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Speaker 2: Hello everyone, welcome to another episode of Iizong. I'm Andy Milburn,
Speaker 2: I'm Jason.
Speaker 3: Lyons, I'm Dimitri Comtacos.
Speaker 2: It's amazing. We've got that absolutely down to a t.
Speaker 2: So we need to change that routine. Yeah, Unfortunately we
Speaker 2: have coming back to us Mark Pam forgive me for
Speaker 2: referring to him as Ad.
Speaker 4: All of us can pronounce.
Speaker 2: His name but this but but simply you know his
Speaker 2: h He's familiar to to a large number of our listeners.
Speaker 2: But we have a rapidly burgeoning that is growing audience.
Speaker 2: So for those of you are not Mark's an old
Speaker 2: friend of the team house and uh and and the
Speaker 2: we hope of our's hosts, at least now for now
Speaker 2: former Senior's almost about say yes, because that's that's kind
Speaker 2: of an am the tea house, but even better, very
Speaker 2: senior guy in the in the agency and you know Mark,
Speaker 2: or Mark's very self effacing about this, but has has
Speaker 2: an unusual operational background too, for someone who starts started
Speaker 2: off as a case officer uh and and rose to
Speaker 2: the agencies and when the agencies, you know, highest ranks,
Speaker 2: but perhaps more importantly, is widely respected among agency guys,
Speaker 2: but also a lot of guys in the military who've
Speaker 2: worked with him, especially in soft and especially in Afghanistan.
Speaker 2: But since leaving the military, Mark has has actually given
Speaker 2: life to that rather dead expression consultant and and and
Speaker 2: appears when he appears on TV, it's he's actually worth watching.
Speaker 4: Very I one.
Speaker 2: I get a lot of a lot of material from
Speaker 2: Mark without without plagiarizing him too much anyway, I hate
Speaker 2: to a long long lead in Mark, great to have you.
Speaker 2: What is going on in Kursk?
Speaker 4: Well, first of all, thanks Andy and Jason and d
Speaker 4: thank you so much for having me. I love the show,
Speaker 4: love coming on. It's you know, it's great to do
Speaker 4: kind of a long form discussion. I'm used to these,
Speaker 4: you know, thirty or forty five second sound bites you
Speaker 4: know on TV. And Andy, just just one thing. Kind
Speaker 4: of the secret of the business is, you know, everyone
Speaker 4: is humble. So I listened to what you all say
Speaker 4: too as well. I listen to others. There's no such
Speaker 4: thing as there's no such thing as borrowing analysis from
Speaker 4: other commentators because uh, you know, who the hell knows
Speaker 4: if we're if we're ever right, cursk has been has been.
Speaker 4: Let me let me put it this way. When I
Speaker 4: say fun, that's a horrible word to say in terms
Speaker 4: of war. But for for a couple of reasons, I've
Speaker 4: I've certainly enjoyed this, you know, first and foremost, Uh,
Speaker 4: there is a kind of a cast of characters in
Speaker 4: the foreign policy blob in Washington, amongst the some of
Speaker 4: the think tanks. And I'm not gonna name names because
Speaker 4: that's stupid and I don't want to, you know, go
Speaker 4: down that road. But there's all this dooming always that
Speaker 4: goes on about Ukraine that you know, you know, it's
Speaker 4: it's always the end. It's almost impossible to find anyone
Speaker 4: to say anything positive that's happening. And so this has
Speaker 4: been pretty extraordinary. This is a success. You know, we
Speaker 4: can we can debate for for for as long as
Speaker 4: we want about why the Ukrainians did this. We actually
Speaker 4: don't know particularly, and we can we can talk about it,
Speaker 4: whether it's for morale boost, whether it's for future pow swaps,
Speaker 4: whether it's for future negotiations when Ukraine actually has Russian territory.
Speaker 4: But it's a positive story. And even you know, Washington
Speaker 4: Post this morning ran a story, or the New York Times,
Speaker 4: I can't remember, and it's always the Ukrainians are doing great.
Speaker 4: But it is impossible for kind of the outlytic class
Speaker 4: following Russia to say anything good. I mean, it's it's
Speaker 4: almost you know, we still keep treating Russia as ten
Speaker 4: feet tall militarily. It drives me nuts. But here's where
Speaker 4: it's really important. Guess what didn't happen with this? There
Speaker 4: was no fucking US whining, There was no complaints. Now
Speaker 4: in all the press reports we heard that this took
Speaker 4: the US by surprise. That's bullshit. There is an incredible
Speaker 4: intelligence soak there of human intelligence, signals, intelligence, certainly imagery,
Speaker 4: and there's also and I'll you know, not to get
Speaker 4: too much in trouble in this. When we work with
Speaker 4: foreign liaison, we also penetrate foreign liss Liz, And there's
Speaker 4: nothing fucking that happens in that country that we don't
Speaker 4: know about. I'm sorry. So the idea that we didn't
Speaker 4: know is bullshit. And you know, I think that's done
Speaker 4: for What we always mean is we weren't told. We
Speaker 4: weren't told, we knew that, and that we knew and Andy,
Speaker 4: guess what we didn't do. We didn't whine about it.
Speaker 4: You didn't have the chief of station or the ambassador
Speaker 4: go and do the little finger wagging to the Ukrainians,
Speaker 4: which is incredibly annoying every time they did something daring
Speaker 4: in the past. And that's the story. So the story
Speaker 4: to me is the US is okay with another country
Speaker 4: invading Russia. That's pretty fucking incredible. And so you know,
Speaker 4: that's what we tried to kind of talk about in
Speaker 4: in in the media, and you know, ultimately that is
Speaker 4: a sea change from the handwringing and you know, I
Speaker 4: mean the NFC wakes up every morning. You know, you're
Speaker 4: always gonna get unfiltered shit for me, and it's I've
Speaker 4: had a couple of cups of coffee, so here we go.
Speaker 4: But the National Security Council gets up every morning. The
Speaker 4: first thing they do, after you know, taking a dump,
Speaker 4: is they start worrying about escalation. That's the thing. I
Speaker 4: think they have T shirts made, uh and so, but
Speaker 4: in this case, they're not doing it. And I think
Speaker 4: that is amazing. And maybe, and maybe this is becoming
Speaker 4: too optimistic. Is at the end of Joe Biden's presidency
Speaker 4: where the United States has done, at the same time
Speaker 4: an extraordinary amount for Ukraine but also withheld a lot
Speaker 4: and probably cause a lot of unnecessary guests. But maybe
Speaker 4: we're going to allow the Ukrainians to take the gloves off.
Speaker 4: And so I think that's the that's the story. But
Speaker 4: you know what interesting to hear your guys take on
Speaker 4: this too.
Speaker 2: Well, I am yeah, I mean I don't have any
Speaker 2: instantly track on this. It it struck me by surprise,
Speaker 2: but the interest here's some interesting things about it. So
Speaker 2: I from my perspective, Yeah, number one, I think that's
Speaker 2: that that is so incredibly refreshing that we're not playing
Speaker 2: kind of you know, this frightened old woman in the kitchen,
Speaker 2: wringing our hands every time, and and yet at the
Speaker 2: same time stop Ukraine for ammunition. You know that was
Speaker 2: that was the ironic thing, wagging our finger and let
Speaker 2: yet going through this ridicut kill us domestic uh kabuki dance,
Speaker 2: which that costs lives. We all know that they cost lives.
Speaker 2: But more important, perhaps more importantly, shut up, sir, but
Speaker 2: perhaps more importantly we we lost some of our leverage
Speaker 2: there as far as you know, the what we were
Speaker 2: doing to the Russians five Ukrainians and Russians were willing
Speaker 2: to adapt. So I think this is entirely positive. The
Speaker 2: other thing, but the other side from the US reactions,
Speaker 2: what really surprises me is the Russian reaction, or lack thereof.
Speaker 4: Remember, you know train the counter isis campaign.
Speaker 2: If we even straight over that boundary into this land,
Speaker 2: they went ape ship right, you know, because they knew that.
Speaker 4: It's symbolic.
Speaker 2: Whether the Russians know how important this is a putin,
Speaker 2: does You've we've seen one TV losing his mind, and
Speaker 2: yet the response has been pathetic and and the prisoners
Speaker 2: that the Ukrainians surrounding up perhaps an indicator of of
Speaker 2: why that is. You know, a lot of cons I
Speaker 2: mean they're all conscripts, but you know, the prisoners guys
Speaker 2: from National Guard, internal military force, so that this was
Speaker 2: an economy of force thing that the Russians, you know
Speaker 2: that the defensive positions groundcase. Ukrainians knew that took advantage
Speaker 2: of it. And you know, it's a Theta company now.
Speaker 2: And and I think the Ukrainians have surprised themselves with
Speaker 2: their success because of the lack of counterattacks last thing
Speaker 2: though they have now probably even even with the lack
Speaker 2: of resistance, they're approaching that culminating point, and they've got
Speaker 2: to make a decision what to do, you know, right?
Speaker 4: So yeah, so what comes next? I mean, I don't know,
Speaker 4: that's a that's a great question. But what is you know,
Speaker 4: and and you know, the the the other part of this,
Speaker 4: of course, there's a there's a piece of the Washington
Speaker 4: Post today that and I have heard snippets of this
Speaker 4: maybe you have as well, as there have been behind
Speaker 4: the scenes kind of talks about future negotiations. Yeah, and uh,
Speaker 4: that was really interesting. Wasn't it. Yeah, and I and
Speaker 4: i'd heard that kind of just you know, kind of
Speaker 4: through the great finding. And frankly, look, if Ukrainians want
Speaker 4: to do this, it's up. If my my view has
Speaker 4: always been Ukraine will settle this on, you know, when
Speaker 4: they're ready to settle this, and it should not be
Speaker 4: forced on by the United States. And so uh uh
Speaker 4: and I guess I guess, you know, we'll see how
Speaker 4: this how this goes. I mean, I don't know. I was,
Speaker 4: you know, watching obviously, you know, following all the open
Speaker 4: source stuff yesterday, and I see, you know, they're dropping bridges.
Speaker 4: I mean, this is this using US armaments. So this
Speaker 4: is fantastic. Uh And uh, you know, let's see let's
Speaker 4: and and and you know, the f sixteens. How much
Speaker 4: are they in play? You know, who knows? But I
Speaker 4: guess that The other point just to make is I
Speaker 4: still don't understand why kind of this weird world that
Speaker 4: we live in that it is impossible to under to
Speaker 4: actually celebrate Ukrainian successes without kind of the dooming that
Speaker 4: goes on. I mean, you know, really there's there's so
Speaker 4: much of Ukraine is doing well, but you know, Russia
Speaker 4: is going to you know, russ reinforcements. Russia is going
Speaker 4: to do this that you know, it's it's very odd.
Speaker 4: I don't know if that kind of translates maybe your
Speaker 4: contacts and the Pentagon, but it certainly is in kind
Speaker 4: of the think tank class that drives me nuts.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't have an answer for you. I think though,
Speaker 2: perhaps it's a response to the fact that pundits went
Speaker 2: strongly the other way back in twenty twenty two. Right,
Speaker 2: it was this kind of euphoria and feeling that you know,
Speaker 2: the war would end soon. I mean, it was kind
Speaker 2: of implicit, and I think that's probably kind of just
Speaker 2: a suburban claud Switz reaction to the fact that that
Speaker 2: didn't happen.
Speaker 4: It's, you know, any any.
Speaker 2: Balanced story, it's got to obviously, you know, there's enough
Speaker 2: to be pessimistic about. It's very interesting what you said
Speaker 2: about the talks and Cutter.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Now, my understanding is those talks were exclusively focused, supposed
Speaker 2: to be exclusively focused from the Ukrainian perspective on kind
Speaker 2: of an agreement on the energy sector. On both side,
Speaker 2: it's like hands off, hands off infrastructure everything from you know,
Speaker 2: for for safety concerns, about nuclear plants to the fact
Speaker 2: that Ukraine's hanging on by its fingernails, you know, this
Speaker 2: last winter and it's not looking forward to this next winter,
Speaker 2: and wants to impose some costs on Russia in order
Speaker 2: to have a bargaining tool and cutter. That was kind
Speaker 2: of that was my impression of it, you know, and
Speaker 2: from an official stance, Ukrainians are saying no negotiation until
Speaker 2: all Russian boots are off, even out of Crimea. But
Speaker 2: it's interesting, yeah, that was that. That's the first negotiation,
Speaker 2: actually the first kind of negotiating, substantive negotiation, you could say,
Speaker 2: since the you know all the arguments about green export.
Speaker 4: Right right, then you forget from one thing. I want
Speaker 4: to raise though for the audience, and I think this
Speaker 4: is important part and this kind of applies to everybody here,
Speaker 4: you know. I always look at these conflicts as as
Speaker 4: a former practitioner, which means I wasn't at the National
Speaker 4: Security Council, I wasn't at CI headquarters. I wasn't attending
Speaker 4: you know, white House meetings in the situation room. I
Speaker 4: always I always try to think about this as, okay,
Speaker 4: what if I was with my old colleagues in the
Speaker 4: field in the in the AO uh uh, and we'll
Speaker 4: just we'll kind of leave it as in the Ukraine
Speaker 4: AO to protect what we're doing and what we're not.
