Russ Theis, a former National Security Agency intelligence analyst, joins Lou Dobbs to discuss the latest in leftist political attacks on President Trump, including the latest grand jury testimony from a key witness in the case against Donald Trump's former lawyer, Michael Cohen. Plus, the Daily Mail has a letter that seems to show Michael Cohen admitting that President Trump never gave him any money for the money Stormy Daniels received from her.
00:07:36.300But certainly, the question has to be asked, to what degree, right now, our intelligence agencies have failed either the national security team
00:07:47.420and the diplomatic team represented by the Secretary of State, the national security advisor, and the president himself?
00:07:55.660Is this a failure of leadership and policy on their part, singularly?
00:08:00.840Or is there also some relationship to the national security intelligence services and agencies?
00:08:10.160I would certainly hope that NSA and RCA are still doing their job overseas, aside from their new job to spy domestically on Americans,
00:08:21.420that they're providing intelligence on what's happening in the Ukraine, the Crimea, and the Donbass, and the surrounding area.
00:08:33.520And I know if I was still in the business, I'd be spending probably an awful lot of time with my satellites right now, looking at all these things.
00:08:43.460I believe this is probably a failure in leadership.
00:08:47.500They're probably being told of what's going on, the massing of troops by the Russians.
00:08:53.160And up until now, the Russians have been fighting this with one hand tied behind their back.
00:08:57.580And I think they're getting ready to unleash their full force in a Klausowitz sort of manner because they're tired of dealing with having their troops sniped on
00:09:15.020and some of the issues that have happened so far with their losses.
00:09:18.880And I think they want this to be over in a grand way.
00:09:29.620And at this point, and I think there's a lot of the losses that the Ukrainians are suffering are being hidden by our press and by the State Department and the military and the intelligence community.
00:09:42.880So in that respect, our intelligence community is keeping their mouth shut.
00:09:48.020They're probably telling the leadership what's going on, but the leadership is still full-fledged nads to the wall on what's going on here.
00:10:02.940And you've got to wonder if it's not the war profiteers that are driving the show on this particular thing because they're probably making billions of dollars and supplying these.
00:10:16.080One of the sad consequences of war always is that the profiteers are both motivated toward war and certainly it is the only group of people who benefit generally from these conflicts.
00:10:35.540Let's turn now to you mentioned the domestic operations of the NSA, the other intelligence agencies.
00:10:44.220And it's striking because one doesn't, until of late, think of the domestic operations of the NSA or the CIA or any number of agencies.
00:10:58.680But suddenly we see their footprints and their tracks almost everywhere, and certainly in politics.
00:11:07.440The suggestion that Leon Panetta made last week that Donald Trump would be a national security disaster, let's hear his reasoning as he talks about Trump and his prospects in 2024.
00:11:25.840I believe that his whole first America first approach to foreign policy, his desire to essentially withdraw from the world in terms of a leadership position for the United States would be devastating to our foreign policy at this point in time in the 21st century.
00:11:47.860Look, in the end, I really believe that he's a loser and that even if he gets the nomination, he will lose.
00:12:00.300But the mere fact that he would be nominated by the Republican Party would be a scary step in the 21st century.
00:12:14.260I don't know that Leon Panetta has considered whether or not 2016 through 2020 was in the 21st century.
00:12:23.080This president turned out to be the best in modern history, including the 20th century.
00:12:29.460Your reaction to the idea of national security, presidential politics, and a clear statement by a former national security official himself, Leon Panetta, talking about a president who would be a disaster.
00:12:48.100That is a very provocative statement coming from him.
00:12:53.160Do you suppose there's an implicit threat in that?
00:13:00.740They're trying to scare people into thinking that President Trump would be some kind of loose cannon with the nuclear football in his hand.
00:13:09.620I wonder if he realizes that Mr. Trump has already been president of the United States for four years.
00:13:18.920As a matter of fact, he started reducing the war, and he took down the ISIS in Syria.
00:13:27.180And the peace accords that happened between Israel and the Arab states, I just don't understand.
00:13:36.300Does he do – I think he must think that people don't understand – they've forgotten everything that Trump has done when he was in office.
