#442 - "It Wasn't Russia" 27-Year CIA Agent Drops DNC Hack Bombshell | Ray McGovern

So you served 27 years in the CIA under how many presidents? Seven presidents and nine CIA directors. Seven presidents and nine CIA directors, wow, that's a stacked resume. What made you want to join the CIA? Well, you have to think back to the late 50s. And I decided to major in Russian. I just sort of that was on a whim because I really liked the language and I didn't want to take any more French. And I got to learn a lot about Russia and then all of a sudden this fellow named John Kennedy got elected. And then as an inaugural speech, he said, look, if you have something special to give, I don't ask what your country can give to you, but ask what you can give to your country. Now you have to put yourself in those years, that didn't sound phony. That didn't sound odd then. And a lot of us, a lot of people my age, went down to Washington as soon as they could. I graduated from Fordham with a degree, a bachelor's in Russian, then a master's in Russian. I was commissioned in ROTC, so I had to do my two years as an Army infantry intelligence officer. But then the CIA grabbed me short of tour and I started there in April 1963, if you can believe it, after being in the Army during the Cuban Missile Crisis. So it's a good back of ways, but it gives you some sort of context and background to take a look at what's going on today and the ensuing years. So you joined the CIA right before the president was shot? That's right. The few months before Donald Kennedy was killed. My entry on duty was the 5th of April. In June, a month later, he made that wonderful speech at American University, saying among other things that, look, we've been through a lot. This is eight months after the Cuban Missile Crisis. Yeah. We don't want that to happen again. Let's remember, let's remember that over 30 million Russians were killed and what two says Kennedy. Let's remember that the equivalent of Chicago to New York was obliterated by our bombing and by the Nazis in World War II. And let's above all remember that we want the same things for our children and the worst thing we could possibly do as we've learned eight months ago in the Missile Crisis would be to give another nuclear power a choice between humiliating retreat and using nuclear weapons. Right. So that's June 1963. Don't corner a mad dog. Yeah. And so I'm just saying that up till just recently nobody picked a fight with an armed nuclear power as we pretty much did by proxy with the Ukrainians because it's no, no makes no sense. And recently, of course, the Soviet, Soviet, the Russian leaders are very clear that they're prepared to defend their country to include all means that there's a disposal, so to vote for a nuclear weapons as well. So, so the big change here came during Biden and a little bit Obama, but mostly now Trump where we're challenging Russia on its boundary, it's very clear that this war was part of the NATO encroachment toward the east, where the U.S. had promised not to do that way back when the Berlin Wall fell. And Ukraine was just the bridge too far, it's too long a border, too close to Russia. Little, middle-level missiles could go there in five minutes, you know, it's really easy. So if you look at the Russian perspective here, as John Meersheimer, the prominent professor at the University of Chicago says, to put you in did everything he possibly could to get those Minsk agreements implemented, so he wouldn't have to invade. What, can you explain for people what the Minsk agreements are? Well, there were several agreements that were made after the Russians invaded Ukraine. The first and most important was Putin sent his top adviser, and so did Zelensky. Zelensky's man actually still had of his parliamentary faction, his name was David Arachamir, okay. To Belarus and then they went to Istanbul six weeks after the invasion, they concluded an agreement. It was initial, by both. You know, we're going to stop, it's B.S. ceasefire, there will be limits on the troop levels in each country, we'll not deal with Crimea, and there will be referendum in Donbas, which is Danyatsky and Lugansk, and the Russian language would be permitted there again. And this is the Donbas region, this is the region right on the border of Ukraine and Russia. That's correct, yeah, these are the really two most important provinces. And so Russia wanted to capture that area, or they wanted just to permit them to speak Russian? The Russian speakers there which dominated those mobilists, about 70%, they were being sheld by the Ukrainians armed, armed to the teeth by NATO, by us, and about 14,000 people had already perished. We have documentation on that from the organization for security in Europe. They put out a graph about how the shelling increased. Obviously during the month of February of 2022, just before the invasion. So the Russians wanted that to stop, and they couldn't get any, and they wanted NATO to say, look, okay, we don't need Ukraine, we'll stop with all the other countries that we brought into NATO despite our promise not to, in February 1990, forgot to say, okay? Maybe, maybe for your listeners I should probably say, when I was a Soviet foreign policy analyst for almost 30 years, if you count my military service, I was delighted when the Berlin wall fell. I knew President George W. Bush, I had worked for him when he was CIA director, and I had briefed him every other morning for the four years during the first Reagan administration. And when he made a speech months before the Berlin wall fell, he said, look, what I want is a Europe, whole, and complete, and free from Lisbon to Vladivostok, okay? Now that was before the, when the wall fell, he calls up Karpacov and he said, look, Mikhail, I'm not going to dance on the Berlin wall, but we got a problem. What's going to happen in Europe now? You're losing all your satellites. Let's get together real quick, and Karpacov said, oh yeah, okay, you have. So the next month they met in Malta, big summit, okay? And again, Bush reassured Putin, look, we have to work out this arrangement so they can be, are you a pre and complete from-- And Bush was saying Bush called Gorbachev? Yeah. And when this was in Bush was the CIA director. No, this is when he was president, when he was president, okay, I should have made that clear. So yeah, this is 1989, 1990, so a summit in, and Malta was in December 1990. So he says, how soon can you talk to us about what we do, about Europe? And Gorbachev says, well, another month. So on the 1st of February, James Baker, Secretary of State for George H.W. Bush arrives in Moscow. Now he's a real smart Texas lawyer, right? Nothing against Texas or against lawyers, but he says now, how would this be? But would like to have a reunited Germany, put yourself in position of Gorbachev. They just lost 26 million Soviet citizens from a reunited Germany. This is a big quid, right? When I heard that this proposal was serious, I don't want a reunited Germany, I've lived in Germany five years. I mean, reunited Germany was not only I feared, but of course, to the end of the degree. Anyway, so Gorbachev says, well, yeah, that sounds like a big quid, what's your quid? And Baker said, well, how about this? How about we promise never ever to explain NATO? One inch east of East Germany, where East Germany now is. Well, they went back, they thought about it overnight and Gorbachev and his foreign secretary Schubert Nudzi said, well, you promise, yeah, we promise. And so that was the promise. Thomas, don't move NATO one inch and it was not right, it's important. It was not. Yeah, that's the point. Okay. Now, I asked Kuvaldin, which is one of the, who is one of the, I got a bit of a shuff's lieutenants there, his chief guy, and I said, this is about 10 years ago. Now I met him in Moscow. Tell me Professor Kuvaldin, why wasn't that written down? And he went, you know, and so I'll give you the standard answers, Germany hadn't signed in yet, and I really need Janet. And the Warsaw Packs still existed, then he looked at me and he said, "But the real reason Mr. McGuvern was we trusted you." So trust evaporated when Clinton allowed all these other East European countries to get into NATO. And then when it came to Ukraine, the Russians said, "No, that's a bridge too far." And they made that clear as soon as NATO in its great wisdom made a decision to incorporate not only Ukraine, but Georgia, the country of Georgia, into NATO. That was February, early February, 2008. And our ambassador at the time was his name, I think, a bit of a second, anyhow. He was called in by Lavrov. Bill Burns is his name, he later became head of the CIA. So Lavrov says, "Look, you keep wanting to get Ukraine into NATO." Now this is February before NATO decided. He says, "Mr. Barnes, do you know what a red line is?" Yes, I do. Do you know what "Neth" means? Yes, I do. "Neth" means "Neth." This is in Burns' cable. We have it, thanks to WikiLeaks. Wow. Okay. He says, "Look, if you do that, you try to get Ukraine into NATO. They'll be a civil war there for sure, and we will have to think about whether we have to intervene or not, and we don't want to do that." So for God's sake, "Neth" means "Neth" is all drawn out in this cable, and we, again, we wouldn't have it if WikiLeaks had any so authentic as can be. So despite all that, two months later, on April 3rd, 2008, NATO summit in Bucharest decided that Ukraine and Georgia will become members of NATO. So that was a bridge too far, and what happened was it took years. There was a lot of cultivation of anti, well, they call it a color revolution, and it's run pretty much by people I used to work for, and the British people. And it was no secret because the Assistant Secretary of State, Victoria Nulund, bragged about having invested $5 billion with a "B" in satisfying Ukraine's aspirations to join the West. In December, in 2013, in February, of course, we had the coup in Kiev. So this is how it all worked. What specifically did Nulund say about $5 billion for what was the $5 billion for? To invest in Ukraine, to help it satisfy its ambitions to join the West. Yelena Kovish, who is the head of Ukraine at the time, had this difficult choice. Does he go with the EU, or does he go with the well-established things they'd had going with Russia? And he was tricking them between, he couldn't make up his mind. And so they made up his mind for him. And what they did actually, these crowds in Kiev, armed and, well, and supplied by Western intelligence services, they, well, they staged this coup. And when people have to tell you, after the coup, I was on Amy Goodman with a professor from Yale, Schneider, his name. And so we're talking just a week after, so we want to talk about it. And I mentioned the coup in Kiev, and Schneider says, what coup? And this is the Maidan, right? Yes, the Maidan. Maidan's the big square there in the middle of Kiev. This is where Nulund, the Assistant Secretary of State, was giving out cookies and other things to demonstrators before the coup. So the reason I mentioned this is I said, now, Professor Schneider, are you want to wear that there was an intercepted conversation between Victoria Nulund, Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs, and the U.S. Ambassador in Kiev, a Jeffrey Piot, and that it indicated, and she said, well, isn't this where she said fuck the EU or something like that? Well, that was it. Yes, on YouTube, on the 4th. I remember seeing this on Oliver Stone's documentary, on the 4th of February. And so the coup was until the 14th. Wow. So McGovern sees this and says, oh my god, so they were really going to do it. Well, in our parlance, the coup is blown, right? I mean, you blow a coup by itself, it's not going to happen, and it's not so much interesting what I thought. It's what got a bit off. I'm sorry. Got a bit off. What Poutine thought? He was in Sochi. Winter Olympics there for the Russians, right? So he stays in Sochi, fully confident that when a coup was blown on the 4th of March, it's not going to happen on the 14th. Right. It happened anyway. The interesting thing is that President Obama called Poutine, until look, we got everything all set. This was the middle, just before the coup, don't worry about it, don't talk of, don't even think about meddling in this, and Biden called his counterpart in Russia, said the same thing. And so these guys feel like they were tricked, because lo and behold, there's this coup. The people that Victoria Nulin named, or was it, remember his name in a second, they were named, and all of a sudden, they became Prime Minister and so and so. And then, if there were any question about whether the intercepted message was authentic or not. Well, as you already remembered, Nulin said, well, I didn't really mean to F the EU, I just didn't know. Right. But you sell it, right? Right. So this is the background for Ukraine. And it took a while until Poutine tried to maneuver things so that the Europeans and the West would recognize that this was really high stakes for Russia, that Russia would not sit down. And the best proof of that is the Secretary General of NATO three years ago, before the EU said Poutine offered us a treaty. And he said, if you if you don't stop trying to get Ukraine and NATO, we will have to invade. And so we said no. And so he invaded. And we got two extra members of NATO Finland and Sweden, half a million Ukrainian young kids killed at that point. So they got Sweden and they got Finland, my god, what kind of leadership do you have in NATO? Anyway, so he blew the whole thing by saying, yeah, it was about NATO. And those treaties, treaties that the Russians offered both NATO and the US, treaties that took care of Russia's core interests didn't let Ukraine and NATO, which is an important thing. They were just rebuffed in December of 2021. Today's episode is brought to you by mod. Medaphine was invented in the 70s and since then, it's been used by high performers in situations where concentration and alertness are paramount, including soldiers, fighter pilots, astronauts, and much more. It's now available at mod.com for qualifying patients. Visit mod.com that's spelled M-O-D.com for a free consultation and get 10% off your first order plus free shipping with the promo code Danny. That's promo code D-A-N-N-Y at mod.com. See their website for important safety information and we thank mod for sponsoring the pod. Let me tell you one of the story that most people don't know, not a story, it's what happened. The Russians are really getting Nancy, not only were there Russian stock people being killed by the shelling in Donetsk and Lugansk, but there was a lot else going on and the Russians were freed that the U.S. not only would take Ukraine into NATO, but would put the equivalent of middle-distance offensive rockets and missiles there. So this is what most people don't know. On the 21st of December 2021, so just two months before the invasion, Putin got up before all his admirals and his generals. I say all the four stars are three stars, so to speak. And he said, "Look, we're being confronted now by NATO. Already there are missile sites that could be used in Romania and Poland to strike us." That would take nine minutes maybe, but when the United States puts missiles in Ukraine, hypersonic missiles, which they are sure to do when they get them, says Putin, all have five minutes to decide how to react. We won't know if they're nuclear, tipped or not. We can't take any chances. So now I looked around, I watch all these things. I looked around these admirals and generals and anyhow, nine days later, Pooching calls Biden. Calls the White House. I need to speak to President Biden. Now he's on vacation. Look, I need to speak to President Biden right quick. Putin calls directly. Yeah. Well, you know, his people. So what happens is the White House and to Biden's credit, he accepts the call. But he's alone. He's alone. He's in a place called Delaware. He doesn't have Sullivan. He doesn't have Blinken. And he talks to Pooching. And the readout says, the President of the United States pledged not to put offensive strike missiles in Ukraine. Wow. And that was the readout. Nobody has disputed that. That was the commitment. Okay. So the next day, which was the 31st of December, this is publicly available information. Yeah. Well, yeah, if people listen. I can't get, well, I've got to publish in some of my speeches and stuff. So this is what's key here. That's the 30th of December. My