Speaker 1: Hello, Hello, how are you welcome to the Big Podcast
on this Monday. Today is the ninth day of March.
Year of our over twenty twenty six. My name is
Tom Sullivan, and oh, we've got a lot going on today.
And when we've got the war in Iran and elsewhere
in the Gulf region, we've got oil prices that are
at levels we haven't seen in a long long time.
There was a very close call in New York City
over the weekend with a couple of terrorists that are
now being charged with terrorist attacks, and luckily they wound
up not killing anybody, but it could have killed a
lot of people. So we'll get into all of that.
Plus welcome the daylight savings Harry Anton has. Yes, it's
not people don't like the change that let me just
put it that way. But let's start. Let's start with
oil prices, because oil affects all of us, whether you
drive a car, or you heat your home or whatever
it might be. And oil prices are just through the roof.
I think I can give you some good news because
oil prices overnight, what did they get to? They went
up to they hit one hundred and nineteen dollars a
barrel during overnight trading. When we opened the stock market
in New York this morning, oil prices were at one
hundred dollars a barrel. Wall streect did not like that,
so down, down, sharply down over eight hundred points at
the open, eight hundred and eighty six points lower on
the Dow when we opened. But all of that has
calmed down considerably. Oil prices, like I said, we're one
nineteen and then they came down to one hundred dollars
when we traded, and now we're at eighty six dollars
and some change as we record this podcast on this
Monday afternoon, so it's certainly above where it was. We've
been running oil in the high fifties, low sixties before
the iron situation popped up, So eighty six still is
very expensive, but it's very volatile as we go through
this afternoon as far as let's let's get this oil
analyst here and to see where it's going to go
from here.
Speaker 2: A lot of headlines obviously moving around. And it's funny,
while we were waiting to start here, I just got
a text from a friend of mine in the wholesale
gasoline market said it's hard to believe I'm saying this,
but Gasolene's only up ten cents today, So you know,
you when you yeah, that seems to make sense to me.
Speaker 3: You know, kind of going.
Speaker 2: Back to twenty twenty two, that's what helped bring prices
back down from that one hundred and thirty dollars type
level after Russia invaded Ukraine. It was the release from
the COORDINATID releases from strategic reserves that helped start to
bring down the price. Maybe the market is kind of
front running that a little bit here to see if
what happens tomorrow. But again, I think if the US
does release from the SPR it's going to be oil
that eventually gets exported. I think refiners here in the
US are are fine and comfortable from a from a
supply standpoint. Over the past ten to fifteen years, the
US has really kind of wing themselves off of Middle
Eastern oil to the point where it's maybe eight to
ten percent of weekly inventory weekly imports. Obviously Canada and
Mexico or our two key suppliers to the United States.
And you know, stay tuned. But over the next you know,
a couple of years, you're going to see more venuzuel
only crew come to the US.
Speaker 1: So what he's referring to is tomorrow there is going
to be a oil minister's meeting at which they are
going to be discussing whether or not to release oil
from their various strategic petroleum reserves. These are oil ministers
from the G seven and they're meeting tomorrow morning, and
the market obviously is pricing in the fact that they're
going to be releasing more oil.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 1: I don't want to get I don't want to get
into Joe Biden releasing it for political reasons, but we're
not back up to where we should have been oil
strategic petroleum reserve. Well, it's not where it should be,
but we have let's see, we have four hundred and
fifteen million barrels. That's about fifty eight percent of the
capacity of seven hundred and fourteen million barrels. And speaking
of the price, I mean that if we're Department of
Energy wants to try to ref fill the petroleum reserve,
the prices are way up, is going to be much
more expensive. Maybe they were doing it before, I don't know.
One of the benefits of higher oil is for Russia.
That is the basis of their foundation, of their economic foundation,
and so with oil going up, Russians are licking their
chops on getting a lot more money for the oil
that they produced from Russia. But as far as the
SP the SPR, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve again, the G
seven ministers are meeting tomorrow Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan,
United Kingdom, and the United States and they're talking about
releasing maybe three hundred to four hundred million barrels, so
that would again, the US can't do this all by themselves.
