We're back with another edition of the Federalist Radio Hour. I'm em Electrician Ski,
culture editor here at the Federalist. As always, you can email the
show at radio at the Federalist dot com, follow us on Twitter at fdr
LST. Make sure to subscribe wherever you download your podcasts as well. Today,
I'm really happy to be joined by Ken Clippenstan He is the reporter at
A Reporter I almost said you were the reporter at the which Business leading?
He is a reporter of The Intercept, self described foya nerd. You can
follow more of Ken's work at Kens dot substack dot com. Ken, you're
also I guess I should call you like the bad boy of the Internet.
I feel like that's how you're known on the streets. I feel like there's
not much competition in the journalism world, Like if you're just ready killer,
that makes you like Edge and the rest of the crowd. So I wonder
I've always felt like it says more about journalism as a profession than it does
about me. But I persis edgy. I don't say myself as edgy.
That's entirely fair. You actually speaking of edgy. This is a perfect transition
because I was asking Keim how his Labor Day weekend was before we started rolling,
and he told me it was great because they got to go to the
dog park, and stupidly I responded, do you have a dog? Which,
as Ken said, it's like a guy with no kids showing up at
the schoolyard. So Ken does have a dog. You can breathe this I
of relief. But then Ken told me a really a really sweet story about
a life lesson he learned from his tiny little dog. Ken, can you
share that with the audience. Okay, So when I was growing up,
it was always my dream to get a black Lab. I just thought they
were cool, versatile, they looked tough, and I don't know, I
just cool breed a dog. So then I got married to my wife who
was allergic to dogs. And there are certain dogs that don't breed or that
don't shed, and they don't produce dander, so that doesn't trigger the reaction.
However, it's a short list, and the list is a lot of
let's say, not very tough looking dogs like poodles, and one that I
got a beach on Freesay. Remember I was so blumbed when I saw that
list. I was like, oh, man, I gotta get these ridiculous
looking dogs. So I get it. And now that I've had her,
she's twelve years old. Now it's like, if I could go back and
pick any breed, I would pick this one a hundred times over. And
it's just been this like a guy post for me that it's like, you
don't always know, you don't. You think you know what you want,
but you don't always in life. Life doesn't seem to go how you plan.
But that's not always a bad thing. In fact, that sometimes a
great thing. That's just a really good illustration of something we all kind of
know intuitively, but we don't always like we're not willing to internalize it when
we have decisions like that to make. And and Ken, your little dog
was the illustration to me. I think of it all the time because life
never seems to go how I plan. Ever, you know, in other
news, this isn't there's no way to transition this smoothly at all. Now,
now for some more news. The DNI is developing pants smart pants to
surveill tax But in all seriousness, Ken has some of the best reporting on
the intelligence community and a lot of our listeners I know are conservative. Ken
is one of my very favorite reporters in Washington. He's absolutely a foint nerd.
He does like the actual legwork that other journalists should be doing and comes
up with fascinating results and asks questions, looks through documents that other people just
don't out of laziness, out of ideological blindness, whatever it is. But
Ken, this story about the DNI that you ran recently, that you reported
out recently with your colleague Daniel Boguslaw, is a good example of that of
how you caught something that nobody else was looking at. Can you tell us
a little bit about this one? Yeah, so they're calling it smarty pants.
Smarty pants for sure, that's an acronymic. Pants were smart, electrically
powered and network exile systems, and so the ideas that they want to have
not just underwear, but all kinds of garments that are audio, video and
geolocation capable, and I don't know it just maybe laugh to be frank because
they're pouring. So it's not just the twenty two million that's what we know.
We don't know the classified side. We know the twenty two million side
because that's what the Pentagon disclosed that the Pentagon tends to be the most proactive
of the different components of the intelligence world. In disclosed what is they're working
on, and it just sounded kind of like, I don't know, like
the fashion version of like Juicero to me, because it's like, why would
you necessarily want there's like Wi fi like underwear, dear. I mean,
like, I don't know, I just starting to me silly. I mean,
So to give them their due, if you were to ask the OD
and I, they would say, this is extremely important for the situational awareness
blah blah blah of our special operations community. So you know, there's there's
arguments on both sides, but there's also a history of the government entity that's
creating this. It's not dark, but it sounds like dark, but it's
called i r PA. It's the Telligence Communities equivalent of DARPA, and they're
known for all of these moonshot efforts to develop new technology, as one expert
described at throwing spagetting aginst the wall and occasionally something sticks. And something I
was amazed to learn in the course of this reporting was how many projects infancy
or our birth in people's minds after watching a Hollywood movie. So for example,
if you go back, there was an actual Iron Man like exoskeleton suit
program around the time of the Iron Man movies and the I don't know if
you remember the Matt Damon movie Elysium. And I was struck by that because
that, to me, in some ways is like the predecessor of this smartypants.
So I started going on interviewing people. They're like, oh, yeah,
that happens all the time. The intellig community is getting their ideas from
entertainment, just like the rest of us, which I thought was a little
bit terrifying. Well though, it's like Alan Dulles was a huge Ian Fleming
fan. Really oh yeah, oh my god, life, life and art
for me each he gave JFK again reportedly gave JFK copy of a copy of
the James Bond books and like encouraged if Kay to read the James Bond books.