inference, I don't have this information. But I imagine those admirals in general said, look, you know, five minutes, forget about it. You'd tell them not to put offensive strike missiles, hypersonic missiles in Ukraine. And that's what Pooching did. And Biden bereft of his advisors makes sense to me. Okay. No offensive strike missiles in Ukraine. Well, what happens? Ushakov, the main man for Pooching is delighted because that's really what those treaties that they offered. That's what it had to do with that with no, no kind of missiles. So on New Year's Eve, this celebration in the Russian saying, look to the west or Biden is finally taking our concerns seriously. Wow. Let's wait until the bilateral negotiations start in Geneva on the 9th of January. And now the deputy foreign minister, Yapkov and Wendy Sherman, deputy secretary of state start those on the 9th and the Yapkov says, Wendy, let's get down to Braxpress tax now. Let's work out the modalities of this thing. And she says of what thing? He says the pledge that President Biden made not to put offensive strike missiles in Ukraine. And she says, what? I don't know about that. I don't have any, I don't have any instructions on that. Lavrov, the foreign minister, corners Blinken two weeks later in Geneva, right? And he says, Tony, Tony, what's going on here? Your president makes this commitment. And his negotiators here in Geneva don't only think about what's going on. And Blinken says, look, how do I say this? You know, he was alone. You know that Putin took advantage of them. You know that I and Sullivan were not there. If I got about it, there's no commitment. Forget about it. Now, we might be able to, we might be able to talk about limiting the number of offensive strike missiles we put in in Ukraine. But if I get about it, that's going to get happen. Now, that was I think the 21st of January 2021. Yeah, of 2022 now. Yeah. And so you have the next step here, where Putin and Biden have their last call, their last summit call. That was the 12th of February. And the readout from that says, Biden did not discuss his former undertaking, not to put offensive strike missiles in Ukraine. And he was unwilling to discuss the matter of Ukraine not being in NATO. That was his 12th of February on the 24th, as you know, Putin invaded Ukraine. Now, this was not the only reason, but it was a token of how the Russians had lost all trust in what the US was trying to say. They were buoyant when Putin, when Biden made this commitment. But now, this would be news to most of your viewers and people who listen. But I've been saying, it's right on the record. And even Jeffrey Saks asked me about this. He said, what do you get that right? You have to read all the discipline is you have to read all the stuff. You have to read what the US says, what the Russians say and put it all together. It's very clear. So there's one other thing, which in this whole scenario needs to be included. Putin, by previous appointment, was going up to Beijing on the 4th of February, 2000 and 22. Now, while they were opening the Winter Olympics in Beijing. Okay. So he was, there was a great big statement of how close these two Russians trying to were. Okay. And now, my inference here is that he said to Xi Jinping, "comrade Xi, I know this is not what you like. You're committed to non-intervention and the treaty of us, failure, and that's your whole Chinese foreign policy. But look what's happening. This is happening in Ukraine. I think I may have to intervene. So I just want to let you know ahead of time." And I think this is the way that went down and Putin's writing, you know, "What's going on together Xi?" And she says, in my imagination, you mean after the Winter Olympics are over, right? Well, now, there's a fallacy post-talk air go proctor hawk. And just because Putin waited for four days after the Winter Olympics were over in Beijing before he invaded Ukraine, doesn't prove that right. Right. But he gets back on the 20th, on the 21st. It looks like a duck and it quacks like a duck. On the 21st, the lens, and then, yes, declare independence. They asked the Russians for help. There's a treaty sign, mutual defense treaty, and on 24th, as you know, four days after the end of the Olympics in Beijing, the invasion occurs. My notion, and I may be an outlier on this, but I think there's a good reason to think that if Putin didn't get the blessing from this great big brother, I mean, great big brother. He may have been more reluctant to do this. He may have done it anyway, but that was the icing on the cake, it seems to me. So he invaded. And then, as we said before, he immediately sent his representative to Belarus to deal with Zelensky's best friend David Arachamiya. And you don't have to believe me. You can believe what David Arachamiya said. By initial disagreement in Istanbul six weeks later, okay, and we had it all set. We're going to put off Crimea. What was the agreement between Zelensky and the ceasefire? Intricle Ukraine. No parts of Ukraine lost because they hadn't been conquered yet. But an agreement to work out a regional autonomy for these where they wouldn't. where they would be able to speak Russian, where they wouldn't be marginalized, where this shelling would stop, okay? Now, that was all kind of sealed with these signatures, and then two things happened. As you may be called, there were a lot of Russian tanks and other military up near a Kiev. Not a lot of them, not enough now. No, there were, right back in. Well, I remember there being a long period of time before the invasion, where the Russians were posting a lot of their military equipment right on the border, because they were staging it. Now, it wasn't full scale. In other words, they had maybe 100,000 folks up there, and I remember looking at those photos and seeing trucks all lined up, like, you know, infantry officer would see that as the craziest thing, because and for later you could shoot them all up with one plane, anyhow, they're there, and they stay there for weeks, remember? Okay. So what happens is Makkol, the head of France, calls up Putin, and he says, "You know, it's a little embarrassing for Zelensky. I'm not Zelensky, but yeah, it's at least because, you know, he looks like he's backing down where the gun to his head, so could you withdraw, as a token of goodwill? Could you withdraw those tanks and stuff?" And Putin says, "Okay, and he does." Now, how do I know that? Putin said that. Is that enough? No, it's not enough. Putin says, "We have that on tape." Now, Makkol does all this kind of stuff all the time. When was this? When was this phone call with Promo-Kron? This was when the people in East Umbal, David Arachamiya and Putin's representative had just signed, or just, initial, this agreement. Right. Peace agreement. Yeah, peace agreement. Yeah. And it's just what, six weeks after the invasion. And it's not a ceasefire, it's a peace agreement. Yeah, no, it's a ceasefire, and it provides for limited armaments on both sides. Okay. And a degree of autonomy. This is important. A degree of autonomy for Danyeskin-Lukansk, the part of Dumbass there. So, what happens is that Putin does withdraw these tanks, not that they were going to invade Kiev anyway, but Zelensky got religion. And they said, "Okay, well, I'll sign this thing, but please don't make it so obvious. Would you withdraw your tanks?" And Putin did. Now, what next? In comes Boris Johnson, going to mess up your hair to see him, right? And he comes in and he says, "Look, forget about it. This is not about your problems. It's about weakening Russia. We're going to support you for as long as it takes. We'll give you all kinds of armaments and all the support of the Europeans and the United States. No deal. Tell them no." And now, and Arakhamiyah has told us to the to the Ukrainian provdah. He was the negotiator. So, this is all very, Boris, not my interpretation. Johnson came in and he said, "No deal." And Zelensky folded and said, "Okay, well, as long as you support us for as long as it takes, that sounds good to me." And now, unfortunately, now, now, it's as long as it takes the U.S. is not going to support him anymore. And the Supreme Folly, and this is where it really gets me. The Supreme Folly of thinking, just not looking at a map, but thinking that you could weaken Russia by stirring up trouble in Ukraine and that the Russians wouldn't eventually win. It's crazy. We make predictions every single day about sports, politics, pop culture, and even the shit that's making headlines. Kowshi, America's number one prediction market platform, lets you trade on those predictions in a live marketplace. Here's one that fits this show. Who will be named in the Epstein files this year? Right now, Prince Andrew is trading at 52%, meaning $100 would pay out over 200 if they win. On Kowshi, you're trading against peers in a live market, meaning there's no house. And as the probability changes, you can buy in or out of that position. Download the Kowshi app and use the code Danny Jones to get 20 bucks when you trade 20 bucks. That's K-A-L-S-H-I, Kowshi, trade on anything. 18+ only. Restrictions and eligibility requirements apply. Event contract trading involves risk and may not be suitable for all investors. Kowshi products are not available in all jurisdictions. Prices, values, and available markets may differ from those mentioned. For more information, see kowshi.com/regulatory. Let me ask you this. What is your high-level view at the moment of the power balance between Russia, United States, and China? Mainly. Like, how weak is Russia? Are they weakening? Are they getting stronger? Are they really a threat to Europe and the United States right now? Like, just give me like a very simple high level. Okay. What do you think's happening? Good. Well, maybe I'll start by quoting Biden in his last inaugural. You know, he looked around. He said, "Anybody in this room think that Putin is going to stop at Ukraine? And then he won't go into Poland, and he won't go into the Bothic state? Anybody think that?" And they said, "Oh, no, no, no, no." And he said, "Well, you know, it's crazy, Danny. He didn't stop at Ukraine. I just explained how he stopped at Ukraine. Now, the notion that he wants to go on to Poland, why would anybody want to do that? Why would Russia want to do that?" He literally signed an agreement to stop the invasion in Ukraine. I'm sorry. You're saying when you're saying he literally signed an agreement with Putin with Zelensky's guy. Initial to initial the agreement to stop the invasion. And Boris Johnson came in and stopped it. Now, again, the Ukrainian negotiator himself, his name is Arachhamia, he has told what the Ukraine scared Pravda in many interviews. This is exactly what happened. We had this all set. And then Boris Johnson came in and he put the kabasha on it. So later, our own defense minister, our own defense secretary Austin agreed, you know, sort of, admitted, yeah, this is really about that giving Russia a strategic loss, you know. This is why it's all about strategic loss. In other words, using Ukraine to cause all kinds of problems in Russia, to plead their resources, to plead their military equipment, to plead their, it's also delusionary that I can hardly say it, but to think that they can dismember Russia as the head of the so-called foreign minister of the EU, Kayakalis has said, they're going to break it up and going to seize the resources and all that kind of stuff. You know, so the US for a high level, high level view. China, to a lot of people's surprise, including mine, came in with both feet. Sure, they liked non-intervention and sure they don't like to people are invading other countries and meddling in internal affairs. But they stopped saying that for the next six weeks after the Russian invasion. What they said instead was, each country has core interests. Russia has core interests in Europe and Ukraine. We have core interests vis-à-vis Taiwan. Core interests, so what you can explain the things that are going on in Ukraine now, eminently sensible, but what about the Westphalia treaty? What about non-intervention? Well, Chinese propaganda stopped all that for about six weeks and then it resumed. Yeah, the Westphalia is important, but we support people who are trying to defend their core interests. So you have China lining up with Russia on this, in the US and NATO. Now, one has to remember that NATO is nothing without the US. I mean, right. So what does that mean when the US says, well, that's enough with Ukraine. We're not going to give many more arms. We'll sell arms to Europe. They can give them to Ukraine, but actually we don't have any kindness. We'll run out of the arms that they really need. So yeah, give it a try Europe, but we're out of there. Now, NATO is no more and for those who think that the Europeans can kind of get Trump or any other president to come back in for Ukraine on this lead. High level, US, okay. When I'm, did you say NATO is no more? Yeah. What do you mean? Well, I mean, you have to kind of watch this stuff that there have been two recent NATO summits. Two years ago, Trump came into the summit a little bit late, and the Secretary General Mark Rute said, oh, oh, finally, Daddy's here. Hey, Daddy, come - Come on and Daddy should, so's the words, okay? So long story short, Danny. A daddy is a deadbeat. A deadbeat, he doesn't pay trial support. (laughing) He doesn't pay, Alamo, he doesn't pay anything, okay? And that's what Daddy decided to do. So these NATO summits, the last one, was pretty void of any meaning, they did repeat, oh yeah, Article five, Article five indicates that if one is attacked, all are attacked, but Article five doesn't mean anything anymore. And Trump has pretty much made that clear. So any European that would think that if, let's say Estonia went after a part of Russian territory, that the U.S. would automatically be be accepted to accepting of an invocation of Article five, it's crazy. So the Europeans are really on their own now. And when I say they're on their own, that means they're nothing. Because when Stalin was told that the Pope was really against, what he's doing, he said, well, how many divisions says the Pope had? Well, NATO doesn't have very much in the way of divisions or armaments. And the way they're acting is really bizarre because they're acting as though they do. They're acting as though there is a great threat from Russia. And they're pouring all, a lot of their money into defense expenditures. - The UK specifically, mainly, right? Is this really-- - Yeah, well, Germany as well. - Germany. - Well, there was an interesting interview I watched the other day with Tucker Carlson and some high society, noble Englishmen with insane accent. And he was trying to, they were arguing the case for building up more armaments to be prepared to fight Russia. And making this big case on how Russia's this huge threat to the UK and they need to be more, you know, I don't know, be more scary and be more intimidating to Russia. What do you make of all that stuff? - Well, it's BS, you know, if you're gonna say Russia's a big threat, then you have to have some evidence and there isn't any. There's not even a centilla of evidence that Putin ever thought they would have to do things like go into Ukraine until we made it necessary for them to do that. So for Biden to say those things and have everybody jump up a clap. A lot of it, Danny has to do with Russia gate, right, which kind of conditioned Americans to think the worst of Putin, after all, what could be worse than giving you Trump? (laughing) - So American, look at it. It was all made up stuff. It was made up stuff. It's so crazy. I have people, we talk to people all the time in here that still believe that whole thing was real. - Yeah, you know, I think maybe, maybe I'd say a word of that now before we close. - Of course, yeah. - We saw it was fake when the Democrats during their convention decided to blame the Russians for hacking into the Democratic National Committee computers and exposing all these emails from Hillary Clinton and the DNC. - Right. - And so there was a considered decision there at the Democratic National Convention to blame the Russians. Why? Well, what did these emails say? They said there was very clear that the football field was so stacked or inclined against Bernie Sanders that he didn't have a snowballous chance in hell of winning the nomination. In other words, it's very clear not only from Hillary's emails, but from all those