Speaker 4: But that means, you know, there's there's a great deal
Speaker 4: of side by sides with our Ukrainian partners, and you know,
Speaker 4: for the and I think there there's always has been,
Speaker 4: and I and talking to my friends who've come back
Speaker 4: from Ukraine, I mean there's a little bit of embarrassments
Speaker 4: the wrong word, because we've helped them tremendously, but you know,
Speaker 4: we also have held back on aid. There is you know,
Speaker 4: a big domestic constituency constituency in the United States who
Speaker 4: is kind of viscerally opposed uh to US assistants to Ukraine.
Speaker 4: So if you're a if you're a you know, someone
Speaker 4: from you from SAFF from the intelligence community, and you're
Speaker 4: working side by side with the Ukrainians, there were some
Speaker 4: tough times. Yeah, you know, you had to do a
Speaker 4: lot of explaining you know why. For example, uh, you know,
Speaker 4: if you're next to someone from you know, Ukrainian military
Speaker 4: intelligence whose family is hiding in a shelter, maybe you
Speaker 4: know family members have been killed, you know why the
Speaker 4: US is not doing enough. So for the first time,
Speaker 4: what I was thinking about the other day was, Hey,
Speaker 4: you know, if you're a US practitioner on the ground,
Speaker 4: you know, this is a time where you know you're
Speaker 4: looking at your you know, your Ukrainian colleague across the
Speaker 4: table or sitting next to you, you know, having a
Speaker 4: you know, having a beverage, and you can have some
Speaker 4: pride in that the US is actually kind of doing
Speaker 4: the right thing and we're letting the Ukrainians take the
Speaker 4: gloves off a little bit. That always kind of runs
Speaker 4: through my mind because you know, it's you know, the
Speaker 4: one thing we do to our detriment is we fall
Speaker 4: in love with our partners. I did that with the Kurds,
Speaker 4: I did that with Syrians. I did that certainly with
Speaker 4: the Afghans.
Speaker 2: Is an American thing. I think it's an American thing,
Speaker 2: and we also something proud of too. Yeah, yeah, I mean.
Speaker 4: So I thought that was kind of that's an interesting
Speaker 4: just kind of I'm sure some of our old colleagues
Speaker 4: are feeling pretty good that they can kind of sit
Speaker 4: with a lot of pride next to the Ukrainians in
Speaker 4: these days.
Speaker 2: It's it's an anomaly. We've We've spoken about this before
Speaker 2: on the program. Mark is that you know, in our
Speaker 2: former professions, you know, military, on the intelligence agency, people
Speaker 2: tend to be right of center, right, you know, especially
Speaker 2: in the United States, less so in European militaries where
Speaker 2: you see more of a kind of an equal distribution,
Speaker 2: but certainly in the military, we tend to be you know,
Speaker 2: pretty conservative, small big c. And yet we've got this
Speaker 2: anomaly where you have a conservative element within the United
Speaker 2: States opposing a to Ukraine for reasons that define me.
Speaker 2: You know, the chance to break down an enemy, a
Speaker 2: longstanding enemy, whether it's communists or now an autocratic state,
Speaker 2: it's an enemy of the United States, sprinking and reducing
Speaker 2: their ability to exert power on their neighbors is absolutely
Speaker 2: in our national interests. And if we can do that
Speaker 2: it costs only financial costs and not a single drop
Speaker 2: of NATO blood.
Speaker 4: Why the hell wouldn't we do that? That's that is
Speaker 4: what blows me out of the water.
Speaker 2: And and my colleagues, regardless of how they vote or
Speaker 2: none of them, none of them can explain why that
Speaker 2: is the case, why we would refuse to support Ukraine.
Speaker 2: I mean, what the fuck?
Speaker 4: I mean? At a cost of money.
Speaker 2: Complain with the richest nation. I know we throw We've
Speaker 2: all seen money thrown away on ridiculous stuff in Afghanistan
Speaker 2: and Iraq. At last there is a chance to see
Speaker 2: our butt actually buy something in terms of you know,
Speaker 2: I had to say it, but the blood of our.
Speaker 4: Enemy right without cost.
Speaker 2: But that is too expensive, never mind twenty years of
Speaker 2: war in our own blood and treasure for no gain
Speaker 2: at all.
Speaker 4: And not have said it better. I agree thousand percent.
Speaker 4: And I've had huge arguments. I mean there's you know,
Speaker 4: you know, I was I was talking to a friend
Speaker 4: of mine. He's a it was a former Air Force
Speaker 4: still in the reserves, he said, kind of on the
Speaker 4: air Force blogs. There's this kind of virulent anti Ukraine
Speaker 4: streak too. I just don't understand it.
Speaker 2: Well. I mean, that's I think one thing we can
Speaker 2: explain there is it's an air Force blog.
Speaker 4: I mean, I mean, it's a different type.
Speaker 2: It can't I mean, you know, I mean it's super bright,
Speaker 2: but they are when we're talking Foma military, I don't
Speaker 2: necessarily include the Air Force in that, you know what
Speaker 2: I mean, They're a wild call right.
Speaker 5: In my conversations. It's when it's come up.
Speaker 6: It's always been uh implied, and that sometimes outright said
Speaker 6: that it's because they are in office. We know who
Speaker 6: there is, you know, the other side. But if it
Speaker 6: was their side that was in office, they'd be all
Speaker 6: for it. So that's what I'm getting. I'm not saying
Speaker 6: that that's the majority and that's the whole reason, but that's.
Speaker 5: You know, and I'm hearing you know that they you.
Speaker 4: Know, we missed the old national security Republicans. I mean,
Speaker 4: just that's just that's just a fact. I don't know
Speaker 4: what's happened, Yeah, exactly. Now, you did have Lindsey Graham,
Speaker 4: you know who is, you know, in you know, the
Speaker 4: other day kind of screaming for you know, former F
Speaker 4: sixteen pilots to come volunteer to go to Ukraine, which
Speaker 4: I thought was first of all, pretty funny, nothing wrong
Speaker 4: with that, But that's a boat from the blue was
Speaker 4: out of nowhere. Okay.
Speaker 2: The same guy who's demanding that, Zleinsky comes and visits
Speaker 2: him in his office to explain, you know, I mean, right,
Speaker 2: these kinds, Yeah, there's no consistency. It's based on on
Speaker 2: that perception of constituent bias, right or emotion.
Speaker 7: I mean Lindsay Graham is relatively hawkish, though he was
Speaker 7: talking about preemptive strike and Iran from sure.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's pretty out good.
Speaker 4: I mean, there are plenty of national security Republicans, the
Speaker 4: kind of old school ones, and some of them, you know,
Speaker 4: are you know, run powerful committees in Congress. You know,
Speaker 4: you have all the mics. Who is it, Mike Turner,
Speaker 4: McCall others, and uh, but it's just the Republican Party changed.
Speaker 4: I mean, I'm sorry that, you know, the presidential candidate
Speaker 4: for the Republicans hates Ukraine and doesn't want to spend
Speaker 4: a penny on this, and so I think that's a problem.
Speaker 4: And I'm not you know, I don't think I'm making
Speaker 4: a political statement, uh when I uh.
Speaker 2: What's what's even worse is when they drag up a
Speaker 2: guy who's you know, we have a point political, but
Speaker 2: you know, a PAO enlisted marine and then quote him
Speaker 2: as though he's the you know, I mean we're talking
Speaker 2: about JD.
Speaker 4: Vance.
Speaker 2: I mean, I have no opinion of him, you know,
Speaker 2: other than that, but let's put this in context. He
Speaker 2: was an enlisted p AO, right, he was six months
Speaker 2: in Iraq? Yeah, in Iraq. I mean that doesn't make
Speaker 2: him an expert on national security, but his comments are
Speaker 2: being taken as though they came from the Delphi Oracle,
Speaker 2: you know, like it's absurd.
Speaker 4: Anyway, back to uh, you digressed into the politics exactly
Speaker 4: what we didn't want to do.
Speaker 2: Yeah, anyway, No, I mean back to so what next month?
Speaker 2: What do you think is going to happen?
Speaker 4: So I think that, you know, the kind of the
Speaker 4: key points on this obviously are November the presidential election
Speaker 4: in the United States, and and I you know, the
Speaker 4: you know so much you know rides on that. At
Speaker 4: the same time, though, you know, just having been in
Speaker 4: I was in Greece for a couple of weeks, I
Speaker 4: stopped in the UK. I mean, there is is a
Speaker 4: feeling that the Europeans have stepped up. And if you
Speaker 4: just look at numbers in terms of European assistants Ukraine,
Speaker 4: it's pretty pretty amazing.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 4: Again, charges that the that the US has bankrolled everything
Speaker 4: is bullshit. Ukraine has has put up a huge amount
Speaker 4: of resources. And and you have countries, you know, kind
Speaker 4: of the the you know, in the in Central Europe
Speaker 4: or or maybe the not that not the older not
Speaker 4: not Germany or or France or the UK, but you
Speaker 4: have countries like Poland in frontline states that are really
Speaker 4: hawkish that understand, uh, the Russian threat. So I think
Speaker 4: that Europe just in general is in a much better
Speaker 4: position on this. And and one kind of one other
Speaker 4: note there, and you know, perhaps and I think I'm
Speaker 4: I'm right on this, is that there's not that there's
Speaker 4: not political divides between left and right. For example, in
Speaker 4: the UK, you know changing you know, changing government policy,
Speaker 4: and Ukraine's the same, and I think that's important. You know,
Speaker 4: Germany is having some issues now. But you know, when
Speaker 4: I when I've talked to my contacts in Germany, because
Speaker 4: you know, there's been a kind of a halt on
Speaker 4: German assistance. There's this is this is you know, they're
Speaker 4: running around and this has to do with a budget
Speaker 4: issue rather than actual kind of you know, lack of
Speaker 4: German resolve and so so ultimately I think that you know,
Speaker 4: Europe is in it, and it is in a much
Speaker 4: better position too. And again for this to kind of
Speaker 4: be a sustained fight, that's going to have to be
Speaker 4: have to be the case. Uh, it will be uh,
Speaker 4: you know, if if the Republicans win in the presidency
Speaker 4: in November the United States. You know, US is going
Speaker 4: to take a much different role obviously with with Ukraine,
Speaker 4: and that's some concern. But you know, in talking to
Speaker 4: kind of senior European officials when I was there, as
Speaker 4: I'm sipping my uzo on the Greek islands, I still
Speaker 4: had some contact with folks.
Speaker 2: Uh. Uh.
Speaker 4: They know what they have to do, and so I'm
Speaker 4: I you know, I'm not as pessimistic about the future.
Speaker 4: And the last point too is look, I was I
Speaker 4: was certainly not a military analyst, but I do think
Speaker 4: that obviously the attack on has arrived. This is an
Speaker 4: issue we talked about for months and months and they've
Speaker 4: been put to good use. They have sixteens are now
Speaker 4: you know, flying over the skies and I do think
Speaker 4: US kit matters and so we'll see, you know, what
Speaker 4: the Ukrainians can do finally, if they're outfitted correctly. Still
Speaker 4: huge manpower issue. I mean, you know, you guys know
Speaker 4: this even more than I do. From from from time there.
Speaker 4: You know, what are they gonna do about conscription? Uh?
Speaker 4: You know, Russia does have a numerical advantage of people. Uh,
Speaker 4: but you know, the Ukrainians have surprised this time and
Speaker 4: again and so uh so, so we'll see. I would
Speaker 4: not I am not pessimistic, but I do think you're
Speaker 4: kind of right in the sense that we shouldn't kind
Speaker 4: of you know, uh, you know, fall completely in the
Speaker 4: camp of Ukraine's about to win now, just because they've
Speaker 4: had some success over the last you know, nine ten days.
Speaker 2: Yes, certainly, you know, if you look at a map
Speaker 2: dr I've found one that I'll send you.
Speaker 4: You can post however you wish.
Speaker 2: But you know, the the it's really interesting as far
Speaker 2: as the decisions now in the Ukrainian general's hands or
Speaker 2: Zanewsky's hands, you know, I mean, do they hold you know,
Speaker 2: the immediate concern, do they hold that territory? I mean,
Speaker 2: I think, you know, regardless of all the reasons to
Speaker 2: do this, and you know, I think it's hard to
Speaker 2: argue against the fact that it that it was inspired.
Speaker 2: But at the same time, now how to take advantage
Speaker 2: of it. And the problem is with holding that terrain
Speaker 2: is defending it, especially with air defense, is going to
Speaker 2: be a real issue because you know, as you know,
Speaker 2: Ukraine's so now it's extended its lines. There's already this
Speaker 2: kind of internal struggle between prioritizing air defense, whether on
Speaker 2: the front line or infrastructure, and so in a sense,
Speaker 2: now extending this makes that worse. So holding in place
Speaker 2: may not be what they can do, but certainly and
Speaker 2: it would seem a shame to withdrawal back to their
Speaker 2: their lines and make this kind of a raid and
Speaker 2: a bluff. Right, So I think probly somewhere in between
Speaker 2: sworlds back to a more defendable position. But the key
Speaker 2: thing that you kind of contact and pointed out is
Speaker 2: that it's still kind of in a diet position in Donbass.
