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

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Thank you. and he's in a in like a skate park and um he's in the rollerblades 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 um and he comes on 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 um that's there you go this is it right here yeah it's right there i told you he's fast as fuck with it yeah i've seen that one all right yeah so that's you but that's me yeah so rollerblades yeah gotcha so it's and it's you know i 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 okay i do i do do you know what we talk about i do i do i you know i i went through probably um at least there was at least 14 episodes i pulled right off the bat to to wow i try to do my homework yeah that's a lot of homework that's what the deep state does okay yeah i'm gonna blink twice if i need help everybody just keep that in mind so so you know i i was listening to what you had to say and you have quite a bit right about you know there being a big problem with uh bureaucratic intransigence uh 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 dollar question is like who's doing it um 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 the deep state isn't um a conspiracy requires members okay so you gotta 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 uh this this dead weight of bureaucratic bullshit right hey guys three quick things number one if you haven't subscribed please subscribe it's a huge 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 pin 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 um 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 uh 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 um 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 um all of this has occurred and it's still occurring in an administration that has said we're going to reform we're going to get transparency so um well they drained the swamp to a lake or something like that right right and you know part of the part of the the the big issue with with with all of this is um i was looking at what you've done uh did you say it was like seven years you've been doing this six and a half six and a half okay um you have provided a 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 uh or are in the process of questioning things and um so you have put people on your platform like john uh kiriaku these other people who you look at him you go okay um this is a guy who who um and i don't know the full details about what happened to him or didn't happen to him what i do know is he passed a test of his humanity okay yeah he said you know last i checked enhanced interrogation is probably just torture okay and agree yeah i do i do now um part of the reason i'm part of the deep state is um he passed a test of humanity i didn't okay i you 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 ownerships for the decisions you did and didn't make over time so like i came forward because the promises from this administration the the importance of transparency and reform uh you know i'm i'm fully on board but it wasn't like my transformation is not is not something that uh you know people should lionize uh because i was that was the guy who's like well the middle east is a burning place but good thing we're here for democracy okay so you know it takes time to realize that maybe some of the things that you thought before are wrong and there's some people who are on the front end who recognize it early um some people aren't but for me you know i started noticing that the institution we had individuals more interested in uh protecting the institution than uh protecting the constitution um 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'm 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 um no regrets on any of that but it's a process for people and it got me thinking when i saw what you're 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 um it's a bit it's a huge huge organization i have no doubt there's people who 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 stonewalled good point and that leads right into what i wanted to say about folks like again kiryaku right we get to see the guy man he was right through the coals i mean he was 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 um for someone like me on the inside all of a sudden you realize hey wait a minute i know it's gonna be there's gonna be some pain involved but maybe we can do the right thing now inside the system use the system to try and make changes and from the outside you look in there you're like well keeps losing that battle from the inside. They're plucked out. they're sent out i retired in my own accord um you know i was not pushed out um there there was nothing i'm pretty sure they wouldn't have given me anything of substance to do maybe they would have maybe not but um 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 who've come forward you don't you don't come forward on your own it's not like somebody says you know what i'm gonna do i'm gonna come forward and do the right thing they gotta see they gotta 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 um people are listening and they want you to do the right thing you're not going to do it unless unless you see it uh and again it's not great for these people but i 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 covet feds for freedom well it was feds for medical freedom which um at the beginning because we we said enough is enough we're not going to take your jab um 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 i'm not saying it like that um but i will say uh i guess in some way maybe maybe um and here's here's what i mean by that um 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 to policymakers to make wise decisions i couldn't understand why we had this cognitive block with say covet 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 an evolutionary 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 me he's 100 right he's not going to cancel me he's not going to cancel me he's not going to cancel me 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 covet well it's the amateur internet sleuths and everyone wanted a bad mouth about doing your own research uh groups like drastic richard ebright uh 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 covet protocols and mitigation measures that didn't work but we're also looking at and 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 um omission of of facts is also a clue yes so yeah a little bit uh you know when you are privy to secrets and you decide you're not going to um 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 gabbard and director directors initiatives group running the the covet 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 that really got his attention our grandfathers had much higher testosterone levels at our age than we do today in fact men's testosterone levels have dropped 25 since 1980 almost like there's something in the air and that's the point we're not weak we're just being poisoned and it's affecting our hormones and that's why my dad loves mars men it's a formula built around natural ingredients that have been studied