"Mossad Is Reckless" - Ex-Spy @Andrew-Bustamante EXPOSES CIA, Mossad & China's GLOBAL Agenda | PBD

It's a it's a hundred percent. I would have not guessed you would have said that so I am I am a staunch Staunch supporter of Israel's importance to the United States. Holy shit Absolutely, because we needed to manipulate Europe NATO is there to protect us Israel's there to protect us

How different is an Epstein versus what happens here?

Masada is way more flexible and what they're willing to bring to the table in terms of an intelligence operation other than CIA So tell me more when you use the word flexible very experimental very little oversight Mossad actively tries to penetrate CIA actively tries to penetrate. I wouldn't am I sick for this? Yeah What do you think about Tucker? So whether or not he was dad's little helper when dad was CIA I don't know, but he certainly wasn't trained, because you can see what it's like when he sits across from a trained intelligence officer.

Wow, got it. Maybe China's not the naive one. Maybe we're the naive one. Could that be a possibility?

Absolutely. Don't forget about all of our intelligence assets that are not human. Bot activity, cyber activity. So you create more chaos from known opinions that are already happening in country. So if you really want an argument to get bigger and bigger, all you have to do is fuel both sides of the argument. it? I feel I'm supposed to take sweet victory. I know this life meant for me. Adam, what's your point?

The future looks bright.

The handshake is better than anything I ever signed, right here. You are a one of one?

My son drives that. I don't think I've ever said this before. The one and only Adam. I'm a one of one.

I'm a one of one? My son drives that. I don't think I've ever said this before. The one and only Andrew Bustamante.

What a fucking sick intro, man.

How you doing, man?

Every time I hear that intro, I'm like, this is so pimp.

My man. So last time we were together, CIA clandestine officer, we sat down, we had a great conversation, it's to the day, I think it's three years to the T, end of August when we did it in 2022, and we had some follow-up conversations, you're like, you know, I'm gonna do this with the U-Term, I want to grow this, I'm gonna do this, I'm like this guy's gonna do everything he wants, and then you said in a few years I'm to disappear and no one's going to see me, right? So are you pretty close to that? Were you going to disappear?

Yeah, so my goal was always to do it before 2030. And then this year, in the last three or four months, we were actually able to hone it down to essentially a series of months in 2027. So in 2027, you're going to disappear? Wheels up in 2027.

And then basically 2026 is just our chance to get everything Rolled up. So I run because so that would have been there That's why I thought about five years because 22 you told me five years or 27 you're gone So as a person who's been in this world, and by the way, it's gonna be tough for you to disappear I'm kind of wanting to hear about you see the interviews with you You've got hundreds of millions of you. It's your clips are probably in the billions on tik, Instagram, all over the place. The way you tell stories is very interesting, but one, why do you want to disappear? And two, how the hell you gonna do it

with that hair that you have?

So the hair is gonna go away.

All of it.

So all of it.

I've got plans to donate it to a children's cancer nonprofit. And I'm super excited about that. That'll actually happen in December, I'll document the whole thing. I will continue to create content, but the content's going to be further and further from the real image of me.

So obviously, post in 2026, I'll create content with a whole new look, because the hair will be gone and some other things will change too. And then I'm planning on moving even further back so that I'm using real voice, but AI generated image. So I might be a cartoon, I might be a real person,

I might be whatever. But I'm gonna experiment and explore with how that goes because at the end of the day, you know this as well as I do we're only here to feed a small percentage of our listeners. So all the virality might be nice, but it's really just a vanity metric.

It's the core audience that takes action That's who we show up for every day and that audience They don't really care what I look like they don't care if I'm a cartoon if they get the real information the real knowledge They move forward. Why are you doing it two reasons right first? I'm a dad and that's where I want to put my effort first And I always promised my wife and myself that while I build everyday spy the company that I run I'll I'm gonna make it treat it like a baby, right?

Treat it like a newborn. But when my kids get to those teenage years, I want to be able to dedicate myself fully to them. My son's 12 right now. He is still very much a kid at heart, but he's going to get to those hard adolescent years and I want dad to be there for him first.

But you wanting to disappear to no longer be seen so people won't recognize you.

Why do you want to do that? That's the second reason because success brings wealth, but not enough wealth to be able to actually protect yourself the most. Wealth like you have, you know what I'm talking about. You can fly private. If you don't want to be seen, you don't have to be seen.

You can have people who do things that are cutouts of the actions that you need to take. I can do some of that. Anybody can do some of that, right? We can have shell companies. We can have attorneys that do stuff for us,

but I'm not wealthy enough to fly private. So when I fly, I'm still recognized by dozens of people who support me. I don't know how many of those people see me and recognize me that don't like me, don't support me. And I'm not going to stop telling the truth as I understand it. So that means the audience that doesn't agree with me and doesn't like me is just going

to keep getting bigger. And as I travel with children, as I have to follow certain rules of transparency, it makes

me an easier target to reach. So it's not, it's got nothing to do with the business that you had, because if CIA wants to find you, they're going to be able to find you. They're not going to have a hard time finding you.

And MSS and SVR, every intelligence agency out there can find me in a heartbeat.

So your concern isn't any of the intelligence agency. Your concern is the average day to day person that doesn't like what you have to say and they disagree with you.

It only takes one. That's true. And if there's anything that you learn in the military and the agency, all rights, all opportunity lies with the unknown threat. So as you get more and more unknown threats out there, like the probabilities just continue

to grow. So that's interesting you're saying that. So have you so far have people come up to you negatively and said some things to you or nothing yet?

I have only had one or two people say anything negative. I actually, it's interesting. Flying into Miami yesterday was the first time that I had a really uncomfortable situation. I had, that was one of our guys. We intentionally did that. But I had a local retired private investigator who interrupted my movie on the plane multiple times, dragging his granddaughter with him to like have a conversation.

I was like, I'm trying to politely tell him I don't want to have a conversation. And then after we get off the plane, he's standing there with his family waiting for me to get off the plane to approach me again, trying to pitch his-

But respectfully, or he's trying to pitch you something. He's trying to pitch his family waiting for me to get off the plane to approach me again trying to pitch his... With respect fully or he's trying to pitch you something?

He's trying to pitch me his private intelligence business, but I mean, respectfully, as respectfully as pushy can be, but still awkward.

Yeah, I can see that. So there's a guy in church that every time I go to church, he just waits all the way at the end, says, can you make this like I want to come here and I don't want to be bothered, but it's becoming challenging. Okay. Just a quick thought. When you're on the plane and you're with your family and kids, your radars are up for protection. What do you like to sit? What do you like to look at? What are you aware of? What would you know?

Your surroundings? What do you look at?

So we're always within three event of an airplane accident. So you want to be able to be able to get out of your nearest exit within 90 seconds. So for me, I kind of put 30, 20 to 30 seconds maximum to get past a row of people, especially in a panic. So we're always within three rows of an exit. My son always takes the window seat.

He's the oldest, so he gets the window. My daughter gets the middle seat, I take the aisle seat, my wife is on the opposite aisle from me. And we both know that in the event of an accident, heads are getting stomped on, people are getting pushed, we're not going to play fair to get off the airplane in the event of an accident. In the event of some sort of hostile character on the plane, then my wife knows that I'm going to engage the hostile character and she's going to protect the kids.

So we kind of have multiple different disaster scenarios in terms of probability.

And you guys have talked about this. My answer was like this, it wasn't even a hesitation.

My wife is a catastrophizer, man. She runs through this stuff and she insists that we have a plan for everything.

What was her background?

She was a CIA target.

Oh, so okay, got it. Interesting, so that's right, because when I talked to, we brought up the Mendez family, right? The husband of Jonah Mendez and what was his name? Tony Mendez, Anthony Tony Mendez. And then I just met another CIA, John Kirakou, who was here who also, I think he was married to somebody who was also CIA, dated somebody who was CIA.

It seems like that's a pattern where everybody kind of, it's an easier way of doing it.

You know the life, let's kind of marry each other. That's exactly it. I mean, we joke at the agency that it's the most expensive dating service in the world, but you put a bunch of fucking high-achieving people together and you make them all work 16-hour days and...

You're going to hook up. John said, man, everybody was hooking up with everybody. It was wild what he was talking about. I want to talk about, you know, there's some stuff going on with Nick Fuentes, with Tucker Carlson, Candace, who's a Fed, Peter Thiel report about he's a Fed, you know, JD Vance, you know, what happened there. There's all these interesting stories that are coming out. And then some of the stuff that happened with intelligence this year so far, but before

I go into these stories that we have, Trump just said something today about him wanting to go after Schiff and Hillary Clinton with a Russiagate hoax and then there's also the Epstein stuff that's going on that a lot of people are talking about I'm gonna hear what you have to say about it, but I'm gonna go to something else. So CIA Andrew so Guy calls me. He says Pat. I'm being offered to be part of CIA To give Intel. Okay. He's in a niche industry that a lot of people have access to him and he meets a lot of people. Think money, finance, you're in front of a lot of different interesting people.

Why is that appealing to somebody like him to say, yes, I want to do this job versus why, what is the risk for him to say, never ever work with the CIA even if they're trying to use you for a project?

Like that US citizen right US citizen. So this is a It's such a hard question because even when we're at CIA and we're briefed on these operations It's really hard to understand why the fuck somebody would say yes It's so nonsensical to say yes to be an American citizen that works for the CIA, that supports as an asset the CIA, because the bureaucracy is horrible when you're a badged officer of CIA, a blue-badged officer. It's even worse when you're a US citizen that's encrypted, that's under layers of confidentiality and

compartmentalization. But people say yes, and there's two big reasons why people say yes. One, they truly believe in helping America, like legit real blue blood, red blood Americans. And they do it a lot, Pat. It's fucking amazing. Cause if CIA were to call me, the only reason I would say yes is because I worked for them in the past.

But if I, if I was a hundred million dollar business owner and CIA said they wanted me to report, I'd be like, like no how are you guys gonna keep my information safe? How are you gonna keep my business safe? I've built I spent my whole life building this thing for you guys to piss away in one bad phone call but they say yes they say yes and then oftentimes what ends up happening is the average lifespan for a CIA asset is about five years we say that's their useful reporting life not

their physical life because within five years CIA fucks up somehow They they leak their information They don't brief the right office and then an internal investigation Takes suit and some FBI person barges through your office door and arrests you on suspicion of working with Russians And then it's not until you get into an interrogation room where you're like I'm only talking to the Russians because CIA's paying me to talk to the Russians and then that whole fucking debacle blows up and it's

A mess. It's a mess because government compartmentalizes so heavily The second reason why people do it is because they believe CIA is gonna help them somehow

Help them close a deal help them get Intel help them get something on there the last thing you would think about and gonna do it. Okay, so so but let's let's go with that. Where am I going with this? So you think about? Stories like an Epstein, okay So, you know when I say Intel, of course, I think CIA Well, you have Masada you have a my six you have you talk highly of India. I think what India's intelligence I've never heard about you're starting to really speak where you're bringing some attention to it But if if a if a person like in Epstein, okay

Where you hear stories about this guy on what things he's been involved with You go back history at this point people know that him and Bill Barr went to a school together I don't know if you knew this or not. They went to school together many many years ago as kids and then that One of the people from that school is who later on came back and brought Jeffrey Epstein to be a math teacher, even though he didn't have the degree for

it, and he kind of grows up to be who he is today. But the story with how he made his money, how he got his connection, his tie to Robert Maxwell, Robert Maxwell's tie back to Mossad, Ghislaine Maxwell, who was trained by her father, and Robert Maxwell being a big media mogul person. Does a person like Epstein leverage his intel relationship with Mossad to get things

from either Mossad or the individuals as a form of a threat and a leverage that's different than a CIA coming to somebody in America saying we'd like to be an asset to help us out getting information. How different is it in Epstein versus what happens here?

