John Gentry - Unpacking the Information War Against the U.S. | SRS #134

John Gentry welcome to the show thank. you for having me my pleasure we have a. variety of topics we're going to talk. about here today your new book neutering. the CIA the polarization of the. intelligence organizations and uh but. what I'd like to kick it off with is and. what I was really excited to talk to you. about other than that is um.

propaganda I've been talking about it. for a while I am not the greatest at. explaining how it works um and things to. look out for but I think you would be. and so I'd like to kind of kick it off. with that but um but. before everybody gets an introduction. here so. um know if I'm missing anything quite. the intro.

Dr John Gentry PhD in Political Science. And a ba in history retired US Army. Reserve Lieutenant Colonel duties mainly. in intelligence and Special Operations. Arenas Former Intelligence Analyst at. Central Intelligence Agency you're a. frequent writer on intelligence and. National Security issues author of. neutering the CIA why the US. intelligence versus Trump has long-term. consequences co-author third strategic.

warning. intelligence history challenges in. prospects and has published about 40. articles on intelligence topics we're. talking about some of those on the way. here frequent public speaker on. intelligence issues former excuse me. former Army Special Forces Soldier and. current Adjunct professor at Georgetown. University's School of Foreign Service. and teaches for the school of defense.

and in strategic studies at Missouri. State University am I missing anything. no points but um I have a a subscription. service uh that we offer to our top. supporters called patreon and so I allow. them to ask each guest one question and. so this question is from David Crosby.

do you feel Russia is acting with China. or vice versa on a majority of our. headlines well it appears that they're. working together on some U my uh my. interpretation here is that Russia's got. its own agenda China clearly has has an. agenda too uh I think I think with. respect to uh to Ukraine for example and. Russian information operations we'll. talk about they they're they're they're. operating pretty much on their own own.

okay so you don't think. they're they're connected in their. propaganda Wars uh not that I see not. that I see they both uh are using. techniques that the Soviets developed uh. but they've got their own agendas and. their techniques are are different in. some respects okay well there you have. it we don't think they're they're. together but you know let's just move. right into the interview I really want. to kick this off with talking about.

propaganda so if you could kind of. explain you know. maybe just some Basics on how it works. and what people can watch out for let's. start with with with kind of how it. works okay so what you're what you're. trying to do with information operations. propaganda actually is only one element. of that so propaganda would be something. that would be fairly obvious in uh in. media uh brochures things that that sort.

but there there's a a wide range of. other things forgeries for example. social media doings so I I prefer to. talk about influence operations or in or. information operations the the uh the. history of this as it pertains to the. United States so if we're thinking about. different countries this would be. somewhat different but as we were. talking earlier the uh the the Soviet. Union uh over a century ago in the early. 1920s uh set up information operations.

that were designed to subvert and. ultimately destroy their capitalist. opponents and so that their intelligence. Services their foreign Ministry uh even. their their national leaders were were. integrated in these in these these these. campaigns one of the the foremost of. these operators early on was a young. German communist by the name of villy. munsen who uh who who who. organized uh uh printing for publishing.

houses that would publish material that. was consistent with Soviet interests he. also. organized uh groups of various sorts he. divided them into into into uh uh groups. that would that would be roughly. homogeneous so there'd be students. groups there' be Professor groups there'. be women's groups labor groups and so on. and they would they would recruit people. uh under false F false circumstances and.

in essence get these these people to. push lines and push programs that were. consistent with the with the with Soviet. interest and vly called these things in. innocence clubs because he was able to. fool so many people so much of the time. they were. Innocents TS at the end so this is a you. know using this this this word as a as a. noun well the Soviets pushed this very. hard through all of their their. affiliates around the world through the.

Communist International the common turn. there was a variant of that here in the. United States called the Communist Party. of the USA which still exists still is a. Soviet the Communist Party of the USA. yes yes so this was formed again a. little over 100 years ago uh and still. exists and so if you want to look online. actually you can get a you can find a. newspaper that they publish every day. wow people's world I have a friend as as. an ass I have a friend who has eclectic.

interests of various sorts and he he he. he looks at conservative press he also. gets a subscription of the Wall Street. to The Washington Post and to the the. Communist Party paper and he sees very. little difference between the Washington. Post in the in the Communist Party paper. very interesting so they're still. operating uh again this is a legacy of. the the the the Soviet Union so Soviet. intelligence took over after the common. ter was was abolished in.

1943 at pressure from uh from the Soviet. Union's war war time allies the United. States and and Great Britain they they. knew what the common turn was all about. and they said wait a minute we're. fighting this war with you not against. you stop stop um trying to subvert us so. so Stalin said oh yeah okay okay we'll. we'll get rid of the the the the common. turn but he he he gave the subversion. mission to intelligence so it continued.

so the KGB formed in the committee for. State security formed in 1954 then took. over that mission uh and in the late. 1950s the the the Communist Party poot. Bureau gave the the the KGB an extra. mission and emphasized more what they. called active measures so active. measures would be sometimes physical. actions assassinations kidnappings and. so on but mostly it was information.

operations broadly broadly defined they. established uh 1962 what was called. service a which is part of uh the first. Chief directorate or the foreign the. foreign intelligence operation the KGB. roughly the roughly the CIA equivalent. of the of the. KGB uh and these these people had a wide. ranging um set of missions and and did a. wide ranging set of things so they.

forged documents that would be given to. Western newspapers they planted stories. in uh newspapers in places like India. for example hoping that they would get. picked up by West European and and the. United States uh newspapers what kind of. stories stories for example like like uh. that uh that the AIDS epidemic was a was. a product of the United States defense. department so it was one of their most. most.

effective active measures operations so. what let's just dive into that one. specifically so they leak a they get a. story. into India's media yeah and they hope. that we pick it up right why would we. pick up what India me because it's a. good good and interesting. story but it was not a sure thing so so. the Soviets had other things that they. would do so they would they would write.

stories and feed them to sympathetic. journalists who would then publish them. Verbatim what they also did was was. publish in essence notes this is the. this is the the message we want to get. across point a point B and so on and I. then give it to you so I'm a KGB agent. you're my asset I give it to you and. then you write up my message in your. style so it doesn't look like a KGB. product anymore but you're you're.

passing passing on the on the on on the. message so again a wide variety of. approaches that were that were used to. provide uh a consistent General message. but one that would not be obvious so. what they're what they did was developed. techniques that that were were designed. specifically to be longterm in goal. long-term in duration that would be. subtle that would be comp complimentary.

uh and would be hard to both identify. and combat it was a very effective. program then they actually came up with. a name for it back in the 1950s they. call they call it reflexive control so. you're trying to get so I'm trying to. get you to do what I. want but you need to not know that you. have been influenced by. me all right so. that has worked very well for the.

Soviets and the K. KGB uh officers who defected who were. involved in active measures campaigns. have said repeatedly it really was very. easy to fool westerners to fool. Americans these are people gullible. people uh and they particularly were. were fond of of targeting political. liberals not cons not hard conservatives. and not hard leftists and again go back.

to vly munsen Berg's innocence clubs. they wanted to create a lot of allies as. part of the effort to subvert the the. country the the the country as a whole. and their argument was that it was. relatively easy to subvert to to fool. liberals uh for two reasons one one. liberals were generally sympathetic to. the Soviet view but not wholly wholly in. the Soviet Camp they weren't weren't. Communists and secondly uh because they.

were generally sympathetic they didn't. ask a lot of questions about sourcing. about accuracy interes so they were they. found that it was easy easy to fool uh. fool. liberals and what they also did. importantly for what's going on here now. in 2024 on the campuses uh is that they. worked they worked the uh the the. universities so they were pushing. pushing materials on the on the on the. universities Russians were so yeah.

Soviets and now the Russians are doing. it are doing are doing it too how are. how are they manipulating our schools. today well you might want to think about. taking some of that cash and try to. protect your purchasing power with. precious medals like gold and silver. it's simple go to shaikes gold.com or. call 855 936 gold you'll learn about. toprated precious metals company gold Co. and how they can help you they're a top.

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enough friends if you will uh either. either committed marxists or fellow. Travelers uh to to now do this to now to. do this to do this on on their own to. back up back up and go go a little bit. different direction if I might but a. complimentary way um uh there was a. group of people in the in the 19 in the. teens and 20s and then in the 1930s good. marxists wanted Revolution wanted that.

good that good uh uh you know perfect. world that that Marx promised but. realized that the the economic conflict. that Marx had talked about was not going. to work so as you recall Marx postulated. that there were there were two competing. groups in the world uh capitalists and. and workers the proletariat uh their. interests were incompatible and that uh. and that at some point point the. proletariat would overthrow the.

capitalists and we'd have we'd have a. perfect perfect world forever well the. problem problem was that workers didn't. see the world the way markx did and they. said Gee you know uh capitalism seems to. work pretty well for us too we can if we. we contribute here we can we can we can. do do better better for ourselves and. for our families too so by the 20s good. marxists were saying uh this this. original Marxist plan is not working so.

what we need to do is find other ways to. divide uh people and generate the kinds. of conflicts uh the kind of conflict. that Marx Envision so in other words get. to the marxian state a different way and. the way they came the way they proposed. to do this is through is through social. means through societal societal means. and fast forward a lot of ways basically. basically they were five areas that were.

targeted for for for for efforts to uh. again subvert the the. old uh Western capitalist way of doing. things and help generate the the the the. the the marxian Nirvana if you will five. of them. education why you want to go after a. young mind it's a relatively effective. way of of of of converting people either. all away or at least getting sympathetic.

elies uh and it it's relatively cheap. the young people of today are the. leaders of 20 and 30 years from now you. have a long time Horizon you're trying. to do this in a subtle way so you go. after. education you're targeting the Press. basically the same basically the same. same argument you're going after the law. because you want the law to begin to. operate in your favor you're not looking. for scale s that are even you're looking.

you're looking for the law to favor you. right fourth one fourth one is religion. so you want to get you want to get rid. of you want to destroy organized. religion because organized religion. talks about a a a a a an alternative. World incompatible with a marxian world. so religion is is a is a core enemy of. Marxism and the fifth one is a family so.

you want to destroy the family unit. where people look out for them them. themselves and their their spouse and. their children they're looking for the. future of the the the the the the family. you want loyalty in a in a marxian state. to be to be society-wide uh your your. identity is not to the family it's to. your group all right so so the so the. mechanism then is that is that you've. got information operations broadly. defined going after all of these five.

areas because they are impediments to. the marxian revolution so it's it is the. press the education system the law the. family unit yeah and religion and. religion. right all five of those are under. significant stress in the United States. at the moment that's what I was just. going to say we're seeing all we've been. seeing this happen for for quite a while.

now so how do we do this in other. countries no we don't no nothing close. nothing so for many for a number of. years CIA was the agent will back up. even before that right so so before. before World War II we had nothing close. to a a coherent uh you know foreign. policy I don't think frankly but. certainly we did not have anything close. to an influence on operation uh uh CIA.

was created as you know in 1947 and in. the 40s. 50s 60s there were there were some uh. some operations that were conducted uh. uh that by Soviet standards were were. were crude and simple and small so you. we've had public release of information. that uh CIA um helped uh publish some. books for example Po and made some. pamphlets and contributed to uh.

non-communist uh youth going to. conventions in Europe and and so on but. by by by Soviet standards this activity. was was trivial and uh as best I can. tell almost all of it was was was ended. in uh in the mid 1970s so Congress got a. hold of some of the real abuses of CIA. and FBI in the Army and 1960s uh and.

said enough we're not doing any more of. this so CIA is a good bureaucracy said. we're not going to we're going to do. things that are going to get in trouble. get us into trouble with with Congress. so they've basically quit quit doing. this so the the the the malign influence. operations are are uh um basically being. conducted around the world by states. that want to change the system so you. have you have. you know you have Norway for example.

that that says gee we'd really like you. to know about our our salmon industry or. you know where we we we got great Hydro. power and we're a green country and so. on so they have some in essence. propaganda uh operations to let the. world know about what Norway is doing. that's good but that's a fundamentally. different thing than what we're what. we've been talking. about man I would uh I don't know I'm. not I have a feeling the agency has its. hands in this but um but we'll take well.

we come let's come back to that when we. talk about the politicization issue. because that's been uh that's been. asserted and my uh my view is that. there's a relationship but it's it's not. quite what's been asserted uh publicly. you know so I got another question I. mean we're not just looking at the. Russians here we're also looking at I. mean China obviously has a hand a big. hand in this Y and and well actually I'm. curious before we dive into that we know.

