like him to talk to somebody else. So, you know, so I think that's the way you do it, it's like again, yeah, you're willing to like be one or two steps away from like directly tasking him. He already has those contacts that are of use to, that are used to them. Conceivably he could say, you know, church, and let's have a dinner with him and I'll bring an intelligence officer who will be able to ask more questions. But Churkin can do that too. He swims in that same system.
- [57:13]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Well, John, thanks for coming on today. And, and you know, we didn't get as many attacks against Gordon Carrera in as I was hoping. We actually got like, surprise.
- [57:28]
D
It's a little, you know, these British guys, they're so British centric. But you know, Frank, it's a little like poking animals in a zoo. It's a little too easy. Right. There's no. And you're doing a fine job of it, so you don't need me to do it. But I, I have great respect for Gordon. I love his, his books, I've read all of his books. I'm a big fan. So, you know, doesn't mean we can't poke him a little bit when he starts talking about all this sort of over the top British stuff.
- [57:51]
A
Well, I do try to tone down his Britishness as much as possible.
- [57:54]
D
You do a good job, but it's.
- [57:55]
A
Just, it's very hard. It's very hard. Well, thanks everybody for joining this live stream. I do want a couple reminders. One is we are going to be launching an upcoming series, a six part series actually looking in depth at the Russian active measure in 2016 against the American election. So we're going to do that, we're going to be doing that from a very sort of rest is classified lens of like, what was the actual operation, how did it work, what was its intent? Going deep, John, into topics that you know a great deal about, which is sort of Russian active measures and disinformation operations and subversion. And we're also pairing that with a series for our club members on the side. Looking at, John, as we were talking a bit, looking at this Trump Russia nexus and trying to make sense of the sort of bizarre connections between Donald Trump and Russia. So we'll have that for our club members. And a reminder, of course, you can join the Declassified Club and should join the Declassified club@the restisclassified.com to get access to, you know, all of that wonderful bonus content. But John, it has been a real pleasure and, and thanks for joining me. Today for this, for this, this live stream.
- [59:08]
D
Always my pleasure. Thanks so much. You guys do a great job.
- [59:11]
A
Thanks, John. Bye, everybody.