for their ability to support 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where you heard about them please support our show and tell them i sent you but you saw that and at the time during covid we had scientific reasons we had a bunch of people with religious reasons 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 is 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 that by clicking on the link in the description below and 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 in my 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 button is 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 the agency and what led you to actually at that time be like you know what this is it now we got a look at this well i i had been looking into covert 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 um the questions in may had to do with there was some very clear safety signals that were already showing up in bears 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 who are vaccinated keep getting sick we're the only ones running the office and we're the ones who are unvaccinated and um so those questions started piling up and so i said well tell you what i'm gonna send an email to to the uh 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 um if you were to bucket them it was uh what are you going to do about my myocarditis and pericarditis yeah 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 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 think i want to come back to that putting your name on the record it's essential it's essential it started there and then um 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 sticky notes oh sticky notes that's not a fake question 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 in the that we know of in the land yes that's yes yeah very reassuring yeah it should be sleep tight america yeah um so and again like i you know we were looking at her 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 um 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 uh 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 go about your business yeah just leave me the fuck alone right sorry leave me alone let me new jersey you can okay okay um 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 um 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 covet policy but you have exhausted all of your administer 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 too and um they said well it's the 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 mandate before the military mandates which was august 24 this is right at afghanistan right right right exactly in uh yeah exactly afghanistan around that time so i uh i send this long email and i cite something that i've been doing for a long time and i send this long email and i cite something that i've been doing for a long time and i cite something that i've been doing for a long time scientific studies i talk about the impact to the workforce because what they were asking us to do was inculcate a lie into our everyday work and you're gonna say uh jim cia lies from the studio that brought you wandavision i was an avenger but i'm not a hero anymore the vision returns for the final chapter of the groundbreaking trilogy that family wasn't real you sure about that i had a father called vision how is this possible don't miss the two episode premiere of marvel television's vision quest nothing bonds a family together quite like mortal jeopardy now streaming only on disney plus right i mean i you're doing 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 that has nothing to do with the work you guys do if 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 a you know an operations officer you you are expected to make decisions on the fly because you can never predict you're never going to be able to predict every situation the longer you spend in the agency the better you're at it at predicting these things and so you know you 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 uh i listen no comments all i'm saying is there's lots of polygraphs and there's lots of ways i mean they get access to your banking um you know you give up a lot to to to get the and i mean this sincerely uh 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 yeah 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 uh 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 um okay the chance encounter but um i don't i don't know anything you don't have any i have no connection with him whatsoever let me say that go check his house i don't need any more ass pain um so uh you get a lot of authority and so what happens is um there were a ton of fake vaccine cards a lot of them in cia oh fuck yeah and they were just getting away god that was such a bad system everyone got away with that so so like there were fake vaccine cards people just loaded them up okay and i am not judging them frankly um but here's what happens one lie that's all it takes okay if you get a lot of authority and you get a lot of authority and you get a lot of can justify why you need to make this just 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 this 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 and realizing what happened we'll get to the full background so you guys can understand that too but please continue sure sure sure sorry and i sort of just jumped into 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 their masks off i you know they come in monday i said hey i came in sunday i sent the email i cited these studies um i'm sure they'll listen now so uh they didn't listen they didn't listen and in fact i started getting hit up by people i didn't know uh in the agency out of the blue they're like jim i saw your email and uh yeah i agree with everything you're saying uh what are we going to do because it looks like we're going to have a vaccine mandate where are they just texting you that yeah there's there's they're contacting me through agency systems and so my first question was like how did you how'd you know i sent that email it was sent to the coup's office which by the way that was like my boss's boss's boss's boss's boss's boss so checking on my tps reports um and so you know i'm like how did you know i mean it turns out that like instead of like taking anything i said seriously you know the email was forwarded probably in a they're probably laughing at me like some kook 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 uh there was 50 of us and um so they're all asking me jim what are we doing 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 yeah i guess let me i i handled financial intelligence at the time so were you based domestically at this i was domestic so i i was i was not overseas at the time i was domestically i came came home in 2019 from africa so when you are saying 50 people in my office are you referring to higher likely complex sorry 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 that my yes 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 going to do about this i'm like 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 uh i'm just going to 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 because it was bothering the i didn't want i definitely wasn't going