Andrew Bustamante is a former CIA intelligence officer and founder of Everyday Spy, a website that helps you learn more about what the CIA does. He's been on the podcast before, but this was the only day he was able to do it, so we did it on a Thursday, so it was the last day he could do it. In this episode, we talk about the CIA's mission, how it's classified, and how important it is to have access to classified information. We also talk about some of the things that go on behind the scenes in the CIA and FBI, and why it's important to have a need-to-know access to the information. We also discuss the dark web, and the dark side of the internet, which is where you can get your stolen and hidden secrets! Let's get into it baby! Subscribe to FreshShift Podcast to get notified when we upload a new episode every Monday morning. Fresh Shift Podcast is now available on all podcast directories. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts! Subscribe on iTunes Learn more about your ad choices. Use the promo code: "FreshShift" to receive 20% off your first month with discount code "UPLEVEL" at checkout. FreshShift is giving you access to 10% off the entire FreshShift membership pack. Use the discount code: FUTURESPY at checkout when you shop at FreshShift. at checkout and get 20% all month long. to receive $5, $10, $25, $50, $55, $60, $75, and $100, and get $150, and a VIP discount when you become a patron, and receive a VIP membership when you sign up for VIP access to Freshshift is available for 4 months get VIP access. Become a supporter of FreshShift, they also get a discount of $35, $45, $48, $64, $95, $65, $99, and VIP access, and they get VIP membership and get an ad discount, and all other offers are available for VIP + VIP access gets you get $24, VIP is a year and VIP gets VIP access and they also gets $50 is a chance to VIP access? they get my ad-only, they get all access to VIP discount, $19, VIP access only, and I get access to all other places in the VIP program plus a discount on the VIP discount is also receive VIP access and VIP discount?
00:05:43.000So I was like, dude, we got to do this interview.
00:05:46.000This was kind of the only day that he was able to do it, so we're doing it on a Thursday, and then we're going to give you guys a pop the balloon after the fact.
00:05:51.000Fresh is going to be running that one, but I'm doing this one.
00:06:17.000If you've chipped on my algorithm, it's there.
00:06:19.000So we were actually talking about this before the podcast, and one of the reasons I really enjoy speaking to you is because you're probably, you and Scott Ritter are probably the only people I've talked to And really the only people I could think of on YouTube that have held a government clearance at some point and understand,
00:06:36.000you know, the whole—and we'll actually talk about that here in a second.
00:06:39.000So we come from the same world, right?
00:06:42.000I mean, obviously Intel is different than law enforcement, but in general we understand certain things that are uniform, right?
00:06:49.000Classification levels, all this other stuff.
00:06:51.000And we understand each other's missions, versus the American public in general doesn't understand the different missions between the CIA and FBI. It's amazing how they conflate the two career fields, or the two professions.
00:07:02.000But real quick, can you tell us what the CIA is, The mission and then what classification levels are?
00:07:08.000Like for someone that has no idea about this stuff?
00:07:12.000So CIA, the Central Intelligence Agency, is the clearinghouse for all intelligence that's collected in the United States.
00:07:19.000And intelligence is defined as secrets from a foreign source that have impact on national security here in the United States.
00:07:26.000So that's very specifically what CIA does.
00:07:29.000CIA's unique charter is something called Human Intelligence or HUMINT, which is one of several disciplines of intelligence.
00:07:36.000And it's primarily collected in a human-to-human interaction.
00:07:39.000So a person sits across from another person and extracts or steals secrets in some sort of covert or willing collaborator kind of way.
00:07:49.000Again, different than what the other intelligence services do.
00:07:53.000So CIA kind of has two primary missions.
00:07:55.000The first is human collection, human intelligence collection, and the second is the central clearinghouse of all source information, all source intelligence, that then is used to create the president's daily brief, the PDB, that goes up to the senior executive, the president, the commander-in-chief, the chief executive.
00:08:12.000Now, can you go over the different classification levels for the people, you know, from confidential all the way up into SCI? Yeah, you know, there's a lot more levels of classification than people realize, right?
00:08:23.000And when we talk about classification, what you and I are specifically talking about is the levels of information that are segmented out and given need-to-know access to individuals who have demonstrated a loyalty, a trustworthiness, and a need-to-know of those different classification levels.
00:08:41.000The lowest level is really kind of called unclassified.
00:08:46.000Unclassified means it's not a secret, but it's also not necessarily in the public sphere.
00:10:17.000Unclassified can include things like sensitive, for your eyes only, confidential, things that are not criminally liable because the classification levels have to do with Damage to national security interests.
00:10:31.000If there's no damage, if there's no risk of damage to national security interests, it basically falls in that unclassified table.
00:10:39.000But it can still be sensitive, it can still be confidential, it can still be need to know.
00:10:44.000It's just if it gets leaked, no damage, no harm done.
00:10:49.000You know, and an example of that can be like a law enforcement operation plan where they're going to do surveillance, right?
00:10:53.000They'll put in there who's going to be participating, which cars they're using, what guns they're carrying, you know, shit like that.
00:10:59.000Like, is it the end of the world if it got out?
00:11:01.000No, but it does display law enforcement techniques or the way they prepare and they wouldn't want that information out there.
00:11:07.000That's why it's, you know, fairly difficult for like...
00:11:09.000For a private citizen, if they did a FOIA request, it'd be very difficult for you to get an operation plan, right?
00:11:14.000I'd be surprised if you were able to get one that wasn't redacted to the T. So, okay, so we got sensitive bond classified, which so many different things fall into that.
00:11:45.000So there's actually a huge number of Americans that have a secret clearance.
00:11:48.000Basically, every entry-level military enlisted person, officer, newly recruited federal agent from anything from IRS to Homeland Security to USAID. Lots of people have secret clearances.
00:12:01.000What's interesting is after you're vetted for secret, Usually there's a long history or a long timeline where all you have is access to secret information.
00:12:10.000And secret information is defined as information that is damaging to national security.
00:12:41.000Yes, and I think it's very important that we distinguish for the audience.
00:12:43.000Guys, there's two different, if you were to look at the criminal justice system, right, at the federal level, there's two different segues you can go.
00:12:48.000You can go the military courts, and then you can go the criminal courts.
00:12:53.000Which, by the way, did you see that they literally gave a plea deal to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, one of the orchestrators of 9-11 yesterday?
00:13:09.000So that's basically the two different routes that you have.
00:13:12.000So with the secret thing, and I find it interesting that you mentioned the military courts, if you're like a military guy, they would prefer to prosecute you in the military courts way more because the burden of proof is less, they have higher conviction rates, and you're just afforded less rights when you're a service personnel.
00:13:37.000It really is just your commanding officer can basically be like, I'm going to try you for insubordination because you didn't do what I said.
00:13:46.000So we talked about the military side, where you'll get hit with that for having secret information.
