WEBVTT 00:00.592 --> 00:09.720 [SPEAKER_02]: M-S-S-W-M-D-A-M-S-W-M-D-A-M-S-S-W-M-D-A-M-S-S-W-M-D-A-M-S-S-W-M-S-W-M-S-W-M-S-W-M-S-W-M-S-W-M-S-W-M-S-W-M-S-W-M-S-W-M-S-W-M-S-W-M-S-W-M-S-W-M-S-W-M-S-W-M-S-W-M-S-W-M-S-W-M-S-W-M-S-W-M-S-W-M-S-W-M-S-W-M-S-W-M-S-W-M-S-W-M-S-W 00:21.407 --> 00:23.590 [SPEAKER_01]: I'm Karen Greenberg. 00:23.730 --> 00:25.913 [SPEAKER_03]: A new addition of a spy-talk podcast. 00:26.313 --> 00:37.206 [SPEAKER_03]: Our special guest today is Zach Dorfman, a Washington Post National Security reporter who's been delving into a super secret and dangerous side of the spy business. 00:37.807 --> 00:41.750 [SPEAKER_03]: the folks who go abroad disguised as business people or whatnot. 00:42.111 --> 00:46.795 [SPEAKER_03]: The so-called nox, that stands for n non official cover and oc. 00:47.636 --> 00:51.879 [SPEAKER_03]: According to his recent reporting, the Pentagon wants to get into that business too. 00:52.400 --> 00:53.461 [SPEAKER_03]: We're going to talk about that. 00:53.541 --> 01:02.028 [SPEAKER_03]: But first, looks like we're going to have another chapter of the war on and with Iran. 01:02.769 --> 01:04.350 [SPEAKER_03]: A lot of pitfalls here. 01:04.610 --> 01:05.231 [SPEAKER_03]: What do you think, Mike? 01:07.077 --> 01:27.223 [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, well, look, I mean, a lot of, you know, pretty eyebrow raising reporting over the last few days that the US is moving Patriot missile systems from the continent of the US to the Middle East, it's warning allies that there could be. 01:29.231 --> 01:35.172 [SPEAKER_04]: strikes, military strikes next week that would prompt Iranian retaliation. 01:36.473 --> 01:49.696 [SPEAKER_04]: So both our air bases and in various Persian Gulf countries where we have assets are now on guard and the thinking is that after the election, 01:50.501 --> 02:04.686 [SPEAKER_04]: next Tuesday, Trump will believe he's got now the opportunity to do what he's been threatening to do for some time, which is massive new strikes on Iran. 02:05.746 --> 02:10.908 [SPEAKER_04]: And, you know, we know the results of the Israeli election completely muddled. 02:11.228 --> 02:12.928 [SPEAKER_04]: We don't know who's going to be able 02:18.950 --> 02:35.760 [SPEAKER_04]: is eager to join in on military strikes against Iran with the U.S. As early as next week, we shall see, I guess, the big question that will hang over this is, is there any reason to believe new strikes? 02:36.561 --> 02:39.642 [SPEAKER_04]: I'll have a different, I'm going to make a difference. 02:39.903 --> 02:43.985 [SPEAKER_04]: There'd be any more effective than all the strikes we had. 02:44.642 --> 02:48.305 [SPEAKER_04]: back when Trump launched his war in late February. 02:48.785 --> 02:50.707 [SPEAKER_03]: Karen, you have something to say about this. 02:51.372 --> 03:02.640 [SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, I mean, on that and then we can move on to something else, but I think, you know, this idea that war now means and never ending war, war never now means a forever war. 03:02.980 --> 03:14.647 [SPEAKER_01]: And so these threats where that they come from Israel or the United States are just taking us, yes, where war and war goes on and forever wars that Trump got elected to end exactly or not even to start. 03:14.968 --> 03:18.290 [SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, I mean, I just, it's just, you know, the next chapter, as you said. 03:18.450 --> 03:30.920 [SPEAKER_03]: There's a lot of Israeli commentary that this is, you know, and that, you know, loves the idea of attacking again because we're staves off the, you know, it'll be unity in the government, uh, uh, 03:41.568 --> 03:52.997 [SPEAKER_03]: To the Middle East, it comes out of time when Zelensky is complaining that he's not been getting shipments of air defense missiles himself. 03:53.678 --> 04:01.264 [SPEAKER_03]: So he is more and more vulnerable to Russian attacks, all already suffering from the star link. 04:02.780 --> 04:05.122 [SPEAKER_03]: Suspensions and we call it already on or off. 04:05.182 --> 04:25.493 [SPEAKER_04]: I don't know it's hard to look at the the full picture of that is the degree to which Trump has once again Been sucking up to Vladimir Putin and doing everything he can to bolster Putin Make it clear Zelensky is the reason we don't have an end to the war and 04:26.914 --> 04:29.356 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, but you know, it's not just same old same old. 04:29.496 --> 04:32.418 [SPEAKER_01]: He's he's definitely intensified. 