It's not wild not known for their authenticity or realist. Seriously, you
think, I mean, you'd think, but it probably there was probably like
more overlap in the than diagram that we realize. This is. This is
a question Ken that is kind of silly. But how when you're reporting these
stories out do you possibly keep these acronyms like right in your head because like
AARPA and DARPA, O D and I all of these other like random Pentagon
departments. It's honestly kind of insane and seems uh, sort of intentionally obfiscatory
like they're they're doing. It's it's sort of like convoluted for the purpose of
making it hard for reporters to be like, hey, twenty two millions go
into the smarty Pants, Oh totally, and not just reporters, book congress
too. There is an inundated in the stuff as as the reporters aren't they're
not able to do the appropriate oversight. And something that's been terrifying to me
to learn is when I get to know these guys, and you know,
I'm often having help finding these things from folks inside, they themselves don't know
all of the different acronyms, you know. I think it was former DNA
clapper in an interview was asked about what's called Special Access Program. So it's
like above top secret. It's supposed to be a very sensitive designation that's reserved
for only the most sensitive stuff. It turns out they have so many of
those that he said, if I remember the quote correctly, he said,
no one other than God knows all the different SAPs. And that's that's not
to prevent that's not for compartmentation. That's just because nobody can keep up with
all this stuff. There's too many nobody would be able to be briefed on
all of them. So to quote Alan Moore, the world is rudderless.
There is nobody that knows all these things. And that's been one of the
most terrifying realizations of reporting on the national scary community. Well, and speaking
of terrifying, you end your peace with this graph that reads a smarty pant
succeeds, it's likely to become a tool in IRP is arsenal to quote create
the vast intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance systems of the future, said Annie Jacobson,
an expert on this. She wrote a book about DARPA, and she
ends, they want to know more about you than you. What are these
civil liberty implications of you know what we know? That what we know has
at least been funded to the twen of twenty two million dollars. How could
this sort of go into the crosshairs of civil liberties going forward. Yeah,
it's an important point because at first I laughed at it, but then as
I spoke to Jacobson and other experts, I realized this is this is part
of a broader push. This is perhaps a sillier version of it, but
a broader push for basically smart wearables of the sort that exists in in you
know, very rudimentary form on the on the consumer market. For example,
I'm Marian Apple watch right now and that can you detect your heartbeat and other
things. So these things do exist, but what the Intelligence Committee wants is
more sophisticated, more prying, more able to generate, glean more information and
insight not just about the other people around them, which was the most surprising
part to me to learn, but about the person wearing it too, And
I found that very interesting. So it's not just collection intelligence collection of the
people around you. When you have video and audio of think like a like
a body camerara that a police officer wears, also the person internal to it,
you can get information about that individual. You know, this relates to
another reporter I had recently on DNA. I mean the amount of stuff that
they can glean at least in laboratory settings is really on inspiring. And the
question is if they're going to be able to deploy that on a broad and
cheaper basis as they've been able to do with DNA. Yeah, okay,
So I was going to ask you about that too, because you had two
really interesting stories in the last week of August that all kind of relate to
this one too. The first one that I want to talk about is what
you just reference, the FBI hoovering up DNA at a pace that ritles China
holds twenty one million samples and counting. That's the headline. And the other
one I definitely want to talk about. The headline there is NSI orders employees
to spy on the world with quote dignity perspect amazing. But let's start with
the FBI and the DNA because again, like using fairly innocuous or innocuous seeming
technologies or these things, you really can be used for good. And I'm
sure that is true of the spaghetti being front at the wall over at IARPA.
There are some things that genuinely could be good, could be used for
the good of you know, national defense, et cetera, et cetera.
Then you're of course putting a whole lot of trust with people who deserve basically
none of it to wield it that way. But let's talk about the FBI
and the DNA. How are they collecting it at such a rapid clip,
Yeah, and in really secretive environments. That's part of the point of the
smarty pants thing is if this is a good investment, shouldn't we know a
little bit more about it? And in the case of DNA collection, why
am I the first one to report that they have seven percent of the US
population's DNA profile? Shouldn't they be forthcoming about these things? I mean,
this is not going to risk sources of methods. Who is this going to
expose? It is an asset of theirs? Or what is the problem with
this and these things? And they just don't And in those closed environments,
that's where you know, not very smart ideas, maybe dangerous ideas can can
really take hold because there's nobody to sit there and say, hey, this
is crazy, let's not do this. So, you know, speaking of
the DNA profile case, I was struck not just by that figure seven percent
of the US population, which again nobody had tabulated. I was amazed by.
And it's public right, this is from the budget. It's not from
the budget, it's from like actual FBI documents to the public right right exactly,
so they have the raw figures and you can just do a percentage tally
of what the US population is. But what I was struck by was that's
pretty much exactly the same percent of the population that China has DNA profiled of
theirs. And you know, there was a raft of stories in twenty twenty
and twenty twenty one, I think, you know, New York Times and
others condemning the China's DNA collection and not that it's the same. I mean,
we do have a rule of law here. China does not have one.
They can just force people to take these things. So it's not apples
to apples. But still I would rather not have anything in common with China's
FBI action program and really fitting that their national security community is doing so.
