On today's show, we have a special guest on the show, former Navy Admiral Fennell. He talks about his career in the U.S. Navy, his views on the Iran Contra scandal, and his thoughts on the proposed law that could open the door to more Israeli intelligence access.
00:03:37.940eventually if this law passes the president no longer has that freedom of movement now you and
00:03:43.980i discussed last time there is a groundswell of people in both parties younger people who are at
00:03:50.260least skeptical of our alliance with israel in its current form and i think the israelis and the
00:03:55.840zionists in congress are fearful that eventually future politicians from either party will try to
00:04:01.560so they're trying to rein in the president's freedom of authority on this they're trying to
00:04:06.320hermetically seal this. It's not going to happen. That's correct. It's not going to happen. We will
00:04:11.140never allow this to happen. Not to the United States of America. Not going to happen. I'm going
00:04:15.120to have Fennell on here, one of the most renowned naval intelligence officers in the history of the
00:04:21.280United States Navy, warned this country about the rise of the PLA Navy and gave up his career for
00:04:26.780that during the Obama administration. We're going to be talking about, guess what, intelligence in
00:04:31.600the year 1941 and 42 one led to pearl harbor the other led to the victory at midway this that's
00:04:36.980is the the investigations about this current war this war this war the investigations of what was
00:04:44.100the real intelligence and what was fed to the president back in june of last year and that's
00:04:49.500for this this is a living thing don't think for a second we're ever going to rest till we get to
00:04:54.360the bottom of it of exactly what was presented to the president and who is responsible for
00:05:00.540presenting it. Kurt Mills, your thoughts on this topic, sir? Yeah, no, for sure. I mean, look,
00:05:06.980it matters what gets in front of the president of the United States. I think you know this
00:05:11.440as a former member of the Principals Committee of the National Security Council.
00:05:15.540I think, you know, the interagency process is a buzzword used by DC or blob types,
00:05:22.600but it matters. And it mattered in the run-up to this war. The interagency process completely
00:05:28.180broke down. Not entirely clear what Marco Rubio's State Department and National Security Council
00:05:33.760were doing. Not entirely clear why there was a joint briefing with a foreign country that had a
00:05:40.380far greater vested interest in war with Iran than we did. This is the Israelis. Not entirely clear
00:05:46.360why there have been widespread reports, not exactly batted down by Langley, that Mossad
00:05:54.420intelligence, that is Israeli intelligence, was sort of loosely trafficked with American
00:05:59.580intelligence as far back as last year in the run-ups of the 12-day war. And make no mistake,
00:06:05.200although I think a lot of people have a better taste in their mouth about the June excursion,
00:06:10.740the run-up to the war with Iran started on June 13th, Friday the 13th, last year with the 12-day
00:06:18.140war, when the Israelis enforced a deadline to a negotiation they weren't party towards.
00:06:24.420I think you see today with the job numbers that are actually surprisingly strong for
00:06:28.840this economy of all the AI concerns, that the president still has an opportunity to0.98
00:06:33.580cut his losses, to declare victory, to get an enduring deal with the Iranians that is
00:06:38.300better by a country mile, potentially, than the Obama-Iran deal, and focus on other affairs
00:06:44.080and don't let Israel subsume his presidency.
00:06:48.480Kurt, where do people get you with all your great commentary and writing on this?
00:06:52.040Yeah, the magazine is www.theamericanconservative.com, founded in 2002 by Patty Cannon and Friends against the Iraq War. And my own personal commentary in mixture with the firms is at Kurt Mills, at C-U-R-T, M-I-L-L-S on X and, you know, the internet. Thank you.
00:07:11.700Thank you, brother. Appreciate great commentary. Brandon, where do they get you, particularly these pieces you're writing now about the merger of both intelligence and the industrial base, sir?
00:07:19.660Well, that's on my new Substack. Thanks for promoting it. It's weikert.substack.com. That's the Weikert Brief. You can also find me on Twitter at WeTheBrandon and also at 1945.com. That's the old website, guys. The Weikert Report is my old one. I got to take that down. But the 1945.com and Amazon.com is where you can get all my books on national security. Thanks for having me as always, Steve.