04:32.438 --> 04:38.042 [SPEAKER_01]: He's gone way further in this recent period of time to a point where it's not really deniable. 04:38.102 --> 04:41.064 [SPEAKER_01]: There's no sort of pretence about it at all right now. 04:41.684 --> 04:44.466 [SPEAKER_03]: This is Meg Trump, a Russian ally. 04:44.486 --> 04:46.928 [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, what? 04:47.208 --> 04:48.149 [SPEAKER_03]: What do we call this? 04:49.379 --> 04:49.959 [SPEAKER_04]: treachery. 04:49.979 --> 04:52.800 [SPEAKER_04]: It's it's weird. 04:52.820 --> 05:13.804 [SPEAKER_04]: I it's probably unprecedented to have a relationship like this between a US president and a US adversary who's been, you know, labeled a war criminal by the previous president of the United States who has a warrant for war crimes. 05:20.005 --> 05:28.147 [SPEAKER_04]: and one of many suck-ups that was in the most recent iteration or meeting with Putin. 05:28.447 --> 05:34.789 [SPEAKER_04]: I mean, just a few months ago, back in September, he and Jared Kushner met with Putin. 05:35.149 --> 05:45.511 [SPEAKER_04]: And they wick off talked about, oh, the great stories we're going to be able to tell, you know, our friends and family after all this was over as though they were, you know, 05:49.472 --> 05:55.999 [SPEAKER_03]: Not a good look, really, inexplicable, really, it makes my mind melt. 05:56.159 --> 06:14.496 [SPEAKER_03]: Anyway, the speaking of weird things going on, Carol Lenin, go over to MS now, our friend of former Washington Post-Friend, she's written a story about unnamed FBI officials worried about election interference, that the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, 06:15.097 --> 06:26.250 [SPEAKER_03]: The bureau is going to get somehow involved with stealing a ballads or machines or whatever You've written about this in the past life in regards to the George of vote. 06:26.671 --> 06:28.353 [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I mean look 06:30.395 --> 06:34.577 [SPEAKER_04]: It's really hard to say how the things are going to play out next Tuesday. 06:34.657 --> 06:54.786 [SPEAKER_04]: I mean, the Justice Department is sending what 1,000 monitors to polling places all around the country, quote, certainly the Justice Department has done that in the past, but it was usually for a very limited purpose to see that the voting rights act was being upheld and people weren't being denied ballots because they're 06:55.626 --> 07:10.553 [SPEAKER_04]: ethnic background or whatever, but given everything else, this Justice Department has been doing filing lawsuits in California and Alaska and elsewhere, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, 07:10.773 --> 07:30.785 [SPEAKER_04]: a lot of people are on edge about things that could go sideways and are there steps that the administration will take either for the FBI or ICE or Justice Department lawsuits or Trump himself to cloud the results of the election next Tuesday. 07:31.473 --> 07:37.614 [SPEAKER_04]: you know, the bottom line is it's going to depend on how big the margins are. 07:37.974 --> 07:50.657 [SPEAKER_04]: If they're big and the Democrats get the kind of blue wave that all across the country that the polls are suggesting they will, I think it'll be a lot harder to do something that throws the election into doubt. 07:51.077 --> 07:55.477 [SPEAKER_04]: But if there are close races and clearly some of these Senate races, certainly many 07:58.678 --> 08:03.281 [SPEAKER_04]: And so you might see it in individual races where they try to do something. 08:03.781 --> 08:08.444 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I mean, I think the thing that Carolina was focused on was one thing in particular. 08:08.464 --> 08:18.431 [SPEAKER_01]: And she and Ken Zalainian were talked, you know, were talked to MS and now about this, which is about ordering, um, being ordered to seize the balance. 08:19.071 --> 08:21.573 [SPEAKER_01]: And the reason that raises alarm is we've seen it before. 