1 00:00:17,679 --> 00:00:21,800 We're back with another edition of The Federalist or Radio Hour. I'm Emily Dashinski, 2 00:00:21,879 --> 00:00:24,839 culture editor here at The Federalist. As always, you can email the 3 00:00:24,879 --> 00:00:28,359 show at radio at the Federalist dot com, follow us on Twitter at fdr 4 00:00:28,559 --> 00:00:32,439 LST, make sure to subscribe wherever you download your podcasts, and of course 5 00:00:32,479 --> 00:00:36,719 to the premium version of our website as well. I'm so honored to be 6 00:00:36,799 --> 00:00:42,000 joined today by one of the most fascinating people I think in this space. 7 00:00:42,159 --> 00:00:46,600 Michael Waller is out with a new book called Big Intel, How the CIA 8 00:00:46,759 --> 00:00:54,159 and FBI went from Cold War heroes to Deep State villains now. Michael Waller 9 00:00:54,240 --> 00:00:59,439 is the Senior Analyst for Strategy at the Center for Security Policy. He also 10 00:00:59,479 --> 00:01:03,760 has talked political warfare, and he has a huge amount of experience again in 11 00:01:03,760 --> 00:01:07,280 this space, which is a pet topic of this show. So I could 12 00:01:07,319 --> 00:01:11,519 not possibly be more excited to be joined by doctor Michael Waller. Mike, 13 00:01:11,560 --> 00:01:15,760 thanks so much for coming on the show. Emily. It's a great thing 14 00:01:15,760 --> 00:01:19,439 to be with you. Now, Mike, could you just walk us a 15 00:01:19,480 --> 00:01:23,920 little bit through your career, because there's so much that brought you kind of 16 00:01:23,959 --> 00:01:27,480 to this moment, and there's so much that brought the American right to this 17 00:01:27,640 --> 00:01:30,560 moment, and I feel like, actually, there's an interesting arc there. 18 00:01:30,879 --> 00:01:34,840 Could you just talk to us a little bit about how you got to where 19 00:01:34,840 --> 00:01:38,680 you are right now. It started out in high school actually, where I 20 00:01:38,760 --> 00:01:44,400 was interested in the environmental movement and they were building a nuclear power plant in 21 00:01:44,439 --> 00:01:47,319 our state. And of course, as a fifteen year old, I allowed 22 00:01:47,719 --> 00:01:51,640 Jane Fonda and all the other comedies to get me all riled up that to 23 00:01:51,760 --> 00:01:56,400 the end of the world. So I got juped into joining something where, 24 00:01:56,959 --> 00:02:00,319 you know, for perfectly idealistic reasons, because I thought this was going to 25 00:02:00,400 --> 00:02:05,480 just wreck, you know, wreck the seawater with the boiling water from the 26 00:02:05,560 --> 00:02:08,159 reactor cooler, you know, going out to sea. And that was my 27 00:02:08,199 --> 00:02:13,639 big worry. And then they took certain of the kids aside as individuals. 28 00:02:13,680 --> 00:02:15,919 This was in New Hampshire, Okay, in the nineteen seventies. These are 29 00:02:15,960 --> 00:02:22,479 professional agitators from California came in and they took us aside to evaluate us and 30 00:02:22,520 --> 00:02:27,599 to break us down in what I later learned was a struggle session to make 31 00:02:27,680 --> 00:02:32,080 me realize how stupid I am and to break down all to try to break 32 00:02:32,080 --> 00:02:37,319 down all my beliefs, and then they asked me why are you involved in 33 00:02:37,360 --> 00:02:38,759 this? Why do you want to get involved? And I said, well, 34 00:02:38,800 --> 00:02:42,599 because I care about the environment. They said, no, this is 35 00:02:42,639 --> 00:02:49,639 all about overthrowing American capitalism. Had they not said that in trying to indoctrinate 36 00:02:49,680 --> 00:02:53,199 me, who knows what would have happened. But then I realized, but 37 00:02:53,360 --> 00:02:54,840 dupe, what is this? So I got out of that and I thought, 38 00:02:54,879 --> 00:02:57,800 I'm going to fight these guys for the rest of my life. And 39 00:02:57,879 --> 00:03:01,439 that's basically what happened. That's fascinating. And where did your career so you're 40 00:03:01,599 --> 00:03:07,960 talking then in high school? Where did your career go from there? Well? 41 00:03:07,000 --> 00:03:10,439 I went to George Washington University and this was the last few months of 42 00:03:10,479 --> 00:03:14,840 Jimmy Carter's term, and so I got to vote for Ronald Reagan from my 43 00:03:14,879 --> 00:03:19,680 dormitory. Was working for my US senator as an intern, and that was 44 00:03:19,719 --> 00:03:22,800 where I started meeting people, because once you're an intern, you can just 45 00:03:23,159 --> 00:03:25,719 network like crazy. And I got to meet people who are then going on 46 00:03:25,759 --> 00:03:30,280 to the Reagan transition team. They understood the value of youth activists, and 47 00:03:30,280 --> 00:03:35,560 then I got involved in College Republicans, Young Americans for Freedom and I was 48 00:03:35,639 --> 00:03:40,120 a national leader in the national offices of both organizations, and by virtue of 49 00:03:40,159 --> 00:03:45,520 that sort of fell into being the youth coordinator for the Reagan White House on 50 00:03:45,599 --> 00:03:50,840 Foreign Affairs and National Security to take down the Soviet Union. And that was 51 00:03:51,080 --> 00:03:54,000 a heady time in the intel space. Is that also what maybe got you 52 00:03:54,159 --> 00:04:00,000 interested? And maybe this is wrong and correct me and tell us more about 53 00:04:00,120 --> 00:04:02,639 and if it is wrong, But is that also what attracted you to starting 54 00:04:02,639 --> 00:04:08,439 to study things like political warfare and paying really close attention to what was happening 55 00:04:08,639 --> 00:04:12,120 and what a lot of people have called the deep state? Yes? Yeah, 56 00:04:12,159 --> 00:04:15,319 so I got interested in political activism and realized the value of it. 57 00:04:15,360 --> 00:04:19,800 And then I met up with people House Intelligence Committee senior staffer whose daughter was 58 00:04:19,839 --> 00:04:24,959 in college Republicans. His name was herb Romerstein. He was a peal of 59 00:04:25,040 --> 00:04:28,879 Stan Evans of the National Journalism Center, And so you got all these networks 60 00:04:28,920 --> 00:04:31,199 then, and of course Stan had been working on this, you know, 61 00:04:31,199 --> 00:04:34,480 when herber Rohmerstein had been a Communist in the fifties as a kid and was 62 00:04:34,560 --> 00:04:40,319 duped. Then he worked for the House Committee on Un American Activities and then 63 00:04:40,319 --> 00:04:44,000 the House Internal Security Committee and the House Intelligence Committee. So you network in 64 00:04:44,040 --> 00:04:48,079 with these folks and with Stan Evans on the journalism side, and then you're 65 00:04:48,120 --> 00:04:51,360 into this whole new world. So from me as a youth activist at the 66 00:04:51,360 --> 00:04:56,600 White House, I was going to go as a student journalist to Afghanistan, 67 00:04:56,639 --> 00:04:59,759 which was then under Soviet occupation. I was going to go in with am 68 00:04:59,759 --> 00:05:04,759 A s i'm a Shamasut's forces in the Northern Alliance, with soldier Fortune magazine. 69 00:05:05,439 --> 00:05:08,800 And someone from the White House said, now we can do better. 70 00:05:08,839 --> 00:05:11,240 Well, you speak Spanish. Why don't you att out to Central America? 71 00:05:11,560 --> 00:05:15,519 Oh boy? And that's how it began with the contrasts. Who okay, 72 00:05:15,560 --> 00:05:20,160 so this was the American fact anti communist insurgency that was fighting the communists in 73 00:05:21,000 --> 00:05:27,319 Nicaragua. And then so the White House folks put me in touch with someone 74 00:05:27,360 --> 00:05:30,480 else. This is all in the book. Let's say, selibits in the 75 00:05:30,480 --> 00:05:34,079 book with who was a national intelligence officer for Latin America. Who was Bill 76 00:05:34,160 --> 00:05:39,879 Casey? Bill Casey's guy in the White House on this. So Bill Casey 77 00:05:39,920 --> 00:05:44,000 had been Reagan's campaign manager, but more importantly, during World War Two, 78 00:05:44,120 --> 00:05:47,439 he was in the Office of Strategic Services the OSS, and it was his 79 00:05:47,560 --> 00:05:56,439 idea to parachute Allied agents and even German anti Nazis behind Nazi lines right after 80 00:05:56,519 --> 00:06:01,079 D Day to clear the way from Normandy up to to Berlin so the D 81 00:06:01,199 --> 00:06:04,439 Day forces from Normandy could come in and march all the way to Berlin and 82 00:06:04,439 --> 00:06:09,319 take it over. That was Bill Casey, So so it was through him 83 00:06:09,319 --> 00:06:12,279 that I was doing this, ended up doing this work in Central America, 84 00:06:12,560 --> 00:06:16,519 and I was I got walking around money over the years, and I didn't 85 00:06:16,519 --> 00:06:23,079 know for thirty years later that it actually came from Bill Casey's pocket. That's 86 00:06:23,120 --> 00:06:27,439 incredible. That is incredible. Yeah. And he did that so that he 87 00:06:27,439 --> 00:06:30,519 wouldn't have to testify before Congress about what he was doing with CIA director because 88 00:06:30,560 --> 00:06:34,720 it was his private money. And then I met him. I was told 89 00:06:34,720 --> 00:06:39,319 to go to Saint Matthew's Cathedral before my first trip with the Contras, and 90 00:06:39,360 --> 00:06:41,480 I thought, well, this is this old OSS guy. He's a nice 91 00:06:41,519 --> 00:06:46,040 guy in DC. Yeah, in d C, right downtown DuPont Circle. 92 00:06:46,160 --> 00:06:49,120 Yeah exactly. And he, you know, I said, because he knew 93 00:06:49,160 --> 00:06:51,759 I was Catholic, he said, you ka, yeah, but I'm not 94 00:06:51,800 --> 00:06:55,759 a very good We should go to the vigil mass five o'clock PM Saturday. 