00:07:45.700thank you very explosive but we need to do it did a voice vote they're trying to hide in the middle
00:07:51.200of the night don't want to let's do real votes like the 18 collaborationists on the uh ukraine
00:07:58.78018 uh eight billion dollars this is sick today the president's going to wisconsin our own ben0.61
00:08:06.340burkham is going to be there he's out there to talk and listen to farmers let's go to the white
00:08:11.040house first uh why is he going out there uh mccabe why is the president taking time away from
00:08:18.560obviously a packed schedule to go out to listen to talk to and listen to farmers in wisconsin we
00:08:26.040love that we love the farmers in wisconsin but he's got a couple three things on his plate why
00:08:30.280would he prioritize this sir yeah once again steve it's an example of not what is said but why it is
00:08:37.980said. The president is going out there nominally to participate in an agriculture roundtable.
00:08:45.080He's really there to support Congressman Van Oren, who is Derek Van Oren, who is one of those
00:08:51.180on the bubble conservative congressmen. The last three cycles, he's won with 49, 53, 51 percent.
00:09:00.080And so it's rated a toss up by Cook. So on one level, he's just there to listen to farmers.
00:09:05.380He's going to help out this congressman. But the White House also wants the message to go out
00:09:11.040nationally that the president is participating with farmers. He's listening to them and he's
00:09:17.060delivering on his promises to them, Steve. Hang on for one second. Let's play a clip.
00:09:22.320Neil, stay right there. We're going to go also to Burquam, who's on location. Let's go and play
00:09:26.100this clip. One of the things we know about Iowa, farm country, pretty rural. Feel the dreams. How
00:09:31.840do rural voters feel about the president? Yeah, you know, Iowa has been traditionally a field of
00:09:35.920dreams for the president of the United States, but it's quickly turning into potentially a field
00:09:39.640of nightmares. There seems to be a rural revolt going on in this country against Donald Trump.
00:09:45.040Take a look here. Rural voters on Trump. Look, according to Fox News, he was easily winning
00:09:49.060them back in October of 2024 versus Kamala Harris. 18 points ahead. The exit poll even had
00:09:53.980at a bigger margin. But look at where he is now. Woo! Down there, underwater, underneath the corn
00:09:59.740fields. He's now 14 points underwater. That's an over 30-point switcheroo against the President
00:10:04.620of the United States. As I said, there appears to be a rural vote going against Donald Trump.
00:10:09.340What could one of those reasons be? You know, one of the big reasons that there seems to be a rural
00:10:13.740vote against Donald Trump, simply put, it's the economy. It's inflation. Take a look at this.
00:10:19.020You thought that that switcheroo was big. How about this one? Rural voters on Trump and inflation
00:10:23.140versus Kamala Harris. He was more trusted by 37 points. Now he is 19 points underwater
00:10:29.980with rural voters on inflation. That is an over 50 point switcheroo against the president of the
00:10:36.480United States. Rural voters like the rest of the country turning against Trump on the key issue
00:10:41.660that got him elected to a second term back in 2024. That is a big, big shift. That is a huge
00:10:47.660shift. Okay. As I noted, the president's sort of endorsement primary magic wore off.
00:10:53.140Hang on for a second. Put a pin in that. I may come back to it, but I'm definitely going to go
00:10:57.420to Ben Burquan. Ben, you're there. You saw this the other day, although I do think the president
00:11:02.540got bad advice. He jumped into this Iowa situation with only a couple of days ago and it had a Maha0.80
00:11:06.800candidate that had real momentum and was really connecting with people. So I think that I don't0.99
00:11:13.380really count that one. Why though, Ben, you're out there. Why, why is the president going out
00:11:17.760to Wisconsin today? Well, it's, you know, as you just heard on that post, I mean, there is
00:11:23.920definitely some concerns, obviously, going into the midterms. It's always about the economy.
00:11:29.880The crazy thing is, if you look at the numbers, what inflation was under Joe Biden, what cost of
00:11:33.900gas was under Joe Biden, all of them were higher, but it doesn't matter. It matters what's happening
00:11:38.580right now. We had some of the lowest energy costs at the beginning of President Trump's term.
