The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad

00:00:00.740 Hi everybody, this is Gadsad. It's been a few weeks since my last guest, but I've got

00:00:06.160 one of the rare guests this time around because I think I only have one other situation where

00:00:11.340 I've interviewed a husband and wife team separately. I've had Brett and Heather Weinstein on my

00:00:18.280 show, the evolutionary biologist, separately. And I've had my current guest's wife, her

00:00:25.080 name is Cynthia Farahad. I've had her on twice and today I've got her lovely husband, Jeffrey

00:00:30.900 Higgins. How are you doing, Jeff? Oh, thank you for having me. By the way, my wife could be here with

00:00:35.920 me. It's not like we're having a problem. She'd be happy to appear with me. She's loved your show

00:00:41.940 and you did such a great job interviewing her and everybody else that you've had on this. I gotta

00:00:46.400 tell you again, you're one of the great voices for free speech in the world right now. And it's so

00:00:51.860 it's so important. I've probably been following you for close to a decade. Oh my God. Thank you

00:00:55.680 so much. Coming from someone of your repute, it actually means a lot more to me to have a fan such

00:01:01.960 as yourself than the Stanford and Harvard professors. Because maybe one doesn't want to have the

00:01:09.180 imprimatur of fellow academics these days because academia is going through a rough patch right now.

00:01:15.160 But I just want to quickly tell people who you are. For those who don't know you, you've spent 25

00:01:21.580 years as a law enforcement career. You're now retired. You're a retired supervisory special agent who was

00:01:29.760 instrumental in capturing the world's leading heroin dealer from Afghanistan, Haji Bakshio. We'll talk 1.00

00:01:37.220 about that. Now, by the way, I knew of you through your wife. But one day, about three weeks ago,

00:01:43.540 I was watching the series Narco Terrorism. And it was the entire show was on the capture of that 0.94

00:01:50.560 heroin dealer. And here comes this gentleman, you. I'm saying, I think I know this gentleman. So then

00:01:57.200 I write your wife. I said, is this your husband? She's like, yes. And that's how I said, oh, I've got to

00:02:03.340 have the great Jeff Higgins on. Let me just finish reading your bio. You were involved in

00:02:10.460 counterterrorism. And then you're also an award winning and number one Amazon bestselling author.

00:02:17.340 Some of your previous novels include the book Furious, another book Unseen. And you have a book

00:02:23.580 coming out on February 29th called The Forever Game. Did I cover some of the highlights? Or do you

00:02:29.000 want to add anything else to that, Jeff? No, absolutely. What a kind introduction. Thank you.

00:02:33.080 All right. So what I thought we would do is just begin with your very alluring and exciting and

00:02:40.820 intriguing law enforcement career. Just tell us what were some of the big highlights? What was your

00:02:46.120 trajectory? And then we could drill down on that heroin dealer that you helped capture.

00:02:52.320 Yeah, well, I was really fortunate. I had that 25 year career. You know, I started with the Hillsborough

00:02:56.300 County Sheriff's Office in Tampa, Florida. And I mean, you know, at all level, I worked at all levels,

00:03:01.040 really. You know, I've worked with local police around the world. I've trained police around the

00:03:04.080 world. So I've been I've been fortunate to do some of the biggest federal cases. So it's it's it was a

00:03:09.840 really interesting career. Ironically, I sort of got into it. I started as a reporter and I got into it

00:03:14.420 because I was looking for something exciting. And I thought it would be good fodder for books. But

00:03:18.280 turned into 25 years. Once once I was bitten by that law enforcement bug and actually doing some good

00:03:23.140 in the world, it was really hard to get out of it. You know, how did you switch? How did you switch,

00:03:28.600 say, from, you know, the sheriff's department where one can spend their entire career doing good things

00:03:33.660 to going to DEA to doing counterterrorism? What's the what are the bridges that lead you to all of

00:03:39.680 these different hats that you're wearing as a law enforcement officer? I think change is good,

00:03:44.520 right? Like it's every now and about every five years throughout my life, I've changed jobs, even

00:03:49.220 even if it was within the same agency. You know, so I started and when I was with the sheriff's office,

00:03:53.920 I started in patrol. I got into my first shooting two weeks into the job, you know, that we would

00:03:58.960 as a call for a like a loud party or as a barbecue. And we went to go talk to somebody and he murdered

00:04:04.720 a woman right in front of us and then tried to shoot my partner and I shot at him. It's weird when I

00:04:09.540 ended up being in a lot of shootings over my career. But like that first one, right, the first time you're

00:04:13.920 doing something that you've only seen on TV, it's a little it's a little shocking and surprising.

00:04:18.040 And I swear to this day, I saw my bullet like go right over his gun right over his hand.

00:04:23.020 Wow. They say that's impossible, but I swear I saw it. But you have these weird, you know,

00:04:28.600 physiological reactions when you're in like, like high, high tension in incidents like that,

00:04:34.820 like your hearing shuts down, you get that tunnel vision, you know, where you can only see what's

00:04:38.560 directly in front of you. But the more you do it, the more I guess normal it becomes. And so later,

00:04:43.720 you just moderate your breathing and you just kind of get used to it.

00:04:47.320 But statistically speaking, would it be correct to say that most law enforcement

00:04:51.580 officers will go through their entire career without necessarily ever shooting their guns?

00:04:58.160 Is that is that correct? Yeah, the vast majority. I think that I want to say it's like 20 percent

00:05:03.360 over a whole career. And the number of people who've been in multiple shootings is like just,

00:05:08.460 you know, in the single digits. That's a small percentage. But it depends on where you are.

00:05:12.580 If you're in a little town someplace, you know, you're not using your guns so much, right? It's

00:05:16.460 all informal policing where you're talking to people and doing conflict resolution and things.

00:05:20.780 But I always chose to be in like, you know, the most impoverished neighborhoods, the highest crime

00:05:26.380 places to actually do the job where it was needed. I mean, you're retired now. And in a second,

00:05:32.380 I want to get to the capture of the Afghani heroin dealer, because that is truly an incredible story 0.58

00:05:39.120 worthy of a of a movie. Do you miss that adrenaline? Do you miss that rise in cortisol levels and

00:05:46.960 testosterone and the rest of the hormonal endocrinological system? Yeah, I'd be lying

00:05:51.360 if I said I didn't, you know, it is it is sort of you get used to it. And I did a lot of, you know,

00:05:56.840 kind of out there on pointy edge of the spear type of things throughout my career. And so yeah,

00:06:01.200 there's a certain excitement to it. There's also a clarity to it, you know, when you're when you're like

00:06:06.340 in combat with with bad guys, you know, it's those are the people you're hunting and there they are 0.97

00:06:11.560 in front of you and they want to kill you and you want to kill them. And you know, there really is

00:06:14.820 that that clarity of just just forgetting all the paperwork, forgetting all the nuance and gray

00:06:20.560 areas. You're just you know, I kind of miss that too. Wow. Even when you're a cop, you're out on the

00:06:26.300 street, you know, like you save somebody's life, you just save somebody's life, you know, there's no

00:06:30.400 figuring out how is what I'm doing now going to like affect the mankind over the next 10 years or

00:06:35.400 something it's right there in front of you. So you get that like immediate gratification, which is

00:06:39.120 nice. So yeah, I miss a little of that. But honestly, a lot of the guys I worked with are

00:06:43.120 died over the years, you know, both in the military, like we I was embedded with the special

00:06:47.760 forces a teams and I was in combat with the seals. And, you know, I worked with, you know,

00:06:52.120 our DEA fast teams and other DEA units around the world. And so at some point, you start getting that

00:06:57.740 feeling like, you know, you can only you can only do this so many times, you know, I've had

00:07:01.320 mortars landing near me, rockets going over my head, RPGs fired at me, people shooting

00:07:06.300 at me, you know, like, eventually, it doesn't matter, like how good you are, there's so much

00:07:10.120 luck that that, you know, that that really determines the outcome of those violent confrontations.

