"The Deep State Hates Me." - The CIA Whistleblower Doing the Impossible | Jim Erdman

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. Keep State had a look. It might look like you. Yeah. Yeah, I'm. You got it down. I do. I do. And actually, did you ever see that video? There's a dude on roller blades. And he's got no shirt on. He's wearing like some like old man trousers. He's fat, middle-aged. Is this Will Ferrell in old school? No, no, no, it's an actual dude. And he's in it in like a skate park. And he's in the roller blades and he's like, you may not like it, but I am peak male form. And he he comes into the skate park and does like a flip, does some crazy shit. And he's he looks like me. And he comes and he's like, you may not like it, but I am peak male form. And you may not like it, but I am the face of the deep state. And that's. There you go. This is it right there. That's right there. I told you he's fast as fuck with it. Yeah. I've seen that one. Okay. Yeah. That's you, but that's me. Yeah. So roller blades. Yeah. Gotcha. So it's and it's, you know, I. When we first started chatting, I looked up. I actually listened to a bunch of what you've put out. And I think you've you've got. You've got a big chunk of this right. I just think that it's worse than what you think. Okay, worse than what I think I do. I do. I do. You know, I I went through probably at least there was at least 14 episodes. I pulled right off the bat to try to do my homework. Yeah. That's what the deep state does. Yeah. I'm going twice if I need help, everybody. Keep that in mind. So, so you know, I was listening to what you had to say. And you have quite a bit right about, you know, they're being a big problem with bureaucratic and trans agents with with just the things that are going wrong that you don't have a good explanation for and the only thing you can say is like somebody's doing this. Right. So the $60 million question is like, who's doing it? Unfortunately, I can't answer that question for you. It's not because I don't want to. It's just it's worse than you think because the deep state isn't a conspiracy requires members. Okay. So you got to have people part of the conspiracy and you can get rid of members if they're not really on board with the conspiracy. But if you have a bunch of people who over time have been part of an organization and all of their decisions are defendable, like small decisions over time where they're like, I need to do this because this is how we're doing it. And this is after a while you accumulate this, this dead weight of bureaucratic bullshit. Right. Hey, guys, three quick things. Number one, if you haven't subscribed, please subscribe to huge help. Number two, if you'd like to join my Patreon for early uncensored releases of the full episodes, you can join via the link in my description or in the pinned comment below. And number three, if you'd like to join my clipping community for a chance to make content from the show and make money, you can join via the discord link in my description below. And you justify it to yourself. You don't even know you're part of the deep state. And that's it. So like you, you're making decisions because this is how it was done before me and you continue on making those decisions. So it's not a conspiracy, which you can eventually identify. It's that it's a culture and you can't, you can't indict a culture and you certainly can't vote it out. So I think it's actually probably a little worse than, you know, you've got these multiple conspiracies, which in my opinion, probably do exist that there are people that have done things they shouldn't be doing. And all of this has occurred and still occurring in an administration that has said we're going to reform, we're going to get transparency. So, well, they dream the swamp to a lake or something like that. Right. Right. And, you know, part of the part of the big issue with, with, with all of this is, I was looking at what you've done. Did you say it was like seven years you've been doing this six and a half, six and a half. Okay. You have provided hugely invaluable benefit to people like me. So you people like you. Yes. Oh, yeah. And I don't mean to the deep state. I mean to people who are waking up. So, okay. Or are in the process of questioning things. And so you have put people on your platform, like John Kiryaku, these other people who you look at him and you go, okay, this is a guy who, who, and I don't know the full details about what happened and what didn't happen to him. And I do know is he passed a test of his, his humanity. Okay. He said, you know, last I checked enhanced interrogation is probably just torture. Okay. And agree. Yeah, I do. I do. Now, part of the reason I'm part of the deep state is he passed a test of humanity. I didn't. Okay. I didn't hear me complaining about it. You didn't hear me getting jailed over complaints about it. So you have to take ownership. And part of that process of waking up is taking ownership for the decisions you did and didn't make over time. So like I came forward because the promises from this administration, the importance of transparency and reform, you know, I'm fully on board. But it wasn't like my transformation is not, is not something that, you know, people should lionize because that was, that was the guy was like, well, the Middle East is a burning dumpster fire, but good thing we're here for democracy. So, you know, it takes time to realize that maybe some of the things that you thought before and wrong. And there's some people around the front end who recognize it early. Some people aren't. But for me, you know, I started noticing that the institution. We had individuals more interested in protecting the institution than protecting the Constitution. And I foolishly assumed that if I started like telling people in the organization, hey, this, this might be the wrong way to go. I was under the impression that I would be rewarded for that behavior. Okay. So, you know, I mean, you know, I thought, like, listen, I'm amongst friends here. We're all part of the organization. We care about it. But there's, there's some things that have happened. And the sad part is, you know, I didn't really fully come forward until I was attacked personally. And so, you know, you want to do the right thing. And I, I have no regrets about coming forward in front of Senator Paul's committee on May 13th of this year. I have no regrets in March when I went in for a transcribed interview. No regrets on any of that. But it's a process for people. And