Russia is involved in this against us we. know China is involved in information. Wars against us is there anybody else. that we should be looking out for well. two two big ones are are are big ones. but not as big are Iran Iranians are. doing information operations by by many. standards a lot of it through cyber. cyber operations and the North Koreans. are doing some too North so here you got. the big four. uh intelligence targets of the CIA now.

publicly identified going back what five. years now ago now and they're all. they're all heavily heavily involved in. information operations as well as. nuclear weapons and you know conquering. other countries and Soh you know and we. we discussed the five I'm surprised. where would social media and cyber. operations fall into in those five. categories well they would they would be. uh those these were the old Soviet ones.

now right this may be would be a sixth. so well well these would be these would. be the ways that you create uh a turmoil. in capitalist Society to generate the uh. the marxian revolution well the Russians. are not Marxist are they Putin you know. authoritarians yeah Russian nationalists. yep uh but they're not they're not. Marxist leninist the way the the way the. Soviets were so a lot of what the. Russians are doing now borrowing the.

techniques and uh and you know in terms. of forgeries in terms of getting. information to Friendly journalists and. so on but their goals are different so. there so Putin is pretty clearly got a a. Russian nationalist agenda restore the. territorial uh Empire that that that. horribly from his perspective horribly. was lost when the Soviet Union collapsed. so they the how do you do that you're.

targeting then uh groups that are that. are opposing you for example in Ukraine. so that would be the European Union that. would be that would be NATO uh and that. would be member states of those those. countries so you want to generate. divisions so pretty clearly one of the. big targets uh in the United States is. to use information operations basically. active measures again but now you're.

trying to generate a generate removal of. support for Ukraine in the United States. social media is a a key way to do that. the people they're targeting are are. Republicans so you remember remember I. mentioned earlier that the Soviets found. it easiest to Target liberals M the. Russians are going after. conservatives uh in the United States in. Hungary in Italy several other European.

countries uh too began basically to. divide to break the consensus of these. big alliances that that are that are. really unwieldy in the sense that they. require unanimity to make major. decisions so if you can you can break. the unanimity then you can break support. for for Ukraine for example that's. interesting do you now. I'm in let's let's stick with the.

Russians they've been at this for well. over a 100 years okay they would have. some very deep ties into media outlets. and writers and all in in in the media. World correct I mean. longstanding assets. MH why wouldn't they continue I mean if. they if they started this on liberals. and now they're transitioning to.

conservative media wouldn't they have to. they would have to get in here create. all new Assets in a in a in a completely. different sector than liberal. media why wouldn't they why wouldn't. they as they're developing those assets. within the conservative media and the. conservative space why wouldn't they. continue to try to. manipulate the liberal oh I think they. probably are I think they are but the. most.

important you know thinking about the. current you know roughly the current. situation as as as best I can tell and a. number of people who follow Russia more. closely than I do indicate that you know. the the current current push is is. Ukraine for obvious reasons it's a major. demanding war on you know on their part. so who who is who is prospectively a. thorn in the side of of NATO and um. um in in the European Union it's.

conservatives oh no I 100% agree with. you I mean so they're so they what. they're doing remember this is this is a. long longtime program right so you're. dealing with lots of lots of of of. avenues some very subtle some not very. subtle at all you're constantly. developing new new uh new new groups and. new and new approaches based on on your. on your on your needs yeah I so I don't. think it's it's it's an evolution not a.

not not a requirement for a wholesale. change I feel like trying to manipulate. conservatives to be against the the. Ukraine against us funding Ukraine for. the Russia Ukraine war that's lwh. hanging fruit for Russia why wouldn't. they yeah you know that's I mean and. you've had a dramatic change I mean can. you can you imagine Ronald Reagan comes. from the grave can you imagine him a. with what many of the House Republicans.

have been saying about Ukraine I mean. he'd be he'd be flabbergasted yeah yeah. who's the who's the who's the Rhino here. yeah yeah but. um you know as far. as so we have four four countries that. were that that are key players in. information mors against the. us at least do these. four the four biggest do these. four do you feel like. they are they all in this together at.

some point I mean we know they all have. their own agendas for for whatever. reasons but do you think behind the. scenes there they are also even though. they have specific agendas that they. want to push into the. US are they also allies well I I suspect. they may cooperate in in some respects. but in the information Arena uh they. they're you know they have a public I. mean they not public I mean they have.

they have an obvious similar goal to. damage the United States but do they. need to cooperate to do that no they. don't so they that's just pretty obvious. so they're doing their own things to to. damage us to damage our foreign policies. to damage their damage us capacities to. be be a world player and and and and so. on and this gets back to the the the the. Marx the Marxist in in in the United.

States too I so remember I mentioned the. so the this this this this uh you know. social uh you know cultural Marxism so. you've got lots at the five different. Avenues everybody knows what the general. plan is uh but there's no there's no. coherent guiding force that says you're. going to do this you're going to do that. you're going to do something else they. all know what the overall plan is and. people can then pick their little niche.

and push in in a way that's roughly. consistent with the the overall. agenda what are some things that people. are seeing on an everyday basis right. now that is part of the information. War uh that that the that the that the. United States and Israel are Colonial. Colonial. powers and that and that uh the deol. ionization uh movement which is marxian.

argument that that you need that you. need to have the United States and. Israel decolonize the rest the rest of. the world so this this basically is is. is right out of right out of part of. Marxism uh Lenin Vladimir Lenin years. ago talked about imperialism and. colonialism and and so on it tracks very. well Edward SED was a Marxist who who. pushed the the colonial Colonial aspect.

uh another one that's very common is. diversity equity and inclusion policies. that have been adopted by the Biden. Administration pushed by the Obama. Administration basically ignored by by. President Trump um uh this comes right. out of critical theory um another one of. the C cultural Marxist uh views that was. Dev veled in the 1930s originally at the.

by the so-called Frankfurt School so. critical critical race Theory critical. legal studies critical pedagogy which. you're using to indoctrinate teachers. who were then indoctrinating school. children so on everything that's got a. critical uh associated with it is. marxian and origin. interesting what and Dei is right out of. critical race.

Theory so this is a very much a a. Snowball. Effect well yeah so it's continuing it's. going on and then arguably it's h it's. it's achieving widespread large scale. successes what's coming next well that's. a good question I mean a number of. people are talking about Civil War at. this point aren't they clearly also uh a. number of a number of people have said.

uh gee I'm finally beginning to realize. what's going on here and this is. unacceptable so they're they're fighting. back against it now whether whether uh. this now counterrevolution if you will. this is what Chris rufo calls what's. going on a counterrevolution against the. marxian revolution it's been underway. for decades now so whether this. counterrevolution will succeed or not uh. remains to be. the the revolution as we were talking.

earlier the the the the Marxist. revolutionaries have been quite. successful MH they know what they're. doing they're they're tough customers so. so the people who want to fight them. have got uh quite a battle ahead of them. when it comes to manipulating the legal. system how are they doing that well you. uh you infiltrate the law schools uh and. you you you create uh uh people people. who are who are uh marxian and Outlook.

you have uh then people who are. appointing judges for. example uh who are who are agree who. agree with you so that's the whole. that's a whole point of of of of. manipulating the flow into the legal. system is that you get ultimate ultimate. prosecutors uh you get you get uh and. ultimately then you what judges and. decisions that are consistent with your. with with your view so we have we have.

uh prominently now a number of of of. uh depending on your perspective either. really good or soft on crime um. prosecutors around the country uh uh uh. most if not all of whom have been. elected uh George Soros has been. providing a lot of money to to support. these people's campaigns and so on so. here you've got through the prosecution. side you've got a in essence a.

manipulation of the legal system and. that and and that a lot of people who. are marxian in orientation say we don't. care what some of the law says we will. we will differenti differentially. enforce that which we like so when when. it comes to manipulating the legal. system there's more than one Avenue so. there there's the there's the seed that. has been planted from a 100 years ago.

that continues to snowball different got. into our education system the people. that were that were in school being. educated to become lawyers right another. one another one now are now graduated. some of those are teaching the Next. Generation some of those are actually in. the legal system as prosecutors District. Attorneys judges. right some of them are in the federal. government administ administering the.

law through regulations so that so when. another another another venue so is is. there direct communication. from so we have the The Entity that. started 100 years ago that's a Snowball. Effect right now we're also talking. about Soros. funded Prosecuting attorneys. right when we're talking about. so is there a direct line of.

communication. from do these attorneys realize they're. being manipulated or is it just come. through campaign fund oh I don't I don't. I don't think they know they're being. manipulated I think they're they they. understand the general plan okay and. they are doing their part to help it. succeed so they've been recruited yes so. are they an asset of Russia no no well I. mean they can help but but they're not. an asset in the way you and I understand.

you know understand that that that term. from the intelligence world so an asset. in intelligence would be someone who is. to some degree controlled by a. formal uh uh uh representative of of a. of a government like a KGB officer would. have an asset uh who would be Prov in. the defense department hypothetically. who would be providing Secrets no so. they're not assets in that respect at. all their allies so if you think another.

way to to think about this and there are. lots of different ways to think about. this this is pretty complicated but way. way I think of it anyway is that is that. you've got um um uh people who who who. who are widely and going back to to. Lenin actually in Stalin you've got. Party People members who are either. either working for for foreign. government working for the KGB MH or.

they are working within their own their. own National context working for. Communist party the USA for example that. they are party members they uh they they. they accept party discipline and party. go uh party orders you will do this you. know yes sir uh and no questions ask. it's a mil these are almost military. type organizations first group. relatively small this is a hardcore then.

you have fellow Travelers term that's. been around a long time so these are. people who are generally sympathetic to. theit to the the overall goal but. they're not completely on. board there are a few areas that they. may disagree with and they also don't. want to sub subject themselves to the. kind of discipline that a party member. uh is is is subject to and then the. third group uh the people who uh who. Lenin Lenin reputedly called useful.

idiots and uh a term that I like better. Stalin's term he calls them he called. them naive. dupes so you want what you want to do is. recruit a bunch of naive dupes to be in. essence the foot soldiers of the. Revolution so they're Guided by they're. recruited by and they're they're helpful. for they vote for the go. of the of the uh of the party members.

and their closely related uh fellow. Travelers so the the the people we're. talking about now the prosecutors and so. on they are not naive dupes they are. either the hardcore or they're very. close fellow Travelers so these so let's. talk about the prop the. prosecutors so are. they I guess what I'm trying to ask is. when. Russia or Soros or China or Iran whoever.

is trying to infiltrate into the into. the the prosecutor. space they're not directly. influencing these prosecutors they're. looking for people. who align. with with their agenda the closest in in. this in this case but in the in yeah.

they're already on board so they don't. really have to do anything but funnel. money into their yeah into their. campaign funds yeah and the Chinese. actually have a have a in in have a. different and I think in many. ways. well they're all sophisticated but it's. a diff different kind of sophistication. but their messaging is not so much uh we. you know us against them uh you know we. to break NATO we to break the EU in.

purpose you know for purposes of. supporting Russian national interests. the the Chinese have a more diffuse uh. def diffuse system they're they're. trying to not destroy the system and put. in their own but kind of molded in their. in a in in the in in their own kind of. way they use they use information. operations in a very different way so. you've got you've got millions of. Chinese students for examp example. around the world at universities they're.

all they're all assets of the Communist. Party of China the Chinese Communist. part the CCP so by law they are they are. subject to to direction to to gather. information to disseminate information. they've got a massive uh operation uh uh. here that that that that is uh you a. very different sort of thing than the. old Soviet system that was run by the.

