John Kiriakou UNLOADS on Hunting Terrorists, Elon Musk, & Pentagon Secrets

Hey, guys, if you're not following me on Spotify, please hit that follow button and leave a five-star review. They're both a huge, huge help. Thank you. You know, when you assemble this blue ribbon panel of the greatest minds in government to look at the evidence, they're going to find the truth. Unless they're the Warren Commission. Unless they're the Warren Commission, or maybe the 9/11 Commission. May hold. Well, I don't want to talk about that. Okay. And, uh, no, just kidding. And, um, yeah. I mean, if they're, if they're legitimately doing their job, they're going to find, look, we, we have no evidence. The Russians didn't steal the election for Donald Trump. That's just the way it is. There was so much, there were so many people though, because you're making me think with the media thing. There were so many people in the media who were, now we can say it, creating evidence. Oh, my God. Rachel Maddow is an example. Yeah. On my show one day, we played a clip of Rachel Maddow saying Russia, Moscow, or Putin, 90 times in the first hour of her show the night before. It was ridiculous. And she was ripping Mitt Romney for saying it four years before that. Remember that? He got like laughed off the stage. Obama was like cold war call once they're positive at everyone's like, hi, he said Russia. And then it was like the main keyword. Yeah. It sure was. Do you think that? Well, let's get to the bigger question here. Do you think that like? Powers that be in the bureaucracy. I mean, this is what the internet says, but do you think there is any legitimacy to people in the bureaucracy? Besides like those two idiots at the FBI who really were actually working to attribute things to other places. When in fact, it was quite literally them doing it to stop Donald Trump from getting into power. Boy, that's a good question. Yeah. You know how it looks. Yeah. It looks. It looks bad. Yeah. You know, honestly, I have to say probably yes. Yeah. Yeah, probably and that's a surprise to me because when I when I worked at the CIA, we generally had no idea what our colleagues politics were. Genuinely. I sat next to this one guy for six years. I didn't have the foggyest idea if he was a Democrat, a Republican or an independent, no idea. There was a woman I worked with, this is in like 96 and she got in trouble. Like written up because she put a Bob Dole for president bumper sticker in her cubicle. Oh wow. And they're like, that has to come down and you're getting written up and you have to go to HR. You know, we work for the for the country. We don't choose sides. That's how it used to be at the FBI as well. And that really seemed to change dramatically around 2016. What do you think it was? Well, let me even ask a hypothetical in there because I always wonder this. I'm like, obviously, I know Trump says a lot of shit and like, you know, he's an outsider and all this. But like, do you think that there's some sort of intelligence? I don't know what it would be that they know about him that they think is just so dangerous that they're willing to completely lift the veil on their. They're not caring about these elections and no and saying like, fuck it, get him out of that. Somebody would have leaked it. You know, going back to to the Christopher steel report. You know, I worked with the crystal. Wait, this is the guy who had the pissment, all right? Right. Yeah. So he was an MI 6 officer. You worked with? Yeah, we did an operation together in London in the 90s. And the funny thing about it is he was like the guy at MI 6 that all the other MI 6 guys wanted to be like. That's how highly respected he was. I enjoyed the first steel. Golden showers. Yeah. Okay, please continue. So I have a theory. He went from the James Bond kind of officer that that every MI 6 guy wanted to be to this caricature because when you're collecting intelligence, when you're an operations officer collecting intelligence, no matter how outrageous the intelligence might be. You send it back to your headquarters and the analysts go over it and the analysts say this is bullshit. This is great. This is a possibility. This is a probability. You just turn over the analysts. So if he had been in MI 6 and a source told him that Donald Trump paid Russian prostitutes to pee on Barack Obama's hotel bed. The analysts would say this is stupid and it wouldn't get published because there's no other information to corroborate this. But in private practice, there is no team of analysts to go over the intelligence. One of, if not the most common DMs I get on Instagram are many of you asking me what my favorite books are. Well, today's your lucky day because if you use the link in my description below to join my newsletter, I'm going to give you my top 10 book recommendations right now. Also, if you'd like to join my clipping community for a chance to make money producing content from the show, you can do so via the discord link in my description below. And finally, you can join my Patreon for early uncensored releases of the full episodes via the Patreon link about a subscription below. As always, please take one second to hit that subscribe button. If you haven't already, I really appreciate that. Also, the like button is a big help and you can join my newsletter via the link in the description below. Because he was out by then. He was out by then. And he was paid by the Clinton campaign, although there were reports that he was initially hired by the Ted Cruz campaign. And then Cruz walked away from it. And then Hillary said, we'll take it. So there was no team of analysts to vet the information and to tell the Clinton campaign, this is nonsense. This is true. This is maybe this is, I don't know, we have to ask other questions, find other sources. There was nobody to do that. And so he did what he always did in MI6. You just write it up and send it in. And then let the next group figure out if it's true or not. I think it's just literally because he may not have endorsed it. He just had what he found and he didn't have government analysts on the other side. So he said they'll take care of that. Yeah. I think that's exactly what happened. Back up a second. How are you working with this guy? Was this, was this the Greek stuff? Yeah. Oh, shit. Okay. Can you talk about this at all? In generalities. That's good enough. I became the master of the old files on Greek terrorism. I took this issue so seriously. It actually cost me my first marriage. I was obsessed with Greek terrorism. And then they tried to kill me in Athens. You told that story. So I would go through these files. Some of them were 25 years old, just looking for a lead, a lead that maybe had been overlooked 10, 20, 25 years ago. And I found a lead. It was a connection between the Greeks and Carlos the jackal. And nobody had ever talked to this guy. So I'm like, where is this guy? Wouldn't have any idea where this guy is. So which guy? Oh, the connection. So I wrote a cable to headquarters and I said, I've identified this guy that I