We will release some, I'm sure, but since we're down
because thank you, Joe Biden, we're not going to be
able to handle us all by ourselves. So we're going
to need the G seven to do that. But that,
I think, more than anything else, is driving prices lower
as we get through the treading day to day. Now,
there's another problem with a number of the Middle Eastern
countries producing oil. They have no place to put it.
They usually produce oil and put it on a ship
and export it, but the ships can't move. So here's
an oil analyst talking about the problem that they have
in the Middle East of oil storage. Or they're going
to have to cut back production. Well, the constraints around
supply are really concerning at the moment, and indeed the
storage conversation is a growing risk to What we're seeing
is these major producers in the Gulf being forced to
shot production in because the reality of the situation is
you can pump the oil out of the ground, but
if you have nowhere to export it, then it has
to be put in to storage. At the moment, the
estimate is we have about twenty five days worth of
storage remaining. That is, twenty five days until the storage
capacity of the region is full. So of course we
are seeing producers already scaling back some production, but of
course how long they're willing to hold production off and
how long the strait of horror moves is going to
remain closed is a key key question mark at this
point as well. A lot of analysts that I've been
talking to saying the biggest unknown unknown at this point
for anyone exposed to these markets and for global energy
trading right now is the duration risk. We still haven't
got any signals of a potential off ramp, either militarily
or diplomatically, and that's obviously a key concern right now
as well.
Speaker 5: Part of the reason.
Speaker 6: We also saw this enormous spike in the price of oil,
and of course risk assets also in the crosshas here
not just in Asia, but in Europe and likely in
the United States today as well.
Speaker 1: So there's a problem. And the question keep coming up
about when will the strait of horror movies open back
up again, and nobody has that answer. And before we
get too far into this podcast, I want to also
pause because the attack in that base that we had
in Kuwait, where six US soldiers were killed right out
of the first day of the conflict, there was a
number of them injured. One of them died, so we're
now seven deaths from US troops. This was Sergeant Benjamin
Pennington is the latest casualty and his body will be
returned to Dover Air Force Base later tonight. So he
was part of the group of the six that were killed.
And there are I think fifteen injured. I don't know
the level of injuries, but obviously this was severe enough
where Sergeant Pennington passed away last night. Back to oil,
oil is used obviously in everything. I mean, if you
have something plastic oil, it was part of the it's
a petroleum product that makes plastic. Airlines are facing the
price of fuel for airlines, it's gone jet fuel has
gone from one hundred and eighty dollars is now up
to two hundred and thirty dollars, So a major spike there.
You and I are going to be facing the same
thing at the pump. The average gas price is now
three dollars and forty eight cents. A week ago it
was two dollars a naughty eight cents, So it's gone
up fifty cents since the conflict in the Middle East.
So this obviously will add to all the inflation factors
when we look back down the road. But so oil prices,
gas prices, jet fuel prices going up. One of the
biggest aircraft lessors in the world is air Lease, and
their CEO, John Fluger, was talking about the problems the
are running airplanes.
Speaker 7: Well, to your point, we have been there before. We're
pretty early on in this conflict. A little too hard
to tell from the consumer perspective for sure. For sure
we will expect to see higher airfares, airfares nudging up
to cover this increase in fuel prices. But you know,
it was this kind of a fuel price surge that
spiked the new generation of aircraft with a new generation
of engines. Those are out there and flying all over
the place. Forward bookings from what we can see across
the airlines have not been impacted yet. You know, the
four bookings are continuing. Airplanes are not being parked in
mass for any reason. They're all still flying. So I
think we just have to wait and see how this
plans out. The airline industry has learned to deal with
high fuel prices, and the question is how long will
it be. So far, I think it's a little premature
to raise super big alarm bells. Mostly they're keeping them
ready for flying. They're not parked in what's called long
term storage, meaning that they plan to continue to fly.