00:13:45.220And they're going to put this label on him that he's basically some warmonger that wants to bring us all to our ruin when his side of the fence are marching towards a nuclear conflict with Russia.
00:14:05.560But it makes no sense to me how anyone could buy this nonsense.
00:14:12.600Except this is part of what look like and sound like and feel like psychological operations on the part of the Democratic Party and their president, who with the Senate right now are in control of the federal government.
00:14:32.540But this is bizarre because, as you say, here was a president who was withdrawing our troops from abroad, who was refusing to get into police wars, who absolutely insisted on America-first policies and foreign policy as well as economic policy.
00:14:50.920And it was – and it succeeded for four years and a bit beyond until Biden could take control.
00:14:59.740This is a remarkable statement to me, and frankly, it concerns me that here he is talking about national security, Leon Panetta, one of the deans of the Democrat Party, talking in absolute opposition to the reality,
00:15:18.860as you pointed out, a history that shows what a terrific – what a great president Mr. Trump was.
00:15:27.020So is there a role here for intelligence agencies?
00:15:31.260Why is this under discussion, do you suppose?
00:15:34.260Well, obviously, these nihilists are gaslighting the American people.
00:15:43.860A role domestically for our intelligence services, especially NSA and CIA, is to keep our hands off of domestic politics.
00:15:52.260They should have nothing to say in this.
00:15:55.100We shouldn't be affording one party or another access to the communications of their adversaries.
00:16:03.020Our job is to let the American people decide who they want as president of the United States and ultimately provide that president with the best intelligence so that the president can make the best choices for foreign policy and for ultimately the national security of the country.
00:16:20.300So in that respect, this whole thing is basically a psychological operation on the part of Mr. Panetta and his ilk to throw the wool over our eyes.
00:16:32.540As far as Mr. Trump having no possibility of winning, like I think I mentioned in the past, I haven't been to one of Mr. Trump's rallies.
00:16:47.320But I seem to think that even in PODOC nowhere, out in the middle of a flyover country, about 30,000 people will show up to see the president, President Trump.
00:16:59.640So, you know, this is just silly nonsense that these people are trying to throw out there.
00:17:04.660So this silly nonsense in this case from from Leon Panetta, just to remind everyone, when I talked about his role in the national security apparatus, it includes being the secretary of defense as well as the director of the CIA.
00:17:21.000You would think that there would be specific constraints that he would follow, at least so as to avoid any confusion.
00:17:29.400But we now know that, you know, 51 CIA, well, five former CIA directors participated in the famous letter of 51 intelligence veterans who dismissed the Hunter laptop as Russian disinformation.
00:17:49.560Intervention in an election by the intelligence services, straightforwardly.
00:17:59.140Well, of course, that was done to influence the election and to make sure that the American people believed that the Hunter laptop issue was something that was a Russian plot or Russian plant to have President Trump elected.
00:18:16.920Interestingly, the one fellow on that list that was both the former director of NSA and became the director of CIA was the guy that I tangled with and ultimately got fired by at NSA was Michael Hayden.
00:18:34.200Ultimately, you know, and he and he matter of fact, he was made a director of CIA when he was still in uniform, when normally the director of CIA is a civilian, not a military officer.
00:18:43.200So, you know, his his his reward for for his domestic spying under the Bush administration was to be promoted to a four star general and to be made head of CIA.
00:18:56.420And back in those days, the head of CIA was basically considered the head of the entire intelligence community.
00:19:07.640And in this case, the devil was very active in the 2020 election.
00:19:13.800The intervention that I was talking about, we've seen that from the FBI National Security Division.
00:19:20.100We have watched this, the attorneys general, uh, the Biden administration, as well as the attorney general under Donald Trump.
00:19:31.100Uh, uh, they have had significant influence, uh, over, uh, elections bar more than, uh, certainly, uh, Merrick Garland, but still, uh, involvement.
00:19:41.880And to think that, uh, you as a whistleblower, uh, were retaliated against by the NSA, you were actually, if we, I think this is accurate, the first NSA whistleblower.
00:19:56.060And you're, you're, you stepped forward in 2005 to make certain that the American people knew that our intelligence agencies and specifically the NSA were, uh, wiretapping, surveilling American citizens.