00:07:15.420 Were you able to once you segued back to civilian life, and you retired, of course, many people go

00:07:23.760 and I hope you don't want me asking this, but many, you know, active duty folks who then retire,

00:07:29.440 whether it be in the military, or as, you know, law enforcement officers, will have all sorts of

00:07:34.680 mental health issues. Were you able to evade all that? What are you saying, Ed?

00:07:39.640 No, no, not that you're, not that you're, you have any problems, but you know, it's, you know,

00:07:46.040 there's PTSD, there is all kinds of emotional trauma. I mean, you know, I spent, you know, after

00:07:53.300 we escaped the Lebanese Civil War, I actually talked about this with the gentleman who killed

00:07:58.860 bin Laden, literally, he was on my show, Robert O'Neill. And, you know, I was telling him that I

00:08:05.700 had nightmares for about 25 years after leaving Lebanon, where it was always one of two recurring

00:08:12.560 nightmares, I would either wake up, because I just realized that I ran out of ammunition as the bad

00:08:19.860 guys are coming in, or that my gun jammed. And as I was telling him that story, he goes, Oh, we,

00:08:24.740 we, we, many of us have had similar dreams. It's called the warrior dream. And so there's,

00:08:29.400 there's always going to be a, a, a mental health related signature when you're going through these

00:08:34.340 difficult situations. Did you experience any of that? Not really. I know it's a real thing. I

00:08:39.000 definitely had those dreams. Like I think everybody in law enforcement over the years has had the dreams

00:08:42.900 where their gun won't fire, or it's jammed, or it's coming apart, or you're trying to get it put

00:08:47.040 back together in time, you know, these kind of just stress related dreams. But yeah, no luck,

00:08:50.920 luckily, no PTSD, or at least it hasn't manifested yet. Let's see what happens during this show.

00:08:56.520 Now, do you think that it is the fact that you've been able, able to be so fortunate as to avoid many

00:09:02.940 of these difficult pitfalls? Is it just your unique disposition that allowed you to have the,

00:09:09.660 the armament, the emotional armament to protect yourself? And, or is it that when you returned,

00:09:15.720 there was a social network that allowed you to, to deal with some of those difficulties?

00:09:20.100 Yeah. I mean, I think both of those things, right. It's hard to say when something doesn't

00:09:23.780 happen, how do you prove the negative, you know, but certainly, you know, having, having support of

00:09:28.560 like agencies and you're honestly, when you're in combat or, and the same thing was true when I was

00:09:32.480 in patrol as a police officer, you know, at the end of the day, you'd get together and have a beer

00:09:36.500 together and talk things out. And just that camaraderie and understanding that everyone's kind of going

00:09:41.160 through the same thing is, is really helpful. I think, I think the longer you hold on to something

00:09:45.840 that's bothering you, right. The, the worse it becomes. And that's when you start having these

00:09:49.340 chronic problems, but if you just get it out or, you know, I, I'm not a person to hold my feelings

00:09:54.160 in either. So I'll just tell people if something's wrong. And well, but by the way, I did exactly the

00:09:59.100 same thing yesterday. You, you, I'm not sure if you saw it or not. We talked about this offline that

00:10:04.440 I've been going through some difficulties with the tax realities. And I just put out a tweet. I knew

00:10:11.380 that there'd be people who'd attack me. Oh, boo, who, who, who successful guy complaining that

00:10:15.420 they're taking all your money. But I felt that psychologically, emotionally, it would do me

00:10:21.180 good. Even if it's a, you know, very large platform that I have, it's as if I want people

00:10:26.300 to bear witness to what I'm going through and just putting out that tweet around. I don't

00:10:31.200 remember when it was maybe 11 o'clock at night or something made me feel better psychologically.

00:10:36.880 No, absolutely. And there's nothing wrong with complaining about taxes or complaining about

00:10:41.440 somebody punishing you for success, you know, and in a progressive system like you have,

00:10:46.140 and like we have here, right. I mean, I'm in Virginia, you know, it's the same thing. It's

00:10:50.140 just the better you do, the more they take. And you get to that point where it's, it's really hard

00:10:54.840 to, and by the way, you can see this all over the place, right. Where else look at all the socialist

00:10:59.300 countries, look at all the former Soviet bloc countries, right. Why work if they're just going to 1.00

00:11:04.020 take it away? Why work if you're not going to get something in return? I mean, it's, it's just basic

00:11:08.400 human nature. And I don't know how many times we have to see the same thing repeated before we stop

00:11:12.960 doing it. I know. So I've, I've, I've used this quote before in several of my writings and you know,

00:11:20.340 in my books, it's by a quote by EO Wilson, who's a, are you familiar with EO Wilson? Do you know the

00:11:26.840 name? No, no. EO Wilson just recently passed away. I just finished actually his autobiography called

00:11:33.880 The Naturalist. He's a, or he was an entomologist by, by training. He studied insects, specifically

00:11:41.180 social ants. He was an evolutionary biologist at Harvard, a big intellectual hero of mine. And at

00:11:48.220 one point when he was asked about the virtues of socialism and communism, do you think it's a good

00:11:55.120 idea? His answer is absolutely brilliant. He said, great idea, wrong species. Because what,

00:12:02.900 what he means there, and I think some of my listeners and viewers have heard me explain this

00:12:07.680 before, but others not. So it's worth repeating. Social ants are perfectly suited for communism

00:12:13.500 because you have a singular reproductive queen, and then you have a whole bunch of indistinguishable 0.99

00:12:19.880 worker ants and soldier ants. And therefore this idea of we're all going to be indistinguishable

00:12:26.620 from each other makes sense within that particular phylogenetic history of that species.

00:12:31.520 Humans are not social ants. Some of us are taller, shorter, better looking, less better looking,

00:12:37.260 more fortunate, less fortunate, harder working, less hard. So when you are imposing a socioeconomic

00:12:42.700 political system to your point that is contrary to human nature, it shouldn't take a fancy professor

00:12:49.080 to say it's always going to fail. And as you said, it has failed repeatedly, but usually the rebuttal

00:12:54.200 is, well, because you haven't tried true socialism, true communism. If only the next round we implement

00:13:02.400 the true one, then you will see that it truly is a utopia.

00:13:06.000 You know, and as an evolutionary biologist, I'm sure you know this better than anyone, but

00:13:10.460 actual happiness, like deep long-term happiness comes from bettering your environment and bettering

00:13:16.140 yourself. I mean, you know, you're not built to sit in the mud, right? And get rained on.

00:13:21.140 And so when you take that away, when you take away that ability to create, it just, it makes

00:13:25.940 people deeply unhappy. And, you know, I worked in a lot of, in several former Soviet countries,

00:13:31.040 you know, working with their police, working with intelligence. And, and, you know, I had one guy,

00:13:35.240 I remember one, one was a Romanian police officer who told me how he, how he hated capitalism because

00:13:40.460 now he had to work and his old job, he didn't have to get out of bed. He didn't have to do anything,

00:13:43.800 you know, if it produced, but, you know, I would, I would rather have to work a little bit

00:13:47.600 and have like five times the standard of living, you know, or have the ability to work harder to

00:13:53.200 improve my life than, than, than not, you know what I mean? Just look at the people coming across

00:13:57.380 the Southern border right now. Right. I mean, you have people, a lot of people, not all of them,

00:14:00.680 but a lot of them are just fleeing economic hardship. You know, look at what happened to

00:14:03.720 Venezuela. Look at what happens everywhere. Right. This system is dried. It's, it's insane that

00:14:09.260 we're still talking about it. Did you see the, I just saw this clip earlier. I was on the

00:14:14.600 treadmill trying to, uh, run away my existential frustrations at the taxation theft that I just

00:14:21.400 experienced. Uh, did you see the, uh, the noble illegal immigrants who were just caught because

00:14:29.780 they had beaten up some cops in New York city? Did you see their reaction as the camera caught them?

