Loading summary
Transcript136 lines
- [00:01]
Alistair Campbell
Thanks for listening to the Rest is Politics. Sign up to the Rest is Politics plus to enjoy ad free listening, receive a weekly newsletter, join our members chat room and gain early access to live show tickets. Just go to the restispolitics.com that's therestispolitics.com.
- [00:17]
Rory Stewart
The rest is politics is powered by our friends at Fuse Energy and Rory.
- [00:21]
Alistair Campbell
You know that Fuse have been very generous in their offers to members and to supporters of the Rest is Politics. So how about this one? Anyone who switches energy supply to Fuse, you get free membership to this wonderful podcast and the rest is politics plus for the rest of 2025.
- [00:39]
Rory Stewart
Well that's a very very generous offer indeed. All you have to do is go to getfuse.com politics and use the referral code politics when signing up and you.
- [00:48]
Alistair Campbell
Will get as a member of Trip all of the episodes ad free question time episode. You'll get that a day before everybody else. You get access to members only live streams. You get early access to tickets for our live shows days before the general.
- [01:02]
Rory Stewart
Public and we'd love to have you as one of our members and hopefully it's just the perk you need if you're considering switching energy provider. It's always worth mentioning that Fuse generate power from their own solar and wind farms and they invest 100% of profits into building more renewables.
- [01:16]
Alistair Campbell
Anyway, Roy, I had a look at Trustpilot and on there people give fuse 4.7 out of 5. That's a very, very high mark in the modern demanding age. And there is comment after comment about how helpful and attentive people find the service that they get. And I do think people appreciate speaking to real human beings rather than those awful chatbots.
- [01:40]
Rory Stewart
So download Fuse's app now and use the referral code politics after signing up, visit getfuse.com politics for the terms and conditions and to learn more.
- [01:51]
David McCloskey
Are your ulcerative colitis symptoms proving difficult to manage? Tremvia gselkumab can help you manage the cycle of UC symptoms. At one year, many patients taking Tremvia achieved clinical remission and some patients also achieved endoscopic remission. Individual results may vary. Tremphya is a prescription medicine used to treat adults with moderately to severely active ulcerative colitis. Serious allergic reactions and increased risk of infections may occur. Before treatment, your doctor should check you for infections and tb. Tell your doctor if you have an infection, flu like symptoms or if you need a vaccine. Ask your doctor if Tremphya can help you manage the cycle of UC symptoms call 1-800-526-7736 to learn more or visit trimfireadio.com I'm ready for my life to change.
- [02:38]
Ryan Seacrest
ABC Sundays, American Idol is all new.
- [02:42]
Carrie Underwood
Give it your all.
- [02:43]
Luke Bryan
Good luck.
- [02:43]
Carrie Underwood
Come out with the golden ticket.
- [02:44]
Luke Bryan
Let's hear it.
- [02:45]
Carrie Underwood
This is a man's work. I've never seen anything like it. And a new chapter begins. We're going to Hollywood. Carrie Underwood joins Lionel Richie, Luke Bryant.
- [02:57]
Ryan Seacrest
And Ryan C. Crest on American idol news Sundays, 8, 7 Central on ABC.
- [03:03]
Carrie Underwood
And stream on Hulu.
- [03:15]
Alistair Campbell
Welcome to a very special Restless Politics live stream with me, Alistair Campbell and me, Rory Stewart, joined by David McCloskey, who, if you are wise enough to have signed up already to the Rest Is Classified, you will know as a former CIA analyst and author. But the reason we wanted to do this live stream with him is because David is something of an expert on a country that we're very interested in, which Roy and I have just been to namely Syria. Whereas, you may know, we interviewed the new president, former al Qaeda fighter Ahmed Al Sharar. It's been one of our biggest, most successful, most watched interviews by some distance. Actually. You can watch that on YouTube or you go to leading. But we thought it'd be really interesting to get David's take. If you've listened to the Rest is Classified, you'll know he talks a lot about Syria because he knows a lot about Syria. So, David, thank you very much for doing this. And we're going to talk about all sorts of things. But first, just I know you listened to the interview. First of all, if you were still a CIA analyst and you've got a new leader coming into the onto the scene like that, what sort of things are you looking for when you actually hear the guy talking on the record like that?
- [04:33]
Carrie Underwood
Well, first off, thanks for having me on, guys. Really excited to be here. And, you know, honestly, my thought while watching and listening to that interview was basically that this is about as good as we could have hoped for, I think, in Syria. I mean, this guy, you know, is saying the right things right now, which given his and as you guys discussed at the beginning of that, like, given his background is not necessarily, you know, that wasn't a given. Right. But the fact that he is, I mean, I wrote some of these quotes down. You know, what unites us in peace is far greater than what divides us in war. You know, the revolution ended with the overthrow of the regime. I mean, this guy is saying a lot of things that I think should give us some hope. And at least some cautious optimism about the way he wants to sort of run this play in Syria going forward. So I'm just about as hopeful as, you know, you could be in Syria, which is saying something, given the past 15 years.
- [05:34]
Rory Stewart
And David, you've written a wonderful novel, which if people haven't read it, they definitely should, set in Damascus. Really realistic spy story set in Syria. And one of the themes that keeps reoccurring in that book is an attempt by the regime to portray the opposition as Islamists. There's a scene in Paris where one of the conditions given to the lady is that she's to go back and say, they're all a bunch of Islamists. Take us back to that moment. And to play my own cards on the table. When I was asked as a British government minister to fund Syrians in northwestern Syria, I was very anxious about people's links to Al Qaeda and particularly anxious when one of the people we'd funded, who was a head teacher, appeared on a jebelt, Al Nusra, an Al Qaeda linked stage, surrounded by these people. Take us back to. Before we get on to why you're reassured. Take us back to why, you know, eight, 10 years ago, people would have been worried about this outcome.
- [06:39]
Carrie Underwood
Yeah, well, I mean, quite simply, I mean, you, you hit it right there, Rory. I mean, the most effective fighting opposition to Assad was almost always, when you're talking about sort of the Sunni Arab groups in Syria was they were almost always sort of Salafi jihadists with that kind of maybe an Al Qaeda bent. Right. I mean, those groups with experience fighting in Iraq, they were the sort of vanguard of the armed opposition to Bashar al Assad in the kind of 2011, 2012, 2013 stages of the war. They were the most well organized groups. They tended to be the most well funded. They had actual practical combat experience fighting us in Iraq and they could raise money. And so it was, it was always this tremendous concern, you know, in the intelligence community that these groups tended to be. And also they had, many of them had a real view on how do you actually govern a piece of territory you hold, how do you actually provide services, how do you, you know, run hospitals and build roads and deliver bread? I mean, it, you know, they had this kind of proto state structure to them that made them, you know, a potential replacement to Assad at the time. And I think you guys talk about this also in the interview up front at the time. Many of these groups also had a kind of transnational view of the sort of, you know, they wanted to carry out or they were interested in carrying out attacks in some cases outside of Syria. And I think what you have seen with Shara over the past five, seven years has been an evolution toward really away from that and some instances where he has actually fought and defeated groups in northwest Syria who have been promoting that kind of more transnational ideology, I would say.
