On today's episode of the Your Mom's House Podcast, we have a special offer from Stamps where you can get a free digital scale, up to $55 in free postage, and a No-Risk Trial. We also talk about a new version of T2 Plus, Alpha Brain, which is a new and improved version of the popular T2+ that increases strength up to 36% faster than placebo. And we talk about how to get your life in order by starting a new workout program. If you like what you hear, please HIT SUBSCRIBE and get 10% off any and all supplements at Onnit.com. And if you use the code "ROGAN" at checkout, you get 90 days to try it out and get your money back. You don't have to return the product within 90 days. You have 90 days for the first 30 pills, and you get a 100% money back guarantee on any of the supplements that we sell. We got... all kinds of stuff. We have strength and conditioning equipment, kettlebells, chin-up bars, medicine balls, chin up bars, weight vests, and exercise DVDs, along with a whole bunch of other stuff you can use to get in shape! We got it all! We have all the equipment you need to get you in shape and keep your life on track and in control of your life! And we'll give you a discount code: ROGAN! to help you save 10% of your total bill! and get a discount on your first purchase. We'll be giving you 20% off your first month of your first pack! Thanks to Onnit ntNFT! we'll send you a free trial of Alpha Brain + Alpha Brain and T2+. I can't wait to hear back from you guys! I'll be back next week with more info on the next week's episode, so don't forget to check out Alpha Brain & T2 +! XOXO, Keith! - Tom Segura and Christina Pazitzky, your host of the podcast, Tom Segur, and I'll talk about that! . , and I'm looking forward to hearing from you! , I'll have you back in the next episode of Your Mom s House Podcast! (and you'll get a chance to hear from you soon! Tom Seguran, your mom's House podcast!
00:00:03.000This episode of the podcast is brought to you by Stamps.com.
00:00:07.000Stamps.com is a website that allows you to send things from your home using your home computer, your home printer, printing up official U.S. postage, never have to leave the house again to send things.
00:00:20.000If you go to Stamps.com, click on the old school microphone in the upper right-hand corner and enter in the code word JRE. You will get a $110 bonus offer, which includes a digital scale, up to $55 in free postage, and a no-risk trial.
00:00:36.000And what this means as far as what you have to do, if you have a home business or if you send things out of your office, It's a huge pain in the ass to have to send someone to go to the post office, weigh each individual package, print up postage for each individual package at the post office.
00:01:16.000If you go to stamps.com, before you do anything else, click on the microphone in the upper right-hand corner and enter in the code word JRE. Can't recommend them enough.
00:01:46.000Before you do anything, click on the upper right-hand corner microphone, the old-school microphone, and enter in the code word JRE. For your special offer.
00:01:55.000We're also brought to you by Onnit.com.
00:01:58.000That is O-N-N-I-T. At Onnit, we have a new version, a new and improved version of T +, along with a new study that came out about T +, that increases strength up to 36% faster than placebo.
00:02:13.000One of the things we try to do at Onnit.com, or one of the things we do do, is anything that we have that's controversial, first of all, we provide, if you click on any of the links for any of the supplements, click on the research page, everything is thoroughly researched and put on Onnit.com with references to all the tests that have been done on all the various supplements,
00:02:34.000double-blind, placebo-controlled tests on both Alpha Brain and now on T Plus and also all the tests that we didn't do that already exist on supplements like New Mood.
00:02:47.000All the research is available online and Onnit has a 100% money back guarantee on any of the supplements that we sell.
00:03:29.000If you're thinking about getting your life in order, we have strength and conditioning equipment, kettlebells, battle ropes, steel maces, steel clubs.
00:03:39.000Medicine balls, chin-up bars, weight vests, along with a lot of exercise DVDs, including the excellent Keith Weber Kettlebell Cardio Extreme Workout DVDs that I swear by.
00:05:38.000You were the former covert operations officer for the CIA? Yeah, I went in, I was recruited into the agency, and the CIA is divided into a handful of directorates.
00:05:50.000You've got the Directorate of Operations, which is pretty much what it sounds like.
00:05:53.000You've got the Directorate of Intelligence, which is where they put all the smart people, and they do all the reports writing.
00:05:59.000They take all the raw intelligences coming in from the field, And they put it into some usable form that can then be kicked out the door to the National Security Council, the White House.
00:06:08.000It's used by the other agencies in the intel community and primarily by the White House.
00:06:13.000So a lot of smart people sitting over there.
00:06:15.000Then they've got S&T, which is science and technology.
00:06:20.000I mean, they've developed in the agency over the years everything from the U2 to...
00:06:24.000You know, stealth technology, drone capability, a lot of the drone technology came right out of the agency.
00:06:30.000They've done a tremendous number of things right there in-house.
00:06:34.000And then we have the administrative logistics group, and they're incredibly important because they keep money, gear, and everything else flowing out to the field.
00:06:43.000What is the biggest misconception about the CIA? You being a guy who worked with them for years, I know that there's all sorts of wacky conspiracies out there about everything.
00:06:55.000Anything that there is where people don't have all the facts and information is going to be wacky conspiracies.
00:07:00.000Look, I know a bunch of wacky conspiracies just about the UFC. They're ridiculous.
00:07:04.000And me knowing the actual inside truth, I hear these things and I go, what the fuck are What are you talking about?
00:07:09.000Things that I'm supposed to say, the things that I had to do because, you know, the UFC made me or they said you have to say this, which is all 100% bullshit.
00:07:25.000It attracts this sort of thing, right?
00:07:26.000It attracts sort of the Byzantine theories and the conspiracy theories and all that.
00:07:29.000Because, again, there's a reason why you have secrets.
00:07:32.000There's a reason why you protect sources and methods.
00:07:34.000And so because you don't have transparency that people would like to see, they assume that you're out to fuck them over, you're out to screw the world.
00:08:45.000A lot of really great people, but the quote of hot chicks was less than I expected.
00:08:50.000You bring up an interesting point about being apolitical.
00:08:53.000Now, that's one thing that a lot of people worry about when it comes to organizations, that they may have more power, in fact, than the political governing body that controls the country.
00:09:05.000One of the big theories about the CIA was the CIA had Kennedy killed because Kennedy was trying to get rid of the CIA. Wasn't that one of the big ones?
00:10:15.000That part there, yeah, I can confirm that.
00:10:17.000But as far as the Kennedy assassination goes, again, it's one of those things, you could see why at the end of, I don't want to disappear down that rabbit hole, but you could see why at the end of that story, that episode when we talked to a lot of people, we did a lot of research, you could see why the theory still holds, the conspiracy still out there.
00:10:33.000What do you think happened with Kennedy?
00:10:36.000I think that once you get inside there, we got really good access into that, and that's part of what the show's about.
00:10:41.000But we had really good access into that window, that very spot where he took the shots.
00:10:45.000Now, he wasn't Lex Luthor, but he had enough training.
00:10:50.000And when you look at the distance involved, the line of sight, the weather conditions, the lighting conditions, the fact that he reconned that site beforehand because he worked there.
00:11:40.000Here's the other part that's a bit of a wild card.
00:11:43.000The Cuban Intel Service had a file, a massive file, on him, courtesy of the Russians.
