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- [00:01]
David McCloskey
Oh, sheet.
- [00:02]
Gordon Carrera
Honey, chill.
- [00:03]
David McCloskey
It's just laundry. Not that I'm talking about these arm and hammer power sheets. All the power of arm hammer laundry detergent in a convenient tossable sheet.
- [00:12]
Gordon Carrera
Oh, sheet.
- [00:13]
David McCloskey
That's what I'm saying.
- [00:15]
Gordon Carrera
And arm and hammer power sheets deliver.
- [00:16]
David McCloskey
An effective clean at a great price.
- [00:19]
Gordon Carrera
Think of all the laundry we'll do.
- [00:20]
David McCloskey
And all the money we'll save.
- [00:23]
Gordon Carrera
Oh, sheet, Arm and hammer. More power to you. When a vehicle is certified by Volvo, it's much more than a certified pre owned. It's certified for that road trip you've been meaning to take. Certified for your growing family. Certified for small steps and big leaps. No matter where the road ahead may take you this season, Volvo hopes you enjoy every moment and are confident in the Certified by Volvo vehicle you've trusted. To take you there, contact your Volvo retailer. Today, real businesses rely on Spectrum business. Get the fastest, most reliable Internet, starting at $40 a month when bundled and backed by the Spectrum commitment. Find a plan that's made for your business@spectrum.com business restrictions apply. Services not available in all areas. Since I've been here, I've listened to and talked with groups and individuals and find there is a of opinion that the Directorate of Operations is overmanned and has a lot of people who are underemployed. Let me emphasise that this reduction is an effort to be leaner and more effective. It will be carried out in as considerate a way as we possibly can. Welcome to. The rest is classified. I'm Gordon Carrera.
- [01:47]
David McCloskey
And I'm David McCloskey.
- [01:48]
Gordon Carrera
And that was CIA Director Stansfield Turner, as you can probably tell from my accent. An admiral.
- [01:54]
David McCloskey
It was your Navy accent, Gordon.
- [01:56]
Gordon Carrera
Navy accent, Oxford, Rhodes Scholar accent. And he was speaking in the CIA's auditorium, the Bubble, on August 7, 1977, announcing his reductions, or should we say purge of the CIA. As we look at this story about purges and political control of the CIA in the context of what's going on today under the Trump presidency, but looking in particular back through the lens of history and what becomes known as the Halloween massacre under President Carter and his CIA director, Stansfield Turner. And David, last time we'd looked at Stansfield Turner, this kind of slightly intellectual, aloof figure coming into the CIA, a culture clash. And he's going to kind of bring with him a desire for change, his own people, and a desire to kind of cut the place down to size.
- [02:45]
David McCloskey
Well, that's right, Gordon. And last time we talked about how one of the things he did when he arrived, which, you know, of course, in any organization immediately ingratiates you to the rank and file. Was he fired a few people who worked on the seventh floor. And it's off to just kind of this really rough, bad start with the CIA. Now, one of the things that Turner does that is going to really accentuate this clash is that he brings in outsiders to kind of staff his seventh floor and to help him run the place. And I'll say this is something that never, ever goes well, sits well at the CIA. Now, there was a director of the CIA under George W. Bush named Porter Goss. He was very briefly the CIA director. And he had been a CIA case officer, I believe, back in probably this time in the 70s, early 70s or something like that. But he's brought in and he brings a bunch of people from his congressional office because he was a congressman by the time the early 2000s rolled around. And they get the nickname the Goslings, and they run around in the place. And when I joined in 2006, there was still fresh sort of blood about Porter Goss. People hated the Goslings, hated these outsiders coming in. And this is exactly what Turner does in 1977 when he takes over. So the new deputy under Turner, because remember from last time, the old deputy director kind of leaves in this huff over Turner taking over. So the new deputy is a career foreign service officer who'd been ambassador to Portugal, who Turner had gotten to know and respected. A Harvard academic, is brought in to be the head of analysis, which would not sit particularly well with a lot of the analysts there. And then he brings in a bunch of Navy guys nicknamed the Gang of Seven, who are kind of aides and other commanders. So he had been commander of sort of naval operations in Europe or in Southern Europe. He had been based in Naples. So he brings in a bunch of people from Naples to help him run the place. He installs a non operations guy as the ddo, the director, the Directorate of Operations. Yes, that's a real sin. And then worst of all, he brings in a management consultant. Gordon. God help.
- [05:09]
Gordon Carrera
Lowest of species.
- [05:11]
David McCloskey
The lowest.
- [05:12]
Gordon Carrera
The lowest.
- [05:12]
David McCloskey
The lowest thing on the evolutionary ladder. A management consultant.
- [05:18]
Gordon Carrera
We should just acknowledge that you may or may not have dabbled in that world as well in your time. That's why we're making fun of it. Sorry. Management consultants. The dark arts.