95 00:06:56,079 --> 00:06:59,160 Sit in the back left hand side of the church and just wait until somebody 96 00:06:59,199 --> 00:07:00,600 talks to you. And I thought, what is this some kind of test 97 00:07:00,720 --> 00:07:03,759 or just to get me to church, because I'm about to do something really 98 00:07:03,839 --> 00:07:10,759 dumb by going with this gorilla force in Nicaragua. And well, sure enough, 99 00:07:11,279 --> 00:07:14,439 I'm told to stand there. And then who comes up to me after 100 00:07:14,560 --> 00:07:19,240 mass but CIA director Casey. Oh my gosh, I'm just a twenty year 101 00:07:19,240 --> 00:07:24,720 old kid. I didn't know anything, and so he said, he mumbled 102 00:07:24,759 --> 00:07:26,879 something up. I mean, I didn't understand it. So somebody else with 103 00:07:27,040 --> 00:07:30,959 him said repeated the name, and he said remember that name. So yeah, 104 00:07:30,000 --> 00:07:32,759 you know, I remember that name, and then Casey shuffled out. 105 00:07:33,079 --> 00:07:39,439 I didn't know for thirty years later that that was my kryptonym and that Casey 106 00:07:39,600 --> 00:07:44,920 used to meet people in church to give them cryptonyms or exchange information because he 107 00:07:44,920 --> 00:07:49,240 couldn't be forced to testify in Congress. What went on in church? That 108 00:07:49,360 --> 00:07:55,000 is incredible. I mean it's just it's Graham Green, but actually even more 109 00:07:55,079 --> 00:08:00,160 wild. And you know, Mike, that's interesting because it's in some of 110 00:08:00,160 --> 00:08:01,920 the dullest books now and I'm going to ask you about this for sure, 111 00:08:01,920 --> 00:08:07,720 but the retrospectives on the legacy of the Dalles brothers that said Alan Dalles used 112 00:08:07,759 --> 00:08:11,839 to frequent and it would be sort of a CIA hotspot. The bar at 113 00:08:11,839 --> 00:08:16,639 the Mayflower, which is right around the corner from Saint Matthew's, of course, 114 00:08:16,600 --> 00:08:20,319 very very interesting. And actually that probably isn't too far from Alan Dallas's 115 00:08:20,399 --> 00:08:24,959 Q Street house, so I guess they were all cavorting around DuPont Circle. 116 00:08:26,199 --> 00:08:28,279 Well. In this case, so Casey was a devout Catholic and he went 117 00:08:28,319 --> 00:08:33,279 to Mass almost every day, so he would repeat, and he wouldn't go 118 00:08:33,320 --> 00:08:37,120 to the same place, you know, repeatedly. He wouldn't have a pattern, 119 00:08:37,440 --> 00:08:39,679 so people would not know his schedule. So he would go. And 120 00:08:41,399 --> 00:08:43,039 his son in law is the one who told me. He didn't know my 121 00:08:43,120 --> 00:08:46,279 case, of course, but when I was explaining it to him thirty years 122 00:08:46,360 --> 00:08:48,679 later, he laughed and he said, ah, that was Bill, that 123 00:08:48,840 --> 00:08:52,799 was his money. He was that all about Bill's money because Bill was funding 124 00:08:52,799 --> 00:08:56,440 these things out of his pocket, so Congress would never find out. And 125 00:08:56,480 --> 00:09:01,399 then that was your cryptonym that he gave you. Oh my gosh, I'm 126 00:09:01,600 --> 00:09:05,679 local officer in Honduras. So I was being hassled down in Honduras about getting 127 00:09:05,679 --> 00:09:09,159 into the country because I'm just a short of long haired, skinny, dumb 128 00:09:09,200 --> 00:09:13,879 college kid, and I thought, Okay, I want to talk to Kapitan 129 00:09:13,960 --> 00:09:16,480 Luke. And then so somebody there got authorization. Okay, somebody invokes that 130 00:09:16,559 --> 00:09:20,879 name led him through and then I met up with the Contras and that was 131 00:09:20,919 --> 00:09:24,039 that. So it was a lot of fun. And the job was to 132 00:09:24,360 --> 00:09:31,279 because Casey didn't have confidence in the career CIA people who somehow couldn't find Soviet 133 00:09:31,320 --> 00:09:37,039 links to international terrorism, even though journalists and scholars could. And so my 134 00:09:37,679 --> 00:09:41,480 job, not at that time, but later on became to go to Central 135 00:09:41,519 --> 00:09:48,000 America work with the Contras and the Sandinista or the Salvadoran army that was fighting 136 00:09:48,039 --> 00:09:52,759 at communist guerrillas. So I was on the anti communist guerrilla side in Nicaragua 137 00:09:52,840 --> 00:09:56,559 and the anti communist army side against communist guerrillas in El Salvador. And it 138 00:09:56,639 --> 00:10:01,879 was to collect intelligence on Oviet support for those insurgencies because people in Congress, 139 00:10:03,159 --> 00:10:05,360 many of them didn't want to hear it, and so a lot of people 140 00:10:05,559 --> 00:10:09,120 and I'm probably guilty of this at different points too, will blend you know, 141 00:10:09,240 --> 00:10:16,600 the Dulles years with the Afghanistan years. They'll blend together what happened in 142 00:10:16,600 --> 00:10:22,080 Guatemala with eventually what was happening in Al Salvador and other places. And I'm 143 00:10:22,120 --> 00:10:26,440 curious, Mike, if you think that there's you know, obviously Alan Dulls 144 00:10:26,559 --> 00:10:31,279 leaves, you know, after the Cuban missile crisis and the Bay of Pigs 145 00:10:31,279 --> 00:10:35,320 and all of that, But what is it was? Was something similar happening? 146 00:10:35,360 --> 00:10:39,080 Did you feel that there was something similar happening that you were sort of 147 00:10:39,919 --> 00:10:41,879 part of this coup orchestration? Was it for the better? This is a 148 00:10:41,960 --> 00:10:46,960 huge question, obviously, but just as someone again who's there and has been 149 00:10:46,960 --> 00:10:50,799 reflecting on this for a really long time in Central America and then ultimately in 150 00:10:50,840 --> 00:10:56,360 Afghanistan, do you see these these two chapters in CIA history as essentially part 151 00:10:56,360 --> 00:11:00,639 of the same chapter, these two eras as part of the same chapter, 152 00:11:00,720 --> 00:11:03,720 or were there differences? As you can tell, you know, I had 153 00:11:03,840 --> 00:11:09,840 not heard that question before. This is great because when you know, I'm 154 00:11:09,840 --> 00:11:13,679 just kind of thinking this through. I hadn't written it that way and had 155 00:11:13,000 --> 00:11:16,200 thought of it. But if you look at the founding of the CIA with 156 00:11:16,240 --> 00:11:22,320 Alan Dulles, who was in Big Intel. These were all OSS veterans from 157 00:11:22,320 --> 00:11:28,879 World War Two, and then thirty years later with Reagan in the eighties, 158 00:11:28,120 --> 00:11:33,399 it's again being led by one of the last OSS veterans of World War Two, 159 00:11:33,720 --> 00:11:37,679 and he was using his friends as talent scouts to assemble teams of amateurs. 160 00:11:39,039 --> 00:11:41,960 So we had no intelligence training, we were not intelligence officers, we 161 00:11:41,960 --> 00:11:48,159 were not employees of the CIA, and to go do things out of pocket 162 00:11:48,679 --> 00:11:56,759 in a in a non orchestrated way to find and do what we could do 163 00:11:56,799 --> 00:12:01,600 that the CIA couldn't or wouldn't do. I'm a big fan by the way 164 00:12:01,720 --> 00:12:09,120 of of Alan Dulls, the CIA director, because even though he has a 165 00:12:09,159 --> 00:12:13,559 lot of detractors, even among conservatives, if you look at the time when 166 00:12:13,840 --> 00:12:18,399 our greatest threat was the Soviet Union, and not just their nuclear threat, 167 00:12:18,440 --> 00:12:24,679 but the spread of communist subversion to overthrow governments, and that where it was 168 00:12:24,720 --> 00:12:28,320 in our national interest that the Soviets not control. So it wasn't us to 169 00:12:28,960 --> 00:12:33,159 conquer places, it was to deny access to the Soviets that were expanding. 170 00:12:33,399 --> 00:12:39,759 That was the whole strategy of containment. So I have no problem with the 171 00:12:39,080 --> 00:12:45,679 operation to overthrow the pro Soviet most of a government in Iran, or overthrow 172 00:12:45,720 --> 00:12:50,360 the pro Soviet regime that was being set up in Guatemala. That was in 173 00:12:50,399 --> 00:12:58,000 our interest to keep the Soviets out of those areas well. If you're a 174 00:12:58,080 --> 00:13:01,679 regular listener to this program, you know I talk a lot about the gaps 175 00:13:01,759 --> 00:13:05,919 I feel like are in my knowledge from my public school education to my secular 176 00:13:05,000 --> 00:13:09,559 college education, things like history, economics, the great works of literature, 177 00:13:09,639 --> 00:13:13,559 even the meaning of the US Constitution. Did you study these things in school? 178 00:13:13,879 --> 00:13:16,399 In many cases you may not have, or if you're like me, 179 00:13:16,639 --> 00:13:20,519 A you might need a refresher and b you just might not think your education 180 00:13:20,720 --> 00:13:24,600 was that good to begin with. Time and technology have changed a lot of 181 00:13:24,639 --> 00:13:30,879 things, but they have not changed basic fundamental truths about the world and our 182 00:13:30,919 --> 00:13:33,679 place in it, no matter how badly today's teachers might want to act like 183 00:13:33,879 --> 00:13:39,440 it's otherwise. That's why I'm so excited that our friends at Hillsdale College are 184 00:13:39,480 --> 00:13:45,639 offering more than forty free online courses in the most important and enduring subjects. 185 00:13:45,919 --> 00:13:48,919 You can learn about the works of C. S. Lewis, the stories 186 00:13:48,919 --> 00:13:52,679 in the Book of Genesis, the meaning of the US Constitution, the Rise 187 00:13:52,759 --> 00:13:56,639 and the Fall of the Roman Republic, or the history of the ancient Christian 188 00:13:56,720 --> 00:14:01,000 Church. With Hillsdale College's online courses all available for free. 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The course is also 198 00:14:39,279 --> 00:14:45,039 self paced, so that you can start whenever and wherever and role now in 199 00:14:45,120 --> 00:14:48,720 C. S. Lewis on Christianity to discover Lewis's core lessons regarding the truth 200 00:14:50,039 --> 00:14:54,240 and the goodness of the Christian faith and how you can apply those lessons to 201 00:14:54,320 --> 00:14:58,639 your own life. Go right now to Hillsdale dot edu slash Federalist to enroll. 