All those aircraft and leisure traffic will certainly book away
from the Middle East right now. They'll go to Asia
the Americas like that has always happened anytime as a
regional conflict business traffic. We'll have to see how that
plays out. But again it's so early to tell. But
one thing I can tell you for sure is this
industry has proven time and time again it is very resilient.
The airlines will work through this. The consumer is going
to have to pay some cost and ticket prices, but
a little premature to really sound the red flags.
Speaker 1: I think so too. Again, it's been one week and
one of the other stories has been about the Americans
that were stranded over in the Middle East. And while
the State Department says that they have assisted twenty three
thousand Americans, helping them get out of the war zone,
but at the same time, there's others that are complaining
because they want the government to take care of them.
And actually, if you look at the flight trackers, there's
a steady stream of airlines that are coming and going
from the major airports in Doha and Abu Dhabi, and
the planes are flying. It's a limited schedule, but they
are flying. So I'm not so sure I would want
to do that. But I just soon stay in place
and not get an airline. Getting hit by a missile
is not a good place to sit. But for those
of you that do want to travel and you're not
going to the Middle East, the funding for Department of
Homeland Security TSA is starting to have some serious repercussions.
At Houston Hobby, they're talking there about three No, they
said three this morning, is now four to five hour
weight line in the TSA line four to five hours
before you get through the TSA checkpoint at Houston Hobby.
There's also long at least three hours worth at New
Orleans and Atlanta. So I'm not sure about your airport,
but I would imagine that all of them are having
the same problem, which is TSA agents can't go forever
without a paycheck, and so they're calling in sick so
they can go get a temporary job somewhere else. Everybody,
everybody was warned about this. All the people in the
Middle East were warned to get I remember seeing the
notices get out, get out, get out, but they waited
until afterwards. And now I don't know what the complain
is because the airlines are in fact flying into and
out of these war zone airports. As far as the
prosecution of the war, I don't know if you are
like me in this regard. I'm watching all of the television.
This is all television producers. I don't want to say
they love this, but they can use all these things,
planes taking off, aircraft, carriers, things exploding, and watching all
of that stuff blow up. That's all that's all keeps
eyeballs on television. The problem having with this is it
feels like it's kind of propaganda to me, because Iran
hasn't folded and they're still they're still doing a lot
of damage where they want to do damage. And it's
because not so much necessarily of the missiles that we're
trying to eliminate all their missiles that they have, but
they've been making hundreds and hundreds and hundreds hundreds a
month and we need to find them all and get
rid of them, and also their launchers. But it's also
the drones. They're cheap to make and it's very hard
to defend against them. So as far as the war itself,
let's start off with the rama. Manual Rama is not
a fit actually running for president, but he's testing the water,
there's no question about it. Let's hear what Ram Emmanuel
has to say about prosecuting the war.
Speaker 8: I mean, you have two factors, both the price of
oil and the market declining, and it's basically the equivalent
of a twenty four twenty four second shot clock on
the White House. It's going to be impacting, especially with
the fact that the president starts down on the economy.
Trust by people they're seeing him divert all his energy
on international affairs, not taking care of the knitting close
to home, and the energy prices. If you know, he
promised as a candidate, inflation will come down, jobs will
go up. Now we know inflation is up and jobs
are down, so it's going to impact the support he has.
And Republican performance since November election has been abysmo compared
to energy in the Democratic Party. So they will say no.
But trust me, people out of the not only out
of the corner of their eye, out of the right eye,
are watching that and it's not good.
Speaker 1: So he makes a good point. And of course he's
a politician, and of course he's a Democrat, so he
is going to say. This is going to make it
bad for the president. We'll see. It's way too early
to tell, but oil prices are up, Energy prices are up,
inflation therefore will be up. The stock market is down,
and so all those things are right. But it's again,
it's March ninth. It's not people will make up their
mind about the political part of this. I think late summer,
early fall, so there's still a lot of road to
travel before we get there. But I think for Republicans
they've got to be nervous about this.
Speaker 5: This is.