In method, in methodology, it's not that different. It's not that different. You're basically, you have an intelligence agency that knows there's a source of information from an individual and then they just need to find what they can use to reciprocate that cooperation from the targeted individual. So the methodology is not that different. individual, and then they just need to find what they can use to reciprocate that cooperation from the targeted individual.

So the methodology is not that different. I would, and I still do, openly say the most likely intelligence connection that Jeffrey Epstein had was with Mossad, most likely. If he was an intelligence asset, it was probably for Mossad, not for CIA. He's too much of a high risk for CIA and

What he would have wanted is

Something Massad would have been able to supply him with where the CIA couldn't whether that's sex trafficking or something else

Massad is way more flexible and what they're willing to bring to the table in terms of an intelligence operation other than CIA So tell me more when you use the word flexible. So Mossad assassinates, openly assassinates. CIA does not openly assassinate. Israel and Mossad openly advocate for regime change. CIA does not do that. And then the permissions, the authorities that kind of, for lack of a better word, handcuff CIA, those authorities don't really exist for Mossad. Mossad is essentially the modern day version of the 1960s era CIA.

Very experimental, very flexible, very little oversight because they're surrounded by an ocean of threats. Whereas the United States is surrounded by a literal ocean and Canada and Mexico. So we have different threat portfolios, profiles, and the difference in that threat profile is what informs our willingness to take high-risk actions.

So it's interesting when you say, so are you saying back in the 60s, we were as reckless and aggressive in getting Intel as the current Mossad is?

And we were as reckless without being as well trained, well funded, or well technologically

equipped.

Give me an example of how reckless we were. MX Ultra. Okay. Operation Midnight Climax. I mean, we were, we were actively drugging Americans and then putting them in brothels with American prostitutes to test mind control agents.

That's some reckless shit. Trying to get Castro's beard to fall off his face the whole bay of pigs I mean, that's the kind of shit that that cia still can't get off its back because it was so

Dumb reckless and ill-informed. Do you think? um that gives a country an edge If they're willing to be more reckless than you and gathering intel and you're trying to be more proper than them?

Just a matter, take it out of the intel world and put it on the fucking school playground, right? Which bully is likely to not get muscled around? The one that will go crazy when you approach him or the one who's trying to play by the rules?

No, no question about it.

No question. Yeah. And that's exactly why it works who knows this All of the five eyes the five eyes being the five Western intelligence agencies that cooperate the closest Canada America UK Australia New Zealand all of the five eyes know Mossad is the most risk tolerance and most

Aggressive of intelligence agencies, and then we also know that because of that recklessness, there's only so much we can do to reel them in. They're so reckless, Pat, they collect on us. Mossad actively tries to penetrate CIA, actively tries to penetrate MI6, ACIS, yeah.

Yeah, when John was here, John Kirakou said every time they would come around to us, he said, we never trusted Mossad because they would come in, they John was here, John Kirakou said, uh, every time they would come around to us, he says, we never trusted Masad because they would come in, they would give gifts and we're like, what are you doing? Giving us gifts. We don't need gifts. You're going to put some recording. We'd find it.

We're like, what are you doing? I can tell you want to hear my conversation.

What experiences did you have with the Masad yourself? types of operations I worked on were more sensitive than they were willing to expose to Mossad. In my senior years, in my years as a middle manager, if you will, that's when I had the most overlap with joint operations with Mossad. Always super professional, always very smart, always quiet in the room, always impeccably dressed and always shockingly good looking,

especially if they were cooperating in an operation with the US, because they know our MO. They know that a beautiful man or a beautiful woman is going to distract us from better judgment. And that's one of the things that we're briefed on before we operate with Mossad. We're like, hey, just expect a bombshell to walk in and expect that they put that bombshell there for a reason. It's basic principles. Basic principles. And that's how they work.

That's why they're so good. Because they can literally leverage what we call primal instincts. Primal instincts in human beings, they surpass your religious beliefs, they surpass your education level, your age,

these primal incentives that they know how to kind of set the dominoes up in place to maximize your cooperation. Unless you come in defensive. So let's go back to it. So let's talk about the recklessness you're saying of Mossad, that they're willing to go to levels that, you know, US is not willing to go. We used to back in the sixties no longer.

What event prevented us from being as reckless? Is it because somebody came agency and we're gonna tell everything to America or No after the 60s, you know, you got Martin Luther King. You got John F Kennedy. You got Bobby Kennedy You got all this stuff that happened the reputation dropped. Let's find a way to fix this What was the reasoning why we went more safer than being reckless September 11th 2001. So not even 60 So you coming straight to a 101 when we when CIA and FBI failed to collaborate effectively to prevent 9-eleven

when that happened the Congress stepped in and created heavy oversight for both intelligence agencies the 9-eleven Commission that was completed in 2003 basically outlined how the intelligence agencies were forced to cooperate forced to grow how their budget and their operations were going to be strictly pursued and over and overseen by a group in the Congress and How everything would have to get briefed up through the executive branch that

transformed CIA

So they so they finally had oversight. So prior to that, what was oversight? The president had, the president controls CIA.

That's always, it's always been the case. That's the executive branch. But what else, did they have another dotted line to somebody else after 01? They had a slight, yeah, after 01, they had dotted lines to multiple people. So they were still under the executive branch, but they had a hard line to the DNI and the DNI had a hard line to the CIA to the executive the president

So now you have one layer of management in between the two But then you also have this dotted line to the Congress who controls the purse strings So prior to that CIA was controlled exclusively by a black budget They spend what they want to spend when they want to spend it Well now their budgets tied to Congress black or not. Do you like that?

Do you like that? Do you, I mean, do you think there needs to be a department that nobody knows about, especially when we're dealing with the types of actors in the world today that if they're going to have no rules and they're going to be reckless, we're going to play by the rules. We're going to get our

asses handed to us. And that's my concern, man. I look at this situation, and it's kind of fucked both ways. If you take away oversight to CIA, you run the risk of a politicized, weaponized CIA doing whatever the hell it wants to do. And that goes for anybody else. That goes for IRS for all we care, right? But, if you give increasing permissions and oversight

to CIA to be more activist, more risk tolerance, then you kind of invite more pain, more public damage, more loss of reputation in the international space. So it's a hard place to be right now, but you're asking the right questions. We, the American people, should be asking these questions.

Right now, we're outsourcing these questions to whoever sits in Congress.

Yeah, that's not, I don't trust that. So the recklessness, you said after the 60s. So are you saying were we still reckless in the 90s?

We were still without supervision in the 90s, which is a big part of why you started to see, you know, like the Hootsies and Tootsies took over.

So, so, so regardless, so the 9-11 event that took place, whether we were more reckless or not, that couldn't have been prevented is what you're saying.

100% could have been prevented.

If what?

If there would have been, this is the argument in the 9-11 Commission, if CIA and FBI would have been forced to work together, 9-11 would have been avoided. And they say that because when in retrospect, they collected all of the intelligence in both agencies and looked at it from 2001 to 2003, they saw that the fulsome profile of both intelligence collection efforts would have prevented the time, the place, and the

personas involved. But because FBI was sending messages to CIA, CIA was ignoring them, CIA was sending messages to FBI, FBI was ignoring them, they're using two different systems, they're speaking in different languages, they have different encryptions for the same sources, all of this chaos resulted in in the most important stuff just sitting in the printer.

Do we communicate better in the 50s and 60s, CIA and FBI, versus in the 90s?

No, but they had a greater chasm between responsibilities. So inside United States, FBI, outside United States, CIA. Law enforcement, FBI, foreign intelligence, CIA. Sabotage, CIA. Drug research, drug investigation CIA, it started to get kind of conflagrated, I think the word is, confused in the 90s and into the early 2000s.

Yeah, so this, I don't know. So okay, the level of recklessness of Israel till today, who holds them accountable if they, what is their level of recklessness they can go to where a commission comes in and say, tribunal, hey, hey, listen, timeout. What are we, what are we doing here? Is there anybody that holds all the intel agencies worldwide accountable or there's

really?

That's, that was what they hoped would come about from the UN, that there would be some kind of global organization that we would all voluntarily submit ourselves to. And then we would follow that rule. It was actually Clinton who refused to let the United States fall under the jurisdiction of the UN's court, the criminal court.

So after he set that precedent, Israel followed, China followed, Russia followed. And that's why we find ourselves where we are now, where basically anything goes if you're a strong enough, brave enough leader.

Yeah. I mean, for me, I wouldn't want to be under UN because I don't even trust UN. UN is going to be having favor. So no matter what it is, bias is there no matter who you are. To believe that a person is gonna be 100%, Walter Cronkite was the most unbiased, stop it. He was a liberal, he still had his own bias, right?

All of us have it, so the sooner I know what your biases are and what mine are, the sooner I'm like, yeah, I totally get it. We were talking about, you know, three years ago about you coming here, doing something, you remember that conversation we had? We had, you know, my biggest thing was you had a timeline and okay, we do the show, we grow it, it gets millions of subscribers and then somebody has to come after you.

Ain't nobody gonna be able to want to hear anybody else but you. I'm like, no, that's not, I'm not letting you know, you go do your thing. We had that conversation and I've recommended you to God knows how many people because I think you're phenomenal character and the trust. But going back to this, I'm kind of glad we're not under the UN jurisdiction.

And that's what kills us, right?

Would you want to do that?

No, no, no, personally, personally, it makes complete sense. But what happens is when you look at what's happening in the headlines, and then you put mass opinion on top of what's happening, that mass opinion sometimes drones out the other more rational thought process, right? So you've got all these people who are like, oh America committed war crimes invading Afghanistan and Iraq.

According to war crime legal

definition?

Definition? Yeah, we did. All war is illegal according to war definition. That doesn't stop wars from happening, so who are you gonna be? The one that gets invaded or the one that does the invading? I mean, if you kind of look at it as a binary personal decision, it makes total sense. But our enemies and our own internal politics have made it so that people start to think

that somehow a more cooperative world is better for us. And when that is a problem that only the richest, wealthiest, healthiest people get to have, because when you're not the richest, the wealthiest and the healthiest, you don't want to be. Yeah, you don't.

They want it, right? Exactly. Because the more order, you know, the less chance somebody is going to take them out, right? You want that order to be in place, but sometimes you need chaos to be able to move up as well, right? If you don't have the bit of the chaotic situation, how do I come up as a small market? So let's stay on this.

Let's stay on this with the recklessness that they still have today versus we don't have today. Okay. If we chose to go be as reckless as them and we get to a point where the CIA is like, look, what do you guys want to do? We keep going like this, look what they're doing.

They're getting involved, they have control over us. I'm not playing by the rules, you guys can't bully me. I'm going to come in, I'm going to own a bunch of your congress folks, I'm going to give them a bunch of money, I'm going to use different NGOs, charities, APAC, whatever you want to call it, trust me, I'm going to get that control over a lot of your guys here and because I can do that. I'm not doing anything illegal, everything I'm doing by the books. Yeah, maybe I'll use some of the methods, that's going to be a little bit crazy.

And for us, we're trying to be very much amicable and very much, you know, following by the rules and let's report everything the proper way. It's a chaotic situation on how you manage that specific relationship with another intel agency that can break the rules and do whatever they want to do.

And the thing is you're not trying to manage the relationship. In reality, what you're trying to do is leverage the relationship for your own benefit. That's the real reason intelligence... Is that what we do? That's why intelligence agencies cooperate. The problem is then it becomes a game of which intelligence officers are more skilled, can move fastest, and can make the bigger promise. And that's where we start to shoot ourselves in the foot again.

United States sits at the table in a joint intelligence subcommittee with the Mexicans, which is happening right now to fight cartels, right? In a situation like that, we bring the bigger budget, we bring the bigger weapons, we bring the better recon infrastructure, the Mexicans are gonna listen to us.