00:13:54.000On the criminal side, let's say you're not a service member, guys, and they decide to go through an AUSA or whatever, Department of Justice, you're going to get hit.
00:14:00.000Typically, this is where you start to get hit with espionage.
00:14:43.000Movies make you think that Top Secret's super sexy.
00:14:47.000Honestly, top secret still isn't that sexy.
00:14:49.000You have to be vetted and you have to be proven to have need to know for top secret information.
00:14:54.000But oftentimes if you're a specialist of any kind in the government, if you're in the national security, law enforcement, or intelligence world, you're gonna get a top secret clearance.
00:15:02.000That's what I had when I was an agent that was a top secret.
00:15:05.000And if you guys apply for any special agent position, they're typically gonna get you a top secret clearance.
00:15:11.000Because what Top Secret gives you is the ability to have joint operations.
00:15:15.000So now Homeland Security can talk to CIA, can talk to NSA, can talk to FBI. Top Secret level clearance to Top Secret level clearance.
00:15:23.000Even though what's really wild, brother, is that they define classified information for an agency differently.
00:15:31.000So, for example, CIA considers their surveillance methodology top secret, no foreign, right?
00:15:37.000No foreign meaning not for release to foreign contacts, foreign allies.
00:15:43.000Where FBI considers their surveillance methodology unclassified.
00:15:56.000And a big reason for that, guys, is if you think about it, like the FBI prosecutes people in open court.
00:16:00.000So when you prosecute people in open court, there's something called the discovery process, which means it needs to come out to the defendant, who are fucking criminals.
00:16:07.000So that is why they can't have their surveillance stuff being unclassified, because that has to come out during the course of a criminal prosecution.
00:16:21.000And if you have a cleared court, you have less control over who's in the court, who the judge is, what the district is, and where you try it.
00:16:28.000And the general public can go in there.
00:16:29.000Guys, any of you right now can literally go into a federal courthouse, sit in there, and watch trials all day.
00:16:57.000The SCI. What's really interesting is you have compartments inside TS. So SCI, Special Compartmented Information, is a category of top secret.
00:17:06.000You also have categories 1 through 15.
00:17:09.000So like category 6 is nuclear secrets.
00:17:11.000Category 12 is nuclear targeting secrets.
00:17:14.000So you would have a TS, Special Compartment of Information, so TS-SCI, or you'd have a TS, CAT-6, CAT-12, like I did when I was in the military in nuclear missile services.
00:17:23.000You could also have a TS-PRIVY. PRIVY is when you've got information that goes to a subset of a subset.
00:17:29.000So let's say that you're NSA working against China and you're also working against China telecommunications.
00:17:38.000Now you might have a privy access that gets you the highest level secrets about what's happening in China telecommunications.
00:17:43.000Whereas everybody else in NSA is going to have TSSEI, so they know we're collecting Chinese telecommunications secrets, but they don't have the highest level of information.
00:17:54.000So you've got all these sub-compartments that further prioritize and limit what information people have access to.
00:18:13.000Sorry guys, I was getting a message from Mo on the side.
00:18:15.000The other thing I was going to say that I think is really important for the people to understand is when you have a clearance, let's go back 10 years.
00:18:22.000You were working for the CIA, I'm working for Homeland Security, and I'm like, yo, I need some information.
00:18:28.000And I was like, and I had some information that I needed to try to get from and pursue it to my criminal case, right?
00:18:34.000And I was like, hey, you know, and someone puts me in touch with Andrew.
00:18:37.000Let's say I'm investigating a terror cell or some shit like that, and I need some information.
00:18:42.000Andrew's only going to get, well, number one, I need to have a clearance.
00:18:45.000I need to have SCI more than likely for that.
00:18:46.000And then I'm going to need to have a need to know to get that information, right?
00:18:51.000And then he's going to have to probably fill out some paperwork from his agency.
00:18:54.000Hey, DHS is requesting this, etc., How did we get the information?
00:19:34.000And on top of that, you need to have the need to know and the clearance.
00:19:39.000Obviously, it's gotten better after 9-11, but this is one of the biggest problems with the federal government, that there's so many different agencies that have different overlaps and different authorities, etc., where...
00:19:50.000Number one, it's sometimes hard to find the information that you need because you've got to figure out, pinpoint which agency is going to have it, which section is going to have it, which guy is going to have it.
00:19:56.000And then second, if you do figure it out, they might be difficult with giving you information.
00:20:00.000One of the things that I've always criticized the FBI for is they classify everything.
00:20:05.000I've given them information before, then I hit them back up like, hey, what was that info I gave you?
00:20:13.000But every agency classifies things differently, and I'm glad that you mentioned that, how what's classified at one agency might not even be classified at another, depending on what it is.
00:20:22.000And then the personnel that you deal with, some people are fucking what I call secret squirrels.
00:20:26.000They don't want to fucking say nothing, and it's like, bro, it's not that serious.
00:20:29.000So I've always found that very interesting.
00:20:32.000So we went over the different classifications.
00:20:35.000Guys, you can really get in the weeds with this.
00:20:38.000For guys that are involved in the nuclear stuff, you're like a nuclear scientist or whatever, you're going to need something called a Q-clearance, you work for the Department of Energy.
00:20:46.000Then you've got, what's the one that the people in the White House have?
00:20:49.000Oh yeah, I know you're talking about it.
00:20:51.000I don't know what it's called, but I know what you're talking about.
00:20:53.000But yeah, there's like a specific clearance for people that are in the White House.
00:20:56.000So there's all different types of classifications, but the ones that we just gave you guys, like the sensitive, unclassified, confidential level secret, top secret, and then top secret SCI, I would say those are the ones that the general public, you guys need to know.
00:21:10.000Obviously, working at the CIA or whatever, I'm assuming the bare minimum is the SCI for you guys.
00:22:09.000But because the actual formal policy is that you keep your clearance until two years after you no longer have access to information, that was being used by senior intelligence officials to move into the private sector and then basically sell to the private sector their private contacts,
00:22:30.000their network of contacts inside of the intelligence organizations.
00:24:21.000They're asking you about drug use, they're asking you about foreign contacts, foreign allegiance.
00:24:25.000Sexual behaviors, like for full-scope, sexual behaviors, you know, how many marriages you've had, whether you're in contact with your whatever, with your stepdad or with your former roommate's ex-girlfriend, like it's super personal.
00:26:11.000And the other thing, too, with the polygraph is, I didn't know this until after the fact, if you don't sleep, guys, the night before a polygraph, you are going to fail.
00:26:23.000Like, you will fail because it's so heavily dependent upon your physiology.
00:26:27.000So, like, something that normally wouldn't bother you or you wouldn't maybe have as much of a reaction to when you're sleep deprived is a big deal, guys.
00:26:45.000And then you show up and you're like, I'm bleary-eyed and whatever else.
00:26:48.000And that's where you really learn the difference between a good polygrapher and a bad polygrapher.