202 00:15:00,000 --> 00:15:03,240 There is no cost and it's easy to get started. That's Hillsdale dot 203 00:15:03,440 --> 00:15:13,240 edu slash Federalist to register Hillsdale dot edu slash Federalist. See this is so 204 00:15:13,360 --> 00:15:16,440 interesting, and I was hoping we could get into this mine because I figured 205 00:15:16,440 --> 00:15:22,679 you would have interesting perspective here that especially as we look back. You mentioned 206 00:15:22,679 --> 00:15:28,960 Stan Evans. I mean, his book on the Venona Files is just like 207 00:15:28,000 --> 00:15:33,000 an incredible example of how high the stakes were and how easy it is for 208 00:15:33,159 --> 00:15:37,240 us right now in twenty twenty four to sort of armchair quarterback what people at 209 00:15:37,240 --> 00:15:41,480 the CIA were doing when we had just deployed nuclear weapons for the first time 210 00:15:41,480 --> 00:15:46,600 in human history. And this is obviously really terrifying. The dollars. Detractors 211 00:15:46,600 --> 00:15:50,000 will look at you know, Sicarno or you know Guatemala, our bonds and 212 00:15:50,000 --> 00:15:54,360 Guatemala and say there were better ways to handle this. This was you know, 213 00:15:54,399 --> 00:15:58,440 Alan dolls just sort of moving chess pieces around the board and you know, 214 00:15:58,559 --> 00:16:03,399 laughing about in smoke filled back rooms. But you know, is there 215 00:16:03,399 --> 00:16:04,519 a middle ground? Is there something that's like, you know, some of 216 00:16:04,559 --> 00:16:11,120 these case studies maybe show us that we were using untested methods to you know, 217 00:16:11,200 --> 00:16:14,200 not the best ends, or is it really you know, when we 218 00:16:14,240 --> 00:16:18,039 look back, we're damn lucky that Alan Dallas did some of this stuff, 219 00:16:18,279 --> 00:16:21,639 even if all of the cups weren't, you know, totally executed as they 220 00:16:21,919 --> 00:16:23,399 could have been. I don't know, Mike, I'm just curious what you 221 00:16:23,440 --> 00:16:30,519 think about that. Well, imagine what if what if we had allowed the 222 00:16:30,600 --> 00:16:37,320 communists to get a foothold in Guatemala in nineteen fifty four and stay that way. 223 00:16:37,360 --> 00:16:38,879 They don't just these regimes don't just go away. You have to make 224 00:16:38,960 --> 00:16:44,639 them go away. What if we, you know, had allowed the Soviets 225 00:16:44,639 --> 00:16:48,320 to control Iran from in the nineteen fifties, and then they did. They 226 00:16:48,360 --> 00:16:51,320 trained a lot of the eye tollas. We tend to think, well, 227 00:16:51,360 --> 00:16:56,080 the Iotolers are sheeite fundamentalists, they're not communists, But in fact, the 228 00:16:56,120 --> 00:16:59,960 Soviets had trained so many of them, and it was the communist Tu Depart 229 00:17:00,000 --> 00:17:04,400 Party of Iran that was part of the whole revolution there in nineteen seventy nine 230 00:17:04,440 --> 00:17:08,039 with the Iatolas, and the Iotolas used the communists to take power and then 231 00:17:08,119 --> 00:17:15,079 wipe them all out. So it's we can't if we're going to be the 232 00:17:15,119 --> 00:17:19,240 world's superpower, whether we like it or not, in our own national interest 233 00:17:19,680 --> 00:17:25,640 and our own America first interest depends on us having no peer rival anywhere in 234 00:17:25,680 --> 00:17:30,319 the world. So you can see what's happened when you had our intelligence services 235 00:17:30,359 --> 00:17:34,960 and State Department full of sympathizers of Maotse Tongue taking over China, which really, 236 00:17:36,079 --> 00:17:38,319 I mean that was actually the case, and it's something that is so 237 00:17:38,720 --> 00:17:44,240 left out of history. It was largely under emphasized in Oppenheimer Mike, I'm 238 00:17:44,240 --> 00:17:47,240 curious for if you saw the movie, what you thought about how they treated 239 00:17:47,279 --> 00:17:51,480 that too. Well. Oppenheimer was a secret Party member and he had to 240 00:17:51,480 --> 00:17:56,759 give up his as Stan Evans has documented, and he had to give up 241 00:17:56,799 --> 00:18:00,880 his party membership card because he was involved in such clandem and service in developing 242 00:18:00,920 --> 00:18:06,640 the atomic bomb for the United States that he wasn't to ake quote card carrying 243 00:18:06,720 --> 00:18:08,720 member. At a place I used to work, where I was a librarian, 244 00:18:08,839 --> 00:18:14,839 we had a bag full of Communist Party They're not cards like business cards 245 00:18:15,079 --> 00:18:18,160 or ID cards. They're like booklets, so they have your picture, your 246 00:18:18,279 --> 00:18:21,920 signature, and your stamps. And then where they mark off when you pay 247 00:18:21,960 --> 00:18:26,759 your dues to the party. I had his brother's Communist party booklet at one 248 00:18:26,759 --> 00:18:30,920 time, you know, long ago. Yeah, and these guys were building 249 00:18:30,960 --> 00:18:37,880 the bomb to fight the Nazis, but to help Stalin. So you had 250 00:18:37,880 --> 00:18:41,119 that whole Soviet spy ring. So Oppenheimer is still viewed as a hero. 251 00:18:41,079 --> 00:18:44,599 And if you look at it, yeah, he developed the bomb to help 252 00:18:44,640 --> 00:18:48,480 us defeat the Axis. That's really important. But what was the motive and 253 00:18:48,519 --> 00:18:52,839 if the motive was to help Stalin as was the case with the Rosenbergs and 254 00:18:52,880 --> 00:18:56,640 so many others involved, you know, Klaus Fuchs and the others in the 255 00:18:56,279 --> 00:19:02,119 ring, you had two Soviet spirings, one British and one American in our 256 00:19:02,279 --> 00:19:07,759 Adam bomb project. And so we have to think, why is that a 257 00:19:07,759 --> 00:19:12,119 bad thing? Well, because they were trying to save Stalin. Because remember 258 00:19:12,119 --> 00:19:17,279 Stalin didn't go to war with Japan until the very last few weeks of World 259 00:19:17,279 --> 00:19:21,519 War Two. He wanted Japan to stay neutral. And as Dan Evans documented 260 00:19:21,559 --> 00:19:27,720 with herb Romerstein and their Venona Secrets book, the Soviets wanted the Japanese to 261 00:19:27,839 --> 00:19:36,880 attack European colonies or American interests in the Pacific to keep Japan from joining Hitler 262 00:19:36,920 --> 00:19:42,359 and making war against the USSR after Operation Barbarossa. So it was in the 263 00:19:42,400 --> 00:19:48,519 Soviet interest therefore American Communist Party interests for Japan to make war in the Pacific. 264 00:19:48,039 --> 00:19:52,920 They ended up attacking not European colony targets, but they ended up attacking 265 00:19:52,920 --> 00:19:56,160 Pearl Harbor, and that's how we got into the war. Stalin was delighted 266 00:19:56,160 --> 00:20:00,640 by that because it kept Japan off his back during the entire duration of the 267 00:20:00,680 --> 00:20:06,759 war. So we've been talking here about the CIA, the OSS then the 268 00:20:06,799 --> 00:20:10,240 CIA, and Mike, you also write about the FBI. You write about 269 00:20:10,240 --> 00:20:12,559 the reign of JEdgar Hoover. Can you talk to us a little bit about, 270 00:20:12,640 --> 00:20:15,240 you know, before we fast forward to twenty twenty four and all of 271 00:20:15,279 --> 00:20:19,039 the various problems with these agencies right now, can you tell us a little 272 00:20:19,039 --> 00:20:26,480 bit about how that the kind of FBI evolved alongside the CIA in the twentieth 273 00:20:26,480 --> 00:20:30,640 century with the nuclear threat looming so heavily over the United States. Sure well, 274 00:20:32,039 --> 00:20:36,920 you can't describe it without going into jag or Hoover the man, because 275 00:20:37,279 --> 00:20:42,039 he personified what became the FBI. So he didn't start out as a lawman 276 00:20:42,079 --> 00:20:47,079 in the sense of a law enforcement officer. He started out as a subversive 277 00:20:47,160 --> 00:20:52,359 hunter, as a communist hunter. And so when in World War One he 278 00:20:52,559 --> 00:20:56,240 enlisted for military or in unless he signed up for the draft in military for 279 00:20:56,319 --> 00:21:02,240 the military, but he was working at the Justice Department, and as a 280 00:21:02,279 --> 00:21:06,519 twenty five year old right after the war, he headed up an office in 281 00:21:06,559 --> 00:21:10,839 the Justice Department called the Radical Division. So his job was to identify, 282 00:21:11,480 --> 00:21:18,480 round up and deport foreign born communist, Marxist, radical socialists, and anarchists 283 00:21:18,559 --> 00:21:22,599 and deport them to Russia. So that was his first really big job in 284 00:21:22,640 --> 00:21:27,279 the Justice Department, and that's what he brought in with him to the FBI. 285 00:21:29,599 --> 00:21:32,200 Now, it was such a huge operation, and there were few laws 286 00:21:32,240 --> 00:21:34,839 concerning this and few practices, and he was a twenty five year old Justice 287 00:21:34,880 --> 00:21:38,160 Department official working this, so there were a lot of mistakes, and of 288 00:21:38,160 --> 00:21:45,680 course the far left made use of the mistakes he made so that these roundups 289 00:21:45,720 --> 00:21:48,799 could not continue. But imagine, imagine if Hoover had been able to round 290 00:21:48,880 --> 00:21:55,200 up all the foreign born extremists in our country one hundred years ago, how 291 00:21:55,200 --> 00:21:59,559 different our country would be today. Right, there was a strategic fight there 292 00:21:59,720 --> 00:22:03,440 when he's later named to head up the Bureau of Investigation. So it was 293 00:22:03,480 --> 00:22:08,400 like the Bureau of Prohibition. There was a Bureau of Prohibition to fight liquor 294 00:22:08,440 --> 00:22:14,599 trafficking, and so the Bureau of Investigation was to fight other types of crimes. 295 00:22:14,640 --> 00:22:18,400 We didn't have a counterintelligence service then against foreigns buys. So Hoover heads 296 00:22:18,480 --> 00:22:23,319 up this Bureau of Investigation, which then with the New Deal becomes the Federal 297 00:22:23,359 --> 00:22:30,039 Bureau of Investigation with now new bigger powers as central government gets stronger and more 298 00:22:30,079 --> 00:22:34,319 far reaching and more powerful, and then there are more federal laws to enforce. 