to take a vaccine i knew it at that point and so i sent it off uh and to sort of shorten 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 get the shot that's a significant number that's a huge number yeah a huge number and so i knew i wasn't wrong uh one of the problems up to this point was we were all sort of separated there was never 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 um and this was across the whole federal government so when all of this started 2021 and that honestly that is not exactly when i woke up i woke up before that but um that was sort of the the last straw um that this whole period because and again it's it's not flattering to me but it really didn't wake up until i experienced the pain point and whatever giddy up we're gonna we're gonna just take it what happened on september 9th when the mandates went in just so i understand this what happened because 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 going to be fired if we didn't get the shot by a certain date okay and um you know when you're thinking to yourself you have spent millions of dollars training me and well multiply that by 1100 and um lots of time money i mean they trained me in arabic and chinese uh free gifts from the agency and um you're fluent in both of those my arabic's gotten pretty bad but mandarin i'm still you're nice with the mandarin it's yeah it's good enough they will use him for the movie dave yeah i need that it's mama hoohoo um okay so him and mom donnie yo mom donnie kind of spits it i'm not gonna lie it wasn't ai you seem speaking chinese yeah i did i did vaguely impressive to a person who doesn't understand chinese yeah Yeah. In any case, you know, they, that was what happened. Uh, you know, that was a turning point. And, um, when they said, you're going to 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 out 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'd stayed away from legal issues as much as humanly possible because you know, you're, you don't need that, that hassle, uh, when you're working at the agency. Uh, so I started calling and I finally got ahold of, uh, lawyers at federal practice group. And, um, I get ahold of them. They said, Hey, Jim, um, you know, it's going to cost you this much for each plaintiff. And I'm like, 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, that's a lot of money for anybody. And so, uh, the, 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, you know, you can't, you can't, 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, what? Like, are you trying to steal money from me? Like, why are we doing it this way? Like, I just, all I care about is the agency and the handful of NSA and DIA people that were part of our group. But I called up Marcus Thornton, a state department employee. Um, he had lined up a bunch of people from state department and, uh, customs and border patrol. And so I had like 200 people. I had like 200 people. I had like that were willing to go to court or, uh, because of various reasons, just provide money for the lawsuit. So it could go forward. And they just sort of hope, 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 three that I don't know if we picked the name at that point. Cause I, to be honest, I wasn't really into the name to begin with. I'm like, we sound like a bunch of glowies. Um, but whatever. It's sort of true. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I get where you're going. You said that out there. I went, Ooh, yeah, we're for your free. We're here for your freedom. Yeah. But we are, we got a good group of people. And so, um, anyhow, we started suing and, um, 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 trade craft on how you oppose, uh, government overreach from the inside. And, um, the crass way of saying is don't be a pussy. Um, the, 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're doing and what you're doing, you're not going to be able to stay state explicitly you're doing and why you're doing it. And, um, what you're actually doing, they're going to destroy you. Okay. They being the deep state, the, or 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 trade craft behind it. And this goes back to our discussion on Kiriakou. Um, we were the one organization feds for freedom. Now it was feds for medical freedom that, um, 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, uh, we're standing on the shoulders of giants in the sense that other people have gone through this mess and gotten 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. Um, and there's some examples of what we've done, uh, 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, uh, we'll be in your corner, but, um, 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, um, we'll help you where the, we know the system is broken. We know cause we've lived it for five years. We've been living inside the system going to, you know, we've been living inside the system going to, you know, we've been you know, Intel oversight committees, going to oversight committees, uh, working through the administrative procedures internal to the organizations. We know it's broken cause we've lived it. Um, and the people at feds for freedom, they weren't recruited into the organization. They were brought in by a test. Okay. 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 in the organization, they're not going to lose their job. They're 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, well, what makes you different from some other group of people out there going, ah, 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, um, is using their authority in their jobs to ensure that the people above, um, 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, um, this is, this is the facts. And so feds for freedom fought the vaccine mandates. We've, we got a nationwide injunction that stopped the vaccine mandate for all staff, federal employees throughout the entire Biden administration and up until January. Yeah. Yeah. So we got a settlement, um, at the end of the day, which really just covered some legal fees, but good enough. That didn't make you persona non grata. Oh yeah. A hundred percent. Okay. So, so it's 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 entertained this, this idea. Okay. I'm going to go back to just doing what I was doing before. Eventually it's still not perfect. Um, and I'm not like, honestly, I I'm not complaining about what happened cause I'm whatever. Um, 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 moaning, I got in a fight and I got punched. Um, 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. Um, don't have daylight with what you're doing and what you're saying you're doing because, um, the fastest way to lose any kind of credibility is to lose credibility is to do that. And also you'll just get destroyed anyway, just quietly, not loudly. And, um, 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 right at the King to say, look what I did check. Yep. 