00:26:52.000Because a good polygrapher will find a baseline, find out what's normal for you in that state, in that condition, and then measure your variances from that baseline.
00:27:01.000Whereas a bad polygrapher isn't going to set a good baseline and is going to find all sorts of false positives.
00:27:47.000It's just like, you don't throw a baseball ever, and then you do throw a baseball, and you're off target.
00:27:52.000A trained interrogator will be able to find that.
00:27:53.000A trained interrogator will be very sensitive to that, but most of the time you're going up against an untrained person.
00:27:58.000So, when it comes to polygraph, you've got the people who condition themselves to beat a polygraph by essentially rehearsing their lies, mastering their lies over and over again.
00:28:07.000And this is what makes a really good con person.
00:28:09.000Really good con men, really good con women, They don't just go out there and wing it.
00:29:42.000And that you guys are the clearinghouse, and you guys specialize in human intelligence.
00:29:48.000Can you, for the audience, please tell them the difference between being the clearinghouse and CIA and being human intelligence versus an NSA? Right.
00:29:56.000So we talked about there's multiple different types of intelligence disciplines.
00:30:13.000CIA not only specializes in human, but also specializes in indexing or synthesizing all source intelligence.
00:30:23.000So they will take human and SIGINT, find out where it correlates or corroborates each other, and from that will create an assessment in a narrative form.
00:30:45.000The two agencies have no idea the other one collected that information.
00:30:48.000And then they both send it to the analytical wing, the director of analysis, or the director of intelligence inside the CIA. And that's in Langley.
00:31:00.000It takes raw data from both places and synthesizes it into a paragraph that says, Dear Mr.
00:31:06.000President, this organization and these two individuals located in Yemen or wherever had a conversation about a potential bombing in Boston at this location.
00:31:16.000Neither agency has the right to know what the other agency collected, but that's why you have the Directorate of Intelligence inside of...
00:31:22.000So there's an intermediary that collects all the information and puts it in a digestible package for the president in their intel brief every day.
00:31:29.000That person just, that entity happens to sit inside.
00:32:36.000And I think that's actually a reason why the FBI has so many problems, because they have a dual mission, and it's very difficult to do both and be actually good at both.
00:33:20.000And when I went to leave the US Air Force, I got a tap on the shoulder from CIA that said, hey, we think we've got a good job for you.
00:33:27.000So then I went and did my interview process and went through my onboarding and my vetting and everything else and said yes to a position with CIA's National Clandestine Service, the NCS, which is sometimes known as the Directorate of Operations, depending on who's in charge of CIA. And when they contacted you, they obviously didn't say who they were.
00:34:11.000So I go through the whole vetting process, I get picked up by the NCS, into the Director of Operations, and I go through what's known at the time as a...
00:34:19.000There's a clandestine trainee program, a CT program, and then there was another program too.
00:35:56.000Okay, so you get into this program, National Clandestine Service, and you get pretty much, since you had experience, they just kick you out of the field pretty much after three months of training.
00:36:07.000I think still, even though Wikipedia has a page on it, I'm pretty sure that all the details about the field tradecraft course, FTC, is still considered classified information.
00:37:48.000Almost 50% of Japanese men say that they're not married at the age of 30 because they can't find a suitable spouse.
00:37:57.00050% of Japanese women at the age of 30 say they can't find a suitable spouse.
00:38:04.000So you got a bunch of fucking Japanese men and a bunch of Japanese women saying they can't find suitable spouses for each other, which is why they're not getting married, which is why they're not having kids, which is why there's a population crisis.
00:38:13.000So Japan launches this brand new policy to inspire population growth.
00:38:28.000You want to know how to have some babies, let some other people into Japan, because I'll bet there's a lot of people out there who'd bang the hell out of some Japanese.
00:40:19.000Because you're virtually invisible to them now.
00:40:21.000And that's what CIA looks for, and especially in a post 9-11 world.
00:40:25.000In a post 9-11 world, CIA woke up to the fact that Harvard and Yale educated white men can't operate well all over the world.
00:40:34.000Because no matter where you go in the world, if you look like an American, even if you're Canadian, If you look like an American, all those poor-ass countries, they all pour attention on you.
00:40:43.000It's impossible to be invisible if you're white pretty much anywhere.
00:40:48.000But when you're brown everywhere, you're easily forgotten.
00:40:54.000And I mean, I think it's very important since you mentioned the whole Harvard-educated Yale thing.
00:40:59.000I think it's important to note for the people that the CIA was started by the good old boys club.
00:41:03.000You know, you're talking about like an Alan Dulles, etc.
00:41:04.000These guys were all wealthy lawyers that had...
00:41:07.000You know, business contacts in the United States that understood that using the intelligence services would be able to destabilize governments for the betterment of American...
00:41:21.000Because if you destabilize a banana company down in South America...
00:41:27.000That's run by a foreign nation, and then we're like, okay, well, America runs this now.
00:41:31.000We're making the money on the bananas.
00:41:32.000Well, you've pretty much not only secured that country's allegiance to America and reliance, you've secured our ability to garner resources from this country, which is something that the CIA does a lot.
00:41:43.000And actually, we could talk about that next.
00:41:45.000Oh, before we do, so you were there in East Asia.
00:41:48.000Can you tell us about what you were doing, like, in general?
00:44:02.000Yeah, no, I mean, yeah, when it comes to government bureaucracy and funding things, I definitely understand where you're coming from with that.
00:44:21.000So, and I think it's important, guys, for you to note that when you're a government employee, the president that's in office does heavily dictate the mission priorities, right?
00:44:30.000So, I'm guessing that this is before bin Laden was killed, so yeah, there was a heavy CT focus, and so these East Asian countries were basically, and that makes sense, actually, that they were allowing and facilitating these guerrilla militias to operate and train in their countries.
00:44:49.000So one of the things that people don't realize, and it's so fucking important, man, Islamic extremism, really any kind of extremism, any kind of radicalization, it's really predictable.
00:45:01.000It's not that different from radicalized drug dealers or radicalized zealot Christians or radicalized anything, right?
00:45:09.000When you take somebody coming from a poverty-stricken background where they've been disadvantaged, Mm-hmm.
00:47:10.000It might be a listening post or a bug, right?
00:47:13.000You're looking for a source of information that yields relevant information.
00:47:18.000Secret, classified, or confidential data that can advance national security interests within an established requirement that was dictated by the chief executive, the president, right?
00:47:31.000So it's a shell game of does this information about the rice trade meet the qualifications of all these different checklist items?
00:48:33.000Which could be done with sabotage or a drone strike or any number of other things.
00:48:37.000Even though it's a sovereign nation, because it's under the counterterrorism rubric, that's how it is that we can just completely disregard sovereign nation's sovereignty and go in and blow things up.
00:48:54.000The only way they could get away with that is because they know that inside the United States, we recognize counterterrorism operations as a unique carve-out of the war, of just war theory, or just war requirements.