299 00:22:34,839 --> 00:22:41,920 And so he built the FBI and into really what became a premier world's 300 00:22:42,000 --> 00:22:45,759 you know, crime fighting agency, and it had no peer in terms of 301 00:22:45,799 --> 00:22:52,680 its technological capabilities at the time. And he built it into a professional force 302 00:22:52,960 --> 00:22:56,440 and fighting the gangsters and so forth in the rise of the organized crime in 303 00:22:56,440 --> 00:23:07,440 the nineteen twenties. But he always had had this commitment to saving America from 304 00:23:07,720 --> 00:23:11,519 cultural destruction and subversion, even where the law didn't There was no federal law 305 00:23:11,519 --> 00:23:15,799 concerning it, because back then we didn't have many federal laws. Before the 306 00:23:15,880 --> 00:23:21,119 Church Committee and all of that well before the New Deal. Yeah, and 307 00:23:21,480 --> 00:23:23,559 then the seventies just made it where the Church Committee came up. Yeah, 308 00:23:23,599 --> 00:23:27,200 the seventies and the whole attack on intelligence, it wasn't so much an attack 309 00:23:27,279 --> 00:23:36,160 on intelligence. It was an attack on anti communist intelligence capabilities and counterintelligence capabilities. 310 00:23:36,759 --> 00:23:42,480 So Hoover, I read, I've read his speeches, his congressional testimony, 311 00:23:42,559 --> 00:23:48,920 his books. He was prolific in speaking out since nineteen twenty about communist 312 00:23:48,000 --> 00:23:53,400 subversion. Farn sponsored communist subversion and how it worked here to destroy us from 313 00:23:53,440 --> 00:24:00,720 within and the infiltration of our of our educational system and universe cities and churches 314 00:24:00,839 --> 00:24:07,920 and labor unions and art communities and entertainment and news media everything else in politics, 315 00:24:08,640 --> 00:24:12,359 to cause us all to fight one another, and to polarize the country 316 00:24:12,400 --> 00:24:17,839 so that we no longer believe in American founding principles and what he called Christian 317 00:24:17,920 --> 00:24:22,119 values. Imagine an FBI directors talking that way, now, right, yeah, 318 00:24:22,200 --> 00:24:26,559 yeah, right, So he took this. He himself was a Presbyterian 319 00:24:27,440 --> 00:24:32,920 and a Freemason, and he had flirted with the idea of becoming a street 320 00:24:33,200 --> 00:24:37,920 preacher early on in his career like his brother was. Instead, he decided 321 00:24:37,960 --> 00:24:41,119 he was going to stay home and take care of his father, who could 322 00:24:41,119 --> 00:24:45,880 no longer work because he had some mental illness which then nobody talked about, 323 00:24:45,119 --> 00:24:48,200 and to take care of his mother. So his father died. He stayed 324 00:24:48,200 --> 00:24:52,519 at home taking care of his mother while he was FBI director until he was 325 00:24:52,559 --> 00:24:57,599 forty three years old. And he believed that if he had a relationship and 326 00:24:57,680 --> 00:25:02,240 got married, that he can he cannot be a good husband and a good 327 00:25:02,279 --> 00:25:06,599 FBI director at the same time, and being married to the wrong woman would 328 00:25:06,599 --> 00:25:08,920 destroy him, and it would destroy the FBI that he was trying to build. 329 00:25:10,279 --> 00:25:14,920 And people speculate that he was actually homosexual for all of these reasons, 330 00:25:15,440 --> 00:25:18,000 right, I mean, if he was, If Jay Edgar Hoover was really 331 00:25:18,200 --> 00:25:22,519 a gay FBI leader, you would you know that his banner would be hanging 332 00:25:22,559 --> 00:25:26,799 in a rainbow for the Hoover building right now. Yeah, they would love 333 00:25:26,960 --> 00:25:30,480 that. That would be wonderful. And if he's really a cross dresser, 334 00:25:30,480 --> 00:25:33,599 with Chris Ray being so into promoting trans stuff, if Uber was a cross 335 00:25:33,640 --> 00:25:37,400 dresser, you know they would be you know, there'd be a big statue 336 00:25:37,400 --> 00:25:41,039 of him right now, you know, right right on the Washington mall and 337 00:25:41,079 --> 00:25:44,720 you don't. Of course, you don't see any of that. What happened 338 00:25:44,880 --> 00:25:48,079 was, though, you know, if you live with your mother till you're 339 00:25:48,119 --> 00:25:53,240 forty three, some people thought that was wrong, right, And then well, 340 00:25:53,359 --> 00:25:57,759 you're forty three, so you have not had and you're a workaholic and 341 00:25:57,799 --> 00:26:03,720 you're you're devoted to the bureau, and then your mother passes away. So 342 00:26:03,759 --> 00:26:06,039 what do you do. You live economically, and you work with the guy 343 00:26:06,079 --> 00:26:07,519 you trust most, which is where you live with the guy you trust most, 344 00:26:07,759 --> 00:26:11,920 who's also a workaholic. So you're working together all day. So you 345 00:26:12,720 --> 00:26:17,880 live in the same house together to economize, and you're always plotting and conspiring 346 00:26:17,920 --> 00:26:21,400 and just working twenty four hours a day. So it was assumed then that 347 00:26:21,640 --> 00:26:29,599 bed Hoover had a more than a normal friendship with his deputy, But the 348 00:26:29,599 --> 00:26:34,720 two scholars were. A scholar Beverly Gage just came out with a recent book. 349 00:26:34,720 --> 00:26:40,319 It's a bestseller right now on Hoover. It's an eight hundred page solid 350 00:26:40,359 --> 00:26:44,599 academic study on Jay Edgar Hoover, and she found that there's no evidence to 351 00:26:44,640 --> 00:26:48,000 support those claims that Hoover was either a gay, closet gay or a cross 352 00:26:48,079 --> 00:26:52,920 Dresser and then Tim Weiner, who is a New York Times bestseller liberal guy, 353 00:26:53,000 --> 00:26:56,319 but he would only use primary sources, and he's got a fantastic book 354 00:26:56,319 --> 00:27:02,640 about the FBI called Enemies. He came to the same conclusion separately. So 355 00:27:02,920 --> 00:27:07,599 these were rumors by his detractors to to you know, make fun of him 356 00:27:07,599 --> 00:27:11,599 and reduce them and destroy him. But there's really nothing in fact to prove 357 00:27:11,839 --> 00:27:15,039 that it was true. So this is actually a really interesting transition, no 358 00:27:15,160 --> 00:27:22,000 pun intended to the premise of the book about you know, as you write 359 00:27:22,200 --> 00:27:27,400 Big Intel, and you mentioned Christopher Ray and their focus on diversity, equity 360 00:27:27,480 --> 00:27:32,920 and inclusion and trans riots and all of that. Mike, as we get 361 00:27:32,960 --> 00:27:40,160 into the contemporary era, this current chapter in the history of Big Intel, 362 00:27:40,559 --> 00:27:48,160 what is there sort of governing philosophy and how have they folded this radical cultural 363 00:27:48,200 --> 00:27:52,119 Marxism kind of into what so many people see as this, you know, 364 00:27:52,160 --> 00:27:57,759 even on the left, we'll see as this fundamentally right wing institution that is 365 00:27:57,839 --> 00:28:02,640 Big Intel. In fact, though as you write, it's really been infiltrated 366 00:28:02,640 --> 00:28:07,160 by something so different. Yeah, Well, it's really complicated because the CIA 367 00:28:07,319 --> 00:28:10,559 was always a liberal institution. So if you think about it as sort of 368 00:28:10,599 --> 00:28:15,359 a secret state department. That's kind of the CIA culture and the CIA bureaucracy. 369 00:28:17,079 --> 00:28:22,920 As long as they're still America first, and they're they're intellectually honest, 370 00:28:23,079 --> 00:28:27,759 and they're against the ideologies of our enemies, you know, we can live 371 00:28:27,799 --> 00:28:33,119 with that. We've lived with that since World War Two. It's when they 372 00:28:33,160 --> 00:28:38,279 become woke where they embrace critical theory, which is cultural Marxism, which is 373 00:28:38,319 --> 00:28:45,319 that America was founded by wicked men, wicked white men, who were all 374 00:28:45,400 --> 00:28:48,039 racists, and they all went along with racism, and they had no redeeming 375 00:28:48,119 --> 00:28:52,880 values, and they were Christians, and they had a Judeo Christian ethic backing 376 00:28:52,920 --> 00:28:57,920 them up, and they were building a democratic republican on the Greco Roman traditions. 377 00:28:59,559 --> 00:29:03,400 This is all evil, it's oppressive, and so we have to fight 378 00:29:03,440 --> 00:29:07,759 that oppression. And this is of course Marxism, where everything is oppressing us 379 00:29:07,039 --> 00:29:10,799 there, you know, help help on being repressed kind of thing, and 380 00:29:10,839 --> 00:29:15,559 they have to fight everything that's repressive, so that the church is repressive, 381 00:29:15,799 --> 00:29:19,720 the republic itself is repressive, the constitution is repressive, the nuclear family is 382 00:29:19,759 --> 00:29:25,640 repressive, our morals are repressive, and therefore they all have to be fought, 383 00:29:25,759 --> 00:29:30,319 and they all have to be destroyed. So that's the that's the cultural 384 00:29:30,000 --> 00:29:34,519 dialectic in cultural Marxism. Karl Marx wrote about this in eighteen forty three, 385 00:29:36,160 --> 00:29:40,519 five years before he wrote the Communist Manifesto. But if you don't think of 386 00:29:40,559 --> 00:29:44,880 it as cultural Marxism, because this has been been baking for, you know, 387 00:29:44,960 --> 00:29:51,160 for generations now in our educational systems and our and popular culture and society 388 00:29:51,160 --> 00:29:53,880 and entertainment. You don't look at it as Marxism. You just look at 389 00:29:53,920 --> 00:29:59,079 it as the way it is. And yeah, so it all makes sense. 