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 know, 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, um, the hard part is you had, um, what's her name? Shawnee that I saw before I even knew that I heard about, I guess, before I even knew, uh, that she had been on your program. And she was on a panel with, with, um, with another officer from the agency, really, really good officer about, um, uh, 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, 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 on the 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 um he's like julian when i look at you our eyes they meet and suddenly i have you in a trance and you're gonna do whatever i'm like okay is this really like happening right now like are you doing it to me but he's he's he knows what he's doing when it comes to being a case officer um 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 gonna do we're gonna we're gonna we're 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 covet hit um we started getting information from every single one of these agencies and departments not classified we don't accept classified information for the record um you know they don't they better not send it to us like i said we don't need any more ass pain if you let me know off camera okay so we got a window into what was happening in all these different agencies and departments and we started seeing all these patterns emerge it was all the similar bs um and it's part of we can talk more about it later but um you know one of the last things that we did was sue the cia before i the day i retired um just in june this year this year okay um because patterns emerged where people were put on insider threat lists because of asking for religious accommodation uh being involved in protected activities which by the way lawsuits are a protected activity and so um and if you want we can jump straight into the lawsuit but um from the studio that brought you wandavision i was an avenger but i'm not a hero anymore the vision returns for the final chapter of the group groundbreaking trilogy that family wasn't real you sure about that i had a father called vision how is this possible don't miss the two episode premiere of marvel television's vision quest nothing bonds a family together quite like mortal jeopardy now streaming only on disney plus 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 yes 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 it 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 were all dealing with a lot of bullshit that said you've had a long career there you had a 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 is my point so that people can understand that and i think that's a really good point and i think that's a really good point and i think that's a really good point and i think that's a really good point 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 where did you begin did did you did you want to be a spy when you were growing up was that ever a thought no no in fact i there's probably a time when i was 18 and living in livonia michigan uh if somebody said hey do you want to travel the world why would i leave detroit i love this place you know that that was not on the bingo card you like detroit huh i did you know i'm not a big fan of detroit i'm not a big fan of detroit i'm not a big fan of detroit i moved to detroit when i was 16. um i think it gets a bad rap um 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 uh i love detroit i love detroit i love detroit i love detroit i love detroit i love detroit i love detroit i love detroit i love detroit i was at michigan state for a while i dropped out to join the army i joined second ranger battalion why'd you drop out to join the army was that out of nowhere or i sort of i i sort of just i got tired of uh it felt boring like you know i had some friends who were joining and um 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 and i was like well they said that i could jump out of planes and kill people for a living and i said that sounds like like ranger battalion it sounds like 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 uh i was at michigan state during the first gulf war and i remember seeing the uh protesters and i and i've always been a conservative um 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 jim james uh and so i did and um 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 training's hard yeah parents were paying for everything and i was you know i didn't realize i was spoiled i was spoiled um so i got there but i was like i got so lucky i had this he's still all those guys that were at ranger battalion 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 and they will take plastic bags yeah yeah full meal deal that's right uh you know uh my my squad leader was a guy everything i learned about leadership um i learned at ranger battalion and um because i was not i think probably if someone had known even most of my life actually i'm not somebody who uh 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 good job jimmy you're the best you know so you know it's not it's not like i was uh i'd never been with a group of people that uh 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 ranger battalion i realized this is not the exact fit for me um 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 i'm believe it or not i'm actually fairly agreeable uh at least i was i'm not anymore uh but i had never experienced somebody who was willing to respectfully um ethically morally um 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 um and my faith has changed definitely has changed um it started with the birth of my son but um well before that before that when i met my wife she said here's the rule um 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 i was raised episcopalian which is almost not religion at this point um but whatever it is it's not it's not what i god i sign up for um and so yeah i took her seriously she said you have to convert and um and i still haven't uh 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 um 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? hmm 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 um you know you start out 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 no no maybe it does it doesn't i don't that started it down the road so that i have a difference in faith now and it's not because i've had any kind of i 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 she slipped it in everywhere she could but uh right so you were saying the the the squad leader yeah 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 um 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 at range battalion are they're so freaking hardcore and they've gone on they went on to be most of them are all retired now because you know we're men of a certain age and um you know hardcore dudes and i remember i'm cosplaying here i've got the uniform on i feel pretty good i can meet standard and i'm keeping up with all of them i'm doing everything a ranger's supposed to do but if someone said jim do you think this is going to be the rest of your life career i'd be like no i didn't 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 the team i was with they were all good like genuinely good people rough but good they could be both yeah yeah yeah and um they're my friends to this day and this is in the 90s when you join yeah it was 93 to 97 i was in active duty okay so the war is not hot obviously it's