They're gonna do what we want them to do, and we're gonna get lots of access into their agencies. That's a good thing, that's a win, but flip the ticket, somebody that doesn't have the same need as a Mexican law enforcement agency, and all of a sudden the rules change, the leverage changes.

Yeah, but what I'm thinking about with this is, so if they don't have the rules, they get the intel from us, like my kids. My daughter will come and say, my daddy said I hit me, said I hit me, and that's her intel, okay?

Then I go in there, and then my son will say, no, she didn't hit her. Brooklyn scratched her back and then Senna reacted, but Brooklyn started it. And then she'll go like this and give me a look. I'm like, did you do that?

And I'm like, two witnesses that I believe, right? So then the question becomes, what if we rely on them for intel, but they come and give us whatever intel that they want us to know, but not the full intel that makes us overreact, but we have to trust the intel because we can't go to another person that was a witness to say, no, that's not really the full story.

This is the real full story. How do you inspect the intel that's being given to you that doesn't have another person holding them accountable?

And again, you're right on the money with the question. We have a process that we have called the corroboration of intelligence, corroboration of intelligence. So when an intel report comes in, that is a single sourced intel report.

We're looking for corroborating intelligence, a second Intel report that says the same thing or nearly the same thing as the first intelligence report, but from a completely separate source. When you have corroboration, that's the two witnesses that you trust.

That also lets you know if the first source or the second source is being honest, because if you have information that's not corroborating and they both say they're telling the truth, you have reason to doubt them both. That is a big part of why you will have, why we have 36 intelligence agencies because Air Force is giving us Intel, Navy is giving us Intel, NGA is giving us or NSA is giving us

Intel, NRO is giving us Intel, CIA and NSA are giving us Intel. So even between the agencies, we're hoping to find corroboration that allows us to validate

foreign sources. Oh, that's actually not what I'm asking. I'm asking if we're dealing with, uh, you know, for example, if we're trying to get intel, how many CIA agents do we have in Iran right now?

Not many.

That's a great, exactly. Who do we have? We have Mossad agents in Iran. Correct. ago, not a skit, we're in the middle of the podcast. I'm like, what if we send 200 African American agents to Iran to act like they were Iranian, you know, T. Ron Johnson, right? Tyrone Johnson, but they're African American. I don't care if you're a speaker or anything,

they know you're not from Iran. They know you're, it's weird for you to be here. Right? So who do we rely on to get intel on what's going on with the scientists that are working on nuclear weapons or where Khamenei is in Iran, we have to rely on somebody else's intel to give to us. And whose intel are we going to rely on? Iraq?

Saudi? Or Mossad? So what I'm saying is, if Mossad has whatever the numbers we've read about low 700, high 2000, and Iran just kicked out I think 550 of them or they arrested them, something happened to them. Rob, if you want to verify what I'm saying here, how do we know when Mossad's given us

intel, we don't have representatives there to check to see if they're telling us the truth or not? Do we just risk believing them?

So the short answer is yes. The short answer is when you don't have intelligence superiority, when you don't have information superiority, you have to start to take risks on the people that you think do have information superiority. Now there are certain benefits here. Saudi Arabia and Israel both have a threat from Iran. So we would anticipate that both of them would be actively collecting against Iran. However, neither of them fully trust the United States.

So we're going to be getting groomed intelligence from both of them, meaning it's going to be shaped for what they want us to know, but it's still an opportunity for us to see if one or the other is saying the same thing or something different. Plus, don't forget about all of our intelligence assets that are not human. Right? SIGINT collection, satellite connection, open source collection. There's lots of other collection efforts besides just human beings on the ground

that we can use to collect intelligence. So we're now trying to find whether or not the SIGINT corroborates the Saudi report.

Tell me about the SIGINT. Tell me about all the three.

So what I'm talking about are human sources coming from two allied countries, and then a third signals intelligence that's coming from NSA. Because NSA collects signals worldwide. Everywhere. OK. So you don't have to be there to get that.

And then you said, what was the other two, SIGINT, and then?

So there's SIGINT, there's open source, open source information. Those are all the analysts that can pull things in foreign languages, in English language, academic sources, et cetera, and then

start to cross-reference to see what intelligence you can open source information. Okay. But, but if we're getting it from Mossad and we're not there, just a question for you, human rights reported that 530 people across Iran that were violating espionage, Israeli Mossad. So this was June 13, 2025, 530 that they found that they were going through and they detained a bunch of these guys. But if Mossad gives us the intel, how many CIA agents does America currently physical

have in Iran right now?

I don't know the answer. If I knew the answer, it would be classified. But I will say that my assessment, less than what fit on two hands. Damn. Iran, Russia, China, North Korea, your sophisticated or rather your most rogue nations have been systematically kicking Americans out, hunting down anybody who even looks like an asset

and then publicly punishing these people to further instigate and protect themselves against people turning against their country for a long time. Now you'll see and I mean it's fantastic if you do a quick search, you'll see the kind of commercials that CIA, China, Russia, and MI6 are putting out there to try to get people to volunteer. The reason those things don't work very well is because your next-door neighbor just got arrested because they think he's an American spy and then you on the internet see a CIA commercial says, Hey, become an American spy. And you're like, fuck no. I just saw what happened to my, my neighbor.

I can hate the regime all day long without talking to you.

What do we, like, let's just say it's Russia or Iran and somebody reaches out, right? And in China, somebody reaches out. What do we give in return for them to give intel? So you're talking about if like... So the Russia ad, right? The Russia ad that you have and it tells the story, it's very emotional by the way. Remember back in the days when your father and he went through this and now you have this?

Do it for your country like these China ads, these Russia ads that they do. Okay, so I want to give intel. What is that Iranian, that Russian, that Chinese person that's sick of their own country, what

do they get in return? This is a lot like our conversation about why would an American support CIA. A huge chunk of their motivation is that they believe they're doing the right thing. They'll take the risk believing they're doing the right thing.

Now, America never wants that. You always wanna have leverage. So we try to find a leverage point. Is that leverage point money? Is that leverage point money? Is that leverage point, you know, medicine is that leverage point, a visa to get your family out of the country?

Worse, we look at all of those options, but we have to give something right away. One of the reasons I really don't like Bitcoin is because Bitcoin has become the currency of choice for espionage around the world. If you're a North Korean trying to recruit

an American scientist, you're going to pay them in Bitcoin. Well, if you're a Chinese person trying to report to American intelligence, you're probably also getting paid in Bitcoin.

In a way, I know this is not the answer you probably expected to hear from me. In a way, that's good, because there is a way to give something that if you do this and it's real, we can send half a Bitcoin or we can send a Bitcoin over to you and it's decentralized. So it can't be fully tracked of where it's coming from. Correct.

So part of that is good. But the other part of it is if, okay, when you were in the CIA, you don't need to give this answer. I'm just trying to see if you knew it, would you guys all know how many actual officers were in any country at any given time? Did you guys know that?

Only for our, the short answer is yes, for the area of responsibility we were working in. The longer answer is there are different categories of officers. Some of them are outside of our need to know. So I would know how many officers of my caliber were there, but then there might be some of a deeper cover that I wouldn't know at all. And there might be some that were barely covered that I also wouldn't know at all.

So above your rank, you wouldn't know if they're there or not. Correct. Okay. So at the peak ever, if you were to guesstimate, what's the most officers that we had in Iran actually working, what would that be?

I mean the peak would have probably been under the Shah and 60-ish.

Still 60s, still not a big number.

Not a big number of American officers.

That's exactly what I'm saying. Yeah, but they would be running networks of locals. So okay, so if they're there, would they be white guys? Would they be regular guys that look like?

They could be. They would be basically whatever the United States, whatever the United States was hiring at CIA, which was predominantly Caucasian back then, but there could have been women, there could have been blacks, there could have been Asians that were also recruited by CIA at the time.

So it's not like they're going and finding American, Iranian, Iraqi, whatever to be able to leverage them to send them there.

Correct. If anything, they're trying to avoid that because of the instant suspicion.

So what is the population right now of Americans living in Iran today? Do we know that number, Rob? Can you, can you pull up? That's a good question. Do we know that number Rob? Can you can you pull up a question? What is the population of Caucasian Americans living in Iran today

White Americans living in Iran today. You can put Caucasian. Let's see what it says living in Iran today

Because if I'm Iran Even if I see one person it appears there's no publicly available reliable sources Although exact numbers are not published past this must suggest that thousands of US citizens, including expats, dual national students, and business professionals reside or stay in Iran, often intermittently in mid-2025, during the rising tensions. State Department issued this, I remember this one, this is recent, that just happened, 25,000 people. This is right before they attack the nuclear facility. So you got to get out of there. But what I'm trying to say is, okay, even if one white guy lives in Iran, why are you here?

So if I'm Iran and I'm overly paranoid consistently, I'm going to be like, you're either CIA, you're either somebody that's trying to give Intel to another, get them out of here, right? Or or rest them find a way to get So that's not gonna work effectively. So we have to rely what other Intel do we rely on as much as Masada get Intel from? Iran

so I Don't want to think of it as a country I want to think of it as a rogue nation a rogue nation means a nation that basically prevents the the trans the transients of American citizens, like Iran, like North Korea. These are countries where you can't get in. If you have an American passport, good luck getting in.

And if you do get in, good luck not going to jail right away. So rogue nations, you primarily rely on third country intelligence, like we're talking about with Mossad. You primarily rely on signals intelligence, which you would get from NSA.

You primarily rely on military intelligence, which you would get from NSA. You primarily rely on military intelligence, which you would get from the intelligence services of your four branches or five branches of military with the Space Force. And those branches of the military are getting a lot of their information from other third party groups. They're getting it from the UN. They're getting it from military channels.

Submarines collect secrets. Airplanes collect secrets. So you've got this conglomerate at all times that are always collecting, but you're primarily relying on signals that you can absorb and intercept. And your human intelligence is coming from a third party.

But aside from Assad, do we have another intel that we trust that would be in Iran to get intel for us or no? It would mainly be Masad.

So the 25,000 people, if you scroll back up again, this is an important two words that often get overlooked. You see the dual nationals? Yes. There are only a handful of countries that allow you to have dual citizenship with the United States. Those countries would allow you to have both an American passport and a foreign passport. So you could travel into Iran on the

foreign passport and essentially the border agents would never know you're an American citizen.

Who are the five countries?

There's only a handful. Costa Rica allows you to have dual citizenship. Spain allows you to have dual citizenship. I believe Canada might let you have dual citizenship. Rob, can you look that up? What, yeah, thank you.

What countries allow Americans to have dual citizenship?

Israel is one of them.

There you go. Canada, Mexico, many in Latin America. Oh, these require that you scroll that up again one more time. These nations do not require that you renounce your citizenship. So these are all dual national countries for the United States.

Okay, and then if you go lower up, where is Israel on that list? Because a lot of, you know of the criticism that a lot of, there it is, long-term grants, go a little bit lower, Rob, countries that allow it only in limited circumstances, Japan, Singapore,

countries that generally do not allow dual citizenship. Let's see this list real quick. China, India, Saudi, UAE, Qatar, Indonesia, Malaysia. Where is Iran on this list, by the way? Did you see anywhere Iran above?

I think Iran allows dual citizenship, actually. If you... There it is. So scroll up to section one, sir. No, I don't see it under Asia Pacific. I didn't see it under Middle East either.

So this is not all encompassing. There's 160 something countries, So this is not all encompassing. There's 160 something countries.

So this is not every country. Iran does not formally recognize dual citizenship under Iranian law. Anyone who's considered Iran citizen is treated solely as an Iranian citizen while in Iran, even if they hold another passport. Dual citizenship is legally, isn't legally acknowledged. Iran will not provide conciliar access to dual nationalists from their country while in Iran.