08:22.193 --> 08:43.075 [SPEAKER_01]: we know that this can be a thing and you know then you have to you know you have to recall I guess as if states are preparing for this because remember in theory states are in charge of elections right and so what happened with per the constitution for the context okay right well just pretending like we still have a constitution but you know what we do 08:43.555 --> 08:49.397 [SPEAKER_01]: You remember when Brad Raffinsberger in Georgia was told to find Trump the votes. 08:49.517 --> 08:49.917 [SPEAKER_01]: Remember? 08:49.937 --> 09:09.224 [SPEAKER_01]: And, and I think the world, I think secretaries of state around the country really feel the burden of what's about to come and how what pressure is going to be put on them, not just in terms of troops that show up or DOJ that shows up on election day, but what's actually going to happen in terms of demanding 09:09.504 --> 09:11.685 [SPEAKER_01]: that there's an actual legitimacy to the vote. 09:12.025 --> 09:25.131 [SPEAKER_01]: And so, you know, I don't know what exactly the details of what they are thinking, but I think that the example of Raffinsburger and the past has to be somewhat in their mind going forward. 09:25.692 --> 09:30.214 [SPEAKER_03]: You know, all of those three of us have known a lot of FBI agents over the years. 09:30.914 --> 09:32.195 [SPEAKER_03]: They don't want to do this stuff. 09:32.825 --> 09:51.005 [SPEAKER_03]: They want to do big robberies or tracking Iranian agents or, you know, serious crimes, serious crimes, they don't want to be doing this in fact one of the people been complaining about this or whispering mumbling about it, but the guy who's calling from Missouri, you know, uh, oh. 09:53.285 --> 10:07.529 [SPEAKER_03]: It's well, we're all in suspense when you see what will happen and we just have to hope it doesn't go bad and enough good people stand up to stop any illegal behavior ordered by Cash Patel and his means. 10:07.569 --> 10:10.070 [SPEAKER_03]: Anyway, we're going to be talking about spy stories. 10:11.010 --> 10:25.420 [SPEAKER_03]: Um, was act orfman in a minute, but just before we get to that, there was a spy story that's developing here with NVIDIA chief, Jensen Wong, who had, what, looks like a girlfriend, who, was it Chinese spy? 10:25.500 --> 10:25.681 [SPEAKER_03]: What? 10:26.081 --> 10:26.361 [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah. 10:26.381 --> 10:28.242 [SPEAKER_04]: Well, what? 10:28.262 --> 10:32.766 [SPEAKER_04]: To be precise, the New York Times said a close personal relationship. 10:32.826 --> 10:33.426 [SPEAKER_03]: That's right. 10:34.107 --> 10:35.748 [SPEAKER_04]: And, and they cited, um, 10:36.832 --> 10:50.021 [SPEAKER_04]: You know, several social media posts by the alleged Chinese spy, in which she's sitting side by side with him at dinner or leaving a conference with him. 10:51.022 --> 10:57.767 [SPEAKER_04]: So whatever the nature of the relationship, the point is, 10:58.385 --> 11:07.218 [SPEAKER_04]: that the Chinese were spying on the CEO of a major AI company that's the supplier for computer. 11:08.743 --> 11:14.607 [SPEAKER_04]: for all of Silicon Valley and who happens to be really close to Donald Trump. 11:14.947 --> 11:28.898 [SPEAKER_04]: So, among other things, aside from getting inside info about NVIDIA and its computer chip business, the Chinese were also getting insights into Donald Trump's thinking. 11:29.498 --> 11:36.261 [SPEAKER_04]: from somebody who had a close personal relationship with, what is he thinking? 11:36.301 --> 11:39.343 [SPEAKER_04]: guy who was had a close personal relationship with Trump. 11:40.263 --> 11:46.526 [SPEAKER_04]: And also we're going to bring this up with Zach Dorfman because it's kind of the flip side of the story he was writing about. 11:46.907 --> 11:47.387 [SPEAKER_04]: Right. 11:47.627 --> 11:49.808 [SPEAKER_04]: So there's plenty to explore here. 11:49.988 --> 11:51.168 [SPEAKER_03]: We'll talk to him about that. 11:51.188 --> 11:53.029 [SPEAKER_03]: Anyway, let's get on this act. 11:53.309 --> 11:55.250 [SPEAKER_03]: I'm just very brief in his background. 11:55.270 --> 12:04.113 [SPEAKER_03]: He recently joined in Washington Post, just a reporter focusing on intelligence, national security, and investigative journalism, but he's been around for quite a while. 12:04.153 --> 12:05.273 [SPEAKER_03]: He's worked with you, Mike. 12:06.434 --> 12:07.874 [SPEAKER_03]: I've known him for some time. 12:07.894 --> 12:10.455 [SPEAKER_03]: He's a terrific reporter on intelligence. 