KGB for example. but similarity is what you're using. sophisticated means long duration lots. of different venues and you're trying to. to to convince Target countries to do. things differently politically in ways. that benefit. you what are some things we're seeing. China Implement through well for example. one of the things that's been done.

around the world there was big effort in. the United States there's been some push. back on that they create they create uh. conf what what they call confucious. institutes at at universities and now. they've got actually have a variant of. that that's that's going to um uh to. secondary schools around the world so. last I looked which was a little over a. year ago there were about 500 of these. still in existence around the world. at major universities in Western.

countries so the goal here is you create. a confucious Institute right so. confucious famous famous Chinese. Cultural person at least he's famous in. the west right but wasn't a Marxist. wasn't wasn't a ma so confucious is very. much out in in in in. China but uh because it's a useful name. you create a confucious Institute here. us staff it with uh with people who who.

you find loyal you provide a lot of. money to greedy uh Western universities. these are very mercenary organizations. so if if if you get you you you make a a. a pitch to them gee we're going to do a. culturally useful thing we're going to. help you teach people Mandarin uh this. will help improve international. relations and oh by the way we're giving. you a lot of money universities have.

said Grand idea so we'll do this so what. the what the people who follow the. confucious institutes are are saying is. that these are core influence pedling. operations and they also are Espionage. uh centers so you've got uh Chinese. citizens working for the state whether. formally or not they are working working. for the state and they are they are.

helping the the the the Chinese. intelligence Services via businesses. view their think tanks uh whatever it. might be to to gather information in the. United States so this is a nice. combination so you can both both do. influence operations and. Espionage uh at the same. time wow what would you say. the I mean what is the end goal is it to. get us into Civil Wars to just divide.

every well the the Soviet the Soviet. goal was to destroy the United States uh. as it was it was known as a what as a. capitalist Christian uh West. leaning um you know uh you know 500. years of Western Civilization type type. of a type of an organization so the goal. was to to have a crisis whether it would. be a you know whether it would be. resolved by a civil war coup or an. election that would be the final. election you know that would be any one.

of those is okay but the ultimate goal. was. for uh this new communist communist. state in North America to be sub. subservient to mosow that was a Soviet. goal Russian's different so Russian's. goal what they want they want to have. have uh you know restoration want to. recreate the the the the the the the. Grand and Glory ious um Soviet and. Russian Empires so they don't need the.

United States to be destroyed they just. need the United States to be to be out. or or abandon or break NATO because it's. NATO that's protecting protecting. Ukraine and protecting the the West. Europeans who by many standards I think. including uh putins are are relative. pushovers with a few exceptions beeds. the fins they're uh they're they're. tough cookies but but some of the others.

are are not not not not worth worrying. about so you want to get you want to you. want to destroy us. support for NATO and for the the general. North Atlantic Community because that. Community is your enemy if you're. Vladimir. Putin how about China well the Chinese. the Chinese the chin the experts say the.

Chinese are not trying to mess with. Ukraine they're they're trying to say. well we we are rising again and we need. to take our proper place in the world. we're Far and Away the. biggest country with India moving you. know a big country and and. self-evidently our our political system. and our longterm term culture and so on. are Superior to anything else so what we. need to do is reshape World.

organizations in ways that are are. Chinese and we will. guide uh not control but guide the um. the the. renewed the the uh evolved if you will. uh International. System so again their goal is a little. different than the Russians Russians. very Russian goal is I understand it. very territorially oriented oriented. very Empire Building oriented the.

Chinese are more interested in in in in. influence although you know I talked. about the importance of of um. sophistication and subtlety and time uh. both xiin ping and Putin have have been. very belligerent lately haven't they. certainly in Ukraine so when you are. more. belligerent then then then the influence. operations get harder. so you're you're you got a situation. where the chi the Chinese now are are uh.

are showing what probably are their true. their true true. selves how so uh well well in the sense. that they're they're being they're. pushing they're trying to push around. the the Filipinos for example they're. talking about invading Taiwan and and so. on um in the in the 1970s U um. um um d. leader at the time uh was reputed to. have come up with a a strategy that.

that's short been shortened to to uh. hide and bide so you hide your. goals make China the the dominant. country in the world and you bide your. time until you are sufficiently strong. culturally militarily economically. politically and so on to for Force these. changes on the rest of the. world so what some of the the China.

Specialists are saying is that is that. it the the the hide is not so hidden. anymore yeah and and so the this this. this hide and bide strategy which fooled. many people in the West for several. decades is now much more in the. open that said they still have massive. uh information assets the students are. still out there they still are providing. funds to universities they've still got.

huge press operations they're providing. funds to political candidates all over. the Western World so they they've still. they still have huge Assets in place and. they have some assets that the the. really the Russians and the Soviets for. sure never had business so you got this. massively potential potentially anyway. profitable Chinese market market and the. the Chinese can say to say to uh to a.

big International Bank or a tech company. or a manufacturer of some. sort uh you're welcome to come to this. this this nice Chinese market we'll be. happy to have you. if you operate in a way consistent with. our political. interests so a number of the the Agents. of influence now are western western. businesses the big banks for example wow. and Tech which the Soviet and the tech. since it's China China didn't excuse me.

the Soviet Union never had never had. that kind of. asset I mean pretty much all of our. businesses well an awful lot of them. operate in China don't they apple apple. most of its manufacturing for a long. time was in China so they're they're. they're really they've got a you know. you know noose around their necks you. know in terms of being control being uh. susceptible to pressure from the Chinese. and they're beginning now as I. understand to to to put put. manufacturing plants in uh in other.

countries but uh they're still heavily. heavily committed to China is it too. late to reverse this. stuff uh no I don't think so um but it. down the road it takes understanding the. situation it takes it takes I think. stopping the ongoing pressure so so you. know Russian Russian Russian uh. influence operations are continuing day.

after day after day right now so you. need to stop those and then you need to. to address uh the the. influence the effects of the influence. on uh Western people on voters on. University professors on journalists and. so. on but we haven't begun to do really any. of that yeah yeah what are just. for for people who are concerned about.

this and I think there's a lot of them. more and more people are waking up. to false information and and all these. sorts of things what is there anything. people can look out for to. know what they're being. fed well if it's if it's really good. that's hard uh but I think I think uh uh. you know sort of General things that. that people can keep in mind are. skeptical uh. uh you know um conspiracy theories are.

are um are usually made up things that. make something look like there is an. international conspiracy or that that. the bad guys whoever they may be are. going after your guys who are all good. you know if you hear that kind of a. message it's probably. wrong um so I think some skepticism is. is a good thing uh um you know we we. tried here in the United States the. Biden Administration tried in uh 2022 uh.

to create this what. disinformation yeah some or other board. the agency yes and it lasted just a few. weeks uh before it was was was done away. with and uh it it got enormous criticism. from Republicans especially in this case. because uh Nina janitz the the the the. head of it was was said to be a a a. purveyor of disinformation of the Biden.

Administration and whether that's true. or not uh you know let's leave it let's. leave aside but the the the the. important Point here is that we already. reached a point here in the United. States where we've got uh political. division sufficient so that it's it's. going to be hard to get any federal uh. Federal uh entity that can be trusted Ed. Society wide to be a to be an Arbiter of.

whether something is malign foreign. influence or not so we've already. reached a pretty bad State here let's. take a quick break when we come back. we'll get into the polarization of the. agencies fabric by Gerber Life is term. life insurance that you could have done. right here right now you could be. covered from your couch in less than 10. minutes with no Health exam required. just just go to meetfabric. docomond once again that's meetfabric.

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life insurance company not available in. certain States price is subject to. underwriting and health. questions when I first started. podcasting opening an online store is. something I knew I needed to do but I. had zero clue on where to start tried. all these different platforms and then I. found Shopify Shopify made the entire. setup process fast and easy prompting me. to do everything like set up products.

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shopify.com. Shan to upgrade your selling today. that's shopify.com. all right John we're back from the break. now we're going to get into the good. stuff about the polarization of the. intelligence agencies politicization. politicization say that three times. quickly. I'll do it off camam but um what kind of.

what prompted this what started this. politi poit maybe I should have said it. three times. right but well maybe it maybe first the. definition of politicization so in um in. the US context so different countries. have different different ways of. thinking about this basically this is. this is the the injection of politics. into some aspect of the of the. intelligence business so historically. there have been.

two uh two ways of seeing this uh in the. United States one is uh one is what they. call sometimes called uh politization. from above or top down politicization. and that that's when politicians will. use intelligence as part of their fights. with other politicians part of the. foreign policy decision making process. as part of battles in Congress and so on. I view that more as the politics of. intelligence it's not really. politicization so that's not what I'm.

not what I'm concerned about not what I. think we should be concerned about what. we should be concerned about is what's. sometimes called bottom up or. politicization by intelligence. professionals so in this case you've got. people who are who are using. intelligence for political purposes they. are injecting messages into Political. Pro into intelligence processes for for. uh uh uh for purposeful reasons be it.

ideological political uh organizational. interests career interests and so on but. it this this historically has been. viewed as being highly. inappropriate whether it's coming from. the political left or right uh because. it damages The credibility of. intelligence and it probably damages the. quality of intelligence so so until very. recently this has been been uh. considered to be you know wholly wholly. inappropriate and wholly out of bounds.

um. and you know generally at CIA the polit. the four episodes that I've identified. three of them have come from the. political left one from the right uh but. all of them are generally considered to. be to be inappropriate the most recent. one the one that the one that uh emerged. publicly in 2016 is very different from. the the three in that much uh uh much.

bigger in terms of numbers of. people uh for the first time you had an. attack on a a sitting first a. presidential candidate and then a. sitting president uh involved uh uh. large numbers of Former Intelligence. Officers or. forers as well as a lot of current. employees uh who did leaking they didn't. just leak accurate information they leak. in in inaccurate incorrect information. on purpose in other words the leaks were.

disinformation so um were they this is a. big deal so what what we want to know is. you know what in the world prompted this. you know where and why is where why how. when did it did occur uh and what are. the implications of it when we. leak can you give me an example of the. misinformation uh. uh so uh um one of the ones that U that.

um came out uh in um gosh when was it. was early early uh it was uh 2020 uh so. there was a there was a there was a. story that that came out in the CBS and. that was picked up by other other news. media that uh that President then then. president Trump had been briefed by his. daily briefers uh as as you know the. president's Daily Brief team normally.

briefs the president six days a week uh. let's he's traveling or something of. that sort the story was the the pdb team. uh brief Trump that there was uh this. new virus coming from from Asia and that. it was going to be very serious and and. that uh it was a you know important. issue was a warning issue uh but he. didn't do anything and so now this is. January February of 2020 uh people were.

already dying in the United States and. the Press reporting then said Trump's. got blood in his hands he didn't take. this good intelligence warning and uh. and and act therefore he's he's. complicit with deaths of of Americans. well it turned out that was not true it. turned out uh within about 3 days the. head of the uh the uh the uh military. element of the defense intelligence. agency at Fort Dietrich Maryland the.

people who. follow intelligence reports that that. could affect um um troops deployed uh so. this the the commander there medical. doctor Colonel uh went public and he. said that no this never happened the we. we and the intelligence community did. not brief the president on this that was. confirmed by the by the the Pentagon uh. and so now Bob Woodward got involved in. this and it turns out according to.