people who had a quit exactly when they were released, that this showed that Hillary defeated or made it impossible for Bernie Sanders to have a chance, okay? So that had to be concealed, okay? How do you do that? Diversion. How do you do aversion? - The Russians did it. - Did what? Doesn't matter what they did. - The Russians didn't say. - No, really. So what happens is, what's her name? Puddi Mietri. His herpia, our person was a person named Puddi Mietri. - Clinton's? - No, yeah, Clinton, feminine Clinton, Hillary, yeah. So Puddi Mietri was herpia, she said, she wrote some articles where she said, she went with her golf court around to the various outlets and the cable stations there at the convention and tried to sell this notion that the Russians had hacked into the DNC computers and it's all the Russians and they're trying to black and Hillary's social, so lose and all that stuff. And she said it was really hard 'cause they looked at me weird and they wouldn't, I mean, they didn't think that. They smell the rat and then Paul Murie says, but then when we got back to Brooklyn, Hillary Clinton's headquarters, then intelligence people, people from the intelligence community and pundits and journalists connected with intelligence came and told, no, no, this is real, the Russians really did hack, okay? And then we still don't have anything official, but then on the first of October, now we're talking 2016 now, right? - Yes, so November is just. - First Trump won, right, okay. So the first of October, Obama insists that the intelligence community put out a memo saying the Russians hacked. Now, there was a problem. They had no evidence, okay? They had co-opted, well, they had hired a tech firm called CrowdStrike, headed by a guy who had worked for Mueller in the FBI forever. CrowdStrike. - CrowdStrike, yeah, I've heard of this. - And so the question was why didn't FBI do the forensics? - By the way, who hired CrowdStrike? - This was the head of the FBI. - I'm sorry, okay. - What is that, is that your phone? - Oh, okay. - Sorry. - No, that's okay. They'll throw on silent real quick, it'll be good. - I thought I had turned it off. - Perfect. - Sorry. - No, you're good, you're good. So CrowdStrike was, what kind of a company was it? - Well, the head of CrowdStrike had worked for Bob Mueller at the FBI for about 20 years. He was a big tech guy, right? And then he set up his own firm called CrowdStrike. And for some reason, Bob Mueller, and James Comey at the time, FBI director, thought, well, let's not send their own specialists into the DNC. Let's pick CrowdStrike with Sean Henry, who is running CrowdStrike, and he'll do their job. The point here is that CrowdStrike had not even reported on any of the forensics on October 1st, October 2nd, October 3rd, 2016. So here, Obama is looking around for an intelligence assessment. Who could he get to do this? The FBI and the CIA refused to do it because there were no forensics. - Wow. - Okay. - So what did he do? - He went to the Homeland Security Guy, G.J. Johnson, okay? And he went to James Clapper, who famously said, - Yikes. - You know the Russians, they're almost genetically inclined to be deceptive into at least that's what James Clapper said. - Yeah. - Yeah. - He said that after we left office a couple of months, yeah. And he was also famous, I said, the NSA is not spying on Americans. - Yeah, right. So he goes to Clapper, the known provaricator, and James Johnson, who's sort of a nice guy, you know. And James Johnson complains later, he says, you know, Obama leaned on us to do this before there was any forensics 'cause we knew he wanted this stunt right away. And you know, I'm glad that my wife's a Catholic, so is J. Johnson, and I'm glad I didn't convert because I'd have to go to confession for all of us. (laughing) Yeah, he says this, okay? Not only for this kind of thing, but for approving the extra legal assassination of U.S. citizens by drone strike earlier on, all that kind of stuff. Anyhow, so he goes to these two guys, and they say, sure enough, the Russian attack. It's a terrible thought. One paragraph and a lot of fru-fru. But my point is, Paul Meary, the PR person for Haley Clinton says, then we had something to chew on, first October, okay? And then there was a lot of other stuff. Before the election, and then after the election, of course, a definitive memorandum saying, yeah, sure as hell, the Russian, well, you know, veteran intelligence professionals for sanity, which I was, yeah. of, we attracted some really neat people, and among them were two former technical directors from NSA, from the National Security Agency monitors all these things. Bill Binney and you know the fellow will remember in a second. Anyhow, they joined us. And we said, well, could the Russians have hacked the DNC? And they said, this is knowable. Let us look into it. And on the 12th, Bill Binney is like a legendary cryptographer. Yeah, I mean, a smart guy, all right. Yeah, he's a good friend of mine too. Yeah. And Ed Lumos is the other fellow. Okay. He's, you know, Princeton, PhD, and he's the computer whiz, okay? He is right. He and, and Binney pretty much constructed a lot of the collection devices and the way they get stuff. And we know what's, what's necessary. Anyhow, they said, right, we can do something right quick because it's easy. Why is it so easy? Or because we built the systems. Okay. And, and we have the slides from, from, from Ed Snowden. Oh, yeah, right. So, so we have this snow. Is that the road of memo? And we put it out on the 12th of December 2016, okay? Before Trump took office. And after he had been elected, I should forget about it. It's impossible. This was an inside job. It's, we can, we can show, and we did, we included all these slides. And we said, look, it's physically impossible. The physical, the principles of physics, what we know about having constructed these collection devices and, uh, cream on the coffee, it's Snowden's revelations show us this impossible. Now, of course, we didn't get the first base with the mainstream press. Right. Until later, when we thought other anomalies, uh, and we could, in, in July, we found more stuff and said, this proves that they couldn't have been, uh, Russian hack. But the Russian hack was, was a big deal, right? That's what they were going with. And it started right during the Democratic National Convention in July of 2016. So, so what happened was this, um, there were a couple of people in Congress that wanted to get to the bottom of this. So the House Intelligence Committee asked Sean Henry to testify. Sean Henry being the head of CrowdStrike. Okay. The forensics guys who didn't give these other guys, because, and, you know, they're the ones that people are relying upon. When the Senate asked James Comey, why he didn't do it himself. He said, well, yeah, best practices would have, uh, indicated, uh, FBI technician. What, what, but CrowdStrike just called them, right? CrowdStrike's goal. Okay. Anyhow, they get Sean Henry before the House Intelligence Committee under oath. This guy's the head of CrowdStrike. Yeah. And this is December 5th, 2017. Okay. Now, just to remind you, on December 12th, 2016, we, that is our, our former technical director's of NSA had already proven that it had to be an inside job. It wasn't a Russian hack. We have no brief for Russia for God's sake, but if it was impossible to be a, well, okay. So they get Henry under oath. And they say, now, uh, what's his name? Um, the guy Schiff, Adam Schiff. Hmm. He said, now Mr. Henry, tell me how it was that the, that the Russians hacked into the DNC. And Henry starts, well, wait a minute, there's a lawyer for the party. You're under oath. You're under oath. Well, actually, actually, there's no technical evidence that the Russians are anyone else hacked into the DNC. I'm from Florida. So anywhere I travel during the winter is cold to me. If it gets below 70, I'm wearing a jacket. From chilly weather to skiing vacations, the one brand I trust 100% is Stio. Stio is designed and tested in Jackson Hole, Wyoming by people who actually ski, bike, climb and live through those Wyoming winters. For everyday cold, their hometown down jacket uses 800 filled down and is designed to feel more like your favorite hoodie than some giant puffy jacket. Their environment jacket, pants, and bib are built for everything from groomers to deep powder. You won't catch me dead above 30 degrees north latitude without my key line snapshot. And when it comes to snowboarding, Stio's double charge jacket and pants are my go-to. Ski season is almost here. So gear up now the way the locals do. Go to Stio.com/danny for 20% off your order. That's STIO.com/danny. Stio.com/danny. Stio designed and tested in Jackson Hole. This is on video. Can you find this? What is the guy's name again? The head of CrowdStrike. His name is Sean Henry. Okay, you want to try our little tool, our little AI tool search? SH AWN. Henry, the last name. Hey Robo, Steve. Find the video clip of Sean Henry who was the head of Crowd Strike in front of Congress talking about evidence for the Russia gate scandal. That's our little new AI thing. We have the transcript. Okay. I'm not sure transcripts good. Yeah, transcript works. Yeah, and I have been really interested to see this. SH AWN. I have the transcript in here. Oh, do you really? I'm sure he can find them too. Okay. So he can then we'll pull him up. So this was when Sean Henry was in front of Congress being questioned. This was December of 2017. Right. It was December 5th. Okay. So we already pretty much decided conclusively enough to satisfy me. How's the transcript? Okay, cool. See if you can find the part in the transcript. Good luck. 80 pages. No, you can go just down to the third page. Oh, okay. He already knows it. Oh, yeah. Oh, man. This is good. Okay. Mr. Shifzis, thank you, Chairman. I have a couple follow-up questions that I'm going to turn it over to Mr. Castro. Welcome and thank you for coming to testify. My colleagues have asked you whether the damage that was done to the DNC through the hack might have been mitigated had the DNC employed your services earlier. Do you know the date in which Russia exfiltrated the data from the DNC? Mr. Henry, I do. I have to just think about it. I do know. I mean, it's in our report that I think the committee has. Mr. Shifz says and to the best of your recollection, when would that have been? Mr. Henry says Council just reminded me that as it relates to the DNC, we have indicators that data was exfiltrated. We did not have concrete evidence that the data was exfiltrated from the DNC, but we have indicators that it was exfiltrated. Mr. Shifz says and the indicators that it was exfiltrated, when does it indicate that would have taken place? Mr. Henry says again, it's in the report I believe. I believe it was April of 2016. I'm confused to the date. I think it was April, but that's in the report. Mr. Shifz says it provides in the report on 2016, April 22nd data stage for exfiltration by the fancy bear actor. What does fancy bear? They accused that of being a Russian. Oh, okay. That was the Russian guy. Mr. Henry says yes, sir, so that again, staged for which I mean, there's not an analogy I used with Mr. Stewart earlier was we don't have video of it happening, but there are indicators that had happened. There are times when we can see exfiltrate, when we can see data exfiltrated and we say conclusively. But in this case, it appears it was set up to be exfiltrated, but we just don't have the evidence that says it actually left. Mr. Shifz says, did the technology vendor, did the technology vendor could you tell us who the technology vendor was that you were working with? And Henry says that the DNC was working with. Shifz says yes. His company is called MIS, and the actual contractor's name was Yerid Tamin. Okay. Interesting. So is that, is that really already read it? I mean, you've heard too much that he doesn't have any evidence that it was exfiltrated at all. He just says they have indicators that there was an exfiltration set up. Now, after his attorney, now, the way our bilbini and bilumus adlumus and quibi are NSA experts, explain that is that yeah, if you want to exfiltrate this stuff, and you don't want to leave any evidence on electronic evidence, right? You copy it. You copy it from your computer, but before you copy it, you put it all together. So it's prepared for either exfiltration, which you have a indication of, or just pressing copy, putting it on a Trump drive, right, getting on a plane and taking it to wherever we could go. Would that also be considered an exfiltration, even if you're just exfiltrating a copy? Well, the question is whether the Russians did it or not, and if you're going to prove the Russians that you have to have some technical evidence, and if there's no technical evidence, which is what Schiff found out, so you're saying there's no technical evidence that it left the computer. So in other words, as my NSA folks tell me, if it's hacked, then there's electronic signatures that have to appear. So not only is it assembled, the data assembled for exfiltration, but it would be exfiltrated in what Sean Henry is saying, there's no evidence that it was actually exfiltrated. So it supports the hypothesis that whoever it was, and there is one prime candidate, his name is Rich Seth Rich Seth Rich. That he was working in the DNC. Now I don't know this definitively, but they're all kinds of odd things that happen to Seth Rich. Matter of fact, he was murdered on the streets of Washington. What? Yeah. Just three weeks after Julian Assange indicated that he had emails related to Hillary Clinton. So if you want to do the chronology here, Julian Assange announced that he had emails related to Hillary Clinton on February 12th, I think, 2016, Seth Rich was killed, I'm sorry, what? Seth Rich was killed on July 10th, I believe. So it would have been, Steve can look it up. Yeah. Rich was walking home around 420 AM when he was shot twice in the back. Jesus. July 10th, yeah. Likely a part of a botched robbery. The case remains conveniently unsolved. It's a cold case. Yeah. It was a robbery, but they didn't take his watch or his wallet or anything like that. Really. Yeah. Is that true? Can you look that up? Yeah. I can look it up. If that is true, then it's not a robbery. Was there anything taken from Rich? Nothing was stolen from Seth Rich during the shooting. Then that's not a robbery. They were saying it was a botched robbery. Yeah. Shhhh. So that was July 10th. No, it was June, June 12th. I'm sorry to interrupt, but can't we do a better job of covering it up when we whack people? I mean, we're the United States. Like if we need to crack a couple legs, can we be more prepared to create our cover story? Take the guys wallet, you know? Well, there are indications this was a hasty job and the metropolitan police are pretty good. It was a high crime area. So my guess is that these guys were just hired to make sure he's dead and didn't matter and they got to take it to hell out of there right away. They didn't cross their teeth and dot their eyes. Respect to the chronology, it was just less than a month earlier, June 12th, that Julian Assange announced that he had these emails related to. So Rich is killed on the 10th of July and Julian Assange offers a $20,000 reward for information leading to the apprehension of whoever killed Seth Rich. It's all on the record. Now, the interviewer immediately says, so was he your source? And Julian says, we don't actually ever say who our sources are, but we're very concerned about this and we'll offer $20,000 for a reward for information. So you know, it's not like, I'm sorry for my ignorance, not on the history of Julian Assange, but was Julian Assange locked up at this point? No, he wasn't. This is before they locked the poem, let's see, forget when they locked them up. I think was, yeah, it was later, it was later that they've locked them up, okay, I forget. I used to visit him actually in the Ecuadorian Embassy. Did you really? Yeah. He's a friend. April 11th, 2019 is when he was locked up. Okay. So this is 2016. Right. Right. So we're still able to communicate, I never see a lot of the good thing, good thing, good thing, good thing. Okay. So he wasn't in prison until April 18th, before that he was in the embassy. Right. So yeah, the interesting thing is that Seth Rich had two computers and the Metropolitan Police immediately saved the computer that they could, but then the FBI came in. And the