it got me thinking when I saw what your platform is similar to maybe a handful of others where you've brought people out and let them speak the truth, let them say, this is what's happening behind the curtain. We get to see, we benefit. And when I say, we, I'm talking about the organization I'm working for now, which is all federal government employees. I know it's hard to believe, but there's federal government employees who actually think there should be transparency reform accountability, a small government. It's a bit, it's a huge, huge organization. I've no doubt there's people want the right things there. The question is, what are they able to do about it when we have so many examples of the people who did try to do something get stumbled. Good point. And it leads right into what I wanted to say about folks like, again, Kiriako, we get to see the guy, man, he was right through the calls. Dude, dude's life was destroyed over this. And this is just one example. But you put him up there. And you said, tell, tell us what happened. And he's out there screaming it at the top of his lungs. For someone like me on the inside, all of a sudden you realize, hey, wait a minute. I know it's going to be, there's going to be some pain involved. But maybe we can do the right thing now. I mean, the system, use the system to try and make changes. And from the outside, you look in there, you're like, well, everybody keeps losing that battle from the inside, they're plucked out, they're sent out. I retired in my own accord. You know, I was not pushed out. There was nothing. I'm pretty sure they wouldn't have given me anything of substance to do. Maybe they would have. Maybe not. Because of you speaking up. Yeah, there's a whole series of this. You know, we have the benefit of standing on the shoulders of these other people have come forward. You don't, you don't come forward on your own. It's not like somebody says, you know what I'm going to do. I'm going to come forward and do the right thing they got to see they got to see that somehow somewhere somebody got through it they may have they may have experienced a great deal of pain along the way but what your platform does is tell people in the federal government people are listening and they want you to do the right thing you're not going to do it unless unless you see it and again it's not great for these people but I wouldn't have come forward if I wasn't seeing other people who have managed to it's not great but managed to get through it and you know part of the reason I'm still so I co-founded feds for freedom during COVID feds for freedom well I was feds for medical freedom which at the beginning because we we said enough is enough we're not going to take your jab we had lots of reasons we had lots of reasons why we didn't like reasons you knew that the public doesn't no no I'm not saying it like that but I will say I guess in some way maybe maybe and here's here's what I mean by that I worked for an organization whose whole sole purpose was to collect information and then pull it together and finished intelligence and then send it off the policy makers to make wise decisions I couldn't understand why we had this cognitive block with say COVID origins okay like no one wanted to hear the possibility of lab leak nobody I remember Brett Weinstein who was just on the pod he did a famous podcast with Joe Rogan in June 2020 where he's in evolution and biologist yeah great guy laid out the entire thing bar for bar word for word he got so much shit for it they tried to cancel these 100% right he was and that's that is what I said I can't remember if it was a written statement or the public statement during the testimony who got it right during COVID well it's the amateur internet sleuths and everyone wanted a bad mouth about doing your own research groups like drastic Richard E. Bright Brett Weinstein all of these people had it right and we were looking from the inside most of us we were mad about what was going on with the COVID protocols and the mitigation measures that didn't work but we're also looking at going yeah this is this is a clue I mean we're intelligence officers we're supposed to be able to look at something and say omission of facts is also a clue so yeah a little bit you know when you are privy to secrets and you decide you're not going to take those secrets and use them to the fullest effect you can and I got to see even more when I was working for director Gabbert and director directors initiatives group running the the COVID-19 origins investigation for when my dad hit his 50s he started noticing his energy fall through the floor everything felt harder the same workouts didn't hit the same way the recovery wasn't there felt energy crashes midday all the time and even had brain fog that was tanking his focus then he learned about something 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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 description below as always please take one second to hit that subscribe button if you haven't already I really appreciate that also the like buttons a big help and you can join my newsletter via the link in the description below and I don't want to spend a ton of time like how did I end up from there to here unless you really want to but in May of 2021 is when I started really asking questions in the agency and it started led you to actually at that time be like you know what this is it now we got to look at this well I I had been looking into covid origins I had offered some assistance and I don't want to go too far down that road with that but the questions in May had to do with the questions in May had to do with there was some very clear safety signals that were already showing up in fares and we had a group of people it was just me and like six other people seven other people who would show up in my office we'd take our stupid masks off we'd sit down close the door and be like listen we're not crazy we're not crazy this this whole the mitigation isn't working all the people are vaccinated keep getting sick we're the only ones running the office and we're the ones were unvaccinated and so those questions started piling up and so I said well tell you what I'm going to send an email to to the our office of medical services and I pulled together and you know there was a bunch of organizations out there pulling the data together so I pulled the data together I sent them a bunch of questions that if you were to bucket them it was what are you going to do about my myocarditis and