- [05:27]
David McCloskey
The dark arts of management consulting. We should note here, Gordon, that given my background both as a CIA analyst and as a management consultant, I sort of have a unique perspective on any story that connects the intersection of the Central Intelligence Agency to. To firing people, which is a lot of what management consultancies do. Now, I didn't do much of that work really at all when I was at McKinsey, but that is a lot of what. What the firm has typically done in the past. Now, this management consultant, he's a special assistant to Turner and overall general bagman. His name is Rusty Williams, which. Good name, Great name, great name. And he comes in really for particular ire by the rank and file in the Directorate of Operations. So Rusty comes in and is charged right off the bat by Turner with basically looking into the Directorate of Operations to come up with scandals and controversies and to try to understand if the DO was being run ethically. Now, remember from our last episode, Turner is taking over in the wake of Church pike and all of these revelations about, you know, sort of agency malpractice. And so what Rusty does is he goes and basically conducts a world tour, defined instances of, I guess, DO officers behaving badly, which of course, is not popular in the do. And one. One article said that Rusty was out running investigations on booze and sex play instead of foul play, and described his managerial practice as a vice squad approach to management. And in one case, Rusty goes out to the station in. Then Zaire, found that the COS was having a chief. Station. Yeah, the chief of station was having an affair with a Scandinavian flight attendant at an agency safe house. The COS is brought home and fired. So, you know, again, management 101, I guess here. Like, you're not really endearing yourself to the troops right off the bat.
- [07:38]
Gordon Carrera
Yeah. Although it does sound like a little bit of bad behavior from the troops as well. It might be the troops you could make.
- [07:44]
David McCloskey
What can you do about the troops, Gordon?
- [07:45]
Gordon Carrera
The troops could make the case that there might have been the need for a little bit of clearing house and for the teetotaler Stansfield Turner to bring in a bit of order to this unruly shop of miscreants who are up to things with Scandinavian flight attendants in safe houses and using money, dare I say. But anyway, he's bringing in his outsiders. But he also wants to cut the place down in terms of numbers, doesn't he, as well?
- [08:09]
David McCloskey
Yeah, that's right. So Turner, again, in his memoir, wrote that he. This is a great line. He just felt like there were too many people. You could just walk through the halls at Langley and feel that there were too many people. And, you know, I think the reality is he was probably right. Right. So the CIA in the late 70s is dealing with really a glut of officers who had come in or joined the agency sort of prior to and then during the Vietnam War. Right. So there's potentially, and we'll talk about this a little bit later in the episode, but you could sort of potentially see some connection or parallel to the post 911 kind of hiring binge that the CIA and a bunch of other national security institutions went on today. Although we'll cover some of the discrepancies between then and now in a bit. So you basically have a CIA that is staffed up with a lot of people who had been working with the military overseas, you know, in Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia. They had been on these kind of war zone tours, and there's not a war on anymore. Right. So you have maybe up to a thousand operations and kind of paramilitary officers who had recently come back from the theater and who are more or less just kind of twiddling their thumbs. You have a lot of those people who are back. You have a kind of younger cadre of officers at CIA who have come in, you know, not in the 50s and 60s, but kind of in the 70s and who feel really stifled by all of these old timers really hanging on. There had been, I think the year prior, a very public resignation by a young CIA officer who'd actually announced his resignation in a public letter to the Washington Post in 1976. And he had charged that, you know, the do the director of operations is run by an old burned out clique of senior officers who've really sucked the dynamism out of the organization. He also makes a whole bunch of colorful claims about, you know, CIA officers misusing taxpayer funds and the fabrication of reports in Vietnam. So kind of more dirty laundry out there. But basically it's a sense that there's just, there's too many people. And the CIA, though, had been going through a kind of slow process of getting down to the proper size. There had been cuts back in the Nixon years. And when we say cuts here, by the way, we should note, God forbid, put my management consultant hat back on.
- [10:36]
Gordon Carrera
Right.
- [10:36]
David McCloskey
Most of what we're talking about here is cutting positions, right. It's not actually up to this point, firing people and sending them out, out the door, right? So it's like someone retires out of a position and then the position isn't filled.
- [10:49]
Gordon Carrera
So they've been kind of trying to bring it down gently rather than rapidly at this point. And I notice in your notes that you use the phrase right sizing, which is A very management consultant phrase. I feel like, you know, we all fear being right sized by management.
- [11:04]
David McCloskey
We just want the size to be right. Gordon, how could you argue with that?
- [11:08]
Gordon Carrera
Strangely enough, smaller. But anyway, yeah, it is.
- [11:11]
David McCloskey
It is rarely for growth. I do remember one of the first projects I was on as a management consultant. There was a guy on the team who was spending too much money personally. And one of the associates on the team came up with a bunch of ideas and put them on a PowerPoint page for how he might get his personal finances under control. And one of the ideas said, right size family. That was the. That was the. That was the savings. The savings lever for my friend. I don't think he got on to right sizing his family. But basically what Gordon, without getting into too many of the numbers here, when Carter took office, the do, the director of operations was maybe around 4,000 or so people. It was down from almost 8,000 at the height of the Vietnam War. And there had been a study commissioned by the DO itself on staffing levels which called for a reduction of like another 1300 positions over the next five years. So there was even inside the sort of document fiefdom, a recognition that they were still overstaffed when Stan Turner takes over and that they would try to get rid of another 1300 or so positions by attrition and retirement over the next five years.