think is the middle man between the Greeks and Carlos the jackal. Do we have any idea where he is? I think he's probably in Lebanon. I said, I get a cable back and they said, no, he's, he's living in London. I said, how the heck is he living in London? They said he converted to Christianity, married some English woman and he's living in London. And I said, I got, I got to see him. A Carlos the jackal plug live in openly in London. Can you tell people who Carlos the jackal was, by the way? Carlos the jackal was the most infamous and deadliest independent terrorist of the 1970s. There was a movie based on, on his exploits called The Day of the Jackal. It's a classic 70s film. And the reason why I say independent terrorist is he did this for ideology. He was a communist, but like an ardent, hard core Bolshevik kind of communist. He was Venezuelan by birth. His name was Iliic Ramirez Sanchez. His name was Carlos the jackal. And he was just impossible to find. But he did some of the most outrageous terrorist attacks. He and his men just simultaneously opened fire on the airports in Rome and Vienna. Killed, I forget what it does and two dozen people, whatever it was. The most outrageous operation that he carried out was there was an OPEC oil ministers meeting in Vienna, Austria. Okay, so all the, all the ministers of oil. He loves those guys. Yeah, I love those guys. All the ministers of oil from all of the OPEC countries. And he kidnapped all of them at the same time. He was a gangster. I'm not going to lie. And it is stews. Oh my god. Oh my god. And the OPEC countries are like, okay, how many hundreds of millions do you want to give us our people back? And they paid. We've talked about his capture, it's actually quite exciting. That was Billy Waw. Billy Waw. Yeah. In Cartoon. But anyway, I wrote a cable to headquarters and they wrote a cable to the Brits and they said, "Hey, we've got a guy in Athens. You know, this is what he's working on. This is what he wants. Can he come and talk to this guy?" And they said, "Sure, but, you know, as per protocol, we're going to have a guy from MI5 and a guy from MI6 go with him." And I said, "Cool." So they set up this meeting of all freaking places. It was at the Hard Rock Cafe in London, with, you know, through the whole meeting. I couldn't even hear myself, but he did that on purpose because he genuinely believed I was going to shoot him in the meeting. He was scared to death, shaking, mouth all dry. And I kept saying, "I don't mean you any harm. I understand that you've straightened out your life." He said, "I found God. I became a Greek Orthodox Christian. I married this beautiful woman." He was living in some housing project outside. It was bad. So I said-- So he was living poor? Yeah, he was poor. And I said, "I don't care about anything but Carlos. I want to know about Carlos and the weapons that went to the Greeks." Well, he ended up being less valuable than I had hoped. We met, I don't know, four or five times, but, but Christel sat in on every single meeting and we kind of struck up a professional friendship. I had a great deal of respect for the guy. And then fast forward, what, 15 years? And they're talking about the steel dossier and I was like, "That can't be the Christel from MI6. Now he's Christel for steel, right?" Yeah. And it was. I recognized him on TV. I was like, "You've got to be kidding me. How could somebody so highly respected, so professional get stuck in this political quicksand up to his neck?" And the conclusion that I finally came to was he did exactly what he used to do at MI6. Just thinking, "Well, there's this whole team. There has to be this whole team in Washington to analyze the information, just like I had this whole team in London to analyze the information. They paid me to collect it. They didn't pay me to analyze it. So here it is. Hillary Clinton knew it was bullshit, but he too. But he has his head in the sand with that thinking that they're going to run with anything, just to be like, "Oh, look, he's a Russian asset." I'll tell you what, as an intelligence collector, if I had one source say something that was utterly outrageous, that no other source corroborated, I would never have included it in the report. You know, I asked an officer one time in the Middle East. I was doing a paper and there was a foreign woman's name who came up repeatedly. And so I didn't know anything about her and we didn't have anything in the files. So I sent what's called a, I won't say what it's called, anyway, I sent a cable saying, "I'm working on this study for the National Security Council and this woman's name keeps popping up. I don't know who she is. There's nothing in the files. Can you collect on her?" And one of the officers responded, "Yes, I can collect." I was like, "Great." And I put the paper on hold, waiting for him to trigger a meeting with his, with his source so he can ask the source, "Tell me all about this woman." I get the report back. The entire report was about how much she loved hot dogs, that she would put them with mustard and sometimes with onions and sometimes with relish. And then every time she goes to the States, she has hot dogs and she asked the some airline to ship in hot dogs. I'm like, "Are you fucking kidding me?" I waited for two weeks for this report. I can't send this to the president. Oh, and by the way, this woman who we think may be procuring weapons for this terrorist group, she really, really loves hot dogs. I was furious. But sometimes the collectors just aren't thinking about the end result. They're like, "Oh, you want to know about the woman?" Here, she loves these hot dogs. Crystal, "Oh, you want to know about Obama and Trump? Trump hired the hookers to piss on Obama's bed. Isn't that hilarious?" It's like, "No. Do you have any idea what you just did to our election?" Yeah. Have you tried to reach out to him? You know, I talked about it with a friend back in 2016 and then I thought, "Nah, I'm going to leave well enough alone." And I've been back to London, I don't know, six, eight times since then, but I haven't. You don't stay with him? No. That's too much, too much trouble. Intelligence agencies, though, like, because it always comes back to us when I talk with you guys. Obviously, they have these names for certain alliances and air quotes. You got the five eyes, all the English countries. And they're friends. Yeah. Right? Yeah, we are. They're legit. They are. But is anyone really friends? Are you really friends with someone if the minute they walk out the door, are you fucking attached to a microphone to their ass so you can hear them for it? Oh, no. In the case of five eyes, it's, you know, I didn't believe this when they first announced the creation of the five eyes. But we were instructed to open the books and give them literally everything to the point where there are five eyes officers sitting at NSA, FBI, CIA, sitting there with you. They have a desk, all the books, all the books, not just the books that sit in the main part of the library. And then there's a hash that takes you