00:14:36.600 Yeah, I did. These are, they, they was the mob beat up a bunch of NYPD officers and they were released

00:14:41.500 on Nobel by the way. Like that's a welcome. But did you see when, after when they caught them

00:14:47.500 or I don't know if it was before or after rather than exhibiting some contrition or shame or fear,

00:14:55.660 or they were giving the finger to the camera. So imagine the chutzpah, right? That's the right

00:15:03.560 term. And in Arabic, you'd say, what honey, right? It's this kind of, it's this F U that is really 0.62

00:15:11.180 deeply felt right. So that there is no sense of shame. I come into the country illegally.

00:15:16.640 I beat up your police officers. I'm now arrested. And my response is I give you the finger because

00:15:25.040 I know there will be no repercussions to me. And society can't withstand that level of lunacy.

00:15:30.660 What do you think?

00:15:31.180 No, it's a deep contempt for the society and it's, and we bring it on ourselves, right? People

00:15:35.100 understand strength. They understand rule of law when you don't have those things. I mean,

00:15:39.140 like you can't have, you can't have open borders in a socialist system, right? I mean,

00:15:43.500 just the math doesn't work. This is, this is first grade math here. You know, I, my, my wife is an 0.99

00:15:48.360 immigrant. My grandfather and grandmother came from Lebanon, by the way, I'm half Lebanese.

00:15:52.760 Oh, is that right?

00:15:53.900 Yeah, that's right. They came from a, they're in Brumana, which is in the hills above Beirut.

00:15:57.920 And you don't speak Arabic because if I, if not, I'm going to break out the Arabic. 1.00

00:16:01.820 You know, I'm smiling a little because my Arabic consists like 99% of profanity. And my, 1.00

00:16:07.260 when my wife sees this right now, she's going to be holding her breath. 1.00

00:16:11.740 So we'll, we'll, we'll skip the profanity, but I think I could imagine what some of those

00:16:15.880 juicy lines might be. All right. Let's, I want to get back and then we can, we can go into all

00:16:21.560 kinds of political stuff. And then I want to talk about your, your authoring career and your latest

00:16:25.360 book, a lot to talk about, but tell us about that incredible story. Number one heroin dealer in the

00:16:33.620 world, you were instrumental in capturing him. And as I was trying to prepare for the show,

00:16:38.520 I think they might've even mentioned it in the narco-terrorism thing at the end.

00:16:42.520 He's been now released, correct?

00:16:44.920 That's right. Yeah.

00:16:45.660 All right. So tell us the whole story leading up to his release.

00:16:48.780 So I was, I was in New York and I went to Afghanistan because I was actually one of the

00:16:52.300 first people to arrive at the North tower, the twin towers, when they came down on 9-11.

00:16:56.900 It was myself and an NYPD officer and a Suffolk County district district attorney investigator

00:17:03.380 were the first. And I, I kind of, I vowed on that day, standing in that rubble that I was going to

00:17:07.400 go after terrorists. And so when DEA opened up its, its office in Afghanistan, this was in the end of

00:17:13.180 2003, I volunteered and I became the assistant country attache there. So I helped stand up that

00:17:18.200 office. So very early on, when we first got there, we were training the local cops. We were arming them.

00:17:23.820 We were going on missions. We were, we were trying to trying to get them to, to be able to be some

00:17:28.100 somewhat functional, right. To, to bring the rule of law from like teaching people, what is evidence

00:17:32.020 to actually going out and targeting bad guys. And, and from those early days, uh, Haji Bacho's name

00:17:37.020 was coming up. This is back in like 2004. He was, he was clearly the world's most prolific, uh, drug

00:17:42.780 trafficker period, right. He dwarfed everybody else. Um, and so, you know, I w I was, I was integral in the

00:17:49.200 investigation itself. Like I was, I was worked, I was, as I told you before, I was living with

00:17:53.520 a special forces, the, the operational detachment alpha out in the Nangarhar province, which is by

00:17:58.680 the Khyber pass on the border with Pakistan. And I was running sources there. So we'd go in for four

00:18:04.080 months at a time and I'd develop sources and go out, put on local clothing and go out into, into the,

00:18:09.600 uh, into the rural areas and set up meetings and gather evidence and then target these, you know,

00:18:14.540 high value targets, put together criminal cases against them. And then when possible,

00:18:18.560 extradited them back to the U S we actually did the first case where we, uh, we, the first

00:18:22.840 narcoterrorism case, like based on our, the intelligence that we gathered over a couple of

00:18:27.500 years, Congress passed the narcoterrorism law, the 21, uh, 960 a law. And so we, I was able to make 0.61

00:18:33.660 the first arrest and the first conviction under that, uh, under that law, but Bacho the whole time we

00:18:39.280 were out there was one of the, the, the biggest drug organization in the world. And a little

00:18:44.320 secret. I worked for DEA, but I'm a, I'm libertarian and I actually believe in the legalization of most

00:18:49.200 drugs, which, which you won't hear a lot, but you know, I've always targeted, uh, drug organizations

00:18:55.360 and transnational criminal groups that were killing people and doing just horrific things,

00:18:59.220 you know, and his certainly was like, like in this particular case, we had his people threatening to

00:19:04.060 boil one of our witnesses in oil. We had, they had firefights with, with some of our police officers

00:19:09.540 trying to kill people that were involved with the case. I mean, these are in, in places with no rule of

00:19:13.960 law, you know, and, and like Afghanistan, it's, it's the war, it's warlordism, right? It's, it's

00:19:19.440 the guy with the most people, the most soldiers and most troops. And, and someone like Bacho had

00:19:24.360 influence and, and corrupted officials like all over the world. He, he distributed to 22 countries

00:19:29.620 when, when, um, he ended up being picked up in Pakistan and then the Pakistan government delivered

00:19:34.840 him to the Afghan police. And then we extradited him back to the United States. And so, and then I,

00:19:40.500 I was, I did the trial with them with, you know, it was our special operations division with our

00:19:44.540 Kabul country office and we, and, and our fast teams and everyone had contributed to that. So it was,

00:19:49.600 it was a, you know, a lot of people over, over several years put together these cases, but in the end

00:19:54.300 we convicted him on some just kind of basic one-on-one, uh, narcotics enforcement doing

00:19:59.300 undercover buys with one of my sources and, you know, doing, getting him on the telephone and doing

00:20:04.180 tapes and things like that. But I remember the gentleman who, you know, you, you had kind of

00:20:08.580 dropped him off by his compound, uh, right. Uh, uh, I can't remember, was his name, was his name

00:20:14.520 Muhammad? Yeah, they, they, they were all, so everyone was working under aliases because as you 0.94

00:20:19.800 could even, by the way, even people testified under aliases in federal court because the, the threat

00:20:24.560 against them was so great. I had a case before this one where one of my, uh, witnesses, uh, was

00:20:30.780 murdered as soon as he went back to Afghanistan and then his brother was attacked. And, you know,

00:20:35.100 I mean, so it's a really, it's a, it's a very real threat. And of course, now that we're not there,

00:20:39.460 which is just tragic, we have, you know, all the police officers who worked with all the

00:20:43.320 intelligence officers who worked with, they're all under threat as well. I've got, I saw pictures

00:20:47.440 of a guy I indicted for terrorism in New York at the date, like in the days that we're, as we were

00:20:52.660 pulling out, going, going house to house, looking for witnesses in some of these cases. I have one,

00:20:57.620 one of my, one of my sources took a picture of him coming with the guy, come with the,

00:21:00.500 this Taliban commander coming out of his house. Wow. So do you, do you feel that, I mean, having 0.97

00:21:07.620 lived in that culture for however, how long did you spend in Afghanistan? So I was there from 2004

00:21:13.800 to 2010, not all the time, but a lot. Like sometimes I, some one year I went like for,

00:21:19.020 for three, four month deployments, almost, almost in a row. Initially I was there for about 15 months

00:21:23.980 straight. So I think I spent three and a half, four years over that period of time, actually in country.