FBI took the computer and then they took his work computer. And then they denied that they had any information about Seth Rich, even though there were court cases that said, look, you have the computers, what information do you have on Seth Rich? We want all fifth FBI records on Seth Rich. They've been stonewalling that for about six or seven years now. Luckily, there are two judges in the Eastern District of Texas who are finally showing some signs of pointing a special master or pointing somebody other than the FBI and the DOJ to go into this. What we do know is that the FBI first denied the lawyers that are pursuing this, that they had any information about Seth Rich at all. Then two years later, they said, oh, we have too much, and we're just, COVID's going on here. We just don't have the manpower. Right. And then later, they've been back and forth denying, but lately, just this week, a judge from Texas has said, look, we're going to pursue this some more. After that judge, in particular, had delayed for four years, maybe people are starting to say, well, look, this is a young guy that could kill. Let me just digress. Let me just add this. There was a very thorough investigation of Trump and the media to include Resurgate done for the Columbia School of Journalism. It was meticulous and was done by a really good author, whose name I'll remember in a second. He included this indication, this five December testimony, where Sean Henry, the head of CrowdStrike, said that there was no information that any information had been exfiltrated, namely into the internet, or into the ether. All of a sudden, when his mammoth is very detailed appreciation of this appeared in the Columbia Journalism Review, they forgot. They left out the part about Sean Henry's testimony saying there was no exfiltration. And the author said, well, why did you cut that out? It's always sent you a final copy. We knew you had COVID, but we sent you a final copy. Oh, he sold that copy that did show what the corrections were. Yeah, I had to read the whole thing again. Yeah, that's a copy. So the Columbia School of Journalism found this to be so heinous. Found this to be such a vivid illustration of the deep state. Let's say the media, the DNC in this case, and the intelligence community, all together trying to suppress information about Seth Rich. So we're dealing not only with a terrible kind of cover up, but with a homicide, with the killing of a, I forget what he was 27-27-year-old male, yeah. So that's how bad the media is to include the Columbia Journalism Review. You know, it's really, it's no surprise that people don't know these things. I do my best last 25 years since I retired. I speak whenever S to speak and I'm delighted that I can speak to you because you have a different audience than the one I usually have. But these things are, I mean, you have to be human about these things. My God, you know, I have two sons. If that's my moral mind, I mean, I'd be really anyhow. Yeah. There's another little side note. I was subpoenaed by Seth Rich's brother. Yeah. I had to produce all information indicating why I felt the Russians did not hack into the DNC. But how does this happen? Well, the NSA technical directors, Bill Binney, Ed Lumas and Kurt Weebie, they were subpoenaed to come up with all information that said that the Russians didn't hack. And I thought maybe I had sort of what I called by who? By lawyers for Seth Rich and not Seth Rich, but his brother. Anyhow, and what is his brother's belief about what happened? Well, his brother was, well, I don't know what his brother believes but what happened. But the Rich family were taken into the confidence of prominent democratic party lawyers. The Rich family has got a lot of richer. And of course, there are indications that not only Seth, but his brother Aaron were involved in leaking this information one way or another to. So this was an attempt to intimidate us from keeping our story alive. And I had, when my friends got all these subpoenas, I had a little subpoena envy. And then they served me. I couldn't believe it. So I just said, well, my friends have everything. Oh, no, you got to come and we're going to pursue you. So I asked to some lawyers, enough, the screening, you got to answer it. So I just gave them what I had in my computer pertaining to this. But isn't that odd? I mean, I had just moved down to North Carolina. Some of my neighbors knew where I had worked before. And first thing you know, there's a subpoena guy serving me as a subpoena, my front thing. And this one, oh my God, he must be one of those torturers. So anyhow, that's how far they went. So it all spills the high heaven. And you know, it's all on the record. It's just that Trump, however much he would like to go after these people. He's so inept and the deep state is so strong. And I'm talking about James Comey and John Brennan and all those guys. And you know, the one time he wanted to go after James Comey for cause, you know, this is not a digression. People say to me, well, come on, right? The head of the FBI involved in trying to turn the election one way or the other. I said, yeah, how do you forget that? I said, well, look, Comey wrote a book, right? And he said in this book, and I quote, we were operating in an environment in which Hillary Rodney Clinton was clear to be the next president of the United States, unquote, well, you're operating in that kind of environment. You take all kind of liberties with the law and the regulations and you do what you can to foster this notion about Russia gate, including the Russian hacking, which was pretty much the cornerstone of it, at least in the beginning. And you investigate the hell out of Trump, even though there's not much to investigate. Right. So, that's why, and then of course, when they went after Comey about a year ago or a half a year ago, Trump pointed a lawyer who didn't know what she was doing. And she made some fatal missteps procedurally, so Comey walked, now he's being prosecuted for some photos of a threat to Trump on the sand beach or something. Oh, yeah, yeah. They're so inept. You know, I mean, the record 8647 or whatever, that same thing, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So anyhow, what's, what the bottom line here is that the deep state is very strong. I don't think anything is going to happen to either Comey or Brennan or Clapper or any of the people in DOJ, they cooperate and all this stuff, as because Trump either is too afraid to or thinks he can't or just is not worth the candle. So he points inept lawyers to go after Comey and maybe he doesn't know if they look really nice and maybe they're not inept. My favorite quote from the Putin interviews with Oliver Stone where he's interviewing Putin directly and they're standing in like a garden somewhere and he says, what do you make of what Hillary Clinton just said about you the other day, equating you to Adolf Hitler and Putin smiles at him and says, Oh, she's a very dynamic woman. Well, he's cool hand look. He's very cool hand look and I get it like I understand he, I mean, it's great. He agreed to do that interview with Oliver Stone. It puts him in a great light. He handled himself incredibly like that's what you do. If you're the president of Russia, I get it. But man, it's hard to look, watch that and be like, this is a bad guy. It seemed like this is a very pragmatic level headed guy who just wants the best for Russia. I know it's not as simple. I know it's not black and white like that, right? Like, I mean, well, it is sort of, you know, it's it's 90% white. Right. But everyone, you know, anyone who you say that to for the most part will be like, Oh, he's a monster. He murders innocent people. You know, there's the the the Chetchnian thing where they blew up the apartments and all that stuff. Like, it's true too, right? I mean, well, yeah, look, we're lucky to have him. He's not going to be provoked by either the Europeans or by some other crazy things that Trump does. He's winning in your crane. You've got the biggest big brother that you could ever have in China behind him. They're going to support you run in a measured kind of for deliberate way. Iran is not going to lose this one because largely of their support. And it's just waiting, waiting, waiting, Trump out. Now what's respect to the refobia? I talked a lot about Russia gate and at one point, one radio commentator asked me, right. For God's sake, why are you so obsessed with Russia gate? I mean, and I said, well, I guess it's because Russia has nuclear weapons. It didn't seem to pour. But there it is. That's why I think that giving make portraying Putin as a monster is a very, very dangerous thing because most people don't understand that he's very perspicacious. He's very gradual. He will not rise to the bait by the Europeans or by the Ukrainians or he's going to win in Ukraine that much is clear and Trump's going to let him because he doesn't have any other choice. And the reason he's in Ukraine is not to seize Ukraine, but rather to defend Russia and I tried to make that point before. I was with Oliver Stone in Russia in May of last year. Oh, really? Yeah. And with him, we were invited to celebrate the 80th anniversary of victory in Europe. Oh, wow. It was really big deal. Yeah. Yeah. Was that like? Yeah. Oh, well, I've been there several times, but this was, I guess most recent. Yeah. Did you ever meet Putin? Well, I almost did. Oliver made it, made the college try, but since I hadn't been inoculated, there were very serious steps. You had this started week before I wasn't able to be in the three or four people that were inoculated for COVID and for all of the other kinds of things. Also, anyone else to see him has to get up? No. Well, I mean, they were invited to a special session with him. Just, oh, I see it together. Got it. Now, I saw him at the parade and I, it's got rid of my friend that took photos of the parade and there I was with the head of the Russian Duma, the head of the, they were equivalent to the Senate, the Orthodox Bishop and a couple of other people, you know, when you travel with Oliver Stone in Russia, you're a special treat, but you're all the right cars. point that I like to make. We had a small dinner given by a nut pooching, but somebody just below him who sees them almost every day. Okay. And I had made a speech, a major speech at a big youth gathering and a recited a Russian poem about the horrors of war and trying to identify the fact that we understand that 26 million Soviet citizens died in World War II, that we were allies, then there's no reason why we couldn't be allies now, as John Kennedy said, after Cuba. And it went over really well, especially doing the thing in Russian. So this fellow just below pooching says to me, "Mr. McGurrin, why is it that you don't hate Russia?" And then they're doing them, "My God, so I explained, when I studied Russia, I didn't study just the language, but the history, the culture, the opera, the music, and the steveskinthelstoy, and Russian history, most of all, for God's second. And when you get a feel for what Russia has been through and what they like, how they handle the Germans, and how they want a degree of security in Europe right now, and feel they've been tricked once or twice or three times." Well, my teachers were not like Richard Pipes of Harvard or Brzynski of Columbia who drank Rsofobia from their Polish mother's breasts, my teachers at Fordham University in New York. Yeah, they hated communism, but they loved Russia. And it came through. I mean, they wished Russia's well, and we had a Russian orthodox chapel right on campus there, and I could go to the literature. So anyhow, I get a feel for Russia. And when I started at the CIA, of course, in 1963, '64, of course, the big challenge was Russia. And it was a real threat. Of course, it was a real threat. And did they want to take over the rest of the world? Well, there's a reasonable argument to say, yeah, that's what they like to do. Were they able to? We were anyhow, my whole career in our priority as the main target was Russia. So when I got to be 50 years old and I qualified for early retirement, that was 1989. And the Berlin Wall fell. And my friend, George H. W. Bush, reached out to Putin and said, wow, now we can have a peace dividend, peace from the latest stock to Lisbon. And I'm saying, way to go, Ray. Now, it wasn't only you, but Russia's not a threat anymore. You can go, I wanted to work down in the inner city where I had been volunteering a lot of time. And I finally found the job down there. But I felt so euphoric. I mean, I had felt euphoric when I was in Moscow for the signing of the anti-boolistic missile treaty in 1972. My branch, the branch that I led there on Soviet foreign policy were instrumental in helping Nixon and customer to figure out, well, is this possible with or do they really want to do this? And we told them, yes, partly because they were afraid the trainer will steal a march on them, have better relations with you than they do. So it was really complicated but not so much. Anyhow, in those days, I kept thinking, my God, you know, as a kid growing up with the threat of the Russian atomic bomb, hiding under desks, that's me, hiding under the desk, walking down Central Park, thinking, my God, those big buildings, don't they know they're building another one? Don't they know that one misstep and then 72, I was in Moscow for this. I'm saying, my God, at least we have a battleance of terror now, okay? No anti-boolistic missile defenses to speak of, which prevents anybody if they're thinking they could make a first strike and not suffer immediate retaliation. And that's what it was until Pushka out of it, the younger Bush, and then of course Trump got out of the other treaty that limited middle range ballistic missiles in Europe. So this is after I retired that that happened, but you know, when Trump got out of that and Pushka got out of that, it was, it was more impetus for me to say what I know and not be afraid to say, look, look at the evidence for God's sake, where is your evidence that Poochine wanted to take over all of Donbass? Hey, great, not to, and April, 2022. Yeah, that he wanted to say Poland, the Baltic States. Now, it's just as bad in places like Germany and I have right here, I think I have brought it, okay. Now this is a, it's out there. This is a, this is a little button, I don't know if the camera can see it, but, if Putin, Verthestia, Verthestia, now I saw that in, you got to Steve? Yeah. I saw that in Germany about seven years ago when I said, "My God, Thou stand is to understand," right? So this is a somebody who understands poutine. And I said, "Oh, my God, that's such good news. People are trying to let me have five of those." And my friends said, "No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no And my friends said, "No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no." It's a perjuret of anybody trying to understand poutine as in poutine's pocket. Oh, I see. And I'm saying, "My God, I mean, how vivid is that? Fist stand, understand. You want to understand poutine? That's fibotent." So here's another little thing here. The Glavni-Vrak, the main enemy of the United States, of course, was Russia, and the main enemy of Russia was the United States until two years ago. The Russians always say, "Gladni-Vrak," not only then there are teleges apparatus, but, you know, just now you know who it is, the main Germany. There was a big poll two years ago, "Who's the Glavni-Vrak? Who's the main enemy of Russia?" This was a poll done where? In Russia. In Russia? Yeah. So, I mean, this is more of a sea change for, where, you know, they fear, I got like, fretic melts. Oh, look at that. According to a recent survey data from Lavenda Center, a Russian public perception. Well, Lavenda has shifted. The top-housed hostile nation is Germany, 55%, the UK, 49%, and Ukraine, we're not even top three anymore. No, we're down to 40%. We've dropped from the top spot down to fourth place. They're their greatest allies, Bolerius, whoever that is, than China. Belarus and China. Yeah. So these are, you know, little factories. That's crazy. I did not know that. Yeah. And of course, you know, if you look at what's a massive shift, a massive shift of power, the balance. What I appealed to the Russians that I spoke before, late April last year, was for remembrance of the fact that we fought together, that we were allies. I had a, I showed a big photo of the meeting on