downstairs. No, well, they're going to be compartmented operations. But it's not just they can't see it because they're five eyes. They're foreign nationals. They can't see it because nobody else can see it, but maybe six people. You know what I mean? Which is a lot. Yeah, it's compartmentalized, like you said, but there's a lot, there's a lot of things like that. Yeah. You think they have the same policy for us? Oh, yeah. Really? That surprises me. It surprised me when it was first announced. You know, we had very poor relations with New Zealand, for example, for many years, Ronald Reagan with drew the CIA station chief from New Zealand and closed the station there in 1982 in a fit of peak for what? Why? Because they would not allow a nuclear powered submarine into port. Yeah, you know what? Fuck them. How dare they? Oh, we're going to park our news where we want it. That's what Reagan said. We want the Lord of the Rings there. And then and then in 1990, 91, it's like six weeks before we attacked Iraq to push them out of Kuwait. I was instructed to brief the Prime Minister of New Zealand. And I was like, New Zealand. I thought they were on the shit list. And they're like, yeah, well, it's wartime. We're going to we're going to try to rehabilitate them. I even got invited to the ambassador's house for dinner afterwards. It was so much fun. Of course she did. You didn't plan a bug there. No. Are you sure? Positive. You can tell me. And the food was great. In New Zealand. It was delicious. I like the ambassador's residence. The New Zealand that can wash it. Now, it was a lot of fruits. I remember that fruit. Yeah. That's cool. It was nice. So they're really fresh. I'm surprised to hear that. Yeah. Five eyes is the real deal. All right. I'm going to put a pin in one thing because I want to come back to that whole friendship thing with someone else. But I don't want to lose the last important part of this USAID conversation, which is how it's being uncovered. Right. So I wish we lived in a world where optics didn't matter, but they do. How things look, unfortunately, are often more important than how they actually are. And you just had an election where certainly like a lot of people voted for Trump and voted for going in and fixing some of the swamp and whatever. And he's trying to follow through on some of that. And I respect that. As someone who is a fan of Elon Musk, I always say this, I'm not a fan boy. I don't sit here and regargle the balls of every fucking thing he does. He's a genius. I love his companies. I think there's so much exciting shit. I think he's a funny guy. I think he's entertaining. I think he has some pretty good ideas. I disagree with some of the ways he publicly goes about things. I also know he, as he stated, like he has autism. So there, you know, there's a certain, there can be an edge to him. Right. There can be an edge to him. The optics, though, of the richest guy, not named Vladimir Putin or some long Sally last name in the world, having full access to all of these programs, including I think even some stuff in the treasury or whatever and the IRS. Right. Now he's not technically elected though. A lot of people did elect Donald Trump with him being attached to it. I will defend him on that. The optics, though, of him being in charge of that is not the best of me because I almost wonder if it defeats the purpose of what I like him doing here, which is this minus like it just being him doing it. Does that make sense? I'm glad you said the, I'm glad you use the word optics because it's important in this, in this case. A friend of mine posted on Facebook the other day, something about, you know, it was illegal for Trump to appoint musk. And I was like, no, it wasn't. Yeah. No, it's not at all illegal. His title is advisor to the president. Right. Okay. Anybody can be appointed advisor to the president. And when you're appointed advisor to the president, you're given, you're given the necessities to carry out the task. So he's got, you know, all the clearances that he needs. He has, you know, a small staff. I think his staff is a problem. It's like five guys in their early 20s who don't really know what they're doing. That was probably not the best choice, but he's perfectly within his rights to be doing what he's doing. I would prefer, like you, that he not muck around with my personal information that's at the IRS or the Department of the Treasury or whatever. But with that said, his task from the president is to take a machete to the federal budget. And I have to say, and I can't believe I'm saying it, but I have a lot of respect for that. Yeah. I was reserving judgment until just a few days ago, when the president announced much to the shock of every lefty in America, that he's ordered Musk to cut the Pentagon budget by 8% a year for five consecutive years. That has never been done in American history. Ever. It's incredible to me. A letter went out to all CIA employees the other day saying, we're not immune layoffs are coming. There hasn't been a layoff at the CIA since 1977. So this is serious. They mean business. And I think that's a good thing. I do too. Is it problematic, though, that one guy's kind of spearheading it? And just like this isn't his fault, but he is the richest guy in this country. Yeah, it's a bad look. I will admit to you. It's a bad look. You know, I mentioned offline and you told me to wait. Actually met him one time. Yeah. John's got it. Like every time it really does happen off camera people, every time we bring up anything, he's like, let me give you an example. I know that guy. And you're like, wait, how do you know Abraham Lincoln? I was there. April 14th. What a night. Every fucking time. I got a Lincoln story to tell you you'll get a kick out of it. So as a hobby, most people don't know this. It must be who know me. Don't know this. But as a hobby, I like to write television pilots, right? Just for fun. And I have an agent and a manager and an entertainment lawyer. And I have sold eight of them over the years. And one of them actually made it to pilot, right? Under your name. Yeah. I have an IMDB page. It's like this long. Yeah, let's get it. So I had an idea for a news show. And I mentioned it to a buddy of mine who's in the industry. And he said, Oh, wait a minute. He says, before you pitch it, my best friend from high school just became the president of NBC. Ben, I don't remember his last name. He was the, he was the producer of the, of the office. He said, let's pitch it to Ben. And, uh, yes, he did all kinds of, I did all kinds of stuff there. True. And self, I've got like 60 something true lies. Yeah, true lies. I was the script, the script coordinator. Come on. Yeah. Fun. Wait, you were on Kill the Messenger of the movie? Yeah. Oh, you were an advisor for that, right? That's about scripted, whatever. Gary Webb. Yeah. Yeah. I did Bruno. I did from Paris with love with John Travolta. Yeah. Yeah. You've talked about Bruno before. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's fun. I do all kinds of stuff. All right. So you were saying your friend. So he said, yeah, I got this friend. Benny was my best friend from high school. He just became the president of NBC. Let me call him. We could pitch the show to him. I said, great. So he calls him and Ben says, Hey, I'm going to be at dinner at the White House. Obama had just gotten elected and he had this big fundraiser for a wealthy, Jewish Democrats. And so he said the dinner ends at nine. Let's meet at the bar at the Hay Adams hotel across the street from the White House at nine. We said, great. So nine o'clock comes. He's running a little late. He calls my buddy and says, Hey, I'm running late. I'll be there at nine, fifteen. Do you mind if I bring a friend? We said, no, the more the merrier. So they come at nine, fifteen. And my friend Rich and Ben are like hugging each other. Oh, my God. It's been so long. You look great. Oh, you've had such success. You're the producer of the office. And now you're NBC. It's amazing. blah, blah, blah. And then they sit down and Ben says, this is my friend Elon. And I said hi, Elon. Nice to meet you. I shake his hand. I said, Rich says, this is John. I said hi, Ben. Nice to meet you. This is like, oh, eight, oh, nine. Oh, yeah. The very, very beginning of oh, nine. So we're sitting there and Rich and Ben are like, Hey, remember this girl. We both banged in high school and, Hey, remember this teacher. We both hated. Remember so and so had this party. And and Elon and I are just sitting there looking at these guys. This conversation means nothing to me. So finally I go, so Elon, what do you do for a living? As soon as the words came out of my mouth, he goes like this, he goes, Oh, oh, I have this passion for technology. And I created this company called PayPal. And then I sold it for like a billion dollars. And then I used the money. And I bought another company called Tesla. And then I have another company called SpaceX. And we're going to go to Mars. And we're going to colonize Mars. And we're going to put a big dome. And it's going to have oxygen in it. And people are going to go up there. And they're going to colonize Mars. Some are going to die. But they're going to be heroes. They're going to be heroes. We're going to colonize Mars. And I'm looking at him and I go, wait a minute. Wait a minute. Are you Elon Musk? And he goes, yeah. Oh my God. And I go, like the Thomas Edison of our time, he goes, I don't know, I guess so. But anyway, we're going to go to Mars. And there's going to be this giant dome. And we're going to build buildings in there. And we're going to be able to farm. And we're going to have oxygen. I never pitched the show. I never spoke about the show. The whole rest of the two hours was him talking about colonizing Mars. And this is, you said this at the very beginning of 2009. Shortly after January of 2009. Okay. So literally days after Obama. Yeah. Days. He'd been present for days. You know, it's, you know, it's crazy about this. There is a very famous story about Elon Musk. And please correct me in the comments. If I have the date wrong, I'm pretty sure I got it right. Christmas Eve 2008. Weeks before this. Yeah. Very famous story. Elon was up to the brims because of the financial crisis. He had Tesla and he had SpaceX. And he was told by all of his advisors, you know, they had money due. They had been trying to get raises in. Couldn't get it in. The companies were going to put, they said, you have to pick one. If you pick one, there's like a 90% chance or something that it will survive. If you pick both, they'll both die. Oh my god. And he said, I can't let one go. I guess we're just going to have to die. Oh my god. And he picked it. And then money came in like five days later. They were able to, so he's talking with you in this hotel weeks after like nothing's going on when he just made the most insane decision of his career. And for years afterwards, I just assumed he was Jewish because he had been at this fundraiser. Well, because it was a Jewish fundraiser, you know, Jewish. Do you say where's your Yamaha? No, I just, in fact, somebody corrected me years later. And they said, Musk isn't Jewish. I said, are you sure? Because he was at this fundraiser for Jewish Democrats. He's like, no, he just went just to go. I like that you call him Alon too. An Alon. It was like, yeah, so Alon, what do you do for living? Oh my god. I didn't know. He looks like vaguely familiar to me, but I didn't know who that he was. That's crazy. When you met him, it's crazy to me. Yeah. Like as a long time ago. But that's on brand. Like he's so like, yeah, fuck it. Let's go. So we could just whatever that guy does to be able to compartmentalize in every aspect of his life, except when someone pisses him off with a meme, is incredible. Yeah. Like it's true. It's unbelievable. Because I guess it just takes a different kind of, well, it definitely takes a different kind of brain to be a guy like without a doubt. You know, Forbes came out with a, you know, I wish I could get to him. I don't know how to get to him. Stick with me. Okay. Okay. Let's let's work on that. I'll tell you something offline. It's very important about that. Abraham Lincoln. Here we go. I am a Lincoln collector. Over the car or the guy? No, the guy. Over many years, I have bought things associated with Abraham Lincoln at auction. I have, I have a blood-soaked piece of the pillowcase that he died on. Come on. Yeah. I do. Framed? Yeah. Framed. I bought it at Sotheby's. It still got his blood on it. Soaked with blood. I have an 11 1/2 inch strip of the wallpaper from the room that he died in at the Peterson Guest House. I have a swatch of Mrs. Lincoln's dress that she wore to his funeral. What's a swatch? Just a scrap of her black dress. I have a piece of the wood that made the gallows that the conspirators were hung from. That's a crazy story, by the way. I buy all this stuff at auction. Like serious auctions. And it's all about provenance. You know, provenance. provenance is you have to be able to document from Lincoln himself how it got to you. So the blood-soaked pillowcase piece. Mr. Peterson, who owned the house that he died in, took the pillowcase and cut it into pieces with his scissors. And he gave the doctor who fished the the bullet out of. Lincoln's brain, the peace. He gave it to his daughter, who married the governor of Indiana, and then it passed down through their family until they sold it at Sotheby's, and I bought it. Right? Whoa. So that's provenance, so you can prove that it is what it says it is. So summer of 2009, I have my boys for the summer, I had two sons at the time. Well, I had more than just, I had three sons and a daughter, but my two from my oldest, from my second marriage, my second marriage at that point. So we went to Baltimore, the whole family went to Baltimore, because they had this thing called the Side Show Museum, and it was a museum of circus freak shows from the 1800s, like stuff that had been in these circus side shows. They had like some nine foot tall woman, she's mummified, the Amazon, they called her. They had a jackalope, you know, stuff