00:20:15.020Tell us, tell us about, uh, what motivated you at that moment, uh, to, to bring that to the, to the public's attention.
00:20:24.720Uh, and by the way, again, thank you for doing so.
00:20:43.280I spent a lot of time with the agency and I found out by accident that, that this was going on.
00:20:48.360Basically, I was working a black operation, a black op, and I needed, uh, support, um, intelligence support.
00:20:55.840And I contacted, uh, an NSA, um, element and found out that, uh, domestic spying was going on, uh, via our satellite capabilities.
00:21:06.900Then ultimately from there, I contacted some of my friends at the, uh, at the, uh, at the fort or NSA.
00:21:13.980And they told me, Russ, this is far worse than just, just your, your, your, your angle of this.
00:21:20.000And then he, they brought in the, uh, the domestic side as far as the, uh, the, uh, RF communications that are done via a microwave and ultimate, and as well as our fiber optics communications that basically run our entire communications for domestically.
00:21:37.220And then we realized this thing was all-inclusive, and that's when I was like, oh, my goodness.
00:21:42.380Um, I ultimately made a call to that same unit that I talked to to try to pin this down after things were, were winding down with the war.
00:21:51.300And I believe NSA security office listened in on that phone conversation immediately after that.
00:21:58.420I was, uh, called in for an emergency psychological evaluation.
00:22:02.960And ultimately, this was them telling me that we know what you've done.
00:22:23.560So, so then they, um, they suspended my security clearance, and they sent me to the motor pool driving NSA vehicles to, to be repaired or what have you, which was my punishment.
00:22:35.980This is what they, this is what they did.
00:22:37.580They, they, the top officials of the National Security Agency to one of their most outstanding senior, uh, intelligence analysts.
00:22:51.760Now, so I, this is basically them telling me, we expect you to pay your penance and to grovel to get your job back and keep your mouth shut and never mention a word of what you've learned, and we'll let you keep your big time job and your big salary and everything will be fine.
00:23:09.940Just keep your mouth shut and, and go along.
00:23:12.980So as long as, and basically pay my penance and, and keep my mouth shut, and it, uh, I, I'll tell you, Lou, and there was a period of time where I'm, you know, I, you gotta wake up and look at yourself in the mirror.
00:23:26.040Um, and at some point you don't like what you see when your mouth is still shut.
00:23:30.980Um, ultimately the trigger, the catalyst for my coming out was one February day when we got a bunch of snow and at the motor pool, they said, they gave me a, uh, a sweeper and said, go, go, go wipe the snow off of like 200 vehicles.
00:23:51.900Um, and that, that's what the trigger, and that was in February of 2004.
00:23:56.020So I'd like to say it was some altruistic, you know, thing that, you know, that ultimately sparked my going to the press, but, but in truth, it was my being just plain pissed off.
00:24:10.320Um, they, they, they did everything they could to anger you, uh, and they succeeded.
00:24:16.740Uh, and to see that kind of pettiness and, uh, arrogance on the part of senior leadership and the national security agency or any other agency of this government, I can't imagine any, anyone, uh, uh, you know, worth their salt putting up with it.
00:24:36.460Uh, and the idea that they were doing that to you, this sort of, this interests me a lot because that means they didn't think very highly of their people.
00:24:47.440If they thought you were the kind of people as patriots serving the United States government, who would put up with that kind of, uh, of an insult.
00:24:58.900But then again, these are people who had decided that irrespective of the constitution and the laws of the United States, they could spy on American citizens.
00:25:34.480And it's, it's kind of true that, uh, these very bright people, but, but they're not, they're not the hard charging, you know, um, you know, tiger type folks.
00:25:45.380As a matter of fact, in one of my very early, uh, psyche vows, they, one of the, one of the cautionary, uh, almost asterisks that they put under my psychological evaluation, and this is before they did their, their, their, their, you know, Russ has got to be crazy nonsense, was they put in there that he's a, he's a black and white thinker, um, uh, and he has, uh, an aggressive, uh, personality.