And just to look at the amount of money they're throwing at this, they're
really increasing the budget and most recent requests, and there are a number of
different factors that are that are driving this. You know, really, uh,
spike in the number of DNA profiles they're collecting. One is just technology
becoming much more advanced. So before they needed to gather these profiles in a
lab in a formal laboratory setting. The FBI has a lab, and so
that was that sort of impeded their ability to collector to analyze very much of
what they were it will collect, so then there wasn't much reason to collect
it. And breakthroughs in the last several years have led to what's called rapid
DNA testing, So whereas uh to to process a DNA test and be able
to associate it with someone that would have taken months before. Now it takes
between one to two days. So just complete see change in terms of the
technology that they're able to use and and you know, as the experts that
I spooked to for the story said, that's a recipe for for some liberties
problems because when it becomes much cheaper for them to analyze these things, there's
not much reason for them not to do so. And indeed that's exactly what
they're doing. If you look through the history of what's called codas coodis,
that's what the FBI's DNA National DNA Database is called. It initially was pitched
as just something that we're going to use for violent two populations, violent felons
and sexual offenders, which I imagine, you know, most people will be
fine with. But what we've seen since then is it's expanded to include all
felons, literally any felony, and not just that, even people accused of
like arrested for a felony but not charged or later having had the charges dropped,
they can still compel you to provide your DNA. So I think it
just is a pretty classic example of the sort of mission creep that you see
happen in these national security agencies and really gives credence to the civil libertarians that
were raising concerns about these things at the time, saying this is a slippery
slope. They're going to start with this and they're going to expand it.
That's exactly what happened. Hey, y'all, this is Sarah Carter, investigative
columnist and host of The Sarah Carter Show. Thanks for listening to the Federalist.
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so how are they collecting this DNA? Is this? Like? What
does it mean that they have X in their database? Like? Where's that
coming from? Yeah? So it's not just you know, basically all felons
and in about I think over half of states, there are cases where if
you're just suspected of a felony and so for example, you're arrested, then
they can compel you to collect it. But it's also a lot of migrants.
Policy with regard to the DIPRIMA Home and security accounts for a massive amount.
That's actually what the FBI's budget request this year says, I'm gonna quote
from it now, the requested resources. They're asking for fifty six million to
process this stuff. The request resources will allow the FBI to process the rapidly
increasing of DNA samples collected by the US apparental homeland security. So a lot
of what that is is the border crisis at the southern border. They end
up gathering at the DNA of everyone that comes to that comes through there and
is booked and so but again that's one factor of several. It's a mixture
of the technology changing. I don't want to give the impression that that's the
only driver that's certainly driving the spike like this year last year, and that's
a bipartisan thing. So there was legislation passed with overwhelming support by both the
Democrats and Republicans in twenty seventeen. I think it gets flattened into just a
Trump thing. That's not really accurate because if you look back at the Obama
administration, they had plans laid to gather the DNA of people being looked at
the border. It just wasn't I mean, it's complicated inside baseball, but
basically Trump removed a waiver that the Obama administration had temporarily been giving them,
but their intent was always to collect. And so now we have the Biden
administration which is doing the same thing. And really I think it's a reflection
of how much better the technology has gotten, how much cheaper the technology has
gotten. Since you know, in these border cases, it's a lot easier
to count them since it's DHS. It's harder at the state and local level
too. I mean, they do have the data, but it doesn't it's
not as easy to go through as the federal So I think we're just seeing
a general push towards being I mean, there's basically no cost impediment anymore or
time impediment to being able to do this. So what I was hoping to
do with the stories trigger some kind of a debate again, I don't think
anyone's against DNA profiling to you know, solve cases, but the question is,
how are we going to do it with this windfall technology that we now
have to so easily do it, not just with stuff the FBI collects,
but like commercially as well. And I don't think we've had that debate yet.
I think the technology has outstripped the the civiliberties discourse. Well, yeah,
that's kind of what's frustrating is that I imagine DNA being in the database
has particularly of convicted felons, has solved cold cases, has gotten people out
of prison who have been there unjustly, etcetera, etcetera. I'm sure it
has, but actually it makes justice so much harder for people in those situations
when the debate isn't allowed to happen period, when you're like not allowed to
ask questions. And I'm not saying, I'm not saying like you weren't censored
for publishing the story, at least not that I know of from not that
we know. I mean, I'm sure you know, pinged around and tell
community circles, but you know, it's it's not something that other people,
despite this being public information, even you know, reporters with the millions and
millions, billions of dollars of resources of the mainstream media behind them, they
didn't touch the story. And it's just strange. I mean, is there
pretty as strange as you're seeing this just from the traffic side. There was
huge public engagement the story. It was one of my best stories in weeks
or months, I think, and so there was huge public like appetite for
it. But as you say, none of the mainstream outlets you know,
followed up on it. I tried to surmise more so, I think there's
a real disconnect between what the public would like to learn about and what the
media is willing to explore. Yeah, it's weird because it's one of those
things where like I don't know, I wonder what I what it is that
you know, maybe the people who sort of first of all, they're just
fear beat reporters, so that might have something to do with it. But
also it's just the people who cover these agencies and departments probably don't want to
unnecessarily rankle or ruffle any feathers because I feel like they're stories. I'm sure
you feel this here in Washington. I mean, people are so reliant on
their sources who you know, I won't name names, but they are very
prominent reporters that people you know, read and get all these groups. And
they're getting it straight from the NSC, straight from the White House, straight
from not even like senior officials, but like specifically public affairs, without questioning
why they're being given it, what they're not being given, why they're given
it, why they're being given it in the form that they are. And
really, I mean it's some very kind words earlier about the stories that I've
been able to get, and a lot of that is just from being willing
to, you know, invite the ire of a lot of the same groups
that I was mentioned before. And to be honest, it hasn't really hurt
me. I mean, I have a different source bas as a consequence of
that. I mean, those people won't help me, The administration officials,
the appointees, they might not talk to me, but you reach a very