- [12:27]
Gordon Carrera
But what's crucial, I guess, is that Turner doesn't want to do it through that kind of gradual process of attrition. He's going to go for the kind of. The purge, the kind of. The slice, in a sudden way, of the CIA rather than what's been happening in the past, which feels like it's about cutting numbers, but also about a kind of ideological view that this place needs to be brought to heel. I think.
- [12:47]
David McCloskey
I think that's exactly right. I mean, George H.W. bush had come in during the Gerald Ford administration and run the CIA. He had been presented with the same numbers and basically elected to do nothing with them because he felt like the CIA needed some help publicly. The last thing it needed was a director who was going to come in and make a whole bunch of cuts. Bush basically just ignores it and by doing that kind of endears himself to the Agency. Right? Turner, he is very stubborn and he wants to demonstrate that he can control the place as well. And so he decides that he's going to cut 820 positions, but not over five years, over two years. And basically, the way the attrition is going to work, it's not going to be fast enough to accomplish that in two years. And so he is going to have to conduct a riff. Gordon, what's a riff? A riff? Is this not a, A term?
- [13:45]
Gordon Carrera
Well, guitar riff.
- [13:47]
David McCloskey
I think a reduction in force is, is what it stands for. And Turner calls it a bottom blow, which is a, which is a Navy blow.
- [14:00]
Gordon Carrera
Something else.
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David McCloskey
Yeah, exactly, exactly.
- [14:03]
Gordon Carrera
What is it in the Navy? What is the. Not a blow in the Navy.
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David McCloskey
Usually you have to pay double for that, but it's a Navy term for when you clean out the boilers by getting rid of all the slag that builds up. Right, okay. So Turner is sort of committed to this idea. This agency is overstaffed. There's too many people there.
- [14:21]
Gordon Carrera
Clean out the stables. And this is what's going to be the Halloween massacre, effectively.
- [14:25]
David McCloskey
That's right. So Turner makes up his mind. He announces this in August, which is the quote you read in your, your Navy accent at the beginning of the episode. And he'll, he'll say later on that basically between August and the end of October, no one at the CIA apparently counsels him against it. And it might be the case that nobody actually thought he was going to go through with it. They send out some memos over the course of that kind of August, September period, offering full retirement benefits if senior officers retire early. And then it ends with this ominous line, this message that the Director, quote, intends to recommend your separation pursuant to Headquarters regulation. And I actually don't know the number because it's still classified, but your separation, but your separation, which sounds pretty ominous, right? And there's not enough uptake of this to cover the 820 positions. So then in October, the head of the Directorate of Operations sends out a memo to everybody in the Directorate, basically says, look, there's going to be a two stage purge that's going to reduce the DO's ranks by about 20% over the next 15 months. So you think, I mean, that's a pretty significant percentage of the, of the workforce. Right? People are terrified. And so we come up Gordon, to Halloween. Basically what Turner did was he came up with the number, the 820, and then he kicks it down to the do and says, figure out how to make this happen. Figure out how to cut people in areas where we don't need them, or cut low performers, but basically come back with the list of names, you know, and positions to be rift. Now, Turner importantly tells the DO to come up with the specifics of that plan by the first of November. And, and Turner specifically said, I do not want the names to go out on the 31st of October on Halloween, does not want them to go out.
- [16:22]
Gordon Carrera
Because he knows it's going to get. He can see what's going to happen.
- [16:25]
David McCloskey
You can see what happens. They go out on Halloween, which is.
- [16:28]
Gordon Carrera
Surely someone screwing him over.
- [16:30]
David McCloskey
Basically somebody sends it out on Halloween.
- [16:31]
Gordon Carrera
Which feels like people are trying to screw him over a bit.
- [16:34]
David McCloskey
Inside the agency there's no evidence of that, but that seems like a reasonable hypothesis. And it is instantly like that day memorialized as the Halloween massacre.
- [16:44]
Gordon Carrera
Because what seems to go out is a two paragraph note delivered by courier. It says that basically says it has been decided that your services are no longer needed. You know, when you've probably been on the battlefield, as it were for the CIA for many years and in dangerous hotspots around the world or doing whatever you've been doing for the CIA, including with flight attendants in Zaire anyway, less about that the better. Then to suddenly get a note like that, you're going to feel bruised, I think it's fair to say. And it's also fair to say that these are not people who take being fired like that lying down unless you're the again the guy with the flight attendant. But these are people who are, you know, they're not, they're not going to be happy.