Speaker 2: I mean, the Russians are within fifteen kilometers of pop Rods,
Speaker 2: which is, you know, along with Krematos, the two major
Speaker 2: cities left.
Speaker 4: In one thing to raise. This is actually something that
Speaker 4: I that I thought was quite quite remarkable, an incredible
Speaker 4: Wall Street journal piece on nord Stream too. Yes, essentially
Speaker 4: the Ukrainians fucking did it. And so this is something
Speaker 4: that of course tell the story. This is a great one, man.
Speaker 4: I mean, I've known about this for a long time
Speaker 4: from kind of all sorts of media contacts who is
Speaker 4: kind of percolated about. But so here's the thing. At
Speaker 4: the end of the day, nobody gives a shit. So
Speaker 4: and that's incredible, and he's about very briefly what happened
Speaker 4: or so, so you know, this was again I'm gonna
Speaker 4: I don't have anything in front of me here, but
Speaker 4: this is what are we It's a it's a year
Speaker 4: and a half ago. It's quite something. Yeah, yeah it was.
Speaker 2: It was not yet exactly twenty twenty two, isn't it
Speaker 2: mid twenty twenty two?
Speaker 4: So you know, the pipeline mysteriously explodes and everyone thought
Speaker 4: the Russians done it.
Speaker 3: I actually I got Timber twenty six twenty two.
Speaker 4: I remember going on the media saying that as well.
Speaker 3: So I was.
Speaker 4: I was obviously wrong. And at some point someone kind
Speaker 4: of called me and said, hey, you might want to
Speaker 4: stop saying that.
Speaker 2: Now this is just for so the this is the
Speaker 2: PEMP pipeline. Can you just talk a little bit about
Speaker 2: the background, what it but the pipeline does.
Speaker 4: And go you're gonna get You're gonna do this better
Speaker 4: than me. I'm gonna botch this.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So, so the the the pipeline we're talking about, the
Speaker 2: north Stream Pipeline takes I think it's again, I'm pretty
Speaker 2: un screwed up but it's liquid, it's l A. I
Speaker 2: think it's l n G from Russia to you know,
Speaker 2: to UH to Germany, right.
Speaker 3: And natural gas pipeline from Russia to Germany.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so I got it right.
Speaker 2: And and it was the source of contention uh in
Speaker 2: in the months leading up to the war because it
Speaker 2: put Germany and in the you know, the way that
Speaker 2: the United States and UK looked at it, certainly within
Speaker 2: NATO in the Germany kind of supplicant of Russia. It
Speaker 2: gave Russia great leverage over Germany, and it did look
Speaker 2: as though Germany was kind of politically voting, you know,
Speaker 2: with that knowledge in mind.
Speaker 4: That was the concern, right, because the economy they were
Speaker 4: very worried about economic effects that they shut off kind
Speaker 4: of that you know, the input of gas, which which
Speaker 4: you know that's they're not They were not incorrect to
Speaker 4: have that, to have that concern. But then, but you know,
Speaker 4: and and and kind of many of us thought that
Speaker 4: the Russians were kind of behind this, some kind of
Speaker 4: COVID action. But it turns out just again for the
Speaker 4: listeners of the Ukrainians, looks like with kind of this
Speaker 4: bizarre operation that had some kind of private involvement of
Speaker 4: former Ukrainian uh, you know, special operations divers UH known
Speaker 4: to the Ukrainian military. Zelensky turned it off because the
Speaker 4: agency found out about it. I mean, this is the
Speaker 4: story in the Wall Street Journal. So I'm not confirming
Speaker 4: or denying anything, but ultimately Ukrainians did it. And if
Speaker 4: this had come out a year and a half ago,
Speaker 4: it would have been a huge mess politically in Germany.
Speaker 4: But right now nobody seems to care because everyone has
Speaker 4: kind of made that decision to support Ukraine. So again,
Speaker 4: the big picture on this, it's a it's a spy story,
Speaker 4: it's a movie. Someone's got to write a movie on this.
Speaker 4: The real story is that nobody seems to really kind
Speaker 4: of bat an eye on this, and that to me
Speaker 4: shows the evolution of thinking in Europe.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 4: And you know, and there there are certainly some some
Speaker 4: of those and I tend to agree with this is
Speaker 4: that you know that of course, the German government has
Speaker 4: known this forever and they they kind of stuck it
Speaker 4: in these law enforcement, you know, legal channels, so it
Speaker 4: would take a long time to be investigated and to
Speaker 4: come out. So again, having made that political decision to
Speaker 4: support Ukraine, which might have been harder. Uh if in effect,
Speaker 4: and I mean this, you could also make the argument
Speaker 4: this was an attack by Ukraine on a NATO country.
Speaker 4: It's pretty funny, yeah, do you think, uh?
Speaker 2: I mean probably what has helped play in Ukraine's favor
Speaker 2: here is the fact that there have been since then,
Speaker 2: Russian sabotage attempts in Germany, right in nationals.
Speaker 4: There's been Germans who have been arrested for espionage. I mean,
Speaker 4: there's been this amazing explosies Russian intelligence malfeasans in Germany too, Right,
Speaker 4: So there's this this certainly a much more growing anti
Speaker 4: Russian sentiment. When I talked to some German journalists on this,
Speaker 4: they're very you know, very clear on that. But again, this,
Speaker 4: you know, this is one of those one of those
Speaker 4: This must frustrate the Russians to no end. I mean,
Speaker 4: they know they didn't do it, they were blamed for it,
Speaker 4: they know who did it. There was no political repercussions
Speaker 4: for this, and so you know, in some ways it's
Speaker 4: going to make a hell of a movie, But I
Speaker 4: don't think it's going to have any kind of effect.
Speaker 4: I mean, other people, you know, might might disagree with
Speaker 4: the old news news. Yeah, it's a great and and
Speaker 4: some of these, you know, I remember, I think it's
Speaker 4: someone from the Washington Post who called me originally and said,
Speaker 4: you know, you think the Russians did it? And I said, yeah,
Speaker 4: you know, they were reminding me now how wrong I was.
Speaker 4: So Hey, sometimes.
Speaker 7: Mark, I got a question. We definitely helped, Right, let's
Speaker 7: be on. You don't know have to confirm it, you know,
Speaker 7: not at all? Okay, all right, sure.
Speaker 4: No, because because d here's the thing, this is a
Speaker 4: time where you know, we couldn't give a hello kid
Speaker 4: bag to the Ukrainians without there being hard palpitations at
Speaker 4: the NSC. You know, you're talking about you know, our
Speaker 4: MRI is going to cost you know, cause World War three.
Speaker 4: So the idea that we helped them do this is ludicrous.
Speaker 4: I mean, really, we just.
Speaker 3: Did not the polls.
Speaker 4: I mean I would I would read the Wall Street
Speaker 4: Journal piece pretty good. Okay.
Speaker 2: So I and this was the time when in the
Speaker 2: Mozart group I received a very formal letter from the
Speaker 2: State Department explaining how I was not breaking ITAR regulations
Speaker 2: by training Ukrainian soldiers. Okay, those of you who know
Speaker 2: about ITAR regulations know that's you know, it just doesn't
Speaker 2: make sense when you're teaching first day. Yeah, when you're
Speaker 2: teaching the first day. You know, I had to break
Speaker 2: down in ak forty seven. ITAR has nothing to do
Speaker 2: with it, but someone you know, this was all the
Speaker 2: part of Hey, what is second?
Speaker 4: This is scary.
Speaker 2: These guys are Americans in Ukraine doing these things. They
Speaker 2: must be violating something, so they look for ITAR.
Speaker 3: You know, hey, do you explain what ITAR is real? Quick?
Speaker 4: Should I?
Speaker 5: Currently?
Speaker 4: I mean, it's a it's a.
Speaker 2: It's a law that that governs the exchange of highly technical, deadly.
Speaker 7: Information International Traffic in Arms Regulations.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, So so teaching guys how to you know,
Speaker 2: put on a pressure bandage is not discovered or or
Speaker 2: even teaching them how to shoot a weapon is not
Speaker 2: you know, it's not governed by ITAR. But yeah, and
Speaker 2: most you know, everyone in the State Department knows that.
Speaker 2: But the fact that we received this letter and then
Speaker 2: it became, you know, it became that's where the intercept
Speaker 2: got hold of and it may became if hey, look
Speaker 2: there they are in Ukraine, but that in retrospect, you know,
Speaker 2: ITAR regulations really is that what you were worried about
Speaker 2: I mean, no, of course, no one was worried about that.
Speaker 2: They were worried about escalation, they were worried about the
Speaker 2: perception of Americans being seen in Ukraine on the side,
Speaker 2: and so they were trying to squeeze us out.
Speaker 4: Let me one more quick here just because because again
Speaker 4: I'm I'm I'm going to be you know, I'm gonna
Speaker 4: be an Atlanticist here. I'm actually I'm very kind of
Speaker 4: pleased to how the Europeans have reacted over the last
Speaker 4: several months. Fresh President mccron comes out and says, fuck it,
Speaker 4: let's put military advisors in Ukraine. Yeah, and you know,
Speaker 4: and so so like just that evolution and the Brits
Speaker 4: have have special operations special points. That is that's the
Speaker 4: that's the the you know, the the story that hasn't
Speaker 4: been told on that is the British Special operations community
Speaker 4: and what they've done inside and which is uh our
Speaker 4: old soft colleagues, uh you know, who are training Ukraine's
Speaker 4: in Germany are kind of salivating at what the Brits
Speaker 4: are able to do. But but again, but putting this
Speaker 4: all together, so you know, the incredible kind of uh
Speaker 4: British costs versus benefit calculus they are, you know there
Speaker 4: there there is no risk aversion on the British government.
Speaker 2: They the storm Shadow missiles right breaching, every single breaching
Speaker 2: piece of the breaching equipment they have.
Speaker 4: They gave the Ukraine as so amazing. So I mean,
Speaker 4: so so Europe has stepped up and I think that's
Speaker 4: a that's a really good because of our uncertainty about
Speaker 4: the US in UH in November.
Speaker 6: So so Mark, big question, big picture question for you.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 6: I noticed I saw that one October that there's going
Speaker 6: to be a new uh uh Secretary General of NATO,
Speaker 6: Mark Ruda r u t t. He's a Dutch prime minister.
Speaker 6: Do you know anything about him?
Speaker 4: I mean, you know, tremendous ally of the United States.
Speaker 4: You know, the Dutchess is you know, is essentially a
Speaker 4: five eyes partner, you know, and and the five eyes
Speaker 4: do you're you're gonna jump in and say that what are.
Speaker 3: The five eyes?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 4: In essence as a historic intelligence sharing relationship between the US,
Speaker 4: the UK, Canada and New Zealand and Australia, UH and
Speaker 4: and and the Dutch deserve to be in there as
Speaker 4: well because just the security partnerships that that the way
Speaker 4: that the United States has with the Dutch. So so
Speaker 4: you know, the idea of uh uh uh you know,
Speaker 4: we're gonna have some certainly continuity in NATO. But I
Speaker 4: think this is a this is you know, a you know,
Speaker 4: a very positive development Dutch or tremendous allies. This should
Speaker 4: they should continue in these things. Jason, You know, I
Speaker 4: mean that the you know, the elections for Secretary General
Speaker 4: of NATO is all very kind of political and done
Speaker 4: behind the scenes, but never done without the complete okay
Speaker 4: push and support of the United States. So I think
Speaker 4: we're in good shape. Cool Mark.
Speaker 2: One thing you when you when you talk about Europe
Speaker 2: kind of picking up the the burden or for supporting
Speaker 2: Ukraine or the responsibility to lead.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think that's an enormously.
Speaker 2: It's really interesting what has emerged from kind of the
Speaker 2: U s is step back from global leadership over o
Speaker 2: the Ukraine, right one is that Europe has stepped forward
Speaker 2: a couple of things. You know, Poland. Poland is now
Speaker 2: how absolutely a leading nation within Ukraine. And this is
Speaker 2: not something we could have imagined two decades ago. Four
Speaker 2: percent of JET committed to four percent of GDP on it,
Speaker 2: and you're tracking all the other things they're doing. I
Speaker 2: mean they are so, you know, and then and the
Speaker 2: Baltic nation says, you know, in Estonia has done that
Speaker 2: study on ammunition worst case scenario, the US can no
Speaker 2: longer provide specifically one five to five shells. When is
Speaker 2: it that europe can pick up that slack? And it's
Speaker 2: actually as early as twenty twenty five, right five, So
Speaker 2: they you know, if European manufacturing goes to surge.
Speaker 4: Capacity in order to do that.