- [08:38]
Rory Stewart
And David, just quickly, and then I'll back to Alistair, give us a sense of why the US would have put a $10 million bounty on his head. How important would that have made him? What did that really mean? Why was that important to the U.S. government?
- [08:54]
Carrie Underwood
Well, I mean, you know, he came to, he came. I mean, he's Syrian. One of the things that I think is interesting about this guy is that he's like an upper middle class kid from Damascus, right? So, so in some respects, he's kind of now back to form. But I mean, he came back to Syria from Iraq after having served with then Al Qaeda in Iraq and then the Islamic State. He came as Baghdadi's guy in Syria to sort of take these networks that the Syrians had permitted to run through Syria to sort of fuel the fight in Iraq, to turn them back into Syria to fight Assad. And so he came as kind of the vanguard of, you know, a caliphate in many respects, which is why he has that bounty on his head. And he also, you know, you guys talk about this as well. What exactly this guy did in Iraq in those years remains a bit of a mystery to me, you know, how deeply involved he was. So, and I'm sure inside the intelligence community right now there are probably some hard facts on those things that, that fed, you know, the sort of stamp of a $10 million bounty on his head.
- [10:06]
Alistair Campbell
So, David, there's you saying that he said a lot of the right things and that gives you some sort of hope. You had Tulsi Gabbard, who's now Trump's kind of head of intelligence, as it were, at her confirmation hearing. This is somebody who famously went out and spent a bit of time with Assad and has ever since been saying that she wasn't kind of, you know, fond of Assad. But she basically said, you, you know, I've got no, no sort of truck for Assad. However, Syria is now run by an Al Qaeda terrorist who danced in the streets when 9, 11 happened. So where does the policy position get formed and how does it get formed? And how do people like you who are working on the ground or you're analyzing every word, how do you frame what you then put up to the policymakers and just trying to explain to people that process and how it might take shape.
- [11:00]
Carrie Underwood
Well, yeah, I think, you know, we have, and I think frankly, the statements, those sort of statements by Tulsi, and frankly, they reflect a not insignificant piece of our kind of political spectrum here, which is you look at this guy's background, Al Shara, and you look at the groups he fought for, and it's quite easy. I mean, you know, sort of the, the sort of cartoon stamp of we've got Al Qaeda running Syria is you can sympathize and empathize with that, with that viewpoint. That said, you know, we, I think, have a pretty poor track record over the past 20 plus years in the US foreign policy establishment of looking at a part of the world could be Syria, could be the broader Middle east, trying to think about the things that we want and then resourcing practical policies to get them. We are. So I don't know if it's the fact that we have staffed our foreign policy establishment with not the greatest folks over the past two generations or whether it's just the fact that we're separated from this part of the world by, you know, sort of language, culture and ocean, but we, it's just fantasy. You know, we have to engage with Syria as it is today. And I think the reality of the place is that we have interest there. We have things that we want and we have some leverage, be it the sanctions or be it our support for the SDF in northeast Syria. We should use those things to come up with a practical policy that, that, you know, know, advances our interest. We shouldn't just waive the Al Qaeda card right now because I think it's disingenuous and, you know, disconnected from reality.
- [12:36]
Alistair Campbell
And the guys in the CIA and the other agencies who are doing your job today, does it help or hinder that when Assad falls? Trump's initial reaction is to say Syria is not our problem. In other words, we don't want to get involved in this. Is that, is that good for you, if you're working on that brief, or is that, is that a problem?
- [12:57]
Carrie Underwood
Yeah, I think so. I would separate the intel from the policy side on this. I think on the intel side, it doesn't matter all that much because frankly, what the CIA is doing right now, and I have no idea what sort of COVID action authorities we might have in Syria, but from a straight up intel, foreign intelligence gathering standpoint, that kind of stuff, those statements don't matter at all. There's collection priorities in Syria. We're trying to collect what we can be it via human network, signals intelligence, whatever, from a policy side of things. You know, I think that statement, it actually does reflect something that is kind of true about Syria. When you think about a small country without significant natural resources, without nuclear weapons in a part of the world that doesn't, you know, matter as much to us as other parts do, Trump's reflecting something real there. At the same time, we do have interests. We have US Troops on the ground. I think a statement like that doesn't help us from the standpoint of, of working with regional partners, working with the Syrians to get things that we want done down the line. That kind of statement, it gets us nothing. And it potentially confuses sort of friend and foe alike, which is not helpful.
- [14:08]
Rory Stewart
David, One of the things that we went through in Britain, quite painfully, is as Britain ceased to be a global power and retreated from the world, there was less and less interest from British politicians in secret intelligence, because, frankly, there was less and less they could do, or less and less they wanted to do in many of these countries. And so we closed stations all over the world and we shut down a lot of agents, a lot of intelligence streams, because, frankly, we were producing a Rolls Royce service for people who couldn't act on that intelligence. So if the US Is moving quickly towards isolationism and is basically saying we couldn't care less the administration, we couldn't care less about Syria, we don't really care about Africa. In fact, we don't really care about much of the world. Eventually, presumably that does have an impact on how resources are allocated, how intelligence priorities are set, and how the CIA does its job around the world.
- [15:15]
Carrie Underwood
I think so, although I think that process is slower than one would imagine. And frankly, I'm not yet convinced that a lot of the kind of smoke at the highest levels of our political system, in terms of talking about the Central Intelligence Agency, the overall intelligence community, why we need it, why we don't need it. I'm not yet convinced that that is going to translate down into sort of significant changes at the actual working level. I mean, we have this kind of buyout program dangled as a starting point. It's not at all clear. I mean, we could talk more about that and how. I think it's probably better to do these things in a sort of targeted way, but that sort of thing. It's not at all clear yet what that will actually do to CIA. And I think, frankly, you know, we continue to have a level of Policymaker, at least we did in the first Trump administration, who was, you know, below Trump, but still very interested in consuming, you know, secret intelligence about parts of the world that maybe the president himself was not particularly interested in. So I think we'll have to wait and see how, how.
- [16:30]
Alistair Campbell
What sort of impact will it be having on people who work in, excuse me, your line of work that, for example, those who even suggested that the Hunter Biden stuff might have been a kind of Russian operation are now sort of basically told you're no longer wanted.
- [16:51]
Carrie Underwood
Yeah.
- [16:51]
Alistair Campbell
And this idea that you, you know, you have to show absolute loyalty to not just the position of the president, but the current person of the president, that must be sending pretty alarming waves through the whole thing, isn't it?