00:26:08.460Uh, uh, true, um, you know, that's one thing that made me a good intelligence analyst, because I would start digging into, into something.
00:26:17.260And intelligence analysis is sort of something where, where you get, you get pieces to a puzzle.
00:26:22.460And sometimes the, the opposition is throwing you little pieces of the puzzle that are wrong or of the wrong shape to throw you off.
00:26:29.020And you've got to look at this, this mosaic of, of pieces of puzzle where you only maybe have 10% or less of the puzzle, and you have pieces that are there to throw you off, and you have to put the picture together and do your analysis.
00:26:42.700So, so, so you have to be aggressive in, in getting the information you need to put, to do a right, uh, you know, to come up with the information that you need to support your, your president.
00:26:52.620So, ultimately, um, yeah, they, and all the money that they spent on my education and all the Intel courses that I took, I think I sent you a copy of my resume, which, and those are just some of the, and remember, all those government courses that I took were paid for by the U.S. taxpayer.
00:27:10.480So, so, so they're creating a very, and I was a very good analyst, so, so the American people invested in me to do my job, and I thought I was doing a good, you know, a good job for the American people.
00:27:21.940And they could have cared less by, by, by saying, okay, uh, for a period of time, you're not going to do your job.
00:27:28.020You're going to be, you're going to be gassing up cars at the, uh, at the, um, you know, at the motor pool, um, while you pay your pens.
00:27:35.420And during that whole time, someone's not doing my job.
00:27:38.300That's, that's just, uh, it's just absurd that they would behave in such a way managerially, uh, uh, and, uh, human level.
00:27:49.400Let's turn to this business of the NSA.
00:27:53.740Effectively, the NSA is the foundation of all the other intelligence agencies when it comes to signals intelligence, correct?
00:28:01.940That's correct. So when all these other agencies are going for, to get their information on, on, you know, if it's Carter Page or whoever, whoever they're going after, they, they immediately will search NSA's database for the, for the communications of said person.
00:28:18.880And then they'll go, you know, two or three levels down to see who that person, who Carter Page has talked to and ultimately go after them.
00:28:26.680Now, I, I bet you once or twice, Mr. Page has talked to the president, former president, President Trump.
00:28:31.120That means President Trump is now put on the list of targeted individuals.
00:28:36.120So, so, so, and, and that's how insidious this becomes.
00:28:40.460And not only that, but they use that same information to, to go after anybody else.
00:28:44.880Like the January 6th situation a couple years ago, I bet all those people, they've gone to the NSA's database and gone back for each one of those citizens to find out what their communications were word for word over the past so many years to be able to throw against them.
00:29:01.780Then ultimately, now they can't bring that up in court, but what they do is what's called parallel construction, where that's the base information.
00:29:09.440Then they try to bring something from that information and they, and, and they, they put up a veil of, of how they ultimately found the information.
00:29:17.880Basically, they lie in court when they come up with this information because it was done unconstitutionally.
00:29:24.040Well, the FBI was lying through the FISA court process itself, which they were set up to prevent precisely this, that is spying on American citizens without a court warrant.
00:29:38.740Eventually, it turns out that was an absolute artifice that didn't work and was abused throughout by both the court system itself and the FBI.
00:29:50.340When I say the court system itself, I'm talking about the judges who simply accepted by rote what was put in front of them, rubber stamped it, which meant there was really no, no protection whatsoever for the, the rights of our citizens.
00:30:06.360And that goes on, you think, today, despite all that has happened?
00:30:12.460The abuse, there have been abuses of, and over and over again abuses, and the FISA court, ultimately, at first, they wouldn't even, they wouldn't even, they wouldn't even, oh, everything that, you know, their decisions were secret.
00:30:23.540So we would, at first, we didn't even know until some of the stuff after, after Edward Snowden came out that they leaked a little bit out.
00:30:31.000But the FISA court, you have to understand how the, there's no pushback for the FISA court.
00:30:37.840They can't, they don't have their own investigators to go into the different agencies to find out whether they're being lied to.
00:30:43.240But the FISA court ultimately has become, I like using the analogy, of a monkey in a black robe with a, you know, with a rubber stamp.