Speaker 2: But the point is that these countries are thinking about that,
Speaker 2: not just thinking about it. They're on a path to
Speaker 2: doing that to kind of prove Ukraine from effects of
Speaker 2: the US selections.
Speaker 4: And against which is embarrassing. That's embarrassing. Yeah, and and
Speaker 4: and and and for for you know, for the most part,
Speaker 4: this goes across the political spectrum in in most European
Speaker 4: countries that we that are that really matter. So it
Speaker 4: doesn't matter, you know, it's it's it's not gonna have
Speaker 4: as much of an effect one you mentioned Estonia. I mean,
Speaker 4: it's such a an interesting example because you know, this
Speaker 4: is the you know, it's an extraordinary uh uh, certainly
Speaker 4: frontline state. But their intelligence services is world class and
Speaker 4: you know CIO officers who have experienced in that region.
Speaker 4: You know, every year the Estonians come out and they
Speaker 4: do it. They do it classified or releasable to liaison,
Speaker 4: but also an unclassified report on Russia. And it's one
Speaker 4: of the most kind of uh uh, you know, sought
Speaker 4: after you know, open source pieces. They are really good.
Speaker 4: And and if you take a look and do kind
Speaker 4: of a whole bunch of digging, there's there's been some
Speaker 4: tremendous Estonian intelligence successes as well. So again countries that
Speaker 4: you you you wouldn't figure would have that kind of
Speaker 4: resolve but are more hawkish than than any on Russia.
Speaker 4: And that's for not also for you know, for good reason.
Speaker 4: But ultimately I think the conclusion is that, you know,
Speaker 4: Europe is in much better shape. And I agree with
Speaker 4: you two thousand. You know, it was always to get
Speaker 4: to twenty twenty five, which is by the way, what
Speaker 4: the US supplemental package of sixty billion dollars was really designed. Yep,
Speaker 4: it's a bridging and and by the way, politically in
Speaker 4: the United States, that's smart because we're not going to
Speaker 4: say this is a never forever war and then we're
Speaker 4: not gonna say we're gonna we're gonna throw you know,
Speaker 4: tens of billion dollars every year. What. In fact, I
Speaker 4: think the administration was smart and saying this, this supplement,
Speaker 4: this package is going to get us to twenty twenty
Speaker 4: five and then European contributions really start kicking in as well.
Speaker 4: And I think that's a that's a good strategy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so, you know, I mean, I prob we probably
Speaker 2: feel a little bit ambivalent about it, but at this
Speaker 2: you know, I mean, it's about the fact that people
Speaker 2: feel they cannot rely on the United Saints.
Speaker 4: That's terrible.
Speaker 2: But at the same time, this has been something that
Speaker 2: you know, since the end of the Coal War, that
Speaker 2: the US has been kind of mumbling and moaning about
Speaker 2: and and increasingly was was participation in NATA. I I
Speaker 2: never understood that, to be honest with you, because NATO.
Speaker 2: The only time NATO has had a reactive in an
Speaker 2: aauticle five was on Pahafa. The United States, the United
Speaker 2: States has gained way more from NATO. You know, those
Speaker 2: of us who've served with you know, I'm a marine,
Speaker 2: so I wasn't closely involved in NATO from my service,
Speaker 2: but I can recognize that we the United States have
Speaker 2: benefited far more from well equally from NATO is NATO
Speaker 2: has from from you.
Speaker 4: Know, you're right, it's not. First of all, it shouldn't
Speaker 4: be transactional. It's not. I mean, you know, there's but
Speaker 4: and you know, but but the fact of the matter
Speaker 4: is over a thousand NATO troops were killed in Afghanistan,
Speaker 4: and so, you know, and they stepped up and uh,
Speaker 4: and I think that's you know, again, when you start
Speaker 4: talking about, uh, you know, the benefits of NATO, you're
Speaker 4: one hundred percent right, because when Article five was invoked,
Speaker 4: NATO partners came through. Uh. And again there's there's the
Speaker 4: you know, other side of the political aisle, or a
Speaker 4: side of the political aisle in the United States that
Speaker 4: doesn't seem to understand that the idea that somehow, you know,
Speaker 4: Europe is freeloading off of us is just utterly ridiculous.
Speaker 5: I've never bought that argument every Well, but.
Speaker 2: You know, all this may be irrelevant if if the
Speaker 2: Middle East the reps in war, as it has threatened
Speaker 2: to do every day in the last sixty years. But
Speaker 2: what are your thoughts now about Yeah, your thoughts about Iran?
Speaker 2: You know, the Hey, before we go to that, just
Speaker 2: one last kind of semi comical point to this thing
Speaker 2: about escalation.
Speaker 4: I just saw as actually as.
Speaker 2: We're here, that the administration has said that they're okay,
Speaker 2: this is an acceptable use of American weapon rates, including
Speaker 2: the driving striker on the vehicles in Russia.
Speaker 4: I mean, so it's like, right, shut it up. Throne
Speaker 4: strikes are not good, but you can drive a striker striker.
Speaker 4: I feel bad for the actually the you know, the
Speaker 4: d O D press. Uh, there's a there was the
Speaker 4: press fokesman the other day. She was I mean her
Speaker 4: brief was horrendous. Rible dude. I just I just I
Speaker 4: feel bad for Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean, we use the word but we deliberately choose
Speaker 2: p aos who are geeky out to lunch because that
Speaker 2: way people people.
Speaker 4: Feel sorry for them.
Speaker 2: Well, okay, so maybe like so we know they're not
Speaker 2: going to wow journalists with their authority, and so we
Speaker 2: put these guys who are like hanging out there on
Speaker 2: the edge of being in the military just po ultimate
Speaker 2: p ao weenies so they can and you can see
Speaker 2: journalists actually feel sorry for them, you know, But it
Speaker 2: doesn't work on this because how do you explain the
Speaker 2: difference between in terms of aggression, between driving an armored
Speaker 2: vehicle across someone's border or simply flying a drone over
Speaker 2: that same border. Most people would think the striker is
Speaker 2: a little more of viol nation of the national sovereignty.
Speaker 2: But no, we've we figured out that it is not.
Speaker 2: But someone's going to use that against us. Watch someone
Speaker 2: will use this against us.
Speaker 3: They already have been. You've seen some of the like
Speaker 3: a little bit on Twitter, and I'm not I'm.
Speaker 4: Not arguing with that.
Speaker 2: I think you should just say, hey, fuck it, we're
Speaker 2: all in man, that's a trip feeding weapons. Were either
Speaker 2: supporting you or we're not just supporting you, never hate you.
Speaker 2: All boundaries are off man, Moscow fuck man, of course
Speaker 2: it's and what are you going to do about it?
Speaker 4: You know what? Let me just let me just wake
Speaker 4: one point andy, I think that is missed in this too.
Speaker 4: So you know, we feel comfortable with these strange nuances
Speaker 4: and the verbal kind of word salad. I don't even
Speaker 4: understand what the fuck they're saying. You know, what's okay,
Speaker 4: what's not? The Russians think we're doing everything. Hey, they
Speaker 4: think they're at war with us. Yes, so we may
Speaker 4: do ourselves feel better, right, I mean, so bring it.
Speaker 2: I mean absolutely, bring it on, you know, I mean
Speaker 2: we don't have I'm just saying one or two storm
Speaker 2: shadows in the center or I mean, you know, attackers
Speaker 2: in the center of a Russian city. Oh God, I'm
Speaker 2: gonna be criticized for this, Okay, used judiciously to send
Speaker 2: a strategic message. Right, We'll save countless slides on that battlefield.
Speaker 2: Could case safe? You know, I mean, we just don't, right,
Speaker 2: And yeah, exactly if we're reading what the Russians already
Speaker 2: had been saying about us since the outset.
Speaker 5: Of the war.
Speaker 4: They're at war with us, yep, that's they're telling themselves
Speaker 4: out of now all right, onto the Middle East? Yeah,
Speaker 4: can you solve the problems in less than fifteen minutes.
Speaker 3: We'll give you thirty.
Speaker 4: We'll give you thirty. I'm good.
Speaker 5: I'm good.
Speaker 4: I've had a couple of cups of coffee and plus
Speaker 4: like I you know, I actually have to get on
Speaker 4: with my I've had this permanent vacation status in the
Speaker 4: Greek Islands and in the UK and then in Maine.
Speaker 5: So I got it. This is good.
Speaker 4: I'm doing something serious now. No, So the Middle East
Speaker 4: stuff is super interesting to me. That was the majority
Speaker 4: of my career was obviously was based in the Middle East.
Speaker 4: I think I've told you all before, and I worked
Speaker 4: very closely with all with with the Israeli intelligence services,
Speaker 4: with the Jordanians, the Egyptians, the Palestinians. I've been everywhere.
Speaker 4: I've you know, traveled, and so so I have a
Speaker 4: lot of experience in this region. I guess first and foremost,
Speaker 4: let's let's kind of tackle the biggest issue of the day.
Speaker 4: Will leave that the talks uh cepar talks for a second,
Speaker 4: but is you know, where is this Iranian retaliation? And
Speaker 4: so a couple of things I think occurred is that
Speaker 4: one is uh that this this and and first of all,
Speaker 4: the charge that somehow, you know, the Biden administration is
Speaker 4: not supportive of Israel is fucking ludicrous. It's the most
Speaker 4: pro Israel White House in the history of the United
Speaker 4: States Israeli relationship. And so we we deployed this incredibly lugably.
Speaker 4: It led to ending ending his career right arguably, well right, yes,
Speaker 4: that was separate, right, but but but ultimately this this
Speaker 4: this kind of military package which is now in the region,
Speaker 4: whether it's you know, one carrier battle group, another one
Speaker 4: en route. You have a US nuclear submarine, you have
Speaker 4: F twenty two's, you have F thirty fives now of
Speaker 4: course on and the carriage ball to F F twenty
Speaker 4: two deployments. I think they're in Jordan, but who knows.
Speaker 4: They're being kind of secret of them where they parked them.
Speaker 4: But ultimately and messages sent to the Iranians very strongly,
Speaker 4: both directly and indirectly, we have a channel with the Swiss,
Speaker 4: but basically telling the Iranians, you know, be very careful
Speaker 4: on what you do. And I think that's worked. And
Speaker 4: so the threat of military force has actually really worked
Speaker 4: here and deterred the Iranians. And again I think this
Speaker 4: is the resolve of the United States. It certainly resolved
Speaker 4: the Israelis. They are in no mood to kind of
Speaker 4: absorb another mass casualty event. And one thing, you know,
Speaker 4: what's interesting about Israel is that whether there's a huge
Speaker 4: debate on what's you know, you know, Netta, who's hated,
Speaker 4: given there's a majority you want to cease fire deal,
Speaker 4: given when it comes to his balla, you know, sixty
Speaker 4: thousand Israelies can't go back to their homes in the
Speaker 4: North school starting in Israel soon.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 4: You know, politically, this is a this is not an
Speaker 4: issue on how to deal with Hisbella that is all
Speaker 4: that controversial. And so I think there's been a lot
Speaker 4: of strong Israeli resolved too, and so the Iranians seem
Speaker 4: to have blinked, and I think that's that, you know,
Speaker 4: that's a good thing. I for one, have never been
Speaker 4: afraid of a confrontation with Iran because we've allowed the
Speaker 4: Iranians to kill Americans for too long and the only
Speaker 4: way to deal with them is shows of strength and force.
Speaker 4: So for now, and again this is obviously dynamic, but
Speaker 4: for you know, for now, I think the situation is stabilized.
Speaker 4: It's day to day, but clearly, you know, we're picking
Speaker 4: up on I would imagine an imagery the Iranian missile
Speaker 4: units and his Bola units standing down. A lot of
Speaker 4: this is going to be intelligence driven.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 4: Uh. The the other point of this, I think, as
Speaker 4: well as UH is on the ceasefire talks.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 4: You know, the US IS I think is doing the
Speaker 4: right thing in pushing for this. But you have to
Speaker 4: have two sides that want to come to an agreement.
Speaker 4: I think the Israelis Netanya, who is coming around a bit.
Speaker 4: He's been under enormous pressure, uh pressure from the Israeli
Speaker 4: National security apparatus, from Mosad and shin Bett and Israeli
Speaker 4: defense intelligence in the sense of, look the deal that
Speaker 4: the US put forward, which was an Israeli deal as
Speaker 4: well as actually pretty good, we can deal with this.
Speaker 4: And if you want to go in the nuances has
Speaker 4: to deal with what's called the corridor Philadelphia Quador is
Speaker 4: the Egyptian Gaza border. Who patrols it. You know, the
Speaker 4: Israelis are there now, it would be better for them
Speaker 4: to stay. Hamas is refusing this and and basically you know,
Speaker 4: Israeli officials are saying, we could probably deal with it
Speaker 4: if we pulled out a little bit, and so you know,
Speaker 4: there's all this this back and forth. But to me,
Speaker 4: the key question is, and one other point on that
Speaker 4: too is kind of the conventional wisdom is that you know, Netna,
Speaker 4: who is never going to make a deal because his
Speaker 4: government's going to fall. But it's not because the Knesset's
Speaker 4: not in session these that's the Israeli parliament. They actually
Speaker 4: go on a three month recess. If you think that's
Speaker 4: fucking crazy what the United States does here during the war.