00:21:29.120 Do you feel that, so I mean, there are, there are several causes as to why those societies fail. I

00:21:35.840 mean, we can argue that, you know, an Islamic theocracy is probably not the way to organize 1.00

00:21:40.460 society. But even if we leave that part aside, which is a big if, that's a, that's a big gorilla

00:21:45.980 in the room. But if we leave that aside, is the endemic corruption in these societies so enmeshed

00:21:53.040 within the DNA of the society that it's almost impossible to extricate yourself out of the death

00:21:59.760 spiral of those societies? Yes. But I think that's a symptom more than a cause. You know, I think at a

00:22:05.740 very basic, like philosophical level, you have to have property rights. You have to believe in

00:22:10.280 individual liberty. You know, you have to believe that individual life has value. You know, some of

00:22:15.360 these Judeo-Christian Western ideas have to be there at the very beginning, because otherwise, nothing

00:22:21.660 else makes sense, right? Right? If the individual, if there isn't some sanctity to the life of the

00:22:25.980 individual, and what they earn doesn't stay with them, of course, this is a tough conversation for us

00:22:30.520 to have today after you've done your taxes, you know, but, you know, this, without, without that, without,

00:22:35.160 without those philosophical underpinnings, and the economics that come along with, like, capitalism

00:22:39.760 and free markets, I think it's, I think it's, yeah, you're, you will inevitably have corruption,

00:22:44.260 because why not? Right? Like, what, what, what is, what is a counter argument for corruption,

00:22:49.420 if property rights don't really exist? Exactly right. Well said. Okay, so then you,

00:22:54.720 you catch the guy, you put the case together, he's convicted, sentenced to, I think, a pretty long

00:23:01.640 sentence, I don't know, 40 years or 30 years, what was the original sentence? I think the original one

00:23:06.540 was life, but it might have been, it was beyond his lifespan. Okay, there you go. And we charged him

00:23:11.840 with multiple things, and what, what, one of the charges was set aside, so the actual narco-terrorism

00:23:16.420 charge was set aside, the, the, the drug charge we charged him with, the undercover buys of heroin

00:23:21.320 stood, he was, he, he remained convicted of that, but he had to get resentenced, because they set one of

00:23:26.180 the two charges aside. The, the problem was, in the ledgers that we found, I mean, just the stuff that

00:23:33.160 we found and could prove, in one 12-month period, he, Haji Baccio distributed over 123,000 kilograms

00:23:40.400 of heroin, and just to kind of put that in perspective, that's 19.7% of the world's heroin

00:23:47.120 that was distributed that year, right, so almost 20% was this guy's heroin that I could prove, and I

00:23:52.080 know I don't, didn't have all the records, so he was by far the most prolific heroin trafficker in

00:23:57.720 history, probably the biggest drug trafficker period in history, and when he was resentenced,

00:24:02.540 he was, he was given, I think, a 10-year sentence, or whatever it was, for that drug charge, even

00:24:08.360 though nobody had ever been charged with more drugs, that, that, we introduced that evidence at trial,

00:24:14.060 not just the, the couple kilos, or we ended up buying four kilos of two different, two different

00:24:18.420 deals with him, and one of, one of those charges was dropped, and the other one he was convicted on,

00:24:22.820 but we showed what he did during that period of time, and I mean, during that period of time,

00:24:26.420 there were thousands of deaths, and hundreds of American soldiers were killed, and he was

00:24:31.060 directly supporting the Taliban, and he was, he was working with, with poppy farmers to grow poppies,

00:24:36.760 and encouraging them to, to deal in the heroin trade as a form of jihad, you know, so, I mean,

00:24:41.860 it was, it was more than just, here's a drug guy, right, like, I told you my feelings on drugs in

00:24:45.660 general, anyhow, but this was somebody who was directly supporting the Taliban, and we have, we had,

00:24:49.960 we had a witness who was, who was present when he was giving money to the Taliban, and providing arms to the

00:24:54.740 Taliban, you know, and so, it was, it, when, when he was not sentenced properly for the drugs, it was

00:25:00.360 obviously quite upsetting, um, when he went back, I'm sure he went back as a hero, you know,

00:25:06.460 so, what, what led to his release, how did that happen?

00:25:10.220 So, I have to be careful, because it deals with classified information.

00:25:13.320 Oh, okay, so, I don't want to get you in trouble.

00:25:15.860 No, no, so, yeah, I don't want to get in trouble either, so let me just put it like this,

00:25:18.780 another agency had some derogatory information about one of the witnesses,

00:25:23.000 and under U.S. law, anybody in the government who has anything that could be used to, like,

00:25:28.740 impugn character, for example, has to be turned over to the defense, but we didn't know about this

00:25:33.700 information until later, through further investigation of something else, and then we

00:25:37.720 turned it over to the defense, and we found it later, so we could have retried Hachi Bacho on those

00:25:42.540 charges, but, you know, witnesses were dead, people were hard to bring over, the trial itself cost,

00:25:47.420 you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars, and just the feasibility of retrying him was so slight.

00:25:53.720 So, it's just the tech, some technical issues that have nothing to do with big philosophical

00:25:58.680 deontological issues caused the guy to walk away, as often happens, right, you didn't read the

00:26:03.620 Miranda rights exactly verbatim, therefore, you can't admit the evidence, or whatever, like,

00:26:08.140 stuff like that.

00:26:08.940 Yeah, unfortunately, the, you know, the material, which I won't talk about,

00:26:12.700 had nothing to do with this case, you know, so, and it wouldn't have had anything,

00:26:18.140 it wouldn't have affected a new trial at all, either, you know, but it was just, it happens,

00:26:22.440 but even with that charge being dismissed, and listen, I'm a big believer in individual rights,

00:26:27.300 and I'm a big believer in people being able to, you know, like, a government should turn over

00:26:31.840 everything, a government should be able, you know, so I kind of agree with all that. What I don't agree

00:26:35.840 with was the fact that this guy, who's responsible for 20% of the world's heroin that year,

00:26:39.900 got, like, a 10-year sentence, like, that's a problem.

00:26:42.820 Wow. Is he, is he, do you know at all if he's back to his old tricks, or has he retired in some

00:26:48.180 little cave somewhere?

00:26:49.800 I'm sure he's back to, I mean, I'm sure he's sitting in Kabul right now, being fetid as a hero, 1.00

00:26:54.360 you know, I mean, when you, when you, when you, like, in the military was guilty of this over and

00:26:58.840 over and over again, they would, they would detain terrorists, and then, but they would have no plan

00:27:03.460 for them, right, so they would hold them for a period of time, and then they'd release them,

00:27:07.280 and it was so much worse than just never detaining them in the first place, because as soon as they

00:27:12.060 were let out and sent back to their village, they, they come, they come back as heroes, look,

00:27:15.680 they can't hold me, I'm, you know, I'm the Teflon Don syndrome, and so you got, you know, like,

00:27:21.260 so that's one of the reasons, by the way, I was, I was pushing judicial solutions in Afghanistan,

00:27:25.620 Afghanistan, the, the Khan Mohammed case was the first ever narco-terrorism case, and we were using 0.68

00:27:30.820 U.S. law to go after terrorists, right, who are, who are, you know, in the drug trade as a way to

00:27:37.400 support terrorism, and, you know, it's, it's, it is a solution, one of many, but we have to do 0.77

00:27:43.200 something, there had, there, we were so frustrated by, you know, catching people, this catch and release

00:27:48.620 of terrorists, there, there's a perceptual problem in the West, where people think, wow, if someone's doing

00:27:54.300 this horrific act, there must be a logical reason for it, and that's not true, when, when, when

00:28:00.220 someone's, you know, a radical ideologue, when, when, when someone has a religion pushing them to do

00:28:05.480 something, they're not thinking rationally, and, and I don't know how many times people have to tell

00:28:10.600 us what they want to do before you believe them, we're constantly saying what they don't really mean

00:28:14.600 that, and they do mean that, you know, so our approach to, like, you know, to, like, radical Islamic

00:28:20.220 terrorism, for example, because that's what I spent a lot of my career dealing with, it couldn't

00:28:24.280 be more wrong, you know, I mean, like, look what just happened in Israel, you know, it looked at

00:28:28.940 the, the most horrific acts, acts since the Holocaust, and, you know, and the, the leadership 0.76

00:28:34.500 of Hamas is telling you why they did it, and we're still looking, we're still making excuses 0.96

00:28:39.380 for them, it's, it's, it's insane.