00:30:56.180And ultimately, a piece of paper flops in front of the monkey.
00:30:59.060And it used to be, the only thing the monkey could do was decide to see a name and a body of text.
00:31:07.140And then ultimately, they'd stamp approved.
00:31:09.120And once the, a little bell would go off, a banana chip would roll down, the monkey pops the banana chip in his mouth, and everyone claps, and then the next piece of paper plops in.
00:31:19.180Now, the FISA court is a blind monkey with the papers flopping in.
00:31:25.320Now, he doesn't even see the name, doesn't see a body, just stamps it and gets his banana chip.
00:31:31.480Ultimately, you know, the archetype for all this goes back even beyond W. Bush with the FBI's national security letters, where they would, we would, they just come up to some business and say, we want all the information on this, this person.
00:31:45.560And here's a national security letter.
00:31:47.120And in the national security letter, it would say, you cannot say a word to anyone that we've given you this order to give all your information that you know on this targeted individual.
00:31:56.320So, so that, that happened even before 9-11.
00:32:00.840So it, you know, they, once the Patriot Act happened, it was just sort of, you know, a jump up from what they were doing in the past.
00:32:09.160Well, obviously, we're looking at a renewal of the surveillance sections, 702, already, you know, that is already underway.
00:32:21.440The preparations for it, the, the likelihood is it will be rubber stamped by this Congress.
00:32:27.920I hope that is not the case, Section 215.
00:32:31.460Give us your judgment about those two sections, their impact on the rights of American citizens, and the ability of the NSA to, to surveil and to disseminate the intelligence that they gather.
00:32:47.800Well, I think the first one was Section 215 under the Patriot Act, where they, where they brought up this, that they were allowed to go after, quote, tangible things.
00:32:59.400Well, a tangible thing could be anything, ultimately.
00:33:03.400And, and only, and their, the provocation to go after tangible things was, was relevance.
00:33:10.080Well, the Fourth Amendment says it's not relevance.
00:33:12.400It's probable cause, and ultimately, if you have probable cause, you need to get a warrant before you get any information on people.
00:33:20.700So the Patriot Act from the very beginning was just, just an affront to our Constitution.
00:33:26.660Then comes, you know, 702, which now means that they can, they can do internal collections, what's called upstream and downstream collections.
00:33:36.320So in the upstream, you get the to and the from, and from the downstream, you get the to, from, and about, so, of, of, of, whoever you target.
00:34:24.740I mean, I understand it was done in, in fear after the attacks of 9-11.
00:34:31.520As far as I know, it hasn't been taken out of the Patriot Act.
00:34:35.760So that, that tangible things, designators still exist, which means everything.
00:34:41.800And we're not talking about just, we're talking about literally they could sneak into your house and, and, and look through it when you were on vacation and look through everything in your house.
00:34:51.420And you wouldn't have a clue, just as if you were, you know, a, you know, a spy from the, from the People's Republic of China.
00:35:01.720So, and, and take pictures or whatever of anything you have.
00:35:06.320They can look into your bank account, your credit card purchases, you know, who you date, um, every, everything you do, how, how much gasoline you use in your car, your odometer, um, you know, ultimately turn on your, your, um, what do you, the thing in your, the emergency thing in your car that, um, even when you don't have, you know, you haven't paid to have that thing on.
00:35:30.980You know, so the question arises, Russ, all of that of the citizen, but why is there any question then if the NSA and our intelligence agencies and our national security agencies, our law enforcement agencies have this capacity?
00:35:50.120Why is there any discussion about what has happened?
00:35:53.680Uh, why could the NSA not give us a, a, uh, an accounting, for example, on, uh, how the vote went in Pennsylvania?
00:36:01.780Or, uh, what is going on, uh, that, uh, that we didn't have advanced notice of the invasion, uh, of Ukraine?
00:36:12.860Or if we did, what was the reasoning and communication amongst the relevant, uh, agencies, departments, and, uh, individuals in our national intelligence and national security teams to have permitted that war to begin, to begin with?
00:36:29.180Uh, uh, why is it that there would not be certain knowledge of what was happening?
00:36:34.680Because if we can get everything, including tangible intelligence, why could we not have almost a, an immediate, a forensic investigation of elections to verify them?