paracarditis thrombosis and autoimmune disorders and some of these neurodegenerative disorders I said if you want me to take this thing that you're pushing and they were pushing it oh they were pushing it can you answer those questions now I sort of knew they weren't going to give me a good answer but I wanted at the time to put it on the record that I was asking these questions and I want to come back to that putting your name on the record it's essential it's essential it started there and then when I couldn't get any answers we had problems with the whole like they were keeping Excel spreadsheets of the unvaccinated they were putting them on sticky notes in their office I mean oh sticky notes that's not a fake story this is I collected more more little vignettes just like who's unvaccinated in the office on sticky notes on sticky notes in the highest agency of spying and that we know of in the land yes that's yes very reassuring yeah it should be sleep tight America yeah so and again like I you know we were looking at we're like this is this is the dumbest thing I've ever seen and last I checked we worked for the CIA like we are intelligence officers in an organization that is yeah it's got a rep and so then I went to the office of privacy and civil liberties I put my name on that complaint and I said this looks like a violation of privacy medical privacy and we had a bunch of other people who had actually gotten vaccinated but they just were like I shouldn't have to tell you my vaccination status and so they were getting sideways they were following the rules and still getting sideways so I ended up going to our office of general counsel our office of inspector general the EO office which by the way I had never made a complaint in any of my jobs ever in my adult life yeah you don't seem like that guy no no like to go about your business yeah just leave me the fuck alone right sorry leave me alone let me Jersey okay okay leave me alone let me do my job because all I really want to do is steal secrets and recruit spies okay so let's just do that and so I started sending and I finally got in in August late July late July late July of 2021 I got an exasperated email from the office of general counsel and they said hey Jim we know you have a problem with the COVID policy but you have exhausted all of your administrative means for employee employer dispute mechanisms if you have a problem with policy you have to take it up with the person responsible for policy so I was like well giddy up motherfuckers okay who's responsible for this so I can send them an email to and they said well it's a number three in the agency it's the chief operating officer I'm like okay and I didn't want to be accused of wasting government time so I came in on a Sunday Sunday Was it August 8th, I think, 2021? So before the military mandate, which was August 24th. - This is right at Afghanistan. - Right, right, exactly. (laughing) Yeah, exactly Afghanistan around that time. So I send this long email and I cite scientific studies. I talk about the impact to the workforce because what they were asking us to do was inculcate a lie into where everyday work. And you're gonna say, Jim, CIA, lies, right? I mean, you know my work for me. - Yeah, I mean, yeah, I get it, you're right. - It's a little dip, what I'll say about this is it's a little different when it's something meant to like her their own on something that has nothing to do with the work you guys do. - That makes sense. - It does. And here's, this was one of my problems with it, with inculcating a lie. So we are given a lot of authority to operate on our own as an operations officer. You are expected to make decisions on the fly because you can never predict, you're never gonna be able to predict every situation. The longer you spend in the agency, the better you're at at predicting these things. And so you're given a lot of leeway and you're given a lot of trust. And well, you're polygraphed. So there's that too. So that helps with the whole trust thing. - I feel like you know how to pass some of those. - I, listen, no comments. All I'm saying is there's lots of polygraphs. So there's lots of ways. I mean, they get access to your banking. You know, you give up a lot to get the, and I mean this sincerely that I always felt blessed that I actually got in and got to work at the CIA. I still do. Everything good in my life has been touched by service there. Doesn't mean you can't change your opinion on what needs to happen to fix the place. But so when you are given all that authority, there's a lot of things you can do with that authority. Talk to 40 million and gold bars guy. - Okay. - Yeah, that was the guy, the CIA spy that like took the gold bars off the balance sheet or something. - I don't know exactly what happened with that, obviously, but it's a matter for DOJ to work out. - You know that guy? - I met him once a long, long time ago. And it was like in passing. So they've chance encounter that I don't know anything. - I have no connection with him whatsoever. Let me say that. - Go check his house. - I don't need any more ass pain. (laughing) - Pause. (laughing) - So you get a lot of authority. And so what happens is there were a ton of fake vaccine cards. A lot of them. - And CIA too. - Oh fuck yeah. - And they were just getting away. God, that was such a bad system. Everyone got away with that. - So like there were fake vaccine cards. People just loaded them up. Okay, and I am not judging them, frankly. But here's what happens. One lie, that's all it takes. Okay, if you can justify why you need to make this, just this one lie. What you're doing is setting the stage for more lies. To the organization you're not supposed to lie to. Because you've been blessed by a job in the agency. Okay, and I mean it, it's so much fun. - Just as a quick editorial here, by the way, we're gonna get to Jim's full story. Everybody, I just want him to stay with us because you're laying out like a key critical moment to where you suddenly are kind of stepping out of it after a lot of years in this and realizing what happened. Well, we'll get to the full backgrounds so you guys can understand that too. Well, please continue. - Sure, sure, sure. Sorry, and I sort of just jumped in. - No, it's great. I like that. - But, so I sent this email on August 8th. And it's me and my seven friends in my office with our masks off, they come in Monday. I said, hey, I came in Sunday. I sent the email. I cited these studies. I'm sure they'll listen now. (laughing) So they didn't listen. They didn't listen. And in fact, I started getting hit up by people I didn't know in the agency. Out of the blue, they're like, Jim, I saw your email. And yeah, I agree with everything you're saying. What are we gonna do? 