12:11.415 --> 12:16.517 [SPEAKER_03]: And I'll add that these days, he's also finishing a book on 12:19.678 --> 12:23.562 [SPEAKER_03]: or Penguin Random House scheduled for 2027. 12:24.003 --> 12:25.945 [SPEAKER_03]: It's gonna be called deep cover. 12:26.245 --> 12:31.571 [SPEAKER_03]: Anyway, that's our top today, and let's not waste a moment more and on to our friends, Zach Dorf. 12:39.612 --> 12:41.613 [SPEAKER_03]: Exactly what I mean, welcome to Spide Talk. 12:41.693 --> 13:05.460 [SPEAKER_03]: You wrote a fascinating piece in the Washington Post the other day about the Pentagon wanting to get into the most sophisticated side of the SUV-nage business, which is sending people abroad despite with no diplomatic cover, which is to say, they won't be assigned to an American embassy as diplomats, though go to foreign countries without any ostensible U.S. government connection. 13:06.280 --> 13:16.430 [SPEAKER_03]: as business people, scientists, AI software, salesmen, and the like, they're called Knox, which stands for NOC, which stands for non-official cover. 13:17.031 --> 13:20.454 [SPEAKER_03]: The CIA has done this since it was started after World War II. 13:20.954 --> 13:24.958 [SPEAKER_03]: The Russians have used what they call illegals for nearly a century. 13:25.439 --> 13:29.282 [SPEAKER_03]: They were dramatized in the hit TV series, The Americans, one of my favorites. 13:30.843 --> 13:42.206 [SPEAKER_03]: And now you're reporting if the Pentagon wants to get into this business and again, but then again, a Pentagon spokesman said is simply not true and that he were badly informed. 13:42.266 --> 13:45.767 [SPEAKER_03]: So what's up. 13:46.988 --> 13:51.069 [SPEAKER_00]: Defend yourself. 13:51.189 --> 13:52.289 [SPEAKER_00]: It's great to be with you Jeff. 13:52.849 --> 13:53.089 [SPEAKER_00]: Yes, so. 13:56.510 --> 14:04.615 [SPEAKER_00]: Not official cover has been something that, as you mentioned, has been practiced by the agency since its founding. 14:05.175 --> 14:12.800 [SPEAKER_00]: It has always been a very secretive component of the agency's human intelligence gathering operations. 14:12.840 --> 14:18.663 [SPEAKER_00]: It has always also been a very difficult thing for the U.S. to execute efficiently and effectively. 14:19.384 --> 14:19.484 [SPEAKER_00]: And 14:20.064 --> 14:36.959 [SPEAKER_00]: If you speak to folks going back many decades, they will talk about the difficulties at 10-10 on doing that kind of work, which is, you know, they'll say it's critical, but also just, you know, even in terms of just organizationally, in terms of the CI bureaucracy, very, very difficult. 14:37.619 --> 14:41.683 [SPEAKER_00]: And very, very dangerous at times, because if you don't have the protections of diplomatic cover, 14:43.184 --> 14:46.006 [SPEAKER_00]: You're not going to be declared persona nangrada. 14:46.026 --> 14:46.826 [SPEAKER_00]: You might end up in prison. 14:46.846 --> 14:47.627 [SPEAKER_00]: You might end up dead. 14:49.128 --> 14:53.231 [SPEAKER_00]: And so there's been a lot of problems with the program over the years. 14:53.871 --> 15:02.498 [SPEAKER_00]: The Pentagon has at least since the early war on terror days, really also wanted to get more and more into this space. 15:02.698 --> 15:03.258 [SPEAKER_00]: So under 15:04.439 --> 15:13.305 [SPEAKER_00]: under Donald Rumsfeld and Steve Cambone and the early 2000s there was an attempt to think through non official cover and there was, you know, there were attempts even before then. 15:13.966 --> 15:17.188 [SPEAKER_00]: You have joined special operations command. 15:17.768 --> 15:26.715 [SPEAKER_00]: You have defense intelligence agency, other elements within within the Pentagon have have run these programs over the years. 15:27.767 --> 15:35.917 [SPEAKER_00]: The reputation of them has been very poor for a bunch of reasons that we can maybe get into later on in the discussion. 15:36.458 --> 15:41.424 [SPEAKER_00]: But what my colleague Warren Stroblon, I were told was that 15:42.935 --> 16:06.578 [SPEAKER_00]: in the last since essentially the beginning of the second Trump administration, there has been a renewed interest inside the Pentagon to create a new knock program, either through an entirely new unit or a kind of expansion and integration of pre-existing deep cover clandestine capabilities that already exist at the Pentagon. 