00:11:42.520after the iran war uh we were seeing higher numbers and that impacts people's willingness
00:11:48.780to go out and vote not not necessarily their support they may still support president trump
00:11:52.240but they may just not care as much to go out and vote and that's the big concern so he's starting
00:11:55.980here in wisconsin he's gonna be hitting all the midwest this is this is the heartland of maga and
00:12:00.760so this is one of those areas as you as mccabe said uh this is uh one of those races toss-up
00:12:05.860races that we need to win in order to keep the house and uh this is you know this is where it
00:12:10.460kicks off. It's about the turnout and the enthusiasm. Let me ask you, I just want to make
00:12:14.860sure I get the logistics right. There's not a rally today. The president's going to do a round
00:12:19.140table, a listening session. Is there a rally scheduled? It's kind of a quasi both. So you've
00:12:26.640got, it's a round table, but you've got this group, you know, group of local folks that have
00:12:30.600come out as well. So there's going to be an audience with it. So it's a round table to listen
00:12:34.060to the farmers, but it's also folks are here to be a part of it as well. So it's kind of a
00:12:38.580combination it'll be then it'll be a uh it'll be a mini rally ben uh what is your uh social media
00:12:46.840you're doing a bunch of stuff we're working on a bunch of stuff behind the scenes on this ice
00:12:50.460situation you're also i can announce that ben is working on a a major book for us we'll announce
00:12:56.220that later but ben has been spending some time really putting together the stories that you guys
00:13:00.180have followed for the last i don't know five or six years particularly of all the death-defying
00:13:05.020acts that Ben Burkwam has done to report and make sure that the MAGA base and the war and
00:13:10.160posse get all the information they need from throughout the world. Ben, where they go to
00:13:14.640your social media and to get your show? Yeah. And even more importantly, it's about what God
00:13:19.820has done in my life to get me here, but stay tuned for that. It's going to be, I, it's going to be
00:13:24.300great. So, uh, my social is at Ben Burkwam, my personal, obviously real America's voice at real
00:13:29.200AM voice, a new episode of law and border is going to be coming out very soon. America's voice.news
00:13:34.080and in my website, frontlineamerica.com.
00:13:36.480And we will be out here with these awesome folks
00:15:09.120Our sins of the past, reckless government spending have finally caught up to us.
00:15:14.280So what's next? Higher inflation, higher prices, higher cost of living expenses, and higher interest payments on the national debt.
00:15:23.020Every dollar Washington spends on interest is a dollar it has to tax, borrow, or print.
00:15:30.040Smart retirement planners prepare for potential setbacks, and they can do that by diversifying with a time-tested asset known for weathering the storm.
00:26:44.280We're going to vote again in these primaries and again in November using primarily electronic voting.
00:26:51.360These have cyber vulnerabilities that our own intelligence community, trust them or not, believes are real.
00:26:59.620So why are we going to allow another election to be held where there are real cyber vulnerabilities and there are real mail-in balloting problems?
00:27:12.140Director Gabbard, before she left, she released, declassified a document which said that the Chinese had penetrated 12 to 18 voter databases around the country.
00:27:24.720Well, what were the Chinese doing penetrating voter databases other than to muck with our system, including potentially to counterfeit mail-in ballots?0.68
00:27:35.720I'm calling for in this piece I've written for the president to take very seriously the idea of banning mail-in ballots, except for in the most extreme circumstances.1.00
00:31:56.540If you knew for certain that the election was going to have in November cyber interference, cyber intrusion, and a manipulation of the election, if you knew for certain that that was going to happen, if you knew for certain or you had a very good suspicion that there was going to be counterfeit mail-in ballots, just if you're an intelligence official or anybody in the government required to defend our election, what would you do if you knew for certain that was going to happen?
00:32:26.540We don't have the cyber capabilities to stop it. We can't do an adequate job in preventing counterfeit mail-in ballots or the abuse of mail-in ballots even.
00:32:38.740I'm calling on the president by executive order to ban electronic voting and to limit mail-in ballots and to go back to a paper ballot system counted by human beings.
00:32:50.260That would be the reasonable common sense thing to do
00:32:53.520if you thought that there was going to be
00:34:30.960I think 5i needs to be reviewed, just like FISA needs to be reviewed as well.
00:34:36.740We have constructs that are going back to World War II, in essence, and we have countries now inside the Five Eyes that have taken a hostile approach to the United States.
00:34:51.240And we're excluding other allies that have demonstrated greater support for us, and I think of Japan in this case.
00:34:58.420A decade ago or over a decade ago when I retired, I was involved with recommending from the commanders of the Pacific Fleet and Pacific Command that we incorporate Japan into Five Eyes, and the Washington, D.C. crowd just shut it down.
00:35:13.860While we're continuing to share information with Canada, the U.K., New Zealand, and Australia, we need to relook at that and understand what we're doing there.
00:35:24.060And the same thing with FISA. FISA is a very important tool. I know some of the people that were there when it was founded, Admiral Mack Showers, who we'll talk about in the Battle of Midway.