'Cause it looks like we're gonna have a vaccine mandate. - Are they just texting you then? - Yeah, they're contacting me through agency systems. And so my first question was like, how did you know I sent that email? It was sent to the Kooz office, which by the way, that was like my bosses, bosses, bosses, bosses, bosses, boss. So, checking on my TPS reports. And so, I'm like, how did you know? I mean, it turns out that like, instead of like taking anything I said seriously, the email was forwarded probably in a, they're probably laughing at me, like some Kooke, whatever, don't care, but what happened was, by the end of the week instead of seven people in my office in August of 2021, there was 50 of us. And so they're all asking me, Jim, what are we doing? I'm like, I don't fucking know, I just send emails. - Are you allowed to say where the office was at this time you keep referring to or is that? - Yeah, I guess, and let me, I handled financial intelligence at the time. - So were you based domestically at this point? - I was domestic, so I was not overseas at the time. I was domestically, I came home in 2019 from Africa. - So when you are saying 50 people in my office, are you referring to the entirely complex? - Sorry, no, no, no, I'm talking about, so first it was seven people in my office, where I worked, me and seven people. - Like your desk, your desk, my office. - After that first email, it was 50 people from across the agency. - Okay. - So they're all asking me, like, what are we gonna do about this? Shit, I don't know, I mean, I, okay. I guess I'll send another email. I was like, you know, they didn't answer my questions, but it worked so well. I'm just gonna send the coup another email and ask them to answer my questions and give them a few more studies. So I came in the next Sunday, I wrote another email, I sent it off and, I mean, I was sort of like, I didn't, I was taking it seriously 'cause it was bothering the, I didn't want, I definitely wasn't gonna take a vaccine. I knew it at that point. And so I sent it off and just sort of short in this story, by the time vaccine mandates hit on September 9th of 2021, I had spoken to 1100 officers in the agency, give or take, that did not want to get the shot. - That's a significant number. - That's a huge number, a huge number. And so I knew I wasn't wrong, one of the problems up to this point was we were all sort of separated. There was never this connection where you could like, look over and go, I wonder if that person, other than the fact that like, there was a period of time that only the people who weren't vaccinated had to wear a mask so you could identify them pretty quick. And this was across a whole federal government. So when all of this started, 2021, and then honestly, that is not exactly when I woke up. I woke up before that, but that was sort of the last draw. That this whole period because, and again, it's not flattering to me, but it really didn't wake up until I experienced the pain point. And whatever, getting up, we're gonna just take it. - What happened on September 9th when the mandates went in, just so I understand this, what happened 'cause you didn't do it? Was it just you were just wearing the mask or? - Well, here's what happened. We got emails saying we're gonna be fired if we didn't get the shot by a certain date, okay? And you know, when you're thinking to yourself, you have spent millions of dollars training me and multiply that by 1100. And lots of time, money, I mean, they trained me in Arabic and Chinese, free gifts from the agency. And. - You're fluent in both of those? - My Arabic's gone pretty bad. But Mandarin, I'm still. - You guys met the Mandarin? - Yeah, it's good enough. - Okay, we'll use him for the movie, Dave. - Yeah. - I need that. - It's Mama Ho Ho. - Okay. - So. - Him and Ma'am Donnie. - Ma'am Donnie, Ma'am Donnie, Ma'am Donnie kind of spits it. I'm not gonna lie. It wasn't AI. You see, speaking Chinese. - Yeah, I did. I did. - Bigly impressive to a person who doesn't understand Chinese. - Yeah. - Yeah. - In any case, you know, that was what happened. You know, that was a turning point. And when they said you're gonna get fired, I had all these people were talking to me like Jim, what do we do? And I'm like, again, I'm just sending emails, man. I like, but when it happened, I went on and started calling lawyers. And you would think, I thought for sure, lawyers were just all blood sucking. They wanted money. They didn't care whether you had a case or not. They'll take your case. No one wanted in DC. No one wanted to take a COVID case. - I wonder why. - Yeah, and again, I had never, I had stayed away from legal issues as much as humanly possible because, you know, you don't need that hassle when you're working at the agency. So I started calling and I finally got a hold of lawyers at federal practice group. And I get a hold and they said, "Hey, Jim, you know, it's gonna cost you this much for each plaintiff." And I'm like, "Sure." And they said, you know, you're also, I forget what they quoted, it was like an initial, each person would have to dump in five grand and, you know, I'm talking to government employees, you know, that's a lot of money for anybody. And so they said to me, but there's somebody else over at State Department who's doing the same thing as you are. You guys should one call each other, talk, figure this out. And two, you can't really just sue individual agencies on this one. If you're going to go after this, you have to sue the federal government because there's, I'm like, why, like, are you trying to steal money from me? Like, why are we doing it this way? Like, I just, I don't like care about as the agency and the handful of NSA and DIA people that were part of a group. But I called up Marcus Thornton, State Department employee. He had lined up a bunch of people from State Department and Customs and Border Patrol. And so I had like 200 people that were willing to go to court or because of various reasons, just provide money for the lawsuit. So it could go forward. And they just sort of hope and pray that we got it through. I talked to Marcus and he had a whole bunch more at State and CBP. And so we decided that day on September 9th, we needed to form a 501(c)(3) that I don't know if we picked the name at that point because I, to be honest, I wasn't really into the name to begin with. I'm like, we sound like a bunch of glows. But whatever, sort of true. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I give you said that out there. I went, yeah, we're here for your freedom. But we are. We got a good group of people. And so anyhow, we started suing. And I did, I've got, it's not, it's not a fully formed philosophy. But over the last five years, there's a, I'll call it more like tradecraft on how you oppose a government overreach from the inside. And the crossway of saying is it don't be a pussy. The more, I don't know if there's a more elegant way to say it, but you have to put your name on everything and you have to use the system and you have to own everything because if there is any daylight between what you stay, state explicitly you're doing and why you're doing it. And what you're actually doing, they're going to destroy you. Okay, they being the deep state, the, we're even just the organizations you work for. So like, when I was sending those emails between May and September, my name was on it. I was telling them explicitly what I was doing. I didn't know I was developing sort of a tradecraft behind it. And this goes back to our discussion on Karyaku. We, we're the one organization feds for freedom now, what's feds for medical freedom that has learned how to use some of the levers on the inside to actually make change. And we can talk about some of the changes that have actually occurred as a result. And it's part of the reason like, I left government service. There's lots of other things I could do, but I'm giving feds for freedom a little more time because what I see here is this, we're standing on the shoulders of giants in the sense that other people have gone through this mess and gone through it. What if you don't have to? What if you got an organization? We've had a ton of whistleblowers show up at feds for freedom. We handle it quietly. And there's some examples of what we've done with part of the reason I'm out talking now is people have to know that we exist and that we are going to help you and we'll be in your corner. What I'll say about all that is we'll be in your corner, but it's all on you. I'm not, this is not a recruitment video where I'm like, you should come to feds for freedom and do the right thing. If you want to do the right thing, come on by. We'll help you where we know the system is broken. We know because we've lived it for five years. We've been living inside the system going to, you know, intel oversight committees going to oversight committees, working through the administrative procedures internal to the organizations. We know it's broken because we've lived it. And the people at feds for freedom, they weren't recruited into the organization. They were brought in by a test. We're not, we're not just picking anybody at this point. The people who showed up in the beginning, they didn't want to lose their job. Somewhere between 23 and 24, the people who now are sticking around, they're sticking around because they're like, we like being on the right side of history and we really, really want our government to function like it's supposed to. So we're going to stick around and we're going to put our name on everything. We're going to file complaints. We're going to, and it's not like a resistance like, you know, one of the arguments is, what makes you different from some other group of people out they're going, we don't like what the president is saying. And we're going to, we're going to fight. We're going to subversively undermine. That's not what I'm talking about. What I'm talking about is an organization that is using their authority in their jobs to ensure that the people above understand the decisions they're making and that people have stated explicitly like, here's the implications of what you're doing. And, and you need to know that because this is, this is the facts. And so Feds for Freedom thought the vaccine mandates. We've, we've got a nationwide injunction that stopped the vaccine mandate for all staff, federal employees throughout the entire Biden administration and up into January. Yeah. Yeah. So we got a settlement at the end of the day, which really just covered some legal fees, but good enough. And that didn't make you persona non grow. Oh yeah, 100%. Okay. So, so it's a great question, great segue too. Like, yeah, you, when I say you're going to experience pain, you're going to experience pain. You're like, for a while, I entertain this, this idea, okay, I'm going to go back to just doing what I was doing before eventually. It's still not perfect. And I'm not like, honestly, I'm not complaining about what happened because I'm whatever. You know, if you're going to get in a ring and get in a fight, you better expect to get punched. That's right. And if you're going to get in a ring and get in a fight and then you get done with it and you start bitching and mowing and I got in a fight and I got punched. That's dumb. And that isn't going to convince anybody that you're doing the right thing. Put your name on everything. Do it by the book. Don't have daylight with what you're doing and what you're saying you're doing because the fastest way to lose any kind of credibility is to do that. And also, you'll just get destroyed anyway, just quietly, not loudly. And you lose anyhow. So yeah. Unfortunately, I think, and this exists far beyond just even deep government, bureaucracies and everything. Sometimes if people are looking at the chess board, they want to make that move. Just write it the king to say, look what I did. Check. But it's not checkmate. You know what I mean? You have to play things longer. And sometimes that means you have to do the things that feel like you're not speaking up in order to get your way slower to the end result. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm not even I'm saying what I'm saying is we've got a group of people that have decided that they will speak up. They're not going to avoid the hard conversations. They're not going to hedge what they're saying. And the hard part is you had what's her name, Shawnee Delaney on. Okay. She was on a panel that I saw before I even knew that I heard about, I guess, before I even knew that she had been on your program. And she was on a panel with with another officer from the agency, a really, really good officer about what insider threat looks like. Okay. The changing face of insider threat. Hey, guys, if you haven't already subscribed, please hit that subscribe button. It's a huge help. Thank you. Was this with Jim Lawler? No, no, no, but I know Jim Lawler too. He's a he's a he is a fantastic old school case officer. Interesting guy. Very interesting to show a few years ago. Did you really? Yeah. Okay. Okay. Yeah. I didn't catch that one. I wish I had. Yeah. 129 back in the day. But very, very fascinating guy scared me a little bit. He's writing books now. You know, his nickname was mad dog. I'm well aware. Oh, okay. Okay. He's like Julian, when I look at you, our eyes, they meet and suddenly I have you in a trance and you're going to do what I'm like, okay, is this really like happening right now? Like are you doing it to me? But he's he knows what he's doing. He has to be in a case officer. But you were saying Shawnee was Shawnee panel. Yeah. So the problem with what I'm describing here, government insider saying, you know, what we're going to do? We're going to we're going to we are going to complain about things that need to be complained about. We're going to put things on the record. That is what some people might call an insider threat. And so we've had five years to work this out now, and I mean across all, we had 34 government agencies and departments as part of feds for med freedom when we started feds for freedom and when COVID hit, we started getting information from every single one of these agencies and departments. Not classified. We don't accept classified information for the record, you know, they don't, they're better not send it to us. Like I said, we don't need any more ass pain if you do just let me know off camera. So we got a window into what was happening in all these different agencies and departments, and we started seeing all these patterns emerged, it was all the similar BS. And it's part of it, we can talk more about it later, but you know, one of the last things that we did was sue the CIA before the day I retired, the year, this year, because these patterns emerged where people were put on insider threat list because of asking for religious accommodation, being involved in protected activities, which by the way, lawsuits are protected activity. And so, and if you want, we can jump straight into the lawsuit, but these things happen and we saw that these people were being identified and I mean, I don't, you don't have to be a genius, it looks like a purge. It looks like a purge, okay, and if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, it's a, it's a damn duck. Yeah, now you were, you're highlighting a thing that was a real hit point for you because you literally ended up starting an organization out of this and I had to do with the Vax mandates and you not wanting to do that. And obviously that was the biggest story in the world there for a couple years and we're all dealing with a lot of bullshit. That said, you've had a long career there, you had a long career before you were in CIA where you were in State Department, I think, Army Rangers as well. You've seen a lot of different things around the world. You've run some missions that you can talk about, some that you can't and you in a nutshell ended up having access to a lot of different things in there within the agency that are, let's say major questions the public has that still are unanswered, some of which I guess you can talk about others, maybe you're still trying to figure out yourself. But maybe we could take a step back right here as my point so that people can understand how you got to this point and how, you know, you're someone who's been able to see all these things and do all these things. Where, where did you begin? Did you, did you want to be a spy when you were growing up? Was that ever a thought? No, no. In fact, there was probably a time when I was 18 and live in in LaVonia, Michigan. If somebody said, hey, do you want to travel the world now? Why would I leave Detroit? I love this place. You know, that was not on the Bingo card. You like Detroit, huh? I did. You know, I moved to Detroit when I was 16. I think it gets a bad rap. There's some, there's some awesome, like you, you've got good food, you got a good music scene. People don't realize the music scene is pretty awesome. And if you get tired of Detroit, you can just cross the bridge up to Windsor and drink at 19 and it's cleaner and the people are nicer. So I love Detroit, I love Cleveland, you know, and I, yeah, no, I did not dream of it. I had, you know, other plans. I was, I was at Michigan State for a while. I dropped out to join the Army and joined Second Rage of a Time. Why did you drop out to join the Army? Was that out of nowhere? I sort of, I, I sort of just, I got tired of, it felt boring. Like, you know, I had some friends who were joining and one of them said, Hey, there's this Ranger thing. And, you know, a lot of people like to say, well, I joined because of patriotism. Well, at that point, it was not patriotism. They said that I could jump out of planes and kill people for a living. And I said, that sounds like, like Ranger, it sounds like, it sounds like it'd be cool. That was my immature young Jim thoughts, like, Hey, this would be cool. There's patriotism involved in there somewhere. Like, I love my country. I was at Michigan State during the first Gulf War and I remember seeing the protesters. And I, and I've always been a conservative, conservative my entire life. And I saw it and I was like, yeah, I sort of want to join the Army. And they told me that there was this thing, Rangers. I had a friend to join. His name was James. And so I did and, you know, I watched all the, all the Army movies and marine movies before I left getting all psyched up. And then I got there. I was like, Holy shit. I may have made a terrible mistake. Like, what the hell? Yeah. It's hard. Yeah. Parents were paying for everything and I was, you know, I didn't realize I was spoiled. I was spoiled. Right. So I got there. But I was like, I got so lucky. I had this, he's still all those guys that were at range of a time with me, privates with me, my squad leader, they have shown up all the time my entire life. They're my closest friends. They are the inner circle. If I have a problem, they're going to show up with hatchets, shovels, plastic bags and they will take plastic bags. Yeah. Yeah. Full meal deal. That's right. My, my squad leader was a guy, everything I learned about leadership, I learned at range of Italian. And because I was not, I think probably if someone had known, even most of my life, actually, I'm not somebody who bucks the system for the most part, I didn't, you know, my