- [17:05]
Carrie Underwood
Yeah, I think so. I actually, I had a number of conversations with, with intel folks just before Trump took office in kind of the December, January time frame. And, you know, I think a lot of people who served in the first administration would, again, again, at the working level. Right. These are people who are, you know, case officers and analysts who are out there, you know, actually doing the work. Right. They're not political appointees, and in many cases, they're not even in D.C. what they would have told you is we basically just kept doing our jobs in the first administration. It was, it was. There was no real significant disruption to the work of the Central Intelligence Agency. Now, I'm sure you could find little pockets where that wasn't the case, but in general, that seems to be the view. Now. There is precedent, and I think we're actually going to do this on a rest is classified show here in the next month or so. There are, you know, there is precedent for, you know, pretty significant purges at CIA. Stansfield Turner did one famously called the Halloween massacre in Halloween of 1977, where they basically eliminated the position of about, I think it was around 800 Directorate of Operations officers and just kind of set them packing. Right.
- [18:18]
Alistair Campbell
That was almost. Almost a decade before you were born. Dav.
- [18:21]
Carrie Underwood
Gosh. That's. That was a highly classified piece of information I gave Rory and Alastair before this started that Alistair has immediately leaked, immediately leaked to the live stream. Shame on you. So there is precedent for this kind of, you know, sort of purge or whatever you'd want to call it at the CIA, and it'd be within the rights of the CIA director and the president to do something like that. But I think diff, you know, sort of the different twist here today is that, and I think you're right, to point it out is that it is not. You know, it's very conceivable that you would. You would come up. You drop that list based on a perception of sort of loyalty, right, to the Trump agenda. And I think inside an organization like the CIA, that is apolitical. It has two political appointees in total. That is an extremely worrisome prospect and one that nobody should want to see come to pass.
- [19:15]
Alistair Campbell
Yeah, David.
- [19:15]
Rory Stewart
I mean, just to push it one more time, because I think we are entering a very different territory from the first administration. We're beginning to get signs that the administration basically cannot tolerate the idea that the US Government could be funding anybody that disagrees with them. So one example of that is the way they're going after NGOs in civil society and saying USAID is a criminal organization because it was funding NGOs that occasionally criticize the American government. I mean, it's sort of mind blowing given that our whole idea of civil society around the world was that we were funding NGOs that criticized other people's governments. Right. And, of course, CIA is still relatively fortunate. But if you look at usaid, you can really see the scale with which this administration is prepared to move and the speed with which they've been moved. And I think the new director of the FBI is going to be a sort of terrifying thing to watch. So is there any chance, David, that you're still putting too much reliance on what happened in the first administration and not reading the tea leaves enough from what's happening to USAID and FBI and what therefore may soon be happening to you?
- [20:27]
Carrie Underwood
Yeah, no, I think, look, I'm very open to that, and I will agree that I've got a bit of anchoring bias just in looking at what happened in Trump 1.0. Right. I think that, you know, the USAID, I mean, and even apropos of Syria, Right, this sort of, you know, evisceration of usaid, you know, is kind of a. It eliminates a source of influence and leverage, frankly, that we have in Syria. Right. Practically right now, and to really almost no benefit. I mean, the thing that if you zoom all the way out and you kind of look at what, what these guys, what, what they're doing now with usaid, with these buyouts, whatever, I mean, you kind of. I'm left a bit scratching my head as to what the objective here is, because if it's cost cutting, you know, you're not really. You're not really cutting the most. You know, you're not cutting it the most effective way possible. Right. And so I agree, Rory, that it's. It's very possible that this could kind of unspool in a much more chaotic and ultimately destructive way than we saw in the first administration.
- [21:36]
Alistair Campbell
And do you think there's even a risk that when we've seen this whole Tulsi Gabbard thing play out, the FBI guy that Rory's talking about, and, you know, America is clearly a much bigger power than any of the other five Eyes countries of which we're one. But at the same time, and I'd be interested in your take on which are the best intelligence agencies in the world. I think we think that we've got a very good intelligence service. And I think there will be people within the Secret Intelligence Service and in Australia and Canada and New Zealand right now, particularly Canada, that are thinking, can we really trust these people with the stuff that we're digging up? And that five Eyes relationship, first of all, how important is it? And secondly, do you think this kind of makes it a little bit vulnerable?
- [22:21]
Carrie Underwood
Yeah. I'm already scouting for my second home in Canada and my third home in Greenland. So I'm looking forward to the new era of American imperialism here. I mean, I, you know, I don't know. It's. Five Eyes is critically important. I mean, you know, it. It's a, I guess a classic case of if we have 20 of something and you've got five of something and the Canadians have three of something and the Aussies have two and the Kiwis have one, it's better to add all those things up and use them together, be it human to, be it sigint like, it makes a tremendous amount of sense practically. Right. Because of our shared interests, values like you would not that that is a valuable construct. And it's. It's important to American security, it's important to UK security, Canadian, etc. Right. I think that again, the risks of, you know, information sort of leaking out on our side that end up damaging those relationships. I mean, it's there. So certainly, I think, you know, I, I would probably have. Again, there's a bit of a wait and see element here, but I do think that there, there is a risk, right, that if you pass us something, right. I mean, this is the case in any administration, but probably maybe more so, given the information management proclivities of the people in this one, that that information that you might provide us that's sensitive, gets out on our end and ends up damaging, you know, the relationship. Damaging. The five Eyes construct certainly but that overall, you know, Americans should, should want there to want that five eyes construct to exist. We get a lot out of it. You get a lot out of it. It works for everybody's benefit.
- [24:09]
Rory Stewart
David, we're going to take a quick break. Alistair and David and then as we come back from the break, we're going to pull you back a little bit towards Syria.
- [24:24]
Alistair Campbell
This episode is brought to you by one of our favorite sponsors, long term partners of the rest is politics. That's NordVPN and we're guilty.
- [24:33]
Rory Stewart
Sometimes, assuming the Internet is safe by default, we browse the same sites, we use the same passwords, nothing normally goes wrong and it's very easy to let your guard down. But hackers, as I'm sure many listeners have found out, are always looking for ways to get into your system. And they're trying to steal your money or they're trying to steal your data. And Internet service providers are happy to sell your browsing data to companies and marketeers.
- [24:55]
Alistair Campbell
And that's where NORDVPN comes in. It's your go to solution for secure Internet access. What it does is it creates a virtual private network. That's the VPN bit which you use to connect to the Internet. Just download their app and switch it on and it works in the background.
- [25:10]
Rory Stewart
It's got military grade encryption so you can browse with confidence, knowing your personal information is safe from prying eyes. Our listeners get an exclusive deal@nordvpn.com restispolitics and one subscription covers 10 of your devices.
- [25:24]
Alistair Campbell
So that's NordVPN.com restispolitics completely risk free with their 30 day money back guarantee. And you can find the link in the episode description.