- [17:24]
David McCloskey
Gordon's mind is stuck in a zeider's safe house. Safe house 1976. I mean so I mean even Turner will, will admit that the way the, the riff happened was unconscionable. Is is the line he actually uses in his memoir. And he had assumed that because there had been downsizing done in the Nixon years that there were methods and procedures for kind of doing this right. But there wasn't. They didn't exist. There had also been no consultation with any of the do people who really did a lot of the budgeting and staffing work. So they were totally caught off guard. And in this case I think it's really a lot of this is the how, right? It's not so much that he's, it's.
- [18:09]
Gordon Carrera
The brutal way it's done. It feels.
- [18:11]
David McCloskey
Yeah, that's right.
- [18:12]
Gordon Carrera
I mean including potentially station chiefs over broad. It seems like a bit unclear, but there's some reports that London, Vienna, Bonn, Canada, Latin America, you know, these are senior people, aren't they, who are potentially. It sounds like maybe being fired.
- [18:25]
David McCloskey
It is I think fair to say that when these notices go out the whole place kind of goes, goes bananas. And to your point on the, on the chiefs of station I mean, I should note there is some contradictory reporting here because it came out that some of these cos. Chiefs of Station were included in the purge. But Turner, in his memoir, insists that it was only headquarters staff that were cut. So it's hard to say, but I like believing that the chiefs of Station were cut because one of the little anecdotes that has come out is that a chief of station who had been fired reportedly cables back to the director and here, Callum, our producer, will need to get that bleep gun ready again because the cable is apparently two words and it just says you. And apparently the support officer who physically wrote the cable and sent it in added a line at the end that basically said, you know, I know I'm not supposed to send this kind of language, but the chief of Station's making me.
- [19:24]
Gordon Carrera
He's making me. It makes it sound like he's got a gun to his head. Send this message to the director saying, f you because or else I'm going to shoot you one.
- [19:32]
David McCloskey
And bulletin boards at this time are a thing around the CIA. So these bulletin boards pop up with anti Turner messages, cartoons, poems, there's a threat of class action lawsuit and a remarkable number of anonymous quotes are, you know, given to the press. He's fragmenting the agency. He's reducing morale.
- [19:54]
Gordon Carrera
CIA can be quite good at briefing the press and leaking and offices when they've got something to say.
- [19:59]
David McCloskey
I would say, come now, Gordon.
- [20:02]
Gordon Carrera
I would say they know how to play the dark arts of using the media to get their message out. I would suggest having seen a little bit of it myself. But Turner, Turner kind of fights back, as you'd expect. I like in an interview, he calls the people crybabies.
- [20:16]
David McCloskey
Cry babies. Yeah. In one interview, he probably misspeaks or relative to what he wanted to say and creates the sort of vibe that everybody at CIA is a crybaby. And then like a week later, he's seated for another interview and he singles out. He says, you know, there's the person here who's being a crybaby. And the journalist who's doing the interview sees a typewritten note in front of Turner that. That has a bullet point on it reminding him to say one crybaby. Not. Not a bunch of crybabies. You know, I mean, even there's T shirts that are being printed at Langley at the time that say Armchair Admiral out, you know, and being passed around. So there's like a modest rebellion at Langley after this, then. Young analyst at the CIA, so not.
- [20:59]
Gordon Carrera
A young McCloskey now an old McCloskey.
- [21:02]
David McCloskey
But your predecessor, now a very old baby. McCloskey said that he encountered a security officer walking around the compound with a German shepherd, which is not really something you see all that much. And he told the analyst that we think the director doesn't trust us. He's afraid he'll be assassinated. Which again is like, I don't know if this is some kind of apocryphal thing or totally made up, but I will believe that it's true until the day I died that Stan Turner thought he was going to be, like, killed during a, you know, a leadership meeting by someone from the do. The way this massacre, it's interesting, has been reported down through the years, is that he fired 800 plus people. So Turner claims that only 17 people from the DO were actually fired. 147 were forced into early retirement, and then through normal attrition over the next two years, they got the remaining positions up to that 820 number.
- [21:59]
Gordon Carrera
So he's trying to say that not that many people were actually kind of given their notice and fired, but I mean, still, in mythology, this becomes a thing, doesn't it? And in terms of the anger and the kind of breakdown between a leadership and the agency, this does become a kind of really significant moment. And the fact is it's still kind of referred to and spoken about today because of the anger and the bitterness that this causes when you've got a director trying to kind of impose his will on what he sees as a recalcitrant agency.
- [22:30]
David McCloskey
That's right. I mean, the place is overstaffed. But this is also an effort on Turner's part to kind of bring it in line, frankly, with the way he wanted to run it. As he says, you know, their empire, which was surrounded by a mode of secrecy, had been invaded by an outsider who they believed would never understand or appreciate it and therefore could not properly change its ways.
- [22:52]
Gordon Carrera
And so with the Halloween massacre having taken place, the chainsaw being taken to the CIA, its moat being breached. Let's take a break and when we come back, we'll look at what that tells us about the CIA and President Trump and what might be happening today.
- [23:08]
David McCloskey
And in the near future before buck naked underwear. Going out naked was a negative. Grocery shopping in the nude, A big no, no.
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C
Sunday service in the buff, a desk.