Speaker 1: On the overall basis, Republicans are in general in favor
of this war. Democrats are not. But when you add
it all together, it's basically a fifty to fifty deal.
Fifty percent are supporting the president, fifty percent are not.
But there's no question oil prices are up and in
stock market down. And with the oil prices up, you
know that well, people were complaining before about the cost
of things when oil prices and gas prices were down substantially.
Other things were up, but oil and gas were down,
not anymore. So what do we do about trying to
get rid of these missiles and also defend ourselves against
the drones. Admiral Harward is expert in this area. Let's
hear what the admiral has to say.
Speaker 3: I think it's exactly what Secretary of Rubio just said.
It's about the missiles and the navy. We've taken out
the navy, now it's the missiles. Once we shut down
those missiles and can move shifts safely through the straits
of a moves, then we have no issues. We have
time on our hand. We can take our time to
sure there's a transition of the regime. We can take
time to put in inspectors to make sure all the
apparatus of the nuclear programs are gone. We can put
inspectors to make sure the missile inventories have been depleted.
So let's focus on what needs to be done first.
Deal with the missile threats. That challenge the straits of HomeOS,
challenge the GCC partners. Once that's solved, once that's eradicated,
we can do whatever we want and time becomes less
relevant to the equation.
Speaker 1: So who knows. Everybody is impatient. They want that to
be done by yesterday, But that's what we're doing. We're
going through and getting rid of their ballistic missiles. The
problem becomes again trying to defend against this new kind
of war, defending yourself against drones.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you're exactly right. It demonstrates how drone technology has changed.
They're much cheaper, easier to produce than missiles, and they're
cranking them out and so they're using them at mass
So to address that, you've got to go after the
production facilities. You got to go insportation, so address the drones.
So I think that's the last part of the equation
aside from the missiles. But if you can produce a
drone for tens of thousands of dollars as opposed to
hundreds of thousands and not millions for cruise missiles, you've
changed the equation. So that's what you're seeing in this conflict,
the real evolution, the third wave of drone warfare.
Speaker 1: It's new and the Iranians know how to do it,
probably better than anybody else. They make a lot of
the drones for Russia in their campaign against Ukraine. They're
very good at what they do. Regarding that, the question
is where are they and how can we get to
the production of them to make them stop making more drones.
General Jack Keene always I'm interested in what he sees
and what's he think about the fact that they've elected
the son of the Ayatola asked, what do they call them?
Supreme leader?
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, I don't think we should be surprised, you know,
at all. It wasn't a question of who they selected.
We knew that what they were going to do is
preserve this regime. That the elites who are running the country,
they have one thing on their mind, and that's to
stay in power and preserve the regime, and a lot
of that has to do with their own personal survival.
They also recognize that if there is a transition here,
they're likely going to be killed, killed by who, by
their own people. That's the reality that they're facing. So
they're digging their heels in here who have But certainly
his son, he's got a personal mistake in this. We
mentioned that his family has been likely killed, most of
them by the strike that took down his father. But
he is an eealog. I mean, he's a hard liner
for sure. He's repressed the people in Ron for years
himself as a member of the IRGC, So he stands
for everything that his father stood for. He and that
regime has got to go. Remember, so our audience understands
this is a condition based operation. We're taking all of
their weapons away from them that they have and their
nuclear capability, and we're taking away their future weapons in
terms of manufacturing firms and others that are making the
weapons of war that they use obviously outside the region,
outside their country, but also on their own people. And
then the other thing that the Israeli is a folction
on which is so important, is to take down all
of the organizations that literally sustain this regime, and that
is a systematic, deliberate process will take some time to
achieve those end states. The IRGC just takes that as
an example based in Tehran, and they have been hit
rather significantly. They have outreachings thirty two other locations spread
around the country and it's those locations that are repressing
the people when they came out in those massive formations.
The militia and also the police infrastructure are on this
list for the same reasons. If we want, and we
do a civilian uprise that could potentially lead to a
revolution and a change of government, we have got to
take down those organizations that sustain this regime, and that
will take some time and some patients to let this
operation get to this culminating point. Based on the conditions
that the military is achieving and their goals and objectives.