390 00:29:59,480 --> 00:30:03,640 So and then if you have an FBI and a CIA whose analysts and 391 00:30:03,759 --> 00:30:11,599 intelligence officers and special agents and managers and lawyers believe that America is founded on 392 00:30:11,680 --> 00:30:18,119 an evil premise, and believe that the Constitution is a is a you know, 393 00:30:18,240 --> 00:30:25,480 a living document that can be twisted to mean whatever the latest trends want 394 00:30:25,519 --> 00:30:30,720 it to mean, then how can you hold up your oath to defend America 395 00:30:30,799 --> 00:30:36,160 against all enemies, foreign and domestic and uphold the Constitution unless you believe the 396 00:30:36,200 --> 00:30:41,160 Constitution is a living document and that the enemies are whoever you want them to 397 00:30:41,240 --> 00:30:45,759 be, which is people who are like you and me and listening to this 398 00:30:45,079 --> 00:30:52,640 program, and what are some of the outward and in some respects, I'm 399 00:30:52,640 --> 00:30:56,200 curious for your take on this. Maybe it's more transparent that it has been 400 00:30:56,240 --> 00:30:59,920 in the past. They're almost doing some of the stuff just right out in 401 00:31:00,039 --> 00:31:03,440 the open. But what are some of the signs we know? You know 402 00:31:03,640 --> 00:31:06,680 again, you know a lot of my friends on the left would just say, 403 00:31:06,799 --> 00:31:08,440 what do you mean the FBI is full of cultural Marxists, and to 404 00:31:08,480 --> 00:31:11,160 you and I it seems very clear. But sort of what are some of 405 00:31:11,200 --> 00:31:15,559 the points that tell us exactly what's going on inside of there right now? 406 00:31:17,599 --> 00:31:21,400 Well, when you see cultural Marxists as the biggest defenders of the FBI, 407 00:31:22,000 --> 00:31:26,200 you know that's probably been taken over. That's a good point. Dan Goldman, 408 00:31:26,480 --> 00:31:32,240 big fan. Oh yeah, Dan Goldman, the guy who who is 409 00:31:32,279 --> 00:31:36,440 crying, crying, you know who. He's the trust fund baby who became 410 00:31:36,480 --> 00:31:38,920 a congressman. He was a lawyer on the impeachment committee, and all all 411 00:31:38,920 --> 00:31:44,279 of a sudden, he's he just realizes that all his you know, progressive 412 00:31:44,319 --> 00:31:48,119 friends want to kill people like him since October seventh. Amazing. Yeah, 413 00:31:48,519 --> 00:31:52,880 So so one of the things that Okay. You know, for decades the 414 00:31:52,920 --> 00:31:57,240 FBI was attacking and just ripping the FBI and Jay Edgar Hoover and anything to 415 00:31:57,279 --> 00:32:00,640 do with law and order, ripping it to shreds. And they were the 416 00:32:00,680 --> 00:32:06,519 ones writing these big narratives about how evil the CIA is, and for generations, 417 00:32:06,559 --> 00:32:08,440 so many people bought into that because that was all they were hearing. 418 00:32:09,480 --> 00:32:16,279 And so they're not attacking it anymore. They're idealizing it now, and they're 419 00:32:16,279 --> 00:32:20,720 saying that if you attack them, or I mean, if you criticize them, 420 00:32:20,799 --> 00:32:22,279 or if you say there should be hearings about it, like let's have 421 00:32:22,519 --> 00:32:29,680 Frank Church style hearings about the weaponization of government, Suddenly that's a bad thing 422 00:32:30,400 --> 00:32:34,599 because the wrong people are saying it should be investigated. And so then you 423 00:32:34,640 --> 00:32:40,440 become antipatriotic in the view of big intel. You become maybe a threat to 424 00:32:42,759 --> 00:32:46,799 society in the public, maybe you're a violent extremist. Let's see. So 425 00:32:46,839 --> 00:32:52,400 when you have it where the security apparatus of our country that was designed to 426 00:32:52,440 --> 00:32:57,720 protect us all becomes a state within a state of its own and now views 427 00:32:57,759 --> 00:33:06,799 half the country as potential enemies, you're coming into a complete threat to and 428 00:33:06,839 --> 00:33:10,440 subversion of our constitutional order. And it's not just it's not just people like 429 00:33:10,519 --> 00:33:15,319 us who might think that. Just listen to Chuck Schumer. Not that we 430 00:33:15,319 --> 00:33:21,160 should in ordinary cases, but I mean, he's the most powerful US senator. 431 00:33:22,559 --> 00:33:24,559 And when Trump came in in twenty seventeen and said he wants to go 432 00:33:24,680 --> 00:33:30,839 after this apparatus because it's abusing people, and he said, if you do 433 00:33:30,880 --> 00:33:34,519 that, they're going to be They're going to come after you six ways from 434 00:33:34,599 --> 00:33:42,000 Sunday and destroy you. So even Chuck Schumer is admitting that our security and 435 00:33:42,079 --> 00:33:50,319 intelligence community now have become so overwhelmingly powerful that neither Democrat nor Republican leaders in 436 00:33:50,400 --> 00:33:54,319 the Senate or the White House can go against it or that apparatus will destroy 437 00:33:54,440 --> 00:34:00,559 them. One of the least appreciated or the most underappreciated quotes in American politics 438 00:34:00,599 --> 00:34:05,599 in the last ten years when Truck Schumer said that, Yeah, and he 439 00:34:05,599 --> 00:34:07,440 said it with a passion. He also said it with a smile, which 440 00:34:07,480 --> 00:34:13,719 is really weird. But it's. Yeah, that's a hard thing about writing 441 00:34:13,719 --> 00:34:15,559 books when you go back to double check quotes and you have to watch videos 442 00:34:15,559 --> 00:34:21,239 over and over again just to make sure it's like it's like Peter Strock and 443 00:34:21,320 --> 00:34:24,639 getting his mannerisms down and watching that same videos, it becomes very creepy. 444 00:34:24,719 --> 00:34:30,639 But when you think you know Schumer, you know, as boorish and as 445 00:34:30,719 --> 00:34:35,440 pushy and as obnoxious and as vicious and vindictive as he is, he has 446 00:34:35,480 --> 00:34:44,679 never tried to pull the FBI accountable. Can you talk to us also about 447 00:34:45,199 --> 00:34:47,599 some cases people are very familiar with, where January sixth comes into this, 448 00:34:47,840 --> 00:34:53,559 where the Gretchen Widmer kidnapping plot comes into this, where the infiltration of Orthodox 449 00:34:53,599 --> 00:35:00,239 Catholic parishes comes into all of this, and that broader context of the the 450 00:35:00,760 --> 00:35:06,280 left suddenly the culture Marxist suddenly defending the FBI and the CIA. What's going 451 00:35:06,320 --> 00:35:10,719 on with some of these case studies? This is all and it's all still 452 00:35:10,719 --> 00:35:16,000 a mystery, you know, because we don't have answers. But where we 453 00:35:16,039 --> 00:35:20,440 don't have answers, then that leads us on the one hand to think worst 454 00:35:20,480 --> 00:35:22,960 case scenario, but maybe even to the point of going overboard on it. 455 00:35:23,039 --> 00:35:30,719 But we don't have answers period. So when you have the FBI Director Chris 456 00:35:30,800 --> 00:35:37,559 Ray and his top deputies on national security are repeatedly brought before House and Senate 457 00:35:37,599 --> 00:35:43,480 oversight committees and asks the same questions over and over. So where Ted Cruz 458 00:35:44,400 --> 00:35:49,519 says to the National Security Chief of the FBI, were there yes or no? 459 00:35:50,119 --> 00:35:57,239 Were there FBI assets or agents that were involved in the planning or execution 460 00:35:57,800 --> 00:36:02,920 of criminal acts of violence at the US Capital on January sixth? Yes or 461 00:36:02,920 --> 00:36:12,599 no? And she won't answer the question repeatedly. When the FBI director himself 462 00:36:12,639 --> 00:36:17,480 won't answer the question repeatedly House or Senate, various different committees, then there's 463 00:36:17,519 --> 00:36:23,920 a problem there. Do you think they could say, you know what, 464 00:36:23,960 --> 00:36:28,719 we would never engage in any criminal activity. They didn't even say that. 465 00:36:30,519 --> 00:36:32,920 So if the FBI won't deny that they're engaged in criminal activities, then what 466 00:36:32,960 --> 00:36:39,679 are we left to conclude? Right? And I'm speaking of somebody who I 467 00:36:39,800 --> 00:36:44,519 had idealized the FBI. You know, I grew up with the watching f 468 00:36:44,599 --> 00:36:47,440 the FBI, with that from Zimblas Junior, which was sort of a you 469 00:36:47,440 --> 00:36:52,960 know, a hokey weekly show about the FBI, which happened every every script 470 00:36:52,000 --> 00:36:57,239 was approved by the FBI. But I grew up with this idealistic vision of 471 00:36:57,280 --> 00:36:59,920 the bureau. I was, I was, you know, I knew a 472 00:37:00,079 --> 00:37:04,039 lot of people in the FBI have been to headquarters and met various directors and 473 00:37:04,039 --> 00:37:07,760 so forth, so it's not like I don't know and don't appreciate it. 474 00:37:07,840 --> 00:37:12,639 Similar with CIA, having worked for CIA Director Casey and known a lot of 475 00:37:12,639 --> 00:37:16,159 these folks, I have a tremendous amount of respect for the many of the 476 00:37:16,199 --> 00:37:22,880 people in both institutions, but as to see, what's happened to those institutions 477 00:37:22,960 --> 00:37:28,719 is a national tragedy, and the fact that they can operate free of any 478 00:37:28,760 --> 00:37:35,920 concern of congressional oversight or even presidential oversight and direction shows that they've become dangerous 479 00:37:35,920 --> 00:37:38,599 institutions of their own, and they don't have the public interest in mind any 480 00:37:39,719 --> 00:37:45,719 they might think they do. I'm looking right now the second on the FBI 481 00:37:45,199 --> 00:37:49,639 Twitter pages. They've got fifty six field offices, and they've got headquarters, 482 00:37:49,639 --> 00:37:54,039 and here's FBI L Paso Twitter today. They're going to have a University of 483 00:37:54,079 --> 00:38:00,519 Texas at El Paso Campus spring career fair Thursday and Friday this week, it 484 00:38:00,519 --> 00:38:02,599 says, and here's the pitch. This is what they're trying to recruit. 