the Elbe, on the Elbe River, where for the first time in four years, Russian and US forces came together, and there was a medical doctor from the US side and a nurse from the, from the Soviet side, and that was right before the end of the war. Yeah, there's some good ones there. Let's see, where is the way though? So I showed one of those things and, oh, there it is. Yeah, that's beating on the Elbe. That's staged, of course, but the, so the Elbe River was, so there's so much in common, and John Kennedy to his great credit after Hushoff and he had been through the real tough crucible of almost destroying the rest of the world. He made that great speech at the American University on the 10th of June, 1963, saying, look, where we need to understand each other better, we need to remember that of all the major countries in the world, we too have never been at war one with the other. Let's keep it that way. Let's proceed forward, and I hate to say this, but that's where they killed them. That's why they killed them. Yeah. Yeah, there was the, and, and. June of '63, I believe it was, where there was that joint chiefs of staff meeting, where they wanted to nuke China and Russia all at once, and the idea was because we had, that was the point in time we had the most in the end, the least amount of nuclear warheads. Yeah, they were like crazy people, yeah, yeah, yeah, it was like limiter, um, limnitsa. Yeah, all those guys, they wanted to do this. Yes, he's called a siop meeting, for my understanding, like SIOP, and, um, and, uh, um, Robert Kennedy, and told, was there at the meeting and told JFK about that, and they were like, oh no. And, um, John Newman has talked to me a lot about this. He, he, he seems to believe that the whole thing was a military coup. Well, um, the military was involved for sure, yeah, but Alan Dulles, the head of the CIA, who was canned by, by Kennedy, right, for the Bay of Pigs invasion, right, stupid thing. Uh, I think he was pretty much the main orchestrator, and, uh, when LBJ, uh, saw a fit to establish the Warren Commission, uh, guess who is the prime mover, the most influential member of the Warren Commission, yep, uh, Alan Dulles, um, interestingly enough, that's where, um, conspiracy theory comes from, uh, a lot of us, even relatively young naive people like me thought, well, wait a second, who has it in for John Kennedy, I mean, who, who, who, who cashured Alan Dulles and, and who kind of gave him a bad reputation? Well, I mean, hello, does it make sense to have Alan Dulles, uh, pretty much orchestrating the whole committee because he knew all the people to invite and all this stuff. He knows who to invite and not to invite the answer to that was conspiracy theory, right. You're making a conspiracy theory to say, Alan Dulles, in the CIA create that term conspiracy theory, you're like, put it out there. Well, my first recollection was when Alan Dulles used it in exactly this context, you know, this is conspiracy theory. Well, you know, it's, it's a easy way to dismiss people who aren't really that interested, but when I raise Seth Rich, uh, people automatically think, oh, conspiracy theories, because they don't know, because they don't know that the FBI has its computers, that they don't know that the FBI swore on the oath that they didn't have his computers. And then they said, oh, no, we have too much information on Seth Rich. And then more recently, burn bags were found in this little alcove there in the DOJ. And the suspicion is there's lots of information on, on Russia gate to include the rich stuff. Right. Luckily, as I said, there are two judges in the Eastern District of Texas who are trying to give a recent hearing to something called the Transparency Project, which is working on behalf of the people who, uh, well, the people who have been wronged by all this and, uh, and who have been actually hurt financially as well as of the waste. Um, yeah, the JFK thing, there's so many different flavors of the JFK assassination. It's just overwhelming. Everyone has their own opinion, uh, their own reason. It's like, you know, you have the, the people like John Newman, who believe it was, you know, mainly like, you know, Alan Dallas and the, and the, um, joint chiefs of staff taking them out so they could go ahead and continue the Vietnam war and can you want to pull everyone out and, um, you know, then you have the people who think it was all Israel who did it because they wanted the nuclear material and then you have the UFO nuts who think it was all because he was interested in UFOs and all that stuff. And it's just like, you know, I, I think there's a legitimate way to like break down and dismantle a lot of those other theories. But I think the one, you know, Alan Dallas, the, uh, Vietnam war, him saying he wanted to pull everyone out of the Vietnam war and those joint chiefs of staff, like all the stuff that they wanted to do and like the meeting and, uh, I think it was Hawaii, like the weekend before that he was shot and all that stuff. Like the way, um, Newman lays it out, it's incredible. And you know, as far as like the Israel theory about it, from what I understand is like, even if Israel wanted to kill Kennedy, they wouldn't have the means to be able to do it, especially in 1963. I think that's probably true. Mm-hmm. I think you have enough when you have, you know, there's one good book on this that is better than all the others. James Douglas, Douglas with two S's on the end of it, uh, JFK and the unspeakable. Oh, yeah, it's 15 years old now, but it's still the best. And he, he goes into glory detail on all of this stuff. And, uh, I think if people are interested in knowing what I think is the best book, that's the one that's out there. JFK had issued two executive orders to pull, pull troops out of Vietnam. Uh, the military was certainly against that. Uh, there's even some suggestion that LBJ, oh, is not a prime mover of this, but that he knew enough about it to stay out of, stay out of harm. Yeah. And I wouldn't put that past him knowing what else. So, so Newman, a really interesting tidbit that he that really stuck with me when I was talking to him was he went to go interview a woman by the name of Jane Roman, who was, um, she was working the, I believe the Mexico city desk, um, and what Newman discovered was there was this thing called a flash stop on, um, Oswald's file on his FBI file. And I guess, I mean, you probably know way more about this one. But I know, but I'm going to try to explain to the best I can, but the flash dot means that like, um, whenever this person comes across your desk or whatever, there's like all the red flags go up like we have to pay attention to this guy. This guy can't be here at this time. And, um, Newman says, because of that flash dot being on Oswald's file, him being on that route in, uh, Dealy Plaza that day was the equivalent to a flea being at a light saw of convention, but two days before or a day before, um, Kennedy was shot, that flash dot was removed from Oswald's file. And there was a cable that Jane Roman signed off on, who was the head of the Mexico City, not I'm sure he was ahead, but she worked the Mexico City desk. She signed off on this cable, acknowledging that the flash dot was removed from his file. So this was like whatever 30, 40 years later, 50 years ago, who knows how many years later, Newman goes to interviews her, you know, she's really old now. She's one of the last people alive who was like listed on some of these cables. And they said, why, he asked her, she's like, why did you sign off on this and not saying anything about it? Like, what was this in your opinion? And she goes, uh, she goes, and she, she, he explained like the way she reacted to it. She like, tensed up. And like, you know, she was like, this is indicative of something known about Oswald that was above my head that they wanted to keep secret and she just didn't say anything else about it. But that was pretty freaky. I mean, that's, that's pretty much a smoking gun that there was some sort of level of, there was a cover up done by the CIA. Yeah. Yeah. I think that whether they did it or not, people like to say CIA killed him, I don't believe the CIA killed him, but like it's pretty, I think it's pretty fair to say that they covered it up. Well, it's demonstrable that they covered it up, right? And I'll tell you why, uh, I know something special about that. When I entered the CIA in, uh, the analysis division in January of 1964, uh, two bosses over me was a fellow named Fred Janney. His son Peter Janney has written a book, Mary's Mosaic. Oh, yeah. You might want to have him on some time. He came to see me and I was working in the inner city after I had retired. Is it, uh, I'm, um, Peter, did you work for my dad? I said, yeah, he says, well, you know, I, uh, and he told me the whole story about his dad was directly involved in the cover-up to include the murder of Mary Meyer on the toe path on the CNO toe path, uh, in, in Georgetown, uh, in, in Washington, DC. And we have been in the back of his book, he has some eggs and plars of, uh, uh, memos that Fred Janney wrote, uh, to make sure that, uh, this court in Texas, uh, didn't, uh, pursue this, this case that this fellow who knows something, something about what happened, uh, against chair, the assassination, in other words, there were, there was a cover-up committee chaired by Fred Janney, uh, to make sure that, uh, there was no, no Texan or, no, a buddy else who would be able to say definitively, uh, that the CIA was involved, um, so it's right there in black and white, and I recognize the signature, of course. And, uh, uh, you know, the bottom line here is that, uh, there is a deep state, uh, uh, it's still around. It even inhibits what Trump want to do, might want to do, whether it's on Ukraine, whether it's on whatever. And that's the reality that it's really hard to contend with because it's very real and it's sort of incoate, but it's there and it has to be taken into account by anybody who looks into this kind of thing. It doesn't seem like Trump's in charge. Trump what? It doesn't feel like Trump is in charge. Oh McGregor, Doug McGregor, worked for Trump for the last couple of weeks of his first administration in the defense department and says outwardly that many of what he wanted to do or the orders he gave were just disregarded or not implemented by slow walking or by simply not doing that, but at the Pentagon. That's first hand they count, okay? He was a special advisor to the the secretary of defense and more recently who was oh yeah, this fellow Kent, Joe Kent. He said in a recent interview and I tried to catch these things. He said look, you know there are all kinds of bureaucratic impediments for Trump to do whatever he wants to do. I watched this. He was head of the counterintelligence counterterrorism center. I watched this happen. He says it's a bureaucracy if it doesn't want to do something either slow walks it or doesn't do it and so this is the deep state. Joe Kent, are you ahead of the counterintelligence? And you're talking about the deep state. And you're not part of it? Not part of it. Yeah, it's the power, gosh, the money, the corporations, politicians, people who make even more money. The craziest thing about the Joe Kent thing was how he said that he was literally stonewall that he was talking to these two podcasters that Trump brought into his administration, Dan Bongino and Cash Patel. And I think he was talking directly to Bongino about investigating, it was either Butler, the Butler assassination or the Charlie Kirk assassination. Charlie Kirk, Charlie Kirk assassination. Yeah. And he wanted to investigate it and wanted to look more into it. Wanted to see the evidence. Give me some stuff. Let me help you with this. Let me figure this out. And he was like a stonewall didn't let him get access to anything. And I think he said something similar happened with the Trump assassination where he was now able to touch any of it or look at any of it. Yeah. That's not supposed to happen. That's his job. That's his job title. Like quite literally. Like why would you stonewall this guy from looking at these things? And if you are going to intentionally hide the truth, then you should expect people to come up with conspiracy theories because that is like by definition what happens when you don't give everyone the facts, they're forced to fill in the blanks in their where their gap of knowledge is. That's right. Yeah. Now Joe Kent would have the purview over any foreign involvement in Charlie Kirk or the other one. In other words, he would be fully entitled to to this kind of thing. And as you say, he was kept out of it. And by his own admission, they didn't let me they didn't they cut me out of it completely. His whole counterterrorism center was cut out of this by the deep by the FBI acting on behalf of whom. Oh, you know, it's really so you're right. This is a there's another thing. Professor Mirsheimer. Oh, yeah. And Professor Sachs both addressed this deep state issue from their academic their academic admission point of view. It was highly enlightening the things that they ran into with respect to the deep state. I asked John Mirsheimer one time at a public gathering before 100 people. John, you're you're in Washington now. Did anyone from the State Department of CIA or Pentagon, they get in touch with you to talk to you about. Hey, he says, come on, Ray. I've been doing this for three decades. Never once has a US government analysis shop where they got in the touch earth, be asked you for my opinion. Wow. Why is that? They got their own little parameters. They don't want to be they don't want to be deflected by actual different opinions or maybe facts that they don't want to entertain. They're trying to construct their own reality. Yeah. They don't need him interjecting his views. Yeah. In my day, you invited the academic academicians in and you wanted to hear what they had to say. But so that's a that's a real conundrum. Yeah. Because if Trump candy, let's say Trump wants to deny intelligence to Ukraine. And there are signs now. Of course, that he's actually some of his people are doing that. Will he be able to do that? Who's running all that stuff? Well, the CIA is why? Because we're not literally at war with Russia and Ukraine. And so you have to can't have the military do this. You have to have the CIA do it. So will the CIA if Trump says, look, no more starlink, no law or no more star shield, no more satellite imagery for Ukraine. Would that instruction? Would that order be honored? I don't know. That's how bad it is. And of course, he would take all kinds of flack here at here at home for doing that. That's why it's waffling, even though the Ukrainians are saying they're being denied this kind of stuff. Trump is you know, not to mind. All right. Somebody might have turned off starlight, but wasn't me. Right. So right. And the that would make sense because, you know, the UK and Germany are two of the biggest countries that are supporting Ukraine in this fight against Russia right now, too, which all goes back to what you were saying. How they are now the number one enemies of Russia and France. Yeah. And France. Yeah. But they're all on their way out. You know, I mean, look at the riots in France now. Oh my god. It's insane. I want to talk about let's talk about I want to take a quick break. I'd use the restroom real quick. Sure. So we'll jump right back in and we'll get into that stuff. Okay. Sounds good. We're back. All right. We're back. So we were just talking about yeah, all the crazy stuff that's happening in France and how they're burning things down. And it's also happening in Albania right now, too. Yeah. And to a degree in Rome and elsewhere in history. You know, the the leaders of those European countries who for whatever reason thought that Ukraine was more important than taking care of their social democracies for most of them. It doesn't really pour us except they're a little divorce from reality. And then it can be around very much longer. I wouldn't give melts in Germany many more months and my Kronk, not even got a year left, probably less. Already had a change in leadership in the UK. You know, I think that it's already been trying, they're already trying to frame it as like a Muslim invasion and blaming it on the Muslims. Yeah. The Islamophobia is it's almost as thick, well, it's as thick as Rousseff, but they're not going to get away with that. They've frittered away billions and