Speaker 1: So I would assume that the military has the son
of the Ayatola, the new Supreme leader, on the target list.
I mean, he's got to be number one.
Speaker 4: He's been on a target list, and certainly if there
is a priority on the list, he's likely at the
top of it. Yeah, I mean, all of these leaders
are on a target list and they know that, but
it's all of them. Even if we were able to
take him down, they still want to stay in power.
They're going to hold on and that's the reality when
they lose everything else, when they lose the organizations that
are supporting them. And we see cracks in that the
feedback that our intelligence services are getting that there are
cracks in the leadership. There is divisiveness that's developing in
and among the elites. There's morale problems in the security forces,
and no wonder, I mean, they see what's happening around them.
You know that the people, they know, the organizations they've
been a part of it for years, and the weapon
system they've employed offensively, all of that is being destroyed.
So it's not surprising that some of that is beginning
to come unravel. And it's not at the point where
it's where we're at a point of collapse. But the
operation that the Israelis conducted is fundamentally designed to set
the conditions for a regime collapse, and that's a measured
approach to achieve that end.
Speaker 1: So we wait, we try to be patient to see
if we're going to be able to achieve that in
the near future, we domestically here in the US. Here
in New York City over the weekend on Saturday, was
a protest, which is not uncommon, right outside of Gracy Mansion.
Gracy Mansion is the home of the New York City Mayor.
So Mayor ma'am Donnie lives in Gracie Mansion with his family,
and there was a protest nearby that was interrupted by
two young guys eighteen and nineteen years old who both
had created IEDs and threw them into the crowd. If
you talk to anybody that has ever served in Afghanistan
or Iraq, the IEDs blew up tanks. I mean, these
things are powerful and there would have been mass casualties.
But once again, these young guys did not get the
formula right. And we've lucked out a few times in
the past where or some terrorist wants to create lots
of death and destruction and yet they're bombs fizzle. Well,
these two IEDs did not go off, but just by
the grace of God. Let's start with Mayor ma'm Donnie,
who was all of a sudden very thankful for everybody
in the NYPD for basically saving him and his family.
Speaker 5: Two men, Amir Balat and Ibrahim Kayumi, traveled from Pennsylvania
and attempted to bring violence to New York City. They
are suspected of coming here to commit an act of terrorism.
There is video of these two individuals throwing two devices
towards the protest. The police department has determined that these
were improvised explosive devices made to injure, maim or worse.
Thanks to the swift and decisive actions of NYPD officers
at the scene, both men were immediately taken into custody
and the devices they brought take off of our streets.
I want to commend the officers who were on site.
They faced a chaotic situation that very quickly could have
become far more dangerous. NYPD Chief Aaron Edwards and Sergeant
Luis Navarro ran towards the danger so that others could
run to safety. They're here with us now, and I
want to thank them today publicly as I did yesterday privately,
and to thank the dozens of other officers who responded.
Without hesitation, there would have been many police officers killed
and a large number of people in the crowd, maybe
in the buildings nearby. It's a residential area. I mean
there's a park around the Governor's I'm sorry, the Mayor's mansion,
but there's also a lot of apartment buildings right across
the street and so forth. Jessica Tish, who's the commissioner
of the NYPD, had this to say.
Speaker 9: First, I will tell you that we are not at
liberty to discuss many aspects of the ongoing investigation at
this time due to the pending prosecution. The suspects here,
Amer Blat and Ibrahim Kayumi are going to be prosecuted
in federal court here in Manhattan, and a complaint will
set forth criminal charges and the factual allegations supporting those charges.
After that complaint is made public, which I expect to
occur later today, I will be able to say much
more about the investigation and what we have learned in
this case, but it is crucial that we respect that
process and not get ahead of it. That being said,
I can confirm that I can confirm this morning that
this is being investigated as an act of ISIS inspired terrorism.