00:49:07.000It's one of the ways to get around the sovereignty of nations, right?
00:49:11.000And because the United States classifies Hamas as a terrorist organization, Israel now has a chance to launch a missile right into the capital city of Iran.
00:49:46.000Or do we allow the dojo to operate so that we can find the next higher level of terrorists in charge of the dojo?
00:49:54.000Because the funding's coming from somewhere.
00:49:55.000The recruitment's coming from somewhere.
00:49:57.000You can follow the money, you can follow the training, and you can find out who's the next level up.
00:50:02.000But if you're going to do that, you're also acknowledging that the 15 terrorists there are all legitimate threats that you're allowing to prosper.
00:50:24.000And somehow you have to justify that up the ladder bureaucratically.
00:50:29.000For the cost and expense of the operation.
00:50:31.000Again, it's stupid shit, dude, but that is what it boils down to.
00:50:35.000Well, no, that's why I wanted to get that scenario out there, because I know, obviously, you can't talk about classified stuff, so I'm like, you know, let's just create a scenario and tell me how they would react to it.
00:50:41.000So, guys, what you're basically seeing here is, like, there's so many different things that come into play, because now, you're like, okay, we want to dismantle and disrupt this, We have a different couple ways, but if we just send a drone in there and blow them up, well now we've got to deal with diplomatic ramifications.
00:50:55.000So now let's continue adding on your scenario, right?
00:50:58.000I'm one field officer in one country following one dojo of 15 people.
00:51:04.000Well guess what's happening all over the place?
00:51:14.000Every dojo has between 5 and 25 trainees in it.
00:51:18.000Somewhere there's an accountant at CIA who's literally trying to fit to a budget that was dictated by Congress.
00:51:26.000So somebody has to make the decision like, oh, the Laos dojo in XYZ Village needs 25 extra dollars and the Vietnamese dojo in XYZ City needs to reduce their budget by $25.
00:51:53.000And the person who's pulling the operational purse strings is an accountant who knows dick-all about tradecraft or about counter-terrorism operations or about clear and present danger.
00:52:06.000And it's just interesting how, because you guys operate in the dark, so, since you guys operate in the dark, like, you have to really be cognizant of doing things in a certain way, because we're talking about huge geopolitical implications if things are done in a certain way.
00:52:21.000And I guess we can segue into the situation with Israel and, well, you know what, we'll just go backwards.
00:52:29.000What are your general thoughts on what went down on October 7th?
00:52:32.000Do you think Israel had some prior knowledge about it?
00:52:36.000There's a bunch of people that have different opinions, but I'll just leave it open-ended for you.
00:52:40.000And then we can talk about that, the conflict in Gaza, and then what your thoughts are, and obviously what just went down.
00:52:46.000For the audience that doesn't know, about 24 hours ago, 36 hours ago, roughly, they killed the leader of Hamas, the political side, who was doing a lot of the hostage negotiation, and they also killed the second-in-command for Hezbollah in Beirut, Lebanon.
00:55:11.000And that's the reality of intelligence, folks.
00:55:13.000Like, intelligence is the art of Of finding secrets, finding things that aren't supposed to be found, and being able to act on them before they take place.
00:55:29.000So it's just, it's a shame because I don't like seeing Secret Service take the kick to the balls that they're getting, or the kick to the vulva, depending on who you're talking about.
00:55:48.000It means that the realities of bureaucracy prevented them from doing what they needed to do in that moment, and that's exactly what I think happened on October 7th in Israel.
00:56:15.000And the fact that they were able to get around one of the best intelligence...
00:56:19.000I've said this many times that, you know, Mossad is one of the best intelligence agencies in the world, and they have to be because obviously Israel has a lot of enemies.
00:56:28.000People had said some shit about the Egyptians and warned them about this, etc., that this attack was happening.
00:56:34.000They saw them on the cameras, but I guess maybe they just didn't take it seriously.
00:56:38.000There's people saying, oh, well, Netanyahu did this on purpose to rationalize this war.
00:56:41.000I mean, there's a bunch of theories out there.
00:57:01.000Yeah, what do you think is going to happen here?
00:57:04.000I mean, I personally am like, dude, I think we're closest to a war than we've ever been in a very long time.
00:57:12.000You can make the argument that it's about to be World War III. Some people say we're already in World War III. What's your thoughts on that?
00:57:16.000So Israel's in a precarious situation.
00:57:37.000That was a circle of peers who were dedicated to taking action in the best interest of Israel.
00:57:44.000And then he dissolved the War Cabinet after Benny Gantz left the War Cabinet because Benny Gantz was saying, Netanyahu's not operating in the best interest of Israel.
00:57:52.000So then Benny Gantz leaves, so then what's Netanyahu do?
00:57:54.000He's like, ah, well, fuck this whole War Cabinet thing.
00:57:56.000And Benny Gantz, what was his position?
00:57:58.000He was like a senior minister, senior leader.
00:58:02.000He was a competitor against Netanyahu to become the next Prime Minister.
00:58:07.000Oh, okay, so he was, if we were going to give an American equivalent to that, because Netanyahu guys are Republican in American eyes, right?
01:01:02.000Can you double check that for me, guys?
01:01:04.000If there's a process, who they report directly to, I think it's the prime minister.
01:01:08.000So there's always a process, and that process can always be bypassed, especially during times of war.
01:01:13.000Keep in mind, in the United States, during a declaration of an emergency action, like COVID, the president just says whatever they want to say.
01:01:20.000They don't have to get it approved by Congress.
01:01:22.000It doesn't have to be approved by the state.
01:02:39.000Because that's a big step that they went ahead and killed...
01:02:42.000A foreign dignitary in a foreign land that was responsible for doing the negotiations with them.
01:02:51.000And then obviously they killed the second guy in command for Hezbollah.
01:02:56.000What do you think is going to happen here next?
01:02:58.000What do you think is going to be the retaliation from Lebanon and from Iran?
01:03:01.000It's really hard to know what the retaliation is going to be.
01:03:04.000I've got some ideas of how it'll play out, but it's hard to know exactly what's going to happen.
01:03:08.000But one thing that we do at high probability, CIA works in probabilities, high probability there will be a coordinated counter-attack between Hamas and Hezbollah.
01:03:17.000Because keep in mind, Hamas and Hezbollah are both funded equally by Iran.
01:03:22.000So Iran, hell man, we could see a three-way coordinated counterattack where Iran launches missiles, Hamas launches missiles, and Lebanon launches missiles into three different sectors of Israel simultaneously as a counterattack.
01:03:35.000They could even have another ground assault of some sort, right?
01:03:38.000Because what Israel has done is essentially pissed off three different military forces and given them all justification to To come and attack.
01:03:49.000And here's what's strategically stupid about what they did.
01:03:52.000The north part of Israel is where Lebanon is.
01:03:57.000Gaza is on the fucking west side of Israel.