billions. And I think that the younger generation or the people who replace the current leadership can be smarter enough to say, now, what about this Russian threat? What is your evidence that Russia wants to? Did you know that the Soviet Union fell apart? Did you know that? Did you know that the Russians aren't trying to take over the rest of the world now? Not even Europe? I mean, maybe we could spend our money on programs of social uplift. That's smart. Exactly, I think you might say. So yeah, I hope to and I think I think that's what Putin is thinking. And you know, the time is on his side that this craziness has got to disappear. But meanwhile, he's got to keep his powder dry and wait for the Europeans to come to their senses. Most important that NATO is no more in any real defensive sense. The US is NATO. The US is not going to defend NATO, the other members of NATO in the way that they assumed would be the case before. Now, what is your view on on everything that's happening in Iran right now. - In Iran? Well, I guess one starts with the fact that Iran has no threat to the United States. - Right. - The Israelis perceive Iran to be a threat to them simply because it's the only country in the area that's willing to step up to them. So this is an Israeli operation. I mean, that's why Joe Kent was talking about before quit. I mean, not only did Joe quit, but he said why he quit it. And very respectful letter to the president and he's still admirers, okay, president Trump. He says I quit because this is really not our war. It's a war on behalf of Israel and that Iran poses no threat at all to national security, much less than imminent threat. Whoa, well, when people quit, they usually don't quit that far, but Joe was great credit, said this is why I quit. So three days after the U.S. joined Israel and attacking Iran, so three days after February 28th, Secretary of State and who is also the assistant to the president of national security affairs, Marco Rubio got up and the press was right there. It's still available. So why'd you do it? He said, well, and this is virtual quote. The Israelis told us that they were going to attack Iran. And we thought that Iran would probably retaliate against us as well. And so we wanted to preempt that attack so that it wouldn't be as damaging as it would otherwise be. Huh? (laughing) Oh my God. So we did it for the Israelis. We did it because the Israelis started it. I mean, so that's the bottom line. Now, the way things have evolved, I don't know who is advising Trump with respect to military affairs, but the British talk about inventories, inventories. Dude, do the U.S. look at its arms inventories? Well, if they did, they invented their inventories, inventories because they ran out of bus, they ran out of weapons for God's sake. How do you confront that? I mean, did they really believe what Densage al-Husayd will be over in a couple of days? I mean, so I guess there's a former military person and a fellow who was trained in the infantry to always have a plan of action which included an estimate of the situation. Right. You know, like you find out how many enemy there are, where they are, what, how they're armed. You look at the weather, and you look at the terrain, and then you look at the lines of communication and control, we call them the locks, okay? You know, look at the map for God's sake. Right. You look at your own inventories, and you make sure that they're not invented, but that they're real. So anyhow, the Iranians have fought us off, and now my main concern is whether Trump will realize that to get the oil flowing again, and to prevent an actual worldwide depression, depression, he's got to give, he's got to make some concessions, and I have a plan for him. You do? Yeah, I know what you're planning. Here's the plan. Mr. Trump, you said that the most important thing is preventing Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. Now, maybe nobody told you this, Mr. Trump, but the intelligence community way back in 2007 said that Iran stopped working on a nuclear weapon in 2003, and has not continued. Has that rebegon or started restarted? So look, here's what you do, Mr. Trump. You say, aha, I have this agreement with the Supreme Leader. He has stopped working on a nuclear weapon, and he pledges not to resume, okay? So, victory, we're gonna work out the regulation of the Strait of Hormuz and the Baba Mandab Strait, and well, declare victory, and he will not have an ugly weapon. In other words, most Americans don't know what I just said that the intelligence community ever since 2007, every year have said Iran is not working on a nuclear weapon. So, John Karyaku told me there was multiple things called national intelligence estimates. That's right. That's the supreme genre of intelligence analysis. I chaired two of them myself when I was sufficient. - Can you walk me through how that works? - Sure. I will take this one specific national intelligence estimate. You have to realize that in 2002, 2003, the intelligence was corrupted to justify, in quotes, the attack on Iran, on Iraq. - Right. - In other words, it wasn't a mistake, okay? The Senate, after eight years of investigation, the Senate Intelligence Committee came up with a conclusion, which said, and I quote, "The evidence is used to justify the attack on Iraq was either uncoroperated, contradicted, or nonexistent," period end quote, bipartisan committee with two Republicans joining that conclusion. June 2008, okay? Now, I ask you, what does nonexistent intelligence look like? - That's a good question. - They made it up at a whole cloth. And, sorrowfully, when people asked me, I testified in Congress after the invasion, the Democrats, they were almost even, why do you, so it wasn't meant, weapons of mass destruction. It wasn't ties between Sodom Hussein and al-Qaeda. Why was it? And I answered with an acronym, oil. Now, John Stewart had a big thing. He said, "I'm a governor and yet can't, that violates the rules and acronyms you can't have." So, with O for oil, L, I for Israel, and L for logistics, the permanent military bases that we coveted up there in Iraq, right? As soon as I said, Israel, mostly the Democrats, Congress, think it's sort of, oh my god, don't know. Well, convulsing. Suffice it to say that, in retrospect, it looks like, and to me, at least, that it was more than 50% Israel. I know that they had their generals crawling all over the Pentagon. I know that Doug Feith and all the people from assault themselves, and Cheney, were manufacturing this non-existent intelligence. And it was mostly because Sodom Hussein was perceived to be a threat to Israel, and they got rid of him. Next in line was Iran. Now, that's, I'm getting to the Iran estimate now. After this debacle, there was only one unit in the intelligence community that took a lot of footnotes on the estimate having to do with Iraq. And they said, no, it's not really clear that they have weapons of mass destruction. This was INR, it's the Department of Intelligence and research, it's part of the State Department. And people looked all around because they knew that Bush and Cheney had Iran in their sights next, right? Before they went off into the Western Sunset, 2008. And so they looked around for somebody who could shepherd, who could manage an honest estimate on Iran, no clear. They couldn't find one in the CIA. So they went to the State Department and got this fellow named Thomas Finger, who was head of State Department Intelligence. And they said, Tom, would you come in and do an objective? This was Congress asking them to do this, right? So he said, no, I don't want any part of that. And they finally persuaded, twisted his arm, told him he could take his own people in, they'd give him a whole year to do it. He'd have his own access to all the information, but it would be sealed off. And so we did, and in November of 2007, the issue disestimate on Iran nuclear. And it went against all the estimates in the past, which were based mostly on Israeli intelligence. And it said, and I quote, "We have high confidence in our judgment that Iran stopped working on a nuclear weapon at the end of 2003 and has not resumed work on a nuclear weapon." We say that with high confidence, we say that unanimously all 16 intelligence agencies at the time. So a national intelligence estimate is where you get all the intelligence agencies together. And this, of course, was on whether how close Iran was to a nuclear weapon. And it was a little embarrassing because there had been previous NIE's national intelligence estimates going back to, let's say, 1990. And they will all sit, you know, it's about five years away, about five years away. And 1995, well, maybe four and a half years away, you know, 2004 was made a whole cloth, a recipient of intelligence from Guess Who, the Israelis. How could you do that with Israeli intelligence? Israel intelligence had a lot of influence within U.S. intelligence because the people brought in were people who sniffed the prevailing winds and realized that people had Israel's interests, at least as much in mind as they had U.S. interests. So that was the situation before they brought this guy in from the state department, Tom Finger, good guy. So there's not working a nuclear weapon, high confidence, unanimous. That was 2007. Every year since then, daddy, every year since then, the so-called threat estimate annually required by Congress repeated that judgment until this, this year. Now this year, Tulsi Gabbard said, well, we can't really tell because we've all obliterated all the sites, right? That's what the president said. So this was the June bombing where they hit him with the bunker busters. Yeah, back last year, I guess, wasn't it? Yeah. So, but she let it open, in other words, and there's no evidence that they all worked. Now, we have to distinguish between the nuclear weapon and the uranium. They're two separate distinct things. They have to be married, of course, in the end, but we can verify or they have been verifying that they weren't working on the nuclear weapon. And of course, there are all kinds of cameras and all kinds of, as long as the IAEA, international, atomic energy agency, was there. Matter of fact, Bill Burns, who I mentioned before, head of the CIA until the new administration came in just two weeks before he went out of office. He said, look, US, how close Iran is to get the nuclear weapon. They stopped working many years ago. And, you know, we will find out right away. I mean, there are all kinds of ways to find out that there were, I mean, we get cameras all over the place. We get the IAEA. Of course, that was the case at that time. And so, look, we'd know right away. So, what about the CIA have people on the ground embedded in there, you think? People on the ground? On the ground embedded inside Iran's, that's inside Iran, but they have agents of influence inside the IAEA. Okay, got it. So, they're able to get people inside, where they're in those facilities. Well, let's, you know, I don't know that for sure, but I know that it's a reasonable assumption. Yeah. Okay. Anyhow, it's, it's not like there's any doubt that they were not working on a nuclear weapon. Now, about the enrichment, the interesting thing is that back in 2015, when the JCPOA, the Joint Comprehensive Act on Nuclear Rights, the Iran deal. Right, the Iran deal. That was Obama. And the Russians said, look, you're worried about the highly enriched uranium. We'll take it. We'll take 90% of it. And the Iranians said, oh, okay. And the Russians are saying that again, look, if you're worried, Mr. Trump, about the, they say this publicly pooching himself. We'll take the highly enriched uranium if that's a problem for you. Now, that's a little embarrassing because then Trump has to explain why the JCPOA was not, you know, was not good enough for him. But it's the basic, this, so he's got a way out of this thing. All he has to do is say, look, I stopped Iran from working on a nuclear weapon. The Russians are taking 90 or 80% of the highly enriched uranium. Why wouldn't we take it? Well, I think they want to give it to us. Oh, right. Okay. We didn't ever get it back. Right, right, right. So now, here's what's really curious. It's a really bad thing in my view that our press is so bad that our media is so co-opted. Okay. But in this case, my God, what would you guess the proportion of Americans believe that Iran is working on a nuclear weapon? Percentage of Americans total. I'm going to say 30%. Oh, really? Okay. I would think it'd be a majority because that's what the, that's, that's the assumption that Iran is working on a nuclear weapon. That's what President Trump is trying to prevent. And, you know, that's, that's why we can, you know, really have to be afraid of Iran. Whatever it is, what do you, do you know what the percentage is? No, I don't. I just guess it. But, you know, talking to neighbors or even family, what do you mean, right? I mean, that's why we're there. That's why we're trying to prevent. So anyhow, what I'm saying is that if I'm right, if ironically, the, the media has prevented us from getting the right story, namely that they haven't been working on a nuclear weapon. Did you find that percentage too? Oh, that'd be good. Yeah, see if there's any. Yeah. So, so this has been a real sticky wicket because Netanyahu, of course, has always been advertising how close the Iranians are to getting an election coming up soon. What's that? His elections coming up pretty soon, huh? Yeah. Two weeks now. Yeah. That's the big thing. And I really worry not so much about whether Trump might go to use the dorsum. What's that? Trump just endorsed him. Yeah. He endorsed him big time. And I think that'll probably help Netanyahu. There's not many people in Israel that, that are against what's going on now. That's the real disturbing thing. So let's say, let's say he wins. We'll be feeling his oats and try to persuade Trump to have another go at Iran. Yeah. I think he may. On the other hand, maybe our senior military would say, hey, Mr. Trump, this is thing that the British call inventories. And we have inventories. And we don't, we, yeah, we have invented our inventories to the point where we don't have any more weapons. That's the reality. We really don't have any more weapons to defend Israel or to defend our bases in the area, those that are left. And so hopefully somebody will talk since it to, and to Trump and say, look, you know, let's cut a deal. This deal that I'm suggesting seems to me an easy way out for him. He'd had to swallow some crow, eat some crow because it's very similar to the JCPO away 11 years ago. But so yeah, my main concern is that and Netanyahu will go nuclear. That's, that's, that's terrifying. Yeah. I mean, the fact that you can even say that about a country who is not supposed to have nuclear weapons, they haven't signed the treaty, they haven't acknowledged, they have nuclear weapons. Yeah. And the US people are still prohibited from acknowledging it officially, even though some people have said it here and there. In other words, we don't dwell on, on, uh, Israel having nuclear weapons, but they do. So all I'm suggesting is that, uh, Iran has shown itself up to facing not only Israel, but Israel's patron, the US down, uh, and all the Gulf states been paying for it. Yeah. So what would, uh, if Netanyahu were in extremists? This is, we asked, Steve, the question was, what percentage of Americans believe the story that Iran has a nuclear weapon? Yeah. I'm, what I'm saying is that, uh, let's say That's your whole look. loses. There would be an interregnum where he would still be in power until some sort of coalition took the opposition is just as hawkish if not more than he is. So nothing would change when it comes to the genocide in Gaza and the war in Iran and all that. That's my point. When you talk about a guy who does genocide, force, starvation, assassinations, galore, you tell me that he would shrink away from using nuclear weapons in extremists and I say to you, I think he probably would. This is funny. I found something that breaks it down by a party. 