like, most of it's funny, just silly stuff. But they had the shadow box hanging on the wall, and there's a dried out turd in it. And it says it's Abraham Lincoln's final turd. Come on. So it says on the card, it said when he arrived at Ford's theater, he had to drop a douce. And so before he got seated, he went to the men's room, and he dropped a douce in the chamber pot, and then he went back to watch the play, and he got shot. And someone fished it out. Somebody had the presence of mine to fish it out, and they saved it. The presence of mine or the sickness? Well, there are a lot of Lincoln collectors out there. It's very competitive. So technically the last shitty takes us in the bed after he dies. Yeah, well technically you're right. Technically yes, you're right. So unless he got it all out in the first time, all right, so thank you. So this place was run down, and it was dirty, and the owner had a cat, the place smelled of cat, and I see an article on the Washington Post about six months later saying it's going out of business, and they're going to auction everything off. So I told my wife, I'm buying that turd. She's like, oh no, you're not. I said, oh, yes, I am, I'm buying that turd. John, what is, what is 144 year old turd look like? It was all dried out, and there was a kernel of rice sticking out of it. How do you preserve that? He had chicken and rice for his last meal. That was his last meal. I could plant the rice in there if I wanted to. Well, how do you preserve that? It was just air dried. They just stuck it in a shadow box. It was pinned to the shadow box. I heard that, but that's all they did. Yeah, it dries out. It doesn't like go moldy or anything. So my wife and I actually had a strong disagreement about this. I wonder why. She's like, there's no provenance, right? Just because it was in the SciShow Museum, that's not provenance. You have to be able to, and I said, I know what provenance is. So I go to the auction, and I top out at 1,200 bucks. I can't go over 1,200 for this thing. What's going on for 5 grand, so the Washington Post reporters there, and he's like, there was this turd, and it went for 5,000 dollars, spirited bidding, they said. So the guy that ended up buying it, sends it to some company for a DNA sample. And what they found was it had like microscopic bits of Neko wafer in it. You know what? A Neko wafer is? Do I look like I know what Neko wafer is, Sean? It's the most disgusting candy that's ever been created. It's from Pittsburgh. Well, that sounds about right. And they're all pastel colors. They're disgusting. They're little wafers, little round circles. They look like buttons. But Neko wafer's weren't invented until 1880. It wasn't a shit. It wasn't his. It was just some random guys turd that somebody paid 5,000 dollars for. I thanked my lucky stars that I didn't get it. It's called Darwinism to whoever spent 5,000 dollars on anyone's shit, right? But that's, you imagine like the Washington Post reporters like Joby works. Oh, yeah. So why did you buy this shit? Oh, my God. I would have called them like Joby, Joby. We can't be bidding against each other. Oh, my God. How far back do you go with Joby? Oh, seven. Was he calling you about that? He was one of the first guys to interview me. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. I think he mentioned it last time he was in here. Oh, he's a good guy. Yeah. I like Joe. He's a solid, solid reporter. Yes. He's, he's so unafraid to be the sober voice in the room and tell people shit they don't want to hear. That's right. And also sometimes like he speaks openly about like, look, you're still working with sources that have, they got their motives, right? And so sometimes you're going to get back to information that turns out to give exactly what they want to get out there. That's exactly right. It's just a reality of that profession, it's a reality of even what I do here. I don't know every fucking person that comes in here and what they're trying to do. And this is one of the reasons why I respect Joby, work so much. He's not the kind of, of journalists who's going to just take a CIA press release and just it. He has sources, human sources that he can use to, to either confirm or, or deny information. Yeah. I love to talk when I was a fan of him before I ever brought him in here because I read his books. His books are fantastic. The, the, the host mommy. Oh man. Yeah. You got to call him and ask him what he's working on right now. I'm not allowed to tell you. Okay. But I think we were talking off camera earlier about something else. And I think it'd be something you would be very interested in. Oh, excellent. Yeah. That's really cool stuff. Small world. Yeah. But so you're, how did you get into being a Lincoln collector, like were you just obsessed with the guy when you were a kid? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The greatest president in American history as far as I'm concerned. He's definitely the kind of person that we should want to be like. The only thing I ever got out bid on that I really kick myself over. There was a gigantic Lincoln auction at Heritage Auctions in Dallas back in 2009. And I was out bid on the original key to his tomb. I couldn't get that. That went for big bucks. What kind of bucks should we talking? And for close to 10 grand. I think I went up to like 3,600, 3,800 and my wife is like, it's a freaking key. Yeah. It's just a key. Yeah. You could buy like a lot of Kifan Che with that. Yeah. Something. Yeah. So do you have like a Lincoln room? No. I just, I have it framed and then I put it up on the wall. I've got a, I've got a ballot from Ohio from the 1860 election that has Lincoln on the, on the ballot. That's a lot higher on my list than shit. But, you know, God damn it, John. Did you ever see that documentary? It just makes, when you were saying prominence, it makes me think about it because I've never asked anyone about this. I just watched it. But you ever see the documentary, The Lost Leonardo? No. Yes. And I don't think that's a Leonardo. Okay. I think Mohammed bin Salman got ripped off. I think he might have too. $500 million. Just for context for people, there was a piece down in New Orleans auction. This is, I don't know, maybe a decade ago, something like that. Yeah. What's that? It's Salvador Mundi. Yeah, yeah. The Salvador Mundi. Actually, unless you can you pull it up, Salvador Mundi, M-U-N-D-I, and you'll be able to see the picture. And so there, there's apparently these guys, like this is a real job that exists where there it is. They just go to auctions. We have it up on the screen right now. They just go to auctions all over the world, wherever it is. And they try to find slips, cracks, right, where something slips through the cracks. Oh my God. I would love to do that. It's such a cool job. And so these guys out of New York, I forget their name, they, they, they, two of them, they went down to this show in New Orleans and they see this picture and they didn't go like, oh, that's a Leonardo. They just went something about this is crazy