Woodward that uh in in fact what the. what the briefers had. done uh was actually tell uh uh. president Trump that the this new the. story about this new emerging uh virus. from U from China was really not very. significant at all don't worry about it. so here you had a. dual disinformation operation on the one. hand uh Trump trump allegedly had blood.

on his hands that he should not have. been blamed for and secondly the. intelligence Community claimed much. better performance than it actually. delivered so you have you have a group. of briefers who are. intentionally dubbing down the effects. of the virus that's that was the the. allegation in this one case uh I don't. uh my own my own view is that the and I. think the the. record is is is strong that the the the.

pdb briefers generally and these go back. to Kennedy Administration these people. generally have been pretty good uh but. something has happened this is 2020 and. it's Trump so so what had been a very. really a fine organization a fine. effort um suddenly changed so again. another another question why in the. world why and how did this did this uh. change in uh in Collective attitudes.

occur on the other hand you have a group. of people who are leaking this in the. complete opposite type of information to. the. Press basically saying that he knew. about it it was a big deal and he should. have taken it more seriously so you have. two different. leakers well it's it's not clear exactly. who who who the leakers were so so well. you got multiple kind so you can have. you can have uh you a leak you can have.

a leak of accurate information that's. damaging you can have a a leak of of of. uh of dis disinformation of of this sort. uh you can have other kinds that provide. different kinds of of uh messaging so. for example again a trump one uh right. after he was elected in. 2016 so. late November December the the the leak. was that that that that Trump was.

refusing to take his uh his daily. briefings which apparently was just. simply not true so the the the message. there apparently purpose of the message. there apparently was to say well this. guy really doesn't care about. intelligence he's you know what's what. what in the world and people do electing. this guy he's not he he doesn't really. care but apparently it was just it was. just incorrect another way another way. uh another way the leakers work is to. talk with with uh with Former. Intelligence Officers especially ones.

who keep their Badges and can go into uh. intelligence workspaces where you know. you're free to talk pretty much whatever. you want classified or not right you're. not leaking and then these and then. these formers will go at and and and. talk so so now you don't have to go to a. journalist you can go to a former and. you can have the former talk for for. you where is this misinformation.

orchestrated from how high up does this. go I don't think it's or I don't think. uh I don't think there's any evidence. there's nothing that I've seen that this. is done by the agencies proper so this. again is I think a point that I hope. your your your your uh your viewers will. will will get I don't see any evidence. that the director would call a meeting. of all of his you know senior people say. well on the agenda today is how to screw. the American people they're not doing.

they're not doing that what what has. happened what or we're going to you know. on the agenda today is how to manipulate. the New York Times what what what is. happened is that you have you've had a a. change in the organizational cultures of. the agencies themselves and then. accordingly also the forers all right. the people who have been in this. to the point where they think that they. need to act against evil that they they.

they know truth and they have a they. have a a. responsibility to society to the country. as a whole the freedom to democracy. whatever whatever whatever whatever may. come to mind at the moment and they have. a they have a mission then to to act to. to to do the right thing so this is. coming from essenti Rogue misinformation. agents this is orated from anywhere yes.

I don't see an an a specific. organization that is or a specific. entity of any sort formal or not that is. specifically guiding the actions of. these of the of these people again it's. kind of like the the uh the information. operations we were talking about earlier. you've got a group of people who in the. Trump years didn't like Trump. the the the the the general view was was. was that Trump was wrong was wrong and.

evil in a number of specific ways and so. then it was left to individual actors to. try to to go after uh uh individual bits. of of Trump's deficiencies as best they. could so they were they were they were. collaborators if you will but not not. co-conspirators. okay now so I say the agencies. themselves are.

not are not culpable in the sense that. they're planning this but there is a. government and an agency responsibility. I think in in uh altering the. organizational cultures because it's the. organizational cultures that led to the. changes that we've that we've seen. so. um um back up um a little bit here so. you you have as you know from your your.

uh your government experience uh. different different organizations have. different ways of doing things they have. different organizational cultures the. FBI is different than the Navy is. different than the Marine Corps is. different than the state department and. so. on and in the intelligence World um some. some organizations have been thought of. being generally more liberal or than. than others you know with with. State Department's Bureau of. intelligence and research being. generally speaking on the political.

liberal side as opposed to leftist. Liberal not leftist CIA being close to. that and then the military uh the. military services being more being being. more conservative okay so this has been. around for for a long time now what. happened in the in the the Obama years. uh is is that uh is that um Senator. Obama in October of 2008 right before.

the 2008 election said that he was he. was on the verge of winning the election. and transforming the. country and and pretty clearly uh soon. there after he made good on that on that. um on that on that promise and the way. the way he did it uh in the words of. John Brandon uh. who for. four years was a close advisor to to. Obama in the white house and then became.

CIA director in in Obama's last four. years so Brennan says in his book that. what Obama wanted to do was change the. country in an an evolutionary not a. revolutionary way that's right out of. right out of Brennan's book okay so so. what you see then consistent with that. kind of view is that is that early in. the President Obama period you began to. see changes in uh in uh policies related.

particularly to the federal Workforce my. interpretation here is you're going to. change the country one of the best ways. to do that is to change the federal. Workforce first because these are the. people who make and enforce regulations. and so on they do the kinds of things we. were talking about ear talk talking. about. earlier so by July of 2009 so Obama's in. office for six. months uh you see policies promulgated.

uh at the odni level so odni is the. office of the Director of National. Intelligence uh uh to to to implement. what uh we now call diversity equity and. inclusion policies so um dni Director of. National Intelligence Dennis Blair uh. signed this and at the same time the. then C director Leon Panetta uh issued a. paper document uh which I got I got a.

hold of at one point that said we are we. are in the we are going to at CIA we at. CIA are going to increase the number of. minorities at at CIA from 24 to 30% by. 2012 why because we want CIA to look. like America look like America so this. was this was a a political goal that. that was. demographically uh. oriented so even more importantly than.

this in. 2011 in August of 2011 Obama issued an. executive order uh which which applied. to the entire federal government and it. pushed the hiring promotion uh and. better assignments of of uh people who. he liked basically privileged. demographic group groups uh per the. Obama Administration that would be. minorities women lgbtq people and.

eventually people with disabilities so. that would would not. include uh people who were healthy male. heterosexual and of European origin. right. so so Obama now is pushing this in this. 2011 executive order has got teeth so. you're creating now div Unity offices. within the federal government and these. these offices uh are told to make and.

Implement and enforce to the policies. consistent with the executive order. within within the the agencies uh the. agencies themselves and these in fact. had teeth so you've got now agency. heads uh paying attention to what the. President says who who giving author. ority to the diversity offices and. you're beginning to make changes in the.

way uh the agencies do business policy. wise uh you're having you're having. cultural changes in the U you know in. little ways so John Brandon would wear. began to wear a a rainbow lanyard you. know landard you know you recall what. lanyards are in the intelligence. business so these are little chains or. ropes or things of that sort around your. neck that hold your uh your your uh. identification documents right so so the.

lanyard now the thing around the neck uh. was now a a rainbow one basically a a uh. an appeal to the lgbtq people at at CIA. small yes but but but indicative of a. policy and what what uh what what. Brennan also did was was uh was was make. specific policy.

changes that that rewarded the hiring of. of more hiring and promotion and. awarding of uh of um to to women so you. you began to have have have a purposeful. alteration in the. demography of the the the the the. intelligence Workforce so it's reached. the point now where women who had been a. relatively small share of CIA Workforce. in the 50s 60s 7s now now a slight.

majority majority so slightly over 50%. last time I last figures I saw slightly. more than 50% CIA employees are. women but the high but the the. preferences continue so director Burns. is is still preferentially hiring hiring. women okay so so what's the purpose of. all this the purpose here now is to you.

know again change the demography but. also change the the the the. organizational cultures and um uh. Clapper Jim Clapper who was a key part. of the Obama team implementers within. the the uh the the IC the intelligence. community so Clapper was the Director of. National Intelligence the. dni 20 0 to 2017 so most of the most of. the uh Obama period and Brennan the LA.

as I say the last the last four years. both of them made pretty clear that they. wanted to change the organizational. culture one of different ways of looking. thinking about things and Brennan says. in his book. specifically uh he he he he he was a. actually a career CIA officer. um uh retired and then went to work for. for Obama who then appointed him back at.

CIA but Brennan says in his in his. Memoir uh I didn't like CIA culture and. as I became more senior I made it I made. a determined effort to change to change. this organizational. culture and what he also did was say. that he wanted uh people employees. current. employees to be active in defending the.

progress his term progress that he had. made in Dei. policies so you might think gee you know. this is an intelligence service this has. National Security uh implications it's. it's a it's a part of the the the the. security establishment why are they. worried about diversity policies well. because it turned out that this was what. the president wanted so they were in.

fact pushing this very very very hard. and and and Brennan said to uh to Wall. Street Journal uh reporter who. interviewed him a few days before he. left office in January of. 2017 you know one of these usual it's. the end of your time in office you know. what's your what are your Great. accomplishments he said well it's was. was de Dei policies so I think you know. in addition to specific statements like. that there's lots of of other evidence.

that in fact what what uh uh what was. really driving these people in important. ways was altering altering the the. workforce altering the workforce this. was particularly relevant in the in the. Obama years at CIA and the odni the. other agencies were were slower in um in. coming around coming around to this so. fast so you're you're you've got a made. a major effort 8-year effort to change.

the the the way the workforce is is. going and you have. done several things two important ones. you've altered the de the demography of. the the workforce you've hired you've. hired a lot of people who who have both. political IDE or ideological depending. on your. perspective uh uh interests here they. agree with you and secondly you've got. you've got a number of people who are.

materially benefiting from Dei. policies so time is passing it's 2014 15. 16 you're into you early 2016 mid 2016. all the polls are showing that Hillary. Clinton is going to be the next. president that's wonderful because we. all know uh she's going to continue the. the policies of President Obama all. right well in the summer summer of.

2016 this upstart fellow from New York. Donald Trump um looks like he might. actually be a viable candidate not. really but you got to you got to be. careful here you might actually be a. threat a threat to what a threat to Dei. policies on ideological grounds on. material interest grounds so in in uh in. August of.

2016 in fact the 5th of August of 2016. you had the first of the big. politicization episodes so this is when. Michael Morell who was then fairly. recently retired as the deputy CIA. director wrote an opad piece in the New. York Times in which he. said roughly my intelligence experience. tells. me that uh Hillary Clinton will be a.

better president than Donald Trump so. what he did was violate the. longstanding norm of of aversion of of. Former Intelligence Officers to partisan. politics and he made a claim that was. factually incorrect on two grounds one. uh he didn't he didn't do domestic. anything right his his intelligence. career was entirely foreign oriented not. not United States and he also did not. recommend policy to anybody including.

including uh recommendations on on. voting so it was this event that. triggered my question whoa you know slap. in the face what in the world is what in. the world is going on going on here so. what happened then was that that opened. the that opened the the the floodgates. and you began to have more former. first again Former Intelligence Officers. known as. forers uh so so Mike Hayden very quickly.

was involved in in this got Hayden. retired Air Force General who had been. the director at CIA for for for a while. and at at a National Security Agency as. well and then and eventually there were. several dozen dozen of these people and. the leaks the leaks started in in the. fall of 2016 and continued throughout. the the Trump presidency and we keep. talking about CIA but this is this.

eventually bled into all intelligence. organizations yeah so that's a that's a. good point uh uh I think the and I. looked at this and researching. researching on the book where uh where. did this happen again one of my three. big three big questions in the in the. early days it was at the odni and at CIA. what was the odni the office of the. Director of National Intelligence so. this is this is the the the relatively.

small administrative organization that. was directly controlled by Jim Clapper. the D so for the audience because not. everybody right understands the. structure here the dni is in charge of. he's an umbrella over all intelligence. organizations correct Yeahs under it CIA. Dia right does FBI fall under that uh. and Only The Counter Intelligence part. Counter Intelligence part of it so to. back up and here for background and good.

good good to to say this for for a long. time the DCI the director of Central. Intelligence supposedly was not just the. director of CIA but was the director of. uh of the whole Community well basically. that didn't happen no president ever. gave the the DCI that Authority uh and. the agent the other agencies said yeah. who are you anyway I worked for money my. you know my secretary or thei you know. whoever it might be so the the the uh.

2004 Reform Act uh that was a legacy of. the the 9/11 episode so Congress finally. did you know they they they do reform. activities every once in a while and. they did it in 2004 and so they created. a new new organization called or new a. new entity called the dni the Director. of National Intelligence who would have. an administr ative office working for. him or the odni the office of the. Director of National Intelligence the.

odni the dni uh had uh largely. coordinating. responsibilities um lot of paperwork. requirements uh levied from from. Congress and so on and uh the the uh the. dni could issue some directives uh but. had relatively little additional power. uh there was some add power um in in. terms of of of uh policies like uh Dei.

diversity equity and inclusion policies. and there also. were uh uh in the um 2004 Reform Act. there were some other elements that. would give the the dni a little bit a. little bit of authority to reprogram. money for example which is important for. bureaucrats so so the key the two in. this early period the two organizations. that were primarily affected were the.

odni the organization that claer the dni. could specifically uh influence and CIA. which was which was directly under John. Brennan's uh purview I looked at the. other agencies and find relatively. little uh little uh effect uh at di at. the defense intelligence agency at at. at at at some of the other big ones and. and and nothing really at the milit in. the mil in the military so that now has.

changed MH that now has changed a lot so. yeah so so what happened so you have an. an active period uh uh um where the the. Obama activists Obama generated. activists are going after Trump uh in. inexplicably in my mind uh president. Trump said essentially nothing about. this he would you know tweet uh nasty. things about John Brennan every once in.

a while and he'd you know he'd kind of. kind of snort and yell it then talk talk. names every once in a while but in terms. of specific administrative action to. reverse these the the the things that. that Obama had done he didn't he did. virtually. nothing so you get then to to the the. fast forward here and we're skipping a. lot that I hope we'll come back to. um but you know you get to. 2021 and uh and President Biden now is.

you know spent eight years in the Obama. White House and he's back he's back in. the uh in in the uh uh Arena of of. diversity Equity inclusion but his major. executive order on. this uh in um June of 21 June of. 2021 actually in in my view expanded the. the the the the depth the scope the uh. the intrusiveness of um of this uh this.

this Dei regime and added an A so now. it's diversity Equity inclusion and. accessibility de a and at this point now. we're seeing lots of evidence. FBI uh State departments INR the Bureau. of intelligence and research several. other agencies and then the military as. well that that the the the the the EI. program is now uh seriously affecting. agencies throughout the government. including the whole int intelligence.