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David McCloskey
Service, and naked in the garage. Just odd. Turn naked into a net positive with buck naked underwear and feel like wearing nothing anywhere. Get buck naked at your Duluth trading store. Watch the world's Biggest tennis stars clash in the California desert at the BNP.
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Gordon Carrera
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David McCloskey
How can they get to these shots?
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Gordon Carrera
Tune in daily for exclusive first ball to last coverage from Indian Wells and.
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David McCloskey
Witness all of the jaw dropping action as the game's top men and women square off at one of the greatest events in in sports. It's tennis magic you need to see to believe. The BNP Paribas Open live on Tennis.
- [24:08]
Gordon Carrera
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David McCloskey
Claire is practicing her breathing for her upcoming yoga retreat in Bali. Has she ever done yoga before? No, but Claire worked with Empower on her savings and investment strategy. She got good at money, so she can be a little bad.
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D
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David McCloskey
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Gordon Carrera
Investing involves risks.
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David McCloskey
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- [24:39]
Gordon Carrera
Om Namaste. So, welcome back. We've looked at the story of the Halloween massacre from the late 70s, a period where you had a president through his CIA director Tryon, impose greater political control on a CIA which had been seen as a bit of a rogue elephant, a bit of a kind of part of a deep state of its time, perhaps, and a desire to kind of bring it down in size and bring it to heel. David, I guess the question that comes from that is how similar or how different do you think that is from what we've been seeing so far with the Trump administration?
- [25:24]
David McCloskey
On the surface there is a similarity, right. Which is you have a new president that is sort of trying to figure out how does it get a handle on Langley and get what it needs or feels like it needs from Langley. And you also have, I think, a president or a new administration coming in who thinks the federal government's bloated today. Right. And there need to be cuts.
- [25:48]
Gordon Carrera
Elon Musk with his chainsaw.
- [25:50]
David McCloskey
Yeah, Elon Musk with his. With his chainsaw. You know, sort of applying and extending that to the CIA as well. So on the face of it, you definitely do have, you know, some real similarities. Though we should note that it is early days in the second Trump administration and it very much remains to be seen to what degree John Ratcliffe, the CIA director, will try to cut maybe further beyond offering these buyouts. And by the way, I don't think we have any sense of how many CIA officers have taken these buyouts, which.
- [26:21]
Gordon Carrera
Is a kind of redundancy package, isn't it?
- [26:22]
David McCloskey
Yeah, right. The, the only people to my knowledge that have been fired from CIA so far have been those in those kind of dei, diversity, equity, inclusion positions. Right. But there are, I think anytime you're talking about establishing more political control over the CIA or cutting positions, cut. Actually just downsizing. Right. There are big risks to consider. There are things to think about here, and I think there's probably five big ones. And the first one, which is maybe obvious but worth mentioning is that if you, regardless of your thoughts on how big the federal government might be, how bloated it might be, and whether that applies to the CIA, if you fire people with top secret security clearances, you are always going to run the risk of potential recruitment by foreign intelligence services. I mean, this is the reason why many very senior CIA officers that I know, they'll say over the course of, you know, decades long careers, I mean, they barely fired anybody. And the reality of that is that you run this tremendous risk of creating a recruitment pool for the Russians, the Chinese, anybody who is able to understand who these people might be once they're let loose and to go after them for recruitment.
- [27:44]
Gordon Carrera
Disgruntlement plus top secrets equals danger. And I mean, I think both the CIA and actually MI6 have seen that in the past with some officers. So yeah, that's one.
- [27:53]
David McCloskey
And I think there, I mean, I'll just bring up this list of probationary officers again, right? These are officers who are in the first couple years of their tenure at the CIA. That list goes down to the White House. It's got a first name and a last initial on it. If down the line a number of those people are let go, let's say potentially hasn't happened yet, but it might. Well, if I were a Russian targeting analyst or a Chinese targeting analyst, you don't have to be that crafty or intelligent to come up with a way to sort of connect. You could use LinkedIn, you can use other social media, sort of connect those names to find people like, oh, this is somebody who was fired from the Central Intelligence Agency. Let's go see what they're up to. Right. So that's one, I think two. And it's related to this probationary point and also just stalling. Hiring is when you do these kind of cuts. The CIA has this very sort of binge and purge relationship with hiring. I mean, we talked about it in the Halloween massacre episode with this, this absolute binge in Vietnam era hiring. And then all of a sudden on the back end of it, you're left with a whole bunch of people. Right. Well, the CIA kind of does something similar. And the reality is, if you start to cut, just like the incoming people, as an example. Well, I mean, you're. You're sort of cutting off your pipeline of fresh recruits. Right. They bring a vitality and energy to the organization that you desperately need.
- [29:23]
Gordon Carrera
You're not necessarily getting rid of the worst people. You're getting rid of the new people, which has got. Definitely got risks. Yeah.