If you are an Iranian citizen under Iranian law by birth, Iran assumes you are 100% Iranian in legal matters. Yeah. So, okay. So let me go where I'm going with some of these questions. We're going to come back.

We're all over the place right now. We'll come back to it. So the Shah is the leader of Iran for, I don't know, 37 years, 38 years, 39, somewhere in the high 30s, right? He was there, can you pull up how many years he was in reign? 38 years, 41 to 79, okay, 38 years.

And he improves the economy, allows women to vote. Women have freedom. They're not forced to get married at a young age, nine years old, eight years old, 10 years old, all that stuff gone. Great relationship with the West. People travel in and out. He falls, he leaves, he dies.

Khomeini comes in, IRGC comes in. I had the former founder of IRGC here doing a podcast with us a few months ago. And then it's been now 46 years, okay? And everyone's been waiting for his son to go back and bring freedom to Iran, Reza Pahlavi, whose son we've had him on here a few times as well. And nothing's happened.

I think he's a nice guy. I don't think he's a father to be tougher or his grandfather. He's a nice guy. And lots of people have been waiting for him to do it. I don't think he wants to do the job. I don't think he's going to do the job. And he keeps saying peaceful. We have to do it peacefully, peacefully, peacefully, peacefully, peacefully. But this is not the job of anybody. Okay. The revolution of the

Shah leaving wasn't peacefully. It was nasty, but they've had control for 46 years if the CIA and Others really wanted Iran to fall the last 46 years It was a lot easier to do it under the Shah Then it would be now Why have why hasn't us mi6 Mossad the Middle East became chaotic after the Shah fell.

If we keep hearing these stories about, let me tell you, what's the word I'm looking for, that they got involved to create a coup, whatever the word is, if they have the playbook, if they know how to do it, if they know Iran is chaotic and they call it what the, what's the phrase they say of terrorism, the, there's a, they're the such and such of terrorism. Like they're the ones that generated all over the world. Why hasn't MI6, Mossad and US work together?

State sponsored terrorism. Yeah. Why haven't they worked together to cause a fall 46 years?

You left them alone. Why so this is where? Uncomfortable truths have to be said right sure Iran is not a priority for the United States and When you have friends like 46 years, it's not been a priority Why would it be a priority Russia's not a priority for the United States either anymore. We don't, they don't touch our economy. They don't touch our people.

We're militarily insulated against them. And most important of all, Pat, we have friends who they have to go through first. So it's a problem that we outsource. It's Saudi Arabia's problem. It's Israel's problem. It's the UAE's problem.

It's Jordan's problem. These are all allies that we have. And we give them money. We have military bases that they host. We feed them intelligence and they take action on the intelligence. A big part of the reason why Netanyahu, even still to this day, doesn't have to kowtow to the United States. It's because he understands the leverage he has. He understands that he is the wall

that protects the United States and the Western allies from Iran. And it makes it so that we can spend our money on something else, and he spends his money and his lives protecting the rest of us against Iran. If it was a priority for us,

like it was on the day that Trump went in and blew up the nuclear sites, when it's a priority for us, we reach right into that cookie jar and do our thing. But when it's not a priority for us, we reach into other cookie jars.

So when you say they have to go through somebody else, it's kind of like, before you can come fight me, kick this guy's ass, that guy's, then you can come talk to me about final. It's like a weight class, you got to come up. Okay. So then if that's the case, in this case, wouldn't that paint Israel as the protector to what Iran could do to others, if that's the case, why are they not seen and they're

getting the level of criticism they've been getting the last two years, two and a half

years? So first of all, it took them two and a half years to get this current level of criticism, right? Right now is when you have...

It's been about a year. They're getting destroyed right now on online, like the people are going after Israel in

a hardcore way.

Online. Online is the masses. The masses have no authority. Well, what I'm concerned about is how does, how do Western leaders treat them?

So you do that, Rob?

Yeah. The masses don't matter. And if the masses think they matter, that's why they're the masses.

Israel understands.

Online influencers, YouTubers, podcasters. We can talk and people can carry our voice, but what can we do to affect policy, man? Not a thing. Affecting policy isn't profitable either. So that's why they, YouTube can turn us off if they don't like what we have to say, right? Facebook can quiet you if they don't like what you have to say. So what power do we really have? Right? That's... We have to avoid certain keywords so that we don't get cancelled by the organisation, not by the internet.

But do you think for a guy that's very open about the fact that Mossad is extremely reckless, very open about the fact that, you know, we don't have to solve Iran's problem because that's Israel's problem. We just give them the money and go, you go do it, right? What do you need? Here, go do it. It's on you and you guys pretty much can self-sustain yourself.

Even better, we don't give you the money. We sell you the weapons, so we make the profit,

but you're still giving us, you're still buying in American dollars. getting the last two years, people don't know the full story of the role they play that's positive for the world?

100%. Really? 100%.

It's 100% true.

I would have not guessed you would have said that. So I am a staunch supporter of Israel's importance to the United States.

Holy shit.

Tell me why. Absolutely. Because they are the first wall of fucking defense for us. We, there's a reason that we fucked everybody up so much at the end of World War II, because we had to build walls around the American boundary. We needed to manipulate Europe. NATO is there to protect us. We're not there to help Europe. NATO is there to protect us. Israel is there to protect us. We continue to, our presidents like Biden,

call the Saudi Arabian prince all sorts of horrible names and promise justice, but it never happens because Saudi Arabia protects us. Americans for sure don't want our enemies at the gate. So we let our enemies go to other gates. And then in diplomatic channels, military channels

and intelligence channels, we give them the tools to fight the fight. Why do we continue to support Ukraine? Because they are weakening Russia. That benefits us. Hurts Ukraine. But as a very pragmatic fact, a Ukraine death does not equal an American death. Not in the eyes of an American. Certainly not in the eyes of the American administration.

Okay, so, um... If that's the case, and we're going with the role Israel plays, how have they gotten the reputation they have right now

that they control American politicians, they fund American politicians, they're doing all this stuff and by the way it's documented AIPAC spends the money, you know, they're hardcore or they're always going out there and you know lobbying and hey you know we're this and we need you to come and we'll travel you and we'll send you this one sir. How have they gotten the level of criticism they have and why isn't half the market believe in them? They're like, nah, I'm not with you. I think you guys are, you know, Trump is a puppet to BB and Israel, all this stuff that you started here.

So a big part of that is because Israel doesn't trust us. They know we have set them up to take bullets instead of our people. They know that we put them into a country that's surrounded by their enemies. They understand that every proposition and accord that we try to force them into benefits us more than it benefits them. Israel's not stupid.

Israelis are very, very smart, very entrepreneurial, very self-defensive. They understand that nobody's there to help them. We as Americans, we forget that we have institutions that protect us. We have partnerships that we believe in. We pay health insurance so that we're not going to get sick. We have this false idea that we're safe. Israelis don't carry that idea. They know they're not

safe. So they do whatever it takes to get them just an inch more of security. So they reach back into the United States and they do lobby for what they believe in and they do try to take advantage of markets when they can and leverage relationships when they can. I mean there's this phenomenal book called Thou Shalt Prosper written by a rabbi about why business benefits from the five like these five principles of Hebrew of Judaism. Phenomenal book. Every business leader should read this book. But in that, he very clearly lays out how the

traditional beliefs of Judaism translate directly to business benefits.

And the same thing, I guarantee you, applies in some other book to political benefit. Yeah, that is, that is, um, um, okay. So they know that we set them up. When you're saying we set them up, where else could have given them their land? That's by Jerusalem. So it's not like it's a setup, right? That was the location. That's what you're getting. We didn't have to help you. We helped you. You got

the land. You're grateful. Explain to me the setup part because I don't understand

why they would think that we set them up for failure. I don't think they think we set them up for failure. I think they know that they can't trust us fully. I think they know that. Tell me why they don't trust us. Same reason Taiwan doesn't trust us.

Why?

Because they see that we have rhetoric that shifts. It shifts every four years with politicians. It shifts every two years with midterm elections. It shifts with the marketplace. And it was the end of World War II that many of these quote unquote,

you know, new countries were born. Israel obviously doesn't believe they were born after World War II, but many Americans believe that that's when Israel was born. So Taiwan came about as a result of the nationalists being forced out of China. Israel came about as Jewish populations were forced out of Europe, and they were given this land.

That's how so many people believe it, that's not how they see it themselves. And then from that point forward, their economy was kind of forced on them. Their trade with the United States was forced on them. It's the same way with Japan, it's the same way with Germany, it's the same way with France, Poland, all these countries that were devastated after World War II, the United States swept in and was like, hey, we'll help you rebuild and we'll put you in debt

and you'll build markets that benefit the United States and this long list of things, including ideologies. You'll have to be a democracy and you'll have to follow our democratic principles. All of that worked, Pat. It worked for a long time until about 2020

when 20 years of an American conflict in the Middle East started to show that we didn't know as much as we thought we did. And then strongman leadership started to pop up and started to work. People like Putin, people like Netanyahu. In other countries of the world, we started to see a shift towards socialist beliefs and socialist practices rather than democracies.

And they were working, economies were building and growing, militaries were winning in a way other than America was distracted for 20 years. That's what changed everything recently.

So let's move on from how they feel about us and how we feel about them. How does, how does, how does Russia and China feel about Israel?

I think that Russia and China look at Israel and they see pragmatic decision-making. And that is something that our adversaries appreciate because there's no ideology involved there. Whether you like Netanyahu's ideology or not, whether you care that he's a right-wing supporter or not, what he is pragmatically doing is destroying step-by-step the enemies that surround Israel, which will guarantee Israel security for five years, a decade, 15 years, 20 years. He's doing as much damage as he can to Israel's enemies, which are all America's enemies, in the time that he can before

he's essentially forced to back off of his war path. And when he has to back off off of his war path, then we'll see what the criminal courts of Israel have to say about him. So he doesn't quite know what the future holds, but other strongman leaders, China and Russia Russia see that and they say, America's supporting that. So what America says to its people and what America does in policy is not always the same. And how can we use that?

So criminal courts in Israel, when he's done, it could be very nasty for BP.

Could.

So he could end up being a useful individual for people that want peace there. But to Russia, what issues does Russia have with Iran? Doesn't Russia have a better relationship with Iran than Israel?

Oh yeah, for sure.

So then, does Russia indirectly view Israel as, would Russia rather see Israel get weaker or Iran get weaker? Because they help they help Iran so and Iran buys from them No, like they go back and forth

so what what Russia wants is Israel is Iran dependent on Russia and as long as Iran can be hurt Damaged put in a box. They will just become that much more dependent on Russia What Russia and China need are strong, dependent, I want to call them allies, but allies implies that you have a common ideology, right?

What they want is partnerships that are pragmatically predictable. And as long as Iran has no other friends in the world, they're going to keep going to China and Russia. As long as China has no other friends in the world, it's going to keep going to China and Russia as long as China has no other friends in the world That's going to keep going to Russia and vice versa

Okay, and I know Iran has these drones that they sell to Russia. They're known for The weapon that they're selling so that's like where the revenue comes from as well for them, but Say somebody wants to now flip it. So we just saw the motivation Why why would you why would us want to see Iran fall for what's not our problem? Let Israel deal with it Right, let's somebody else deal with it. But then why did they back then create a coup and allow Iran to fall?

That was those were the years before government oversight so that was the left hand reckless and the right hand not knowing what each other was doing and

so Kissinger promised Shaw that they would help and that they would allow him to use the hospitals and all this other stuff. And at last minute they didn't help him. And there could be a possibility that Kissinger wasn't necessarily reporting everything to Carter that Kissinger may have been more powerful than Carter was.