00:36:47.900Uh, why could this not be turned to positive use?
00:36:50.820And, uh, uh, or should we just simply assume that the intelligence agencies themselves were used to intervene in elections?
00:37:02.420Well, I think you already know the answer to that, Lou.
00:37:06.180They apparently were turned against, uh, you know, a certain element that they decided, um, was not to their advantage to have in power.
00:37:14.660Um, you know, it's, and they, and NSA does have that information.
00:37:20.260NSA has all those 30,000 emails that were deleted by Hillary Clinton.
00:37:24.660They have all this information that, you know, on, on these different people.
00:37:30.160And they're going to use it to their advantage, I believe, to blackmail people to make sure that the deep state cabal that they run is going to stay in power.
00:37:40.680You know, one of the things, uh, one of the papers that I ran across where, where NSA, where I realized NSA was, uh, was targeting all these important information, people, they were, they were, they targeted the Supreme Court, the, um, the Congress, the, uh, the, uh, the FISA Court, uh, all kinds of, uh, uh, bigwig industrials, law firms, lawyers, the press.
00:38:07.100NSA was targeting all these individuals way back in 2002, 2003, 2004 timeframe.
00:38:14.620Like I mentioned previously, when, when Barack Obama was running for Senate, NSA started, uh, wiretapping, you know, tapping into all his communications in 2004 before he became president.
00:38:25.900Another, uh, a list of, of, of, of numbers associated with, uh, uh, an individual was, uh, Samuel Alito before he became a justice in the Supreme Court.
00:38:37.160So they knew that he was being considered, and then they wiretapped everything that Samuel Alito was doing.
00:38:44.240The obvious answer is to, for blackmail.
00:38:46.980Uh, and obviously what they're doing with all this information is to, just like J. Edgar Hoover did, is to use it to their own advantage and to make sure that the dollars keep pumping into the intelligence community and ultimately the lifeblood of what we now know as the deep state.
00:39:05.260You know, we're going to, we're going to bear down on, on, on much of this and drill down on much of this as we continue our conversation over the, the coming weeks, uh, Russ.
00:39:16.700But I, I just, I, I think most people don't understand the, as you said, as we began this conversation in the previous episode, that the NSA has a record of every electronic transaction and communication, uh, ever made by any citizen.
00:39:36.160Is that a fair statement, summation of what you said?
00:39:38.780At first, at the beginning, uh, they could only get metadata for everybody and, and then they would target people like they were targeting Barack Obama, the, the, the, the Congress, Supreme Court.
00:39:51.900All then, then, then, and those, and when they would target someone, they could get everything and they were, but they couldn't do every communication, you know, like a little Jenny talking to, to Julie about how cute Johnny is in, in middle school.
00:40:04.420You know, um, um, most people, you know, don't care about that communication, but today NSA is even getting that little conversation about how cute Johnny is.
00:40:14.940So it's everything that's being done right now.
00:40:18.580And that started happening when they opened up that facility and this was all, all done quietly.
00:40:23.940And that was December of 2012 is when that facility, uh, in, in, uh, in Bluffdale, Utah was opened up to be able to store huge storage of facility.
00:40:34.420Over, over, over a million square feet of storage of computer storage space.
00:40:39.100Um, when that was opened up, uh, the, uh, it meant everything is going to be stored every word for word, every communication in perpetuity.
00:40:49.060Well, that is sobering as well as alarming.
00:40:54.320And that's going to be the subject of our next, next discussion.
00:40:57.880Uh, Russ, we appreciate everything that you've done for the country.
00:41:01.600Uh, as you worked, uh, for the NSA, we appreciate everything you did as a whistleblower, uh, and your perspectives, uh, on, on life since then.
00:41:11.660Uh, and what we are looking at now and witnessing in this country, uh, as we are coming to terms in many cases, uh, with the American people being the enemies, uh, designated by the agencies of our federal government, uh, as enemies of the government.
00:41:27.660Uh, we're going to look into that, uh, the weaponization of our government against American citizens as we continue the conversation.
00:41:35.800Uh, Russ Tice is always, God bless you.