mom would put my ninth place finish up on the, on the fridge and say, could you hop to me, you're the best. You know? So, you know, it's not, it's not like I was, I'd never been with a group of people that challenged you all the time. These were a hyper competitive group of people and just constantly. And so when I got there, I was meeting standard for sure, you know, I was a little more physically fit than most, I was a little smarter than most, I was never the smartest, I was never the most physically fit and when I got to range of Italian, I realized this is not the exact fit for me. I, I'm really glad I'm doing this because these people are making me better. And yeah, what, what made them teach you so much about leadership? I guess a better way to ask that question is, what do you think are the key tenants that make great leaders? He's not agreeable on anything. And I had, I believe it or not, I'm actually fairly agreeable, at least I was, I'm not anymore, but I had never experienced somebody who was willing to respectfully, ethically, morally, challenge people's, people who were in a position of authority. Just asking questions, if you will. Yeah, just asking questions, if you will, exactly. He was also a man of faith. And at the time, and my faith has changed, definitely has changed. It started with the birth of my son, but before that, before that, when I met my wife, she said, here's the rule, I'm Catholic, you will be Catholic. And I, I believed, but it wasn't like, it wasn't anything that was part of my life. I was raised a piscopalian, which is almost not religion at this point, but whatever it is, it's not, it's not what I, God, I sign up for. And so, yeah, I took her seriously, she said, you have to convert and, and I still haven't, but I definitely don't miss church anymore. And I definitely have a difference in opinion, and it was after my son was born. When my son was born, you start doing this thing, and maybe other people don't, but I started saying, make sure you're being a good boy, be a good boy. And that's maybe where the transformation started, because I started asking myself, have I been a good boy? Have I really been a good boy? I really like not, I mean, I won't lie. I like not being a good boy, it's fun. And then you start, you start saying it over and over and you're like, I should probably be a good boy too. And you know, it sounds dopey, maybe it does, and I don't, that started it down the road. So I have a difference in faith now, and it's not because I've had any kind of, man, I wish I had one of those experiences people talk about where they're like, I know, because this happened. I don't. It was slow, it chipped away. Slow, yeah. And I think my wife did it too, she slipped it in, everywhere she could, but, so you were saying the, the squad leader, the fact that he would ask questions respectfully of authority when things didn't clock to him and that he had strong faith, those were things that wanted to be in a great leader. Yeah. And he didn't equivocate on anything, he never hedged his bets. He never said, well, if I say this right, I'll navigate this. And so, you know, there are guys that I served with a range of a tie and are, they're so fricking hardcore. And they've gone, they went on to be, most of them are all retired now, because, you know, we're met of a certain age. And, you know, hardcore dudes, and I remember thinking, I am cosplaying here. I've got the uniform on. I feel pretty good. I can meet Stan. and I'm keeping up with all of them. I'm doing everything a ranger is supposed to do. But if someone said, Jim, do you think this is gonna be the rest of your life career? I'd be like, no, I didn't quite fit in. I fit in well enough and they made me a better person. And part of that making me a better person was my leadership that I had there. But also the team I was with, they were all good, like genuinely good people. Rough, but good. That could be both. Yeah, yeah. And they're my friends to this day. And this is in the 90s with a joint. Yeah, there's a 93 to 97. I was an active duty. Okay, so the war is not hot, obviously. It's all pre 9/11. The 90s were until the end when you had the Balkan stuff, like largely a pretty decent time. So are you on the base this whole time or did you get to go places too? There was a lot of training. Went to Panama. We were deployed for Haiti. And that was probably the closest we ever got. We were ducks in a row at Guantanamo Bay before Guantanamo Bay was a thing. Ducks in a row. We were on the airfield. Ducks in a row battled up, geared up, ready to go into Haiti. And the mission was, what was it? Restore democracy and then it turned into a pulled democracy. And we're, why is it always about something with democracy? Oh, because you've got to have the, you know, the big patriotism. You know, and just voting, because voting will fix it, right? Voting will fix it, right? So we're ducks in a row waiting to get on these helicopters to go in and the mission was pretty much just kill everybody but us. We're going to go into the airfield and the presidential palace and fix things that went wrong. While that was going on, it was, it was Colin Powell, Jimmy Carter, and there was another guy there doing negotiations. And he was saying to, to the folks there, hey, listen, 82nd airborne is in the air right now. Third range of battalion is in the air right now. And I've got first and second range of battalion on an airfield in Guantanamo Bay and they're coming. So you have a choice. It here are two democratic elections. Or, you know, we can't guarantee that anything will be good for you at this. So in that, you know, restored democracy turned into uphold democracy. And we thought, we thought, OK, well, that's it for us because Rangers aren't, aren't peacekeepers. But we were left in Guantanamo for, I forget how long. But then a special forces guy got shot in the chest in a village called LaCai. In Haiti. In Haiti. And they had a special forces compound there. And they had like a siops team that was running around town saying, turn in your weapons at the weapons turn in points. And it was actually called a siops team. Yeah, there was a siop team out there. I believe it was called. I mean, that's what we called it. And I was some dumb private that, Rocho got our war. I was that guy. When are we going to war? So we got sent in as a show force. So we flew into LaCai. And we were rotating in-- and I was on the-- what they call the siop team as well, so combat search and recovery. So when VIPs were going in and