And these are all suspicions that can't be validated, but are completely probable. And that's what sucks so much about the days before oversight.

This guy was a very powerful guy. Oh yeah. Feared, hated, powerful, interesting, womanizerizer all in one. Very interesting. Okay, so let's go here. So today, if somebody today wants to see Iran fall, and they're in politics, they're actually on the inside.

If somebody did it from the eye of a CIA agent today, no one, say a former CIA officer, clandestine that you've been around, how would you be able to succeed today? How would you do it today? Knowing all the players, knowing where people are at, knowing who would want to see it, knowing who doesn't give a shit about getting involved, it's not our top ten problems that we have right now. President Trump sat right there and said

to me, yeah, we have so many problems in America. You want me to think about Iran? We have so many things that we're dealing with ourselves, right? How would one go about doing it if they're from the States?

You always have to approach things with multiple avenues, multiple ways in. So you would have, of course, one way in that's exclusively propaganda, trying to get the people on the inside to take action themselves. Propaganda is alive and well everywhere. Don't just think that it's Russians doing it to us.

We do it all over the world as well. We call it information warfare. So one route is through propaganda. Another route is through paramilitary or guerrilla support to known revolutionaries that are in country. That's why you have Green Berets. That's why you have CIA paramilitary.

That's why you have elements of government whose job it is just to support, train, arm, equip known revolutionary forces that are in any given country. But then you would also want to reach in using your intelligence services to create bot activity, cyber, cyber activity. So you could create more chaos from known opinions that are already happening in country. Anywhere you go, there's always people who disagree.

So if you really want an argument to get bigger and bigger, all you have to do is fuel both sides of the argument. So hack an algorithm, create a bunch of fake bots that comment and like and whatever else, and now you just made an argument bigger. So you have all three of those elements

before you start talking about foreign intelligence partners that do have reach into that country. And when you have a foreign intelligence partner who has reach into that country, sometimes it's just a matter of paying them for operations. Sometimes they already have their own

national security policy they're trying to execute and you can support that national security policy. So there's lots of ways to reach in. But the thing that's so frustrating about Iran specifically is nothing seems to be funded and supported for a long enough period of time to make real progress.

All four of those efforts happen, but then they're turned off, they're turned up. They're turned down All sorts of changes happen all the time and especially for professional intelligence officers current and former who have been Iran watchers It drives them crazy. It drives them crazy because they see success and then there's protests and then they hope that someone's going to continue to fund operations that advance the protests, and then they don't. Or they hope that there's going to be some kind of effort to swoop in and do something else, and there isn't.

And then you've also got instances like the B-2 bombing raid that occurred into Iran. A one-time attack like that, that's just a big muscle flex. That's not strategic or tactical benefit for a long-term operation.

So in other words, in order for it to happen, it's not going to be a peaceful one. It would be a very nasty one.

If it was peaceful, I'd be shocked. It would require somebody to die of natural causes, somebody else not to step up to the plate to take over when when Khamenei dies, and then everybody else to just agree to elections. I will say one thing that shocked all of us was when the least likely president was elected, right? I forget, I don't know how to say his

name, but when the current president was elected, nobody saw that coming. Raisi? Who's the current president? Yeah, it starts with a P. Oh yes. Pzeshkian. Right? Here's a guy that's... He was just on Tucker four weeks ago. But pro-bull markets, minority, did not win the majority, did not... no one expected him to win the majority vote, except that so few people voted, he ended up elected.

In contrast with the religious leadership. So this guy is an example of letting these three arms of espionage work. Letting covert influence and rebellion and letting natural things foment can cause change. But then this guy got screwed when we bombed Iran,

because now all of a sudden he has to choose between supporting the US or supporting Iran. Of course, he's going to support Iran.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I thought it was close at one point, but there wasn't enough momentum, and too many people wanted to play nice. And I don't think playing nice would have gotten the job done. And the only time I ever saw Trump flinch, not even flinch, but like a little bit nervous

was the day when they attacked those three facilities, when he walked up with himself, Vance and Hexet, maybe Rubio next to him as well. It's the shortest. It's the first time he ever said, God bless, you know, we, hopefully God is looking over us. Never saw him talk like that.

He seemed a little bit nervous. Okay. I figured you'd get a kick out of this. So I've been trying to buy this property for three and a half years.

Okay.

10, 11 acres on the airport, all this stuff. So one day I find out locally that this was the old CIA DOD property where Oliver North sold, you know, when they were going back and forth with the weapons, Iran contract, this is the land. Wow. Yeah. So we buy the property. After we buy the property, the director of the airport comes up and he says, you know, we've been trying to buy this property. I said, I didn't know that. I said, why are you trying to buy it? Well, nobody wants this property to be in a civilian's hand. He says, how much do you know about this property?

I said, I've heard a lot of stuff, but I don't know what's what. He said, what have you heard? It's like me and four of their people and in my executive team. Is it true that this was the CIA property and DOD and they would do a bunch of things? He says all of that is true and then some I said really yeah He says when we used to call back in the days when they used to call, you know

Cops or whatever they would call nobody would ever come to this property. Everybody wanted to stay away from this property So apparently they flew this stuff from this land. This is a tax-free zone property. This 11 acres here.

That's badass. When I pulled up and saw the new building and saw the new property backed up against an airport, what I thought was that the airport completely fits the model of a CIA airport.

Really?

Oh, yeah. And there are several CIA airports across the country for various reasons, but the acreage, the location in a downtown city space, it's a small airport that doesn't really have to serve executives, but can serve executives. It's got the right cover reason into being there.

It's big enough. It's got the right size landing strip. It's a great location for clandestine airborne operations.

Well, I'm glad you said that because the reason why you're here is they've asked me to invite you back to the CIA, and I'm the recruiter, so you know.

I'm not getting on that plane.

You're not open to the idea?

Not on that plane.

They've been watching you closely, they want you back. You're not open to it. Because if I get on a plane in fucking Florida man in like 20 minutes I'm no longer on American soil. So then they can do something to you. Exactly. All right well I guess that offer is off the table. I was gonna give it to you but you rejected it. Folks you know now he's not interested. Nowadays more than ever the brand you wear reflects and represent who you are. So for us if you wear a future looks bright hat or a value taming gear, you're telling

the world, I'm optimistic. I'm excited about what's going to be happening, but you're a free thinker. You question things. You like debate. And by the way, last year, 120,000 people got a piece of future looks bright gear with value taming.

We have so many new things. The cufflinks are here new future looks bright. This is my favorite the green one just yesterday Somebody placed an order for a hundred of these if you watch the PBD podcast You got a bunch to choose from white ones black ones If you if you if you smoke cigars and you come to our cigar lounge We have this high quality lighter cutter and a holder for the cigars. We got sweaters with the value tainment logo on it. We got mugs

We got a bunch of different things But if you believe the future looks bright if you follow our content and what we represent What value tainment would PVD podcast go to VT merch comm and by the way, if you order right now There's gonna be a special VT gift inside just for you So again, go to VT merch calm place your order. Tell the world that you believe the future looks bright Let's go to two other issues that's going on three other issues that's going on here with us. One is a Russia gate

Okay, Russia gate Stories been out of our date for a while. It's not like we haven't known when the dossier was paid for 35 million Hillary Clinton We've all read it. We've seen the story. That's not news now You know, Tulsi Gabbard who is running DNI is coming out and saying hey, here's what we're gonna be doing and They're going after shift. They're going after Hillary. Here's here's a President Trump today just five hours ago. Go ahead Rob

I had to go through the Russia, Russia hoax. And it was actually it's it was a strain on the relationship. I actually told him I said, you know, they got this phony investigation going on. Russia, Russia, Russia, totally phony, created by Adam Schiff, Shifty Schiff and Hillary Clinton and the whole group of them. And it made it very dangerous for our country because I was unable to really deal with Russia

the way we should have been. I'm looking at Pam because I hope something's going to be done about it. These people put our country at great danger. And Adam Schiff was all made up. It was a hoax. The Mueller report came out.

They all hated me. They had 18 Trump haters. And they said I did nothing wrong. They couldn't believe, they couldn't find anything. After years of investigation, it was all a hoax. It was a hoax created by the Democrats, but in particular Schiff, Crooked Hillary, the whole group.

Let me pause it right there.

And uh...

So what do you think is gonna happen here? You think, I mean at this point, people know, right? Obama knew all along, we got the reports that shows that Obama knew this was going on and it kind of looked the other way and he allowed it to happen. What level of accountability do you think will happen here?

This is tricky. So unfortunately, we are dealing with an issue that will always have information that's confidential, that's classified. We're not ever going to know what they know. We're not going to know what's being leaked. That isn't a controlled leak.

We're not going to know what's real information versus what's spun information. So because we'll never know, it does two useful things for the current administration. First, it distracts us from whatever else we might be focusing on. And then second, it continues to drive this bipartisan divide, which is going to be very important going into the midterms. So there's lots of benefits from talking about something even though you and I can't reasonably expect any significant

outcome to come of it. The second thing it does is that it allows this question about whether or not a president, former or current, can be held accountable, accountable for their actions, for their words, for their conspiracies. And that's, to put a fine point on it, I don't think a president will ever be held accountable for what

they did or didn't do right or wrong because the office of the president is so representative of freedom around the world that to actually put a president behind bars to hold them in contempt would be something that basically says, hey we're America we made a mistake. We can't do that on the world stage.

They did it to him didn't they? They gave him a muck shot president. They, they, you know, who's what presidents ever had a muck shot.

They tried. They certainly tried with, with Donald Trump and the, the vote of the people on two separate elections,

four years apart kind of demonstrated the power of the office of the president. If, if, if Trump didn't flip those three Supreme Supreme court justices and it was the other way around six, three, when they voted for him, not, not to be able to be on the ballot in Colorado, if they would have voted the other way and said, yeah, we're going to remove him from ballot on Colorado and five other States follow, he's not winning. Kamala Biden is the president today. And he would have been in jail or they would have done anything and everything in their

power to say that he was a criminal. They would have done that. So we got very close.

Without the Supreme Court, we're there. It's at its core, you're right, but there's also other levels that have to, essentially other dominoes that are smaller dominoes that also have to fall into place and we don't really know how any of that would turn out but I I don't pay a lot of attention to these internal divisive politics because it really is

It's a it's a page out of the political playbook to distract the American people the masses It's it's a tool to distract the masses. It's also a tool to distract your adversaries because all of the Russian intelligence services that are watching open source collection from the United States, they're spending time and money wondering what's going to happen next instead of collecting meaningful intelligence on what the true plans and intentions are of the United States in Mexico with trade

tariffs with rare earth minerals, right? So we want to waste our enemies' time. We didn't invent this. We borrowed this skill from the USSR. The USSR literally had a playbook that said that they would let their politicians pontificate

in multiple hour-long meetings because they knew that it would distract the Americans.

Got it. So you don't think there's anything there and Trump may be doing something to play everybody else into going in and seeing what's going to happen. What's that Rudy Giuliani says Obama will invoke presidential immunity over the Rush Oaks investigation. But here's one little problem that could lead to an indictment.

You're not immune from the rest for the rest of your life as a president. Obama becomes a problem because he will invoke presidential immunity. Where's this Rob?

Is this a clip from here?

What is this just now?

August 10th.

Okay.

So yesterday, a couple of days ago, let's see it. Becomes a problem because he will invoke presidential immunity. The decision the Supreme Court made that that helped Trump. The acts are kind of different. But there's a problem. Yeah. It continues after he's president. So starting on January 1st, 2017, any participation of him in the conspiracy is not immune. You're not immune for the rest of your life as president. So he'll be immune if whatever allegations against him are contained within his presidency. But if he's helping to assist over that three year period

that they push Russian collusion into 2017 and 2018, then he's of course, he could be indicted for that. Obama becomes a problem.