Community I mean the the. the the current Dei agenda has proven to. be extremely effective do you honestly. believe that the current pus is. cognitively able to put this together or. is somebody else behind that well he I. mean I I think he's bought into into it. it's he's got a a whole staff of people. who who were who bought into this they.

were you know large numbers of people in. the Biden White House were in the in the. um in the Obama white house so he's you. know he he doesn't write his exe his. executive orders himself anyway does he. he's he's you know he's got staff to to. do this but I I'm I see no reason not to. think that he is bought into this. General agenda even if he's not a. Marxist himself he's an old old style. retail politician uh but he also you.

know finger to the wind you know you. know he knows which way the wind's. blowing within the Democratic party and. it's you know it's heavily in the it's. heavily in the Obama Direction so he's. he's going along with with that. program it's U again I don't see a. you know there no no uh no. internationalist conspiracy behind the. behind the throne I mean I don't I don't.

have any doubt that that Barack Obama. still is influential in the white house. but you know that's not a that's not a. uh you know big International. conspiracy yeah I don't think so either. I. just it's it's. um it's been very effective oh yeah so. it has more effective than anything. we've seen. well he's try you know think back to the. goal you know since October 2008 I'm.

going to transform the country and he's. been able he and then his uh you know. his U compatriots and his his his white. his white house and now what some people. are calling the third Obama term uh they. they've been very. effective from thinking about this from. their perspective they've been they've. been very effective so if this started. so the the Obama administration had an. 8-year run at implementing this.

throughout all of the intelligence. Community right what did the Trump. Administration do to combat this nothing. nothing I can't think of a single thing. so are they compliant in the issue or. they just I I think I think uh Donald. Trump was just you know you you know the. the old term he was awall on this he was. not paying attention he wasn't getting. uh word I I have been told by at least. one person who was was you know.

knowledgeable on this sort of thing he. said that you know some some. knowledgeable people in the IC warned. about not not paying attention to this. and they were. ignored so so Mr Trump himself key. advisers in the White House and and some. senior people uh who Trump appointed uh. didn't do anything so thinking about the. two the two big positions that that um. was talking about earlier the dni and.

the CIA. director so for a fair amount of time. his Trump's dni was was Dan coats who. was a who was a former Senator uh from. Indiana had had spent time on the Senate. intelligence committee knew a fair. amount about intelligence but he told. Bob wward in one of these interviews uh. he said well you know it's a tough job. here in um in this be the dni and I.

needed to to to focus on important. things so so again if I remember the. quote the quote about right he said what. I decided to do is be Mr outside quote. unquote Mr outside and I will worry. about intelligence interactions with the. White House with the Congress uh and so. on and I will believe the internal. running of the the the the odni and then.

the the IC as a whole to Mrs. inside quote unquote who was Sue Gordon. Sue Gordon was a career CIA uh officer. who was a compatriot of John. Brennan right so the brenon policies. continued internally at um um within the. odni so coats was not concerned about. this at CIA you had you had first uh.

first an outsider who was there for a. year and then what went to the state. department and then for the last three. almost three years of the Trump trump uh. Administration you had Gina haspel as. the the CIA director haspel was a a. career CIA operations officer well the. last person in the world you you you you. would expect to do radical change on CIA. is a career CIA officer and she didn't.

she didn't do anything uh to alter to. alter this the diversity offices stayed. they moved down a level so they were. originally put in so there's a big one. CIA level then there were some. subordinate ones for the directorates. the five directorates of CIA and then I. understand they were even moved down one. level before that so that would be the. the divisions within the directorate of. operations and the analytic offices. within the analysis director for example.

and. haspel uh U uh issued a modification an. update of what Brennan had done remember. I talked about a number of policies. there were specific things done as well. as policy documents well there were. strategies uh implemented at OA and at. the odni and and haspel uh updated uh. the Dei. strategy uh in ways that expanded the uh.

the number of of of of uh demographic. groups who were favored so she added. people who were NE people who identify. as. neurodiverse so this is a new this was. in the in the Trump year so you're. adding to the number of people you want. to specifically. provide uh benefits too so people who. are NE.

neurodiverse uh would be people uh who. have dyslexia for. example so you know many of them many of. them most of them are functional in a. number of ways but but uh uh dyslexia. for example is normally considered to be. a bit of a disability right so you know. you know you'd prefer most people in it. would prefer not to be dyslexic dyslexic. if they had a they had a choice but this. became a group that would be favored for.

hiring and promotion and and so on to. add to the other favored groups has this. become the number one priority of the. intelligence Community sure look like it. to. me I mean you know you you you see well. G you know the the at least at the work. the traditional work level I mean you. know director Burns will say well you. know we really we really need to focus. on China and so on and and. [Music]. haspel uh said well you know we've been. worried about counterterrorism for for.

uh nearly two decades now so this was. when 2019 roughly we need to shift back. to to um uh doing traditional uh. Espionage and other things related to. great power competitions okay so so. you're yes you're you're you're focused. externally on on on real work but you're. also really really really concerned. about this this uh uh this this issue of.

your of your. Workforce getting the right kind of. Workforce encouraging pandering if you. will to specific favored demographic. groups identifying people as members of. groups not as individuals I don't care. who you are as a human being I I don't. want to hear your background I can look. at you and I can tell you were part you. were you are you are male from from from. European Heritage that's your identity.

so that's what they're doing now and. that's that's brand spanking new in. terms of the the the traditional way in. which uh the intelligence Community. worked or the federal government. worked uh and it's right out of Marxism. right so cultural Marxism you don't care. about people you care about about ident. entities that are group in nature. remember so you're you're not talking. about capitalists and and workers.

anymore you're talking about different. different adversary groups within this. the the five social the five social. categories I was talking about so this. is what makes di Dei policies right out. of right out of cultural Marxism what. could. [Music]. have the last Administration done. to combat this I mean it sounds like. this goes well you get rid of well you. yeah if they if they because if I we.

talked about two different ways they're. doing this and you said from the top. down or from the bottom up basically. correct and we are in a scenario where. it went from the bottom up well this was. this is the traditional definitions of. politicization okay so what uh arguably. arguably what's happened in the last few. years is another variety I third variety. they completely restructured the entire.

Workforce on purpose to where the the. ground level who is they hired ground. level employees you know brand new. employees Mass numbers and now they're. starting to advance in advance and. Advance they're into senior positions by. now the the the PO immediate post 2000. post 911 group now they're they're. they're they're well into management so. we have management middle management and.

Workforce right all all who been they've. been they've been selected from. demographically uh and they have been. acculturated uh through through policies. uh and so they're they are they're you. now have large numbers of people who. have. bought this View and again they they. they believe it on two grounds one. politically or ideologically you know I.

I tend to think in this case the the the. two terms are similar but they're not. identical but call it political. political or ideological if you're a. Marxist then it's ideological if it's if. if you're thinking that Dei policies. really are designed to help specific. groups of people then it be political. and then and then another another area. is interest so you get large numbers of. people who are are benefiting materially. from. this they're they're they're getting Pro.

differentially favorable promotions. different differentially U preferential. Awards differentially preent. preferential. assignments so ideational ideological. interest on the one hand material. interest on the other and they work. together to say Dei Dei de a now uh. policies are really good what does the A. stand for the a for accessibility.

accessibility I mean is this is this a. is this a mission complete. scenario um no I mean if it's. infiltrated every level we're talking. because it hasn't all away because. there's still pretty clearly some people. who are who haven't all the way bought. the program who hasn't what what or. organization well it's not organization. it's people within them so so I you know. I talk with a number of people who are. working in government now as well as a.

lot of a lot of forers and the people. who are still in government tell me. pretty clearly they're keeping their. heads down the people who in government. who don't like this and there are some. they keep their heads down so there. they're saying you know I it that it's. now uh in the in the Biden years it's. it's reached the point now where uh uh. uh Dei policies and Obama were were were.

mandates for management now in the Biden. years add the a uh you're now you've now. added uh uh uh Dei. requirements uh to uh annual performance. appraisals the old par remember at C at. CIA so so Europe your performance. appraisal now at many of these agencies. if not all of them now says you're an.

active participant. in uh Dei Dei you're are you serious I. am absolutely. serious so so so you've still got though. I am told by people who are still there. you've still got people who who think. this is really a bad idea for political. reasons and also performance reasons and. maybe we can talk talk about how this. affects how this affects uh operational. performance but every one of these. people who IAL to is saying uh I I can't.

fight it there it's a utter losing uh uh. situation to to uh to fight it so you do. one of two things you shut up and don't. say anything or uh in the words of. another uh very senior guy uh who not. happy with this you. you choose your your close friends. carefully so words you make sure you're. not talking to people who were part of.

the the the the. program so what is this doing I mean. this dividing the workforce isn't it MH. so this is one of many ways that the. workforce is being divided there's. actually actually have been purposeful. divisions so you're creating now within. the government as a whole including in. the IC you've got uh uh groups that have. different names but I'll use use one of.

them employee resource groups so these. are these are groups created within the. organizations based on demographic. characteristics so you got the women's. group you got the Latino group you got. the lgbtq group you've got the you've. got the the Asian-American group there's. a veterans group there about a dozen of. these things things so the purpose of. these ostensibly is to create safe. spaces where people whose identity.

demographic identity can be can be uh. you know supported and so on but in fact. uh what what these clearly have become. are places in which grievances are are. identified and exacerbated and again if. you think of this from a marxian. standpoint absolutely standard stuff. cultural Marxism you're generating. divisions the oppressor uh the oppressor.

white male of European background uh is. after you LGBT people or or Latinos or. whoever uh and so you you then can be. here in a situation where you can defend. yourselves against the. oppressors so the the this this kind of. thing now is is fully fully embedded in. the uh in the in the federal government. what else do you see this is bled into. outside of intelligence organizations.

all through the government that's you. know I I've talked about this several. times and I'm just curious what your. thoughts are and it's just a it's it's. not fact it's just what I think and you. know we saw the we. saw law enforcement across the country. broken up from the defund the police. movement right right we we saw they have.

demoralized police they've broken them. up it started with the defund the police. movement a lot of PE a lot of police. officers are quitting or going someplace. else it's it's I mean in some of these. places it's a ghost town now right. and they can't they they can't recruit. it fast enough then we saw you know the. military you know it was the forced. vaccinations that bled off into the law. enforcement Community as well we're.

actually seeing it in the medical field. now with do you. think because I especially with law. enforcement I. think it there was obviously I mean what. you're saying there's obviously an. agenda to to bring in a new guard. correct and so to kind of speed that. train up on some of these other aspects. of government like law enforcement the. military do you think that possibly the.

defund the police movement and the. forced. vaccinations in the military and in. medical field in in a lot of fields do. you think that. was more than just we want everybody to. get vaccinated do you think that was. more than just you know. the defund the police movement that was. you.

know was there another a was there a. deeper agenda than what it appeared to. be on the surface to amplify this to get. rid of the Old Guard get them to quit. and bring in the new guard with yeah. that mindset well my view on this and. again that's you know this be my my. judgment here opinion if you will um uh. the the the defund police at the local. level right so in Seattle and Portland. Oregon a number of other places so this. is this is the.

marxian view you want to you want to. eliminate police so listen to Angela. Davis the Communist Party USA member you. know retired professor at the University. of California system she was a vice. presidential candidate of the. cpusa uh in 76 and 1980 CP USA Communist. Party of the USA um so so you know her. she and the and the and the uh.

particular particularly black activists. given the amount you know number of. black people who were in in prisons. these people basically are saying we. should. eliminate. prisons so this is heavily coming from a. the Communist Party Marxist perspective. there's a big racial element to it and. it's got it's it's it's got you know. soros's money and and so on on it that's. one thing uh in my mind the the the.

vaccine is a different different one and. I have a different view than a number of. people on that my father was a medical. doctor who was a uh in the Public Health. Arena uh he liked uh vaccinations. because they help keep people alive and. I got a number of vaccinations as a kid. and uh spent time India and happily. never got never got seriously ill and I. think vaccinations were a good a goodly. part of that so I see that as I'm I just.

want to be clear I'm not trying to I'm. not trying. to get your stance on vaccinations I'm. not trying to say vaccinations don't. work I'm not trying to say they do work. are they part of a conspiracy okay so I. don't my view is that probably the. vaccine situation is different than. defund police and and the kind of. program that we've just been talking. about going back to Obama in 2008 long. preceded the uh the the the covid U.

vaccination vaccination. issue I guess what I'm kind of trying to. say is never get a good never let a you. know the old saying never let a good. crisis go to waste oh yeah and so we've. seen demoralization of military yeah in. a long line of Trends too I mean let's. talk about you know. there's been a trend demoralize the war. fighter we started trying people that. were obviously innocent for war crimes.