25% of Americans believe Iran currently possesses nuclear weapons. Nearly twice as many, 45% believe Iran does not have any nuclear weapons, but is actively working to develop them. Another 26% says not sure. Okay. Interesting. Yes. I was wrong. I thought maybe it's over 50%. But 45% is pretty, pretty high. And as I'm saying, I've noticed that just not many people I talk to believe much of anything they hear the government say, which is very concerning to me. Yeah. It's, and it's just like they don't, they don't put in the effort to even hide it anymore. That's the problem. Well, as I see it, they have nowhere to go that's easily accessible. They have two jobs. They go home from work. They feed the kids. They put their feet up and they watch fox knows to be entertained. So that's why I'm delighted to come on to a program like this, where we can talk candidly and say our truth and put it out there for people to take in. But not many people are clued in that way. And even though we're making inroads, it's still a pill struggle to put out the real facts on many things including this. And it, you know, it seems like one of the biggest underlying things here beneath everything that we see on like the political layer of society is like the financial institutions that are below it pulling the strings. Like the fact that, you know, Tucker reported on this thing a couple weeks ago about how the United States was selling Israel something like a couple thousand two thousand pound bombs. Right. And the way that deal worked was we gifted them a couple billion dollars so that they can in turn purchase, purchase these bombs from us. So it's like this weird money laundering scheme to boost our GDP or something like that or to to fund a more money into industries. And at the same time, you also have all these people that are in the administration who are like picking stocks early on certain companies are that are, you know, making a tremendous amount of money like fucking Howard Ludnick is one of them. And, you know, it's just like they do it right in front of our faces. And we can talk about it until we're blue in the face on social media in front of a microphone. That's not it doesn't seem to have any effect like they don't care. It's just like the masks off. And they're going to rake in as much money as they possibly can because it, if you look at this, the landscape of these, these wars and these conflicts that the Israel and the US are getting into, especially from the US perspective, it none of these things are beneficial to the United States, right? They're not a, they're not a beneficial to the people who live here. They're not beneficial to the economy or to the security of the country. So it's like, okay, the math isn't mathing here. If you're trying to say the politicians are making these moves. So like, maybe if you look a step above that and look at the financial layer of these things and, you know, these corporations like Black Rock and Vanguard and State Street and all these, you know, companies like Palantir and Lockheed Martin and all these companies that are, you know, maneuvering and getting themselves into position prior to when these decisions are made and seeing how much money they're making and how the people that are the politicians who are allegedly making these calls are enriching themselves from that. It just seems like it's just this extraction of money. They're trying to just make as much money as they possibly can in the shortest amount of time before shit hits the fan and we're no longer, you know, the most powerful country in the world or the US dollar is no longer, you know, the primary currency, you know, that's just my view of it. It just seems like, it just seems like chaos and greed. No, I agree. You know, I come from proletarian stock and I can never understand why enough is not enough. I mean, why do people have to have more millions or more billions of dollars? I just don't understand it, but it's the deep state in the Palantirs and the others that you mentioned, you know, those really, there are the ones that are calling the shots and how do we get at that? Well, let's see what the midterms do. I think we are in for some real surprises with the midterms. I think that the one of the main factors is that the automatic favoring of Israel is no longer the case, especially among younger people, right? Yeah. Now, back in 2001, I think it was, yeah, Netanyahu was in the dining room of a supporter and you may have seen this clip, but he says, turn off that video camera and got to turn it off, right? So here's the woman of the house saying, now, BB, if we do that to the Palestinians, we're going to be isolated from the rest of the world and it's going to look really bad. And he's, this is a roll on tape, okay? And he says, oh, the rest of the world. It's the Americans that matter. And we can bend the Americans anywhere we want, anytime we want. Do you know that no matter what we do, 80% of the American people will support us no matter what we do. It's incredible. Period. And quote, it's on YouTube. Look at that. Okay. No, that's no longer the case. No longer the case, right? And whether that can be translated into, into electoral results or not, we might be see the beginning of that just in a couple of weeks when we have a midterms. Well, it's crazy that Thomas Massey still lost. Yeah. Well, yeah, it's crazy. It's true. What you're saying, there's a huge uprising among the youth who are aware of the undue influence of Israel on our politicians, but he's still lost. Despite that, he's still lost. Yeah. That brings us back to reality. But, you know, it's a, it's a reality that I observed from the very first time I was working on Soviet foreign policy in 1964, right? If I wrote something that mentioned Israel, however casually or kind of like a footnote, I had to make sure that that was, that was seen by the top press of the agency before, before it was approved. Now James Jesus Angleton was the guy. And he was like this with the Israelis and with the British. And he was pretty much in charge of whatever anybody said with respect to Israel. I often ask myself, how come there are no national intelligence estimates on Israel? Hello, I mean, McGovern, when are you going to wise up? Now, that was all so secret and so, so compartmental to the degree there were any estimates, were there ever national intelligence estimates on, on other friendly countries? Oh, yeah, sure. We had them on Western Europe, we had them on all countries, but it was really. Yeah. Yeah. Sure. I did one on one of the two that I actually shared was on Spain after Franco go back away. But what was going to happen then? But never one on Israel. And one, one other I did was on, on Italy. And that was when people were really worried about the Communist Party of Italy getting a share of the power. Yeah. So, I just don't know of any national intelligence estimates on Israel. That was not my focus, but I know about most of them. And such as there were, were probably kept really under tight hold as we say. Do you think there's any level within the current intelligence community that is aware of this and trying to come up with a solution to it? The Israel issue? No, no. Well, you know, what happened was See, I opted--go ahead, continue, continue. The analysis directorate in which I worked was able to do its thing. In other words, I was privileged to be an analyst of Soviet foreign policy. People were interested in an honest assessment of that, and I was able to give it. Even though I had to, if I mentioned Israel, I had to make sure that James Jesus Angleton said that was okay. The other ports were not so much--so independent--Latin America, for example. There were a lot of ideologies that played there, even in the analysis thing. But what was I going to say here? What was your question again? I was asking, is there any level of organization or understanding inside the intelligence community today? I know this would be a peer speculation on your part, but that is aware of the actual threat of Israel and its influence that it has. If it has infiltrated, which it clearly has infiltrated our agencies and our government and to--I think John Kerry Occult told me, when the last time he was in the CIA, he had estimated that there was, you know, over 250 undeclared Israeli Mossad spies in the country. And he says it must have ballooned by now, but do you think there's anyone in the current intelligence community that is aware of this and actively working on it? Or is it just one of those things that it's like, "It is what it is, and let's just do our job," and like, "We are one with them." Have they accepted the fact that it's like this problem? Like this--I hate to make it sound like it's, you know, like Hitler, but like, it's a bad analogy, but like, when a parasite eats an animal, the animal eventually becomes the parasite to where there's no distinction anymore. Has it become like that, or there's no distinction between Israel and the United States? They just feel like this is a problem that is too far gone, and we just have to accept it. Well, let me answer it this way. When Robert Gates came in as head of analysis under Bill Casey, people got promoted by towing the company line, in other words, even on Russia, of course, you know, the Russians would never lose power without a violent revolution. God of our chuff was just a clever commie, he couldn't deal with them, all this kind of stuff. So the people got it hired, were people who, in the Russian realm, kind of were trained by people I mentioned before, Richard Pipes, a Berzhinsky, or people like that, and it evolved in other areas as well. The reason why the continued insistence by the intelligence community that Iran was not working on a nuclear weapon, the estimates, one after the other, every year from 2007 until this year, is because it's the exception to the rule. In other words, I've been amazed that those analysts have been able to stick to that line, that Tulsi Gabbard stepped to that line until she kind of waffled too much and was discarded. So unfortunately, that's the good news. That's why I, as an analyst of these things going on, I was reluctant to throw the baby out with the bathwater. In other words, the analysis function, with all those operators that are overthrowing governments and causing wars and stuff like that. But that's the exception now. Right now, I just don't know if there are people that are taking issue with our deference to Israel, whether they're still there, whether they have a voice, whether, if they spoke out, whether they'd be transferred to stacking books in the library. I just don't know, but the whole thing has been corrupted to the point where, except for this one exception, so I speak. And it's really sad to see this because a nation can't really function without somebody telling objective truth to the point where they can arrive at objective truth to the policymakers. In other words, did no one, did no one tell Biden that it was a fool's errand to think they could weaken Russia by building up Ukraine, did no one look at the map, did no one look at the inventory, I mean, it defies explanation. And then with Trump, did no one tell Trump that they're going to run out of ammunition? Then we'll tell Trump that the Iranians have been three decades digging in and building hypersonic missiles and so forth. In other words, it's not only intelligence community, it's the military who have been sort of towing a line and not speaking up. This fellow, this fellow, racing cane, Dan Cain, who is the chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff, you know? I mean, doesn't he tell Trump what's possible and what's not possible? I thought he did say something early on. Yeah, that's what he told some press guy, you know? But when push came to shove, when he, with the head of the CIA, the head of the defense department, so forth, all together, when BB Netanyahu had most side brief, how easy it was going to be to conquer you, you run, they didn't say diddly. They didn't say diddly. Now the next day or two days later when the New York Times interviewed him, they said, well, yeah, we had certain misgivings, so we had supports and problems. But that's the way it goes in Washington and, you know, if the military, if the uniform military is so corrupt that they're people by, by, by ones that have their next eye on a job with Lockheed Martin or with Raytheon, and they don't really care much as long as they get their four stars or their three stars and retire, then we're in a really difficult place. And I hate to be so pessimistic, but maybe cold reality will sit in, maybe the fact that Iran has faced us down, maybe the fact that maybe even in these, these pliable military will say, no, Mr. President, no clears, not going to be a good idea, okay? Maybe there's hope that the thing, things will calm down, particularly since nobody wants especially Trump, a worldwide depression, which is what's going to happen if the Strait of Hormuz is not really open, it's not really open now except to some of the, some of the ships that are going to China and elsewhere, it's not open to the people who are, who are supplying you are, for the United States, for the other places, so. So we're in for a real economic hardship, and maybe that will kind of be people over the head with the two before. And now the Houthis are bombing Saudi Arabia. Yeah, it looks like Saudi Arabia is not long for this world, right? I mean, they don't have much, and when they asked Trump to come to their aid, Trump said no at least twice, and then they asked Pakistan and they asked Turkey, now they've asked Egypt. I don't think there's any real way that any of these armies can insert themselves in a way that can do more than just defend the capital of Saudi Arabia, not much more than that. And the Saudis are not making any money, and you know, it looks like the Houthis of Saudi is finally for the history books. And so the, from what I understand, I'm going to get you a napkin, see, will you grab him a napkin, please, or some paper towels, know what this is, he's got a cut on his hand. All right, we're back. I want to ask you, you, I saw a video of you explaining the, the USS Liberty story better than anyone else I've ever, you explained all of it, because there was, I think you were, you were analyzing a video where somebody was asking Ben Shapiro about the USS Liberty and he was explaining it from his perspective and you, you explained it, there's like all of these transcripts or something about it. Sure. So for people who aren't aware, can you just give, first of all, what, what is like the, the general consensus on what happened with the USS Liberty, and what is the truth? Yeah. Well, I know some of the USS Liberty survivors, some of them are very good friends of mine. The ones that weren't killed or wounded, well, some of them are wounded. USS Liberty was a intelligence collection ship run by the Navy and NSA, the National Security Agency, eavesdropping off the coast of Sinai during the June war in 1967. They were told to stay in international waters, namely farther out than 12 miles and they did. And they were snooping on, well, truth be told, they had Israeli translators, they had Hebrew translators as well as Russian and Arabic. On the ship? On the ship, yeah, there's pretty much intelligence. It was the most expensively and most up-to-date intelligence collection ship in the U.S. Navy. Oh, wow. So what happened was that on June 8, 1967, in the morning, they were reconnoitered by Israeli fighter bombers and so forth, they flew over and they flew so low that a couple of the sailors was waving to them without the window and all. I wasn't so happy afternoon because they appeared and they strafe the ship and tried to do everything they could to sync it to include dropping napalm all over the deck, shooting out all the active communications, communications sites they had antennae and so forth. And this game is a big surprise to the crew of the Liberty, of course, and couldn't understand what was going on. Meanwhile, back in Washington, we had the intercepted messages where Israeli pilots were talking to the control centers, but this is an American ship. This is an American. It's got big American fling. Follow your orders. Follow your orders. And there was one pilot that refused to follow the orders. He ended up in prison when they got back to Tel Aviv. But what happened was not only were they strafing and bombing out all the antennae, but there were three torpedo boats that appeared. Two of them missed submarines. Three Israeli torpedo boats, right? So that's not a submarine. That's a boat. No, these are kind of surface torpedo boat. And one of them hit midships were the marine detachment. There was a marine detachment on the ship and hit that and put a big hole in the Liberty. Now, one of the head of the marine detachment, whose name I were remembered. And Bryce Lockwood, marine sergeant, gun resorgent, was behind a bulwark when his men were hit. Okay. And he told me later that he was not unconscious. But then he woke up and he saw there were two Marines left in there. The others had all floated out into the Mediterranean. He jumped in. He pulled out one of them. And damn, they like, they like the hatch. He got the hatch open, got one up and went down for the other and the other guy had slid out to sea. He lost all his men. Bryce Lockwood. How did I meet Bryce Lockwood? I talked a lot about Iraq after the Iraq War. And I was down in Springfield, Missouri, giving a lecture in a church hall, maybe 300 people. And someone asked me, tell me, what did you think of that Muir Shimer and Walt's article on the Israel lobby? And I said, well, I thought it was very good, except it missed the main point. It's what do you mean it missed the main point? I said, it missed the one time when the Israelis learned for sure that they could get away with murder. And what was that? I said, well, I'm talking about the USS Liberty. Blank faces. 