Do you agree with him?

So I agree with him on a legal basis. However, the operative term that he used was conspiracy. I think if there's anything we all learned from the Diddy investigation, it's that the Department of Justice can't do shit to prove a conspiracy

because they couldn't pin conspiracy on Diddy. They failed to pin conspiracy on multiple players because it's very hard to prove conspiracy. So, whether or not there was a conspiracy, whether or not that is backed up with evidence, it's a completely different thing that our Department of Justice can bring the talent and the and the team together to be able to make a true conviction of conspiracy.

So you don't see much happening here.

I see us getting distracted, man. So you don't see much happening here.

I see us getting distracted, man. I see a lot of us being distracted. I see a lot of bifurcation of politics. And I wanna correct one thing. I don't think it's Trump doing it. I don't think it's Trump sitting in the Oval Office saying,

you know what we need to do guys? We need to distract America. I think it's his PR department. I think it's the people who are trying to, trying to make sure that the Republicans are still in a good position for the midterms. I think there's all sorts of advisors who are like,

we need to do something to get the eyes and ears and get all the clicks off of.

But a strategic way of telling Trump to protect them or because somebody else that's the establishment is telling the PR people to tell the president to say this because they want to distract others like is it direct or indirect? It's it's direct. Oh, it's direct. He knows that he it's not a negative His own teammates are not doing this to distract him. Correct. Okay, so it's not a negative thing. It's not a negative Okay. Yeah, it's just and it's not a Trump thing. It's not a negative thing. Okay. Yeah. And it's not a Trump trying to misinform the United States.

Okay. So let me ask you this, as somebody that is in this world where you study deception and you know what's going on because you've been a part of it as a CIA officer, not been a part of it, but like you're in it and you're seeing what they're saying.

They're like, no, that's bullshit. What you want to watch is you want to watch what Donald Trump is able to do that delivers on his campaign promises and what is he able to do that makes a demonstrable improvement in the lives of the average American because that's going to be what we carry with us Into the midterm and the midterm is going to be critically important because if Donald Trump wants to continue to make progress He needs as much control to be Republican held in the Congress as possible at the midterm.

So that's the stuff that we need to pay attention to. His foreign policy ambitions are all over the map right now because these strongman leaders are all jockeying for control, whether it's Netanyahu or whether it's Putin or whether it's Xi Jinping, they're all manipulating and jockeying in different regions. Europe is, is kind of tits up. In the last two years, you've got three major economies all dissolving their parliaments,

all going through a no confidence vote in France, in Germany, in Portugal. You've got Hungary and Bulgaria supporting Russia. You've got Slovakia having a pro-Russian president brought in, like Europe's in chaos. So foreign policy is going to be something very difficult, and it's too complex for the average person to understand.

And it's not Trump's priority, just like he told you here, why would I worry about Iran? So how does he make domestic wins? That's what he and that's what the party behind him want to see. Everything else is just something

to fill the 24-hour news cycle.

Epstein, did you, and I know that's part of 24-hour news cycle, how do you view Epstein? The list, the people, the names, the Clinton, all these guys, how do you view it?

I view it through a list of probabilities. I think the most probable explanation is that he was killed in prison. Whether he killed himself or whether somebody was hired to kill him or whether he pissed off the wrong person and they killed him because he was an accused sex trafficker for children is kind of irrelevant. I think the probability is he was killed in prison. I don't think that he was in an orchestrated hit by some politician. I don't think that the deep state was involved.

I think that if it comes down to whether or not he was an intelligence asset, it is likely that he was on somebody's radar, if not a full-blown paid asset. Very unlikely that he was a paid asset of the FBI or the DEA or any other US entity. So he had incredible access and incredible value that foreigners would be able to exploit

far better than we would. And they wouldn't want him dead, right? Because they would always want to hold out hope that he was going to get through the trial, come out the other side, maybe spend a couple of years in prison, pay a fine, and be right back in the intelligence collection business.

Wouldn't they be worried that maybe he threatened them because he had all the intelligence. If you guys don't take care of me, I'm going to do this. So let's just take him out because he sounds a little bit too emotional and irrational.

The problem with that is that it's very easy to spin one person's story and then you can always destroy that person reputally, financially afterwards. That's very, very easy to do. Look at John Kiriakou. Very easy to destroy somebody without ever killing them. The flip side is, he would only have one shot. He'd have one golden arrow.

Right? I'm gonna let this video loose. After that golden arrow is shot, what's he got?

They destroyed him. Nearly a million dollars of pension they took away from him. But he's never gotten, till today. Any of the two years in, two years time I believe if I'm not mistaken. 23 years, John Kiriakou.

So the one shot, they would have said, no, he's emotional, he's this, he's that. So why are they releasing Jelaine Maxwell? Why is she going to a different jail? Why is she out there now? I thought I didn't I see story Rob, but what's the story about her being released or.

Yeah that came out yesterday.

Jelaine Maxwell lawyer drops bombshell work release report. This was just released. Go a little bit lower. The lawyer of Jeffrey Epstein-Chavez has denied claims that she's able to leave her secure asylum. However, the report of Maxwell was certainly 20 years in prison. Has been granted work release privileges and defiance of federal rules for sex offenders was made by Allison Gill, host of Mueller.

She wrote political podcasts. So they're saying what they're saying now that's not correct. That's what her attorney is saying that she is not released. But she is willing to now talk and how close are you following the Epstein?

I don't follow it that closely. I don't follow it that closely because again, I'm trying to conserve my resources for what I think really matters. And then second, whatever is on the Epstein files, it's just like JFK. It is not going to be complimentary to the US federal government. They're not going to release it.

If it's not going to benefit strategically or tactically the current administration, it's not going to get released. And what's interesting is each current administration isn't an individual. It's a party. So it's not just Donald Trump.

It's the Republican Party. It's not just Barack Obama. It's the Democratic Party. So's not just Barack Obama, it's the Democratic Party. So if whatever the information that's currently classified, once that sees the light of day, you can't put it back in the box. So it's always better to keep it in the box.

Yeah, but so then what that means is, how many people do you think actually know what happened with Epstein? How many people know for a fact who's on that list? How many people are on that list?

Maybe no more than 50, probably closer to 25.

Closer to 25, no. Of those 25 people, how many of them are in a place where maybe something happened to their daughter or to their kids or maybe to them when they were younger, where they're like, no, I'm gonna make sure the world knows about this. Meaning none of them would wanna bring that story out

to the public, really?

Every one of them would have more invested in their political career than they would in aligning this with their family. And here's the thing, man, when you get to the level where you're dealing with scumbags, first, you segregate your family out of just survival need.

You can't think of all the FBI officers that have to hunt down child pornography. They can't do their day job and live in a world where they think of their kids. So they have to compartmentalize the job from their family life. It's the same way in politics. You have to compartmentalize

your job from your family life. And then second to that, they're also thinking about what does this do to the structure, the institution of the American people. If I release it, XYZ happens. If I keep it confidential or classified, ABC happens. And if it's classified now, somebody else can always come back and release it in the future. And then the blood is on their hands when they release this. So it's just easier for me to kick it down the road to focus on something else.

I mean, there has to be an element of selling the dream. There has to be an element of, hey, look, you're on the inside now, you know, guys, we can't release this. You know, this is America, we have to protect it. If they knew they would lose their mind.

You're at a different level. You're no longer part of the masses. That's the masses, you're now on the inside. What's being said for them to flip? It's a very interesting conversation. When somebody goes in who views themselves as a statement, then they get the intel. What is that script that's being given to them?

So there's a speech that we get when we first join any kind of sworn service. And it's almost always the same topic, even though it has different names. At CIA, the speech was called American primacyacy and the speech was given by this officer at CIA who was 20 years, a 20-year veteran of CIA and he got up in front of all of us after we

had taken our sworn oath to protect and defend the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic and he gave us this 45-minute lecture about American Primacy and how America has to be the number one superpower in the world. It has to continue that way. We may disagree with it at times. We may come into contact with information

that we think is unjust. But it doesn't matter what happens in the moment, because in the arc of global power competition, the United States needs to remain in the front spot. Because if we're not, who is? And when somebody else takes the front spot,

what does that do to the American people? The 330 million American people. And do you want to be the person whose principles sacrifices the safety of the 330 million people? We all get that speech what you agree with it pragmatically

That's how you do the job It is what it is. That's that's part of what you have to do. And if you go against the principles, you're John Kiriakou If you go against the principles, you're Edward Snowden. Oh my God. You know, it's funny, Pat, because people, and you've seen this, I'm sure, people call me like a CIA plant. They accuse me of still working for CIA. It's way more pragmatic than that, right?

I understand why CIA does what they do. I understand what happens if you go counter to what they approve or let you do. So why would you go contrary? Why would you swim against the flow if swimming with the flow gives you more reach, more wealth, more power, more success? Maybe that makes me unprincipled, but pragmatically speaking, it's one road to Rome.

Do they, have they ever called you and told you, Hey, listen, relax, you're talking too much.

Uh, I get an email every year that reminds me in a, in a templated format that I'm criminally liable for whatever I say and whatever I put on the internet in print or in, or in digital interface. So that's their way of letting me know someone is still watching you, someone's still listening to you. I've been up to CIA three times in the last two years

physically to sit with a panel of people who are talking to me about my content and saying, this is on the line, this is safe, this is not safe.

Oh, you're kidding me.

I get those emails, I get phone calls, but at the same time time I also get, I get text messages, I get emails, I get public comments online from people who left CIA and are patting me on the back, saying they support me, saying they agree with me.

I know my reputation inside the halls of Langley is kind of 50-50. Some people hate the fact that I'm capitalizing on my background. Some people love the fact that I'm out there accurately representing the difficulties, the commitment, the patriotism of the men and women who still serve.

And that those three meetings that they had, how long was it? Was it a few hour meeting? Oh, I figured because they're showing clips.

They don't show clips. It's hilarious. It's hilarious because you can't have your phone, you can't have your computer, you can't have any kind of electric device.

Do they check to make sure you don't have hearing aids? They check your hair, everything?

So when I go in, there's, if you go into any kind of heavily secured federal facility, you drive to a gate and then at the gate you park and then you pass through a pretty rigorous security checkpoint. So you run your bag through checkpoint, you walk through a metal detector, sometimes you get patted down, they make you sign an affidavit

that if you're caught with anything on your person, you're criminally liable for falsifying your report to the security guard because they're federal officers. They're not like security guards, they're federal uniformed officers.

So when you lie to them, you're lying to a federal agency. So you go through these steps before you're ushered to a secure room, and then in the secure room, you have the conversation. And then you go in reverse on the way out. And that's not just for publishers and authors

and influencers. That's also for people who are retiring. Like when you get your, when you get your high five and your fake Rolex, when you retire from a federal agency, you go through the same rigmarole because you're not, you're not a uniformed officer anymore.

You're a nobody who's just allowed in today to get your pat on the back before you leave.

That's, that's wild. Because I can see if you're, if you're going out there talking, doing what you're doing, they're like, Hey, what is crossing the line? What cross on the line is given actual details of a mission you were a part of, right? Is that cross specific to missions that you were?

The terminology is sources and methods that you yourself or sources and methods of active intelligence collection. That's, that's the key word that makes it criminal. Anything other than that, they can pursue you on civil charges for contract violation, et cetera. But John Kiriakou was inside that sources and methods space.

Okay. So, uh, uh, next question for you with threats, who, who is the biggest threat that they look at in the CIA? Is it a religion? Hey, look at what's going on with Islam in UK and Europe and look at the damage you're doing. They're coming over here next. We got to be careful with a religion, right? Is it a region? Is it a community? Is it a mindset? How does CIA, you know, rank threats and, or any of those that I said on the list? Like how do they look at it and say, the number one threat is this, number two threat is this,

how would they view it? The number one threat is China.