00:11:50.000Of course, I mean, the Russians trained most of the Cuban Intel Service at that time, and they had provided a great deal of information because Oswald had been living in Russia for all that time.
00:11:58.000He married a Russian woman, you know, worked in a radio factory, and again, had a very disappointing experience.
00:12:03.000And the Russians were pretty much happy to get rid of him at that point, because he was, you know...
00:12:15.000There was an unexplained trip that he had taken down to Mexico City.
00:12:18.000So do I think that there's a potential that, probably not directed by the Cuban government, but probably in his mind thinking, this is how I do it.
00:12:31.000I think one of the things that bugs me about people, the way they look at the Kennedy assassination, is that it's either Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone, or it was a conspiracy and Lee Harvey Oswald wasn't a part of it.
00:12:43.000And my thoughts are always like, why would you assume that he wasn't a part of it just because people said there were shots from other directions?
00:12:50.000First of all, we all know that eyewitness accounts are some of the most unreliable accounts ever.
00:13:11.000Well, that's another, we'd go down that rabbit hole too, but the thing that drives me crazy about the Kennedy assassination too is when they show Lee Harvey, when they try to disprove it, like Jesse Ventura did a show where he tried to disprove it, he was holding a rifle in his arm,
00:13:26.000he was cocking it and firing it, but he was standing holding it, and I'm like, you got a windowsill.
00:13:32.000If you're trying to hit something accurately, why would you hold it in your arm?
00:14:29.000What bothers me about it, there's a bunch of things that bother me about it.
00:14:32.000The single bullet theory, without a doubt, bothers me.
00:14:34.000Because that doesn't make any sense at all.
00:14:36.000When you see that bullet showing up on Connelly's gurney, it's in pristine condition, it's supposed to have gone through two bodies, there's more, there's bullet particles, fragments that are in Connelly's body, they showed up on x-ray, they're not missing from that bullet.
00:14:49.000And the whole reason Arlen Spector concocted that in the first place was because They had to account for a bullet that hit a curb stone under the overpass.
00:17:31.000But, yeah, and it was, again, so I think the conspiracy things, going back to your original point, the agency is always sort of ground zero for people's conspiracies.
00:17:39.000Yeah, well, there's so many people involved in it, too.
00:17:42.000One of the things that I found completely fascinating about this whole thing with Petraeus is Petraeus got in trouble with the FBI, was investigating the CIA, and, you know, the whole thing with the emails.
00:17:57.000Like, That seems to me to be so crazy, that agencies investigate other agencies.
00:18:02.000Is there really competition between the CIA and the FBI? Well, you know what?
00:18:52.000But the idea was we were, you know, working together.
00:18:54.000And if you're out on the street, I mean, our natural response was, well, I thought we're working together because I don't want to get my ass caught out there if, you know, if we could tell them something that would make sense.
00:19:04.000But, you know, also at the same time, the Bureau was telling us about 50% of what they knew.
00:20:15.000The thing about it is, is it because everybody wants to take credit?
00:20:20.000Is it like the FBI wants to take credit for catching bad guys, and the CIA is going after the same people, and they're competing to reach the finish line first?
00:23:00.000But is there anybody who's gotten it right?
00:23:02.000Is there like any movie or anything that you've ever seen where you're like, that's pretty damn close.
00:23:07.000You know, there's some old-school ones.
00:23:09.000When you talk about straight-up tradecraft, when you're talking about old-school espionage, then things like Smiley's People, some of the old sort of BBC shows.
00:23:33.000The Good Shepherd, I thought, was very interesting.
00:23:34.000It kind of dragged on for a while, and honestly, who could believe that if you're married to Angelina Jolie, you're going to want to go away all the time.
00:23:43.000She's probably annoying after a while.
00:23:59.000They did a show, and full disclosure, I worked on the show from its inception called Spooks in the UK. And it was called MI5 over here in the States.
00:25:02.000The ones I have trouble with, where they throw a little something in, they try to make it look like they know what they're doing, and then you think, oh, for fuck's sake.
00:25:09.000Yeah, the Bourne series is more like a superhero show.
00:25:47.000The last one is fucking ridiculous, because he's with this chick as hot as the fucking sun, and she's fawning over him, and at the end of the scene, the end of the movie, they're sitting apart from each other.
00:25:57.000He saved her life about 150 fucking times.
00:26:00.000He's handsome, he's a stud, he's kicked 150,000 people's asses in front of her.
00:26:55.000And if you got an indication that he might have just been banging one of the girls that was in the movie, he seemed like he was sorry about it and he was depressed about it.
00:27:15.000I mean, it's like the polar opposite of what we consider.
00:27:18.000If you think about ancient warriors, think about Gladiator or any of these ancient warriors, you connect these ancient warriors with they would fight and they would fuck.
00:27:28.000But these Bourne Identity guys, there's no fucking.
00:29:13.000So, you know, if you get a wolf problem, shoot the fucker.
00:29:15.000But it's, you know, people don't understand that.
00:29:18.000It's just like people, you know, people trying to dictate what you do with public lands when they have no experience dealing with public lands in their state, you know?
00:29:25.000And that's kind of the way things work nowadays.
00:29:28.000But yeah, she's from Idaho, went back east.
00:29:30.000I met her out there when she was working with a lobbying firm and And I came home one day from, we were living in New Canaan, Connecticut, which is a nice little town outside of New York.
00:29:42.000But I was on Metro North riding the train back and forth where my office is in Midtown.
00:29:46.000Walked in the door and said, you know, I don't think I have to be here to do what I do, which is basically just travel for the business.
00:29:54.000Within a week, she had the house on the market.
00:29:56.000Within five weeks, we were settled in Idaho.
00:31:58.000Like, the level of intelligence and awareness of the average folks, like, just in the middle of the country is way different than it was 20, 30 years ago.
00:32:06.000The flow of information, much better, and that's helping.
00:32:09.000And then, but you can, you know, I spent, what, about seven years in the Northeast, in the New York City area, and You know, people in that area, you know, I got wonderful friends there, but a lot of folks can believe that the rest of the country thinks like they do,
00:32:26.000or that they should, because they just don't know any better, because they're not right there.
00:32:31.000They're not in the heartbeat of America, as they would refer to it.
00:32:35.000You know, you get outside that northeast corridor, and in Washington, D.C. in particular, and Washington, D.C. is so far up its own ass, that, you know, you realize that all this country, and that's one of these things with this Travel Channel show.
00:32:49.000The great thing about that is being able to just go out and travel and see how great this country is, and how, like you said, how many places there are to see.
00:32:58.000And, you know, I spent most of my life overseas.
00:33:01.000And so, for me, it's a real treat because we're going all over hell and back.
00:33:21.000I got a great relationship with them, and I'm one of those guys that, you know, I have a hard time being objective sometimes about it, although I try not to, you know, look through rose-colored glasses every time I'm talking about operations or things that they're doing, but I had a great time, and I got a lot of respect for the people there.
00:33:37.000And so when I got ready to leave, and I left for a pretty simple reason.
00:33:41.000I've got a daughter who's in college, terrific, terrific kid, and I was just never home when she was growing up.