300 people. Oh, anybody know about the USS Liberty? One guy in the back, one guy in the middle, one guy in the front. Sir, are you in the front? Tell me what you know about that USS Liberty. Sir, Sergeant Bryce Lockwood, and USS Liberty crew, sir. Mr. Lockwood, did I hear correctly? You were in command of the Marine Detachment on the U.S. Yes, I was. Well, would you be willing to, would you be willing to tell people what happened? Sorry. I've not been able to do that yet, but I'd like to try to do that now. This is 2006, witness 1967. Okay. Hey, came up and you talked for about five minutes, and then he was pretty much overcome and went back. And he told me, he told us all this story. And the only reason why it was only 178 people wounded and 34 people killed was because one enterprising sailor found an antenna, an antenna that wasn't obliterated by the Israeli fighter bombers. It hadn't been active so they didn't know it was there. And he stringed up some kind of device. We got an SOS out, okay. And SOS went out and the torpedo boats immediately left because they intercepted the SOS as well. And the fighter bombers stopped. What happened? Well, the SOS went to the commander of that part of the Navy fleet, six fleet in the Mediterranean. And he immediately launched some of his fighter bombers to the do battle with whoever was attacking his ship, right? And he was called back. Call back by whom? By Secretary McNamara, the Secretary of Defense who said, pull those fighter bombers back. And he said, I can't. They're attacking my ship. They said, well, you pull it back anyway. And they think his name is Admiral Geiss, okay? He said, sir, I'm willing to do that. I wouldn't need to speak to your supervisor. Wow. LBJ. LBJ is right there. I'll tell you, you, I don't want to embarrass our ally. Israel, you pull those, you pull those, those bombers back. Yes, sir. Now, we have this directly from that admiral who swore one of the sailors to secrecy until he died that the admiral died. He finally died. And we have that, we have that verbatim. This is exactly, well, it went down. In other words, the Israelis learned that they could get away with murder, 34 sailors, 174 wounded of a crew of about 300. And the US would not only not do anything about it, but would cover it up to include the US Navy covering it up. Okay, I'm sorry, covering it up for Israel, so that who was sworn to secrecy? This sailor who interviewed Admiral Geiss, I think, was his name. The admiral who was in charge of these two ships, the USS America and USS Saratoga. Okay. They're both both aircraft carriers of every call. So in other words, my God, the Navy, I guess, to its credit, fought for Captain McGonagall, who was wounded in the leg and kept the ship right. They reached Malta, I think it was. And then they took all the sailors to Athens to the, to where the hospital was. But anyhow, the Navy did say, could you please, give Captain McGonagall a silver star? I think we'll know. What's the battle banner? And finally, they prevailed. Admiral Moore was one of the people. And they gave him the honor, but not in the White House, but in, I don't know if you know, the Anacostia River Navy base, but they gave him very exceptionally. They gave him this honor amid the stench of this base with very little public. and no president to make the honor. So Captain Mechanical was honored, but nobody else. And I'll tell you one thing. I became so close with these survivors that when I heard that one of the Navy people who are instrumental in getting the SOS out, you know, from the radar, from the antenna that wasn't demolished, he was getting an award in Vesalia, California, to what the Valley there. Yeah. And the Congressperson was a fellow named Devon Nunes, who was a name already to me. And he had this fellow Terry Haddad-Bethier working for him. And he found out that Terry was one of the survivors. And when he heard the story, he petitioned the Navy to give him the Silver Star, which is the second most big medal. So as soon as I heard that, I got the next plane and went out there, fronted a car and drove down. And it was a wonderful ceremony because many of the survivors, many, there were about five survivors there. And Terry, the press, local press, it was not a big deal, local press. And Terry, you have Shrapnel. Shrapnel, if you take so many shirts, Joe is a Shrapnel woman. Wow. But you want to know about. Hey, there it is. That's the boat after it got struck. So why did Israel do this? What's that? Why did Israel do this? Well, that's the big question. You're good. You asked the right questions. We don't know for sure, but we know there are two very plausible reasons. Whatever this do we have. Well, the evidence is circumstantial. Israel is going to go up on the Golan Heights the next day. Okay? They're going to go into Syria. They're going to take over the Golan Heights, which they have and which they still have. Okay. They don't want us to know. Israel is very much in the habit of asking us for forgiveness after the fact rather than permission before. And they knew that this intelligence collection ship would surely be able to intercept the messages that were not back and forth about the next attack, the next day, the 9th of October on the Golan Heights. That's one theory. The other one is that the Israelis had captured a whole bunch of Egyptian soldiers in the Sinai. And they had taken them to a place very close to the shore. And they had a freedom, they had a given water, and they had to guard them, and they're supposed to go up on the Sinai. So there were two Israeli journalists there who recorded that these Egyptians were shot, put into a trench, and just done away with. And that's theory. That happened. That was attested to by these Israeli journalists. Okay. The theory is that the USS Liberty, just 13 miles offshore, would have gotten word of that as well. And they didn't want the USS to realize what the Israelis had done to these prisoners. You know, if you take a step back, this was an unprovoked war. And the reason I say that is because not many people know that Manachim Began, six or seven years later, he had been the Prime Minister of Israel. He was in Washington, and in a real moment of Hutzpah said, "Look, we'll have to be honest about the 1967 war. Nasir was not really provoking us. Those soldiers in the Sinai, they were not a threat to us. We decided to attack him." Let's be candid about that. We decided to attack him. This Manachim Began, former Prime Minister of Israel, speaking to, I think it was a national college, a national military university or so. It's in the New York Times the next day, okay? So what does that mean? That means this whole six-day war was waged on a pretext. They decimated the Syrian Air Force with Egyptian Air Force and more important. They took over what is now called the occupied territories. Gaza, West Bank, okay? So when you're talking about the occupied territories, they were occupied in 1967 by the Israelis who Prime Minister admitted that this was not provoked. They just wanted to take over this territory. That was June. In November, the UN Security Council voted unanimously that Israel had to withdraw from the occupied territories. Resolution 242, UN Security Council. November 1967, same year. That's what we're talking about now. They're never withdrew. When what's going on in Gaza, what's going on in the West Bank, and when the other Arabs see all this, they have this, what they call this, arc of resistance. Resistance? What kind of resistance? Well, are the entitled to resist occupiers? They damn well are under international law. International law says that it's not only okay, it's necessary in some instances to resist occupiers to occupy a land. Oh, but are they allowed to use violence? Yes. International law says that they're allowed to violently fight for their independence against occupiers. So this arc of resistance is really led by Iran but it's talking about Lebanon now. It includes Gaza. It includes parts of Iraq. And now the Houthis. So it's a real deal. This is a group that cares about what's happening in places like Gaza, even though, you know, if I were an Iranian, and I am a real Politiq guy, and I say, "Oh, I got this dust up with the US and Israel, but I can cut a deal." Why complicate it by including Lebanon? What's going on there, you know? Well, they're not like me. They're insisting that Lebanon be included and now Gaza. And now Yemen, the Houthis. So this arc of resistance is exactly that resistance to occupation. It's legal. I hate violence, but violence is un. And the people against this, of course, are Israel and the United States, who for reasons that Israel wants resist all this and are afraid that Iran might be able to take back the occupied territories. It started in 1967. The liberty was just, as I said, the time when I thought, you know, when Mishima and Walt wrote this book about the Israel lobby, I look for a mention of the. A mention of the liberty. There was no mention there. When I got finished here in Missouri, Springfield, Missouri, I called up John Mishima. John, why? Hello, you missed the liberty. So, yeah, we had so much, right? We had so much. Yeah, but get away with murder. So John is a great guy. I love him. I've learned a hell of a lot from him. I don't know how to explain it. He didn't make a very convincing case that he had so much else, you know? What other proof was there that they could literally get away with murder and that the US Navy, my God, would cover it up? So, what were the transcripts again that you were saying? They had orders. These were the intercepted messages, which a lot of people had, and what you're used, actually, in some of the intelligence courses at Fort Hollywood, where the intelligence school used to be in Baltimore, to show what happens in war. And it was, you know, they were intercepted by whom? By us. By us. Yeah. At what, when did we intercept them? Right, simultaneously. Yeah. I mean, the state of the art, even then, was, you're intercepting. NSA has it immediately. And so did we at CIA headquarters. And the messages were from who to who? From Israel. fighter pilots to control tower, but these are American ships. These American ships, those big American flag there, follow your orders, follow your orders. As I mentioned, one of those fighter pilots did not follow orders, flew back to Tel Aviv, it spends a lot of considerable time in prison for violating orders. So it's not like any of this is made up. We have the survivors, we have the intercepts. Your real question there is the only one that I can't answer definitively. Why? Why they would do this? And those are two real possibilities. There's another possibility, well, now they made various excuses about a Egyptian horse carrying ship that was mistaken, that they mistook for the liberty or something like that. That never held much water. And there's some speculation that I won't go into the other. Those are the two main theories. I leaned toward the one about the Golan Heights. They did go up the next day. I think that the Israelis didn't want us to know about that. Less we intervened and said, don't they? We took enough now. Don't take the Golan Heights in Syria. And they to prevent that. They just kept us in there. Do you think there was any intention to possibly blame it on someone else? Or would it have been too obvious? Well, you mean the Israelis blaming on somebody else, right? You know, if the ship had been sunk, which was fully the objective by the Israelis, that would have worked. But with so many survivors and so many witnesses to exactly what happened, only a cover-up, a monster cover-up by the U.S. Navy and the U.S. government would prevent it from coming out. But no, there was no way that they could accuse anybody else of striking the liberty. I'm glad you asked that question because recently Bryce Lockwood came to an event. I arranged up at the National Press Club in Washington, March. And he's sharp as a tack. He's my vintage, but he's still pretty sharp. Yeah. And he just got up there and without a note, just talked about what had happened and how his co-survivors. You know, you want to talk about PTSD. My God, when I had lunch with the survivors after Terry Harpajay was awarded that medal from Congressman Noonis. I mean, those guys couldn't tell their wives. They were enjoined against talking to each other about what happened on the plane of court martial. And I mean, as I say, this was what, '67, this was 2007, I think, was so what? Do the math, 40 years later. Bryce Lockwood finally says, "Okay, I think I can talk about it tonight." And he gets up and he explains what happened. So, I mean, if further proof were needed about the Israelis knowing that I've got a flea problem in here, Steve, that they could get away with murder literally. And murder of U.S. Armed Forces sailors and NSA employees. Well, they learned that then and whether that would obtain right now, probably, but when Trump goes, I don't know, speculation, but surely the whole that Netanyahu has explained back in 2001, where he says, "It's amazing. Amazing was the word to use. How much the U.S. can bend to the will of the Israelis. 80 percent, 80 percent of the Americans will support us. Whatever we do, it's amazing." Right. It's on the tape. YouTube. It's insanity. It really is. Yeah. Well, Ray, thank you for doing this, man. We just did three hours. Oh, he's right. Yeah. Well, I wish extroverts like to like to talk. You're a great talker. You're a great talker and a fantastic storyteller. And I appreciate your time. Oh, it's welcome. Very, very good work. Yeah. Tell people who are listening more about where they can find more of your talks, more of your work. Okay. All that stuff. Well, I'm on sub-stack, Ray McGovern. I do ex at Ray McGovern. I have my own website, which is actually easily searchable. It's Ray McGovern.com. Okay. So, and YouTube, but man, a lot of YouTube stuff. What's your organization that you founded right before the recommendation? It's called Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity. And the word, the sanity came advisedly because back then, there was no real way to collaborate. In other words, at the CIA, you had analysts and you had various booths and so forth. And if you're going to write that the vice president of the United States was lying through his teeth, well, you're going to check that out. What do you think? So, it was all email sanity checks, right? So, we do insanity checks all the time. And of course, there wasn't much sanity in Washington at that time. So, that we kind of said, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, we do have quite a record now of about 60 memoranda, mostly addressed right to the president. And that one from December 12th, 2016, where we said that it wasn't hacked by Russia or by anybody else. It had to have been an inside job. And so, we had a copy, not even a download, a copy from the computer onto an external storage device, probably a thumb drive. Somebody who was there in person. Yeah. And the only suspect, there's a fellow named Seth Rich. You mentioned Seth Rich. You're immediately branded a conspiracy. There's a lot of them branded. So, I'll lean into it. Welcome to the club. It's good to be here. Ray, thanks again. We'll link all your stuff below. It's been very fun. I appreciate it. Thank you. All right. Good night, folks.