Speaker 4: And so he is actually in no danger of falling
Speaker 4: until they come back in October, so he could cut
Speaker 4: a deal. So I guess the key question for me
Speaker 4: is more on the Hama side. And you know, everybody
Speaker 4: is always hammering I think is an asshole, but everyone's
Speaker 4: hammering dB for being the party that refuses to make
Speaker 4: a deal. But I think there is question now is
Speaker 4: what is yas And we're gonna do last point on
Speaker 4: this uh and and again I always try to look
Speaker 4: at this from I know, you know, you guys have
Speaker 4: spent time in Israel I look at it from the
Speaker 4: Israeli perspective and not condoning their behavior, not condemning it.
Speaker 4: But you know, the killing of Ismail Heni and Tehran
Speaker 4: first of all a fucking glorious operation from the from
Speaker 4: from the intelligence perspective. You know, to put someone on
Speaker 4: the X like that in a denied area is pretty impressive.
Speaker 4: But premister nt Yahu, when he was given the opportunity
Speaker 4: to do this by Masad and by the Israeli defense forces,
Speaker 4: you know, there's a question of should he have done
Speaker 4: this that would affect the talks. My argument is he
Speaker 4: he had to do it. If that had leaked that
Speaker 4: the architect, the leader of the of the group that
Speaker 4: killed twelve hundred Israelies was on the X and he
Speaker 4: didn't give the go ahead. He's in more trouble politically
Speaker 4: than he would be in any other situation. And for
Speaker 4: Fox's sake, like, are you kidding me? Like we would
Speaker 4: have done the same thing. So lots of I'm kind
Speaker 4: of all over the place on all these but I
Speaker 4: think I'm all over the place because it's tough. There's
Speaker 4: a dynamic situation, different variables and so hard. Next meeting,
Speaker 4: they go back to Doha and we'll see what happens
Speaker 4: on the talks. It enabled the method, I mean, it
Speaker 4: enabled the I mean it was a well designed operation
Speaker 4: number of ways, but not least of which is it
Speaker 4: gave Iran a kind of a face saving way out
Speaker 4: that the US was able to say, Hey, look this
Speaker 4: was you know, this was a this was a foreigner.
Speaker 2: Yes, but it was a foreigner who was involved in
Speaker 2: these things on your territory who was killed.
Speaker 4: Really don't brag about it either, Yeah, no Iranians were killed. No,
Speaker 4: you know, let's you know, call it a call it
Speaker 4: a buying and let's move right. Look and and you know,
Speaker 4: I mean the Israeli said, we're going to track down
Speaker 4: all these motherfuckers and kill them all. They're going to
Speaker 4: do that. These are dead men walking, So no surprise.
Speaker 4: I think it embarrassed the Iranians for for sure. One
Speaker 4: point I want to make on kind of the other
Speaker 4: the other assassination was it was like it was like
Speaker 4: twelve twelve hours of like you know, insane Israeli intelligence
Speaker 4: and special operations capabilities. And that's when the Israelis killed
Speaker 4: Flood Chukar in Beirut. Fwood schukar Is was in essence
Speaker 4: one of you know, it was one of the top
Speaker 4: leaders of his bola. You could people were calling him
Speaker 4: the chief of staff to Nosralla. For us, why does
Speaker 4: that matter? And Andy for you in particular, why does
Speaker 4: that matter? And Jason and Jason, sorry, that's right, both
Speaker 4: of you guys, two marines. There's two Greeks, say Jason.
Speaker 4: I apologize for both of you, you know, and it
Speaker 4: should be personal. Twod Shukar was responsible for the deaths
Speaker 4: of two hundred and forty one US Marines in nineteen
Speaker 4: eighty three at the US Marine Corps barracks. I'm actually
Speaker 4: there's the book. Jack Card just put out a book
Speaker 4: where he sent me an advanced copy of of a
Speaker 4: book he wrote on this, uh on on what was
Speaker 4: uh you know, one of the deadliest terrorist attacks and
Speaker 4: really almost the beginning of of kind of the the
Speaker 4: the US War on terrorism. And so you know, no
Speaker 4: one should shed a tear that this this uh, this
Speaker 4: senior his BULA member was killed. And so uh, you know,
Speaker 4: as as I kind of, you know, I'm not always
Speaker 4: popular when I say this, when I kind of go
Speaker 4: on MSNBC and say this, uh, but I said, I
Speaker 4: basically said, look, every every you know, uh, former and
Speaker 4: current US Marine should you know, find their closest Israeli
Speaker 4: friend and buy him a beer. They did us a
Speaker 4: solid on this. And also if what Sugar had you know,
Speaker 4: five million dollars uh you know rewards for justice uh
Speaker 4: program reward on his head too. So, uh, the one
Speaker 4: thing we seem to forget in the US media is
Speaker 4: that we should not be neutral. AMAS is a terrorist organization,
Speaker 4: as this Isballa. Now the US has to play this
Speaker 4: kind of mediating role in trying to tamp down, you know,
Speaker 4: the prospect for a regional war. But this this is
Speaker 4: not you know, the US just being a neutral party.
Speaker 4: It's not mediating between two sovereign states. It's not exactly.
Speaker 4: And Rachel Kaita Isbela killed more Americans than any other
Speaker 4: terrorist group. And on October seventh, over thirty Americans were
Speaker 4: killed by Hamas. And by the way, an American citizen
Speaker 4: with with with two passports, a US and Israeli passport,
Speaker 4: we consider in the counter terrorism community to be an
Speaker 4: American citizen. I don't care what other passport you have.
Speaker 4: The US government does not care. The FBI, who you
Speaker 4: know is the lead in investigating these things, doesn't care
Speaker 4: they're Americans. And so somehow we we we tend to
Speaker 4: forget it. In my background, you know, there's a there's
Speaker 4: a term we always use which is burden hand. If
Speaker 4: you got the if you got a terrorist on the
Speaker 4: actually take them out. And there's and then and the
Speaker 4: one thing that I always saw too in working with
Speaker 4: the Israelis is they're really smart on benefit cost calculus.
Speaker 4: So they're not they don't they don't go in there
Speaker 4: and take a shot at for what Schuckar or Ismail
Speaker 4: Haniya and say hey, this is going to be cost free.
Speaker 4: They might say, hey, we might lose an embassy somewhere
Speaker 4: or or you know, or our assessment is these the
Speaker 4: Iranians will retaliate, but in a in a kind of
Speaker 4: a mild fashion. But uh, you know they do this
Speaker 4: with with eyes wide open, and right now it looks
Speaker 4: like they're they're kind of their calculus was correct.
Speaker 7: I mean, yeah, when you know that you're gonna have
Speaker 7: a US carrier group and a nuclear submarine steaming in,
Speaker 7: of course you're you got that's going to be in
Speaker 7: your calculus, you know, like it's right, you're gonna have
Speaker 7: a backup.
Speaker 4: But and that's and and so so ultimately, uh, that
Speaker 4: kind of that that that burden hand notion, which which
Speaker 4: we used in the counter terrorism community, uh in the
Speaker 4: United States, you know, whether it's drone strikes in Pakistan
Speaker 4: or in Yemen or other places. Uh, if you if
Speaker 4: you've got a real bad guy, especially a high value
Speaker 4: target on the X. I can't think of a time
Speaker 4: forget the whole issue with whether we had been laden,
Speaker 4: you know, years ago, but I can't figure a time
Speaker 4: where we had someone of that seniority and we didn't
Speaker 4: take a shot. In fact, if you look at Leon
Speaker 4: Panetta's autobiography, he talks about when we when we killed
Speaker 4: I think it was a Q number two or three,
Speaker 4: and we killed his family as well, and we did
Speaker 4: so knowingly. Uh, you know, there there are costs of this,
Speaker 4: but you got to take the shot. I'm glad he
Speaker 4: really did.
Speaker 2: Mark before, you know, before we wind up and we've
Speaker 2: got an opportunity to talk. What what's on your mind
Speaker 2: that we haven't already talked about, even if it's just
Speaker 2: fresh memories of your holiday in Greece, No, I.
Speaker 4: Think you know so. So it's that's a great question,
Speaker 4: because you know, it's sometimes it's good to go on
Speaker 4: vacation and kind of reflect on stuff and career and
Speaker 4: things like that. And you know, when I when I
Speaker 4: was thinking about or two things. One is what we
Speaker 4: talked about earlier is this is a good time to
Speaker 4: be with our Ukrainian partners. I missed that. I would
Speaker 4: love to be at a at a at a time
Speaker 4: like this working with the with the Ukrainians, especially when
Speaker 4: they're kind of you know, planning some of these uh
Speaker 4: you know pretty uh, you know, daring operations. And the
Speaker 4: other is just on the Middle East. You know what
Speaker 4: what I think about a lot is and I'm just
Speaker 4: I think I'm disappointed. It's on my mind is I'm
Speaker 4: disappointed in national security media.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 4: And and I let me give credit to one one journalist,
Speaker 4: Shane Harris the Washington Post is an excellent reporter. He
Speaker 4: covers the intelligence beat, he has for for years. And
Speaker 4: you know, I remember talking him a couple of months
Speaker 4: ago and I was like, you got to go to Israel. Like,
Speaker 4: you know, so many of the national security media here,
Speaker 4: you know, their sources, they they they talk to via signal,
Speaker 4: so they'll you know, they'll signal their contacts at the NSC,
Speaker 4: but they don't go to the region where they don't
Speaker 4: get you know, whether it's UK. But but so Shane
Speaker 4: went off to Israel and you know, and you know,
Speaker 4: I gave him some suggestions on who to talk to,
Speaker 4: and he had great contexts too, and he came back
Speaker 4: with kind of a different, more nuanced view of because
Speaker 4: the conflict in Israel is Yes, is an asshole, Yes
Speaker 4: we want him out. Uh, but uh, the Israelis are
Speaker 4: traumatized from October seventh. And if you don't really understand that,
Speaker 4: you don't understand their response. Uh, even even in such
Speaker 4: things as you know what, there's been horrible civilian casualties
Speaker 4: in Gaza. There's no dispute on that. And what I'm
Speaker 4: gonna say now again, I don't want people to get
Speaker 4: upset Is, but the Israelis don't fucking care and you
Speaker 4: have to understand that.
Speaker 5: Now.
Speaker 4: I'm not saying that's right in Israel. There's a lack
Speaker 4: of press coverage of civilian casualties inside. That's not a
Speaker 4: good thing. But if you want to say it on TV,
Speaker 4: you cannot. You've been there, Andy, so it's just not covered. Now,
Speaker 4: is that wrong? Well, I mean, I think you know,
Speaker 4: but the Israelis are so traumatized from October seventh that
Speaker 4: you have to understand their thinking now in everything. You know,
Speaker 4: my old contacts on WASSAD and the Israeli Foreign Ministry
Speaker 4: for years were absolutely supportive of a two state solution.
Speaker 4: They're not anymore. They said they're not ready. Now. The
Speaker 4: US policy is to push for this. I believe in
Speaker 4: my soul that's the right thing to do. I spend
Speaker 4: a ton of time in the Palestinian areas. I think
Speaker 4: I've been to every city in the West Bank, I
Speaker 4: work with Palestinian intelligence and I think the Israeli practices
Speaker 4: in the West Bank are imhorrent, but that's not where
Speaker 4: Israel is right now. So it's just the idea of that.
Speaker 4: I think the national security media, uh, you know, it
Speaker 4: doesn't doesn't do enough kind of field reporting. You have
Speaker 4: to go to these areas. And and it goes back
Speaker 4: to my time at c i A. You know, one
Speaker 4: of the one of the things that we did, uh
Speaker 4: is that when when when senior officers will come back
Speaker 4: from the field, often they'd go down see the president
Speaker 4: and so we you know, we take you know, chief
Speaker 4: of stations from all across uh, you know, the land,
Speaker 4: and and because the president wants to hear from the
Speaker 4: guy or the girl on the ground, not from the analysts,
Speaker 4: not from the policymakers, uh, but from from from someone
Speaker 4: who has actually you know, been on the ground in
Speaker 4: a certain area. And that to me is invaluable. And
Speaker 4: I think that I wish the national security media would
Speaker 4: do the same. So that was I've been pondering that
Speaker 4: recently when uh, you know, when I when I kind
Speaker 4: of I mean, I you know, I of course obsessively
Speaker 4: follow you know, everything, whether I read the journal, Wall
Speaker 4: Street Journal, New York Times, watching post. I will painfully
Speaker 4: watch Fox News sometimes. Sorry, that's my uh, I have
Speaker 4: to do that as well as CNN and MSNBC and
Speaker 4: and so so. Uh. But nobody really does the hard
Speaker 4: work and you get out there and and and go
Speaker 4: to regions and talk to people, and that's how you
Speaker 4: really understand things. That's a really good point, I think.