Still.

And that's not just how CIA views it. That's in the published national security assessment that comes from the DNI. Number one threat is China. Number two threat is Russian influence and chaos in Europe. That's the number two threat, I'm pretty sure, according to the DNI. And then I think after that, it goes into more transnational threats, cyber threats.

I am certain that the next year's assessment is going to include fentanyl or something with Mexican cartels. But that's essentially how they rack and stack the threats. And it's because one threat has multiple sub threats. China is a military threat to the United States. It is a regional threat to US allies, including the Philippines, Japan, South Korea. It is an economic threat because it's growing its economic capability to compete with America one-to-one,

whether it's telecommunications, whether it's chip manufacture, whether it's electronic vehicles, it's a logistics threat with the movement of materials as well as rare earth minerals. So these compounding sub threats make China the number one threat.

Did they ever bring up the religion of Islam or no?

So radical Islam was absolutely on that top ten list during the global war on terror because we were concerned about the radicalization of Islam, not Islam writ large, but that radicalization of Islam. What we've seen since then is that anybody can be radicalized. It doesn't have to be Muslim.

You can radicalize an angry kid in a basement in Pennsylvania, right? So there's ways to radicalize all sorts of different people. So we've moved away from being fearful of religions and move it into recognizing that it's the weaponization of ideology that's used by radical groups. Yeah. I would be surprised, Pat, if there's anybody in government that sees Islam as

a threat. I would be surprised because that's, that is a way that was... China does. But China's not the US. No, I know that but China does yeah because and Good. I was just gonna say it's a level it shows how How not sophisticated China is that they still view that as a fear as a as a national security concern, right? They haven't they haven't evolved to the place where they actually can identify a true threat. Yeah, I'm reading the Shah's book again for the

God knows how many times. Can you pull up his book? Not this one. Go to images. I'll show you which one it is. It's the last one he wrote before he died. Second Row, second book. Right there. Yeah. That one right there. And he opens it up in the first chapter and talks about his bigger concern because this could have been a blind spot that he had He was more worried about communism in the 70s than he was about Khomeini he thought

Because of the whole, you know Russia USSR Soviet Union and hey You know Karl Marx Stalin Lenin all that and they were moving to Iran. So his his bigger threat was the two-day party Saddam Hussein, I think offered to kill Khomeini for him. Can you verify this Rob? I think Saddam Hussein offered to kill Khomeini and He didn't think of Khomeini as a threat, right?

And some say he mismanaged the threat. He saw an ideology philosophy like communism as a bigger threat than who's Khomeini? He's going to come and do something to Iran. You're nobody. You can't do anything to me. And Saddam, who is a little bit more reckless than he was, kind of like you're talking about Mossad as a CIA earlier,

Saddam's like, hey man, you want us to take this guy out? Because you don't seem to be too threatened by him. No. OK. So he doesn't. And that offer was made by a few different people.

It wasn't just him that was the offer was made. I'd actually, Rob, if you can verify that I really want to see if that that offer was made because I don't want to just make claims and it's not I thought I Saw this somewhere Saddam Hussein threatened to kill How many is no so so somebody offered to kill? When Saddam was a consolidating with Iraq under pressure Shaw forced how many to leave Najaf how many forced to France?

some accounts suggests Iraq authorities harassed Khomeini and warned him to stop his anti-Shah activists but there's no verif- of course there's not going to be a verified record. But Saddam had a position, he saw Khomeini as an existential threat to Iraq and went to war so he apparently from- I have some friends that were former Savak guys from back in the days and I've spoken to some of the guys. They're all older right now. The former deputy director of SAVAK is somebody that I've had meetings with.

He's visited the house. And Saddam had a better eye for threat maybe than the Shah because he knew that guy you have to worry about. And because Iraq and Iran weren't having problems under the Shah, he wanted to eliminate a future threat. He didn't.

The moment the Shah fell, what does Iraq do, Saddam do? Attack Iran. I lived in Iran when Saddam attacked us. I'll never forget the attacks. Tabajo, Tabajo, Alamate Kermes. We would hear these alarm lights. So the lights would go out and tabaja tabaja alamatikim as a red signal shows that somebody's crossed our border and

Who was it? It was always Saddam and he's sending his people over Do you think it's naive to not sit there and Be seen some people that View Iran we view us as the enemy that they want to destroy this country and our Western ideology and say, no, it's more, we have to worry about socialists.

We have to worry about communists. We have to worry about Chinese. We have to worry about this. Maybe China's not the naive one. Maybe we're the naive one. Could that be a possibility?

Absolutely, because if you think about it, September 11, 2001 happened because the federal government thought communism was a bigger threat than radical Islam. And it wasn't until people were jumping out of towers that we woke up to the fact that we have a whole new threat that we didn't take seriously. So in many ways, we're standing in the shoes of the Shah, not realizing the true threat

because we're still focused on yesterday's threat. I think where we stand right now is best defined especially for people who understand how to shoot a gun. You've got your 5 meter target and then you've got your 15 meter target. China's our 5 meter target. China's right in front of us getting closer and and making gains every day.

If we start using our ammunition on the 15 meter target, we're going to continue to lose ground at the five meter target. So let's take out the five meter target and move on. Or let's put 80% of our effort into the five meter target, 20% of our effort in the 15 meter target. Let's not make the same mistake where you invest 100% of our effort into fighting communism

and then lose two of our buildings. Yeah because Saddam was a

wasn't the nicest guy but he had decent instincts. Because the dude

fucking got power in a history of other people just killing each other. Think about that. I mean one of the things I loved about living in the Middle East was that everybody knows what it's like to fight for survival, so they never take it for granted. Whereas here in the United States, you walk down the street, you go to Publix,

the grocery store here in Florida, everybody walking in and out of Publix has no fucking clue how to fight for survival. Even if they're carrying a weapon, it's there because they think it's going to help them, but they don't know how to actually fight for their survival. I mean, there you've got Bedouin people who, they didn't even have technology in the 1950s. And now it's 2025 and they've got the most modern cities in the world.

That's an incredible amount of transformation that has happened in the lifespan of basically two generations. They still remember what it's like to be under the hot sun with nothing.

No, I mean, that's the, you know, you said earlier with Israel. Israel has an edge because they're always in, in a not flight, fight mode, because they have to stay protected. America, we're so lucky.

Who are you worried about? Canada or Mexico? We don't go to some, oh my God, what if Canada taxes tomorrow? They cross the border. Hey, taba jo taba jo, alamatak hermes, Canada's here. No one worries about that, right? It's a very different threat that we have.

I don't know, I would just kind of ask him to see if there was always conversations about certain sex, certain religions, certain communities, certain calls to be ready of, and how do you watch what they're doing? Who's here? Who lives here? Who from ISIS? Who from this? Who from Hamas? Who from, you know, Houthis? Where are they at in the States? It would be something I would think about.

Story came out about Tucker. I don't know if you agree with him on this one or not. Rob, you want to pull that one up with not owning a computer?

So he said about a month ago, Tucker Carlson says he doesn't own a computer because the CIA plants kiddie porn. Do you agree with him here? I don't I don't agree with what Carlson's saying here. I understand why he's trying to Do what he does make alarmist claims get attention I actually think he's trying to back this one off which makes sense because this is a big stupid claim to make See, yeah CIA. First of all CIA. it's against their authorities to plant evidence on American citizens, period, against their actual federal authorities. So if they were to do it, and then that person went to trial, once it was shown that CIA

worked in any way against that person, then the whole trial would be debunked. So that is a ridiculous claim in many, many ways, just administratively, let alone ethically.

So in the last 30 days, a story came out about, well, you know, I didn't know my father was CIA. And then when he passed away, I learned that my father was CIA, right? And then I think Nick Fuentes or somebody showed a clip, somebody showed a clip of him on Sean Ryan saying he knew his father was part of CIA Dick Carlson Richard Carlson and

Now there is the well Nick Fuentes is fed. No. Well, this is this and this is that so, you know What was Tucker CI he went on some interesting trips? There's some pictures with him with a I don't know if it's an an AK 47, but I think it's not an M four. It's not an M 16. I don't, he's holding something. Were you here? Were you there? Somebody's asking me, you were just on traveling with your father here and there.

So what do you know about Tucker, you know, affiliation with CIA father being part of CIA. How do you view all these stories that are coming up right now?

So I don't know personally, I don't know anything one way or the other about Tucker Carlson specifically Because there's the overlap he's old enough that there's the overlap with with 9-11 and the crazier looser days of CIA so prior to September 11 2001 really anything is kind of possible because there was no oversight Records would have easily been destroyed. I mean, if there's anything we learned from, uh, um,

from the Obama years of CIA, it's that when that records could have been recorded, but they can still be destroyed. And even when we were looking at Guantanamo, there were still the director of CIA at the time. I forget her name. Uh, she was the temporary director. It'll come to me later.

But even she was directed to destroy Guantanamo Bay records and she did. Thank you, Gina Haspel. Look at that, that smiling face of destroying classified information just because you're told to.

That is principles second. Country over your principles. Country over your principles, bro. That's a, that she got the same fucking speech I got and she delivered.

Hurrah.

So, but the question is who cares if he was, you know what I'm saying? Like, what's the big deal if he was, is it just a big deal that, you know, you're maybe using assets to, you back in the act like you're innocent? Oh, shucks. I didn't know about it. What's the criticism of it?

That's what I'm trying to find out. The Fed I get, the informant I get, the CIA, slightly different, no?

Yeah, because what happens here and what happens so often with CIA is because they've shrouded themselves in secrecy, people don't trust them. And especially when you mash up a media, a strong media presence with CIA affiliation, that's like, that's hot sauce on a jalapeno. That's a guaranteed conversation. It's a guaranteed viral issue on the internet, right?

Because people already suspect that CIA is shaping the information that we read. They're already thinking that they're messing with our minds and running disinformation campaigns. So when you put a media persona like Tucker Carlson, together with a CIA affiliation, it's, it's out of this world. The same thing happens with, with anybody like me with a CIA affiliation.

Yeah. It's a crazy question for you. You know, sometimes I'll talk to a guy and they'll say, you know, they'll say, Oh, that guy gives me the vibes of being a Scientologist. Why? Because the way he asks questions, I feel like he went through certain levels to learn how to do the assist where you're trying to get information out of people. And he's very, were you ever Scientologist?

No. You know what, you speak like a Mormon. Were you ever part of church a lot of days since? Because you give me the vibes, even the way you talk to me, like it's a Mormon vibe you give me, right?

Or you know, that person gives me the vibes of being a former such and such. When you hear people talk and their mannerisms and the way they explain things. Do you ever watch and say, that guy could have been an asshole? Yeah.

You know what I'm saying?

I know exactly what you're saying. What trigger gives it away? What place?

Yeah, it's a great question. So in our world, we call it spotting the spook, when you spot a spook, because there are absolutely verbal and nonverbal indicators that let you know when you're talking to somebody who is trained. So we kind of separate the world

in the trained and untrained. Untrained is all the people who went to the school of hard knocks and trained is the people who went to some kind of systematic education about how to interrogate, ask questions, collect information,

protect personal information, et cetera. So just as a real quick aside, if you watch Tucker Carlson's interview with Vladimir Putin

perfect chance to watch Spock the spot the spook take place because you can see and

Hear how how trained Putin is and how untrained Tucker Carlson is so whether or not he was Dad's little helper when dad was CIA I don't know But he certainly wasn't trained because you can see what it's like when he sits across from a trained intelligence officer.

Oh wow.

Got it.

So Putin's interview with Tucker gave it away to you that he was never CIA himself. And he says he wanted to be one. They didn't hire him. He talks about it openly. Even Putin said it right off the bat.