different group of intelligence community folks that will talk to you as a consequence of
that because they appreciate it and they're I mean, there are people in these
I want to stress they're not monoliths. You know, you can be very
critical of the National Security Agency and realize that you know, their rank and
file folks themselves within them who also have problems with it, and they are
willing to talk to the press and help the press if you know, if
they're able to find that somebody would even listen, because so many times I
have sources that give me amazing stories and it's like, why do you come
to me? It's like, well, I came to the Times first,
but they weren't interested in I've heard that so many times I can't tell you,
so it's like, oh my gosh. Yeah, I think it's really
like overreliance on the kind of like very political side of these things. Like
I was saying before the appointees the heads of the agencies, the public affairs,
that kind of thing is so insane because if anyone should be concerned about
civil liberties and privacy, it's journalists. I mean, it's just completely bizarre
that either the one group of people that should be the vanguard and the like
ongoing, never ending battle for civil liberties would be the one that's not like
freaking out about the scale of Dan hate collection. I mean, it's just
it's so weird, and I guess we all saw that with you know,
Greenwald and Snowdon and Asange. I mean, the media was really slow to
come around on Julian Osange, at least in the sort of most recent charges
that are pretty bogus. It's just it's such a weird. It has to
be weird from your perspective watching it play out on the left too. Oh,
it's been great for me personally. I mean stories that are doing all
right. I mean it's bad for the country. I wish it wasn't.
I would much rather not be doing great and have the country be doing great.
But I mean also the politicization. I mean, it's just so criticism
of the FBI now is coded as like conservative, which is so crazy to
me. I don't it doesn't make any sense to me. How Why don't
see why it should we coded anyway? But that fortunately is you know,
Trump draws the air of the room so effectively that it's like, you know,
the FBI has I was saying before, these institutions are not monoliths.
Well, unfortunately, a lot of press, these the FBI's the guys are
going after Trump and because of that, you know, just from personal conversation
with a lot of ports. I think they're uneasy with criticizing that same institution
that they view as doing something noble or benevolent or whatever. Yeah, it's
weird because a lot of the media and Hollywood came around to what is now
I think pretty much a consensus position, the correct position on their rock war.
But because they had these close relationships to begin with, at least journalists
who are are probably left of center, those relationships are what you know,
that's what takes Judith Miller, and you know, probably allows her to give
more credibility to a story than you know. Otherwise, an outsider who's not
worried about those connections or doesn't know those people probably would ascribe to a story
like that similar to her. Editors of the Associated Press or maybe it was
some New York Times at the Times. But I think those social connections probably
do bolster a lot of It feels like Natasha bertrand Politico CNN has been wrong
so many times just by carrying water for the intelligence community and fails upboard.
These public affairs offices are masterful at basically operant conditioning reporters through the selective meeting
out of you piecemeal scoops and things to try to reward certain behaviors, and
then withdrawing those those scooplets to punish certain behaviors that they've really been able to
run rushot over over Washington. And I don't quite understand it, because you
know, I mean, I don't have public affairs feeding me things, and
I feel like I've done fine. I don't think you need it. I
mean, certainly life would be easier if you just had a direct line and
you could have a steady stream. But the stuff they're giving you to me
doesn't seem very interesting or insightful or very exciting to do. But unfortunately that's
the direction which much of Washington media has gone. No, I agree with
that, and let this be a lesson to everybody in those public affair offices.
You can DM Ken for his signal. Yeah, you guys got to
court me if you want better covered to give me something here? What am
I getting some of them? By kind of beer? I'm going to start
a go fund me for the intelligence community to buy you a beer can.
Speaking of which, you have another great story also from public documents, if
I'm not not mistaken, where the headline is NSA orders employees to spy on
the world. Quote with dignity and respect. Tell us more about this reporting.
Yeah, I think this is really a Democrat thing because the language reflects
language. It was first released in an executive order, if I remember,
under under President Obama, and then it was updated under President Biden and sent
out to the NSA personnel instructing them to do just what you said that when
we spin foreign targets, it's got to be done with dignity and respect,
which is absurd for a couple of reasons. Not that you shouldn't treat people
with dignity and respect, but the presupposition of intelligence collection, the kind of
signal stuff that the NSA specializes in, hacking emails, phone calls, text
messages, is that kind of thing. The presupposition is that they are doing
that to threats to the US national security. I eve Vladimir Putin, I
E. Al Qaeda, I E isis. So do we really need to
be super worried about dictating and respect for those types of groups? And if
they aren't those types of groups, why are you spying on them? You
know, if it's the if it's the girl Scouts, yes, I would
be particularly concerned about dignity respect, but hopefully it's not the girl Scouts that
they're spying on it. So I don't quite understand their rationale here, And
in fact, a lot of military people thought it was ridiculous too when I
posted this story both right and left, which I was struck by. They
saw it as just, you know, kind of representative of the the kind
of human human rights posturing, not not matched with any sort of like meaningful
or substantive policy, but just the posturing that these administrations do. Do you
think I mean, so the NSA, probably the CIA and the FBI two
are rattled by I would imagine some of the opposition to reauthorization of section seven
or two. Okay, tell us more about that, explain that. Yes,
So that's that's exactly the context in which this is taking place. So
they're having to do a pr push to show how much they care about this
stuff because they're in the context of, as you said, reauthorizing what's called
seven oh two programs, which are basically govern how they're allowed to you know,
spy on and collect on these forms of signals intelligence. And so this
is kind of like when you know, BP as an oil spill. They've
got to start doing commercials where there's some guy like washing the oil off of
a duck or something like. It's going to make everyone think, Yeah,
we really care. You don't worry about the policy. You don't need the
aggressive oversight. Just trust us because we care and because we're going to treat
people with dignating respect. You want to read the quote in its entirety to
just to show people that are not taking us out of context. It says,
and you can find this they posted the NSA's website, and among their
directives it says, quote in recognition at Sigent and Signals Intelligence activities must take
into account that all persons should be treated with dignaty and respect, regardless of
their nationality or wherever they may reside. So they're specifically saying this regard with
regard decision. This isn't just some treat your co workers nicely or something.