00:28:41.240 So you may or may not know this, but I mean, I've talked about exactly this issue at, at length

00:28:45.780 for several decades, culminating in, in this book, in the, the other book, in The Parasitic

00:28:50.240 Mind, I have a chapter, chapter six, which I titled Ostrich Parasitic Syndrome, where I

00:28:57.560 specifically focus on various manifestations of ostrich behavior, right, the, the metaphor

00:29:04.760 being that you bury your head in the sand, and you go, la, la, la, I don't want to hear

00:29:07.820 it, and exactly to your point, I actually list, I say, okay, well, here's the number of terror

00:29:15.380 acts that have been committed since 9-11 alone, by one religion, where they specifically state

00:29:23.420 that they are doing it for the religion, and, and now, by the way, that, that counter is

00:29:27.740 up to about 44,000 plus, since 9-11 alone, in nearly 70 countries, right, so you couldn't

00:29:35.100 make up data that would be as unassailable and as unequivocal as that, and yet, I then list

00:29:42.820 all of the Western intelligentsia offering the real causes for why these things happen,

00:29:50.360 and some of those, quote, real causes, and, and for those of you who are going to be listening

00:29:54.860 on podcast, real causes is in air quotes, are really, they come out straight out of my

00:30:01.120 satire, but regrettably, they're not satirical, so example, it's due to beard bullying, right,

00:30:07.420 so who, who, who amongst us didn't decide that if they were beard bullied, they would head off to

00:30:13.200 ISIS and join Raqqa, I mean, go to Raqqa and join ISIS to throw gays off rooftops, it's also due, 1.00

00:30:19.560 it may surprise you or not, Jeff, due to lack of art exposure, so for example, you know, you're 0.88

00:30:25.960 walking around some young Muslim guy in Brussels, and you're not being exposed to enough Chagall and 0.98

00:30:33.040 Dali and Renoir, and that's when you decide, well, listen, not enough art in my life, time to kill

00:30:39.620 the kuffar, right, so Bill Nye explained to us that the Bataclan attack in Paris was actually very

00:30:47.460 clearly caused by climate change, so when you have Westerners being willing to espouse such insanity,

00:30:56.720 is there hope for us, Mr. Higgins? Is there hope? You know, I'm a very optimistic guy, but

00:31:03.580 no, Gad, there isn't, I'm, I'm not in a good place with this right now, I mean, and the fact that we've

00:31:10.640 lost our ability to reason, I mean, that is really the biggest problem, like, you talk about it being

00:31:16.380 satirical, we're, we're, everything is satirical, now, you, you can't make up, like, the Babylon Bee can't

00:31:21.640 get far enough ahead of a story to make it satirical, the things people believe in the, in the lack of

00:31:27.080 truths, and I think it goes down to a, it comes down to a, like, a basic tribalism, you know, and it's so

00:31:32.620 anything the other side says, even if that was my opinion, five minutes ago has to be wrong because

00:31:37.720 they said it, and we're definitely, in the United States, at least, we're in that position right now,

00:31:42.320 you know, it's, it's, it's, it's whatever, whatever the Democrats say is wrong, whatever the Republicans

00:31:46.580 say is wrong, right, and, and there's, there has to be this objective stance, this, or,

00:31:51.640 or even the belief in objective reality, right, that we can measure things, and that something

00:31:56.120 could be wrong, or, or how about some nuance, how about this one politician is doing some good

00:32:00.960 things, but he's also doing some horrible things, how about that, that's a legitimate position,

00:32:04.540 but it, I don't, I know so few people who can actually do that, or so, so few people who can

00:32:10.120 actually break themselves from their entrenched positions, as if changing your mind, it somehow

00:32:16.600 makes you a lesser person, you know, and, and so if we can't have this debate, and now, of course,

00:32:21.640 thank, by the way, thank you, thank you, thank you, for what you're doing, because, like, these,

00:32:26.660 like, long-form interviews, the, the, the, you're, you're, you're really courageous, uh, stand for free

00:32:32.340 speech, I mean, this is, this is the whole ballgame, I mean, really, this is the whole ballgame, when

00:32:38.020 you're getting, you know, censored on people, you, me, a lot of people censored on social media, you

00:32:42.980 know, um, just literally, you can't break into mainstream media with certain ideas, when the government

00:32:48.380 itself, the CIA, the FBI in the United States are pressuring people to silence people with opposing

00:32:54.000 viewpoints to an administration, I mean, that is pure totalitarianism, right, and unless we can get,

00:32:59.580 unless we can have this, like, open forum of ideas, we'll never get to the truth, and when you, when

00:33:03.620 you, when you're even, when you start to self-censor, and we're there now, right, you're afraid to cancel

00:33:07.560 culture, that's, that's the beginning of the end, so, you know, honestly, the only way out of this, and I

00:33:13.340 said, there's no hope, there is, there's always hope, and right, and there's, like, everything's a

00:33:17.120 spectrum, and there's, the pendulum swings back and forth, but what you're doing is the way we get

00:33:21.320 out of this, you gotta, you gotta stop, we all have to stop demonizing the opponent of an idea, and

00:33:27.560 actually focus on the idea, right, and, and get away from all the logical flaws, and discuss it, and

00:33:33.300 then try to, try, and then we can compromise, then we can, we can agree to disagree on things, and, but

00:33:38.460 until we get back to that, and we were there, like, 30 years ago, I, I don't know what, I do know what

00:33:43.300 happened, but this whole politically correct cancel culture movement is, is destroying everything,

00:33:47.640 you know, sorry for the rant, but no, no, no, no, it means a lot to me, that's what the long form,

00:33:52.220 format is for, you, at the start of your response, you, you said about, you know, how people are unwilling

00:33:59.740 to change their minds, and so on, and it reminded me of a recent exchange I had, I was appearing on a

00:34:05.800 British psychiatrist's show, and he asked me a question, which, you know, in, in retrospect,

00:34:12.620 you, you'd think that many other people would have asked me, but I think he might have been the first

00:34:16.280 one to ever ask me that question, I thought it was a brilliant one, and it's going to speak to what you

00:34:19.480 were just talking about, he said, of all your years, as a psychologist, as a behavioral scientist,

00:34:25.220 as a professor, what has been the finding about human behavior that you found most surprising and

00:34:32.900 shocking, and so that kind of took me aback, because, you know, I've had a long career, there are many

00:34:38.100 things I could talk about, but what's the singular most surprising, and then I paused, and I said,

00:34:43.800 the inability of people to have the intellectual honesty to change their opinions, yes, you know,

00:34:52.040 it's once you are, and now, here, I'm going to get slightly academic, in chapter seven of the

00:34:59.140 parasitic mind, that the title of the chapter is How to Seek Truth, and I'm arguing that there is an

00:35:05.040 objective way to seek truth, but I start off with kind of a pessimistic outlook on that, I quote a, this

00:35:13.860 very long quote from a great book called The Enigma of Reason, by two French psychologists, where they argued

00:35:23.800 that our faculty to reason did not evolve to seek objective truth, but rather it evolved to win

00:35:34.160 arguments, and therefore, oftentimes, I can present you all of the evidence of the world, here, Jeff,

00:35:41.740 here is all of the historical, economic, political, philosophical, psychological evidence that suggests

00:35:50.680 that socialism and communism is doomed to fail, guess what, that evidence is not going to sway you,