01:04:58.000It just happens to be a nation that doesn't respect the difference between church and state, which, oh, by the way, is a fundamental requirement for democracy.
01:05:06.000Now, nevertheless, what I see happening is some sort of coordinated counterattack from all three or two simultaneously.
01:05:15.000It's important to keep in mind, Iran is a very well-funded machine.
01:05:20.000People don't realize how rich Iran is.
01:05:22.000Iran is the breadbasket of the Middle East.
01:05:26.000They provide all the food and all the agriculture for all of your wealthy Arab nations.
01:05:31.000Hezbollah is a military force just about as strong as the IDF. Like, Hezbollah's been around a long time.
01:05:37.000They're well-trained, well-funded, and they're big.
01:05:41.000Theoretically, Like, a ceasefire was reached, but, you know, they both wanted to preserve each other or preserve themselves.
01:05:48.000If Israel were to really go to war with Hezbollah full out, it'd be a toss-up who's actually going to win.
01:05:54.000Especially considering the fact that Israel's now alienated all of its allies.
01:06:29.000It's going to have to happen because the United States needs a two-state solution because without a two-state solution, the Middle East, meaning Saudi Arabia, UAE, Oman, Bahrain, Qatar, all of these countries are continuing to see the abuse of the Muslim people in the face of The Jewish people being backed by the United States.
01:07:46.000We could talk about Omar Bashir getting taken out of power, and then the two people that used to work for him, now they're warring, and there's fucking civil unrest going on in Sudan.
01:07:56.000The whole Middle East is just in shambles right now, going wild.
01:08:01.000And that's an interesting take, that you think that there's going to be a coordinated attack, which makes sense, because yeah, they pissed off three different countries, and obviously Netanyahu is one of the problems.
01:08:13.000And it's interesting, too, because they had this meeting set up, and then October 7th happened, and everything was suspended.
01:08:26.000Yeah, he met with Trump in Mar-a-Lago, with Biden, and I think he met with Kamala Harris as well.
01:08:31.000Kamala Harris, for optics reasons, didn't want to meet him publicly, like they met behind closed doors, etc., because she wasn't there in Congress when he gave his speech.
01:08:37.000But if we're going to go ahead, I'll summarize his speech for you guys right now.
01:09:21.000All these countries that dislike Israel.
01:09:23.000Significantly so, but if they have the backing of Saudi Arabia, they have the backing of the United Arab Emirates, they have the backing of Bahrain, all these other countries, it'll be easier for them to exist in a somewhat less turbulent, I guess, space.
01:09:37.000So, let's assume, let's say you're the advisor to the president, right, at this point.
01:09:44.000Yeah, let's say you're like the advisor to the president, right, in the intel world.
01:09:50.000How should we move in the United States knowing that there's a high probability, as you would say, that there's going to be a coordinated attack from these countries in response to the bombings that we've seen?
01:11:07.000So we've painted ourselves into a corner where we don't want to support Netanyahu.
01:11:14.000It's not in our best interest to support Netanyahu.
01:11:16.000We do want to support Israel, but we can't actually negotiate with any of Israel's enemies because we've labeled all of Israel's enemies terrorist groups.
01:11:23.000So we either have to say that we are willing to negotiate with terrorists, which by the way we are, because we've talked to the Taliban and we're currently talking to Hamas, and it's a bunch of fucking bullshit that we try to say that we don't negotiate with terrorists.
01:14:33.000So we were talking about Israel and we can't let it fall because they're an ally in the region.
01:14:38.000So I was going to ask, and your thing is you don't like Netanyahu's policies and you look at it like, look, We've got to support Israel.
01:14:49.000However, Israel needs to have a Tuesday solution.
01:14:51.000And that's the only way that we're going to get the Arab world on board.
01:14:53.000And I see your perspective on that, because realistically speaking, they're not going to go anywhere.
01:14:58.000So the only way that you're going to solve this is, yeah, you're going to have to have a Tuesday solution and give both parties the ability to self-govern.
01:15:05.000Netanyahu did mention that he would give Gaza back to the Palestinians if they'd be able to self-govern, but it'd be a civilian government.
01:15:29.000He wants to give them a half-ass, like, you know...
01:15:31.000This is my big issue with both Ukraine and Israel.
01:15:34.000Is that the figurehead for both countries, they are dick-all at being statesmen.
01:15:41.000They have zero chops, credibility, or experience at being actual statesmen.
01:15:48.000Meaning people who can solution their way through a problem.
01:15:52.000They're both really good at getting up and giving, like, pompous speeches and rabble-rousing speeches full of empty promises that get people excited and get people supporting you.
01:16:12.000But my point is, like, they're both of these leaders, both Zelensky and Netanyahu, They're not experienced people at bringing a solution to a challenging problem to a head.
01:16:25.000Instead, what they are is they're good at motivating a base and getting national awareness and creating a campaign that's lopsided that gets people to believe in their cause.
01:16:38.000Half of the world, not even half the world, the wealthiest parts of the world believe in their cause, whereas everybody else is kind of like, this is some bullshit.
01:17:20.000Well, after World War II. Coming out of World War II, you had a devastated Germany, a devastated UK, a devastated France, a devastated Japan.
01:17:29.000And you had a powerful Russia and a powerful United States.
01:17:34.000Now, what the United States did well that Russia didn't do is they swept in with economic aid because the United States had turned on their economic machine.
01:17:42.000So now we were able to come in and essentially economically hijack Germany, France, the UK, and Japan.
01:17:51.000We were able to force them to follow our democratic principles, which like you said earlier, made them dependent on us.
01:17:57.000If you want our money, you have to let our companies rebuild your country.
01:18:02.000You have to let our resources build your cars.
01:18:05.000You have to let our systems and our services create your new financial backbone.
01:18:12.000Now you have Japan, France, the UK, and Germany, all well-established economic countries, all well-established economic democracies that are questioning whether or not they are democratic at all.
01:18:28.000The Prime Minister of France destroyed his parliament, dissolved parliament.
01:18:32.000Germany is facing a populist uprising.
01:18:35.000Japan is having all sorts of issues with its neighboring countries.
01:18:38.000The UK is distancing itself from the United States.
01:18:41.000So what has happened is the strong arm of the United States...
01:18:45.000That came that the strategy of strong arming people through economic control and manipulation was very effective for about 35 or 40 years.
01:18:54.000Well, over the course of the global war on terror, we got distracted and we started focusing on this terrorist threat and everybody else in the world woke up and was like, hey, you know what?
01:19:04.000The United States is just leveraging a bunch of economic money over us.
01:19:07.000But now, the United States isn't the only person with deep pockets.
01:20:22.000All they're doing is following the MO created by the United States.
01:20:25.000And the United States is now throwing a fit because China's doing the same thing that we did better than us in the modern day because we took our eyes off the ball for 20 years.