00:33:47.000And so we got to a certain point where...
00:34:07.000And he knew I was getting antsy, and he said, stick around.
00:34:11.000It's going to get better, because we had gotten a little bit risk-averse at that point.
00:34:14.000And it gets a little wearing after a while to be working on operations, and then all of a sudden, at the last minute, people say, no, we can't do that.
00:34:35.000If you're operating in another country and something you're about to do blows up on you, and then the political blowback from country to country dealing with that.
00:35:53.000They draw you in that way because of the challenge and the patriotism and all the rest of it, and that's exactly how it should be.
00:35:59.000Nobody does it for the money, that's for sure.
00:36:01.000If there's one bit of controversy or the main controversy, the main conspiracy when it comes to the CIA, it's drugs.
00:36:08.000The main evil conspiracy is that the CIA was involved in selling drugs in African-American communities to fund foreign wars, the Contras, the Nicaragua, you know, the whole thing with Oliver North, you know,
00:36:23.000with Freeway Ricky Ross, the guy who's out now.
00:36:27.000He was involved directly with selling drugs.
00:36:30.000The money went straight to the CIA. The CIA used that money.
00:36:48.000But honest to God, I spent enough time behind the curtain in operations the whole time to say that we've got a lot of restrictions on us in terms of what we can do, who we can deal with, and what you're able to accomplish.
00:37:05.000Yeah, the whole concept of the drug thing, I don't know when that got started.
00:37:09.000I don't know how it sort of popped up initially, but it takes on a life of its own, like everything else, like theories about the Kennedy assassination, like we were talking about.
00:37:19.000And you're never going to let him go away.
00:37:22.000And sometimes saying that, you know, if I sit here and protest, people are going to say, well, of course, that must be true because he's protesting.
00:37:28.000Is it possible that things went on that you don't know about?
00:38:50.000The whole decision to nation-build in Iraq and what that meant.
00:38:54.000Although the agency doesn't drive policy, so I'm not sure what that's got to do with it.
00:38:58.000But the Iran-Contra thing is directly connected to selling drugs in poor neighborhoods in L.A. Freeway Ricky Ross literally sold hundreds of millions of dollars worth of drugs.
00:39:30.000I did it for the Secret Service or whatever.
00:39:32.000Freeway Ricky Ross didn't even realize he was selling drugs for the CIA until he was in jail.
00:39:37.000He didn't know who the connections were that he was getting.
00:39:40.000What's interesting about Barry Seal, the guy who died, is that he was an informant for the DEA. The DEA, as you were talking about, the CIA and the FBI have a little combative relationship.
00:39:50.000So do the DEA and the CIA. There's all sorts of interagency relationships.
00:39:55.000I work with the DEA. I work with the DEA overseas in counter-narcotics operations.
00:40:04.000Going back to the same thing we talked about with the Bureau, relationships during those early days, starting out working with them overseas, there's a lot of kind of peeing on each other's turf.
00:40:15.000But I guess all I'm saying is, and I'll leave it at that, is that the agency was not in the business of selling drugs.
00:40:24.000If we wanted money to fund operations, we had other recourses to gather that money Rather than narcotics and selling drugs to lower income neighborhoods in the United States of America.
00:40:38.000It's just, to me, I understand you're never going to shift people off a certain position and people are going to believe what they're going to believe.
00:40:45.000But it kind of goes back to what I said at the very beginning.
00:40:49.000The number one misconception is that this agency is out to fuck people over.
00:40:52.000Yeah, this Barry Seal one is a very interesting one because he had so much information about the CIA and so much information about the Medellin cartel and drug dealing in the first place.
00:41:03.000What he had actually said led people to believe that he was a guy who was very knowledgeable about the actual operations.
00:42:18.000And Michael Rupert, who was a former LA narcotics officer, who was an officer at the time, confronted him saying that...
00:42:25.000In his experience as an LAPD narcotics officer, he had seen evidence of the CIA complicity in drug dealing and that the confrontation was handled so poorly by Dush, it resulted in him being terminated from the CIA. It resulted in Deutsche being terminated.
00:43:48.000I will tell you, Director Deutch, as a former Los Angeles police narcotics detective, that the agency has dealt drugs throughout this country for a long time.
00:44:06.000People are clapping, so it must be true.
00:45:09.000I have Watchtower documents heavily redacted by the agency.
00:45:13.000I was personally exposed to CIA operations and recruited by CIA personnel who attempted to recruit me in the late 70s to become involved in protecting agency drug operations in this country.
00:45:24.000I have been trying to get this out for 18 years, and I have the evidence.
00:45:28.000My question for you is very specific, sir.
00:45:30.000If in the course of the IG's investigations and Fred Hitz's work, you come across evidence of severely criminal activity and it's classified, will you use that classification to hide the criminal activity or will you tell the American people the truth?
00:45:56.000Alright, do you want to hear the response first from Congressman Julian Dixon and then from the director?
00:46:05.000Wait a minute from your I'm sorry, sir.
00:46:39.000We see it all the time in guys like, I'm not putting them in the same category, don't get me wrong, but guys like Hanson, guys like Jim Nicholson, Ed Lee Howard, all these things.
00:47:38.000Somebody pushing that theory has their own life experience.
00:47:42.000I've got a life experience which I was fortunate enough gave me access inside an organization that I think gave me an understanding as to how they operate and the ethics with which they have, even though people say ethics, the agency.
00:47:55.000Again, as an example, people went nuts over the interrogation thing.
00:48:03.000If anybody had taken the time, all those critics who had taken the time to read the DOJ memos that Holder's Justice Department decided were great to release, then you can't not come away from reading the Seriously,
00:48:20.000the DOJ memos, and not say, well, shit, every little thing, they were going back and forth, trying to see, is this appropriate?
00:48:35.000And there's back and forth and back and forth and back and forth, and it belies this notion That somehow we're just out there fucking over the world and acting like a bunch of cowboys.
00:48:46.000But again, it's like the agency going up on Capitol Hill and trying to defend itself.
00:48:53.000People are going to believe what they believe.
00:48:54.000If I was going to give you advice, though, in the future, I mean, obviously you don't need my advice, but when someone brings up something, even if it's ridiculous, don't laugh while you discredit it, because it makes it look like bullshit.
00:49:05.000You know, like when people do that, they go, what, that's ridiculous.
00:49:08.000Yeah, no, I know, and I think you're right, I think you're right, but you also have to realize it.
00:49:50.000I'm saying based on my experience, based on a lot of time behind the curtain and working in a lot of operational environments and dealing with a lot of people over 17 years, No.
00:50:18.000Is there always an issue as well with, in order to adequately protect the United States' interests, in order to adequately...
00:50:29.000Act in secrecy in the interest of the United States people and government.
00:50:34.000There's always going to be walls that people come up against where to do your job, I would imagine, if you're involved in something that requires a certain amount of secrecy, you can't discuss certain things.
00:50:45.000So when things come along, when Congress wants to have answers to questions, do you know what Glomar is, like a Glomar response?
00:51:07.000They were trying to pull this thing out of the ocean, but it was an incredible operation.