00:35:57.900 because God forbid, you would ever change your opinion in light of incoming information, so I think

00:36:02.900 that's probably the thing that epistemologically makes me the most pessimistic, because sometimes

00:36:08.080 I start questioning myself, I say, okay, I'm putting all this effort, I mean, I know I'm flipping

00:36:13.180 some people, but those people are flippable, they're really hardcore, rigid ideologues, is there any

00:36:20.840 amount of evidence that I could ever offer them to change their mind, and regrettably, I think for

00:36:25.920 some of those folks, it's a resounding no. You know, I've heard even people that I used to respect,

00:36:31.780 like intellectually, who in recent years have talked about propagating lies, because, you know,

00:36:39.020 the end goal, the outcomes were too important to be left to chance, you know, and by the way,

00:36:44.680 so yeah, so someone who believes in like moral relativism, you just, you can't argue with that

00:36:49.020 person, there is no end to that, except for maybe over time, they'll realize how ridiculous what

00:36:53.420 they're saying is, but even that argument, right, that reason is there to win an argument,

00:36:58.760 you know, evolution would say no, you know, because you can win every argument and still end up dead,

00:37:04.380 you know, it's using reason to find reality is what helps us survive as a species, you know,

00:37:10.340 and so one of them clearly leads to survival, and the other does not.

00:37:14.680 Right, very interesting. Okay, so I want to get, I hope it's not an abrupt segue. In a sense,

00:37:22.040 it isn't, because I think your novels deal with some of the issues that we're talking about.

00:37:25.540 So okay, you come off from, you get out of this career as a law enforcement, you know, you're hanging

00:37:31.000 around in Kandahar, whatever, and you're with the special forces, then you retire, and you say,

00:37:36.660 all right, act two of my career, I want to be a successful author. What was that transition?

00:37:43.980 What was your process? And I ask you this, because I often get people who write to me and say,

00:37:49.800 hey, Dr. Saad, what's the secret to being a good author? So do you have any recipes,

00:37:55.000 one, two, threes that you could share with us?

00:37:56.800 Well, the secret to being a good author is right, right? Don't talk about that you have a book,

00:38:00.760 actually sit down and write the book. And, you know, they say it takes about a million words to

00:38:04.400 achieve some mastery in it, sort of Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000 hours. And there's some truth

00:38:08.640 to that. So right. Also, you have to learn the craft and the business. That means, you know,

00:38:13.400 following podcasts, going to seminars, joining, you know, going to conferences, joining writing

00:38:17.960 groups, getting critique partners, like actually learning it. And it does take a while. If you're

00:38:22.940 doing that, if you're constantly trying to better yourself and learn, everything you write will be

00:38:26.900 better than the predecessor. Right. And so I'll go back, I'll finish a book and I'll go back to the

00:38:31.260 beginning to start editing and I'll cringe at what I just wrote. So I'm actually a better writer at the

00:38:35.000 end of that book than I was at the beginning. I don't know if you've experienced this as well.

00:38:39.340 But it's interesting because probably not as much as what you're saying. I think because the process

00:38:46.680 of writing nonfiction is inherently different from the process of writing fiction. And so that was

00:38:53.600 actually, I mean, in a sense, you've, you've teed me up perfectly for my next question, which is,

00:38:58.520 I think you've done a bit of nonfiction writing, but mainly fiction. How does your process change

00:39:04.060 depending on those two genres? Well, you're right. It's completely different. So the first thing I

00:39:08.160 wrote upon retiring was the story of the first narco terrorism case. So it was, it was my story.

00:39:12.920 It's nonfiction. I, I, I tried to sell it at the time. I got an agent with it. We had a lot of

00:39:18.420 interest, but I didn't sell it. So it's one of those things that sort of sat on a shelf and I will go back.

00:39:22.980 Now this is 2017. So I'll go back and rewrite and then try it again. But I also pivoted right

00:39:29.060 after I got out because, you know, when you're in the government and you have a security clearance

00:39:32.480 and everything, you're, you're very limited in what you can say and what you can do. So I,

00:39:36.320 that was 2017. That was right during the time with all the defund the police, right. In the,

00:39:40.260 in the beginning of the demonizing police. So I wrote a bunch of essays and articles actually showing

00:39:45.000 facts, you know, about, about what the numbers looked like and in defending police. I mean,

00:39:49.600 if there, if there's a bad cop, if there's a racist cop, if there's a bad shooting,

00:39:53.100 everybody should be, should be, you know, pointing it out and it happens. Of course it happens. Right.

00:39:58.480 But it's, it's not statistically significant. And the numbers like every year, you know, there's,

00:40:03.840 there's something like, there's like 10 million arrests, about 700,000 U S police officers,

00:40:07.880 sworn officers, about 10 million arrests. And out of them every year, there's, there's a,

00:40:13.040 there's actually more unarmed white people are killed than black people. Right. But, but, 0.80

00:40:17.040 but the percentage, the, the, the, the, the percentage is, is, is skewed because there's

00:40:23.080 the, you know, blacks are like 13 and a half percent of the population or whatever. But when

00:40:26.460 you, so I started actually going into like government documents and showing what the numbers

00:40:31.200 were, you know, because it really matters. Like if there's an epidemic of racist police shootings,

00:40:35.320 we need to stop it. And it turns out, not only is there not, it's, it's, it's, it's almost

00:40:39.680 non-existent. Like about every year, there's one to two dozen unarmed black men who are shot in the

00:40:44.380 United States. And I would go through and I, and I was a tactical instructor for DEA. You know,

00:40:49.440 I've been in a lot of violent encounters, many, many encounters, and I would, I would go through

00:40:54.060 them and I would analyze each one, you know, and each year there's a couple of them that are bad

00:40:58.320 for sure. Every year, there's a couple of just outlandish like shootings or things in, in the,

00:41:02.660 in the cops go to jail. But most of them, even if they're unarmed, people think unarmed and they

00:41:06.720 think, well, that's a bad shooting, but it's not true. A lot of them came at the end of high

00:41:10.220 speed chases. A lot of them came when the, when the, the suspect was wrestling for the police

00:41:14.660 officers gone, or the, the bad guy had just been shooting at the police officers. And, and, you

00:41:19.680 know, so when you, when you look at them all, there's only a couple. And, and, and then, so

00:41:24.380 would you look at these numbers, you say, okay, you know, blacks are, you know, it's, it's like, 0.97

00:41:28.060 it's like a third or whatever the number is I've written about the exact numbers of all the

00:41:32.280 unarmed shootings. But then you, but then you look at like, like the black community's involvement in 0.55

00:41:36.720 crime, right? Like 54% of homicides, 54% of robberies, et cetera, et cetera. Once you account 0.77

00:41:43.080 for that, and, you know, as, as a, as a scientist yourself, you know, you look, you look at confounding

00:41:48.260 variables, right? And once you account for the, their left, their participation in criminality, 0.79

00:41:53.400 the disparity goes away completely. In fact, it actually reverses in a lot of, a lot of cases.

00:41:58.340 And there's been a bunch of studies about this, you know, from Roland Fryer.

00:42:02.180 I was just going to say, I was going to ask you if you're familiar with Roland Fryer's work. Yes.

00:42:06.180 Yeah. And there's a, there's a dozen of these done by different universities and they all show

00:42:09.920 the same thing. And then there's all these other like societal and sociological variables, like

00:42:15.840 father, the percentage of fatherless homes, poverty, you know, like, like almost all crime is done by

00:42:21.100 young men. Right. And the black population is significantly younger than the white population.