01:20:36.000I've been extremely critical of Israel on multiple occasions.
01:20:39.000I don't think that we should support them as much as we do.
01:20:41.000I do think that they cause us some issues, geopolitical issues with getting into Middle Eastern affairs that I don't think we should be involved in.
01:20:49.000And you mentioned that we need to support Israel and we should back them.
01:20:53.000Why do you think it's so imperative that we don't just let them deal with this problem on their own?
01:20:56.000Because I think that they've opened...
01:20:58.000Pandora's box by attacking these two different countries within 24 hours.
01:21:02.000We're the only thing that keeps all of the Middle East from destroying Israel.
01:21:23.000There's lots of economic and financial reasons that we should support Israel.
01:21:30.000They're the backbone for most of our medical equipment and medical machinery in the United States.
01:21:35.000Unless you want to start buying fucking CAT scanners from China, you need Israel to make the best medical devices and medical machines in the world.
01:21:43.000They're the center for a lot of precious gems, precious jewels.
01:22:08.000So it's in the best interest, again, I'm not saying that Netanyahu is making good decisions.
01:22:15.000I'm not saying that Joe Biden supporting Netanyahu's policies is making good decisions.
01:22:18.000What I am saying is that it's in the best interest of the United States to support the ongoing existence and survival and independence of Israel.
01:22:26.000And if we stop supporting Israel, Iran's just going to wipe them out.
01:22:32.000But you think we should support them under the pretense, obviously, that there's a two-state solution.
01:22:37.000Or, even better, we should start to dictate to them more about what it takes, like what requirements they must meet in order to get American support.
01:22:46.000Coming to our Congress and making a plea to our statesmen, that shouldn't be accepted.
01:22:53.000What the fuck is a foreign dignitary doing in our Capitol Hill talking to independent congresspeople?
01:23:22.000All you're doing there is making some kind of backroom deal because you've got this bullshit in the United States now where apparently the Speaker of the House can fly to Taiwan on her own and completely violate the primary orders and intentions of the executive,
01:23:38.000the president, who's supposed to be the senior commander-in-chief.
01:23:41.000So we've got our own issues here in the United States.
01:23:43.000But my point with all of that is just...
01:23:45.000Supporting Israel does not mean supporting Netanyahu.
01:23:47.000We need to support Israel to maintain the supremacy and the economic superpower of the United States.
01:23:53.000And if we let Israel collapse, we lose the Middle East to either a Sunni majority or a Shia crescent, both of which are not in our best interest.
01:24:36.000We gave them a financial system, we gave them an economic system, we gave them a foundation.
01:24:41.000If I could have my dream situation, my dream situation would be that we dictate, not just we being the United States, but we being the Western powers, Dictate a two-state solution.
01:25:40.000And even better, if you can make some kind of organic requirement, some kind of organic cooperation, that makes sense.
01:25:48.000One country has oil, one country has food, right?
01:25:51.000One country has ocean ports, one country has rail ports.
01:25:55.000If you can make it like that, now they have to get along.
01:25:57.000They have to cooperate to move forward.
01:25:59.000And if they have to cooperate, then they both get the trade benefits of access to both the Western world for Israel and the Arab world for Palestine.
01:26:10.000Because as soon as Palestine's its own independent state, as soon as it's its own state, Saudi Arabia, UAE, like Iran, are all going to become close trading partners.
01:26:19.000There's going to be so much money that flows into Palestine to rebuild Palestine, to create school, educations, and hospitals.
01:26:25.000The whole Muslim world wants to support Palestine.
01:26:34.000They just don't deserve to take their, they don't deserve to abuse, they don't have the right to abuse their support and kill Palestinians in the name of trying to hunt down Hamas.
01:27:40.000Obviously, there's been a lot of updates since last time we spoke.
01:27:43.000The people I've spoken to that are really, you know, into this whole conflict, they say Russia controls somewhere around 20-25% of Ukraine right now, pretty much the whole eastern portion, which, you know, has a lot of the middle-rich areas.
01:28:16.000That the Western world would grow tired of supporting Ukraine, that they would acknowledge that Ukraine's a corrupt country, not really a democracy, and And Putin just had to sit around and wait for the Western world to get distracted or bored or run out of money.
01:28:59.000And that was the number one problem, right?
01:29:02.000I mean, even then, there's an argument that I think is very sound that the reason Ukraine got as much press coverage as it did was because we needed something other than COVID to talk about, right?
01:29:11.000So, all that to say, Russia, from the beginning, what Russia's been really going for is to control the resource-rich eastern side of Ukraine and essentially to put a puppet or friendly government into western Ukraine that's going to be pro-Russia rather than pro-NATO. And that's been his endgame from the beginning.
01:31:24.000We're going to retake all the land that Russia took from us.
01:31:26.000Russia's going to pay back for all the...
01:31:29.000This is stuff that he was promising, right?
01:31:32.000And people were tripping over their dicks trying to support him in the first six months.
01:31:36.000Well, now you wake up and you're kind of like, oh, wait a second.
01:31:38.000The guy who was making all those promises was hiding the corruption of his country.
01:31:41.000And then, after a year when he started losing support, then he kind of went to war trying to overcome the corruption of his country.
01:31:50.000Only then validating that there was all sorts of corruption, making all of us Americans wake up to the fact that, oh, those billions that we gave you, you don't even know where they are anymore?
01:31:59.000Like, maybe that wasn't a good use of our money, now that we ourselves are in an economic recession.
01:32:48.000Is that this guy is going to live out his days in comfort while the Ukrainian people have bled and died and they're going to end up having nothing to show for it.
01:32:57.000What's our MO? We're going to flood into eastern Ukraine and take all the debt and rebuild all the cities and we're going to make back every dollar that we invested in aid.
01:33:11.000I do agree with you, and I think that's what's going to happen, especially if Trump comes in.
01:33:15.000I think what Trump's going to do is he's going to pretty much force them both to the table and come to an agreement.
01:33:18.000I think with Trump, he's kind of like, bro, you know, and he always says, you know, if I was in, this war would have never started, which I kind of do agree with him on because he wasn't really big on NATO, and that's Putin's biggest thing is NATO. So I think the fact that he didn't really give a shit about it, he felt like we were spending way too much money on it.
01:33:33.000It wasn't really benefiting us like that.
01:33:34.000I think that kind of kept Russia at bay.
01:33:36.000But then you get Biden in, who's super pro-Ukraine, super pro-NATO. I think Putin was like, yo, we got invaded.
01:33:44.000Then you had the issues going on in the Donbass, where there was war.
01:33:47.000Ethnic Russians were being killed a lot of the times.
01:33:49.000So I think there was just so many things in there why Putin invaded.
01:33:53.000And I think I agree with you that he got the buffer he wanted.
01:33:56.000And I think he's willing to negotiate.
01:33:57.000And it's funny, because they brought this up during the presidential debate, and Trump didn't really answer the question.