16:07.338 --> 16:15.844 [SPEAKER_00]: And it has been recast as kind of a part of a larger program of so-called economic warfare against the Chinese. 16:16.705 --> 16:23.990 [SPEAKER_00]: And the program that we discussed in our story is incipient. 16:24.010 --> 16:28.814 [SPEAKER_00]: Like there are, there are no new, there are no new knocks doing this work as part of this program. 16:28.834 --> 16:30.695 [SPEAKER_00]: It is under discussion currently. 16:30.715 --> 16:32.797 [SPEAKER_00]: There's an attempt to think through how to do it. 16:33.537 --> 16:48.368 [SPEAKER_00]: And the person kind of spearheading this effort inside the Pentagon is somebody named Tom Rakusan, who is a former deputy director of operations at CIA's, the top operational official inside the agency. 16:48.789 --> 16:52.391 [SPEAKER_00]: And he is very close to Steve Feinberg, deputy secretary. 16:52.752 --> 16:59.857 [SPEAKER_00]: And what we were told was that it was Rakusan, who was kind of overseeing some of these efforts. 17:01.723 --> 17:03.505 [SPEAKER_03]: This is very difficult stuff. 17:03.925 --> 17:14.494 [SPEAKER_03]: I must say in my own brilliant brief career as a case officer with army intelligence and I was documented as the US Navy civilian personnel officer. 17:14.955 --> 17:25.965 [SPEAKER_03]: And I quickly learned that I had to know all the intricacies of the civil service exams, pay schedules for motion schedules, and like, because that's what people like to talk about overbears. 17:26.865 --> 17:27.966 [SPEAKER_03]: Not high policy. 17:28.006 --> 17:28.227 [SPEAKER_03]: So, 17:28.907 --> 17:50.784 [SPEAKER_03]: If you, and you actually have a fascinating anecdote in your piece about some guys who were in Africa, and they were presenting themselves as engineers, I think, and they came upon a mining company, and the mining company, people started asking them, engineering questions, and they couldn't answer, so 17:52.425 --> 17:53.385 [SPEAKER_00]: They were totally fun. 17:53.446 --> 18:01.249 [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, that's, I mean, that has always been a problem with commercial cover is, you know, there's there's kind of like there's a sliding scale, right? 18:01.269 --> 18:17.656 [SPEAKER_00]: There's there's kind of lighter commercial cover, you know, ace tomato company or whatever and you have a card and you have somebody in an office somewhere that picks up the phone, kind of like, all the argo almost, or literally somebody, there's like a number that's routed through to somebody at CIA that, you know, that it's out there desk at a certain hour and 18:21.798 --> 18:25.079 [SPEAKER_00]: But then there's this more, there's this deeper deeper cover, right? 18:25.399 --> 18:33.602 [SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, that is, if you are going to pose as a mining engineer, you should probably have a background in mining. 18:33.622 --> 18:41.524 [SPEAKER_00]: Like, it's probably need to know how to actually speak about the specialized area in which you are supposed to be an expert in. 18:42.024 --> 18:57.046 [SPEAKER_00]: And so that story, which was kind of an earlier iteration of a Pentagon deep cover initiative was to send these J-Saw guys to the to the saw help in in Africa where they were 18:57.927 --> 19:11.031 [SPEAKER_00]: on their on a mission of some sort and they they ended up running into a bunch of actual mining engineers who started asking them detailed questions of what they were doing there and apparently they had no idea how to talk about it. 19:12.252 --> 19:18.954 [SPEAKER_00]: They managed to get out of it but that's kind of indicative of the level of difficulty but also the kind of 19:19.514 --> 19:28.261 [SPEAKER_00]: the general sense about with some exceptions, the lack of sophistication of the way that the Pentagon has tried to enter this space. 19:28.301 --> 19:37.369 [SPEAKER_00]: And maybe speak to CIA folks in particular, but also folks in the Pentagon, they'll just say those guys don't know what they're doing, you know, like they've had a real problem with it. 19:37.529 --> 19:41.713 [SPEAKER_00]: And part of it is the level of expertise, the other part of it is that it's very hard. 19:44.173 --> 19:47.074 [SPEAKER_00]: If you are a career military guy, you give off a vibe. 19:47.334 --> 19:47.854 [SPEAKER_00]: You're right. 