00:42:25.840 So just that one fact alone would mean there'd be a higher level of criminality. It's nothing to do

00:42:29.980 with race, obviously, right. It has to do with age and young men and testosterone. And so when you,

00:42:34.080 when you look at all that, it goes away completely. So I just, I just got, you know, I did, I did a lot

00:42:38.260 of media about it, you know, over a couple of times, but it's not going away and every election

00:42:42.000 cycle, it comes back and we'll probably get more of it, you know, this year leading into the U S

00:42:45.720 elections. But it's, but in a sense, what you just said, well, not in a sense, in an exact sense,

00:42:50.180 it speaks to my earlier point about most people are unwilling to be swayed by facts. Right. So when you

00:42:57.360 said that the same faulty narrative keeps coming up, it suggests that you are impervious to this

00:43:04.800 little pesky thing called data and analysis, right? Because I can't get rid of the narrative.

00:43:10.140 Right. So I'll give you, I'll give you a great example of that. So I still receive, you know,

00:43:16.400 pretty much almost every day, some thing from the university about how to be a better ally to women,

00:43:22.880 as if women in North American universities are indistinguishable from little girls trying to 1.00

00:43:30.760 go to school in Waziristan. That's the narrative, right? And so I had once shared the data from the

00:43:37.500 U S government. Okay. You ready for this, Jeff? Four levels of educational attainment, associate's

00:43:44.180 degree. So half a bachelor's bachelor's degree, master's degree, and doctoral degree. So four levels

00:43:49.940 of educational attainment broken up by five racial categories, you know, Hispanic, indigenous,

00:43:57.500 whatever, white, so on. So basically the matrix is four by five, four levels of attainment by five

00:44:04.100 races. And in every single one of those cells, you can calculate the ratio of male to female in that

00:44:11.240 cell. So I can go black associate's degree. Is it more men and women? Indigenous doctoral degree? Is it

00:44:18.280 more men and women? So out of 20 cells, Jeff, guess how many cells women outnumber men? 20.

00:44:28.040 Yes, sir. We have a winner, Jeopardy champion. So the narrative is women need constant allyship 1.00

00:44:39.380 because we live in Waziristan. The data could not have been doctored to be the exact opposite of the

00:44:48.060 narrative, but no amount of data that I show you alters the fact that I receive emails saying we need

00:44:55.620 to be, by the way, my dean is a woman. My departmental chair is a woman. My associate dean of research is a 0.62

00:45:02.880 woman, but I need to find ways if I apply for a grant to argue how I'm going to be a better ally 0.99

00:45:09.200 for women in universities. Yeah. I mean, it's because it's narrative, right? And not conclusion 0.97

00:45:17.160 based on analysis of facts. And, you know, my master's is in criminal justice and I have a

00:45:22.280 statistical research focus and it's just basic like 101 research and statistics. And you have to

00:45:30.040 look at that, but the narrative survives because the narrative is the point. And so, you know, it's

00:45:34.180 not the average person who's like listening to a podcast or hear something and then repeats it,

00:45:39.640 right? Because that's what they heard on the news. But the people who are actually like propagating

00:45:43.260 these lies have a political agenda and they're not shy about talking about it. You know, like it's

00:45:50.100 interesting that everything from like a disparity in like gender with wages to climate change has the

00:45:57.500 same solution and the capitalism, you know, like. Yeah. But it's interesting because I've often thought

00:46:06.180 about so, but why is it that this reality exists? So I think it's a it's a couple of factors. Number

00:46:11.240 one, most people regrettably are cognitive misers, which is a fancy way of saying they're intellectually 0.98

00:46:16.520 lazy. If Barack Obama, peace be upon him, or George Bush say that Islam is peace, then it's a lot easier 0.91

00:46:25.640 for me to say, oh, well, my president said Islam is peace, therefore Islam is peace. They're actually

00:46:30.400 going through the hard work of putting together the evidence to either support the fact that Islam

00:46:36.540 or peace is peaceful or not. It's too effortful. So I want to use some kind of simplifying heuristic

00:46:41.600 to make sense of the world. So number one, people are cognitive misers. Number two, we are a storytelling

00:46:48.220 animal. We love stories, right? That's why literature, that's why that's why fiction works,

00:46:53.680 right? Because because our big brain is is is fed by powerful literary narratives. So if you concoct a

00:47:03.620 story for me, that's going to be a lot better than if Jeff Higgins comes with all of his statistical

00:47:10.320 analyses. I don't give a shit about reality and truth. Tell me a story that sticks. And that's the 0.99

00:47:16.980 problem. What do you think? No, I completely agree. And it's it's it is it is so much easier.

00:47:23.360 And it's it's also there's social pressure, right? So if you have like, basically, a communist cadre,

00:47:29.560 and that's what it is, right? Intellectual communist cadre who are pushing, pushing pure socialism across

00:47:36.160 the West who hate everything about like America and other Western powers who who want to replace this 0.77

00:47:41.600 and they're, they're, they're using race, they're, they're, they're using dissension. I mean, these

00:47:46.120 are Marxist 101 tools that they're using to try to tear down institutions so that they can replace it

00:47:51.300 with something else. And don't trust me, ask them because they say all openly all the time, you know,

00:47:57.320 so you just have to believe them. But so that they create they craft these narratives, and they and

00:48:02.360 they spark something in us, right? If the idea of like a police officer, somebody that we have to trust

00:48:07.260 to protect us is committing like a racist crime. What's more horrific than that? Like, I mean,

00:48:12.820 that that makes me ill, right? And I would spend 25 years along, it makes us all like sickened by that.

00:48:17.620 So I think there's this natural inclination to want to stand up or stand up for the underdog or,

00:48:23.460 but the problem is, it's not happening. Or when it happens, you actually take away from when it

00:48:28.580 actually happens, right? Because there are racist incidents, there are bad cops, and we all need to go

00:48:32.500 after them. But when you when every time there's a shooting, you call the cop a racist,

00:48:36.680 even when there's not a single piece of evidence or any inclination to believe that that that racism

00:48:41.400 had something to do with it, what you what you do is you make people question all of it, you know,

00:48:46.340 and what and I've been writing about this for years and years and years. And what you're seeing now is

00:48:50.800 what happened like Miami in the 80s, they tried to like diversify. So they lowered standards, and they

00:48:56.100 made, they made the racial makeup of their police department, the goal, which, by the way, is fine,

00:49:02.880 because you know, there's different cultures. And it's great if you can have cops from all these

00:49:05.820 different cultures, and they can they can help with sensitivities, and they can they can help with

00:49:09.380 communication and all this. But when you drop like a meritocracy in place of that, you cause huge

00:49:15.400 problems. And what I predicted, like, it's got to be like, like, six, seven years ago now, is you're

00:49:20.560 having people who don't want to get into law enforcement, right? Like, why would you in the

00:49:24.160 United States want to be a cop right now? Like, why would you you might want to protect your community,

00:49:27.520 you might want to do good. But there's a good chance you would do your job exactly as trained and get

00:49:32.260 indicted for doing it. So who would want to do that? Plus, you're getting demonized in the press

00:49:36.820 and call these horrible things. So we are seeing it's already happening. And it doesn't happen

00:49:40.620 overnight, right? The cops that are there now are retiring in mass, and in fewer good candidates are

00:49:47.140 coming in. So what you're going to end up with is a lowering of the quality of candidates. And when

00:49:51.560 that happens, the people who are going to suffer are the people are who are in impoverished

00:49:55.100 neighborhoods with higher crime rates. Exactly. Very people we say we're protecting by demonizing the

00:49:59.920 cops who weren't doing anything wrong. And by the way, sometimes they were right there. They're

00:50:03.880 definitely departments that were doing a lot of bad things, and we should focus on them. But I'm

00:50:07.340 just talking in general, you know, and now you're actually hurting the very people you claimed you

00:50:11.460 were going to help. If that was your goal, but if your goal was to tear down the police and the

00:50:16.460 institutions, so that you could replace it with a utopian vision of the world that you have,

00:50:20.860 then you don't care. And that's what's happening at the top.