01:34:02.000They were like, yeah, so are you going to concede to Putin's demands with Ukraine, etc.?
01:34:07.000And he just went on to insult Joe Biden instead of answering the question.
01:34:15.000Foreign policy, in my opinion, I want to get your take on this because that's what you used to do.
01:34:19.000I think foreign policy is probably the most important topic in this presidential election that people, I don't think, are paying attention to.
01:34:25.000I think they're paying way more attention to, like, dumb social issues, right?
01:34:29.000Versus, like, us potentially being in World War III. And I think, obviously, the rising tensions that we have in the Middle East, right?
01:34:35.000Like, what went down in the past 48 hours is fucking huge.
01:34:44.000You know issues which actually I want to get your take on that as well like I think Us potentially going into war can create a lot of problems for us, and I don't think Americans understand.
01:34:53.000The price of food went up dramatically after Russia invaded Ukraine.
01:34:59.000And I don't think Americans have been able to piece it together to think, it's because Biden's in office.
01:35:03.000Yeah, of course, that's a part of the reason.
01:35:04.000But another reason is that Biden's allowing war to happen, war happens, winds up happening as food goes up.
01:35:10.000Yeah, let's have an honest conversation.
01:36:00.000He breaks all the rules of the traditional bureaucratic process that we have made that has turned into professional politics.
01:36:10.000Which, by the way, the Founding Fathers never wanted professional politics.
01:36:14.000They wanted people to come and be a public servant, like you and I, serve a period of our lives to the public, and then get the fuck out and go do something better for the economy.
01:36:24.000And let new blood come in and sacrifice to serve the public.
01:36:27.000That's what a public servant is supposed to be.
01:36:53.000And now, look at their champion for 2024, Kamala Harris, who no American voted to be president, who never won a primary, who never had a debate where we got to see that she was a demonstrably good leader.
01:37:09.000Instead, it's just the passing down of the Democratic blessing from the Democratic National Convention to Kamala Harris.
01:37:25.000But what I think is really interesting here is that what Americans are being faced with in the polls in 2024 is, do you want professional politics to be more of what it's always been, or are you open to the idea of something else?
01:37:39.000Because I'm not saying Trump is a great solution, but Trump is 1,000% not the same solution.
01:37:45.000And when we've seen, like, do you remember the, it was Bush and Gore, Yeah, I do remember that, actually.
01:39:11.000Is strong evidence that it's not a conspiracy.
01:39:15.000This assassination attempt is starting to sound so much like the actual JFK assassination.
01:39:20.000And a lot of the conspiracy is also sounding like the same conspiracy around 9-11 and the same conspiracy around the October 7th invasion in Israel.
01:39:28.000The current sitting president or prime minister knew it was going to happen and allowed it to happen and used the resources of the deep state to make it happen.
01:39:38.000There was a fucking gap that the Secret Service tried to shore up with local law enforcement.
01:39:43.000It didn't work the way it was supposed to work.
01:40:53.000Yeah, most of the features that are advertised in weapons, like, oh, you can use this simple button to eject your magazine, or you can rack with a flip of a button.
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01:42:28.000And when it comes out the other end, you got this brown mush.
01:42:32.000The food is supposed to last for two to three years on the shelf, but that means some pretty bad stuff has gotten into the food.
01:43:26.000As far as the whole inside job conspiracy, I agree with you that I haven't seen any conclusive evidence at this point.
01:43:33.000To me, it's just gross ineptitude and just incompetence is what it comes down to.
01:43:38.000Whether it's the two police officers that were told that there was a shooter on the roof and they left their post and didn't see him actually climb up onto the roof.
01:43:44.000And he was able to go ahead and set himself up, and then they climbed up to try to find him, and then he pointed the gun at him, and went, oh shit!
01:43:50.000And then he fell off, because the guy literally boosted the other guy up to get in there, and then he had his hands there, and he was dangling, and he saw him, and he looked at him, and then literally the shots were fired after the fact.
01:44:00.000I think all that saved Trump, because the dude was obviously nervous at that point.
01:44:04.000Seconds after the police told him, hey, what the fuck are you doing?
01:44:06.000And he pointed the gun, he shot at Trump, because he obviously got nervous.
01:44:09.000I think right now, I haven't seen anything conclusive that lets me believe that it was like an inside job or anything else like that, because I think people are very quick to assume everything is a grand conspiracy from the government.
01:44:20.000I think they grossly overestimate the government's competence.
01:44:24.000So I would say, yeah, that was just a huge fuck up from the Secret Service.
01:44:28.000Now, and then obviously the FBI joined the investigation and, you know, I'll probably talk about this more on FedReacts for you guys as well, about like, because I, um, Secret Service, the new director and the, um, The acting director.
01:44:40.000Yeah, the acting director of the Secret Service and the second in command assistant director for the FBI both came in and actually testified a couple days ago together.
01:45:18.000If you look at just facts alone, we know that as of 2019, when there was supposed to be the release of all the classified files, that they weren't all released.
01:45:30.000So the only reason that classified information is retained and reclassified after 50 years is because it still has current impact on national security.
01:45:40.000We talked about the definitions of classification, right?
01:45:44.000For something to be a top secret classified document, it has to be of grave national security interest, meaning it can do grave damage to national security.
01:45:52.000So in order for those files from JFK to be reclassified again 50 years later, it means they must still demonstrate grave damage to national security.
01:46:06.000That's the definition of top secret information.
01:46:08.000That's the definition of classification.
01:46:10.000And that's what would be required in order to reclassify that information in 2019.
01:46:15.000So I didn't know that they reclassified it.
01:46:17.000I just knew that they didn't want to release it.
01:46:18.000But you're saying the reason why they didn't release it is because they reclassified it.
01:46:22.000If you look at the bottom of every classified document, there's a time frame in which that classification is valid.
01:46:27.000For most human intelligence, humans, which is what a lot of JFK was, that default classification is 2x25, which means 2 times 25, two cycles of 25 years.
01:46:37.000Because the assumption is that after 50 years, whatever was...
01:48:26.000It goes to show you what we talked about with the pre-911 CIA and the post-911 CIA. The Wild West CIA. Versus the kinder, gentler DMV CIA. Like two different worlds.
01:48:39.000So everything that happened before 2001, It was crazy shit.
01:48:42.000Whether you want to talk about American United Fruit Company, whatever it is in South America, and, you know, obviously the Contra, the Iran-Contra, all that stuff like, you know, yeah.
01:48:52.000Because we were doing everything that our opponents were doing, right?
01:49:20.000What could either an adversary have done so right Or, what could we have done so wrong that makes it so that these secrets still have to be kept from the American people?
01:49:32.000And I understand the secrets that are kept from the American people.
01:49:34.000And I'm telling you right now, the majority of secrets kept from Americans should be kept from Americans.
01:49:40.000Because Americans would not know how the fuck to process a lot of what happens outside the United States.