- [29:28]
David McCloskey
And it probably takes seven years, I mean, is what I think senior officers would say, seven years to get a new person in to be a full performing analyst or case officer. So if you cut people off halfway through that process and leave a lot of people up kind of at the upper ends, you're not doing this in a targeted way. You could see a world where maybe some of your better talent actually gets let go. Right. So that's, that's the second one. There is a third point here around morale, which is a big one. You know, and as we saw with Stan Turner in the Halloween massacre, if you come in and you. You're sort of day one mission gets filtered down to the workforce as cutting staffing. You might be acting with the full support of the president. Right. But from the standpoint of the CIA, I mean, this is. This is gonna absolutely kill morale. And there are a number of reasons for this, Gordon, but, you know, having conversations over the past couple weeks with people who have just left the CIA and some who are still in, I mean, there's a real culture of kind of anxiety and fear that is developing there around the way that this agency will be. Will be treated in the second administration.
- [30:41]
Gordon Carrera
And then what you get is you get a culture where people are spending their time worrying about their jobs rather than doing their jobs. So, you know, it undermines performance in a way, doesn't it? The anxiety, the amount of time you can spend worrying about it. So, yeah, totally see why that's a risk.
- [30:53]
David McCloskey
Well, and I think the other one here, the fourth risk is the potential for losing support from, or getting weaker support from key partners. Right. And this is, I think, a maybe potentially very unique risk to Trump and the way he has handled classified information. I mean, we mentioned in the past episode, the incident in the first administration where I believe he was. He ended up sharing, like, Israeli liaison information on the Islamic State with the Russians. There's just sort of a more freewheeling attitude or sort of treatment, I think, on his part, to classified information. And also, we should say the way that, I mean, we're recording this in February of 2025. I mean, we are looking at a world where policy change on Russia, Ukraine is pretty stark in comparison to, well, let's say, Gordon, your government. And so what does that mean for kind of intelligence sharing with key partners like, you know, the Brits?
- [31:57]
Gordon Carrera
The Brits, when you ask them, will always say at British intelligence, well, you know, our professional relationship on the day to day working relationship remains very strong with the Americans. But you can't help but think that they will have to think about whether, you know, some of the most sensitive secrets they have can be shared if there is a risk. You know, I mean, they will always protect some secrets, even from your closest allies. But the boundaries of what you're willing to share. That might change as you've got more worries about what's going on in that organization. And particularly, I guess, when it comes to the issue of whether it could be handled sloppily or whether there's politicization.
- [32:33]
David McCloskey
And I should note, I mean, before we get to the last one, which is politicization, I would say for those listening who think Gordon and I are being sort of unfair or maybe hammering on too many of the risks and not for the benefit, I would just say that these four risks we've outlined, the counterintelligence risk, the talent risk, what do you do? What happens to morale? I think it's possible to downsize or right size, Gordon, to use the consulting, you know, to trim a workforce in a way that mitigates those risks. Right. I mean, you could conceivably manage this in a way that would actually potentially improve the effectiveness of the Central Intelligence Agency. Right. Because it would be my assertion that in any massive organization, any massive bureaucracy and probably public bureaucracies, more so than massive private corporations, that there is going to be a bunch of kind of waste and redundancy and things that don't make sense and that are out of step with the reality of, in the CIA's case, the kind of mission in the world. So we're not coming out and saying, look, the CIA is at a perfect size, resources are being allocated perfectly. That's not at all what I'm saying. What I'm just saying is anytime you're going to go and cut, you have to think about these risks and sort of mitigate them in order to do the cuts effectively.
- [33:58]
Gordon Carrera
Yeah, but let's get to politicization because I think that's the real one that people are most conscious of, rather than just the cutting of staff, which I Guess does, does still have some risks. And that is the idea that what's going on is the agency is being brought to heel politically, not just in terms of size, but there is a message going out, you need to be loyal. And you know, the talk was that people were going around and being asked, what's your view of who won the 2020 election? What's your view of January 6th? Are you on board politically? And that that is a different thing, which is a kind of a political control over the Central Intelligence Agency, which I guess is not what it's there for. It's there to kind of speak truth to power. Although also, as we've talked about in past episodes, it's also there as the kind of arm of the President, isn't it to do things as well? There's maybe a tension between those two things.
- [34:47]
David McCloskey
The politicization conversation is the hardest one to have because I think the reality of how it happens is subtle in many cases. It can be hard, very hard to really substantiate it if you try to go back and prove that it happened. And also I think weirdly, it is of all the risks that we've highlighted, probably the most insidious, right, because if you go back to the Halloween massacre for a second, right, if Stan Turner had come in and said, look, there's a particular set of Carter policies that we're all going to get behind and he had at the same time sort of dangled this thread of staffing reductions simultaneously. Well, all of a sudden you realize you've created a bunch of incentives inside the organization to pull punches so that you're not seen as opposing the policies or contributing a piece of information that's going to make it harder for the President to implement their policy. So you have an agency that's going to be sort of fearful of actually communicating reality to, to the President. And that is very hard to measure that. And it's the kind of thing where that kind of fear can get into the organization really, really quickly.