I can also provide some additional information, building on my
remarks from Saturday evening. At that time, we were beginning
to conduct preliminary analysis of two devices that were ignited
and deployed earlier that day, one in a crossroad walk
on East End Avenue and East eighty seventh Street, and
the other on the west side of East End Avenue
between East eighty six and East eighty seventh Streets. That
testing was performed by the NYPD's Bomb Squad and FBI
Special Agent bomb technicians in consultation with an FBI chemist.
Preliminary test results determined that these were not hoax devices
nor smoke bombs. They were improvised explosive devices that could
have caused serious injury or death. Part of our initial
investigation was to determine what energetic substance, if any, was
used in the two devices, and our analysis showed that
one of the devices deployed by the subjects contained the
substance triacetone triperoxide known as TATP. Now TATP is a
dangerous and highly volatile homemade explosive that has been used
in ied attacks around the world. Our bomb Squad then
rendered safe both devices is and as of now, explosive
evidence samples are being sent to an FBI lab for
further testing. Our investigation also led our detectives to a
vehicle that was tied to the suspects, and yesterday afternoon,
patrol officers found that car, a black twenty ten Honda
with New Jersey plates, on East End Avenue between East
eighty first Street and East eighty second Street. Using a robot,
the NYPD's bomb Squad was able to find another possible
suspicious device and materials inside the car consistent with the
first two explosive devices, and the area was immediately frozen
and cleared. A limited evacuation of certain floors and certain
nearby buildings was conducted while the officers secured the vehicle
and removed this third device, which was transported to Rodman's
Neck for further testing. This third device tested negative for
explosive material. Once the scene was secure and deemed safe,
residents were allowed to return to their homes.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 9: We have been in a heightened state of alert in
New York City since the start of hostilities in Iran,
and we remain in.
Speaker 3: That posture today.
Speaker 9: We will continue to deploy additional counter terrorism resources throughout
New York City, including heavy weapons teams, K nine units,
aviation and more. The NYPD is vigilant and determined in
our unceasing efforts to ensure the safety of the city
and the security of its eight and a half million residents.
Speaker 1: So essentially it was a close call, and the fact
that they didn't make the iedes properly that the TATP.
Let me get this. This is one of the NYPD
experts on what THATP is all about.
Speaker 10: As the Commissioner mentioned, TATP is highly dangerous and extremely volatile,
and the NYPD and FBI bomb Squad ODDS bomb technicians
did do controlled detonations of the two IEDs from the protest,
which revealed a significant explosion. It's really important to note
that had these IEDs functioned the way the perpetrators allegedly
wanted them to, they could have caused death, destruction, extremely
dangerous compound, an extremely dangerous place deployed.
Speaker 1: Like I said, these IEDs, these are the kinds of
things that would blow up tanks in I Rock and Afghanistans.
They are very, very powerful. James Gagliano, former FBI weighed
in with.
Speaker 11: This, Yeah, just chilling details that were just laid out
by the police commissioner down at one police Plaza, and
I got to tell you this is chilling.
Speaker 7: For number of reasons.
Speaker 11: First of all, they were charged. The top charge was
providing material support to Isis. Now we always talk about
whether or not somebody was directed or inspired. These look
like young men, disaffected, disenchanted, that decided to do something
like this and picked a target, which is New York City,
the number one terrorist target in the world, and use
what's called THATP or triacetone triperoxide. Now, what is that?
That is not something that you can buy over the counter.
Now you can buy the precursor chemicals, but once you
put this together, it's exceedingly unstable. And the fact that
they tried to light it, they tried to detonate it,
and that nobody was killed is a miracle. And lastly,
I'll close with this, this instance right here was the
NYPD acting on instincts and acting on their training. You
had senior level officials jumping over stanchions in barricades and
chasing these people down. An incredible act of heroism all
their parts.
Speaker 1: Now, they had the usual brass out there, they were
standing around talking with obviously a lot more regular street
cop from the NYPD. But yeah, there was a sergeant
and a lieutenant jumping over stanchions they chase these guys down,
we tackled them, arrested them. Craig Goudie, former federal prosecutor,
former congressman.