01:49:49.000Think about inside of law enforcement.
01:49:51.000How much would Americans actually be able to process?
01:49:54.000How much faith would they lose in the institution of the United States federal government if they really got to see the secrets of law enforcement, right?
01:50:00.000If they really got to understand how the court system worked.
01:50:03.000If they really got to see how things really do work behind the confidential curtain.
01:50:08.000And I wasn't even really dealing with classified shit like that, you know what I mean?
01:50:11.000Like, I was doing mostly criminal cases, and criminal and intel world don't mix, because in the criminal world, the cases have to be discoverable, and you have to disclose where your info comes from.
01:50:21.000This is why so many intel cases, like, you know, we talk about the FBI doing counterintelligence, etc., you don't hear about it because no one ever gets arrested because they stop it before it happens.
01:50:32.000That's like you just said before, the intel world, it kind of sucks for you guys.
01:50:35.000You guys don't get your flowers for what you guys do.
01:50:38.000Because no one knows what the fuck you guys do.
01:50:40.000But you guys are thwarting attacks, you guys are stopping espionage, etc.
01:50:44.000But no one knows, and that's the way it's gotta be for it to be successful.
01:50:47.000When you get a fuck-up, Everyone sees it.
01:51:23.000Because they still haven't declassified a lot of that stuff as well.
01:51:26.000Do you think that's going to get declassified after the 50 years or what?
01:51:28.000So 9-11 was such a significant disaster that there's actually a fully classified lessons learned briefing that we go through at CIA. Oh really?
01:51:40.000So like part of your onboarding process, you go through a classified training on what happened during 9-11, the lead up to 9-11, the mistakes that were made, the communication guffaws, like all of it.
01:51:53.000And it's highly sensitive and it's highly classified because it's the true secrets of what happened.
01:51:58.000The American people will never get to know that.
01:53:13.000Hey guys, he's gotta get out of here in a few minutes, so obviously we're going this thing until Trey falls off, and I'll read the chats after.
01:53:37.000As someone that came from the intel world, that your job was obviously to safeguard these secrets, what are your thoughts on whistleblowers like Snowdens and Assanges, etc.?
01:53:45.000You can't compare Snowden and Assange.
01:54:11.000Julian Assange is actually a foreign citizen.
01:54:17.000Who isn't culpable under American law.
01:54:20.000And we are overreaching in our Espionage Act and overreaching in our actual sovereign rights by trying to make an Australian citizen culpable under American law.
01:55:08.000So that he could be extradited to the United States for the Espionage Act because he posted secrets that an American army personnel member publicly shared to WikiLeaks?
01:55:20.000So you think if you take that oath to the Constitution, because you have to do that if you're going to have a clearance, right?
01:55:25.000You become a government employee, you raise your right hand, you take that oath.
01:55:28.000So you think with Snowden, unacceptable because you were in a privileged position, you took an oath, and you betrayed that oath by telling...
01:55:39.000By whistleblowing a foreign news source.
01:56:06.000So he had multiple avenues by which he could verbalize his complaints, create a law, create a history, follow the bureaucratic process that we all swore an oath to.
01:56:14.000Because if you recall, the oath that actual officers swear is to protect and defend the Constitution.
01:56:53.000And I'm glad that even though he's wasted almost a decade of his life, That justice has prevailed.
01:57:01.000And he will get to go back to Australia and he will have his background exonerated and, you know, that's a win for international sovereignty.
01:57:10.000And it's a good lesson in fucking actually remembering the source of information, the source of secrets, is the person culpable for protecting the secrets.
01:57:21.000It's interesting because I didn't get that chance to ask you last time.
01:57:26.000So with Snowden, I see your perspective why you're like, look, man, there were avenues for you to whistleblow versus giving this information to a foreign publication, which I see your perspective because there are.
01:57:38.000There's a bunch of channels where you can whistleblow, and a lot of times you'll get your job protected.
01:58:08.000He would have had more, I guess, leeway to stand and say, like, look, I went to the news because he didn't even try to go to any of these, you know...
01:58:18.000I think he claims he tried, but I've seen no evidence that he's ever tried to do anything else.
01:59:04.000Which, it's highly specific, but the point is, it's data that was already being collected by businesses, and the businesses were able to give that information to the federal government in an effort to try to identify terrorist threats.
01:59:20.000So nobody cares that you're cheating on your spouse.
01:59:22.000Nobody cares that you're cheating on your taxes.
01:59:24.000Nobody cares that you're stealing from your church.
01:59:26.000They're looking for fucking terrorists.
01:59:29.000And if you don't want them looking for terrorists because you're afraid they're going to trip over you- And they're not going to expose you for cheating on your wife on there because then that would disclose the fact that they were spying on you in the first place.
01:59:37.000So they're only going to use that to go after the terrorists.
01:59:39.000It's an example of, like we started this whole conversation, people don't understand the value of intelligence and the difference between intelligence and law enforcement.
01:59:59.000They could be getting information that someone's going to get killed, and they're like, yeah, we're not going to, because we will compromise this operation and our intelligence and our capabilities.
02:02:39.000When it comes to different levels of clearance, is there a guideline or prerequisite that investigators use or follow when determining whether or not they'll approve someone for a clearance?
02:02:44.000Just curious, because I had a secret in SCI at different points.
02:02:47.000Well, yeah, bro, you've had a clearance, so you already know.
02:03:01.000The agency that classifies certain information that other agencies might not see and is classified, is there a high possibility that a particular agency has some fuckery to do with that information?
02:03:08.000Yeah, I mean, different agencies classify things at different levels, bro.
02:04:05.000Okay, I can reopen that conversation with Muhammad Hijab.
02:04:14.000Question for Andrew in the film, Gray Man CIA created a program called the Sierra Program for criminals to take out people on different missions.
02:04:19.000Do you think CIA has programs like that?
02:04:21.000Well, you heard him say earlier, I fucking knew it.
02:05:53.000I've been a fan for a while, and a couple months ago I started posting clips of FNF, and they have been putting good views on YouTube, but all the clips are copyrighted by Rumble.
02:05:58.000Anything I can do, can we post clips anymore?
02:07:59.000Can you guess an opinion on the Homeland Security investigations if it wasn't working for the CIA? Would he rather work for HSI or FBI, the difference in his opinion between DHS and DOJ when it comes to federal law enforcement?
02:08:31.000I mean, the FBI is a good agency to work for, guys.
02:08:33.000They just have a lot of bureaucracy and a lot of bullshit.
02:08:35.000But I've told people before, if you want to be a special agent, the best agencies to work for, I think, in my opinion, by far, are HSI and FBI. You have the most ability to work different types of cases.
02:08:55.000Since the post-9-11 agencies are hitting retirement because of 6C, do you think there's going to be a big hiring push by Federal Intelligence Agency soon?
02:09:03.000Seems like a lot of people can't meet the rigorous requirements.