This is specifically the Yeah, the people who's privacy you've violated explicitly, that's
what they're supposed to do, not necessarily against that in principle, Yeah,
treat them with dignity and respect. It's like what you just hacked into them?
How are you treating with denating respect, you know. But yeah,
so it's not just a pr push on the part of seven or two domestically,
but Europe is really unhappy about this. If you recall the Snow disclosures,
one of them was, you know, hacking into Uncle and Markel,
the then Prime Minister of Germany. You know, this is a very sore
issue in Europe, not just because of that, but because of you know,
signals activity in the in the I mean, these are supposed to be
partner nations and were spying them like anyone else. So there's a lot of
pressure internationally and domestically on the NSA, and this is this is one of
their attempts to try to get in front of that. I think. I
think it's also a tell as to how and not that they're super ashamed of
saying this, but it is a tell that seven O two is so incredibly
important to them, which they will admit, but not in the context that
what it means is a vast, a vast hoovering up of data and so
many uses of it. When you look at how often they're actually you know,
going into the seven O two database and how often they're improperly doing it.
I think there were Inspector General reports just last year about improper probing of
Section seven O two. It's obviously incredibly important to them. Yeah, they
really don't want people talking about I mean, that's got to be that's got
to be the number one thing that the i S is worried about, like
legislatively right now, because because the reauthorizations happen, it's not like an annual
thing. This is something that happens once every X number of years, I
don't know how many. Yeah, and there they're go ahead kind of.
I mean, the really dramatic shift happened after nine to eleven, but it
hasn't been turned back to the system that we had before. So they're enjoying
the privileges of a you know, terrorized, scared population post nine eleven without
having to justify what is the state of emergency that we're presently in anymore?
You know. I mean you could say, you know, I mean there's
a war in Ukraine. That's true, but too I mean, that's it's
very different in character than a terror attack, you know, And there's just
no there's no debate about it. It's just they're just kind of assuming how
we deserve this privilege. It was supposed to be a privilege. It was
not supposed to be this open ended, permanent thing. It was supposed to
be a temporary thing while I figure out, you know, what happened with
the attacks, and that's unfortunately not not being now it's treated the watched Alt
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wherever you get your podcast right. And we were talking about this one time,
something that perplexes me because we're going into a potential I would say likely
government shutdown, but certainly that debate is upon us now that Congress is back
from their fun little August break can and it blows my mind that Republicans don't
when they're when they're focused on these like big spending fights and government shutdowns.
I'm genuinely like blown away that they don't, especially like going back to the
speakership fight, the budget fight that transpired in May. It blows my mind
that they aren't, you know, I mean, I guess I shouldn't say
blows my mind because I understand that establishment Republicans and you know, neo conservatives
and maybe some people who legitimately really do believe that you've got to have these
programs. But it just it's strange to me that Republicans don't blow up these
issues during spending fights, like all of these random you're like basically discovered an
office of the Pentagon earlier this summer, like everybody knew about it, and
it's scary to be that's scariesful about it. It's like these are things they're
getting how many millions of dollars? And it's like I again personally benefit from
being the one to break these things. But I would love it if like
the entire you know, patchwork of institutions we have here, there's think tanks
are supposed to paying attention to these things. I would love it if they
could point these things out in timely fashion so that you know, the people
can you know, pressure their elected officials to make decisions in accordance with what's
actually happening, rather than this retrospective Oh look at this thing that happened two
years after because Ken figured it out. Yeah, it's very scary. They're
not small sums. Again, these are entire like offices. This is not
like a small thing. And there's there's That's the scariest thing about learning the
culture here Washington is how much Congress is just like the rest of us and
just trying to keep up with what's going on and unable to do so,
whether it's because I mean it's crazy. Sometimes you see you see officials that
that you know, give very fire rhetoric that's exciting you can get find and
then you look at how much they're actually paying attention to the nuts and bolts
to implement that rhetoric. And there's almost no correlation between between the two.
The the you know, the vividness and the ardor of the of the rhetoric
with the actual uh, you know, implementing that in a policy level.