all pre-911 the 90s were until the end when you had the balkan stuff like it's 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 um went to panama um we were deployed for haiti and that was probably the closest we ever got um we were ducks in a row at guantanamo bay uh before guantanamo bay was a thing ducks in a row we were on the airfield ducks in a row battled up geared up um ready to go into haiti and the the mission was um what was it uh restore democracy and then it turned into uphold democracy and we're why is it always about something with democracy oh because you got to have the you know the big patriotism you know and spread voting right because voting will fix it right voting will fix it right so um 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 uh airfield and the presidential palace and uh fix things that went wrong while that was going on it was i think it was colin powell jimmy carter and another guy there doing negotiations and um he was saying to uh to the folks there hey listen uh 82nd airborne is in the air right now third range battalion is in the air right now and i've got first and second range battalion on an airfield in guantanamo bay and they're coming so you have a choice adhere to democratic elections or you know we can't guarantee that anything will be good for you so in that you know restore democracy democracy turned into uphold democracy and we thought we thought okay well that's it for us because rangers aren't aren't peacekeepers but we were left in gitmo for i forget how long but then um a special forces guy got shot in the chest in a village called uh man lakai lakai in haiti in haiti and they had a special forces compound there and they they had like a psyops team that was running around town saying turn it down turn it down turn it down your weapons at the weapons turn in point and it was actually called a psyops team yeah there was a psyops team out there i believe it was called i mean that's what we called it and i'm i was some dumb private that roger we got our war i was that guy yeah man when are we going to war yeah so uh we got sent in as a show force so we flew into lakai and we were rotating it and i was on the what they call the csar team as well so you combat search and recovery so when vips are going in and out we were up in the air making sure that uh 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 raided a hotel you raided a hotel yeah we pulled out i'm trying to think it was like 50 guys in the hotel and there was some and i don't remember all the details but um we got this is after audition everything we got in five ton trucks went out to the hotel um no shots were 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 uh recovery team or the uh 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 holed up and got to see grown men bawling their eyes out when they saw we were taking them 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 interrogators came and did their thing but um that's the closest i ever came and it was uh yeah it was uh it's an interesting time and it was a different time because you didn't have the global war on terror right totally it's it's like night and day yeah and ranger battalion is night and day the ranger battalion i grew up in was very it was obviously harder when i went through but they always got to yeah uh but it's a totally different animal now and so i'm just grateful that i 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 um they teach you how to be a good follower too too like how to like in part of being a good leader is actually learning that first step how do you support the person respectfully ethically morally how do you make sure that that person is successful and everybody comes home and um 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've always carried that with me from then on and you don't realize what shapes you when you're a young man until uh until you got to pull it out of your back pocket and say and leadership in the agency is totally different um it's it's not this hierarchical chain of command like everybody goes around everybody else and you know there's a it's flat yeah i was gonna say spies talking behind each other's back that would never happen no they don't do that right right they follow chains of command but it taught me everything i needed to know to to have a strong foundation and i'm 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 you know 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 that i'm not going to be able to do it and i'm not going to be able to do it 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 world 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 there are people who are disconnected and um sort of an aside but really related you know i got uh administratively demoted out of my job uh 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 what was i mean uh so for two years i was uh not allowed to get promoted couldn't pcs overseas couldn't tdy uh tdy uh temporary duty in other locations um so couldn't get promoted i was not allowed to get promoted i was not allowed to get promoted i didn't go to training uh couldn't do any of those things i was uh i was also suspended without pay for a week over christmas in 2021 um and uh even though i had the year prior received four leadership awards it was because i was a bad leader not because of covid not because they were fully aware i was organizing litigation like no not that kind of leadership no no right no the other kind um they sit down and shut up kind mm-hmm so i got administratively demoted and this is going to sound crazy too and it's sort of an aside i i don't we're sort of all over the place here but i'll bring you back but uh 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 um and i was a senior manager running two full branches and yeah uh division yeah anyhow uh i was demoted and i'm not saying this to to whine i'm telling you that i got put in a branch and the branch manager was junior to me and he's like what the fuck do i do with you what am i going to do with you and um 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 it's trade crap that's a humbling thing though to have to say that it well i told him just listen you're you're in charge right like i like i'll be glad to give you advice if you want it 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 it 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 going why is this not done yet like what what's what is what is up and then you realize oh i know it's a giant bullshit bureaucracy that gets in the way of everything that's right and so uh you know just as short aside uh 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 and i'll see you next time it is a huge huge help and if you'd like to check out this clip's 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 from the studio that brought you wandavision i was an avenger but i'm not a hero anymore the vision returns for the final chapter of the groundbreaking trilogy that family wasn't real you sure about that i had a father called vision how is this possible don't miss the two episode premiere of marvel television's vision quest nothing bonds a family together quite like mortal jeopardy now streaming only on disney plus