out, we were up in the air making sure that nothing happened to them. And if they did, we'd fly in and that was our job. So we were there for a few days, putting up blocking positions. We rated a hotel. You rated a hotel? Yeah, we pulled out-- I'm trying to think it was like 50 guys in the hotel. And I don't remember all the details, but we got-- this is after a audition and everything. We got in five ton trucks, went out to the hotel. No shots were fired, which, by the way, is a feat for a range of Italian. They went in, they blew the doors in, they being us. And I was on the recovery team-- or the search team for the folks that they pulled out. So we're pulling stuff out of them. And they had a team went in, pulled everybody out. And then we brought them back to the police station where we had hold up. And you got to see grown men balling their eyes out and they saw where they were taken on. Because that was the police station where people just disappeared. We didn't know that. I don't think we knew that when we took that as our sort of-- but it worked. SF and Terrier just came and did their thing. That's the closest I ever came. And it was an interesting time. And it was a different time. Because you didn't have the global war on terror. Right. Totally. It's like night and day. Yeah. And range of Italian is night and day. The range of Italian I grew up in was very-- it was obviously harder when I went through. But they always got to say-- Yeah. But it's a totally different animal now. And so I'm just grateful that I got to serve with all these guys. And they taught me leadership. That leadership-- actually, in the way they taught leadership too, they taught you how to follow first. And people don't go down that road far enough. Everybody wants to be in charge. They teach you how to be a good follower too. Part of being a good leader is actually learning that first step. How do you support the leader respectfully, ethically, morally? How do you make sure that that person is successful? And everybody comes home. And so you learn to be a follower first. You learn the job that is two jobs above you. You always learn the job that's two jobs above you. Because you never know what's going to happen. And I always carry that with me from then on. You don't realize what shapes you when you're a young man until you got to pull it out of your back pocket and say-- And leadership in the agency is totally different. It's not this hierarchical chain of command. Like everybody goes around everybody else. And there's-- it's flat. Yeah, I was going to say spies talking behind each other's back that would never happen. No, they don't do that. Right, right. So-- They follow chains of command. But it taught me everything. I needed to know to have a strong foundation. And I'm grateful for all of them. Yeah, I also feel like that gives you a wildly different perspective than a lot of the people who end up in case officer jobs and CIA. And I've talked with guys in the military before I've had to work with those types of people as well. And sometimes they work with them well. And they get it. And then other times a major source of the frustration is they're like, you know, this person was sitting at Dartmouth four years ago. And you know, I just did fucking 12 tours of duty and lost 12 of my guys along the way. And they're trying to tell me how it works in a place that they've never fucking been. But you understand having been in the guys who are-- even if you weren't in there for the war on terror and everything, like you've been out there. You understand how it works. You see how the military thinks. You see how the tip of the spear works so that you can work with them well later. And the human factor too, you know, that just there are people who are disconnected and sort of an aside, but related. You know, I got administratively demoted out of my job at the CIA because of my heretical views on COVID, right? So I got a two-year letter of reprimand, career-killing letter of reprimand. A two-year letter of reprimand was what does that mean? So for two years, I was not allowed to get promoted. Couldn't PCS overseas? Couldn't TDY-- TDY? Temporary duty in other locations. So couldn't go to training. Couldn't do any of those things. I was also suspended without pay for a week over Christmas in 2021. And even though I had the year prior received four leadership awards, it was because I was a bad leader, like because of COVID, not because they were fully aware I was organizing a litigation. No, not that kind of leadership. No, no, right. No, the other kind. They sit down and shut up kind. So I got administratively demoted. And this is going to sound crazy too. And it's sort of an aside, we're sort of all over the place here, but I'll bring you back. But every person should be demoted once in their life. I agree completely. Everybody should be demoted. Like, did I deserve to be demoted? No, fuck them. But I did. And I got put in a entry-level position. And I was a senior manager running two full branches. And yeah, division anyhow, I was demoted. And I'm not saying this to wine. I'm telling you that I got put in a branch. And the branch manager was junior to me. And he's like, I want to fuck to I do with you. We're not going to do with you. And I said, well, just tell me to do what I'm supposed to do. Like, your job is to tell me what to do. Give me my tasks. I'm here to work. And that's part of my-- it's not a philosophy. It's trade-craft. That's a humbling thing, though. To have to say that. Well, I told him, just listen, you're in charge. Like, I'd be glad to give you advice if you want to. But you're in charge. And my job is to make sure that I do my job and the people around me do it. And so he did. And it was great. And the thing was I realized I had sort of drifted over time. And some of the things I was saying to my staff when I was a manager, I was like, holy shit, I had totally lost the beat on what takes to be what it takes to be a line officer, a junior officer sitting in those branches and you got some dipshit showing up gone. Why is this not done yet? What is up? And then you realize, Oh, I know what's up, giant bullshit bureaucracy that gets in the way of everything. That's right. And so, you know, just a short aside, a good leadership is getting demoted just once. 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 help. And if you'd like to check out this clips full podcast episode, that link is in the description below or right here. 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