485 00:38:02,840 --> 00:38:08,199 The FBI is committed to strengthening its workforce and connectivity with our community by continuing 486 00:38:08,239 --> 00:38:17,320 to prioritize diversity, equity, and inclusion within our efforts. And it's just 487 00:38:20,320 --> 00:38:23,079 it's so strange. Why do they think if you can put yourself, you 488 00:38:23,119 --> 00:38:28,280 know, put their little thinking caps on mike for a second, what does 489 00:38:28,320 --> 00:38:31,360 that say about their end? You know what means? Is this an end? 490 00:38:31,840 --> 00:38:38,760 Or to what end are these means aimed at? Well, they're promoting. 491 00:38:39,000 --> 00:38:44,239 I mean they only want to attract a certain type of people, with 492 00:38:44,360 --> 00:38:50,679 a certain type of mentality that would subscribe to the overarching philosophy of critical theory, 493 00:38:51,039 --> 00:38:58,119 which is cultural Marxism, which came from Stalin's period of time and scholars 494 00:38:58,119 --> 00:39:02,199 and intellectuals who developed under Stalin and then they broke with Stalin, but they 495 00:39:02,199 --> 00:39:08,039 still remained ideological communists how to destroy free societies. And then they moved to 496 00:39:08,119 --> 00:39:14,559 the United States and they set up shop in the United States and became some 497 00:39:14,599 --> 00:39:17,360 of the largest intellectual drivers. So we all know what critical race theory is. 498 00:39:17,760 --> 00:39:22,639 But before there was critical race theory, the same intellectuals who developed this 499 00:39:22,760 --> 00:39:28,800 developed what was called critical law theory, which was to manipulate the law for 500 00:39:29,440 --> 00:39:34,119 ideological purposes and to then dispense with rules of evidence. Rules of procedure, 501 00:39:35,199 --> 00:39:39,320 you know, constitutional limitations and all of that. And by the nineteen eighties, 502 00:39:39,360 --> 00:39:44,920 critical law theory was the dominant legal theory being taught at many, if 503 00:39:44,960 --> 00:39:49,199 not most, American law schools. So where do these lawyers go. Who's 504 00:39:49,280 --> 00:39:52,960 hiring them? Well, the Justice Department was hiring them in spades, as 505 00:39:52,960 --> 00:39:57,639 well as the FBI and other government agencies. So when you think that the 506 00:39:57,840 --> 00:40:04,440 critical law theory lawyers are working at the taxpayer's expense within the Justice Department in 507 00:40:04,480 --> 00:40:07,800 the FBI, well, then of course they're going to be extremist. And 508 00:40:07,840 --> 00:40:13,320 of course they're wanting to recruit younger people still in college who believe in those 509 00:40:13,440 --> 00:40:16,840 views so that they can fully take over the organizations. And I was just 510 00:40:16,840 --> 00:40:22,360 going to ask about that, you know, how widespread with you know, 511 00:40:22,400 --> 00:40:24,400 all of your experience in the space and studying the departments right now, how 512 00:40:24,400 --> 00:40:29,559 widespread is that ideology is? Is it concentrated at the top, does it 513 00:40:29,639 --> 00:40:32,760 trickle all the way down because so many of these staffers are now, you 514 00:40:32,760 --> 00:40:36,679 know, all the way from the bottom to the top, filtered through our 515 00:40:36,719 --> 00:40:39,320 system of higher education, which is, you know, a four year degree 516 00:40:39,320 --> 00:40:42,920 in cultural Marxism. You know, and even if you're going to school for 517 00:40:43,000 --> 00:40:47,920 engineering, how widespread is this mindset? Is the buy in to this mindset 518 00:40:49,199 --> 00:40:52,679 at the FBI and the CIA right now, it started at the bottom, 519 00:40:52,000 --> 00:40:55,800 and especially it took place. It began a little bit earlier, but it 520 00:40:55,840 --> 00:41:00,719 especially took place after nine to eleven when there was this had hiring spree to 521 00:41:00,840 --> 00:41:06,760 expand the CIA and FBI and the entire intelligence community. So they were recruiting 522 00:41:06,760 --> 00:41:10,880 people all over the country. They were recruiting, you know, not based 523 00:41:10,920 --> 00:41:15,360 on DEI or critical theory. They were just recruiting a lot of people. 524 00:41:15,800 --> 00:41:21,280 But when you're recruiting people from the humanities studies, especially from American colleges now 525 00:41:21,320 --> 00:41:24,840 by the early two thousands, and then you're recruiting a lot of tech people 526 00:41:24,960 --> 00:41:31,159 from Silicon Valley, so you've got that San Francisco worldview. Then you're creating 527 00:41:31,199 --> 00:41:37,840 a new base of lower and mid level people coming into the system. Now 528 00:41:37,880 --> 00:41:42,480 this is after two thousand and one. Now they're more than halfway through their 529 00:41:42,519 --> 00:41:45,800 careers, so they're in the mid and upper management of their organizations now, 530 00:41:46,000 --> 00:41:50,039 and of course they're going to pull in and recruit people who think the way 531 00:41:50,039 --> 00:41:55,480 they do because they have an ideological mindset and not a professional mindset. Well, 532 00:41:55,800 --> 00:42:00,679 what Bush had done after nine to eleven to centralize our intelligence community, 533 00:42:00,719 --> 00:42:05,840 which had been split up in multiple agencies that didn't talk to each other for 534 00:42:05,880 --> 00:42:09,199 the most part, because there was a bipartisan consensus that this would be a 535 00:42:09,280 --> 00:42:14,639 danger to our country if they became too powerful at the top, Bush consolidated 536 00:42:14,639 --> 00:42:19,119 the FBI at the top, and then he consolidated the whole seventeen agency intelligence 537 00:42:19,119 --> 00:42:23,199 community from the top with the Director of National Intelligence, and then further consolidated 538 00:42:24,119 --> 00:42:30,480 domestic security with his Department of Homeland Security. He had decent motives for doing 539 00:42:30,519 --> 00:42:35,119 that was to prevent another terrorist attack in America. Well, then with the 540 00:42:35,119 --> 00:42:40,119 Patriot Act, which Bush and Congress they deemed it so dangerous. The Patriot 541 00:42:40,360 --> 00:42:44,320 Act was only supposed to last for a few years and then the Patriot Act 542 00:42:44,360 --> 00:42:51,159 would expire, but instead Congress and Bush and Obama they continued to renew the 543 00:42:51,159 --> 00:42:53,960 Patriot Act, which still exists to this day. And while parts of it 544 00:42:54,039 --> 00:42:59,239 might be necessary, the whole thing is dangerous to us and Congress knew this 545 00:42:59,280 --> 00:43:04,719 from the start. So Bush had set up this top heavy centralized intelligence system 546 00:43:05,000 --> 00:43:08,280 with the laws behind it, so that when you have a critical theory person 547 00:43:08,360 --> 00:43:15,039 like Obama come in as president, he puts his fellow believers in charge, 548 00:43:15,440 --> 00:43:22,800 James Clapper in charge of the entire seventeen agency intelligence community, James Comey as 549 00:43:22,840 --> 00:43:25,840 head of the FBI, and the people he put at the top of the 550 00:43:25,920 --> 00:43:30,280 Justice Department and elsewhere, so that they were able to then take the people 551 00:43:30,280 --> 00:43:35,440 who had the critical theory types, who had were at the junior in mid 552 00:43:35,519 --> 00:43:39,679 levels and bring them upward to promote them rapidly beyond everybody else. And then 553 00:43:39,719 --> 00:43:45,679 they were using DEI as an excuse for rapid promotion of people who were not 554 00:43:45,719 --> 00:43:51,880 competent enough to hold those positions. H I mean, it just explains so 555 00:43:52,000 --> 00:43:53,960 much. Obviously a racist and if you're a racist, you have no business 556 00:43:53,960 --> 00:43:58,519 being in the FBI, right, So that also gives them pretense them to 557 00:43:58,559 --> 00:44:01,159 purge good people I suppose, yeah, and to drive them out. So 558 00:44:01,719 --> 00:44:05,639 you know, there are a lot of really great people in the FBI and 559 00:44:05,719 --> 00:44:08,119 CIA, And I know a lot of folks hate it when I say that, 560 00:44:08,320 --> 00:44:12,559 but I know them it's true, and there's a lot of them there, 561 00:44:12,920 --> 00:44:15,360 and we've seen some of them come out already like the suspendables. You 562 00:44:15,360 --> 00:44:21,159 know, Kyle Sarafin, Steve Friend, Garrett O'Boyle, a bunch of other 563 00:44:21,199 --> 00:44:23,400 ones. They're really great people, and there are a lots still inside. 564 00:44:23,440 --> 00:44:27,960 But if you if you know, well, why don't they come forward and 565 00:44:28,079 --> 00:44:34,119 expose this? Well, the few whistleblowers who did came out, you know, 566 00:44:34,199 --> 00:44:37,480 the system made an example of them, just as Schumer warned it would. 