- [25:33]
Carrie Underwood
Your data is like gold to hackers.
- [25:35]
David McCloskey
They're selling your passwords, bank details and private messages. McAfee helps stop them.
- [25:41]
Carrie Underwood
Secure VPN keeps your online activity private. AI powered tech's scam detector spots phishing attempts instantly. And with award winning antivirus, you get.
- [25:50]
David McCloskey
Top tier hacker protection.
- [25:51]
Carrie Underwood
Plus you'll get up to $2 million.
- [25:53]
David McCloskey
In identity theft coverage, all for just $39.99 for your first year.
- [25:57]
Carrie Underwood
Visit McAfee.com, cancel anytime terms apply. This episode is brought to you by Shopify. Upgrade your business with Shopify, home of the number one checkout on the planet. Shop pay boosts conversions up to 50%, meaning fewer carts going abandoned and more sales going cha ching. So if you're into growing your business, get a commerce platform that's ready to sell wherever your customers are visit shopify.com to upgrade your selling today.
- [26:31]
Rory Stewart
Welcome back from the break. And on the subject of Syria, I guess I'd love you to reflect on the risks which are facing the new president. So we've got Kurds, we've got Turkish backed groups, we've got a bit of isis. But before we get onto that, what I want you to start on was the former regime. So you more than anyone have written so beautifully about Bashar Al Assad's regime and its strength. And we've seen something that on the surface looks a little bit like Debarthi. We turned up in a Damascus where there was no police, no intelligence service, no security service, and very few soldiers because they'd all been associated with the old regime. And a lot of them at senior level had headed back to Latakia where they're sitting up in the hills. What risk is that, that those people might come back and cause trouble? And how can one put a weighting or a probability on that risk? And how would it happen?
- [27:34]
Carrie Underwood
Yeah, well, I think it's a very significant one. You know, I think in I'll just maybe take the de Ba'athification analogy first and there's a very obvious comparison point here which is you in Saddam's Iraq, you had a sort of minority Sunni dominated regime. They said it's sort of military and security services that is, you know, overrun. And then those military and security services are essentially sent home right where they start an insurgency. In this case you have a minority Alawi dominated military and security and sort of militia apparatus that in a same, in the same way is sort of sent packing after Assad flees. And it's very uncertain what's going to happen to them. So at that level, I accept kind of the analogy, I think where I, where I do think Syria is different, at least right now, although both of these things could change, number one, structurally. And I think Shahra made this point in your interview and I think he's right there. The idea that sort of Assad was running a national army and that there was like one major coercive institution in Syria or even a small handful when he fell is false. It was a, it was a patchwork of sort of militias, warlord fiefdoms, you know, Alawi militias that were very fragmented in many cases were essentially gangs and sort of, you know, money making operations. So the thing that got destroyed or dismantled was already extremely fragmented and messed up prior to him leaving. Then the second point I would make is that what hts and what Shara have said thus far. And what they seem to be doing is taking a much more selective approach to the former regime elements that, that have, you know, sort of fled and how they would vet them and potentially bring, you know, ordinary kind of mid level people back into the new, the new regime, be it in its sort of bureaucracy or be it in its coercive apparatus. So said maybe more plainly, I think they're being, they're not being as sort of not just cutting off all those former elements and saying you have no future. There is a potential pathway back in to a new government now. So those are the differences. But I think it is true that there is a massive risk that as you have a bunch of, you know, Alawis with military, with combat experience who sit in the mountains for a long time without any hope of coming back into some structure where they are paid, the longer that goes on, the greater the chances that you have yet another sort of armed faction that Shara and the government need to deal with. And that I think is one of the major issues facing the country right now is just the proliferation of the number of armed groups that need to be dealt with and sort of absorbed or coerced or included into a national government.
- [30:27]
Alistair Campbell
I said when Roy and I had a chat after the interview that I kept sort of feeling and seeing parallels with the, the Northern Ireland situation and how the IRA kind of moved or parts of the IRA moved at different paces to others to get to the idea that there could be kind of a peaceful approach to the, to the problem. I mean how. And I remember once Tony Blair saying, you've got to understand these guys, Adams and again Jerry Adams and Marty McGuinness, they're walking around with the not inconsiderable risk somebody's going to put a bullet in the back of their head.
- [30:59]
Carrie Underwood
Yeah.
- [30:59]
Alistair Campbell
How big a risk is that to him right now? And I mean the secure Rory will testify the security around him was pretty intense. And what, what are the, what are the fears? Who will, who will he be worried about? How will he be trying to get those people on side?
- [31:17]
Carrie Underwood
Yeah, well, he has a massive number of problems. He's got, I think, you know, he's got, I mean you started to take this off. Right, Right. You have the Syrian national army basically Turkish Janissary group in the north of Syria. He's got the Syrian Democratic Forces in the northeast Kurds armed group that's totally separate from HTS he has. There are Drew's militias down in Sueda. There are other militias down south in Dara and he's got the Islamic State, which, I mean, if you look at, I think there have been probably almost 10 foiled terror attacks over the past few months, probably in part because the US has been sharing intelligence with. With hts to prevent these from happening. So he's got a massive number of potential groups interested in putting a bullet in his head. I also think, or at least, you know, where you'd have elements of a group that might consider it, consider it and really try to make it happen. I also think below the waterline, and it's something we don't see because these are not the guys who are giving interviews to British podcasters, but you have a harder line sort of group inside his kind of military council who are, again, they're not the public face, but these are the people who have fought with him, bled died, and who I think probably have views about the future of Syria that most of us would, would. You know, they're not Jeffersonian Democrats, and he has to. He has to assuage that group and keep them on side as part of this transition while negotiating.
- [33:00]
Alistair Campbell
Would they. Would they be hoping if they were to listen to the interview that Roy and I did with them, would they be hoping and sitting there thinking, oh, I kind of understand why he's saying this, but he doesn't really mean it.
- [33:12]
Carrie Underwood
Maybe, maybe. But I think this is where I think some of the real risk is. And it's. It's less on his points about sort of transnational jihad or external attacks or anything like that. I think it is more about how closed or open the political system will be and whether I think the biggest risk here is really about a drift into authoritarianism. And I think that's what those guys would be looking for is when we talk about when Shada talks about being inclusive and kind of running a more open process to represent the different factions and groups that comprise Syria, is he talking about actually giving away power that this HTS sort of armed faction has earned over the past couple years, you know, or not. And I think that's where the tension probably below the waterline really is.
- [34:05]
Rory Stewart
Help us understand a little bit more about the ideology of the hardliners. So I guess the Syrian opposition was broadly split in two, or it felt like it was. There were people who initially the west was very excited about 2012, 13, 14, who were educated, apparently quite progressive liberal Democrats. And then there was another group which was very much associated with the current president. And those guys fought and died for 20 years, including losing their friends who went off as suicide bombers and got themselves blown up fighting for quite a different vision. Can you tell us a little bit about, even if it's changed, what was the hardliners vision five, six years ago socially? What was their vision of Israel? What was their vision of the United States? What was their vision of how countries should be run? What is this hardline view in the background that he's going to have to navigate and deal with and that may ultimately pose a threat to him if he doesn't deliver?