19:47.894 --> 19:50.916 [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, you give off a vibe and say, sir, a lot. 19:51.136 --> 20:04.701 [SPEAKER_00]: You say, sir, I mean, you would literally hear about, you know, somebody would open up a dive shop somewhere, and they would bunch of like big buff dudes, muslim guys, and they all have the same, they all wear the same stuff, they have the same facial hair, they, you know, they, they just look off, right? 20:04.741 --> 20:08.763 [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, the old idea was that the best and tell them saw officer was the grandman. 20:09.303 --> 20:23.797 [SPEAKER_00]: The person who could just blend into any space and the military because of their inability to do that very very well has had a lot of difficulty the one exception which is quite interesting is that the military the US military is one of the most. 20:24.638 --> 20:27.499 [SPEAKER_00]: It's one of the most diverse and representative bodies in American life. 20:27.939 --> 20:39.904 [SPEAKER_00]: And so sometimes what you will get is, you know, first generation Americans who can speak, you know, the Egyptian Egyptian Arabic, right? 20:40.584 --> 20:41.845 [SPEAKER_00]: That is that dialect. 20:42.365 --> 20:46.687 [SPEAKER_00]: And those there have been some cases of folks that can do that really, really well. 20:46.707 --> 20:48.407 [SPEAKER_00]: And that has been where the military has had a lot of 20:52.589 --> 21:05.998 [SPEAKER_00]: that person, that person might be able to do this and they can, they can integrate into the societies that we want them to conduct intelligence in in a way that the CIA just doesn't have access to the same pool of people. 21:06.258 --> 21:10.100 [SPEAKER_04]: So a couple of questions on your fascinating piece on this. 21:10.301 --> 21:16.985 [SPEAKER_04]: I mean, first of all, one question that let down at me is that the DNI director of national intelligence 21:22.724 --> 21:32.389 [SPEAKER_04]: Here, the Pentagon is potentially going to unleash an army of, you know, knocks to spy on China and Chinese companies. 21:32.470 --> 21:41.694 [SPEAKER_04]: I mean, has the DN, and I obviously has been quite a bit of turmoil at the office of director of national intelligence over the last year or so. 21:41.775 --> 21:47.998 [SPEAKER_04]: But have they signed off on this or are they part of the process of vetting how this is going to work? 21:49.197 --> 21:54.381 [SPEAKER_00]: That's a great question, I don't have a, I don't have a definitive answer for you there. 21:54.481 --> 22:06.031 [SPEAKER_00]: I will say that there is some concern and dyspepsia among the institutions that traditionally conduct this work around. 22:07.070 --> 22:07.750 [SPEAKER_00]: this program. 22:07.891 --> 22:15.375 [SPEAKER_00]: Like it has leaked out internally inside the IC that this is being discussed and there's a lot of concern about that. 22:15.395 --> 22:26.222 [SPEAKER_00]: As far as the DNI is rolling it, especially like Clayton now and his, you know, his perspective or the new director of national intelligence. 22:26.242 --> 22:28.603 [SPEAKER_00]: The new director of national intelligence, I don't know. 22:28.784 --> 22:30.785 [SPEAKER_00]: I don't see that be a good follow-up Mike. 22:31.265 --> 22:48.103 [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, well, it was certainly a question that occurred to me, but the other part of it, which, you know, is substantive and significant, I thought is that there was talk, there is talk of this and advocacy that this should be used as 22:48.723 --> 23:00.529 [SPEAKER_04]: economic espionage that would then be supplied to particular American competence to help them in their competitive advantage over the Chinese. 23:01.089 --> 23:10.514 [SPEAKER_04]: And I'm just saying particularly with this administration where we've seen how corporate oligarchs suck up to the White House, you know, 23:18.515 --> 23:21.756 [SPEAKER_04]: there does seem to be the potential for corruption. 23:21.776 --> 23:24.696 [SPEAKER_00]: Okay, I'm going to choose one of them tomorrow later. 23:24.996 --> 23:47.800 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so I think that one of the most newsworthy parts of that, the story and one of the most important, just in in my, in my opinion, is that economic espionage of the sort that is being discussed as part of this proposal, 23:50.166 --> 23:58.270 [SPEAKER_00]: is a profound shift in the way that the American intelligence community has conducted itself from its inception. 