00:50:24.280 As you were talking about sort of corrupt officers, I thought of the movie,

00:50:29.540 I'm sure you've seen it by Al Pacino, Serpico. Do you remember that movie from way back in the

00:50:35.220 70s? Yeah. So that was, that was one of my early exposures as a young kid to Al Pacino. And then he

00:50:41.400 became one of my favorite actors. Okay, let's talk about with the time that we have left your book

00:50:46.800 that's coming out on February 29. Actually, the day that your book comes out is the day that I will be

00:50:52.280 speaking about all of these parasitic ideas at Arizona State University. The reason why I know that is

00:50:57.840 because it's a leap year, February 29. Tell us about your latest book, The Forever Game,

00:51:02.640 if I remember correctly, right? Right. So The Forever Game deals with artificial intelligence.

00:51:07.100 I actually, I had a friend of mine, who's the CEO of an AI company years ago. And he told me that

00:51:12.440 another CEO of another AI company was going to friends and family and offering to download their

00:51:18.260 consciousness, like as like a beta program. And I'm like, wait, what was that? You know,

00:51:22.300 it's, you know, we're really at this inflection point with AI, and we're seeing it all over the

00:51:27.220 place. And so it's, it's kind of a timely book, but all my books kind of have a theme, you know,

00:51:31.660 and, and this one, it's really the nature of artificial intelligence and what it says about

00:51:36.620 humanity and what it what it means to be human. So I have a special agent, Adam Locke, who quits DEA

00:51:43.220 because his girlfriend is terminally ill. So he can take care of her and he joins his brother's AI

00:51:47.280 company, then his brother's dies under suspicious circumstances. And in Adam learns that this

00:51:53.140 lifesaving technology can be deadly, you know, so the whole the whole thing deals with like,

00:51:57.760 what are the types of AI that people are experimenting with now? And what does that mean?

00:52:01.460 I mean, it's, listen, it's fantastic stuff, right? When you can have like nanobots that go into your

00:52:05.920 bloodstream and find cancer and cure things. It's amazing. But like what it means, like, actually,

00:52:11.800 when you're downloading, okay, so this is real. So this is real. A couple years ago, this is like

00:52:15.320 five years ago. Now, I saw a I read an article about a lab that was doing like some kind of high

00:52:21.980 density MRI, some type of MRI. And they were they were watching the synaptic connections when somebody

00:52:27.720 was having a memory, they were able to recreate that in the next room in a blind study in a blind.

00:52:33.340 Wow. Fascinating, right? So what does that mean? You know, what does that mean when you can download

00:52:39.240 your thoughts and your memories? And, and as AI gets to that, you know, fourth or fifth generation,

00:52:45.160 right, that that that next level of AI, where it's sentient, or that it's that it surpasses human

00:52:51.340 ability? What does that look like for us? So anyhow, that's what the book's about. I mean, it's I say all

00:52:56.400 that it's it's a thriller. So my books are they're fast paced, they're thrillers, they're fun, you know,

00:53:00.840 but having these underlying themes, I think is always interesting.

00:53:03.960 So as you were mentioning that study, I think, and I'm wondering if it's the same study that I'm

00:53:09.540 thinking of, there's a study, if I'm not mistaken, by a group of UCLA, or at least the lead author

00:53:14.620 might have been at UCLA and neuroscience group, where not, I don't think it was memories. But it was,

00:53:21.160 let's say there are eight different types of thoughts that you could have, I'd like to touch my

00:53:27.840 computer or whatever. Since each of those have a different neuronal activation pattern,

00:53:33.960 they were able to then guess what the thought was based on the neuronal signature at higher level

00:53:43.400 than chance. So it's exactly it's a very similar idea to what you're talking about. So it's,

00:53:46.860 it's unbelievable. Now, if one of your movies, not one of your movies, one of your books were turned

00:53:53.240 into a movie, and one of the characters was an incredibly good looking wise guy, can I immediately

00:54:02.180 assume that I would be the guy who would be playing that role?

00:54:05.600 I mean, who else could possibly play it?

00:54:07.300 Thank you very much. That's why you were the big DEA agent, you understand reality.

00:54:13.280 Hey, Jeff, any other project? I know you've got a looming one coming up on February 29. So I don't

00:54:18.340 want to look beyond that. But are there other projects, whether they be authoring or other things

00:54:23.500 that you're working on that you'd like to take this opportunity to promote?

00:54:27.340 Oh, yeah. Well, thanks. Thanks for that question. Yeah, I have another book called

00:54:31.260 the Havana syndrome. That's the working title. Oh, is that the the the the wave stuff that the

00:54:37.080 mysterious? Okay, yeah, it's US diplomats all over the world. And then other nationalities,

00:54:42.240 right? Canadians as well, who've succumbed to something right, that's called the Havana syndrome.

00:54:48.640 And a couple years ago, I read the CIA put out a report and said that these are anomalous health

00:54:53.380 incidents, right? And so they're blaming a psychogenic effects. And yet, that can't possibly

00:55:00.700 be true. And I actually I've actually interviewed people who were who were part of this or who were

00:55:06.500 who suffered from this had brain injury from it. But just to give you one example, there was a there 0.73

00:55:10.380 was a national security officer, national security advisor in I think it was across the across the

00:55:18.300 river in DC. And she was stricken by the Savannah syndrome, right? Like with all you know, the loss

00:55:24.040 of balance and the sound in the ears and all that there's like a whole host of symptoms. And people

00:55:28.700 like Oh, psychogenic causes, but her dog had a seizure at the same time. So unless you feel like

00:55:35.380 her dog is is is watching television and open to suggestion, or he's just mimicking her behavior.

00:55:40.340 That's right. Okay, yes, that's actually a much better explanation than what I read in the CIA report.

00:55:46.960 Right. So you know, so anyhow, that's, that's what that book's about. It's an international

00:55:50.480 thriller. And it goes to places like Estonia and Ukraine and places that I did operations in and

00:55:56.500 the Dominican Republic. And, and so it's, it's, I think that's a lot of fun. That's coming out with

00:56:00.740 Severn River publishing in 2025. And then I have another one a called shaking, which is like a pure mystery

00:56:07.340 takes place in a little town of Harvard, Massachusetts, where I grew up. And that's

00:56:10.700 coming out in the summer of 2025 with a running wild press. Very cool. So are most of your books

00:56:16.840 in one way or another related to, you know, your history in that, you know, most people write about

00:56:24.100 what they know about. And so is that what's happening in your case? Or, or do you, do you try to traverse

00:56:29.460 landscapes that are otherwise completely unfamiliar to you? Well, doing what you're suggesting would make

00:56:35.160 a lot more sense for branding, but they're all thrillers, right? So they're all mystery thrillers.

00:56:39.820 But my first book, Furious is psychological suspense. And it's a woman who's lost a child and her husband

00:56:45.140 takes her across the Indian ocean to get her away from everything. And while bad things happen, because

00:56:49.500 it's a thriller, you know, the second one unseen is about, it's about the Muslim brotherhood and an actual

00:56:56.720 real life terror. A topic that your wife, I believe knows a bit about. A bit. She's probably the world's

00:57:02.820 leading expert on that. By the way, her book, The Secret Apparatus is required reading. If you're

00:57:08.040 interested in terrorism, you have to read that book. It's the only book like it. And she's the

00:57:13.680 only one who had that information. She's studied this stuff for decades and decades. And, you know,

00:57:18.220 DHS is reading it now. And it's, she's all over the world. She's getting, she's in academic libraries

00:57:23.780 all over the place, but read that book. I really recommend it. That's fantastic. Well, you rarely do you

00:57:29.340 have a marriage where both partners are the epitome of honey badgers. You are both

00:57:35.260 certified as honey badgers. Thank you so much for coming on the show, Jeff. Stay in touch. And as I

00:57:41.600 said, offline, if we, if I ever make it, I'm sure I'll make it to the Washington area. I look forward

00:57:47.700 to meeting you both in person. Thank you so much for coming on. Well, thank you. It's been,

00:57:51.640 it's been a real pleasure. Keep up the good work. Thank you, sir.

My Chat with Former Supervisory Special Agent Jeff Higgins (The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad_642)

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