- [35:09]
Carrie Underwood
Yeah, I mean, well, I'll say that. I'll just kind of look at this through the lens of how he governed Idlib in the northwest. Right. Where you, you had, you had a sort of technocratic government that was doing a lot of the things we would associate with the state. Right. It's delivering services. It's, you know, building roads. There was a military college for defectors that actually brought in, you know, people who had left the former, you know, the regime's military. They, they delivered emergency relief after the earthquake in 2023. Right. So there, there were a lot of these things that, you know, you look at that and you'd say, that's great to have an alternative to Assad. At the same time, there was a, you know, I think it was called a supreme fatwa council, which sat outside the kind of maybe more democratic structures or the more technocratic structures of Hayatar Al Sham. They're, you know, it's administering Quranic schools, things like that. And then in the, in these kind of what they would call liberated areas, the minority groups, be they Druze or be they Christians, were not really represented in any of the sort of political elements of HTs. And so I think the, the concern. And then, you know, you, of course, have cases of HTs, you know, members, you know, talking about, or even, I think in some cases, executing women for corruption and prostitution and things like that. Although I will point out that they never had a kind of promotion of virtue and prevention of vice kind of morality police in Idlib. So it's complicated, right? Because it's not. Again, we. I think the problem here, or one of the problems is that we set our expectations in the States for what is going to happen in Syria so high that, you know, we're sort of expecting it to become this kind of, you know, wonderful flowering democratic experiment. I don't think that, you know, Hayatar Al Sham is a democratic organization. It's politically authoritarian. And I think that is, you know, in addition to some of these kind of, some of this kind of ideological bent of its recent past, you know, it's cause for some concern.
- [37:27]
Alistair Campbell
David, we've had lots of questions in while we've been talking, and here's one from a member, Helen Dance. And this, I go, I guess, goes to the heart of the intelligence agencies like to give a sense of being all knowing. But she makes the point, given that nobody saw the situation we have in Syria today arising with either the outcome or the pace that it did, how will today's analysts be changing the way they think about the country and what develops next? And by the way, I noticed you didn't answer my question earlier about which of the best agencies in the world.
- [37:57]
Carrie Underwood
Oh, it's the CIA, of course. No, I, okay, let me take the intel agency one first. I mean, I think, I think you're right that, you know, the SIS is a, is an exceptional service, particularly, obviously, what it does is human and it's very, very, very good at that. I think that the, you know, it would be hard to answer this question without bringing up the Mossad. And I do that simply because, you know, if you look at Mossad does not have a global mandate, really. Right. They're very, very focused in their neighborhood and they're very, very good at what they do. I mean, look at what they did in Lebanon with the pager attack. And, you know, you could argue about the sort of strategic rationale for that and certainly the morality of it, but from the standpoint of an intelligence operation, it's absolutely incredible. And the way they've penetrated Iranian society over the past 20 years is absolutely astounding. So I think some of these smaller services, frankly, you guys, the Israelis, even the French, like that, have a more targeted, you know, sort of mandate in some respects, can pull off incredible operations.
- [39:14]
Alistair Campbell
Okay. And Helen's question.
- [39:16]
Carrie Underwood
Helen's question. So I will, I would say that, number one, I would, I would argue that nobody saw this coming in the way as quickly as it did, but I would argue that the, the kind of, the weakness, the corruption, the hollowing out of the Assad regime, that was very well known. It was also well known that HTS was planning a major attack in the fall and that it was going to be new and different from what had come before. So those things were known. But I do think when we talk about the regime collapsing in the way that it did, essentially bloodlessly, not really, but close, you're sort of dealing with a psychological, a mass psychological shift on the part of the regime's soldiers and, and its officials, where everybody just sees it collapsing at once, and it just goes like a domino. So I think that, you know, the point being here, I think the CIA analysts prior to this probably had written papers about how a lot of the pillars supporting the regime had weakened significantly and that they were sort of primed for problems, but they would not have predicted the collapse. That said, I think the way that the CIA is probably looking at this now, I'm not sure they're changing the way they think about the country necessarily, but they're probably now looking at a set of questions, much like we're discussing today, and coming up with practical signposts that they would see in the intelligence to indicate sort of which scenario we're headed toward. Because it is very possible that we, you know, we head toward another phase of the civil conflict in Syria, and they'll be watching that very, very closely.
- [41:00]
Rory Stewart
David, let's. Let's just sort of step back for a second and maybe develop Helen's question a little bit more. One of the big problems in intelligence is knowing when something will happen. I mean, often it feels a little bit like somebody saying, well, there are big problems in the American economy in terms of this debt, and so at some point the market's going to collapse, but we never have really any idea how. And I remember this because my first posting in an embassy was Indonesia, and people for 20 years been pointing out that Suharto's regime was corrupt and hollow and was going to collapse anytime. But officers came and went and posting after posting. 20 years never really happened. And I remember in Syria that, you know, we were told by a lot of people who knew a lot about Syria that Bashar al Assad would be gone within six months. Yeah. And, you know, I suppose what I'm trying to get at here and in Ukraine and all these things. How on earth do intelligence officers get around the problem of timing? Because it's all very well saying these regimes are hollowed out, corrupt, their institutions are crumbling, but if you miss call by 10 years, when they actually fall, that makes a lot of difference in the real world.
- [42:09]
Carrie Underwood
It does. And it drove the Obama administration absolutely nuts when we would write these assessments, because we were not able to be precise about the timing. We were able to point out the sources of strength that Assad's regime had where there were weaknesses. We were able to do the same on the side of kind of the opposition in the early years of the war. But they wanted, and they being Obama's nsc, they wanted an assessment of how long this guy had left. Can he survive another six months or not. And we couldn't. We could never do it. And it made them very, very angry at us to the point where, you know, I think oftentimes they would just ignore the analysis because they would look at, you know, they ask a direct question and you don't give them a direct answer. And. And that makes, you know, that tends to make policymakers very angry. I do think the reality of it, though, is that. And the comparison I would make here is the way that communism collapsed in eastern Europe in 1989.
- [43:17]
Rory Stewart
You.
- [43:18]
Carrie Underwood
You would have looked at that and you would have been able to say, you'd have been able to write assessments in the late 80s about the different weaknesses that these regimes had that the Soviet regime had. You would have been able to paint a very negative picture like you could have of Assad's regime in military four months ago. But when you're dealing with a mass psychological shift that happens all at once, I think you are pushing up against the limits of human cognition and forecasting, and all you can do at that moment is put together a set of scenarios for what could happen, put some weight on them, and explain what you would expect to see if you're moving down one of these three or four paths. And that kind of thing to a policymaker, though, is not what you want. You want an answer to the question. And as an intelligence analyst, you oftentimes just cannot give it.