00:35:34.720But Admiral Showers was a career naval intelligence officer and in the CIA. And in the early 70s, after the Nixon Watergate events and the church commissions, you know, the government said we have to come up with a way to preclude the intelligence community from violating the Constitution and our individual rights in the Bill of Rights to not be searched upon by the government.
00:36:00.940So people like Admiral Showers of high honor and integrity developed a system that worked for many, many years.
00:36:08.360But fast forward to the Obama administration and you see somebody like Samantha Powers submitting essentially over 200 FISA requests to the National Security Agency to have American citizens unmasked as the American ambassador to the United Nations.
00:36:24.440I was in almost 30 years, 29 years, and in that time, I submitted one request when I was a director of the U.S. Pacific Fleet Intelligence, and that request was denied to me for finding out something that was operationally relevant to the fleet, and our commander wanted it, and the NSA said, no, you don't have a need to know.
00:36:44.760Yet Samantha Powers is able to request and get 200 plus.
00:37:42.740You are one of the most serious intelligence professionals I've ever met.
00:37:48.340You sacrificed your career, right, in becoming a flag officer,
00:37:53.680specifically because you felt it was necessary to warn the nation
00:37:57.380about what was happening with the Chinese Communist Party and its Navy.0.82
00:38:00.800Everything that you warned about at that time has come true.
00:38:04.900I want to go back to FISA because you would think in this debate
00:38:08.520where they're trying to hold President Trump hostage,
00:38:10.940you would think, well, Jim Fennell is the kind of guy that would be 1,000% for the FISA renewal
00:38:16.740and Brian Kennedy, and they're not. I want to go back and use the example of Samantha Powers again,
00:38:22.820because this is the beating heart of the problem. So take it from the top and walk me back through
00:38:28.840why you, as one of the best professionals in intelligence we've ever had, are opposed to
00:38:34.520extending this. And one of the reasons is the Samantha Powers and what can happen there, sir.
00:38:40.940Yes, Steve. I just want to baseline it again. I knew Admiral Donald Mack Showers, who served with Admiral Nimitz, was there at the Battle of Midway in Hawaii at Station Hypo. He arrived in Hawaii in January, February of 1942.
00:38:58.860He served for four years, five years in Hawaii and in Guam on Admiral Nimitz's staff, went on to become a rear admiral and become the deputy director of DIA and served for 16 years in the CIA.
00:39:11.720And he was somebody of high, high integrity.
00:39:15.720And when the church commission said we have to redo the IC, we have to preclude them from spying on Americans, they came up with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
00:39:25.440And he was one of the people on that team that crafted it.
00:39:27.920And they established a system that would ensure that the United States could still get information about foreign activities in America that may have been associated with an American using telephones in those days.
00:39:42.840They had no concept back then of the internet and all of that's going on today and the connectivity that we have.
00:39:50.240And what has happened is, is in those days, it was you could collect on somebody if you submitted a FISA request to the FISA court and said, hey, we think American person X is getting calls from the Soviets, somebody in the Soviet Union, and we need to hear what's going on there.
00:40:07.900And they had to go to a court and say, can I listen in on that? And that's and then it had to be reviewed. And it was just between the Soviet person and the American person.
00:40:17.620Well, you fast forward to the Obama administration, and they're doing one, two, three hops saying, well, I want to be able to collect on the person that's in the Middle East, some terrorist cell that's talking to somebody in America, and then I want to be able to talk to the person in America who talked to another American and another American.
00:40:35.900And then it was weaponized, and they used it to find out and target their political opponents, as opposed to exclusively being used to prevent adversaries from attacking us and preparing plans to destroy America, either in America or in our field of forces elsewhere.
00:40:57.140And so this is the this is the problem with the system now. And it's it's politicized. It's it's no good anymore. I think it's probably it's probably been contained a bit now since what happened to President Trump.
00:41:09.660But the fact of the matter is it needs to be abolished, and then we need to start over.
00:41:15.200And when all the people in D.C. scream and say, oh, it's going to put a risk to national security because we won't be able to collect, and it's NSA, Fort Mead, predominantly is going to scream the loudest and say, hey, oh, we can't collect on something, and we're at risk.
00:41:29.740Well, then get to work, Congress, get to work, IC, get to work, Director of National Intelligence and Director of CIA, and come up with a new system that's approved by the Congress and the American people that will prevent politicization but still ensure that we can protect ourselves.