00:51:11.000Miles deep, there's millions of pounds of metal, and they had to pull this nuclear sub up, and they were trying to get all this information about The capabilities of these Russian subs, what kind of documents were on board.
00:52:11.000We're worried we're going to go to war with Russia.
00:52:13.000Why do we have to tell you if we found a fucking Russian sub that's got nuclear missiles in it?
00:52:18.000Why should we have to tell the American people and also inform the Soviet Union, and then they go and find out where we're doing this, and then they find out that we have their sub?
00:53:13.000I mean, for crying out loud, the New York Times, half the time, the front page is made up of front page stories with nothing but anonymous sources.
00:53:19.000And they can't be quoted or they can't be identified because they're not supposed to talk about it.
00:53:23.000Well, then don't fucking talk about it.
00:53:24.000If you've signed an agreement, if you've signed a deal that says you're not going to talk about something, shut your piehole.
00:53:29.000Or if you feel that strongly about it, get the fuck out and then talk about it.
00:53:33.000How do you feel about guys like Edward Snowden, guys?
00:53:44.000Well, again, everyone's going to disagree over this.
00:53:48.000I'm a small government person, so I agree that you've got to have checks and balances.
00:53:53.000And I believe a handful of things, one of them being that, and people aren't going to believe this because they watch a lot of movies and beach books and shit, and down a lot of rabbit holes, but the U.S. intel community is the most transparent intel community on the planet, right?
00:54:07.000Maybe that sets the bar pretty low, you know, compared to other services.
00:54:10.000Right, that saying like you're the nicest rapist ever.
00:54:15.000And so I think that it's, for me, You know, the idea that Snowden had signed agreements and then chose to do what he did disappeared into the PRC and then now is over in Russia.
00:54:38.000And despite people wanting to wave the flag and saying he's a hero, on a certain level it's caused a great deal of damage.
00:54:46.000And I think that if he was that distraught over this Then there were other avenues that he could have pursued to bring this to light.
00:54:59.000And I think that what he's done is very damaging.
00:55:01.000I understand why people beat the drum for him.
00:55:33.000And you've got to have the ability to understand what the government is doing in this regard.
00:55:43.000I think that the best way to do that is have a very inquisitive and proactive political base.
00:55:52.000Congress and Senate should do their jobs.
00:55:54.000And part of it is, you know, there's a game that goes on in Washington where every time something like this comes out and it's politically expedient for them to do so, they express outrage and angst and, oh my god, I can't believe this is happening.
00:56:04.000There's a well-worn path between the intel community and Capitol Hill, with people going up and briefing these people all the time.
00:56:11.000But in Edward Snowden's case, what he's talking about is them spying on every single American.
00:56:20.000Don't you think that people have a right to privacy if they're just innocent folks that are taxpayers and they're not breaking the law, they're not doing anything?
00:56:42.000There's a lot of characteristics of Snowden that remind me, again, of some of the other characters in a counterintelligence world that we dealt with that...
00:56:51.000I don't take everything, just like this character that we watched on the video.
00:57:23.000Then again, you look at Amazon and Google, and you look at what they're doing.
00:57:25.000Yeah, but he was saying that people were actually going into people's emails, extracting naked photographs, passing them around the office.
00:57:33.000Yeah, that's Edward Snowden saying that.
00:57:36.000Again, we're going to have to fall down on this whole thing that I don't believe him saying that.
00:57:42.000All the time I was involved in things, I never saw behavior like that.
00:57:46.000And we dealt with NSA a fair amount and on the technical collection side.
00:58:21.000You know, I'm not getting the respect I deserve.
00:58:23.000It is funny they all go to the Soviets, right?
00:58:26.000He's right over there chilling in Russia.
00:58:27.000Yeah, and they've got everything he's got.
00:58:28.000You know, Glenn Greenwald and Snowden, these guys, they all want to, you know, talk about how, no, no, we've safeguarded it.
00:58:35.000Well, if they're smarter than the fucking PRC and the PLA out in China and smarter than the FSB in Russia, then winged monkeys on unicorns are going to fly out my ass.
00:58:47.000You mean in terms of safeguarding very important secret information that they haven't released yet?
00:58:51.000From a counterintelligence perspective, all that shit that he's walked out the door with is in the hands of people who don't have our interests at heart.
00:59:00.000Meaning not just what's been released, the concerns about the American people, about privacy, but some other stuff that is totally unrelated to privacy that is very important.
01:00:09.000the senate staffers who were busy writing what took them over five years uh...
01:00:14.000and they had a preset agenda on on uh...
01:00:17.000the interrogation history of interrogation by the agency so it took them over five years to write but during the course of that they set up a shared network shared system uh...
01:00:24.000for the agency and the senate staffers who were writing this thing to use So, at a certain point it became clear through the course of that process that Senate staffers had acquired documentation that they weren't supposed to have,
01:00:41.000that was above their parameters, their classification.
01:01:03.000I've got a company diligence for all your information and security needs that, you know, we've got a computer forensics group.
01:01:09.000So keyword phrase searches is a standard forensic tool.
01:01:12.000So they went through that to try to figure out how did this document and did others go walkabout.
01:01:16.000So that's what that whole hoo-ha was about.
01:01:19.000But again, it points to Even at that level, even with the Senate Intel Committee, which, you know, again, they've got the ability, if they would use it, if they would stay inquisitive, if they would stay proactive,
01:01:35.000they've got the ability to pursue things, but there's a level of distrust.
01:01:41.000Sometimes it goes on, and it kind of comes back around to this whole transparency issue.
01:01:56.000So your take on it was just that the CIA was trying to figure out how the Senate acquired these documents that they were not supposed to be in possession of?
01:02:03.000Yeah, the point of their exercise was, from a counterintelligence perspective, then you have to start figuring out what else has walked out the door.
01:02:10.000And what the Senate interpreted it as was that I guess the agency was pushing back in an attempt to What?
01:03:00.000People who work inside the organization understand that.
01:03:02.000And I'm outside it so I can express a little frustration.
01:03:05.000But I guarantee you when you're inside...
01:03:07.000And you're constantly being thrown out there as, you know, an evil cabal or selling drugs to low-income neighborhoods or fucking over, you know, everybody else or doing, you know, working against the interests as opposed to White House delivers tasking and says,
01:03:40.000So when you see a situation like this where Dianne Feinstein says that the CIA may have violated the Constitution, do you think there's a lot of political grandstanding going on?
01:03:51.000Yeah, I mean there's political grandstanding in everything that goes on nowadays.
01:03:54.000So when they're making these big speeches, it's like to set them up in a position where it looks like they're looking out for the American public, when in reality, if they looked at the actual circumstances and the actual facts behind what had gone on, it would have been far less...
01:04:07.000Or if in other cases where they were expressing, oh my god, I can't believe this interrogation program was doing this, well, fuck that.
01:04:16.000We've got briefers that, like I said, march back and forth and back and forth and explain what's going on and answer questions.
01:04:22.000I mean, the agencies, from the church committee on and even prior to that, you know, there's a long history of sort of this game that goes on.
01:04:32.000If I'm a politician up on Capitol Hill and I see that this is not going to look good from my constituency back home, then I'm going to express surprise, even if I sat on that intel committee and listened to what was going on.