Speaker 12: Yeah, it also highlights kind of a weakness in our system,
if you will. I'd be curious what Professor or Hugh
thinks about it. But prosecutors are really good after the fact,
after something bad happens. I mean, you don't want to
have a great success record as a homicide prosecutor because
it means you got a big sack of bodies. But
the last question you heard of the press conference is
and this how do you prevent it? Well, we got
in debate going on right now when Congress about how
to prevent it. And you've got members of the House
and Senate that want probable calls, warrant level for our
foreign surveillance. How in the world do you expect cops
to stop a car that is coming into a major
city like New York unless you have surveillance programs. If
you're going to require a warrant, which by the way,
is what you need to indict.
Speaker 3: If you're going to require.
Speaker 13: That, then then we're going to continue to be a
reactive criminal justice system. I think most people don't want
the crime to take place, They want to stop it
ahead of time. If that's true, then then I don't
want to hear any more about a warrant requirement for
our foreigns availlance programs.
Speaker 1: But these two guys, even though they have foreign names,
are not foreigners. They're from Pennsylvania. They're from just outside Philadelphia.
John You, former assistant Attorney General and a law professor,
and from Philadelphia at this descent.
Speaker 3: Excellent point.
Speaker 14: We should be grateful for the police and the FBI
who came in to stop it. But as Trey said,
the criminal justice system is reactive. It comes in after
the harm has occurred. If you want to address what
Sandra said, you want to address what the reporter they're asked,
how do you stop it from happening. You're not going
to be able in an open society like ours to
shut down the movement of people, to shut down communications,
so that is impossible. The only way, and we learned
this after nine to eleven, the only way to stop
future terrorist attacks on our homeland is to go to
the source and take preventive action in Iran, to take
preventive action in the Middle East, where these terrorist groups
are forming where they're trying to send people here, where
they're trying to radicalize. The Iran war is going to
create the circumstances where a foreign government is going to
try to stoke more of these attacks. The best way
to stop this from happening is finishing off the Iranian
government and the Iranian military forces and remembering where war
with these terrorist groups we should not be. As Trey
said in a reactive after the fact posture, after a
bomb has gone off, we want to break up their networks,
intercept their communications, and stop the attacks before they happen.
Speaker 1: So, as I'm recording this podcast, I'm watching a live
coverage of an anti US pro Iran demonstration going on
in San Francisco. So it's we came really close over
the weekend in New York. But I would say heads
up out there, folks, because it's not limited to just
New York City. Last word on this from Paul Morrow,
former NYPD. Actually he ran the Counterintelligence Department. Here's Paul.
Speaker 15: They went on this would have been very very serious.
First of all, TATP has been the explosive of choice
for a while now for serious GIHATTI groups. The whole
Pantheon isis al KaiA to Taliban. You've got incidents like
the Ariana Grande bombing outside the Manchester Arena well into
double figures of fatalities to London seven seven bombers, Richard
Reid who tried to detonate the shoes on a plane THTP.
So the fact that this was thatp really raises the
level of scrutiny here that relative to is there a
group involved or did these two manage to try to
do it themselves and just got the formula wrong. As
far as the damage goes, just consider this a bullet fight.
Depending on the caliber your average bullet fired, especially in
a street and counterhandgun or something, the bullet is going
to be about the size let's say a marble. After
it's fired, imagine nuts and bolts, which are, if anything larger,
being dispersed into that crowd at the velocity of let's
say a shotgun, and there are dozens of those nuts,
bolts and screws. All You can just imagine firing numerous
shotgun blasts into a very dense crowd, and then that
second device is actually thrown at the police officers. That
commission at TISH is talking about this could have been horrific. So,
as you know, I did this kind of work for
about fifteen sixteen years post nine to eleven. And the
thing is, as we've often talked about, the further we
get from nine to eleven, the closer we get to
nine ten. Right, the general public needs to just live
their lives and go on with it. As far as
police are, the closest to the ground, really have to
reinvigorate our efforts here. We got the question at the
press conference about cyber was there any imprint online for
these guys. Well, look, there's a couple of indicators here
to travel, and I'm reminded of of our cases like
Nigi Bulazazi who wanted to bomb in the New York
City subway, had traveled to Pakistan, got the training, got
a situation like the Times Square bomb that didn't detonate
in the car, same thing, all right, Virzal Shazzaid had
gone to the f PAC region, got the training, came back.