Speaker 2: And you see that in Israel, but you saw it
Speaker 2: in Ukraine to an extent too. You know, the journalists
Speaker 2: who went beyond ef there were very few because they
Speaker 2: thought that they could get the story via WhatsApp or
Speaker 2: signal local. I think, you know, at the same time,
Speaker 2: there is a handful there are a handful Wall Street
Speaker 2: journals where you know has a has a coterie of them,
Speaker 2: and New York Times be fair, and of journalists who
Speaker 2: really you know, guys like Eric Schmidt with the New
Speaker 2: York Times, who really do root out the story. And
Speaker 2: but that's I think that's a that's a really fair
Speaker 2: point in your comments for my part of absolutely accurate
Speaker 2: and so sorry, go ahead, mam.
Speaker 4: And and I think the you know, uh kind of
Speaker 4: the last piece is uh is I would love I
Speaker 4: don't even know if there's going to be a debate UH,
Speaker 4: but if in the in the nex in the present,
Speaker 4: you know, I guess there's one schedule for early September.
Speaker 4: And I know Americans don't vote on foreign policy, but
Speaker 4: I would love to see foreign policy covered in the
Speaker 4: in the debate between Harris and UH and Trump if
Speaker 4: it happens, because I think it, you know, again, that's
Speaker 4: my world, and I think that there could be some
Speaker 4: profound differences that should be kind of discussed.
Speaker 2: I would be really interested in kind of a to
Speaker 2: see a comparative poll of how many, you know, maybe
Speaker 2: compared to two decades and then full decades ago, how
Speaker 2: many Americans really are interested in foreign policy, because when
Speaker 2: we do get to foreign policy and debates, it's the
Speaker 2: level of debate drops to kind of middle grade, middle
Speaker 2: school level. You know, it's then bad us good, there's
Speaker 2: you know, it's a very and for the most pop
Speaker 2: candidates don't have a good understanding of debates.
Speaker 4: It makes me laugh when we see candidates who not laugh.
Speaker 4: That's not fair.
Speaker 2: I'm glad to see candidates who are veterans, but it
Speaker 2: does make me laugh when there's an assumption that because
Speaker 2: someone's a veteran, they must know about foreign policy, right
Speaker 2: because they've been on the pointy end of it.
Speaker 4: But we let me add one quick thing for the listeners,
Speaker 4: and I think this is this is an inspirational thing.
Speaker 4: You know, when you serve overseas the United States government,
Speaker 4: you know, oftentimes you're working at a US embassy. And
Speaker 4: I always believed, you know, I would. You know, I
Speaker 4: remember walking down the street when I was serving in Damascus,
Speaker 4: and you know, at a time where the US well
Speaker 4: we don't have embassy there anymore, but the US Syrian
Speaker 4: relationship was in the toilet and I would walk down
Speaker 4: at night, I'd see the American flag there. It was flying,
Speaker 4: you know, silhouetted. You know, it's dark in night, but
Speaker 4: the lights on the flag, and it meant something to me,
Speaker 4: but it also meant something to ordinary Syrians. And here's
Speaker 4: my point. Every US embassy there is a line outside
Speaker 4: the consular section that sometimes runs around the corner. And
Speaker 4: that's because America is still seen as a bright, shining
Speaker 4: city on the hill, you know, and with in terms
Speaker 4: of economic liberalism political and this is not liberal vers conservative.
Speaker 4: This is economic freedoms, political freedoms. You know what we
Speaker 4: stand for. That's really important for this to continue, that
Speaker 4: America has to be seen in that light. And so
Speaker 4: you know, to me that was one of the inspiring
Speaker 4: things about serving overseas, uh is is that America stood
Speaker 4: for something that is what we have done in Ukraine.
Speaker 4: Uh But and I guess my worry is I wonder
Speaker 4: if that will continue with kind of our political divisions.
Speaker 4: That's something that that concerns me.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Great, great points to ponder.
Speaker 3: Mark.
Speaker 4: We need to have you on again before this long
Speaker 4: long break anytime.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're one of our you one of our close friends.
Speaker 2: I don't know how you feel about that that.
Speaker 4: I'm come on, I love it. I need some I
Speaker 4: need some bling though. Are you guys doing any like
Speaker 4: T shirts or bugs or anything like that. You got
Speaker 4: to send me some stuff.
Speaker 3: I'll get it done. I'll get it done three to
Speaker 3: six months.
Speaker 4: And I've lost a little weight now. I just I
Speaker 4: dropped twenty pounds, thank god.
Speaker 2: Nice bad So we are having problems silk screening these
Speaker 2: image on the on the back of off switch.
Speaker 4: I will walk around with these image on a T
Speaker 4: shirt anytime.
Speaker 7: Don't say that because I will send it to you.
Speaker 7: I will send you a T shirt mark where can
Speaker 7: they find you?
Speaker 2: So?
Speaker 4: Fortunately or unfortunately. On Twitter at m Polymer, I tweet
Speaker 4: mostly as dnos about the Red Sox, but a lot
Speaker 4: of stuff about politics, a lot of stuff mostly about
Speaker 4: foreign policy. You know. One of the things that I
Speaker 4: that I did was and it's hurt me. But I
Speaker 4: know my my kind of as a as a as
Speaker 4: an old national security centrist, I you know, my political
Speaker 4: views are pretty well known, and so people get pissed
Speaker 4: at me sometimes about that. But I'm on Twitter. I'm
Speaker 4: all on LinkedIn, which I think has gone kind of crazy.
Speaker 4: That's a little, there's there's a little there's a lot
Speaker 4: of weird shit on LinkedIn now, people doing stuff and uh,
Speaker 4: what do you mean that's weird shit on LinkedIn. I
Speaker 4: haven't noticed that it's gotten too political. I mean, I
Speaker 4: you know, I it's to me. People are putting on
Speaker 4: LinkedIn what they used to put on on Twitter, and
Speaker 4: I don't like that LinkedIn as it was a freaking
Speaker 4: business thing in the past, or at least you know,
Speaker 4: a place for adults to discuss things. Right. Uh, let's see,
Speaker 4: I'm on MSNBC all the time, I'm on a couple
Speaker 4: of times a week. So if you they have me
Speaker 4: on at at five am these days on uh and
Speaker 4: so that's early, but it's good. I get up early.
Speaker 4: I'm the early riser. I come back, I get the
Speaker 4: rest of my day and uh and so yeah, so
Speaker 4: uh so it's I've been I've been busy enough and
Speaker 4: uh got to make it up to New York City
Speaker 4: again sometimes soon. I just was up there. This is
Speaker 4: We talked about this before the show. I took my
Speaker 4: son to see slipknot a couple of days ago. I'm
Speaker 4: still a fifty five years old. I'm still a crazy
Speaker 4: heavy metal fan. So D was trying to get me
Speaker 4: to come into studio, but I said, now, I think
Speaker 4: we're gonna be out too late and banging our heads
Speaker 4: against the wall.
Speaker 3: Also, you have your podcast, too above average intelligence.
Speaker 4: A podcast above average intelligence.
Speaker 3: That's what you're going to bring over soon to the
Speaker 3: team House network.
Speaker 4: Don't say that and uh uh and that's been that's
Speaker 4: been fun. It's you know, it's a kind of a
Speaker 4: different format. It's a quick thirty forty minutes where I
Speaker 4: just you know, can can chat about stuff. But I
Speaker 4: make fun of myself on that as well, because usually
Speaker 4: we kind of devolve into my drinking habits at the
Speaker 4: Vienna n Or or my love of heavy metal in
Speaker 4: the Red Sox and so a little bit of national
Speaker 4: security you're in there.
Speaker 3: But it's a you have some great guests on it too,
Speaker 3: it's a great podcast.
Speaker 4: Well I'm not, and I'm trying to feed them to
Speaker 4: you guys as well.
Speaker 7: So I should have Andy Milburn or Jason Lyons on it.
Speaker 7: I would love or Jack Murphy or Sean Taylor. See
Speaker 7: how this works, guys, You see how this works.
Speaker 4: It's fun doing that.
Speaker 3: People help people.
Speaker 4: Yeah, no, these and and you know it's well that's
Speaker 4: you know, it's fun just having a chat with kind
Speaker 4: of old friends.
Speaker 3: So I like that.
Speaker 4: And the other thing too, is I mean, do you're
Speaker 4: gut on the metrics? I have no fucking idea. How
Speaker 4: many people listen to these things?
Speaker 3: They don't tell.
Speaker 4: I just I sort of pay attention. I don't and
Speaker 4: I don't know. I mean. The one thing and for
Speaker 4: everyone here on this show understands this, when you get
Speaker 4: into this kind of space, you got to have thick skin.
Speaker 4: You know, there are and it's been hard because you
Speaker 4: kind of put your whole life out there. Yeah, and
Speaker 4: if you want to kind of jump into the arena,
Speaker 4: there's going to be you know, flip a coin, fifty
Speaker 4: percent of the people are going to think you're an asshole.
Speaker 4: And you know, one of the things a good buddy
Speaker 4: of mine is uh is Dan Hoffman, you know, a
Speaker 4: former CIA station chief in Moscow. He's the Fox News
Speaker 4: Intel correspondent National Scurity Howls, And he always tells me
Speaker 4: he is like, He's like, man, I wish I could
Speaker 4: do what you do because you just say whatever the
Speaker 4: fuck's on your mind. And but there's a price to
Speaker 4: pay for that, and so some people don't like it.
Speaker 4: But it's a if you jump in the arena, this
Speaker 4: is what you get.
Speaker 6: Which is why I am not on Twitter because I
Speaker 6: will fight. Which is why I'm not on Twitter because
Speaker 6: I will fight everyone.
Speaker 5: Oh.
Speaker 4: I was called I was called you guys will love this.
Speaker 4: Someone said you're in this lomist communist. She called me
Speaker 4: that the other day and I was like, I said,
Speaker 4: that's awesome. That's why I actually wrote back. I was like,
Speaker 4: that is a good one. I don't know what that means,
Speaker 4: but I'm going to use that. You know, I've got
Speaker 4: used to. I mean, I don't mind the the insults
Speaker 4: like that. What still bugs me and I've got to
Speaker 4: stop it.
Speaker 2: Our accusations are lying, you know, So I don't I
Speaker 2: don't mind people call me an asshole or anything. But
Speaker 2: I'll give you you know, just recently, someone questioned on
Speaker 2: D on that podcast when I said, hey, we had
Speaker 2: hotels hit by missiles four times, and some guys like
Speaker 2: that's impossible. You know, who the fuck else remembers that?
Speaker 2: And actually it was more than that. You know, it
Speaker 2: was four times we know of for sure.
Speaker 4: While we were in those hotels.
Speaker 2: But for some reason that I shouldn't tell people this
Speaker 2: because now Evan's gonna accuse me of lying for some reason.
Speaker 4: That really pissed me off. It pissed me off for
Speaker 4: a whole I don't know hour and then. But you're right, Yeah,
Speaker 4: you've got to evolve beyond that.
Speaker 2: I mean, think about think about all the shit that's
Speaker 2: flying around now about you know, the titans of social media,
Speaker 2: you know, the seals. I mean, we we can only aspire.
Speaker 2: We are We're just grasshoppers at their feet when it
Speaker 2: comes to media propagation.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 2: So, you know a guy like Jock and this is
Speaker 2: not a hit on Jocko. I mean, he's done very well,
Speaker 2: good on him, But even a guy like him with
Speaker 2: his following also has a you know, has a determined
Speaker 2: counter following with people from apart.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 7: Well, I mean we've had on the Team House, we
Speaker 7: had a former seal that was in that world, never
Speaker 7: worked with Jocko, that has had some pretty damning accusations
Speaker 7: towards him.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, yeah, no, this and this is not you know,
Speaker 4: just general.
Speaker 2: I'm just saying, yeah, so, you know, but but the
Speaker 2: attacks came from the guy's own community, you know, and
Speaker 2: that is particularly concerning. I don't mind attacks coming from
Speaker 2: the GP general public, you know, I mean, that's that's
Speaker 2: part of the game. And and of course I'm always
Speaker 2: going to be attacked by a few Marines, and I
Speaker 2: discount them.
Speaker 4: By saying they're not real marines.
Speaker 2: But you know, when you're getting at tanked by a
Speaker 2: substantive part of your community, then that is probably a concern.
Speaker 2: Right Yeah, that's happening even among seals who who you know,
Speaker 2: who like doing who you know, they tear each them
Speaker 2: like a group of piranha, you know, whenever one of
Speaker 2: them goes to bathe they won't converge on him.
Speaker 4: But all right, so here's my theory on this as
Speaker 4: as we're going to kind of start rambling down the road,
Speaker 4: but this is, this is this is a good one.
Speaker 4: I like that. I was just talking about this the
Speaker 4: other day with with with some folks, and I really
Speaker 4: believe this, honestly. Is that you know, in this in
Speaker 4: this strange world that we inhabited and we and I
Speaker 4: we don't anymore. And I think it's healthy. So what's
Speaker 4: the personality trait? And I know this CIA recruits a
Speaker 4: certain personality trait and that's narcissistic sociopaths and so and so.