01:04:42.000I was supposedly listening to what was going on.
01:04:44.000So, again, I'm not saying the fucking agency is perfect.
01:04:49.000And again, I'm also not saying I can be objective about it.
01:05:27.000It's possible to know everything that's going on in any organization.
01:05:31.000I mean, you can't, no matter what it is, if it's a police department or if it's the CIA or the FBI or the United States Army, every general doesn't know about every single action that every single soldier is involved in.
01:06:40.000Nobody ever accused me of being a deep thinker.
01:06:42.000So my feeling about it is the commonality there is that you initially agreed to keep your mouth shut, to protect the information that you were given responsibility for having access to and to do your job.
01:07:03.000I think if you sign up to commitments, if you make a promise, if you sign that promise, that contract, then you've got to stick with it.
01:07:12.000And if you decide at some point that you can't because you're just so fucking morally opposed to it, Then, you know, man up and find a way to do it properly.
01:07:42.000What do you think they could do, though?
01:07:44.000I mean, what does someone do if they feel like they're being ignored and they're on the inside and they honestly feel like some horrible things are happening and they have no recourse?
01:08:56.000Go find yourself something else to do.
01:08:57.000Get yourself a job that you can be happy with.
01:09:01.000I'm sure there's people out there right now screaming, oh my god, well you gotta bring it up, well then fine.
01:09:05.000At what level though, at what level can the crimes be?
01:09:08.000I mean, what if you found out, like let's go deep, like what if you found out that there was some sort of a false flag operation that was going to result in the death of a bunch of American lives, including American servicemen, including American officers and enlisted folks?
01:09:23.000I mean, if you found out something along those lines...
01:09:26.000That's a thriller movie concept, but yeah, and there's never the ticking time bomb scenario.
01:09:31.000I mean, by the way, that was never a good defense of sort of like the interrogation program, the ticking time bomb, you know, that always saying, well, I've got five seconds, so therefore I've got to hit this guy over the head with a car battery.
01:09:42.000But you almost always have more than five seconds.
01:09:54.000Again, it's a hypothetical that doesn't make any sense in the sense that what am I going to do?
01:09:58.000I'm worried that I'm going to go and I'm going to tell my superiors and it's all a cabal and they're all working together and the whole organization is going to suddenly...
01:10:04.000And I'm the one who's going to be fucked and the next thing I know I'm being chased to the basement of the organization by all these people and it's a cabal.
01:11:50.000Again, I'm not smart enough to be able to address issues like that, but I do think if you make promises and you agree to protect and serve the interests of the United States, Don't break the fucking law.
01:12:30.000It's an excellent example of the times that we live in, that when you're dealing with something so sensitive and so difficult, it's very hard to get people to just keep their mouth shut now.
01:13:10.000You know, you're going to get out after 30 years, and you're going to talk about all the...
01:13:14.000You know, the various things that, you know, were done and, you know, you're going to give a maya culp over a couple of things and you're going to talk about shit that, you know, all that time you knew you weren't supposed to talk about.
01:13:23.000So it's, yeah, I think there's a slide there in sort of the cultural understanding of what is and isn't acceptable.
01:13:34.000So what you're talking about, you keep saying the New York Times, and you're talking about unnamed quotes and unnamed sources.
01:13:40.000You're talking about this James Risen case, where this guy's detailing a botched CIA operation in Iran, and they're trying to get his sources.
01:13:52.000You can't swing at the cat most days without hitting a major newspaper that's dealing with anonymous sources.
01:13:59.000I'm just talking about in terms of all the general use of it.
01:14:03.000I mean, remember, I don't think you could, in the past, I don't think you could write a major story if you had more than one anonymous source.
01:14:09.000Maybe you couldn't even have an anonymous source, but now it's just an accepted fact.
01:14:13.000And I guess the point being is that people just feel more comfortable speaking out of turn.
01:14:19.000And that filters down to all the younger members of whatever organization it may be, whether it's a company, whether it's a hedge fund, whether it's the agency, a military, whatever it may be.
01:14:28.000So you feel like in the case of this rising guy, he's in deep shit, right?
01:14:31.000I mean, the Supreme Court just rejected his appeal.
01:15:59.000That is a very interesting situation when it comes to protecting sources.
01:16:04.000It would almost be if we had a lie detector test, like an infallible lie detector test, where you can say, did these sources actually tell you this information?
01:16:13.000Were these sources really CIA deep undercover operatives?
01:16:39.000So do you think this is sort of a battle between the idea of protecting sources and the idea of protecting America, that these two things, maybe the oath that a person takes is equally important as the laws that are in place to protect sources, and this is just duking it out to see which one holds precedent,
01:16:56.000what's more significant in terms of the repercussions on the American people?
01:17:00.000Yeah, I mean, I think I could see where journalists would hold this up as an example of saying this is the same thing.
01:17:07.000Is there a national security element to this that takes precedence over a journalist's right to publish something and not disclose a source?
01:17:20.000Again, no one's going to ask me for my opinion on that, but I can see where people could draw the comparison and try to argue one side or the other, frankly.
01:17:28.000I think if there is a legitimate national security issue, you've got to weigh in on that side of it.
01:17:53.000When people say that we shouldn't have military.
01:17:55.000In your utopian world, and the world would be beautiful and charming, and everybody would be growing flowers out of their ass, yeah, that would be nice.
01:18:20.000And that's also part of the perspective that people bring to it.
01:18:23.000That's just a massive ignorance of human history.
01:18:25.000I mean, human history and human motivations.
01:18:28.000If you look at the potential and if you look at the possible future of humanity once we evolve past where we are now...
01:18:35.0001,000 years from now, 10,000 years, wholly 100, maybe a decade, who knows?
01:18:39.000But the reality of right now, if you look at the rest of the world, look at what's going on with Israel and Gaza right now.
01:18:44.000Anybody who thinks you shouldn't have some sort of method of protection, some sort of method of intelligence, information, and ability to operate militarily, they're crazy.
01:19:35.000As far as violent crime, as far as worried about being attacked by another country, I think it's probably the safest time ever.
01:19:42.000And I would hope that that trend would continue, and that this would continue all across the world, and that human beings would slowly but surely sort out all their bullshit and figure out a way to have a cohesive, nice, civilized world that we could all live in.
01:19:56.000Yeah, not in our lifetime, but it's nice to think about.
01:20:23.000But I think that oftentimes we, you know, I get asked this question all the time from folks that are trying to manage security, you know, work on crisis management, that sort of thing, for their companies, for their families, whatever it may be.
01:20:37.000And, you know, I'm not one of those preppers.
01:20:39.000I'm not one of those people who think, oh my God, it's all going to fall apart and we're going to be dealing with zombies.
01:21:10.000She refuses to watch 28 Days of Life because it freaks her out.
01:21:14.000So anyway, but I think that, you know, this idea that one of the biggest crises we actually do face in the short midterm is to our power grid.
01:21:24.000So as an example of what I mean by human nature...
01:21:30.000It's a very nice little town in Fairfield County when I was working out of my New York office.