Eddie Gallagher's one they they they. pinned him for killing an Isis fighter. which he did not kill yeah you know. which demoralizes the. entire Seal Team Special Operations. Community right you know and that's just. one example so I I okay so I take your. point my I would make a better I would. make a different Uh u a different argue. so uh you know I know I know the number. of people who were you know let go from. the military I mean there was some. concern there I think a bigger a bigger.

issue in terms of demoralization and. something that that clearly had an. ideological agenda to it was a standown. in uh in early U. 2021 uh SEF Secretary of Defense Austin. ordered to uh to give training and uh. and so on to everyone in the defense. department military and civilian uh to. try and keep them from being uh uh. radical right-wing terrorists of the.

January 6 group MH and I think we know. now I mean the defense department hired. uh the um uh what was it I guess it was. Ida The Institute for defense analyses. said do it do a serice so this is one of. the federally funded research and. development centers in the Washington. area these are not for profit at. technically capable organizations that. do research for the government including. a lot for the U for the for the defense.

department so Ida um uh did a number of. surveys and uh you know and looked at. looked at the defense department broadly. had access to the defense department. said hey do do you have a a right-wing. terrorist problem in the defense. department and they said no we don't so. they said no there's not nothing nothing. special here outside of what might exist. in the uh country as a whole well the uh.

a report was issued unclassified report. was issued to the defense department. which sat on it. for don't cor don't quote me on this but. it seems about a year before they. finally released it so so you've got. you've got a pretty clear ideological. agenda coming from the Pentagon now uh. Biden's. uh you know Biden's uh Executive Suite. at the at the at the Pentagon where. you're injecting politics into the into.

the directly into the management of the. defense. department that I think is a serious. problem I for to me that's a much bigger. deal than the. vaccines and I'm told this is wandering. is wandering away from the intellig bu. Community here but I'm told by fellow. I've gotten to know reasonably well. serving US Army Officer at the.

moment he said that even even even even. in the intelligence part of the army. that that that the. partisan domestic American politics are. spoken uh openly on a regular basis uh. in with in in u. uh uh business offices so it's part of. the. day-to-day business and it's and it's uh.

very very strongly Pro uh Pro. Biden so this and as you recall from. both your intelligence and Military. perspectives in the old days that was. absolutely forbidden you just didn't do. that yeah that's it's it's it's common. now and in fact it's common in the at. CIA too and at the odni and I I suspect. probably I've got reports from both of.

those places and I suspect it's common. elsewhere too so the old prohibition. against uh partisan talk in the office. is gone just doesn't exist anymore it's. part of the cultural. transformation so my 12 years at CIA by. comparison in the 19 basically in the. decade of the. 1980s uh that was when the old Norms. held and we were told in no uncertain. terms G we understand you're reasonably.

bright people everybody here uh you're. educated you've got political views but. you will leave them at. home and so in my 12 years I knew the. personal political views of a grand. total of one of my colleagues and this. was a fellow who I got to be very good. friends with and we talked Politics on. the weekend not at work yeah and that. that that is just utterly gone.

now John let's take a quick break when. we come back maybe we can talk a little. bit about how we start to reverse this. if that's even. possible join me and my special guests. for the next behindth scenes experience. exclusively available on vigilance Elite. patreon the behind the-scenes footage is. raw and uncut this is as close to the. set as you can possibly get you can. expect anything from off-topic. conversations Studio tours the final.

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all right John we're back from the we're. getting ready to cover how do we fix. this what can we do but before we do I. missed a couple of points and uh one of.

them being how did the Press get. involved so I'd like to I'd like to talk. to how did the Press kind of amplify. what's going on here okay that's an. important point and and an unusual one. so uh you know historically the Press. has done what the Press supposed to do. you know take a look at intelligence. issues ask questions and press generally. speaking has been critical of uh us us. intelligence operations but in the in. the the Trump years there was a a highly.

unusual three-part actually alliance. between the activist uh forers uh in. particular along with the leakers with. the press and then also also to the the. the house intelligence uh committee. which also had uh. oversight responsibilities of course so. the nature the nature of the issue with. the Press was that that the the Press uh.

saw a this is the mainstream press so. here we're. talking uh New York Times Washington. Post National Public Radio plenty of. other newspapers uh U NBC CNN msnpc that. group so that that part of the. mainstream left of center uh. um press so we're not talking Fox here. we're not talking Wall Street Journal. although the Wall Street Journal use.

leak leakers uh you you leakers here too. but the the this know the mainstream. liberal press. saw uh allies in the forers and they. they uh Amplified the messages that the. forers were. giving to them and and they helped. create a situation in which the forers. had credibility to talk about all kinds. of things domestic.

politics uh things that were really. outside of their normal baileywick why. because these people were seen as being. credible were seen as being reasonable. and objective critic critics of of. Donald Trump so in essence you had a an. alliance formed between these people and. one of the key the key things that the. Press did was again amplify The. credibility of Intelligence Officers. Former Intelligence Officers so you.

should listen to these people because. they were in they were they were in. intelligence and man you know I mean. it's you would think how do. you you would think that just that the. Press wouldn't have to amplify you know. the credibility of an Ence officer well. uh you would but again they were in in. political Alliance so it was I. understand that and now now every now.

they've lost all I I can't say all. credibility but I mean we're going to. get a bunch of comments on the show. because we're both former agency so many. people no longer. trust any any government any government. entity let alone intelligence agencies. you know yes and the polling results are. showing that you know how do you we. we'll get into how you rebuild that. trust but I mean it's it's broken yeah.

but the the point here I think between. again the mainstream press and and the. and the Allies was that this was a a. temporary uh uh Alliance of convenience. to go after one person Donald Trump but. again there was a again even even more. unusual was the was the the hipsy the. the house intelligence committee uh uh. doings where where representative Schiff. Adam Schiff the the um chairman of the.

of the committee uh was actively. involved here too so he was involved in. uh supporting and encouraging through a. staffer The Whistleblower who led to. Trump's first impeachment in in. 2009 and uh we've just learned uh. recently that would be in in uh what. April of. 2024 uh that National Public Radio had. Adam Schiff on about 25.

times getting his take on uh on issues. including Trump and so then that this. was a way then for for the for for. Schiff to to provide to NPR a major a. major critic of of trump what what his. view what the Democratic party's view. was so that this was then then then uh. then then then Amplified so so it was a. huge thre part Alliance working together.

uh not in any uh you know not not not. conspired and not a conspiracy of. somebody else but rather these groups. were seeing Mutual Advantage so the the. Press I would argue took advantage of. the the Intelligence Officers to get at. a politician they didn't like an. Intelligence Officers opposed to Trump. Ed the Press because the Press then gave.

them more venues to go after Trump so. they had uh airtime on the on the on the. the partisan networks they had ample. opportunity to write op ads in the. Washington Post in the New York Times so. the mutually ADV mutually advantageous. so the three components are. intelligence agencies press and. forers uh no I would argue I would argue.

the the three key points were were. forers uh with a little bit of help from. the from the uh the the serving people. doing. leaking the the the mainstream press MH. and the house intelligence committee. okay in the form of Adam Schiff okay and. as you recall Adam Schiff was was uh was. uh speak. Pelosi's uh manager on this on U Trump's. first trial in the in the Senate so. which which I think was a horrible.

decision see here you have the the the. chair of the of the house intelligence. committee supposedly supposedly as. apolitical as the house can possibly be. and yet he was charged with running the. prosecution against Donald Trump I think. it was a serious mistake on her. part so huge Alliance here this is you. know largely the the house part is gone. um uh you have a situation in which a.

lot of the the. forers uh who were active during this uh. you know the the the four four and a. half years of the Trump period a lot of. them are getting either getting old or. or have been been uh um rendered largely. uncredible uh and I'll talk I'll talk. about Michael morale in the case in the. case of the laptop 51 but uh Mike Hayden. um you know has been accused of trying.

of of advocating the assassination of. Senator tur turbiville for example I. mean a lot of these people have have. shot the shot their credibility uh but. uh there are plenty more where they came. where they came from so an open question. is who's going to replace them mhm do. you think that they are appointed or. does this just no no this is volunt here. and this is you know this is a minor. this is a you know a community of people. who have similar interests I guess what.

I'm saying is is for. the conspiracy. types is this all orchestrated from. somebody way up or is it just is it just. happening to work out this way all the. pieces are in place but nobody's really. controlling people are just because. you've got you've got some general. political Trends so I mean this issue of. conspiracy came up actually more than. once uh with the forers right because.

you could talk to them and you you know. you knew who used to be in intelligence. and who's now talking on on CNN all. right so you ask and say well you know. are you guys in cahoots and you know a. couple of them said well no of course. not we just we just come from the same. the same place in the world we just have. similar kinds of. views and but they can't. actually collaborate in some important. respects so as I mentioned some of um. some of them talk to Former Intelligence.

people in government spaces so people. like John Brennan people like John mlin. former former u u Deputy U director of. Central Intelligence so on these people. retain clearances and retain green. badges so so this is a this is a you. know inside the Beltway term the green. badge is a is a is a badge that means. that you've got you've got all the. security. clearances uh but you're a contractor.

you're advisory sort as opposed to a as. opposed to a a federal employee who gets. a check every two. weeks but the green Badgers can go into. a federal building an intelligence. Community Building anywhere basically. anywhere anytime they want so they can. sit down with with the with currently. serving Intelligence Officers and talk. intelligence stuff so so a leaker can.

talk with a John Brennan or a mlin or. some other in a government space knowing. that the information is going to get out. but since they're talking to a cleared. person in a government space they can. rationalize that they're not leaking at. all so this is a neat little Arrangement. that that that the the ongoing clearance. Arrangement has. interesting let's move into the laptop. okay so the laptop what I call the. laptop 51 case uh was was a situation in.

which uh uh two. prominent Former Intelligence Officers. so Michael Morel who I mentioned and. Mark polymeropoulos who was a senior. operations. officer um were apparently approached by. a Biden campaign officer who said uh in. this case um um U Anthony blinkin now. the secretary secretary of state so.

according to morel's testimony to the. house Judiciary Committee in the spring. of 2023 that's what I'm about to you. know tell you U um um blinkin said we. need help intelligence help remember. remember the Press had built built up uh. the The credibility of Intelligence. Officers these people know everything. about everything and can be can be. believed you know from your in your.

heart of hearts so these people now have. credibility blinkin says we need help we. need help with this problem the problem. was that that uh that Hunter Biden the. president's son or the presidential. candidate son at that point uh his. laptop computer had been left uh at a. repair shop the the the repair owner. sent it to the FBI the FBI verified that.