- [36:09]
Gordon Carrera
You get a kind of self censoring partly, don't you, where people are not putting stuff up. Political pressure is very rarely someone saying, you will say this, but it's people not saying something that they could say. And it's also, I spent a lot of time looking at the Iraq WMD story in both the US and the UK and there's a kind of parallel there, isn't there, where people knew the political direction of the administration and of the British government which was to go to war and for Britain to go to war with them. And so they basically decided not to put up information which might challenge that and to look for intelligence which would support that policy. And so what you got was a kind of a group think and a lack of challenge around the intelligence on weapons of mass destruction because they were following what they thought was a political direction. And again, it was. It's your point about it being subtle rather than people saying, hey, go make something up or go find me this to justify that. It's a slightly more subtle process, but it does kind of carry risks, particularly at the moment, I guess, when you've got a dangerous and uncertain world and you've got, you know, whether it's Russia, Ukraine or whether it's kind of the Iran nuclear program and what's happening with that, where you can imagine there are political priorities which people are going to be very aware of. And then their question is, you know, what kind of intelligence do they bring to the table, whether it supports that or maybe undermines that policy.
- [37:29]
David McCloskey
We should be very clear that right now we're talking about the general risks of a new administration coming in and saying, look, we're going to get more political control over Langley. Right. A risk of that is politicizing the intelligence. We, as of yet, just a month into the second Trump administration, I don't think, have a lot of crunchy information yet to suggest that there's sort of a full throated effort underway to do that. But maybe just to kind of walk one of these cases through a bit, just to see how kind of damaging politicization can be if it takes hold, is if, let's imagine you had a CIA director who understood either implicitly or explicitly from the White House, that there were certain types of information that they just weren't interested in seeing or interested in showing to the president. We've talked about Russia in this episode. I think you could probably make the same case that there could be intelligence about Israel, there could be intelligence about Saudi Arabia, that just sort of doesn't jive with the way the president wants to think about or talk about the world. Right. And oftentimes it can be an appetite that there not be bad news or complicating news brought into the White House that's going to mess up a policy or complicate a policy. You know, and the CIA director in this kind of hypothetical scenario could say, look, I want to see everything on this subject before it gets disseminated. Right. And then you sort of can push that down through all your various aides and staff and hangers on. Right. To go out into the bureaucracy and to kind of make sure that as reports move through the organization. Right. That it gets to senior officials on the seventh floor who can have a look at this stuff before it really gets disseminated. The really explosive stuff. Right. The stuff that's going to mess up a policy or frustrate the president. Right. As we talked about with that cable coming out about the Iraqi insurgency, I mean, that's going to send President Bush through the roof. Right. And so get rid of this guy who's putting this stuff out.
- [39:30]
Gordon Carrera
Yeah. It gets filtered out and the people get moved out.
- [39:32]
David McCloskey
In the CIA, it's called NDing something, non disseming something. So you can have a source, the station, wherever they are, in Baghdad or in Moscow, put something out as a draft and you could have a senior official look at it and say, ooh, non dissem this kind of stuff. Right. So it doesn't take that much to kind of kill the stuff in a bureaucracy. And you can also imagine a world, Gordon, where that stuff isn't even put out to begin with because, you know, it kind of, it's not going to make it through the chain, so why bother putting it out in the first place?
- [40:03]
D
Yeah.
- [40:03]
Gordon Carrera
And I mean, it's one of the things that you'll hear about the Russian system, interestingly enough, is that stuff doesn't get up to Vladimir Putin if it's going to upset him or if it contradicts what he thinks, for instance, about whether, you know, an invasion of Ukraine in 2022 was going to be successful or not. And the risks are you then make bad decisions because you have got imperfect information. I guess as we come to an end, we should say that we don't know quite what's going to happen next. It is early days and we're going to be keeping an eye on it. And, you know, I'm sure we'll come back to some of the kind of stories of the past that reflect on this, like Iraq, WMD and maybe lab leak and things like that, but also keeping an eye out for any, any news stories and just a reminder as well to those listening that if you've got any kind of questions, if you've got suggestions, things you want us to look at or talk about, please do get in touch. The rest is classified@goalhanger.com but I guess there, David with the chainsaw hovering, ready.
- [41:00]
David McCloskey
To pull Stan Turner's memorial chainsaw from his Halloween massacre.
- [41:04]
Gordon Carrera
Ready to pull. Who knows whether it's going to be used by Elon Musk or someone else. But with that, I guess we should say thank you for listening and we'll see you next time.
- [41:13]
David McCloskey
We'll see you next time.
- [41:19]
C
Hi there, I'm Al Murray, co host of we have ways of making you talk the world's premier Second World War history podcast from Goal Hanger.
- [41:26]
D
And I'm James Holland, best selling World War II historian. And together we tell the best stories from the war. This time we're doing a deep dive into the last major attack by the Nazis on the west, the Battle of the Bulge.
- [41:40]
C
And what's so fascinating about this story is we've been able to show how quite a lot of the popular history about this battle is kind of the wrong way round, isn't it, Jim? The whole thing is a disaster from the start. Even Hitler's plans for the attack are insane and divorced from reality.