because we see it on the screen. If we could pull up one more time, unless this is it remastered, I'll explain the context as to how that happened. But when they found it, it was like torn apart, you kind of had, yeah, you kind of had to like, like sift through it to see what was there. And apparently there's all kinds of ways things can be restored. So wow. That's perfect. We got it. So I see down to the bottom left, it's all messed up. Yes. Yeah, yeah. See that actually. Yeah. See the example on the far left. Yeah. Up one or less. Yeah. Yeah. So people can see that this is what I believe what it initially looked like. But you can see there, from an art perspective, you look at that and you go, there is something there. Yeah. That looks interesting. It was selling for like, I don't know, $1,000 or maybe less. And these guys are like, alright. Yeah, you can get an old master painting, uh, 17th century, 16th century for 1,500 bucks. Especially if they don't know who painting is. Exactly. Right. School of or circle of, you know, so and so. Yeah. So this was really fascinating for me to learn about, but they bring it back to New York and there's a whole underground, you know, system of experts who can determine down to the paint stroke with high accuracy, if something's attributable to someone. So they take it to this woman who I forget her name, but her husband, he, he had passed away. He was like the most famous art, something or rather, I'll fuck up what, what the official title was, but he was an expert on this stuff and she was an expert on it because of him. So she starts looking through it and I forget what her logic was, but suddenly it like came upon her. She's like, holy shit. This is Leonardo. So they commissioned her to retouch it up. So it goes from the old one. to the new one that we showed, like a few minutes ago, and actually looks real. And they started marketing it as a Leonardo. And very quickly, there was a famous reporter, I forget his name from the New York Times, who was instantly like, no, fuck this, that's not a Leonardo. And people started fighting over it. But long story short, skipping all the middle parts along the way, it ends up going to a South of Bees auction in New York City, where there is the auctioneers up there, a whole crowd, and then there's a silent, like crew of dudes on the phone. Yes, who are all like Americans, New York attorneys, or something. They're taking the bids by proxy. And you don't know who it is. And suddenly the bid goes up to like 450 million, something, and they're like winner. So it's the most expensive piece ever sold. And it floats up later that it is most likely MBS who bought it, now they're like certain that he bought it. And there are many people who are still like, yo, that's not a Leonardo could it, maybe they were saying, maybe it could have been a student of his, which is worth nearly as much, but the Louvre wanted to put the painting on display in the Leonardo exhibit, because there's like 15 or 16 known Leonardo's. Yes. And there was supposedly this, they weren't admitting it was MBS they were talking with, but there was this underground conversation. Oh, we're going to get it. We're going to get it. And then eventually, they didn't because MBS wanted it put next to the Mona Lisa so that symbolically people would assume it had the same level of importance as the Mona Lisa. He was thinking, yeah, yeah. So it's like this whole thing, but the provenance is what they didn't have. They didn't know who it passed from and all that. Now, how the heck does it get to New Orleans, you know? There was just a two part HBO series, not a series, two part HBO documentary on Leonardo that goes through his entire life. And he traveled a decent bit for, you know, the late 16th century. But when I say travel, I mean, between Rome, Milan, Venice, you know, Florence, Naples, that was pretty much it. And pretty much all of his work stayed there and in France. And that's it. How the heck did that end up in New Orleans? I mean, it's been a lot of years, things can happen. New Orleans certainly changed. I could see it. It's just, it gets really weird. And that one I tend to believe it's not a Leonardo. I think it's just some of it. I understand where that lady was coming from because part of it could be a little bit of confirmation bias because she's looked at so much crazy art or whole career. And, you know, finally, Leonardo's like, finding a fucking Golden Charizard. Like, you're not finding that thing. Yeah, it's what everybody fantasizes about in that, in that line. Yeah, he was something else though. You ever read Isaacson's biography of him? No. So good. Really? Oh, he was, he was, he was a God. I mean, he could just, he was a true polymath who just, yeah, he was a rebel, but he could do everything. Did you know that he only wrote backwards? Yes. I did not know that until I saw this documentary. Yeah, I freak, actually, I haven't read the biography in a while. He was obsessed with the idea of people stealing his communications. Yes. And so he only wrote backwards. Yeah, they had that in the DaVinci code, where they had part of the code that they're uncovering. Damn brown wrote that in the book where it's like, you had to hold it up to a mirror to see. Yeah, fucking crazy. Like, bro, it's like, it's like James Madison. James Madison could write Greek with his right hand and Latin with his left hand at the same time. What is that? I know. What is that? It's some kind of glitch in your brain. Do you think that, because you've been around some crazy people in your life? You think some people are literally just born physically different and we just can't see it? Yeah, I do. I do. Yeah. Yeah. Crazy. I think that's the only way you explain like an Elon Musk. Mm-hmm. Right. Oh, that's what I was going to say. So in Forbes last week, they said he's worth $446 billion now. He's not just the richest man in the world. He's the richest man in the world by 100%. Outside of Saudi Arabia and Vladimir Putin. Yeah, because we don't really know, we don't have any idea. They're laughing. Yeah. We have to laugh for 40, though. That's cute. Yeah. That's right. That is right. So optically, not the best that maybe he's the kind of guy and charge with it, but the idea of what they're doing is music to both of our ears. Yeah. Right? Now, do you think that could go, I mean, I love the idea of slashing the waste, right? Me too. Do you think it could, do you think that there are things that he won't get access to from maybe an intelligence perspective or something like that that could lead to him accidentally slashing some things that we actually do need? Probably not, because I think if that were to be the case, people like John Ratcliffe and Tulsi Gabbard would go to the president and say, listen, just between us, there's this operation. There's this program, it needs to be protected, and they would be okay. Well, that's the other question that I was going to ask you, just siphon right into it. Someone like Tulsi Gabbard, I like Tulsi, it's from what I've heard. So you're a