the files on the computer were actually. hunters and the files gave. credible um support to a hypothesis at. least that both Hunter and his father. Joe were corrupt in terms of taking. money uh it B basically influence. pedaling with Ukraine with China and. maybe some other countries all right so. the campaign now says this this is a.

potential October surprise a killer we. cannot have this come out and damage the. the the purported Integrity of of. candidate candidate Joe Biden so Lincoln. says we need intelligence help we need. we need to. deflect this this this story in a way. that would exonerate the president and. not damage his his his his election. prospects okay.

so uh moral and poly moropoulos right up. a short little letter that says this uh. this uh laptop story has all the. Hallmarks all the Hallmarks of Russian. disinformation so as we talked earlier. on the Russians have done all sorts of. disinformation kinds of things including. forgeries and so on so so you're using. the credibility that these people had. been had built up over time courtesy the.

press to say it looks like this might be. a Russian operation have nothing to do. with with Hunter nothing to do with Joe. okay so the they're very careful in. writing this if you examine this letter. and it's online it's you know any. anybody can find it it does not say. explicitly that this was Russian dis. disinformation and says it sort of looks. like it as all the. Hallmarks okay so they knew very well.

that that was you know not the point of. this letter they knew the point of the. letter was to. help uh Joe Biden in your opinion did it. have all the Hallmark Hallmarks of. Russian disinformation probably well I. mean it's conceivable but it but it's. not likely I mean the the I mean we know. that there are. um we know we know we know the Russians. do cyber cyber operation but we also.

know now not at the time but we know now. that the FBI had already checked the. computer and it already determined that. this surely did look like real you know. they're they for they're they cyber. forensic PE people had already. determined that this was legitimate uh. Hunter Biden material and that's not. been challenged at this point so you're. trying to Mis mislead. voters using intelligence credentials as.

a rationale for it knowing full well. that the Russians were not behind it. okay so so the the these two go to. number of Former Intelligence Officers. and ask for their signatures on this. this open letter so among the back up a. step among the many things that the. Press had done over the previous four. years had been to publish a series of.

open letters open letters they usually. were published in Politico a uh. politically oriented uh newspaper in. based in Washington and then were're. spread to the other to the other uh. Mainline press organizations and that's. the way it worked worked this time here. too so you get uh you get this short. letter it sort of looks like the. Russians were in you get 51 Former. Intelligence Officers to to sign it you.

look at that list a lot of senior people. there were like half a dozen five I. think former uh CIA officials a lot of. very senior people uh so this is a. credible group of people right so you're. a voter gee whiz these really sharp. people are saying it looks like Russian. so I'm hey I'm not going to worry about. about uh about Joe Biden. okay so how do we you know how do we. know that this was this was um you know. basically a sham basically this was a. political operation it was an.

information operation by Morel and Pa. moropoulos well Mor Morel told the house. Judiciary Committee that and I can tell. you uh not commonly published thus far. anyway that one of one of the people who. was. approached um uh uh told me that the. pitch received specifically was we want. your signature to help Joe. Biden not.

not for your intelligence. expertise so the pitch the pitch was. explicitly. political okay so now moral uh has had. his credibility shot I think pretty. clearly he's now uh out of the partisan. Limelight at least for the moment he. does uh he does have his own podcast. which which uh is credible and he's.

staying out of partisan politics so so. so I have no no no grievance against. what he's doing on a day-to-day basis uh. here in in 2024 but but he was he was. the epitome this this I this I think was. an epitome now well documented of what. was wrong with uh with with with. political activism by uh by Former. Intelligence Officers once again doing. today is credible pardon me did you say.

what he's doing today is credible in the. sense that he's doing credible podcasts. he's doing he's doing things about about. about intelligence that are not not not. domestically partisan in nature do you. think he's building that. to well he might he might guess is uh. he's still got a number of years to live. he hopes he's trying to trying to to to. uh do something that's that's that's. that's U you know that's reasonable and.

is within his his area of expertise now. I guarantee you and that that if that if. he begins to be partisan again then uh. there are people who will go after him. so he probably knows that at this point. and it's not just me I mean there'll be. others there'll be others who who who do. that so he is one of again you know. Hayden talking about you know. tuberville's death and so on I mean. there are a lot of people who have just. really shot themselves in the proverbial. foot John Brennan wrote tweets that are.

just outrageous and I think his. credibility is pretty pretty minimal too. so so I I expect there will be. Resurgence uh but some of the some of. the 2016 20121 people will not because. they're tired old and damaged goods. what about. Mark um tabs on him uh I do he uh he is. on um he's on Twitter X and I I follow.

him every once in a while he wrote one. uh one slightly uh slightly partisan. thing several months ago but I haven't. seen anything I haven't seen anything. recently man you know so the issue from. my standpoint and I think this is a key. a key Point uh uh again thinking back to. the definition of politicization from. the from the beginning it's it's. Intelligence Officers injecting or using. intelligence in a partisan way so a core.

problem and this is what Morel started. was using his intelligence background to. rationalize a partisan political view. and that is again historically abnormal. from a nor normative standpoint and it's. also dysfunctional so if you have you. have you know have people people who. have partisan views but keep them to. themselves that's fine if they talk. publicly but they talk about things that. are not related to partisan politics.

that's okay too man but once you spread. purposeful. disinformation to influence an election. how could you ever be trusted again well. exactly so so that's that's why I think. he's he's he's staying within an area in. which he's established a little bit of. credibility but I I think he I think. Morell is wise to not Venture again into. uh you know what he. started Brennan has stayed very quiet.

too you know he's he he's you know just. not not on Twitter not on Twitter X. anymore he was a an active participant. for a long time he says in his Memoir. it's kind of funny he says wow you know. I really didn't want to get on to. Twitter but but Trump made me do it. because I Trump made me do because I. couldn't I couldn't leave leave the. Twitter's fear to Trump I had to respond. to him so it's all Trump's. fault so so so you regret it but then.

that's why that's why that's why I did. it but at least for the moment and he he. also says it in his a memoir that he had. some real issues with personal. discipline um that um but at least for. the moment he's been um been quiet on. this front will he stay we'll see we'll. see but I my guess is that if he if he. comes back there'll be a number of. people who will remind the the citizenry. about some of the outrageous things that. he said during the Trump years how is. this kind of stuff affecting operations.

within the intelligence. World okay so this is a this is a an. important issue right as intelligence is. as you well know is part of the National. Security establishment you want your. intelligence people to perform well they. help they help the senior. people make better decisions if. intelligence works right and they help. keep the the country secure okay so uh. how does this how does this affect again. going back to uh to Obama years.

um my my assertion that the you know the. real change occurred occurred at that. point in the beginning of the Obama Dei. policies the the the uh rationale was. that uh Dei policies they again Chang. hiring Promotion Award assignments bases. so these at least in these four areas. the pop and they they were done on a. policy basis that these were ethically.

good that this was this was a uh morally. good thing to do to help disadvantage. people and so on so the the initial uh. argument was was ethical in nature was. it was political okay fair enough we. could people could agree or disagree on. that. uh in the roughly 2012 13 period uh. people began to say um you know uh these. preferences are causing operational.

problems and you're hiring favored. demographic groups but not qualified uh. white men uh and that's causing. demographic problem so these are mainly. accusations um but about that same time. so call it 2013 call it the be roughly. the beginning of Obama second term Jim. Clapper the. dni uh mainly but then also Brandon to. some degree to began to add another.

claim and that claim was that Dei. policies improve the operational. performance of the intelligence. community so I've been in the you know. as you introduced me earlier on been in. the academic world and studying. intelligence and teaching on it and so. on so I kind of scratched my head and uh. said uh gee um if this is the case then. uh where's the evidence let me see some. evidence so I began to look at this and.

and uh uncharacteristically for the. intelligence business whereas you know. uh uh assertions assessments are. supposed to be backed by evidence right. well there wasn't any so I uh I wrote a. eventually a a paper was published in. December of. 2021 that said uh I cannot find any. evidence to support that. claim uh that claim that Dei improves.

the performance so. my uh my project here was to assess the. claim as opposed to looking at the the. bigger picture of whether Dei uh affects. performance in any other ways okay so I. got a lot of reaction from this so the. the the de I proponents of course didn't. like it it was not politically. politically correct and I actually had. four four representatives of the OD and. complain about that article to my.

journal editor basically threatening him. so kind of interesting what kind of. threat uh you're threatening in the. sense that you're you're we are going to. consider your Journal not to be a. reputable intelligence Journal anymore. so not tangible threats not tangible. threats in terms of money or physical. violence or anything of that sort but. they were they were it was implied so. the my the editor told me. this okay so I also got a lot of.

responses from uh people who said yeah. you're right it's not helping out and. and the point you made at the end of. this which was that gee we ought to look. at the alternative which is the claim. that the Dei policies are damaging the. performance of. intelligence so a lot of people got got. in touch with me several dozen got in. touch with me and and said you should do. this next project and let me tell you. some of these problems so I now have a.

significant body of of um of evidence on. this on this score and uh I will be. writing up what I have uh within the. next the next couple of months uh and uh. my expectation at this point is that uh. the the the argument is going to be that. the the Dei substantially damages um uh. operational performance so I'm still. working on it so I'll you know probably. perhaps you know leave off you know some. of the some of the details here but uh.

it Ram these run from budgetary issues. to hiring issues to Performance in the. field uh issues and I haven't found any. any anecdotes or anything that says that. Dei does a good a good job so if I could. put a little plug plug out to the to the. world here um uh I I never I make a. point of never asking serving. Intelligence Officers questions like. this uh but I will take uh I will take.

uh information they give me if they if. they offer it and I do ask uh Former. Intelligence people if they've got. anecdotes to to give so if if if any of. your folks uh have any any evidence of. relevance to me please get in touch with. me and I'm not just looking for negative. evidence what I want to do is is be. methodologically objective here so I'm. looking for evidence related to whether.

Dei affects operational performance so. if you got evidence that Dei improves. performance I'd like to have it where. would they get in touch with you at well. uh my uh my uh my email address uh email. C current email address uh still at. Georgetown I'm in the process of getting. cancelled out I think there but J. a411 at. georgetown.edu. something tells me you're going to get a. lot of.

mail but um and I hope you do so anyway. that will come out with that and U my. guess is that um the evidence that I get. will probably not change dramatically uh. so I suspect that this will be another. another. controversial um article yeah I would uh. so I'll P gu send it to you when it. comes out thank you thank you well. moving. into. 2024 you know we're about halfway done. we got an election this year what what.

are we going to see okay my uh my. expectation uh write it in the book uh. but U you know said it said it in. another another. 402 and I think actually uh I feel more. strongly now than I did when I finished. when I put that put that that to bed my. guess is that we will see a significant. uh significant uh resumption of the. political activity in in 2024 oh so why. do I say that uh the the the.

motives that I mentioned are are uh as. strong or stronger so you recall I. mentioned two two basic motives. political ideological and then an. interest interest based one so a lot of. people who who benefit from Dei policies. who will not want to see them reversed. well if if Trump is a viable candidate. and at this at this stage of game the. polling polls are showing that he's he's. going to be competitive uh if it if if.

in fact he becomes the the Republican. nominee in July of 2024 my guess is that. we'll begin to see leaks and leaks and. uh and and uh and a new generation of of. of of of activism. so um again as I said the activism. started in 2016 because people worried. about what Trump might do and then of. course he turned out to be to be not. much of a tangible threat at all well.

it's pretty clear now that the uh that. some of the advisers uh uh of the Trump. campaign are well aware of uh of of. President Trump's deficiencies in in and. then and I mean I use that that's not a. not a term that I think is not being. used right so so he was you know again. again not not really paying attention in. the in the management of the Personnel.

of the federal government people people. who were close to him I'm told are well. now well aware of that they're talking. about that publicly so I'm not this is. not all inside information although I. know a little bit that's not public but. clearly it's public statements are the. the the the campaign recognizes that. there were deficiencies here so the so. the activists or excuse me the former. activists the people who were worried. that there might be a.

reversal uh who worried in 2016 there. might be a reversal have more reason to. be concerned this. year because because some of of of. Trump's advisers made it pretty clear. they're going to they're going to change. things if they if they have a. chance so my guess is new generation of. of forers uh largely maybe some of the. old-timers uh uh but the leakers will. come back so we had a big in big surge.

in leaks uh in uh. 201621 uh none of them were. were caught uh or and publicly punished. to my none of them were were were caught. there was U within the within the main. part of the the IC the one person. certainly not at CIA and OD and I the. two the two activist. groups in uh you know in the first in. the first Trump years there was one uh.

one young woman who was who was arrested. and um and and punished a a contract. employee former Air Force. linguist uh at the National Security. Agency at their Georgia facility uh by. the name of reality. winner um who was then 25 years old uh. who to who brought some documents uh out. of NSA that she thought were uh relevant. to the uh the Russia the Russ you know.