Everybody that travels is not going to be a suspect.
That's not our system. But what you really got to
do is to investigate this case is not only look
into the suspects, not only look at how they got
the devices, how they were able to put it together, etc.
Do they have a foreign terrorist organization footprint connection?
Speaker 13: Is it?
Speaker 15: In response to Iran? You're going to look at their comms,
their computers, their phones, but you also have to look
at yourself. You have to do a real forensic on
where the point of failure was, if any here. You're
not going to stop everything. The truth of the matter
is intelligence is not a zero sum game and they
only have to be right. Like you said, and we
got very lucky in this particular incident. You got to
make a very very hard effort, an uncompromising effort, to
look at yourself and your people to say could we
have stopped this?
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's talking to police there and saying, police departments,
do you think you could have stopped this? That's the
ultimate question. So a lot of heavyweight stuff. Let's get
let's finish up the podcast today with a much, much,
much much lighter story. Usually every year I ran and
complain about switching time. I can't stand it, just leave
it alone. Well I found somebody else that can do
the complaining for me. This year, here's Harrietton. Look, people
are perturbed at this idea. We do not like this
idea of losing an hour of sleep. We do not
like this idea of jumping forward. And we've seen that
in the polling data. What we see is that the
majority of people do not do not do not want.
Speaker 16: To spring forward. Look at this stop chaining the clocks
twice here, sixty four percent of Americans say yes, we
favor the idea of stopping the madness.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for stopping the change, stop changing the clock on it.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 16: I mean this is the issue, right, Okay, So if
we're going to have this whole idea of we're going
to actually you know, change and stop changing the clocks, well,
what the heck are we actually going to do about it?
And Americans on this particular topic seem to be dare
I say, quite confused when it comes to actually doing
something about it. So if we look at the polling,
what we would see is something that is not aligned
with this, which is all standard time all the What
we see is the sunrise pre seven thirty am and
sunset post five thirty pm seventy two percent of the year.
If you want that the national average seventy two percent,
you actually want all standard time compared to this idea
of daylight saving. Hey, this is where we get the
most the most sunlight. In fact, that is the least
the least sunset of the year. You just get sixty
percent where you would get the pre seven thirty am.
Speaker 1: So majority of people just want to leave it alone,
leave it on standard time. I mean, we'd like to
have more sun, but just leave it on standard time.
Speaker 3: Please.
Speaker 1: In any case, it's done for now Wall Street today.
Now this is also if we're going to finish a
podcast on a higher note, this is it. I told
you we started this morning the Dow. Oil prices had
hit one hundred and nineteen dollars overnight, marked that down. Uh,
and then the price of when we started trading, price
of oil was all the way down to one hundred
dollars a barrel. And the Dow started at nine thirty
Eastern time this morning down eight hundred and eighty six points.
You ready to see where it ended?
Speaker 5: I know, the Dow up.
Speaker 1: It finished up two hundred and thirty nine points to
forty seven thousand and seven forty. The S and P
was way down, it finished up fifty six. The NASTAC
was way down. It finished up three hundred and eight.
The price of gold fell twelve dollars, done at five
one forty six, and oil, which had been one hundred
and nineteen, and then when we started trading it was
at one hundred. It finished at eighty six dollars. That's
done almost five bucks from where we left off on Friday,
trading eighty six dollars for a barrel of oil. Now,
don't ask me to explain it. Thank you for coming by.
We have no I'm daylight to this. You can't explain something, well,
you can, but it would take hours. Thank you for
coming by. We're going to try this again tomorrow. I
hope to see you then