Right. And you can really see it take place when you watch that. And I love that he did that interview. As much of a train wreck as it was, I love that he did an interview because it's such a phenomenal lesson in espionage for anybody who chooses to watch it.

And you can see Putin control the conversation, control the pace of questions. You can see him get his agenda across the line, no matter what Tucker Carlson's asking you can see Tucker Struggle for control and then ultimately cave in because he's he's trying to maneuver into a different type of question category it's such a brilliant piece of

You know KGB skill What do you think about Tucker I think Tucker's trying to make it in a world where Where media is changing. He knows he needs FaceTime. He knows he needs coverage. He knows he's not the best of all journalists or the best of all interviewers. He's got his five minutes in the spotlight and he knows that eventually that spotlight is going to dim out. So he's got to collect what he can while he can.

Sorry Tucker, wherever you are. Have you been on Tucker? You know it's true too. Have you done Tucker or no? No. You've pretty much done everybody. You've done, you've done Friedman, because that one did very well.

You've done Diary of CEO, I think you've done Ryan.

Yep.

So you haven't done Tucker, you've not you've not done Rogan. I've not done Rogan. Why haven't you done Rogan?

So Rogan actually it knowingly is passing me up Yeah, so I have a book coming out. I know we've we've talked about off-camera I have a book coming up my publisher actually reached out to the Joe Rogan show to make sure they were aware of me and my upcoming book and their producer wrote back and said Joe knows Andy Joe's been tracking Andy and Joe Joe does not want to talk to Andy. Very interesting. I don't know why I have a silly theory because when I interviewed with Lex and I have tremendous respect for Lex

Friedman when I interviewed with Lex it and I have tremendous respect for Lex Friedman, when I interviewed with Lex, it was before I really understood that during these interviews, there's a bit of a game that you play with the host, right? So I made Lex look bad on his own show. And a lot of the comments that came out afterwards, a lot of the reason that that show did so well is because people are commenting on what their opinions are for the ways that I made Lex look bad.

And there are apparently a lot of people out there that liked Lex looking bad. And then when that started going to Twitter and that started going to Instagram, I actually got some messages from Lex saying, why would you encourage people to say such mean things?

He said that to you?

Yeah. Lex said that to you?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I went back and I wasn't even tracking social media. So I went back into my social media feed and I saw where people were saying bad things and I saw where I clicked the thumbs up on whatever they were saying,

just because I was clicking like to everything. And I actually wrote Lex back and I was like, hey man, I don't really know what I'm doing. I apologize for hurting your feelings. Let me go back and recant it. And there's actually on Twitter, you can see me going back and saying, hey, Lex was a great interviewer. If you think I looked good on this interview, it's only because he was asking good questions.

And, but nevertheless, when I left Lex's studio, he and Joe Rogan down the street. I bet Joe would love to have a conversation with you. And then just a few days later, everything went tits up on the internet and Lex stopped talking to me. So if there's-

That makes sense. Because I don't see, Joe is very loyal to his friends, very loyal to his core, core friends, very loyal to him. So I'm not surprised that that's probably what could have happened because he really likes Lex and they have a very good relationship together It could be as simple as that. Yeah, so I actually think

Joe Would very much enjoy talking to you So but one thing about I love about Joe Joe said the following the first time I went on Joe Rogan Joe reached out I didn't reach out. I'm like, hey, oh, we had a conversation exchange. Like, hey, you want to do a podcast? I'm like, sure.

Boom, and then we went out there and that's kind of how it happened. And then the second time, Ron, he opened up his club. I wanted to go see his club. And then he said, hey, if you. I don't know if you saw when I gave him the gifts of comment section They were not I will never ever give anybody a gift after my you know If you go back and look at my history of me having like when I Kobe Bryant, I give him a gift

He was trying to be a producer I give him a signed copy of all the Star Wars people signing there when I had Mark Cuban on 10 or 11 years ago, I gave him a gift. I know he's an Atlas Shrug guy. I gave him an original first print, first cover, everything. Like, you can't find that. It's a very tough book to find. He didn't have one. He was thankful.

We're always giving gifts from the Middle Eastern side. Sean Ryan gives gifts as well, I think. But I'm like, yeah, next time if hopefully that'll happen eventually Fed you hear stories with Fed by the way, some people even say Lex is like Lex, you know That's everybody has a criticism that they get you know that guy take that we take money from Assad I've never you know, I've never taken money at 100% finance by my own company I sold my insurance company and now everything I'm doing here pretty much financed by us, but everybody has their own criticism Tucker took money from Qatar those guy took money from Assad, you know, Ben Shapiro got this this was I got this

What do you know about the the back and forth with? Peter Thiel story came out 2023. He's a fed. Did you read that story or no it I didn't read the story

I know what you're talking about and Peter Thiel has been a topic of For a while of a law for a long time, a federal debate for a long time. And what I know about Peter's company and where it intersects government, I'm pretty sure is still classified, so I can't talk about it. But I can see why people would accuse him of being tied up with...

I'm assuming you're talking about Palantir.

Again, and I don't know how much is public or not public, so you said it, not me, but that's pretty much where I can and can't talk.

Yeah, I had a guy, the recent theory that a guy said, and then I saw a video that the guy showed today on the podcast with Nick that JD came out of nowhere. Okay. JD Vance, he was a guy that came from Thiel and then Elon went in with the doge and they

got the Intel that they needed and Palantir now is getting a contract with the government and they, this may be a direction for technocracy and all this other stuff. Does a CIA sit there and worry about technocracies. There's a CIA sit there and say well listen the direction We may be going and these guys are no longer billionaires. They're not worth a hundred now They're worth hundreds what they're soon. It's gonna be a trillionaire in the next Twelve to thirty six months. I think it'll be worth two countries. You can buy – it's a very different world when you make that kind of money.

Is there the fear of a technocracy and some of these guys coming out of nowhere taking

control? Not at CIA. Not widespread at CIA. Keep in mind CIA's focus is almost exclusively foreign, right? If it's – if they're looking inside the United States, it's because a foreign threat has made it inside the United States, it's because a foreign threat has made it inside the United States. So they don't worry about that.

But I will say that there's a very practical level in federal government where somebody else decides what technology you use and whether you like it or not, whether it's good or bad technology, you're stuck with it because some acquisitions officer said, this is what we're buying.

I spent a lot of time on Windows 98 when it was shitty, man.

That's a different story than what we got here. Rob, what is the one clip we had, I don't know if you've seen this one, where this lady's on Stephen Colbert and she starts talking about, have you seen this thing?

I don't think so.

Okay, so this is interesting. So she's sitting and all of a sudden, I think the conversation is, did you ever work with CIA for the movie

and all this other stuff?

Yeah, she did a show called Homeland on Showtime, I believe, Claire Danes, where it was about intelligence agencies tracking terrorists. And here's what she said.

Fight camp for us producers and writers and. Really? camp for us producers and writers and really yeah is it like yeah so we park ourselves in a club in Georgetown and talk to like real spooks and you know people in the intelligence community and and the State Department and journalists

and people who really tell you that like what's the most surprising thing that they've told you about their jobs or something you would need to know well

every year it's different right we've been at it for a while and and the climate has been has changed but this year it was all about you know the distrust between the administration and the intelligence world and um and the intelligence community was suddenly kind of allying itself with

journalists which usually they're not. How long ago did you start shooting this this season?

Spike. So they're saying he interrupted so quickly because a producer on the back end was like, yo, stop. She's giving too much information. Is that likely or now is it just...

So I can see why a producer would redirect her for sure. I can also see how that may have just been he was excited. What year or what month was that, Rob? I'd have to go back and check. Because what she's saying is 100% accurate. We don't call it spy camp, but there are definitely moments where CIA officers

who are no longer undercover will meet in restaurants around the DC area with actors, actresses, investors, market movers, anybody who can get the approval to sit with them. So 2018. So 2018 is two years after the Trump administration

and Trump was keeping CIA at a distance, if you recall back then. So she's telling the truth and that is the kind of stuff that they talk about. And that's what happens at these camps. Silly enough, I actually am hosting my own spy camp for a UK, a major UK newspaper in my home in August and yeah

where I'll be doing the same thing. I'll run them through a mock surveillance operation, I'll run them through and teach them tradecraft and show them how to do things in the field so that they can be informed when they write their article.

That's wild, man. That is fully wild. So your book, when is the book coming out?

The book comes out September 9th.

September 9th?

Yep, it's called Shadow Cell, we discussed it earlier. And it was three and a half years in the making, man, not because it took me three and a half years to write it, but because it took three, two and a half years for CIA to finally like bend on letting it be published.

Oh wow.

Yeah.

They- So you and your wife wrote it together.

Yes, sir. It's our memoir about when we were put on an operation together against one of America's largest adversaries, and CIA really did not want us telling that story. They gave us initial permission to write the manuscript. We submitted the manuscript in 2022. They came back and they said, everything in this manuscript is classified.

This will never see the light of day. So we went through about a six month process of trying to understand what they didn't like about our manuscript. So we could edit it and fine tooth, change it. We asked for redactions, anything that would give us a way of getting to publicity, or to publication, and they just kept saying no. So we ended up having to hire an attorney,

and I'm totally happy to tell the world, Mark Zaid is a fucking miracle worker when it comes to getting a classified organization to understand and listen to the author. And, uh, and after getting to the place where we realized we had a case for a First Amendment lawsuit against CIA, when we presented that to them, that's when they were like, publish your book.

No shit. Because the content of the book is about a mole hunt where my wife and I were used as bait to get a mole from a foreign wife and I were used as bait to get a mole from a foreign country to make a mistake. And in the process of us building our operations, we also were being targeted by this mole.

And because we were put in harm's way, intentionally, we had a first amendment right to tell the story.

Are you joking?

Nope, dead serious. And this is the man that got it across the finish line and I will, I will support Mark Zade until the day I stop producing content. Do you feel safe from the CIA? I do because there are American laws. You smiled a little bit. I feel safe, I feel safe in my life and well and my, my health. I don't feel safe that they won't one day take all of my money and destroy my reputation and then leave me humiliated on the side of the

street. I hope that they won't. I hope that they see that what I do is better than you know being

destroyed like they did to John. But it's always a risk. Is that one of the reasons why you're going, you know, out of 2026? So you're not even a public, it's more what CIA then it is actually what's possible with regular day-to-day people.

It's both. It's both. It's partly...

The average person doesn't do what you're doing though. There's a lot of podcasters and YouTubers, but the only thing that makes you different than everybody else is you're a former CIA. Correct.

Correct. And, and honestly, if we were at a different point in history where, where expressing your assessments, expressing your opinions, expressing your, your, your sites, your truth was more accepted than I would probably keep producing. But there's always a risk now where someone's gonna disagree with you.

And if they won't take violent action, some agency might.

Wow, listen, that's pretty wild to be in a situation like that. But, you know, what, Rob, what I do like is if you wanna have the crew come in with the scissors, Andrew has agreed for me to cut his hair today. And I'm looking forward to this. When that day happens and all of a sudden,

what's the last line in a usual suspect? And then he disappeared, Kaiser Soze, right? Bustamante is soon to be Kaiser Soze, right? We run a podcast called the unusual suspects, not the usual suspects, the unusual suspect. But a threeyear anniversary. So

Most likely we will not be doing this again. So this probably the last time we're doing this. I'll give you a call I'll give you a call before we leave the country in 27. I'd love to do one last one before you leave Yeah, because of what's happened with your story right after you left with us you flippin blew up I would get messages like hey, can you help this guy come speak at our event? We're really trying to get a hold of him.

Does he do speaking? Because I'm like, look, just talk to him. Don't even reach out to me. Let me put you guys in contact with each other. But it's been a blast talking to you again. I appreciate you.

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