Speaker 4: On the one hand, it can be incredibly effective if
Speaker 4: you're running a surveillance detection route alone carrying two hundred
Speaker 4: thousand dollars in the backstreets of you know, Baghdad or
Speaker 4: Condohart or or Damascus, and you have to you have
Speaker 4: to determine are you surveillance free? You have an asset
Speaker 4: meeting all these things where you're this incredible, you have
Speaker 4: this incredible capacity to operate on your own. That makes
Speaker 4: you a really kind of shitty teammate later on, Uh,
Speaker 4: that affects that has nothing to do with it on
Speaker 4: how you can manage, and it promotes kind of a
Speaker 4: zero sum uh mentality. And so that was always my
Speaker 4: kind of my issue at CIA. And so you know,
Speaker 4: ultimately my success now in the media and I don't
Speaker 4: call it success by the way, I'm just out there talking.
Speaker 4: Trust me, I don't make any fucking money. Uh, it's
Speaker 4: very everybody pays very leaky. We pay d we pay
Speaker 4: D there on this. That's right and so so. But
Speaker 4: but if you know, but you're you know, uh, the
Speaker 4: there is there is no way that people get up
Speaker 4: in the morning a lot of our former colleagues and
Speaker 4: are happy for your success. I'm sorry, that's just not
Speaker 4: the And but it's because this weird I think, personality
Speaker 4: trait and on on, you know, how we recruit folks
Speaker 4: into the organization, And to me, that is just I've
Speaker 4: never kind of figured out how to crack that nut.
Speaker 4: I think ultimately one of the things that that we
Speaker 4: might want to do, and I'm not going to speak
Speaker 4: for the Special Operations world, is maybe we're actually recruiting
Speaker 4: the wrong people. Maybe those you know, maybe you don't
Speaker 4: need that kind of sociopathic narcissist because Ultimately, it leads
Speaker 4: to that notion of like, hey, if you have success,
Speaker 4: that means I'm failing. It's a zero. So I don't
Speaker 4: know if you found that in your old world.
Speaker 2: I certainly well one hundred percent, you know, I mean,
Speaker 2: the story of the Mozart group became that, you know,
Speaker 2: it was you know, as soon as as soon as
Speaker 2: we were dealing with our own not you know, bad
Speaker 2: actor within the organization. Of course, a lot of people
Speaker 2: want to jump on the bandwagon or simply cut instead.
Speaker 2: You know, the people would be fighting on that same
Speaker 2: bad wagon. And I agree with you one hundred percent.
Speaker 2: A lot of those guys were former military and it's
Speaker 2: made me think a hard over the over the last
Speaker 2: few years about how we select people within the military.
Speaker 2: So I'm very you know, I know this is a
Speaker 2: whole different program, but I can only speak about my community,
Speaker 2: and I think, no, we don't do a great job ultimately,
Speaker 2: because we still get too many officers who are risk averse,
Speaker 2: who are bureaucrats and are driven by very selfish motives.
Speaker 2: You know, that comes down to careerism, and we see
Speaker 2: it even in the rink or even though we love
Speaker 2: pretending that we are exempt from that right, as you know.
Speaker 2: And I think egotism narcissism are part of that. But
Speaker 2: I think, to me, certainly within the military, the biggest part,
Speaker 2: and I can't put my finger on it, is this
Speaker 2: kind of pureaucratic mentality that people use time and time
Speaker 2: again to persuade them into doing nothing. That's on one side,
Speaker 2: and then on the other side you've got the other
Speaker 2: extreme within the soft community of people who think that
Speaker 2: the rules don't apply to then they you know, hey,
Speaker 2: we are super talented, we pay a heavy price to us.
Speaker 2: The rules don't quite apply the same way. In the
Speaker 2: words of the Seal Master Chief, the boys just need
Speaker 2: to blow seal steams. So, you know, this mistake and
Speaker 2: feeling that which has destroyed us in the sock, and
Speaker 2: what's hurt us in the soft community, you know, because
Speaker 2: of all the bad publicity in their turns around it.
Speaker 2: So I do think about that line. I think you're
Speaker 2: onto something, and I'm not sure what the answer is,
Speaker 2: except that we do need to instead of patting ourselves
Speaker 2: on the back, we need to really look at the
Speaker 2: people that we have in these positions, especially as warfare
Speaker 2: of ops, right, and you need a far more cerebral guy.
Speaker 2: You need a guy who is just as tough, but
Speaker 2: he needs to be cerebral. And in the Marine Corps, wherefore.
Speaker 4: We have not done that.
Speaker 2: We have too many idiots and among our officers. I
Speaker 2: know there are those on this show who will say
Speaker 2: all our officers are idiots. I would say no, for
Speaker 2: the most part, most of our officers are great. But
Speaker 2: we still have too many guys who do not belong
Speaker 2: in uniform. Okay, I'm sorry, I didn't need to, but
Speaker 2: I'm great. Yeah, absolutely, you know it matters to us
Speaker 2: because we spent all our adult lives in an institution,
Speaker 2: right the agency, even rank hole.
Speaker 4: It's my family and it's your identity. I mean, it's
Speaker 4: just yeah, twenty six years my life was I and.
Speaker 2: I take it personally when I when when I see
Speaker 2: fun them marine Worlds is doing bad things. So I
Speaker 2: don't mean just being incompetent, but I mean, you know,
Speaker 2: just anyway enough just not being marine.
Speaker 7: What kind of personality would fit besides like that type
Speaker 7: a narcissist socio.
Speaker 4: Let me let me flip. Let me just tell you
Speaker 4: a story. This is a great story, so so I
Speaker 4: have to sanitize this.
Speaker 2: So uh uh.
Speaker 4: A long long time ago. I handled one of our
Speaker 4: top penetrations of a Middle Eastern country. He was an
Speaker 4: intell intelligence officer. He was in line to be uh uh.
Speaker 4: You know they're within their their leadership ranks. Uh And
Speaker 4: one of the things and and I didn't. I was
Speaker 4: not the recruiting officer. I was the handling officer. And
Speaker 4: so one of the things you do when you take
Speaker 4: over a case. You know, Jason knows this is is
Speaker 4: you know you're gonna you're gonna sit down with the
Speaker 4: ass the asset and you kind of have to go
Speaker 4: over the history of the case. But I wanted to
Speaker 4: get into his head, like, you know, why did he
Speaker 4: why did he end up? And he and he volunteered
Speaker 4: and and the mechanics of of when he approached us,
Speaker 4: and he said, he goes, well, look, he said, I
Speaker 4: you know, I was. I was. I was watching at
Speaker 4: every diplomatic reception how Cio offered, how US diplomats were reacting. Goes,
Speaker 4: I could pick all of you guys out and gals out.
Speaker 4: And I was guilty this too. He goes. You know,
Speaker 4: you were the glad handler. You wanted to be the
Speaker 4: life of the party. You know, we're gonna we're gonna
Speaker 4: have uh, Jason's gonna laugh. We're gonna you're gonna be
Speaker 4: the one running like the you know, the scotch tasting
Speaker 4: at the military attest circuit or you know, organizing the
Speaker 4: soccer games or you know, you know, but you are
Speaker 4: the life of the party. Kind of this domineering America.
Speaker 4: And he said, and then I looked in the corner
Speaker 4: of the room and I saw some guy. You know,
Speaker 4: he showed up to every reception, but he didn't say
Speaker 4: a word, and he and so he goes. I said
Speaker 4: to myself that not only is a CIA officer not when,
Speaker 4: by the way, that everyone else in there is as well.
Speaker 4: But they're just kind of these type a American ants,
Speaker 4: he said. But that guy's going to keep me alive.
Speaker 4: I want an introvert. I want someone who is is
Speaker 4: is you can't even tell. Nobody even knows him, knows
Speaker 4: his name. And so that's the person he ended up
Speaker 4: walking up to one day and said, I'm from so
Speaker 4: and so country, you know, I'd like to talk to
Speaker 4: you privately. And I remember in the in the station bullpen,
Speaker 4: Everyone's like, well, that motherfucker didn't do anything that got you.
Speaker 4: It was a volunteer, and I was like, thinking about
Speaker 4: it later, I was like, actually, no, he did everything right.
Speaker 4: But he was an introvert, so you don't have to
Speaker 4: be this kind of type a asshole. And so you know,
Speaker 4: so I you know, I've thought about that over the years,
Speaker 4: and so I would I would think that, you know,
Speaker 4: kind of the used car salesman, maybe that's not the
Speaker 4: uh the best, uh the best model we have for
Speaker 4: an intelligence officer.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 6: The analogy that a mentor told me was the sticker
Speaker 6: on the bumper sticker on the car. Said, if there's
Speaker 6: an accident, a crime, whatever it is, you know, police
Speaker 6: are going to show up, they're going to ask questions,
Speaker 6: and someone's going to say, you know, oh, the thing
Speaker 6: I remember about that car that sped away, they had
Speaker 6: a bumper sticker on the back of their car. And
Speaker 6: he told me, if you go out in the parking lot,
Speaker 6: you look at my car. I have no bumper stickers
Speaker 6: because I want to be the gray man. I want
Speaker 6: to be the guy who people are like, I think
Speaker 6: it was a blue car, but you know there were
Speaker 6: no distinguishing marks. So I've always carried that with me,
Speaker 6: you know, to always be I don't want to be
Speaker 6: the bumper sticker on the car. It's just like with
Speaker 6: people who I've had this conversation with people that I
Speaker 6: are big two A guys, which I'm I'm fine, I'm
Speaker 6: proponent of the Second Amendment, but they're always screaming a
Speaker 6: lot of them are screaming about their guns being taken.
Speaker 6: And just like the mentor, my mentor was telling me,
Speaker 6: you know, if you are so adamant that they're coming
Speaker 6: for your guns, why do you have all these gun
Speaker 6: stickers all over your cars. You're the first person that
Speaker 6: they're going to look for. So it kind of goes
Speaker 6: to what that asset was saying.
Speaker 2: You know, I've always tried to picture what that's going
Speaker 2: to look like when they come for our guns and blacks.
Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly, the guy, Yeah, I shouldn't actually me.
Speaker 5: It's going to be your local shriff that you know
Speaker 5: it is going to show up at your door.
Speaker 6: That's what it's going to be. But yeah, so it's
Speaker 6: pretty uh, pretty cool analogy. But yeah, you just and
Speaker 6: that's how I tried to my short career at the agency.
Speaker 5: I tried to be that.
Speaker 6: Cliche gray man. Well, in my case would be dark gray,
Speaker 6: but that gray man, you know, as much as possible.
Speaker 4: That's I think that's that's that's great advice that you
Speaker 4: that you got. And and I guess the answer probably
Speaker 4: is that, you know, why do we have to have
Speaker 4: this kind of personality test? You know, why why are
Speaker 4: we why are we recruiting narcissists sociopaths as our intelligence officers?
Speaker 4: Maybe but in you know, maybe maybe we should actually
Speaker 4: look at because also I would argue that and the
Speaker 4: agency is horrible leadership. We don't teach leadership, you know, uh,
Speaker 4: you know, if you guys both know this. If you're
Speaker 4: in the military, have a twenty year career, probably what
Speaker 4: spent one or two one year assignments at some kind
Speaker 4: of leadership school. The agency we have three one week
Speaker 4: classes in your twenty years and so but and and
Speaker 4: all the attributes that make you a great case officer
Speaker 4: again make you a terrible leader because you have to
Speaker 4: make that switch from from line officer to manager where
Speaker 4: it's not about you anymore, it's about all the people
Speaker 4: under you. And people have a terrible time doing that.
Speaker 4: So when was that few when you took over at
Speaker 4: the coast, I mean.
Speaker 2: No, no, No.
Speaker 4: Two thousand and three was my first management job. I
Speaker 4: was Chief of Operations in Kuwait and I sucked. I
Speaker 4: was fucking terrible. I'd come off a tour in a
Speaker 4: rock where I received the Distinguished Intelligence Medal, the agency's
Speaker 4: second highest war so I thought I was the baddest
Speaker 4: person on the planet, and all of a sudden, I'm
Speaker 4: managing a whole bunch of folks thinking I'm still the
Speaker 4: baddest person in the world, not realizing it's all about them,
Speaker 4: not about me. And I look back at my decisions
Speaker 4: and how I acted, and it was abominable, and I
Speaker 4: got better.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, But the point is you're looking back and
Speaker 2: saying that, right, if they really were abominable, you were
Speaker 2: a bad leader, you wouldn't be saying that.
Speaker 4: You wouldn't be because those guys just don't self for
Speaker 4: a flank. Look at a cable you wrote twenty years ago. Uh,
Speaker 4: if one can, and you know how much it's it's
Speaker 4: the use of the first person evaporates very you know,
Speaker 4: and because again it's the and the at the end
Speaker 4: of the you know, my last my last couple of jobs,
Speaker 4: I mean my last job when I was the off
Speaker 4: chief over Europe in eur Asia. You know, technically I
Speaker 4: had probably a thousand, two thousand people working for me.