00:41:56.640Samantha Powers, why is she controversial, and what does she do to abuse this system, sir?1.00
00:42:02.440She was asking for the unmasking of people that were the political opponents of President Obama.0.96
00:42:09.900I mean, it wasn't anything to do with national security.
00:42:13.880It was about finding out information about who people were talking to in the Republican side or guys like Mike Flynn and others.
00:42:22.460There's a list of these people, and it wasn't correct.
00:42:25.560And I can tell you, I'll say it again, 29 years, I asked one time, and I went by the book, through the system, all the way up to the director of NSA, and I was told, sorry, Jim, we can't give you that.
00:42:37.420Not Jim, U.S. Pacific Fleet, we cannot give you that information.
00:42:41.740So it was a very tight system in certain circumstances.
00:42:45.720But when you're back in Washington and you're working for the president, oh, my gosh, look how people were willing to turn over information and unmask people.
00:43:01.520This is Jim Finnell, one of our best professionals, one of the best professionals we've ever had, talking to you right there and giving it to you with the bark on the rough way.
00:43:11.080Pfizer should just – and you can't hold it against the president.
00:43:14.080Are you going to hold up his appointees?
00:43:15.380Are you going to hold up his programs?
00:43:16.600Are you going to hold up Save America because of Pfizer renewal?
00:45:47.020the arc of that story, and then we'll get to all the details of Midway tomorrow.
00:45:52.160Sure. Joe Rochefort was stated by Admiral Chester Nimitz after Joe Rochefort was summarily removed
00:46:00.000from his position as the lead intelligence cryptologic radio intelligence officer in
00:46:05.400Station Hypo that was decrypting these Japanese naval codes that won the Battle of Midway.
00:46:11.000Admiral Chester Nimitz wrote that in paper and said the Battle of Midway was in no small part
00:46:16.720due to the great leadership of Joe Rochefort in his combat intelligence unit.
00:46:21.440So Joe Rochefort was a surface warfare officer, had enlisted, then became an officer,
00:46:26.560and he had a propensity for cryptography.
00:46:28.920So he was very bright with numbers and worked in cryptography when he had his shore duty,
00:46:34.420but he was also a very dedicated naval officer and wanted to serve at sea and wanted to command at sea.
00:46:39.820And then in the period drawing up to the war, in the early late 20s, 29 to 32, he got an assignment in Tokyo to work and study Japanese.
00:46:51.860So he was there for three years and learned Japanese, learned the Japanese culture, met Yamamoto, along with Edwin Layton, who became his cohort in Hawaii during this period from 42 to the Battle of Midway.
00:47:05.260And before the run-up to Pearl Harbor on December 7th, Joe Rochefort followed direction from what they called OP-20G back in Washington, D.C.
00:47:14.640that gave them the direction of where they were supposed to work on this collection network that we had across the Pacific.
00:47:21.020We had people in the Philippines. We had people in Australia. We had people in Shanghai.
00:47:25.720We had people all over as stations that collected this new thing called radio intelligence, which was intercepting HF radio communications and then decrypting the coded discussions that were going on.
00:47:37.740And there were different levels of discussion.
00:47:44.800But the fleet communications, JN-25, was not given to the guys in Hawaii.
00:47:50.620And then the folks in Washington were unable to decrypt it.
00:47:55.720And December 7th happened and thousands of people were killed. And Joe Rochefort took that personally because he was working 24 hours a day trying to decrypt these things.
00:48:05.560And after the attack happened on December 7th, he recognized that the people in D.C. were, you know, they were they had their own interests and their own political views and outlook.
00:48:17.500And they weren't the same as Chester Nimitz and before that, Admiral Kimmel. And so he dedicated and said, I'm going to work for the fleet commander.
00:48:24.880And so he started breaking, working on JN-25 with his team there in the basement at Pearl Harbor, still there today.
00:48:34.440I want to hold and give the story to Mark.
00:48:36.620To break the code so we can know where the Japanese fleet was.
00:48:39.480The intel operators that broke the codes, the heroism of pilots that sacrificed and willingly, knowingly gave their lives in these runs, the sailors, it all came together.
00:48:52.780That's why Midway, I think, I would argue is maybe the greatest of all naval battles in performance of the United States Navy.
00:49:01.000It's the reason as a kid I wanted to join the Seventh Fleet because I learned those stories early on and just so amazing.