567 00:44:37,519 --> 00:44:42,480 But these were just special agents. These were nobody seenor destroyed them, 568 00:44:42,719 --> 00:44:49,480 file criminal charges against one of them, illegally leaked the personnel files of at 569 00:44:49,559 --> 00:44:53,519 least one of them, did as much as possible to it wouldn't would not. 570 00:44:53,719 --> 00:44:58,079 It would not fire them, because to fire them, we would let 571 00:44:58,079 --> 00:45:00,320 them be free to do anything else. So it merely suspended them without pay 572 00:45:00,719 --> 00:45:05,920 for an unspecified specified amount of time. They could not get other jobs without 573 00:45:06,000 --> 00:45:10,079 FBI approval. Then they ended up having their insurance cut off. And these 574 00:45:10,119 --> 00:45:14,400 people have families, And then you had other people at risk of having their 575 00:45:14,400 --> 00:45:17,000 pensions cut off. Even though that's legally not supposed to happen, it does 576 00:45:17,079 --> 00:45:23,119 happen. And you had FBI insiders leaking more private information. That's a criminal 577 00:45:23,159 --> 00:45:27,760 act. That was happening from within the FBI leaking it to the media to 578 00:45:27,800 --> 00:45:31,639 try to destroy these people. So if you're sitting there and you have your 579 00:45:31,679 --> 00:45:35,960 career, you have your family, and you're thinking, I can't be exposed 580 00:45:36,000 --> 00:45:37,679 this way. I'll never get hired at anyplace else. So you just keep 581 00:45:37,719 --> 00:45:40,800 your head down and keep doing your work. And then you have others saying 582 00:45:42,119 --> 00:45:45,519 I can't stand it here, I'm fed up. But if I give up 583 00:45:45,559 --> 00:45:49,599 this position, you know, I'm manning my post on this sensitive job, 584 00:45:50,079 --> 00:45:55,440 I'm going to have some you know, rainbow wacko, who is going to 585 00:45:55,480 --> 00:46:00,599 take my place? And how does that benefit America. So you do have 586 00:46:00,679 --> 00:46:04,199 these people in there, and then you have older people meaning I put in 587 00:46:04,199 --> 00:46:07,440 my years. I just have a few more years left. I'm just going 588 00:46:07,480 --> 00:46:09,880 to keep my head down, get my pension, and get out. And 589 00:46:09,920 --> 00:46:14,320 then you have your real cynics who are saying, if I say anything, 590 00:46:14,559 --> 00:46:20,719 I won't be able to do really lucrative government contracting once I retire. So 591 00:46:20,760 --> 00:46:22,559 I'm just going to stick in so that I can make it and go along 592 00:46:22,639 --> 00:46:28,079 just so I can make a ton of money once I retire. So you 593 00:46:28,119 --> 00:46:36,159 have all of these problems where this ideological destruction of our intelligence community is taking 594 00:46:36,199 --> 00:46:42,840 place with the passive cooperation of people who many of whom have really good intentions 595 00:46:42,840 --> 00:46:47,000 for the country. They're just stuck and that's a really scary place to be 596 00:46:47,199 --> 00:46:50,400 for a lot of reasons. And one that I want to ask you about 597 00:46:50,480 --> 00:46:57,760 is you mentioned earlier constitutional checks and balances, and this has been an inevitable 598 00:46:58,360 --> 00:47:04,320 and serious hurdle for intelligence agencies, especially as technology has evolved and as we've 599 00:47:04,320 --> 00:47:07,960 had you know, new groups like the NSA and just again so much new 600 00:47:07,960 --> 00:47:12,000 technology the Internet, and with January sixth, they were, you know, 601 00:47:12,039 --> 00:47:17,280 basically demanding Google hand over all the GEOFENS data and all of that. Every 602 00:47:17,360 --> 00:47:22,639 last stroke on your Google when you Google, you know, they can monitor 603 00:47:22,679 --> 00:47:25,920 every single key stroke you have, and now they're every single web page you've 604 00:47:25,960 --> 00:47:30,880 ever visited. And it's terrifying in the hands of the people that you just 605 00:47:30,960 --> 00:47:35,920 described, Mike. So what is the House should say, hypothetically we had 606 00:47:36,039 --> 00:47:44,119 a totally responsible FBI and CIA and NSA and DJ, is it possible to 607 00:47:44,159 --> 00:47:52,679 carry out covert ops to in the age of lone wolf decentralized terrorist plots monitor 608 00:47:52,039 --> 00:47:58,440 genuinely troublesome people is all of this possible within constitutional bounds or is there always 609 00:47:58,480 --> 00:48:00,079 going to have to be some sort of special life and its carved out for 610 00:48:00,119 --> 00:48:06,840 people operating in this space. It's possible to do. It will never be 611 00:48:06,920 --> 00:48:13,760 perfect, even with the terrible overreach we have now, it's still not It's 612 00:48:13,760 --> 00:48:17,480 still never going to be perfect in terms of preventing Americans from being harmed. 613 00:48:17,519 --> 00:48:22,239 But that's like saying, you know, we we have to have so much 614 00:48:22,280 --> 00:48:24,800 safety that we can't drive cars anymore, or we can't you know, do 615 00:48:24,880 --> 00:48:30,079 whatever because we might get in an accident. It's really the same attitude the 616 00:48:30,119 --> 00:48:32,840 anti gun people have. Let's take away everybody's guns because somebody might get hurt. 617 00:48:35,519 --> 00:48:37,599 So we have to think of it in a different way, and that 618 00:48:37,719 --> 00:48:42,920 is how do you rain these how do we keep the capabilities we need? 619 00:48:43,519 --> 00:48:50,360 Because if you don't define if you go from terrorism to domestic violent extremists as 620 00:48:50,400 --> 00:48:54,639 a defining factor of what the FBI's mission is to hunt down and at the 621 00:48:54,679 --> 00:49:00,599 same time, the FBI includes DEI as what it calls a mission critical function 622 00:49:00,679 --> 00:49:06,400 of the bureau and a core principle of the FBI. In fact, FBI 623 00:49:06,480 --> 00:49:13,360 recently made some statements saying that adherence to the Constitution and DEI are core principles 624 00:49:13,599 --> 00:49:22,920 of the FBI's mission. So they're equating DEI with the Constitution. So amazing. 625 00:49:22,280 --> 00:49:27,440 Yeah, so you can see that the damage is now there are ways 626 00:49:27,480 --> 00:49:31,320 to address it which are really This year is really a make or break year 627 00:49:31,360 --> 00:49:38,119 for it, because the next presidency will be the time when the critical theorists 628 00:49:38,159 --> 00:49:44,400 will have taken over these organizations in terms of numbers of personnel, and they 629 00:49:44,400 --> 00:49:49,320 don't need the huge numbers to physically dominate the whole organization. State just need 630 00:49:49,360 --> 00:49:53,519 to dominate the human resources departments, the legal council units, and the managerial 631 00:49:53,719 --> 00:49:59,320 nervous system of the entity, and that way it controls everybody inside and determines 632 00:49:59,320 --> 00:50:05,840 who gets promoted and who doesn't get promoted. So we need these functions of 633 00:50:05,840 --> 00:50:08,920 the FBI, most of them anyway, to one degree or another, but 634 00:50:08,960 --> 00:50:13,320 it doesn't have to be in the FBI. And it was a great man, 635 00:50:13,480 --> 00:50:17,519 Angelo Codevilo who taught me long ago. He was associated with the Claremont 636 00:50:17,599 --> 00:50:22,880 Institute and he was a big fan of the federalist also very prescient thinker, 637 00:50:22,079 --> 00:50:28,599 absolutely so he taught me long ago when I wanted to go into the CIA 638 00:50:28,679 --> 00:50:32,400 as a career, and he warned me, don't do it. You will 639 00:50:32,400 --> 00:50:37,039 hate it and it will hate you. Because I was a mission oriented person. 640 00:50:37,960 --> 00:50:42,960 And he said, these are just bureaucracies, and bureaucracies come and go. 641 00:50:44,039 --> 00:50:47,880 And just because a bureaucracy has a cool brand and has an old brand 642 00:50:47,960 --> 00:50:52,480 that it did great things long ago, doesn't mean it's still a good brand. 643 00:50:52,559 --> 00:50:55,000 So, really, thinking about what Angelo said, the FBI is to 644 00:50:55,079 --> 00:51:06,440 law enforcement and counterintelligence what bud light is to be. It's really good. 645 00:51:05,920 --> 00:51:08,719 So it's just a bad brand, and so get rid of the brand. 646 00:51:08,880 --> 00:51:13,239 Boycott the brand, find another brand. But you still want to have your 647 00:51:13,239 --> 00:51:17,000 beer. You just don't want that brand. So I would say in Big 648 00:51:17,000 --> 00:51:22,159 Intel, I suggest taking the counter intelligence functions out of the FBI and moving 649 00:51:22,159 --> 00:51:27,840 them laterally over to a small agency that was created after nine to eleven for 650 00:51:27,960 --> 00:51:34,079 strategic counter intelligence, which would be just a counter intelligence agency aimed at foreign 651 00:51:34,119 --> 00:51:38,840 spies and agents of influence. The reason that other counter intelligence service never became 652 00:51:38,880 --> 00:51:45,679 successful, and it was created twenty years ago, was because Bush put FBI 653 00:51:45,760 --> 00:51:50,760 agents in charge of it. So move it over there, and with a 654 00:51:50,840 --> 00:51:54,400 management that can can you know, pick out the mission critical people, the 655 00:51:54,400 --> 00:51:58,960 mission oriented people, and really go after spies in a different way. There's 656 00:51:59,239 --> 00:52:01,360 much more. This is very simplistic approach, but this is one part of 657 00:52:01,400 --> 00:52:07,639 it. Take the Criminal Division of the FBI that investigates crimes and move it 658 00:52:07,679 --> 00:52:12,719 over to the US Marshals. The US Marshals have had far fewer scandals. 659 00:52:13,599 --> 00:52:17,400 It's the nation's oldest law enforcement agency. Arguably it's the only constitutional federal law 660 00:52:17,440 --> 00:52:22,159 enforcement agency because George Washington created it, so it's been around forever and it 661 00:52:22,199 --> 00:52:27,079 has a good reputation and it's pretty effective. So you move that and the 662 00:52:27,159 --> 00:52:30,519 FBI Academy, which means the training of all the new personnel, move that 663 00:52:30,639 --> 00:52:36,000 over to the US Marshals Service. You know, why do we have a 664 00:52:36,000 --> 00:52:39,400 Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms That was also created at about the 665 00:52:39,440 --> 00:52:44,199 time the FBI was created, So that's already a different bureau. Take the 666 00:52:44,239 --> 00:52:45,800 FBI. We don't need two of those, but we have two of those 667 00:52:45,840 --> 00:52:50,239 because the FBI does the same stuff that ATF does, it just doesn't collect 668 00:52:50,239 --> 00:52:55,480 the tax revenues. Move the FBI's weapons work over to ATF, and then 669 00:52:55,480 --> 00:53:00,039 we can deal with atf later on and so on down the line until you 670 00:53:00,159 --> 00:53:04,119 have really nothing useful left within the FBI and then you can close it down. 671 00:53:07,360 --> 00:53:09,400 This is maybe a strange question. I'm curious what your thoughts are on 672 00:53:09,559 --> 00:53:15,239 to what extent the American right is compromised. And maybe it's you know, 673 00:53:15,639 --> 00:53:19,920 minimal, maybe it's non existent. But I asked that question just in the 674 00:53:19,920 --> 00:53:23,880 context of people have This is not about you know, Rachel Maddow's various theories 675 00:53:23,920 --> 00:53:28,239 on Donald Trump and