Speaker 4: But what did I want? I wanted everybody there smarter
Speaker 4: than me. I never would have said that, you know,
Speaker 4: in two thousand and three in my first management job,
Speaker 4: but I wanted to be the dumbest person in the
Speaker 4: room I could. I'll be I'll be your leader. I
Speaker 4: have the experience to make decisions. I want to surround
Speaker 4: myself with greatness. That is so against the grain of
Speaker 4: a CIA case officer. It's completely not what you want
Speaker 4: at all, because you are kind of indoctrinated to be
Speaker 4: this badass and to work hard.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 4: We had this thing. If they're not working hard, oh
Speaker 4: that's the whole right, right, So I could talk for
Speaker 4: hours on this issue. We're not doing activity I made.
Speaker 4: I I literally went out I remember one time to
Speaker 4: a stay. I got in trouble for this, uh and
Speaker 4: I was wrong. I went out to a station as
Speaker 4: a manager. The station wasn't working hard enough, and I
Speaker 4: basically said, you know, you know, everyone can kind of
Speaker 4: make their reservations to go home. I want you guys
Speaker 4: out seven nights a week and at the end of
Speaker 4: your tour. I want you crawling up the stairs of
Speaker 4: the of the plane. I thought I was given a
Speaker 4: Raw Ross speech and it was pretty stupid, because especially
Speaker 4: in places where people are coming off of war zone
Speaker 4: tours or exhausted, you do have to have this work
Speaker 4: life balance. I mean the notion for even now I
Speaker 4: have disagreements with former colleagues at c I as a
Speaker 4: case offic you got to work at night, That's fine,
Speaker 4: got it. But you know what you can do. You
Speaker 4: can go home for dinner, see your family, you know,
Speaker 4: and and and you have to be able to take care.
Speaker 4: We need time in the gym. You know, everyone should
Speaker 4: be working out. I mean, so there's you know, it's
Speaker 4: it's I learned a good buddy of mine. It was
Speaker 4: a former UH command sergeant major of UH. It'll get
Speaker 4: mad at me, but of Delta, Rob Lively. I don't
Speaker 4: know if you guys know Raw. He's a he's a
Speaker 4: great guy. UH and him and I have gone down
Speaker 4: to the Philly Police Department to teach them leadership stuff
Speaker 4: to and especially some of the Philly SWAT units and
Speaker 4: UH and and Rob has a thing he calls it
Speaker 4: the Combat Leadership chassis. And I was like that's the
Speaker 4: first and I stole it immediately, just like you guys
Speaker 4: can poach my guests and I'll have you guys on
Speaker 4: my show. Like you hear something good? But he said,
Speaker 4: he goes. You know, you get up in the morning,
Speaker 4: you know, is everything working? Hydrate? This is this is
Speaker 4: basic hydration, nutrition, exercise, you know, these are your controllables.
Speaker 4: No one taught me that at CIA. It was more
Speaker 4: of like, hey, how much did we fucking drink last night?
Speaker 4: And I gotta go I go out again tonight. But
Speaker 4: it's it's it's sleep hygiene. And so you know, when
Speaker 4: you no one ever taught me that. I think that's
Speaker 4: really important. And so uh, you know, I just I've
Speaker 4: I've kind of evolved. And as well, last point is
Speaker 4: whatever it is?
Speaker 5: What is it?
Speaker 4: Gen z? The new generation now they are not going
Speaker 4: to tolerate bullshit from US as leaders. And so you
Speaker 4: know what happens at CIA if someone uh you know
Speaker 4: has a US who was going to work them to
Speaker 4: death and doesn't allow them to take care of themselves,
Speaker 4: they're going to quit. And and right when I left CI,
Speaker 4: I did a study of of why people at the
Speaker 4: five year mark were quitting and it was it was
Speaker 4: like ninety percent because they had shitty first line managers.
Speaker 4: So that's an indictment.
Speaker 2: Yeah, But I mean that's feedbacks they get right, that
Speaker 2: it's serious. That's the thing that bothers me sometimes about surveys.
Speaker 2: They used to inflict discipline or imposed discipline on individual commanders,
Speaker 2: but they're not necessarily used to fix systemic problems, which
Speaker 2: you're talking about. You know.
Speaker 4: I once had three sixty feedback. They said Mark thinks
Speaker 4: he's a lot smarter than he really is. And I
Speaker 4: was horrified. When I thought about that a lot. I
Speaker 4: was like, yeah, maybe that's true, and I you know,
Speaker 4: you know, I kind of took that to heart. It
Speaker 4: was that's I mean, that's that's the that's the uh,
Speaker 4: that's the pious lie that we tell usselves. Especially I
Speaker 4: think the biggest thing is humility, Like gotta be humble
Speaker 4: as a as a leader, especially with kind of the
Speaker 4: stuff we were doing.
Speaker 3: So I mean.
Speaker 7: That that that assignment and kuwait, when at what point
Speaker 7: in your career did you realize, oh shit, I wasn't
Speaker 7: doing like I don't think I was doing the right thing,
Speaker 7: or I wasn't a great leader there or whatever, like
Speaker 7: the was it early on or was it like with
Speaker 7: benefit of hindsight and experience.
Speaker 4: Like but probably a combination of things, but certainly looking
Speaker 4: back mostly how I okay, so this is this is
Speaker 4: a really important point. I was having a very hard
Speaker 4: time making the transition from one of the boys and
Speaker 4: gals in the back to leader. And so, you know,
Speaker 4: so what does that mean? It means that at the
Speaker 4: marine house at midnight, go fucking home. If you're a manager, sorry,
Speaker 4: nothing happens at a marine house after midnight. That's good.
Speaker 4: If you're supervising your officers, they can they can do
Speaker 4: whatever the hell they want. But you know, it's things
Speaker 4: like that you can't. And so I'm not their friend anymore,
Speaker 4: just not and so and and in in a place
Speaker 4: like that, I was still too close to the officers
Speaker 4: who then you end up having to possibly discipline And
Speaker 4: so I think about you know, and and that that's
Speaker 4: a that's a struggle that that case officers have, or
Speaker 4: any managers probably have. And from having this intense you know,
Speaker 4: uh environment where you're right next to someone to all
Speaker 4: of a sudden to them to them being their boss.
Speaker 4: Because guess what you want to do? You want to
Speaker 4: be liked. Yeah, you want to be a leader. That's
Speaker 4: not that's really not part of the whole fucking leadership equation.
Speaker 4: Can't give a shit about that. And uh and so
Speaker 4: that I really that's the thing I really struggled on.
Speaker 4: And eventually, you know, you get better at it, and
Speaker 4: you get better because you screw things up.
Speaker 2: You get better because you're paying attention and you're willing
Speaker 2: to and you're honest with yourself. Yeah right, That's why
Speaker 2: we all know four stars and three star generals who've
Speaker 2: had all the experience in the world but are still
Speaker 2: shitty leaders because they haven't inflected on that experience.
Speaker 4: You know, it's all.
Speaker 2: They've used it all to bolster their image of themselves,
Speaker 2: which is positive.
Speaker 4: The one thing when I've gone and you know, I
Speaker 4: wrote a book on leadership, when I talked about it
Speaker 4: and I try and of course, and so you know,
Speaker 4: I remember I got it. It was actually pretty funny.
Speaker 4: I got it from a very senior former agency officer.
Speaker 5: I really like.
Speaker 4: He sent me a text one time he said, hey,
Speaker 4: can you teach me some leadership with a little smiley face.
Speaker 4: But the point I'm making is that not that I
Speaker 4: was a great leader at all. It's just I'm just trying.
Speaker 4: These are just lessons on leadership that I found mostly
Speaker 4: from me screwing up and I made a ton of mistakes.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 4: And so it's a it's I think that that is
Speaker 4: where it's important to to, you know, to have that
Speaker 4: kind of mentality of of you know, of of understanding,
Speaker 4: you know, being humble and uh and you know it's
Speaker 4: a it's a it's a really tough business. I mean
Speaker 4: that you know, this is not you know, we're not
Speaker 4: we're not worrying about you know, whether your sales of
Speaker 4: Coca cola went up and down. There's a lot of
Speaker 4: life and dust stuff and so. But but being I
Speaker 4: think the biggest, the two biggest best traits for intelligence
Speaker 4: officer to be humble and then to be curious. It's
Speaker 4: don't like that Ted That's a Ted Lasso thing. Be curious. Yeah,
Speaker 4: I like Ted Lass.
Speaker 3: All right, boys, this is great?
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 7: Andy Milburn, Colonel Andy Milliburn. His book is available. The
Speaker 7: link is in the description. You could find them on LinkedIn,
Speaker 7: get check out a substack. Everything will be in the description.
Speaker 7: All of marxlinks will also be a description.
Speaker 2: Can I say something real quick? Absolutely very quick about substack.
Speaker 2: Hey guys, please read well, don't check out and if
Speaker 2: you want to read it. But I wrote a I
Speaker 2: wrote an article on just about to release actually about
Speaker 2: the worst year of my life, which was the lawsuit.
Speaker 2: De's familiar with the STORYSMDEO. I'm not going to go
Speaker 2: into it now, but I fought two lawsuits in the
Speaker 2: last two years, one and both on all accounts, both dismissed.
Speaker 2: But it was expensive and it was incredibly painful. And
Speaker 2: if I hadn't had the backing of a major media organization,
Speaker 2: I would have I would have been finished. I would
Speaker 2: have been done. And it's taught me how fragile the
Speaker 2: First Amendment is. But most of all, it's really talked
Speaker 2: about humility. It's brought me face the face with a
Speaker 2: type of fear that I never never knew during active duty,
Speaker 2: never knew facing death, fear of just losing everything, you know,
Speaker 2: my family, everything.
Speaker 4: That I built up.
Speaker 2: That's what I was facing last year, So you know
Speaker 2: the To me, the article is more interesting in that
Speaker 2: sense and scary and frightening than any of the stories
Speaker 2: I've told about combat. For what it's worth, and I'd
Speaker 2: love to get any feedback, positive feedback. Of course, I
Speaker 2: don't wanstn't.
Speaker 4: I will read that that's amazing. Wow. But I'm a
Speaker 4: better I'm a changed man and after that year and
Speaker 4: I'm you know, I like to think for the better.
Speaker 3: So you're welcome.
Speaker 4: It's not about me.
Speaker 3: No, no, no, it's great. No.
Speaker 4: I touched on it, that opportunity to do that.
Speaker 7: Yeah, we touched on it slightly on your last Team
Speaker 7: House episode, which is good, Marky.
Speaker 2: I'm an alleged rapist who sadly was a marine reservist,
Speaker 2: brought a lawsuit against me for going off from Ukraine
Speaker 2: going after him. By that, I mean I was asked
Speaker 2: to put out a description of him. He claimed that
Speaker 2: I was trying to get the Mozart group to assassinate him,
Speaker 2: which is at early day end of the war the Russians. Anyway,
Speaker 2: the lawsuit was a twenty million dollar lawsuit and it
Speaker 2: was a frightening year. Sure, very interesting things happen in
Speaker 2: that year, to include his lawyer having a total stroke and.
Speaker 4: First day in court.
Speaker 2: You know, there's weird acts of I won't say acts
Speaker 2: of God, but things I'm not going to go there,
Speaker 2: but weird things happening Anyway, I'm alive, I'm emerged, and
Speaker 2: i'm you know, and I won. But I'm a vastly poorer,
Speaker 2: vastly wiser person than I was.
Speaker 4: Hopefully adversity like that makes it stronger. I mean that's yeah,
Speaker 4: I'm not sure I do it all again. No agreed.
Speaker 3: Also, the Red Sox stink by the way they.
Speaker 4: When last night twelve to ten. It's painful to see.
Speaker 3: You have a schedule in the back, like get the
Speaker 3: white board.
Speaker 4: Out, going to Baltimore on Monday. So Sunday, I'm going
Speaker 4: to see the Red Sox on I think I might
Speaker 4: be up there over there's a there's a there's a
Speaker 4: counter terrorism conference September twelfth and thirteenth, and I think
Speaker 4: the Red Sox are playing the Yankees.
Speaker 3: So I'm through. Bro, Let's grab dinner.
Speaker 4: Yeah, gotta do it, gotta go. We went to Greek
Speaker 4: restaurant last time. No went to a Lebanese place. We
Speaker 4: got to go to your Greek.
Speaker 7: No, So we went to a Greek restaurant last time,
Speaker 7: but it wasn't my fam my families, but we can
Speaker 7: go to my families and hopefully it'll be fucking open.
Speaker 3: Now, to be open. Yeah, we can go. It's a
Speaker 3: lead Greek kitchen. If you're in Brooklyn, go check it out.
Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, me and Andy went, yeah, really really good.
Speaker 7: All right, boys, Patreon dot com slash the teamhouse. That's
Speaker 7: how you support the show. Don't forget to do that,
Speaker 7: and don't forget to like it. Subscribe and uh yeah
Speaker 7: thanks guys.
Speaker 4: Mike having you on. Thank you so much anytime. You
Speaker 4: all were great. Thanks so much,