fan, too. I am a fan. I wrote about it a couple of weeks ago. What, why do you like her? She's got guts. First of all, she's qualified, which is, which is wonderful. Yeah. And she's got the guts to stand up to people. She stood up to the DNC. She stood up to the Democratic leadership in Congress. She's a lieutenant colonel in the Army. I guess now it's the Army reserve. But, oh, I mean, all of that is good. What I was also thinking is that she's a supporter of transparency. She supported Ed Snowden. She's been supportive of Julian Assange. She said a couple nice things about me. I don't know we're well enough to actually ask her for a favor or anything, but I've met her once or twice. We can work on that. I hope so. I've tried. I've reached out a number of times. We'll get working. Thank God. No, I won't say it on the air, but anyway. We protect our friends in New Jersey. We got you. Don't worry. Thank you. So I'm optimistic. I love that so many important Democrats accuse her of being a Russian stooge. Oh, it's so funny. A Syrian stooge. Why did they say this? Because she bucks the official DNC line. Yeah. You know, she went to Syria and met with Bashar al-Assad. Good. He's a leader here. He's a leader. I want people to be meeting with, I mean, back then when he was still in Syria. I wanted them to meet with Bashar al-Assad. And also, when the United States said, when Barack Obama said, Bashar al-Assad gased his own people. We gave him this red line. We said, don't cross that any gas to zone people. Well, there were 12 United Nations whistleblowers that say that that gas attack did not come from the Syrian government. It came and these were the inspectors who were on the ground. They said it came from al-Qaeda. Al-Qaeda fired that. Al-Qaeda, huh? But remember, we're friends with al-Qaeda in Syria. We just sent a whole delegation from the State Department to meet with the new leader of Syria, who's al-Qaeda. And the co-founder of ISIS, by the way. And we lifted the $10 million bounty that we had on his head. So it interfered with our plans. All right. We got to take this rabbit hole real quick. We'll come back to Tulsi because you just took a middle road. And what I mean by that is when the Syria conversation comes up, we've done a lot of podcasts where it gets discussed in one way or the other. Joby Warwick wrote a great book on it that has more of the Assad did it point. And he lays out a lot of good evidence for that people cook them for it all the time and try to say it's bullshit. But he's gone with what he knows. The two arguments, though, are that Assad did it or then the side-hersh argument of like, oh no, the CIA did it. Which I've never seen good evidence for that. But you're saying you just took a middle road. And you said another rogue element may have done this. And I got to tell you, it may be I'm glossing glossing over it in my memory. But I don't remember reading about at any point whistle blows. Yeah, these OPCW whistle-keyed them out, yeah. And they all ended up getting fired. But they're the ones that said that it was all kind of it. It was the news forefront that did it. Yeah. What was what was their evidence of that? They were on the ground testing. And they said that there was no evidence that a missile had been launched from the Syrian side, from the Syrian government side. So this is after it gets done, obviously. They're going through the residue. And what reason would I set have to turn to chemical weapons, especially after it's specifically been told by the United States that this was a red line? Which turned out to be bullshit anyway. We didn't do anything. That's right. Like, better not cross this line. OK, you crossed it. Well, then you better not cross this new line. Come on. Barack Obama. Yeah, Obama, we've talked about that a bunch. Obama, I've mixed emotions on that one because, first of all, that was a really stupid thing to say. It was. Secondly, afterwards, he had to try to clean that up politically after it was all said and done at home. And that was messy, how he did that. However, you know what it's like when your pride gets it. Oh, yeah, you know, he said something stupid. You should have never fucking said that's right. And his pride was like, fuck you, we're going to bomb them. Yeah, which would have started a new war. And there was the Russians were already based there. Yeah, exactly. I wasn't even going to go there, but that's just another layer to it. And he apparently the way I understand it. Is that he did there was a work around here where he didn't have to go to Congress To get past to take certain action that would have started a war He could have effectively like so. I'm a I said red line. I'll protect my pride and at the last minute Now he thought Congress was gonna agree with him. He's very wrong about that Yeah, he said fuck it. Let's do it right. Let's put it through Congress They voted like 400 to 100 against it or something whatever it was something like that Against it and he couldn't do it and I at least respect the fact that once he had the L He didn't we move double the that's right. That's right. I agree Would have been bad to get involved in something there But we kind of you know if it wasn't Syria We still did with what ended up happening with ISIS because of what was born in a lot of there, too Have you ever been to Syria? No, no listen on my list of vacation spots. It's one of the most fabulous places. I've ever that's what I hear But not my lifetime amazing. No, no, it's too dangerous It's probably going to remain too dangerous for a long time Friendliest people best food incredible history. I mean, you know, you go to Greece You see the you see the Parthenon you go to Rome you see the Colosseum you got a Syria you got a Damascus and the stuff that you're looking at is Mentioned in the Bible. Yes, that's how old it is so much history. Well, I loved it. I've never been of it. What do you think's gonna happen there? In the near term nothing good. Okay, in the longer term I Could see Slow development. They've been racked by war for so long. I don't think anybody wants more war at this at this point the the unknown is that the Iranians and The Russians were humiliated by what happened with us. It happened so quickly. You know, I remember I remember It was exactly one week seven days before us. I was overthrown He and his family got on a plane and went to Moscow and people started saying oh my god He's running away. He's running to Moscow But then he returned the next day to Damascus, but he left his family in Moscow and Then that same plane made three more trips to Moscow over the course of the week presumably to take out money and artwork and personal effects and furniture whatever and then At the end of that week he went back to Moscow and stayed So this was a humiliation for the Russians because they had Military bases there including a major naval base and Remember the day he was overthrown the Russians made this announcement that They hoped that the new government of Syria would respect Russian bases in Syria Yeah, they just ran