the American Left, various theories on Donald Trump. But 676 00:53:29,159 --> 00:53:32,440 you know, Pompeo SCIA director under Donald Trump and sort of tried to go 677 00:53:32,480 --> 00:53:37,440 after Julian Aissange. Trump himself kind of went back and forth on Julian Assange, 678 00:53:37,480 --> 00:53:39,719 as we talked to Keith Kellogg about on this podcast about a year ago. 679 00:53:42,400 --> 00:53:46,599 Is there Bill Barr, for example, somebody who various people, you 680 00:53:46,599 --> 00:53:51,320 know, stonewalled some of the committees we were talking about that were reacting to 681 00:53:51,360 --> 00:53:54,599 Intel in the seventies when he was a back of the DJ early in his 682 00:53:54,639 --> 00:54:00,519 career as a lawyer, a young lawyer. What the this is again, 683 00:54:00,559 --> 00:54:04,679 it's a weird question, Mike, but is the is the Republican Party and 684 00:54:04,679 --> 00:54:10,039 maybe even the conservative movement more broadly, Do you worry that some of these 685 00:54:10,079 --> 00:54:15,679 agencies exercise too much control over groups on the right that, you know, 686 00:54:15,719 --> 00:54:17,559 at a time when you kind of need the right to be the bulwark here. 687 00:54:20,000 --> 00:54:23,039 Oh, I worry about a lot. I wouldn't say the agencies control 688 00:54:23,199 --> 00:54:31,280 them, but I would say that our foreign adversaries will use anybody or anything 689 00:54:32,000 --> 00:54:37,679 to divide us as a country, to discredit our own leaders one way or 690 00:54:37,679 --> 00:54:42,519 another, and to to tear us apart however it can so. So our 691 00:54:42,559 --> 00:54:46,639 foreign enemies don't just go after the commis and the MSNBC set and the and 692 00:54:46,719 --> 00:54:52,159 the you know, antiphote types or whatever else. They're going after anybody who 693 00:54:52,280 --> 00:54:57,400 makes a good target, and they're going to go after conservatives. They have 694 00:54:57,440 --> 00:55:01,280 gone after conservatives through you know, through history. Robert Hanson, the Russian 695 00:55:01,320 --> 00:55:08,280 spy and the FBI, was a hardcore conservative. So for us to think, 696 00:55:08,559 --> 00:55:12,880 oh, they're only going to get the people we don't like is just 697 00:55:13,079 --> 00:55:15,199 hubris and it's really dangerous. And I've seen a lot of people who are 698 00:55:15,239 --> 00:55:23,480 friends, who are influencers on social media and elsewhere, who are you know, 699 00:55:23,639 --> 00:55:29,679 they're at risk of doing the bad guys work for them simply because they're 700 00:55:29,760 --> 00:55:32,960 they're seeking more clicks, or they're putting themselves in positions where a foreign adversary 701 00:55:34,000 --> 00:55:37,639 can exploit them. I don't have any information that foreign adversaries are exploiting them, 702 00:55:37,639 --> 00:55:43,400 but I do know. Let me correct that the Chinese Communist Party did 703 00:55:43,440 --> 00:55:49,519 take advantage of this and was using conservatives to against one another. And this 704 00:55:49,679 --> 00:55:53,960 was a Chinese so called billionaire in New York who was with the Chinese Communist 705 00:55:53,960 --> 00:56:00,519 Party and who has actually built his career with the Chinese secret police, who 706 00:56:00,159 --> 00:56:05,400 has been now he's in jail awaiting trial, but he was working for several 707 00:56:05,480 --> 00:56:14,079 years to fund, actually fund conservative activities and conservative social media to compromise them 708 00:56:14,119 --> 00:56:17,079 for the Chinese regime. So we have to be real careful of this because 709 00:56:17,079 --> 00:56:22,000 it's happening to us too. The problem is the issues become so politicized that 710 00:56:22,159 --> 00:56:28,360 we don't know and we can't trust the institutions we used to trust to root 711 00:56:28,400 --> 00:56:34,400 this out. So when you have the FBI pushing a phony Trump Russia collusion 712 00:56:34,480 --> 00:56:38,440 narrative, and the FBI and the CIA and the fifty one intelligence officers former 713 00:56:38,440 --> 00:56:45,159 intelligence officers putting out things that Hunter Biden's laptop is Russian disinformation or it has 714 00:56:45,159 --> 00:56:49,599 all the hallmarks of Russian disinformation. And then even now the Department this week, 715 00:56:49,639 --> 00:56:54,239 the Department of Homeland Security just named majorcis just named former CIA director Brennan 716 00:56:54,800 --> 00:57:01,119 and former Director of National Intelligence Clapper on this special panel for election year. 717 00:57:01,400 --> 00:57:06,119 Right, And these are the guys who are surfacing and pushing these false narratives 718 00:57:06,119 --> 00:57:09,119 in the previous two election cycles. So who do you trust when they say 719 00:57:09,280 --> 00:57:15,239 so and so is being recruited by a foreign intelligence service. There's nobody to 720 00:57:15,280 --> 00:57:20,840 trust anymore. Do to return to Peter Struck just briefly as we're wrapping up 721 00:57:20,880 --> 00:57:23,440 here, Mike, does Peter Struck know what he's a part of? And 722 00:57:23,480 --> 00:57:28,360 not just Peter Struck, but the Peter Struck archetype, the Leasta Page archetype. 723 00:57:28,400 --> 00:57:30,880 Do they know what they're a part of? The conscious of I think 724 00:57:30,880 --> 00:57:36,079 there's a great Sultan needs and clip that's him talking about the infiltration of academia 725 00:57:36,079 --> 00:57:39,000 like in the nineteen eighties. He's talking about this. Do they know who's 726 00:57:39,199 --> 00:57:45,840 ends they're serving? When they cry hysterically about Russian influence and Russian infiltration? 727 00:57:45,320 --> 00:57:51,320 Are they useful idiots to borrow a phrase, or are they, you know, 728 00:57:51,480 --> 00:57:57,119 true believers who are taking their marching orders and doing their best to tear 729 00:57:57,119 --> 00:58:01,039 down all of these institutions, knowing that you know, it'll create a it'll 730 00:58:01,039 --> 00:58:06,320 destabilize the country. Their own children will will have to deal with the chaos 731 00:58:06,320 --> 00:58:10,280 and pick up the pieces. What do they think they're doing? Well, 732 00:58:10,320 --> 00:58:14,960 They won't say. And Peter Strock blocks me on Twitter, so I have 733 00:58:15,079 --> 00:58:20,039 no direct way he think of it, though. He was head of counter 734 00:58:20,159 --> 00:58:22,639 espionage for the CIA, which is to fight foreign spies, and then head 735 00:58:22,639 --> 00:58:27,760 of all of counter into nothing for the for the FBI, and then head 736 00:58:27,760 --> 00:58:31,559 of counter intelligence, which is not just fighting foreign spies but fighting foreign agents 737 00:58:31,599 --> 00:58:37,840 of influence. On his watch, the FBI shut down a successful ten year 738 00:58:37,960 --> 00:58:42,880 program, Operation Ghost Stories, which was against the Russian illegal agent network here 739 00:58:42,920 --> 00:58:46,679 that had begun to infiltrate Hillary Clinton's inner circle. That was the that was 740 00:58:46,719 --> 00:58:52,320 the Anna Chapman group that sponsored the TV series The Americans. Okay, the 741 00:58:52,360 --> 00:58:59,880 FBI shut that down on Peter Strock's watch. And then the only counterintelligence of 742 00:59:00,000 --> 00:59:06,159 operation that we know of that Peter Strock actually ran was Operation Crossfire. Hurricane, 743 00:59:07,480 --> 00:59:09,920 which wasn't a counterintelligence program at all. It was the abuse of his 744 00:59:10,079 --> 00:59:16,920 office for the political purpose of falsely portraying Donald Trump as a Russian asset. 745 00:59:17,119 --> 00:59:24,760 And he was using what a former foreign intelligence officer from Britain who had been 746 00:59:24,800 --> 00:59:29,440 part of a Soviet active measures campaign in the nineteen eighties against American nukes. 747 00:59:29,519 --> 00:59:32,199 Right at the time, I was unwittingly involved as a fifteen year old kid, 748 00:59:34,480 --> 00:59:38,320 but I broke with it within weeks, and Christopher Steele stayed with it 749 00:59:38,360 --> 00:59:42,920 all his life. And then the other source was a Russian individual who the 750 00:59:43,000 --> 00:59:47,599 FBI believed at the time was still working for Putin. So Operation Crossfire Hurricane 751 00:59:47,679 --> 00:59:52,800 was the only major counterintelligence operation that the Peter Strokes of the world ran and 752 00:59:52,840 --> 00:59:58,199 the Andrew mccabes ran while they were in the top positions of the FBI. 753 00:59:58,320 --> 01:00:01,599 So were they acting as foreign assets we don't know. Or were they just 754 01:00:01,719 --> 01:00:10,760 so incredibly politicized that they viewed counterintelligence as a weapon against their political opponents here 755 01:00:10,840 --> 01:00:15,119 in the United States. Okay, I could keep doing this for three hours. 756 01:00:15,159 --> 01:00:20,239 But Michael Waller is the author of Big Intel. How the CIA and 757 01:00:20,480 --> 01:00:23,360 FBI went from Cold War heroes to deep state villains. That book is out 758 01:00:23,440 --> 01:00:25,679 right now. You can buy it right now. You should buy it right 759 01:00:25,719 --> 01:00:31,519 now. It's just incredible perspective that goes against the narratives popular narratives not just 760 01:00:31,599 --> 01:00:36,639 of today, but written into our history. So, Mike Waller, thank 761 01:00:36,679 --> 01:00:38,960 you again so much for stopping by Federalist Radio Hour. This was a lot 762 01:00:39,000 --> 01:00:43,119 of fun. It was great talking to you. Absolute blast. We'll have 763 01:00:43,159 --> 01:00:46,000 to do it again soon. Mike. Let's do you've been listening to another 764 01:00:46,119 --> 01:00:50,320 edition of the Federalist Radio Hour. I'm em a Lekashinski, culture editor here 765 01:00:50,320 --> 01:00:52,280 at the Federalist. We'll be back soon with more. Until then, be 766 01:00:52,400 --> 01:01:04,440 lovers of freedom and anxious for the fray. I heard the fame voice, 767 01:01:04,559 --> 01:01:14,280 the reason, and then it faded away. Mm hmm