Yeah, no, it's and to me, like if ever there was an
appetite on the right that people who are concerned about what's happening over at the
Pentagon could exploit for political for the political goal of actually curtailing some of the
power of these institutions. I mean, I really think it's right now a
post covid B, while you have the DOJ doing whatever the DOJ is doing,
that's deeply upsetting, not just Republicans in Washington, but like a lot
of average Republican voters. It just maybe kind you could even tell us a
little bit about the department that you like stumbled upon as you were reporting and
all of this stuff. This was earlier the summer, it was like June,
right, yeah, yeah. So it's called the Perception Office of Perception
Management, which is just such all I mean, you want to talk about
disinformation government sport, that was a good one, but perception management, and
it actually has a history I guess where it comes from. So it comes
from the belief it was Yes, it was the Reagan administration, the Iran
contra war, so his so the Reagan administration had had a disinformation guy at
the CIA who was later I think detailed to the National Security Council and he
came up with this term perception management. The idea was, we have to
we have to manage the perception of this deeply unpopular war backing the Contras in
Nicaragua and their host of human rights atrocities. We didn't manage the perception of
this because we're coming out of the Vietnam War where the public is very skeptical
of for military entanglements, and so how are we going to manage them?
And then it was it's sort of resurfaced during the Bush administration. Then Secretary
of Defense Donald Rumsfeld created a very similar office, I can't remember exactly what
the name was, but also working on perception management around the warne I Rock
a similarly unpopular you know, faded to become very unpopular conflict. And then
it was roundly criticized by the press just completely laughed at it. I mean,
they ended up closing it because it was such a scandal. And what
was, you know, disturbing to me about this story was when I reported
on the existence of it, there wasn't that response from the liberal press that
there was when when Rumsfeld did it. I mean, I don't know anyone
that liked it, but I certainly didn't see, you know, calls for
officials to defund it or pressure on the Pentagon to shutter it. And so
you know, it exists to this day because again, the politicization is such
that I think in a lot of ways the national security community has a halo
on its head, particularly for those in the Democratic Party, as a consequence
of you know, not just not just what's happened recently with what the FBI
is doing with Trump, also Russia Gate in twenty sixteen and twenty seventeen,
and so it's really you know, hamstrung, uh, you know, political
a certain political tendencies from being able to conduct oversight in the aggressive fashion that
we've seen as recently as the Bush administration or even Obama administration. I think,
yeah, the Office of Perception Management, I think, if I'm remembering
correctly, I want to say it was like Bill Casey from the Reagan administration.
Yeah, so he was the CIA director and then yeah, I think
he's a go to n SC. But you know, in the context of
this whole fight about disinformation, where it's this like, you know, transcendent
problem that we have to you know, through all these resources at and it's
like, well, we're running disinformation off this out of the d D,
you know, I mean, I can't how does that square? Well?
Yeah, no, And actually this is a little teasert. This is one
of those things that I was going to talk about on Breaking Points tomorrow,
is this idea that you have as one Hunter Biden stuff that's going on.
And Ken has reported on the Hunter Biden stuff, by the way, and
that has to upset the left a little bit when you do it, Ken,
because you're obviously at the intercept, and I'm sure your readers are sometimes
like, hey, you what you're doing. But it's obviously when you have
Joe Biden trying to reign in potentially corrupt uses of the millions and millions of
dollars we've sent over to Ukraine, it's just really hard for him to have
credibility and trying to reign in corruption. Be it in twenty fourteen, we're
in twenty twenty three over in Ukraine, when his son was taking all of
this money for no good reason other than influence, pedaling on the board of
a wailing gas company in Ukraine. Like it is just absurd. The way
that we sometimes send our very worst and our people with absolutely no credibility or
even we put that foot forward in these negotiations and don't have a leg to
stand on and don't seem to have the will to do anything about it.
Yes, it's it's really bad. I mean, that's a pretty archetypical case
where you know, the position I've always had on that is like, okay,
well, evidence that exists looks bad. What needs to be substantiated is
if the president knew about it, or if you know Hunter Biden who's clearly
had you know, addiction issues, and as is known, in cases of
addiction, people find ways to fund them. Is he just lying and pretending
that access that he doesn't. Those are the questions that need to be answered.
But to pretend like there's no questions that should be pursued or there's nothing
there that really has the effect of when it does come out, then everybody,
like you know, isn't there there's no appropriate context for it. And
I mean that's what I've tried to do and just cover the basic facts of
these things, is trying to situate people such that they're familiar with what's going
on, so they don't hear it all at once and find themselves in a
situation where they're where they're liable to believe whoever, you know, whatever spin
somebody wants to put on it because they're completely unfamiliar with it. Because the
press is refused to discuss any of these things. I mean, yeah,
it sort of seems like a mirror. It's not quite exactly the same because
he wasn't an official in the find administration, but you know, there was
appropriate criticism of Trump's son and launch or Kushner in the Saudiast ever foreign influence,
and I mean, you know, he was in advisor at White House,
so it's a little different. But to me, it's like, well,
if we're going to focus on the one, shouldn't we you know,
extend that to these other cases. And unfortunately that's not that's not being what
the press is doing. Yeah no, but I mean credit to the intercept
for uh, you know, covering Jared, covering Hunter. I mean,
it's the most important thing that you can do. But it also is it
becomes so dangerous when we don't do that, because you kind of allow people
in positions some power to get away with it, get away with corruption,
because you know, nobody everyone is like too busy in the food fight over
like media, there's like totally it's we shouldn't have to talk about, you
know what, whether something's being used or is being covered by the media in
a kind of neutral way. We should actually just talk about the corruption itself.