- [44:06]
Alistair Campbell
David, would your successors be that interested in where Assad is now and what he's doing and how he's living? Does he remain somebody that the CIA are interested in and want to know about?
- [44:23]
Carrie Underwood
Probably not. I think. I mean. Well, let me put it this way. As an analyst, as a. As a former analyst working on Syria and having spent a decent amount of my youth thinking about Bashar al Assad, God help me, I am immensely curious just from the standpoint of. I mean, look, in my book Damascus Station, I have a scene where I almost kill Bashar al Assad. There's a bomb that gets put into a big sort of security meeting and he's nearly killed. And that actual event happened more or less as I wrote it, but Bashar wasn't there. And I put him in that scene because I wish him ill and despised the man and wanted to sort of give him a good scare. Right. Novel. I am deeply interested in, you know, him, what he's doing, moping around one of his luxury apartments or his dacha, his new dacha in Moscow. Like I'm interested in that. But I Think from the standpoint of sort of where are the intelligence, where the foreign intelligence collection priorities right now, I would have to think he's pretty low on the list. Unless. Unless we start to see members of HTS or Shara starting to, you know, engage with the Russians around this idea of him being, you know, maybe turn return to Syria or something like that, which I think is very unlikely.
- [45:49]
Rory Stewart
Will he be more of his question. Sorry. So, Dylan from Solihull coming in. What's to stop Syria going the same way as Libya? And I wonder whether you could use that as a route in to talk a little bit about what this regime was like. What was the difference between Bashar Al Assad's regime? You were living there on the ground in Damascus, you were a CIA analyst operating out of the embassy, and you would have had a sense of what it was and how was it different from Gaddafi's Libya or Putin's Russia or other forms of autocratic gangster regime. Give us a sense of how it worked.
- [46:23]
Carrie Underwood
Yeah, well, in many respects, you know, it was similar to the way those. I think there was kind of an autocratic model for how you run one of these places. And there are some similarities between, you know, Libya and between Russia and, you know, pretty much any other authoritarian country on earth where essentially the way they ran it was. And again, it had been prior to Assad's father taking power in 1970, there had been something on the order of like a dozen coups between independence from the French in 1946 and Assad taking power in 70. So, you know, it was very politically unstable when Assad took power, what he did. And this is the system that Bashar more or less continued up until the eve of the civil war. Is they coup proof the place? And what that meant was they took. They built a system of, you know, four main security agencies that were responsible for internal security, that all had overlapping mandates and similar capabilities that all spied on each other and that were sort of managed by Assad at the top so that you never let one get too powerful. And they could report on each other so you could understand where threats came from. You also build a set of sort of praetorian military units that are loyal to you, typically by blood, and that are capable of destroying in urban combat any other formation of, you know, sort of your regular military that might conspire against you in a coup. And they had actually multiple of these praetorian units because it was the same sort of hub and spoke thing with them, where if you had one that got too big for its britches. The other one could destroy it. Now you then you basically had a state that was being run as a, you know, it was, it was a repressive apparatus masquerading as a state. The state itself had become quite hollow. The security institutions, the repressive institutions were the most powerful and effective ones. They were deeply predatory. And, you know, the Syrians had a word for this was you could get pulled or taken behind the sun. You could just be plucked off the streets and taken away by these, you know, by these groups and put into these horrible prisons which we've seen so much of over the past few months and be gone. And so there was this kind of wall of fear that developed. There was no, I think by the end, and this is a big part of Bashar's downfall, whatever social contract had existed largely between his father and Syrians, which obviously had these elements of repression mixed in, but was based on some promise of stability and some measure of sort of economic output. All of that was gone. There was no social contract anymore between the government and between society. It was kind of a slave society in some ways. You could think about that mentality as the one that destroyed the regime.
- [49:23]
Alistair Campbell
So can I just jump in there? What, what can you tell us about the. The. What seems like a rather remarkable journey of the wife.
- [49:33]
Carrie Underwood
Yes.
- [49:34]
Alistair Campbell
This sort of seeming fairly ordinary, quite good looking, middle class British woman who becomes. I listened to your discussion with Gordon Carrera on the Rest is classified about this. Who becomes a kind of complete monster, but a very powerful one.
- [49:50]
Carrie Underwood
Yeah.
- [49:51]
Alistair Campbell
You know, and. And also, what would the wife of somebody like Al Sharon now be? Somebody that the CIO will be trying to find out about. Were you interested in asthma at the time?
- [50:04]
Carrie Underwood
Yeah, very much interested in asthma because she played a role, I mean, even before she took on more of a formal kind of economic role in recent years. She was a kind of informal advisor to Bashar and was obviously a very helpful way for him to really portray the regime in kind of this soft and, you know, comforting glow. I mean, there's the famous Vogue, you know, article that came out about a month before the protest started called A Rose in the Desert. I don't have it in here in my office, but I have one in my house. I retained the hard copy because Vogue tried to eliminate all references to it. So OSMA was a very. Was always of interest to us from an intelligence collection standpoint. And I would imagine that Shara's wife, right now there'd be a similar sort of Interest in understanding who she is, what she believes, what level of influence might she have over his decision making? Absolutely. But yeah, I think that, you know, the journey, it is something that is, you know, it's sort of, it's a very interesting story to think about Osma going from. I think she was, she raised an Acton or something. I mean, she's like, yeah, her, her father was a cardiologist. Is a cardiologist. And, you know, to go from that to overseeing in many respects the system of sort of industrial level slaughter and repression, I don't know, it says something about humanity that I think we don't, you know, and just the way all of us can be pulled into systems that, that become bigger than us and, and, and where we, you know, sort of can lose ourselves. It's just really a profound human story.
- [51:50]
Rory Stewart
I think, David, as we sort of come towards the end, we're getting a number of comments and so Steve has come in and said, how about Ukraine? Surely that matters more to the world than Syria? And I guess what that's an invitation to do is to give you a chance to think a little bit more about the bigger world picture. You know, lift your head from Syria and give us a sense of what's going on, what you're worried about, and, and whether Syria does or doesn't fit into that.