right over the bases. Yeah, and took them more importantly than then you know Russian embarrassment is This was the Iranian pipeline to his bala and then by extent by extension to to Hamas so The Iranian weapons and and cash and all the stuff that the Iranians were sending Went across northern Iraq And across Syria and then from Syria to Lebanon and then you know There's through a more informal pipeline from Syria to Jordan to Hamas or Syria to Lebanon to Hamas and It's gone now like like that. Yeah, just like that. It's gone and at the same time the Israelis Essentially decapitated has bala they killed Hassan Nasrallah Three days later they killed the guy who replaced Hassan Nasrallah and Now there's a guy nobody ever heard of and half of his his fighters have been killed or wounded So for a while there's gonna be pretty much no his bala not meaningfully And Syria's Syria's economy though. That's a real it's been a wreck because Essentially I was talking this guy on the phone that we're trying to get in for a podcast who met with a side In like 2012. He's a Syrian Wow and told him what was gonna happen here, you know If he didn't change his ways or whatever the fuck you told him. Yeah, so we're working on getting him in here He has to get like approval to do it. Mm-hmm. So we'll see if that would be exciting. Yeah, it would be really cool He's very very smart, but you know What he's saying is that yeah the whole economy is run on I always forget the name of the fucking drug What's it called again? I'll see Captain gone? It's run on that Captain gun drug Oh, you haven't heard about this. Mm-hmm. So Captain gone is like this meth like club drug or something and a sod transferred Basically the Syrian economy into a Captain gun trafficking economy Wow that pushes it, you know all over Europe and stuff like that where it's used and Joby when he was at the border a Syria like last fall They were they were watching all the trucks come across with with with the Captain gun. So What this guy I talked to on the phone Yeah from Syria was saying is he's like that's absolutely correct The issue is that it's kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy because the US put so many sanctions on Syria as a result of something Allegedly very bad, you know with the with the chemical weapons that it cut them off from so much of the world that this is how they have to stay afloat Mm-hmm sure Sanctions are going to come back to bite us. Yeah, you know, I think that American sanctions are what led to the creation of bricks I was in I was in explainer. Yeah, um, the bricks countries Brazil Russia India China South Africa and then they've added a couple they've added Iran and South Korea and a couple of others When I was in China last year I was there for a week for a conference and I was struck by how few places took Mastercard and visa That doesn't surprise me. Well, they took this card called Panda card And everybody had these Panda cards. So I asked one of the shopkeepers. What is this Panda card and his explanation was so like right on he said With visa and mastercard because their American companies all transactions are rooted through a New York, right? And so even if the transaction only hits New York for a 10th of a second It's still considered to be a US transaction So if the US government imposes sanctions, we can't make that transaction But what we did is we created Panda card where all the transactions go through Shanghai Which is their banking center And so if the Americans put sanctions on us, he said we don't care. We don't need visa and mastercard. We have Panda card Wow, uh-huh. Well, now not only are the bricks countries Merging their their economies. They're talking about a unified currency like the euro Well, if they have a year of unified currency American sanctions going to be worthless and Do you think that is a real threat to overtake the dollar? I do yeah last year for the very first time China bought a shipment of oil from Kuwait and paid for it in you want instead of dollars never happened before And we went back to the Kuwaitis and we've raised all kinds of hell and they're like look what are we gonna do? There are major global power This is how they wanted to pay for it Yeah, and it's because we sanctioned everybody. I remember it's still being at the agency and and the Treasury Department had Announced new sanctions on Iran and I remember saying to a colleague. How many more sanctions could there possibly be? Yeah, like haven't we sanctioned them in in every facet of their economy? Self-fulfilling prophecy, man. It's exactly it. I'm not saying the intentions are always evil or something like that It's just people get it's the eye for an eye people get carried away with it, and it's like you're gonna make the problem worse We should see that now. We're gonna talk about the Russia Ukraine thing a little later I don't want to jump to that because I do want to keep my promise to come back to to the Gabbard thing because there's there's there's an important Point here that I keep thinking about in my head because I like her - I don't fucking know or I hope she's cool, but you know She's qualified as you said she understands how this world works all that's true, and let's say it's also true that she's a great person has great intentions She is still just like the president by the way, which would say something about the problem with the system she is still technically at the mercy as a DNI Or is it DCR DNI DNI DNI right? She's still technically at the mercy of the people who read her in on things. Yeah, she's not out there in the field You're absolutely right there in offices at these different agencies and they're like we're not telling this bitch this and I'll go one farther than that. Oh, please There are what 18 19 Intelligence agencies in the US government. I forget what the latest the latest number we know of almost all of them are DoD agencies right army intelligence Air Force Navy Marine Corps DIA DARPA NSA they're all Components of the defense department. Mm-hmm. So she doesn't have jurisdiction over them secretary defences. She is no jurisdiction zero The only thing she controls is the budget She controls two important things the the intelligence community budget and the president's daily brief which was just in the last column years transferred from the CIA to the ODNI. That's it. But again, it's what they feed her in that too. Yeah, you're right. You're right. And it would be easy to cut her out because then they could say, if called on it, well, the secretary's briefed. We report the secretary of defense. So he's briefed. We don't need to brief her. Now, she has a little bit more sway at the CIA, but not really. Thank you guys for checking out this clip. If you haven't already subscribed, please subscribe and hit the like button on this video. It is a huge, huge help. And if you'd like to check out this clip, full podcast episode, that link is in the description below or right here. And finally, you can follow me on Instagram and X by using the links in my description below.