But we're just like in the food Fight where we have to do this
different conversation about why the media is covering something, why they aren't covering something.
And then you get into Philip bump on this in this conversation with the
owner of the comedy seller in New York, and it's just like, is
this a story or isn't this a story? It's obviously a story, but
Philip, you know, just insists that it's not because there's nothing tying it
back to Joe. But and Ken, you have a really actually a really
interesting story of actually being out of outside of DC when you started to dig
into a lot of stuff. And I guess I just want to ask you
if that was I think we've talked about this before, if that was helpful
and sort of pushing you to places other people didn't want to go. Yeah.
So I was in Wisconsin for almost ten years, prior to coming up
to Washington and when I started. I mean, that's really why I got
mentioned before Freedom of Information Act FOYA for short. That's how I got INTOY
because I didn't have the ready access to official dumb next door that a lot
of folks in you know, DC do, and so it forced me to
become good at other things. In retrospect, that's the best thing that could
have happened to me, because if you look at my reporting, it tends
to be very document based. I don't use, you know, stuff from
anonymous sources very much. And it's kind of interesting when I get young people
calling me for advice a lot of times, and I feel bad because it's
like they feel as though they're under so much pressure to either go to New
York City or go to Washington, DC. And you know, no two
persons experiences the same. I don't want to. It was a little reluctant
to dispense any advice because you know, what worked for me worked for me.
Who knows how what what other people want from life. For the black
lab, everyone get a black lab exactly, and stop calling Ken. It's
the same message, it's the exact same thing. No, but that's the
foils stuff in particular. And maybe you can speak to this a little bit
too, that there's just so many places where there is no sunlight. So
like you can say democracy dies in darkness, and I feel like we can
all agree with that sentiment, but even just for non ideological reasons, but
for the fact that you know, the media has shrunk really quickly. Beat
reporters have have withered away. There's just not people even looking in certain places
because our government is also like so vast, and especially the security state.
I mean, it's just expanded since nine eleven to a level that media could
never keep up with even if it wanted to. Yeah, as revenues shrink.
And then for a byproduct of that is that people don't have the time
to familiarize themselves with these databases and learning the arcana of the Foyer requests process
and figuring out where things are on their own, so they become more reliant
on others to guide them along. And who are those others? Those are
the think tank officials who are getting paid by the same by foreign governments and
business interests. In the United States, those are the public affairs officials who
are obviously advancing the interests of whatever agency or department they work for. These
are the White House officials and so really my point, you know, when
I talk about the decline of news media revenue is not boo hoo, poor
us, who gives a shit about us? The thing is the public is
going to get lower quality information because the way that they do more with less
resources is farm out the investigative process. There's almost no investigations anymore. People
are kind of weaving together stuff they get planted, you know, given to
them on a platter by you know, official dumb or NGOs or whatever,
because that's the most time off. To me, that's a major facet of
media control. It's not like Soviet Russia, where someone is telling you to
do something. Doesn't work that way. It's it's that someone has to file,
you know, five stories a week, and how are you gonna have
time to investigate that? You know, you're not You're going to need to
get someone else to do the investigation. Well, the problem is that someone
else has a motive and they have they have an agenda when they're pulling stuff
together in what they're going to give you. And I think that explains a
lot of the you know problems we see in media today. Well, and
another thing I like about your work and the intercept in general is that it's
it's kind of similar to what we do with the federalists in the sense that
there's an open sort of ideological perspective and like you do not try to like
conceal what you think about any of the issues that you cover. You just
come at them and are completely honest with your audience. Let them people are
smard enough to decide for them. So this whole charade. I'm not convinced
there is anyone that doesn't have politics, and so long as you do,
you might as well do a full discol It's like, if you have a
conflict in a story, you disclose that, you don't pretend that you don't
have one, which is what most of the press seems to do. Yeah,
I know they love doing that. It was like, I don't know
this person. Nobody believes that, why do we do this this pantomime of
like I'm in some disembodied voice. He's completely dispatching it, like, come
on, well, what brought you to like being It's sort of like taking
that approach because no young journalists is trained to that to take that approach.
There's not a journalism school in the world that trained was you exactly. I
wasn't trained. I was never properly socialized. I didn't go to j school
and never took a journalist of course. In fact, that's probably why I
liked it. If I took any it seemed like anything I took in school.
I hate it because they pitched it. If you had told me to
be a journals when I was a kid, I would have been like,
oh my god, like one of those guys on TV that chase the celebrities
around with a microphone. I didn't know what it was, and so I
just found myself kind of investigating things for fun. And then I realized,
oh, I'm doing journalism right now. Maybe I should try to pitch this
somewhere. And I did, and that's basically my whole career. So I
never never had that socialization process. And then over time, as I started
to learn that other people followed and update those norms, I was I thought,
well, what what is that doing for them? Like, what's of
any of this ship? And it doesn't seem to be any point other than
that Columbia Journalism school tells you that you're supposed to do it, you know
what I mean? Right, if it comported with some kind of ethical uh
you know, reality or benefit or something, and then I would consider doing
it. But as far as I can tell, it doesn't, so I'm
not going to do it. Well, and that's it. It's also interesting
because you were at the Nation before, you're before you were at the Intercept.