Russia is using uh using Donald Trump as. an asset uh issue which was a you know a. big one in the early part of the in fact. not just the early but later you know. all the way through the the the the the. the Trump years so she brought some. documents out sent them to sent them to. a um a news news site um the news site. got these documents sent them to uh sent. them to the F sent them to NSA and said. are these real uh reality winter was.

arrested shortly thereafter answering. the question so so here was a here was a. an intelligence officer who used not. very good tradecraft so it turned out. that that she copied apparently she. copied uh copied these documents on. machines at the office and the office. left uh left some identifying the. machine left some identifying marks so. it was easy to figure out who who who. she was so anyway she was the one who uh.

who was was caught she got five years. and three months for violating the. Espionage Act nobody at CIA nobody at. the odni were were. caught punishment nobody so my uh one of. one of the things I think what I would. like to see us do in the leak department. is is is encourage. uh FBI Justice and whoever else may be. involved in here to be thinking about. disinformation leaks as not only. national security issue Espionage Act.

issues but also Hatch Act issues so for. some of your viewers the Hatch Act of. 1939 prohibits uh federal employees from. engaging in partisan political. activities so when you're do when you're. doing leaks that are really. disinformation and you're doing them for. partisan political reasons that's that. that it seems to me becomes hatched uh. uh.

material I don't know how you reverse. this I mean if if what you're saying is. true and these organizations from the. bottom up have been infiltrated. where do you even begin well it's well. it's a good question I mean you know. we've got you know how do you reverse a. century worth of uh you know of Soviet.

Marxist propaganda well it's a long you. know a long long long process so it's. now embedded you know this kind of. activism is embedded in the culture so. it's not just not just the. perspective ideology and and uh you know. material interest but also there is a. especially in younger people who've come. from universities where where uh where. the marxian tradition is is is uh strong. you've got a culture that says it's hey.

it's okay it's it's appropriate to be. activist think about Ed Snowden for. example you know I have a moral author. moral authority to to release uh. classified information because I think. it's it's in the you know it's in the. public public interest so you have you. have a lot of things moving in the. direction of continued politicization I. think it can be addressed but again. slowly so among the things you would. need to do would be to would be to would.

be to put in some strong leaders who who. are bound and determined to reverse this. to the extent they can so you know. there's leadership from from the top so. you change policies but even even before. that you you you you you uh resend the. executive orders that are causing the. big problems so the the huge one at the. moment is is is uh Biden's uh uh June of. 2021 executive order that absolutely.

needs to to go you need to get rid of. all the Dei offices the diversity. offices and the agencies because these. have become uh in essence uh ideological. Orthodoxy. creating and. ideologically ideological. Orthodoxy enforcement or. organizations so they are now in. enforcing the Dei agenda uh managers who. don't um uh don't tow the line or.

punished so among. the among the bits of information that I. you know received as a as that uh at. some some agencies now uh basically. what's happening is that people from. some of the privileged demographic. groups that get celled by. managers uh and you know most of us. who've ever been workers know that you. know you get counseled by Bosses and one. of your jobs is sometimes to counsel.

other people constructively so what's. happening is that people who think that. they should not have been counseled are. going to the Dei offices the Dei offices. the diversity offices are in some cases. overruling line managers and are firing. managers for doing this so in essence. what's happening in some cases so I have. anecdotes here and there not a not the. big picture uh what's happening in some. cases is that the diversity offices are.

acting the way uh Communist party. commissars did in the old the old Soviet. Union the way party party elements do in. uh communist and Chinese businesses for. example so line managers work uh normal. uh most of the time but if something. gets out of line from a from a from a an. ideological Orthodoxy standpoint the. diversity office will will step in and.

make a. correction so those need to get go just. go yeah. yeah. what I just don't know how you establish. credibility again without completely. restructuring the entire intelligence. well you can I mean major changes is is. not not a bad idea but but I one of the. the this the sort of standard and um you.

know simple you know sounds good it's. easy and but it's too simplistic is you. know defund defund the FBI defund the. CIA you know start all over again and so. on. well um know maybe but but I mean that's. that's a major step both of these are. important organizations and they they we. need the country if the country is going. to be coherent and safe it needs these. organizations to perform well so my my. thought is at this point anyway and I'll. you know keep.

keep uh assessing it and maybe maybe. re-evaluate it some point but I think I. think trying to uh to reform is the way. to go at the moment um uh there are some. things you can do that that that would. be in addition uh to this and uh then. let me just to mention a couple of them. um these would be smaller but but I. think are are viable and actually are. are are administratively relatively. relatively easy to do so uh uh first um.

if a president says to agencies I don't. like what you're doing you're you're. giving me bunk I know you're I know some. of this stuff is not right I know. there's there's a there's a political uh. um motive behind it um going to cut cut. your funding so that the odni has an the. Pres the dni the Director of National. Intelligence has a little bit of money. reprogramming Authority so you tell your.

you tell your dni you're the president. you tell the dni I want you to cut that. agency's money for not uh doing a good. job as as I as I Define it so a second. thing you could do this is. Administrative second thing you could do. is reissue executive order 12333. which as you you recall is the order. that initially was um issued by by. President Reagan in U. 1981 which which gives the the the the.

uh responsibilities for for the for the. agencies of the IC it is absolutely. dreadfully boring reading um if you want. you got a you got a uh uh uh an insomnia. problem got you know go read go read. executive order 1 12333 it'll it'll help. it'll help you but uh and this is online. actually so you can you can read it but. you so but this has been mod been re. reissued a couple of times so you can.

modify at the executive order level you. modify missions so if you got an agency. that is a problem take missions away. from them give the missions to somebody. else that will get money and missions. will get the get the attention of. bureaucrats. and a third one that um would. particularly affect CIA because even. even though the 2000 Reform Act that I. mentioned uh moved the production of the.

president's Daily Brief from CIA to the. the odni CIA people are still mainly. responsible for doing it Public public. information is that most of the Articles. now are still still written by CIA. people so if you you have uh ongoing pdb. problems of the sort that I mentioned on. the the co story uh then what you what. you might do is say uh okay I see you're.

out of the pdb business we're moving the. production of the president's Daily. Brief to the White House so you give us. the you give us roal reports and we'll. establish a small uh organization within. the White House to uh Pro to make the. briefings for the president so that's a. major slap in the face uh at the at the. odni and again at C at CIA uh too so. that would get their that would get.

their. intention so come back what's the what's. the what are the risks there well I. suppose there are some risks uh. President Nixon actually proposed this. for a time and it and it and it sort of. uh occurred during the during his U. second second term for a while Henry. Kissinger was the uh the fellow who ran. it uh but but uh there really has not. been a danger of of politicizing this. kind of activity uh as done in two other.

countries so the the British The Joint. intelligence committee and the and the. the new Australian odni equivalent uh uh. do this they get information from the. the various agencies and then and then. distill it within the within the. executive office of the Prime Minister. and in in their case and by by all of. the accounts that I've seen U this has. worked well and there haven't been. politicization. problem but in this case you could you.

could help uh help eliminate the the uh. not eliminate you not eliminate but. reduce uh presidential. concern that there uh is a is a bias. within the uh within the within the. intelligence business and um uh this is. not a not a not a a you know a madeup. concern I mean you know clearly there. there's a certain sort of atmospheric. concern here but we know we know that.

there are at least some uh some cases in. which uh uh uh ongoing intelligence. products have been have been uh tailored. um and um again I would encourage. interested interested viewers to look up. uh online a letter that was written by. the uh analytic ombudsman of the odni in. January of. 21 uh which is a letter in response to a. query from the Senate intelligence. committee and in this letter uh the.

incumbent at the time Barry. zulaf um writes about two. episodes uh in in. limited detail of course uh but but but. but but makes the point clear two two. episodes in one case China analysts were. accused of withholding relevant. information from the white house because. allegedly the China analysts did not.

want to give president Trump information. that they thought would facilitate. Trump's. policies so that's classic. politicization yeah and the second the. second one different part of the of the. IC um and there were allegations. different time that this was from Russia. House that this was the Russia Russia. operation at C CIA again relatively. sketchy public information on this but. the story in the letter was that Russia.

Russia analyst kept. pushing um uh Trump is a a dupe of Putin. uh at long after uh uh Trump had made it. clear he wasn't interested in in in. hearing that so basically they were. pushing a story at at a president just. to annoy him is the mees is the that's. my version of of the longer uh uh uh. explanation there so to the extent that.

that this kind of thing is being. reported a little bit I think we have. reason to think that it's probably. occurring uh a little bit more yeah. yeah what about what about citizens. okay um what can they do uh what can. citizens do I think the best thing I. mean for citizens to do people who are. looking at the Press looking at looking. at uh at uh other podcasts and so on is.

is to is to try to understand a little. bit more about the intelligence business. um intelligence is a is a hard thing to. understand um there is there is some. reading about it uh I've contributed a. little bit a number of other people have. done some some good work here too but. learn more about the history learn about. the motives learn about some of the. techniques we've talked about. disinformation we've talked about press. press uh intelligence people connections.

um we haven't talked too much about the. fact that the the the the um the. forers lied on occasion about the proper. role of of of intelligence so if you. learn more about uh about what the. intelligence business is about out you. can you can better uh understand when. you're being F fed a bill of goods uh be. skeptical of of alliances between the.

between the press and Intelligence. Officers that should not be the case. should not be the case um is this easy. no it's not I mean in uh you know. um um as we were talking earlier you. know that the uh the the the the the. sophisticated methods here are really um. substantial so you know it's it's very. hard to be to be uh you know fully. confident that you're you've got good.

defenses against disinformation of this. sort but if you're aware that you're. being attacked uh from an information. standpoint and you're a little bit more. skeptical uh that can help man it's just. I know you're right but you know the. problem for Citizens is the time you. know what I mean it's it's so I'm not. I'm not I'm not getting through the work. day trying to keep up on everything. that's going on in the world and in the. country trying to to figure.

out I mean you know what I mean it's. it's it's more homework and it's it's. it's going to be hard I mean it's it's. well it is it is hard uh it's also a. responsibility of. citizenship um and again uh uh I I'm not. conf that I can uh can defend myself. against all of this so I'm not. suggesting that the Perfection is the. goal here uh you can learn a little bit. more you can be a little bit more uh a. little bit more defensively oriented and.

every little bit every little bit helps. but one thing you can do I think be. easier and that's to to keep an eye out. for for for for Clear uh coercion. coercion collaboration between. intelligence officers in the press and. if you see that then then be skeptical. of of uh of what's coming out of it so. when you say that are you basically are. you. saying are you calling out.

contributors you know former analyst on. XY andz news channel that's what we. should be skeptical of uh well if it. depends on the depends on the issue. you're coming so so what people have. done uh over the years many years going. back a long time is talk um Talk. analytically and talk. professionally and that is fine the the.

issue the the problem is when the Press. gets people like again John Brennan. Clapper Hayden uh Morell and so on and. they are in essence pushing a partisan. perspective so what I have tried very. hard to do is in in our discussion is be. analytical so I've not not made a point. of saying that any one presidential. candidate is good bad or indifferent. have I I don't think and that's on.

purpose so what I'm trying to do is talk. about how intelligence works in the. political process and and try to try to. be uh be analytical and objective in. that sense so look out for opinion-based. stuff yeah and that and that's not just. not just from the from the left I mean. there's some stuff that's coming from. from uh from all across the spectrum. that is really not not close to to right.

so be careful be careful well John I. appreciate everything thank you. for for all the information he just gave. us the propaganda what's going on how to. fix it and um is there anything else. that uh we should discuss. thank you my pleasure thank. [Music].

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