01:21:36.000And one of the things I didn't know about New Canin was if you buy a house there, then you have to assume that in town You'll lose power at least every week during winter because everything's above lines, above ground.
01:21:46.000And so one time, after about a year there, I didn't have any generators.
01:22:16.000So I went to Home Depot and I went in there and I watched a fight break out in a very affluent county of America when the power had really only been out for probably about 36 hours at that point.
01:22:31.000And I watched a fight break out of one of the last generators, apparently, that was available.
01:22:34.000I mean, I literally just walked up on this scene, and there were people all masked up, and they'd been handing out numbers and trying to get everybody in order in line.
01:22:40.000And I looked at this thing, and I thought, good God.
01:22:43.000So then I found the manager and gave him $100 and got the last generator.
01:22:48.000So that's field expediency right there, kids.
01:23:12.000So my point being is that if the grid goes down, say we've only got three grids, east, west, and Texas, right, around this whole country of ours.
01:23:20.000And these grids were never designed, they were never built to withstand a terrorist attack.
01:23:24.000And now, you know, the infrastructure is getting old and we're spending a lot of money trying to harden the facilities and trying to improve and provide more mobile generators.
01:23:33.000It's a major, major issue in this country.
01:23:36.000And you can imagine if the grid goes out or we lose power for say two months.
01:23:44.000Everything that drives transportation, trading, banking, just general well-being of society, how we all feel about ourselves every day, water, then we got a problem.
01:23:57.000And so my feeling has always been I would like to think that we'll see the best of ourselves during the course of something like that.
01:24:03.000Maybe we will, but sometimes I find myself being a little bit more cynical than When there's no light or there's a brighter light over there.
01:25:27.000You worry about, you know, not just the future because of, you know, bullshit that's going on overseas, but just natural disasters, things that could happen that could wipe out the grid, you know, asteroidal impacts, etc., And you know what I worry about, too?
01:25:42.000I mean, all the potential, pandemic, you know, whatever it is.
01:25:45.000But I tell you what I spend more time worrying about, because I think it's actually more likely or possible, is most of my time was spent overseas.
01:25:56.000Most of my, you know, young and then adult life.
01:25:59.000And you could travel to the darkest places out there, the deepest, darkest places out there, and you would find somebody who would think, you know, if I could just get to America and I work hard, then I can do better.
01:27:31.000Just like human nature is going to evolve and we're all going to, you know, like you said, have flowers at our ass.
01:27:35.000I don't know what that gets us, having flowers at our ass, but...
01:27:39.000I think that there's the reality, which is that if you don't have somebody at the top, and during the Cold War, we had this bipolar situation with us and the Soviets, and that worked, as long as there was a balance of power,
01:27:57.000But if you don't have somebody at the top of the food chain, you're going to get kind of where we're going, which is chaos and people looking to fill that void, and we're not going to be happy with it.
01:28:05.000And if you're not in charge, then you're looking at somebody's ass in line, right?
01:28:08.000And if we're happy with that, and we're happy with the ensuing potential chaos that that brings, then fine, let's just admit it.
01:28:16.000Let's say that's where we're going with all this.
01:28:24.000You know, you're a patriotic guy, and you're looking at the situation at hand, and it's very uncomfortable.
01:28:30.000And I think that the reality of what's going on in the foreign crisis is whether it's what's going on in Ukraine or what's happening right now in Iraq, this massive power vacuum that's being filled by ISIS and these militant jihadists.
01:28:44.000And if somebody's going to be at the top, better the United States than ISIS. Yeah, no, absolutely.
01:28:50.000And you know what, honestly, and I guess maybe that's what I'm trying to say, but I'm not saying it very well, is that I have a great deal of faith in the U.S., no matter which administration's in charge.
01:28:59.000Again, I don't like to think I have a dog in the hunt as long as people are working hard and trying to do the right thing.
01:29:05.000Whether it's this administration, previous administration, whichever one, I got a lot of faith in the ability or the desire of this country to do the right thing.
01:29:13.000Sometimes we don't do it, and it takes us a while to course correct, sometimes longer than we should.
01:29:18.000But I do believe that we, and that's something I took away from the time with the government.
01:29:31.000What I worry most about when it comes to the United States, when it comes to the future and the direction of things, is the influences that politicians have that are not in the best interest of Americans.
01:29:44.000That, to me, is one of the scariest things.
01:29:46.000The influences of corporations that only look at things in terms of how much money they can extract from X or Y. Which one is gonna be more profitable for them?
01:29:56.000Let's go with Y. We're gonna make more money.
01:29:59.000And the politicians tend to lean towards that because those are the very people that put them in office in the first place.
01:30:04.000They're beholden to them once they get in there.
01:30:07.000That, I think, is one of the biggest threats.
01:30:09.000The fear that people have of money overpowering the greater good of the actual citizens of the United States.
01:30:17.000Yeah, I think you're absolutely right.
01:30:19.000And to that I would say, what I always say, which I've been beating on this stupid drum for a while, is term limits.
01:30:25.000I don't think we get big, brave decisions in Washington anymore until we get term limits.
01:30:30.000This system, which, quite frankly, the Founding Fathers never imagined that anybody in their right mind would want to stay in Washington for 36 years.
01:30:36.000You know, who would want to do that in their mind?
01:30:39.000So they didn't put that in there, and that's the one thing I think that would make a difference.
01:30:43.000You know, give congressmen two four-year terms.
01:30:46.000Give senators two six-year terms, and get the fuck out.
01:30:50.000We got some great people in this country that could step up and be terrific leaders if given the opportunity and if we didn't have to pay a couple hundred million dollars every time we want to run a campaign.
01:31:01.000So put finance limits that actually mean something in there and bring that down.
01:31:05.000If you can't get your point across in a Congressional or Senate campaign for say, you know, a million dollars, two million dollars, then you're a fucking moron.
01:31:22.000And then the Supreme Court shut it down and said, oh, states can't determine the term limits for federal positions, which to me, I still don't quite get that.
01:32:01.000Do you think that term limits would be circumvented the same way they've kind of been with the president, where there's just so much massive money and influence that essentially the two-party system is controlled by virtually the same corporations in the first place?
01:32:22.000If suddenly, if I'm a corporation, and I know that somebody's going to be on the Ways and Means Committee for the next 24 years, then I know what I'm going to do.
01:32:31.000I know how I'm going to try to influence that position and how I'm going to kind of work that from a lobbying position.
01:32:53.000But the way that it's working right now, all I know is we've got a city full of dysfunctional people who are – I mean the congressmen are trying to run for election basically constantly.
01:33:01.000A two-year term means you're constantly trying to raise money.
01:33:18.000And when you send good people there, then they get co-opted by the system.
01:33:21.000And it must be extremely frustrating for the people that go out there with good intentions, and then they realize, I've got to spend all my time impressing the congressional leadership with my fundraising prowess.
01:33:40.000Do you get a sense, by paying attention to all this shit that's going on overseas, whether it's what's happening in Ukraine, I don't know about it than they've ever been before,
01:34:03.000It used to be that we'd have the issue, right?
01:34:05.000It was the Balkans, and the Balkans were a mess.
01:34:07.000They were a big stinking mess, and it was very violent.