23:59.611 --> 24:02.352 [SPEAKER_00]: So American adversaries do this. 24:02.432 --> 24:04.713 [SPEAKER_00]: We know that many American allies do this, too. 24:05.033 --> 24:11.356 [SPEAKER_00]: I mean the French, the South Koreans, the Israelis, but the idea that we would 24:13.228 --> 24:22.584 [SPEAKER_00]: Collect intelligence and then provide a two specific companies in specific sectors opens up a host to potential issues that you identified right I mean. 24:23.795 --> 24:28.837 [SPEAKER_00]: Do you go to, let's just say it's the, you know, to the frontier labs. 24:29.117 --> 24:31.778 [SPEAKER_00]: Well, do you only go to the, the big three? 24:32.558 --> 24:33.539 [SPEAKER_00]: What about the fourth company? 24:33.619 --> 24:34.459 [SPEAKER_00]: What about the fifth company? 24:34.479 --> 24:36.200 [SPEAKER_00]: What about six company where you draw the line? 24:36.720 --> 24:44.583 [SPEAKER_00]: What about companies where there is significant economic infrastructure on US soil, but they're not actually American companies. 24:46.222 --> 24:46.902 [SPEAKER_00]: what do you do then? 24:48.723 --> 24:54.344 [SPEAKER_00]: And the potential for it to be used in a corrupt way is significant. 24:54.584 --> 24:56.885 [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know how it couldn't be seen as such. 24:56.925 --> 25:06.727 [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, you can imagine an idealized world, where these things are easy to figure out who you give information to and when and why. 25:07.308 --> 25:24.476 [SPEAKER_00]: But in the nitty-gritty of politics as we in the American political economy as it exists today, I think it opens up really serious questions that have to be adjudicated in public because it could alter 25:25.932 --> 25:40.698 [SPEAKER_00]: the structure of our economy and the kind of who is, who comes out as a winner and who comes out as a loser, which is just very different than the way we've ever, it's just not the way the intelligence community has ever functioned before. 25:40.978 --> 25:49.101 [SPEAKER_00]: And when you have something like the awesome power of the NSA, you can imagine the NSA being brought to bear on economic issues like this. 25:50.082 --> 25:53.363 [SPEAKER_00]: And it would be a very different world. 25:53.860 --> 25:55.001 [SPEAKER_01]: Okay, a couple of things. 25:55.241 --> 25:57.644 [SPEAKER_01]: First, I want to get back to the ODI and I thing. 25:58.064 --> 26:05.251 [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, in theory, this enterprise is being set up under the Office of Intelligence and Security at the Pentagon, correct? 26:06.692 --> 26:07.173 [SPEAKER_00]: Uh, I'm clear. 26:07.977 --> 26:08.518 [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, unclear. 26:08.538 --> 26:09.158 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. 26:09.178 --> 26:13.321 [SPEAKER_01]: Because if it is, then it is part of what the ODNI oversees. 26:13.422 --> 26:18.826 [SPEAKER_01]: So I just, you know, it's, and I did, somehow I thought I had read somewhere. 26:18.886 --> 26:19.106 [SPEAKER_01]: Okay. 26:19.426 --> 26:19.887 [SPEAKER_01]: Second thing. 26:19.907 --> 26:21.848 [SPEAKER_00]: They've pulled people in from that office. 26:21.868 --> 26:22.569 [SPEAKER_00]: Right. 26:22.669 --> 26:24.771 [SPEAKER_00]: But where it is actually going to sit is, 26:25.031 --> 26:27.113 [SPEAKER_00]: Okay, that's interesting clarification. 26:27.133 --> 26:27.493 [SPEAKER_01]: Thank you. 26:28.053 --> 26:43.185 [SPEAKER_01]: And then on the bigger point of what's the purpose or the righteousness or the uncorruptability of the intelligence sharing between the private sector and the national security establishment, right? 26:44.586 --> 26:58.375 [SPEAKER_01]: two things one how naive are we to think that doesn't already go on in some way shape or form just because of the reality of the world and and who holds power these days and and how it goes and not just here but globally and two. 27:05.419 --> 27:10.220 [SPEAKER_01]: So he makes a pretty strong, former deputy director of the CIA. 27:10.540 --> 27:17.461 [SPEAKER_01]: He makes a pretty strong argument about the importance of economic espionage, not at the Pentagon, but of economic espionage. 