- [41:53]
D
Well, you're so right. But what we can do is celebrate this as an American success story for the ages. From their generals at the top to the gis on the front line. Full of gumption and grit, the bold should be remembered as a great victory for the usa.
- [42:07]
C
And if this sounds good to you, we've got a short taste for you here. Search we have ways wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks. Yeah.
- [42:19]
D
Anyway, so who is Overstuff Van Fuhrer? Joachim Piper.
- [42:23]
C
But I see his jaunty hat and I just think skull and crossbones. Well, I see his reputation and I think, you know, you might be a handsome devil, but the emphasis is on the devil bit rather than the handsome.
- [42:34]
D
Anyway, be that is May. He's 29 years old and he's got, he's got a very interesting career really because he comes from a, you know, a pretty right wing family. Let's face it. He's joined the SS at a pretty early, early stage. He's very. International socialism. He's also been Himmler's adjutant. Yeah, he took a little bit of time off in the summer of 1940 to go and fight with, with the 1st Waffen SS Panzer Division. Yeah, did pretty well. Went back to being Himmler's adjutant, then went off and commanded troops in, in the Eastern Front, rose up to be a pretty young regimental commander. I mean it's not many people that age are no ber Stern van Fuhrer, just Colonel.
- [43:08]
David McCloskey
Yes, I.
- [43:09]
C
You see, what must it have been like if you're in, if, if Himmler's adjutant turns up and he's been posted to you as an officer, do you think? Well, he Only got that job because of, because of his connections. For Piper, it must have been always, he's always having to prove himself, surely, because he's, he has turned up. He's not worked his way through the ranks of the Waffen ss. He's dolloped in, having come from head office, as it were. It must be a peculiar position to be in. Right. He's got lots to prove. Right. That's what I'm saying.
- [43:36]
D
Yeah. And he's, he's, he's from a sort of middle class background as well.
- [43:40]
C
Yeah.
- [43:40]
D
But he's got an older brother who's had mental illness and attempted suicide and never, never really recovers and actually has died in. Of TB eventually in 1942. He's got a younger brother called Horst who's also joined the SS&TOTEN KOT Verbanda and died in a never really properly explained accident in Poland in 1941.
- [43:59]
David McCloskey
Right.
- [44:00]
D
Piper gains a sort of growing reputation on the Eastern Front for being kind of very inspiring, fearless, you know, obviously courageous, you know, all the guys love him, all that kind of stuff. But he's also orders the entire. The destruction of entire village of Krasnaya Polyana in a kind of revenge killing by Russian partisans. Yeah. And his unit becomes known as the Blowtorch Battalion because of his penchant for touching Russian villages. So he's got all the gongs. He's got Iron Cross, second Class, first Class Cross of Gold, Knight's Cross. Did very well at Kursk briefly in Northern Italy actually, then in Ukraine, then in Normandy. He suffers a nervous breakdown.
- [44:36]
Gordon Carrera
Yeah.
- [44:37]
D
And he's relieved of his command on the 2nd of August and he's hospitalized from September to October. So he's not in command during Operation Lutech. And then he rejoins 1st SS Panzer Regiment as its commander again in October 1944. It's really, really odd.
- [44:51]
C
I mean, but isn't that interesting though, because if you're a lancer, if you're an ordinary soldier, you're not allowed to have a nervous breakdown. You don't get hospitalized. Hospitalized, you don't get time off. How you could interpret this is. This is a sort of Nazi princeling, isn't? He is Himmler's adjutant. He's demonstrated the necessary Nazi zeal on the Eastern Front and all this sort of stuff. It comes to Normandy where they, where they're losing. Why else would he have a nervous breakdown? He's shown all the zeal and application in the Nazi manner up to this point. And they're losing, you know, and because he's a knob, you know, because he's well connected, he gets to be hospitalized. If he has a nervous breakdown, he isn't told like an ordinary German soldier. There's no such thing as combat fatigue, mate. Go back to work.
- [45:28]
D
Yes. And it's a nervous breakdown, not combat fatigue.
- [45:30]
C
Well, yes, of course, but.
- [45:31]
D
But you know what SS soldier said of him? Piper was the most dynamic man I ever met. He just got things done.
- [45:38]
C
Yeah.
- [45:38]
D
You get this image I have of him of having this kind of sort of slightly manic energy. Yeah, kind of. He's virulently National Socialist. He's got this great reputation. He's damned if anyone's going to tarnish it. You know, he's a. He's a driver. You know, all those things.
- [45:53]
C
He's trying to make the will triumph, isn't he? He's working towards the Fuhrer. He's imbued with. He knows what's expected of him. Extreme violence and cruelty and pushing his men on. I mean, he's sort of. He's the Fuhrer Princip writ large, isn't he, as a. As an SS officer.
- [46:07]
D
Yeah.
- [46:08]
C
Which is why cruelty and extreme violence are bundled in to wherever he goes, basically.