01:34:11.000There was a little lovely period of time where Haiti was the only real big concern.
01:34:16.000We had the Cold War era, and that was very comforting for a lot of people because you knew who the enemy was, and you knew how the game was played in a sense.
01:34:25.000But right now, with the flashpoints that we've got, we've got the Chinese Are increasingly aggressive in an effort to try to retake the Pacific, which they've always been pissed off that we've basically owned since World War II. And the Russians, the Middle East situation,
01:34:52.000Is it just an ebb and flow when it comes to these sort of situations?
01:34:56.000When it comes to, like, what's going on in the world?
01:34:59.000Power struggles, then the power struggles are resolved, and then new resistance builds up.
01:35:04.000I mean, is that, in your experience, how things go?
01:35:06.000Well, I think you minimize the chaos by being consistent.
01:35:11.000And what I mean by that is that, you know, as foreign policy is an example, if your foreign policy...
01:35:17.000If the message is consistent and strong and clear and there's no misunderstanding by either your allies or the people that are against us, then you can minimize the chaos that exists.
01:35:30.000If it's not consistent and there's confusion over where we stand, and I'm saying we because, you know, okay, fine, we're still at the top of the food heap.
01:35:38.000Whether people are comfortable with that or not, I don't know.
01:35:42.000So if we're not consistent in that message, then there's confusion and that's where you start to get problems because you start to get people probing at the perimeter trying to see what exactly is going on, what they can get away with.
01:36:10.000The Saudis are enormously pissed off at us still over what they view as the current administration's failure to...
01:36:18.000You know, work with them to try to resolve some issues out in the Middle East, and they feel as if we've sort of abdicated responsibility.
01:36:25.000Now, whether we have or not, whether it's the right thing to do or not, I'm just saying, from a policy perspective, If what we want to do is be isolationist, then be very clear about that.
01:36:48.000So in one way, being patriotic and being an isolationist, in another way, meddling in foreign governments, sending out aid, being part of their political process, all that jazz?
01:37:06.000You pass a red line, okay, fine, we're going to do something else over here.
01:37:10.000You know, we're going to pivot to Asia.
01:37:12.000And I don't mean to pick on the current administration.
01:37:13.000I've got a lot of respect for some of the folks in there, but there's a...
01:37:18.000You know, there's a lack, I think, of consistency.
01:37:21.000And there's certainly, I think, in the sense of how the Chinese are behaving, how the Russians are behaving, how certain countries in the Middle East are currently behaving, I think it's an indication that they don't necessarily believe we're engaged.
01:37:32.000And that either worries them or delights them, depending on what position they hold.
01:37:38.000And I don't think we have the luxury of disengaging.
01:37:41.000Again, my experience has been when there's a vacuum, shit happens.
01:37:46.000Well, that's what we're seeing right now in Iraq, right?
01:37:51.000For the folks who live there, and what we're seeing in terms of these jihadist extremists, this is as ramped up as we've ever seen it before.
01:37:59.000And this is a direct response to the power vacuum, right?
01:38:49.000And that's a huge recruitment tool for them overseas.
01:38:53.000Which is why we're seeing their numbers, you know, kind of grow exponentially at this point.
01:38:56.000It's because they've got the turf of this caliphate that they've been talking about for years and years.
01:39:01.000Finally, they've got this physical vision of this thing.
01:39:03.000They've got the resources from overrunning the banks and the various, you know, military bases in Syria and Iraq.
01:39:09.000I mean, good God, they've gotten their hands on multiple divisions worth of gear.
01:39:13.000And so we're going to have to deal with it.
01:39:16.000And somebody's got to put boots on the ground, whether it's us or somebody else.
01:39:19.000It'd be nice to see the Turks step up because they've got a lot to lose on this one.
01:39:22.000It'd be nice to see the Turks step up and get involved.
01:39:26.000But somebody's got to put boots on the ground because airstrikes alone are not going to cut it.
01:39:29.000Is this one of those situations too where it's difficult to get people enthusiastic about engaging because of all the years of war that people disagreed with, Iraq and Afghanistan especially?
01:40:02.000I mean, what can be done to sort of mitigate all this shit?
01:40:06.000Well, the problem is that we're now in a position, and if we're just talking about ISIS, the Islamic State, we're now in a position where we've got some pretty strange bedfalls.
01:41:10.000I'm not necessarily the biggest Obama fan, but man, has this fucking guy walked into a hornet's nest from the moment he got into the White House.
01:41:17.000I mean, talk about a chaotic eight years.
01:41:21.000And they walked in without really, I think, appreciating how bad it could be, obviously, and walking in also with not as much interest in the international scene.
01:41:32.000As in, you know, doing some domestic changes.
01:41:35.000Well, I remember when he was debating McCain and he was talking about going into Afghanistan and that we'll just go in and take care of things.
01:41:42.000And McCain was like, do you even fucking know what Afghanistan is?
01:43:19.000He was still carrying around shrapnel from the time of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.
01:43:23.000We didn't need to go all the way back through history to understand how this was not going to work.
01:43:28.000And I hate to say this, and I'm not doing any disservice to the terrific men and women who have served over there, lost their lives, been wounded.
01:43:52.000We did a brilliant tactical mission there.
01:43:54.000But by the spring of 2002, we should have walked out the door and said, if you do this again, if you allow your place to be used to reach out to the West, we're going to come back and kill more of you.
01:45:12.000Look, I mean, if you really do think about what the scenario is over there, 90% of the world's opium comes from there, and there's a massive amount of lithium and ion and minerals in the mountains.
01:45:23.000What the fuck else can anybody do other than try to figure out one way to fund staying there?
01:46:04.000But yeah, we've got a lot of flashpoints right now.
01:46:06.000We've got a lot of big issues that are happening, and...
01:46:10.000Now we've got the midterm elections coming up, so I don't think anything, nothing big in a way is going to happen in Washington.
01:46:15.000Do you think any of this could have been avoided by not going into Iraq and not going into Afghanistan?
01:46:20.000Or was that kind of shit inevitable anyway?
01:46:22.000Because with all this, with having a ruthless dictator like Saddam Hussein, that's no picnic, having a guy like that running a country with his evil fucking sociopathic serial killer sons.
01:46:33.000I mean, that guy was a ruthless piece of shit.
01:47:09.000Well, there were a lot of allies that were believing that, and unfortunately, and this goes to show you how you've got to be very careful about your intelligence operations, a lot of it was based on just crap, bullshit.
01:47:22.000You know, but the time, at the time, the way that we thought, and the fear that existed, and the way that people said, whatever it takes to protect the homeland, even if that means, you know, going into Iraq, you know, because that's going to be the next flashpoint.
01:47:39.000So, I'm not one to say you've got to second guess, you know, decisions that happened in the past, because it's a complete waste of fucking breath, but, I mean, I guess you obviously can learn things from it, but More to your point, which is a much more important question, is what do you do about it now?
01:48:21.000Well, that's why I say, you know, another thing I think is, I can't go back to term limits and finance reform, is, you know, I think we get a lot of, we get a deeper pool of potential candidates, and we'd surprise ourselves with how many really good, smart, dynamic people are out there who might be willing to step in if they didn't have to go through this insane political process.