- [52:19]
Carrie Underwood
Yeah, well, you know, I mean, as I alluded to up front, I do think that from a, you know, if you zoom all the way out and you kind of look at the world from, I don't know, a geostrategic standpoint, does Syria matter all that much? I'm, I'm not certain it does. I think it is intensely interesting. And the reason I, you know, have written about it in novels is because I'm very interested in the place and its people. Right. And so I think from just a human standpoint, it matters deeply. Right. But yes, if you, if you zoom all the way out and you look at the, you know, sort of menu of challenges that we have in front of us, I mean, I think, I guess the way you could think about it would be we've got sort of the, you know, absolute nasty revenge of geopolitics ongoing right now. You could look at Russia, Ukraine, you could look at, you know, China's military buildup in Asia, you, you could look at realizing they've sort of been diminished over the past six months, but you could look at Iran and its position in the Middle East. You would look at the sort of really, I think, frightening implications of a wave of technologization of life and intelligence that are now before us and create all kinds of scenarios in which the marginal cost of violence and chaos are going way down, which is, you know, disturbing. And then lastly, you look at kind of the global information landscape, how fragmented it is. I mean, even in the States now, where do you get your information about what's true and what's, what's, what's false? It's very hard to make sense of basic facts. So you put all of those things together. Syria is a piece of all of them, I'm sure, to some degree. But yeah, it's, it's not the, it's not the headline, David.
- [54:05]
Alistair Campbell
When we interviewed John Soares, who was my former colleague in Downing street, went on to become the head of MI6, he said that your novel Damascus Station was one of the best things ever written about espionage. And I was surprised by that because actually, not because it's not a great novel, but because a lot of people in the special Forces, in the intelligence agencies, they kind of have a bit of a thing about insiders writing when they're outside, even if it's presented as fiction. And I just wondered how conscious you are of that and whether you're, whether even as a novelist you're actually quite careful about, about what you write.
- [54:44]
Carrie Underwood
Yeah, well, I really did appreciate that comment he made to you guys. That was, that was wonderful to, to hear. I mean, you know, I think, look, I have to be, I do have to be careful. I have to send everything I write to our publication review board. They review it, they determine if, you know, I put anything that's classified in there. I have a pretty good self censor at this point to understand where it's inappropriate if I were your book.
- [55:07]
Alistair Campbell
Your books get cleared.
- [55:08]
Carrie Underwood
They get cleared, yeah, they get cleared. They get cleared. But, you know, I think I am trying and I really do think there is space for this, as evidenced by the fact that all the books have been cleared and you know, they're out there. But I think there is space for writing in an authentic way about the espionage business. Not just the tradecraft and the operations, but they, you know, but like the culture of these institutions, what it's actually like to work there. I mean, even, even the fact that if you look at the Hollywood rendition of, of the CIA or sis, like it's like this superhero spy construct where you have someone who's always very attractive running around with a weapon in a car chase, you know, killing somebody, and the reality of the work, I think is actually Far more interesting than that. It's far more about human drama. And I think the books, you know, they've been a way to sort of tell that story about the actual.
- [56:06]
Alistair Campbell
Have you seen, have you seen Slow Horses?
- [56:09]
Carrie Underwood
I have, yes.
- [56:10]
Alistair Campbell
Yeah. So are we talking about, are we talking James Bond or Slow Horses? Where is the reality?
- [56:16]
Carrie Underwood
Yeah, I think the reality is that it is more Slow Horses. Right. I mean, there's obviously stuff in there that's, you know, crazy too, but it is more like that. I mean, it is. The way I have kind of described CIA to people, and I think it's true of almost any intelligence service, is that these are really bipolar institutions. Right. On one hand you have this very sort of high stakes mission, which is to go out and convince, you know, people in Syria or Russia or China or wherever to sell you or give you state secrets. I mean, that's a bonkers, you know, objective. And then on the other hand, you have these massive government bureaucracies. Like at CIA there's a, you know, there's a gift shop, like, so you have, you have a kind of weird, like. And I think you have weird bureaucratic stuff that would, would be similar to the way anyone who's worked in a big corporation, they look at that and say, yeah, that, that's like what, you know, that's what it's like to work at British Airways or AT&T, you know, so both of those things are happening all at once. And I think the best kind of spy fiction melds those together to some degree to show you the reality of that world.
- [57:26]
Rory Stewart
And David, tell us why you left. I mean, you obviously have enough love of it to be writing novels about it, but not enough love of it to want to have put 40 years of your life into becoming a senior person, doing many more postings, getting involved in other things. What is the side of it? If you were able to be a little introspective for a moment, that meant that you didn't want to be a full career officer and other ethical stresses, emotional stresses in the job which made you feel you might be happier outside.
- [58:05]
Carrie Underwood
Yeah, I think, I mean, so I've been out now for a decade and in that intervening 10 years I should have come up with a sexier answer to this question that has me sort of in knots about Syria and the way we dealt with it or the sort of morality of the spy business. And I don't have an answer like that at all. And my answer is this. So I joined the CIA as an undergraduate intern, which is an Actual job at the Central Intelligence Agency. I took my first polygraph when I was 19 years old. They came and recruited when I was, you know, in literally International Politics 101 and had no sense of the actual world and wanted one. And so when I joined the CIA, I had no experience doing anything other than digging holes for a sprinkler system company and flipping burgers at Wendy's, like, legitimately. Those were the two entries on my resume prior to the CIA. And so after working there for a while, I started to get this sense that I wanted to see and, you know, I'm retrospective about or sort of, you know, introspective about this point. I, at some point in my CA journey, I said, I want to get out and see how, you know, how does a business actually function? What is it like outside of dc? I want to get out of here and just kind of see what else is going on in the world. And that was the reason, that was the reason why I left. I was, of course, frustrated by what was going on in Syria, frustrated by our policy, but. And maybe in some way that contributed. But for me at the time, it was the sense of, I want to get out of these walls and see what else is going on in the world.
- [59:38]
Alistair Campbell
David, we're coming up to an hour. My last question is quite a big one. When you were, without giving your aging away, when you were 27 years of age, I was working in Downing street and we were in the build up to the Iraq war and we took a decision to publish a paper, present it to Parliament, put it into the public domain, which was partly based on intelligence. And fair to say, that was controversial at the time and it's remained controversial all these years later. And there was from the top of the intelligence agencies, if there was any pushback, we didn't see it. But certainly down the ranks, there were people telling the media, telling MPs they really didn't like this. I just wondered what your take is on that. But also how do you balance the need for privacy, for secrecy, but sometimes policymakers wanting to make a case in public that is based upon intelligence.
- [60:39]
Carrie Underwood
Yeah, it's a very tough kind of road to walk, I think, in a real balancing act. Most recently, and I think with great success, there's been an example of this with the kind of strategic declassification of intelligence around Ukraine run up to. Yeah, the war in Ukraine, where I, I think it was, again, from the outside, it seemed like quite an effective way to build a coalition or frankly, just to warn that the Russians were actually going to do this. So I think there are examples where putting information out in a way that, you know, doesn't threaten the collection method, doesn't threaten the source of that information makes really good sense, because if we had not we, the, you know, the CIA or the US if we had not gone around, you know, and, and actually briefed that material, I think it's very unlikely that anyone would have believed that the Russians were going to do this or at least would have diminished the number of groups, you know, in sort of countries who, who saw it coming. So I think there's a real place for it. But again, you've got to be very careful because I'd imagine that information that we've collected is coming off of, you know, human assets or frankly, technical collection programs that are very expensive to, to reconstitute and that you want during, in this case, during the war to be able to collect information going forward.