And another good thing is that these places exist, like I'm trying to
think of, you know, maybe twenty years ago, you basically there would
have been you know, probably a bunch of jobs at the Nation, but
it would have been limited to you know, sort of on the right.
Maybe if you want to do this kind of reporting, you would be at
you know, National You or the American Spectator, which did a bunch of
like Whitewater stuff during the Clinton years. But there are, it seems like,
on the left on the right, a lot more opportunities now because there's
like the Internet allowed for new media politicians like the Intercept to come about and
to do so much of this. And the Internet has let you like probe
all of these public documents in ways that like you wouldn't have possibly been able
to drive to every local Courthouse. That's what's so tragic about how low quality
the reporting is now in Okay. In some respects it's worse because the revenues
are smaller, but in other respects it's I feel like I'm a gold miner
going to California during the gold Rush. It's the best time in human history
to have access at your fingertips to all kinds of information. So I feel,
I don't know. I see a lot of people are very black built
and very doomware about future media, and there are some dimensions to it there.
There are, you know, indeed negative but like in some ways there's
reason to be very optimistic in my view, but unfortunately the press doesn't seem
to take very much advantage of those sort of things. Yeah, I mean,
yeah, makes sense. What can people expect if they subscribe to your
substack, which again is clencing dot subsac dot com. A lot of what
we've been talking about, just a candid discussion of what I found, and
you guys can decide what you think of it, because I don't view that
as my job. I'll I might tell you what I think of it,
but it doesn't really matter. Yeah, that's my subsac And then my formal
reporting is at the intersect and why are you a cyber bully? Why have
you chosen the CID putting me on the couch? Now? Why is it
ken that you feel compared? Are you projecting via your cyber bullying? Really
is a reaction to the press and the sanctimony and of importance. If you
look at my Twitter, the thing that I would take back from it is
this guy doesn't take himself very seriously. Because I don't, and because I
disagree with this whole like the media, the fourthest state is going to save
us from terry. I don't take it that seriously. We're going to do
our best to inform me about what we can probably not do. Agree job.
If you look at so, I want to be honest about that,
Like, I don't want to be some I don't know. I think I
have a lot of people that are like, oh, this is good fruit.
If you just cleaned up, you can have a job at the Times
or whatever. It's like, I don't want that. I don't you know
what I mean. I don't take Twitter seriously. I don't take myself particularly
seriously. That's really all. And I do hate elites. I do hate
a lot of elites, and so I voiced that, but that's just kind
of how I am, and I think I feel like a lot of people
are closer to that than they are to this like type of CNN reporter where
they all have the same abby, Like it's like a company dictate that they
all have the same background and that they only tweet headlines. I don't think
people are I resent this idea that I'm kind of edgy guy. I'm just
a regular guy. Everyone. All these other media people are freaks, in
my opinion, not me. So no, it's completely true. Like if
you sit down and you know this because you were you were in Wisconsin with
your wife, Like if you sit down at a bar in Wisconsin, they
all sound like you, they can don't sound like Jim shootout right exactly.
So I would turn it around and say, well, why does everyone else?
Why do I stand out? That's what I would say. I don't
think I should. Didn't you, like, didn't you post the names of
like Diane Feinstein staffers like a month ago and people freaked out about it?
Yeah, apparently people that work for this aging senator and we now know from
reporting, which I knew from people that I knew on the Hill. We're
running cover and trying to hide from the press. Her mental decline. I
don't think they should be able to do that in secret. I mean,
I didn't post anything about where they live or anything like that. But I'm
going to put their names out as officials they're participating in this, and apparently
I'm supposed to do that. Another norm that again I don't think reports with
any sort of ethical imperative, but is one that washed are respects. You
don't name staffers. That's just some normative fool I don't give a shit about
it. I'm going to do it. And then when I did it,
the New York Times finally got off its ass and started reporting on this thing
that they should have been reporting on weeks ago. And so if you have
a nicer way to get the press to do its job, then I'm all
for that. Unfortunately I haven't found that yet, well, the press in
the Hill, I mean, and I bring that up because I think it
is just such a good illustration of you know, if some people take issue
with your social media or anybody else's social media, it's just because they have
this gut instinct of protecting power that maybe they haven't even thought about. But
it's like people who people are busting their asses to pay the salaries of these
people who are protecting their boss, who is not doing your job and is
not serving your constituents. And you're gonna wind about a reporter reporting. Yeah,
you can't even say their names. That's the degree of privilege that that
that the circle has you. I cannot even be spoken. I should be
free to exist in in you know, total anonimity for what I'm doing,
which everyone was disgusted by when it came out. No, you're not allowed
to talk about that. I don't agree with that, you know, no,
absolutely absolutely, because that is like the number one thing that brings all
journalists and Mushian in DCA together. You know, we have to be civil
at the end of the day, respect of the norms oh Man, Well,
Ken Kloppenstein, thank you so much for coming on the podcast, coming
on Federalist Radio Hour. I've wanted to have you on for a really long
time. So this is your your stories last week for the perfect opportunity to
do that. Just great reporting and thank you for being willing to come on
and talk about it. My pleasure. Thanks for having the Emily. Of
course, you have been listening to another edition of The Federalist Radio Hour.
I'm Emily Joshinsky, culture editor here at the Federalist. We'll be back soon
with more. Until then, the lovers of freedom and anxious for the fray right