01:49:04.000Exploring things, doing shit, chasing Burmese python down the Everglades, roping into glacial ice caves up in Alaska, tracking grizzlies in the beautiful Yellowstone Park.
01:49:16.000If people haven't been to Yellowstone, oh my god.
01:49:44.000It's on the Travel Channel, and that's all I can think to say that's clever.
01:49:48.000What was it like when you had to investigate Area 51?
01:49:51.000Was that a hornet's nest of looney tunes, thinking that there's aliens that are pickled in a fucking mason jar somewhere down in the basement?
01:49:58.000The agency called me up and said, look, here's what you can and you can't disclose.
01:50:03.000Don't tell them about the sub-basement where we keep the aliens.
01:50:07.000And so I think I kept those secrets pretty well.
01:50:10.000Area 51 is a fascinating, fascinating place.
01:50:14.000And what's interesting is tracking the history of sort of our developmental air platforms and looking at the timeline, the chronology of getting sightings and things.
01:50:25.000And that to me is pretty cool because we were coming up with some pretty bizarre air platforms for surveillance in particular.
01:50:32.000And this shit was flying around the desert, you know, being tested.
01:51:00.000If you saw that, you would think it's Bigfoot.
01:51:03.000After September 11th, we were filming Fear Factor down near Edwards Air Force Base.
01:51:09.000We were out in the desert doing these stunts, and stealth fighters would fly overhead.
01:51:14.000And if you had never seen one of those before, if you didn't know what that was, that looks like a goddamn UFO. That looks like a spaceship from another planet, this black thing that's not shaped like any normal plane, and it's flying low and fast.
01:51:28.000You're like, holy shit, I'm looking at aliens.
01:51:30.000A lot of that technology developed at the agency.
01:51:35.000Early days in particular, surveillance, craft.
01:51:38.000Incredible what they were doing inside the agency.
01:51:40.000How do they recruit guys instead of, like, getting them filtered, like, top people, instead of them going into the public sector and, you know, making money doing something else?
01:53:41.000And I actually took Indigo Films for the second season of World Access on Travel.
01:53:46.000I took them into the agency headquarters not too long ago, a couple of months ago.
01:53:50.000And we did a story inside the headquarters.
01:53:51.000And part of it was based on, we've got a museum inside there that's open to the staff, obviously, and then visiting liaison partners and dignitaries that come in.
01:54:16.000But they always, when they're developing technology, when they're developing ideas, when they're developing operations, it's in response to something.
01:54:23.000They don't just sit around, unlike maybe a tech company in Palo Alto or something, they don't just sit around and throw a ball at the wall and think, you know, let's come up with a clever idea.
01:54:31.000It's always in response to a task that they get from, well, from the administration.
01:54:36.000It says, we need to solve this problem.
01:54:37.000And typically, the administrations, over the years, they go to the agency first because they know it's, you know, they'll cut through the crap.
01:54:46.000They've got people who will sit down and come up with, you know, scenario that This might work.
01:55:34.000It's in D.C., and it's a great time out.
01:55:37.000Kids love it, but it operates on a couple levels.
01:55:40.000One is sort of for the kids, but one is it's a really very, very smartly done museum, looking at espionage through the years, tradecraft, and a variety of operations that have happened over the years.
01:55:50.000Fantastic facility, so people should go to that one, too.
01:55:58.000My buddy Mike worked at the American Embassy in Russia, and they would find the surveillance devices that the Russians would install in these buildings that were so sophisticated.
01:56:09.000They had found a listening device that was powered on the swaying of the building itself.
01:56:16.000The swaying and the movement of the building itself in the wind was actually powering this device.
01:56:21.000They said it was unlike anything that they had ever thought of before.
01:56:24.000And it was just mind-blowing that these equally intelligent people with a completely different language in another country had come up with some alternative path to listen in on people.
01:56:36.000Yeah, the Russians and Soviets during the Cold War in particular were, you know, A, because they dumped unlimited resources into it and B, because they were highly motivated and aggressive.
01:56:47.000They were very, very worthy adversaries, still are.
01:56:50.000But yeah, our Cold War history is a fascinating thing.
01:56:55.000You look at the technology that was developed out of that and a lot of that ended up being, you know, used for the private sector and the development of everything from From smartphones to internet applications to a variety of things.
01:57:07.000So a lot of the crap that gets put together, gets thought of and designed inside the intel community ends up benefiting the private sector and just the person on the street, commercial people.
01:57:19.000It is also fascinating, too, that both the Russians and the United States battled over who could get the best Nazi scientists.
01:57:25.000You know, that's a dirty secret of the Cold War and of the space race.
01:58:55.000But discounting their social activity, just their engineering and technology, I'm always fascinated by what is it that causes one country, one nation to excel in a radical way above and beyond others?
02:00:44.000I see how someone figures out how to make a car, where when you're taking a turn, the computer adjusts the shocks to put more pressure on one side to flatten out the...
02:05:40.000America declassified sounds like better for a former CIA officer.
02:05:43.000They wanted to lighten it up a little bit, take it a little bit away from sort of the conspiracy and the dark side, and focus more on just going to great places around the country and talking to cool people.
02:05:53.000Yeah, so world access, and maybe next season, for the next season, we'll do actual world access as opposed to U.S. access.
02:05:58.000I did this show for SyFy called Joe Rogan Questions Everything, and they were trying to get me to do sort of along the same lines as the Jesse Ventura show, the conspiracy theory.
02:06:07.000They were really into conspiracy theories when I started doing the show.
02:06:11.000But the more I started doing it, the more I was like, most of this is bullshit.
02:06:15.000Like, you're doing a show where you're exploring bullshit, but you don't necessarily want to call bullshit because you want to keep this air of mystery that keeps people tuning in.
02:06:30.000And so I like to think, I mean, I approach this second season that's coming up, this World Access show, I approach it sort of like anybody who's sitting on a sofa...
02:06:39.000I'm a fairly simple guy, so when I go to some of these places, literally, I'm kind of staring there slack-jawed and amazed at what I'm seeing, whether it's the geography or whether it's just dealing with the people or what goes on there, whatever it may be.
02:06:51.000So I like to think I'm the guy that's sitting on the sofa watching this shit, and I'm reacting the same way they would.
02:07:11.000Even the Science Channel, which is supposed to be about science, they have so many of these goddamn UFO shows where they talk to these people and they all have fucking stories, but when it boils down to it, that's all there is, is stories.
02:07:27.000Stories from questionable people, and the stories are almost all goofy, and it gets weary after a while.
02:07:34.000You're like, what kind of a show am I making?
02:08:03.000And it's not just sort of the same beaten path, you know, not walking up to the edge of the Grand Canyon staring at it and going, hey, okay, that's nice.
02:08:09.000It's, you know, get outside your comfort zone, travel a little bit more, make the effort, and you'll be amazed at what the country has to offer.
02:08:15.000Oh, there's some incredible things in this country.
02:08:17.000I mean, people don't realize the fact that out of these 50 states, I mean, everybody thinks of New York, Chicago, San Francisco.
02:08:24.000We think of these spots that you need to visit, but...