- [62:10]
Rory Stewart
Yeah, Dave, final one for me then. What is it that you feel that the public, and I guess in your case, particularly the US Public doesn't necessarily understand about international relations, about countries like Syria, about wars like Ukraine? What is it that you wished you were able to communicate when you see the public debate?
- [62:38]
Carrie Underwood
I think that I wish. I wish that when we talk about, when we talk about a place like Syria and we talk about Russia, Ukraine, Russia. Ukraine's a great example of this. I wish that there was a tighter connection made by the people who do the talking and why it matters to actual people in the United States or, you know, Great Britain. Like, why. Why does the outcome of a war in Eastern Europe matter to us? You know, I, I think that connection really. I mean, I live in Texas. I'm not in D.C. the people around me in my neighborhood, the people who I go to the coffee shop with, and, you know, if, if you talk about, you know, that, that conflict, there is an immense confusion over why it matters to us, why we would care at all, why we would fund it, why we would support the Ukrainians. That's just one example. So I think this connection of what goes on outside of our borders with what practically the sort of the practical concerns and interests of, you know, Americans that live in Texas or Iowa or Minnesota. That is what I wish. I wish policymakers would do more of that, because I think the way we talk about, and I guess and the other thing I would add is I wish we did. We created a tighter connection between the things that we say and the things that we did, because I think we have allowed A lot of our kind of strategic communications and rhetoric to get way out in front of the actual policymaking. And I wish that we were, you know, more, I guess, more disciplined about that.
- [64:21]
Alistair Campbell
Well, David, it's hard to square that with Hesketh basically telling the Europeans, Ukraine's all about Europe and JD Van saying he can't be bothered to see Olaf Schultz because he doesn't think he's going to be there very long. So if they're not, it's hard to see that they. I don't think they have that link in mind. Now. Listen, Debbie, thanks for all your time. We've got one final question which from Andy wants to hear about some future episodes coming up. The Rest is Classified. I also, before you do that, I want to remind people that our interview with Al Shara is out. Just search leading where wherever you listen or you watch. Also do think about joining. The Rest is politics. Plus a lot of the questions we got today, sorry we couldn't get through more of them, but it's been fascinating talking to you, David. And also Rory's having a day off tomorrow to watch football, which is, we all know he loves to do. But once Burnley have beaten Preston North End, I am going to be doing another live stream with the Mooch where we're going to be interviewing former bank of England governor and currently prime ministerial hopeful in the 51st state of America, aka Canada, Mr. Mark Carney. David, why don't you just close off with telling us about some future episodes coming up for the Rest is Classified.
- [65:33]
Carrie Underwood
Yeah. So we are, we are doing a six parter on Edward Snowden. Oh, wow. Yes, yes.
- [65:43]
Alistair Campbell
You can take Tulsi Gabbard's friend.
- [65:46]
Carrie Underwood
Tulsi Gabbard's friend. You can take a wild guess how I come down at Edward Snowden. I'll leave that, leave that vague. So we're doing a six parter on him, which, which was quite interesting to do. We're gonna do a couple episodes actually on Greenland and some of the kind of, you know, spy stories around that, why it matters today, why it's in the news, other than the fact that it'll be my third vacation home after my one in Canada. And then we're going to do a couple on kind of the, the past and present of CIA purges going back to the Halloween massacre and talking about kind of the precedent for, you know, getting rid of officers of the Central Intelligence Agency, what it means and how today fits into that context. So little sample of what's coming up.
- [66:35]
Alistair Campbell
Very good. It's great to have you as part of the Restless Family.
- [66:38]
Rory Stewart
And final goodbye for me. And a huge thank you to the people who belong to the Restless Politics plus because this is a stream that's been driven by their questions. Just remind people, join the Restless Politics Plus. It supports the podcast, which we're very grateful to, but it also allows you early entry to live events. We do specific things which are only available to Restless Politics plus listeners, including. You'll find unique interviews, you'll find unique content being provided. And we are very grateful for everybody, both those who join the rest of Politics plus and those who are just joining us for coming part of this. And we'd also like finally to say this, of course, is something that's going to drive you hopefully towards the wonderful work that David does on the Rest is classified. Bye bye, guys.
- [67:24]
Alistair Campbell
All the best. Thanks, David.
- [67:26]
Carrie Underwood
Thank you. Foreign.
- [67:31]
Luke Bryan
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.
- [67:38]
Ryan Seacrest
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.
- [67:52]
Luke Bryan
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.
- [68:04]
Ryan Seacrest
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.
- [68:19]
Luke Bryan
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.
- [68:31]
Ryan Seacrest
Anyway, so who is Overstein van Fuhrer? Joachim Piper.
- [68:35]
Luke Bryan
But I see his jaunty hat and I just think skull and crossbones. Well, and 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.
- [68:46]
Ryan Seacrest
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.
- [69:01]
Luke Bryan
Yeah.
- [69:01]
Ryan Seacrest
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.
- [69:07]
Luke Bryan
Yeah.
- [69:07]
Ryan Seacrest
Did pretty well. Went back to being Himmler's adjutant, then went off and commanded troops 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.
- [69:19]
Rory Stewart
Which is sort of.
- [69:20]
Ryan Seacrest
Colonel.
- [69:20]
David McCloskey
Yes.
- [69:20]
Carrie Underwood
I.
- [69:21]
Luke Bryan
You see, what must it have been like if you're in. 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.
- [69:48]
Ryan Seacrest
Yeah. And he's, he's, he's from a sort of middle class background as well.
- [69:52]
Luke Bryan
Yeah.
- [69:52]
Ryan Seacrest
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 cop Verbanda and died in a never really properly explained accident in Poland in 1941.
- [70:11]
Carrie Underwood
Right.
- [70:11]
Ryan Seacrest
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. Yeah. 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.
- [71:03]
Luke Bryan
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 a hospital capitalize, 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.
- [71:40]
Ryan Seacrest
Yes. And it's a nervous breakdown, not combat fatigue.
- [71:42]
Luke Bryan
Well, yes, of course, but.
- [71:43]
Ryan Seacrest
But you know what SS soldier said of him? Piper was the most dynamic man I ever met. He just got things done.
- [71:50]
Luke Bryan
Yeah.
- [71:50]
Ryan Seacrest
You get this image I have of him of having this kind of sort of slightly manic energy, 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.
- [72:05]
Luke Bryan
He's trying to make the will triumph, isn't he? He's working towards the Fuhrer. He's imbued. 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.
- [72:19]
Ryan Seacrest
Yeah.
- [72:20]
Luke Bryan
Which is why cruelty and extreme violence are bundled in to wherever he goes, basically.