27:17.521 --> 27:22.122 [SPEAKER_01]: And I'm wondering if you can just sort of reflect on that a little bit and can you make it? 27:22.422 --> 27:32.104 [SPEAKER_01]: So how much of this is about the Pentagon and how much of this is about the Trump administration and how much of this is about what economic espionage is and how it can function 27:34.765 --> 27:41.450 [SPEAKER_01]: how much of what is it is about the issues that you worry about that we should worry about with what the Pentagon's trying to do. 27:41.470 --> 27:44.452 [SPEAKER_00]: Well, they're overlapping issues. 27:44.773 --> 27:50.257 [SPEAKER_00]: One issue with the Pentagon is its ability or inability to do commercial cover at scale. 27:50.417 --> 27:51.938 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, right. 27:51.958 --> 27:53.279 [SPEAKER_00]: So there's there's that. 27:53.539 --> 27:58.183 [SPEAKER_00]: The second thing is whether such authorities should reside in the Pentagon, 27:59.283 --> 28:04.184 [SPEAKER_00]: If you're going to have the Pentagon collecting economic intelligence and then passing that on to private companies. 28:04.204 --> 28:04.664 [SPEAKER_00]: So that's another one. 28:04.684 --> 28:04.825 [SPEAKER_00]: Right. 28:04.905 --> 28:10.006 [SPEAKER_01]: A hundred percent of agreement on the Pentagon, why would this be put in the Pentagon? 28:10.026 --> 28:10.186 [SPEAKER_01]: Right. 28:10.566 --> 28:18.288 [SPEAKER_01]: But on the issue of economic espionage in the way, you know, we're understanding it this moment in time. 28:18.508 --> 28:21.508 [SPEAKER_01]: Is that also an issue that we should be thinking about? 28:21.688 --> 28:27.690 [SPEAKER_01]: Or is it something that we have to confront and maybe develop and already maybe have developed anyway? 28:28.570 --> 28:38.917 [SPEAKER_00]: So I've been asking about this for years because I shared your skepticism where I mean 10 years ago, I remember asking CIA and FBI officials about this, I was like, come on. 28:39.337 --> 28:43.240 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, you guys also say that you really don't play favorites, but I don't really believe you. 28:44.360 --> 28:55.248 [SPEAKER_00]: And with a few little exceptions where companies that cooperated with the IC would be given like little brief, you know, they'd be given these kind of briefings with they would 28:56.108 --> 28:57.949 [SPEAKER_00]: Sprinkle a little bit of stuff. 28:58.390 --> 29:14.981 [SPEAKER_00]: There was no formal relationship whatsoever that I was ever able to report on to my satisfaction that this was anything close to systematic and in fact there was a deeply, deeply held norm around not doing this. 29:15.061 --> 29:15.501 [SPEAKER_00]: That's right. 29:15.721 --> 29:16.982 [SPEAKER_00]: You know us and so. 29:18.643 --> 29:18.963 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. 29:19.184 --> 29:20.525 [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, we didn't do it. 29:20.765 --> 29:24.428 [SPEAKER_00]: In fact, we were we were unique and anomalous in that way. 29:24.648 --> 29:35.336 [SPEAKER_00]: And it's part of the kind of philosophy and ideology of the free market economics as practice in the United States that there was always deep concern about about doing this. 29:35.556 --> 29:37.738 [SPEAKER_00]: And you know, in a way, I find it. 29:38.999 --> 29:39.439 [SPEAKER_00]: I found it. 29:42.273 --> 29:47.278 [SPEAKER_00]: quite admirable that we did not participate in this kind of activity. 29:47.899 --> 29:54.626 [SPEAKER_00]: Now whether that, the people of the proponents of doing this now, say, well, that was, you know, that's antiquated. 29:54.906 --> 29:58.550 [SPEAKER_00]: And we can't live like that anymore on the world, and that world no longer exists. 29:58.570 --> 30:00.972 [SPEAKER_00]: So we now will need to adopt to new circumstances. 30:02.290 --> 30:03.251 [SPEAKER_00]: I'm not a policy person. 30:03.291 --> 30:07.697 [SPEAKER_00]: It's not my, I, you know, I'm not really, my pain really doesn't matter at all. 30:09.259 --> 30:18.570 [SPEAKER_00]: And I understand why, and I understand why why those people are making an argument and I also understand the deep discomfort that exists still. 30:20.152 --> 30:32.296 [SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, I spoke to people recently who are engaged in this space and by the space, I mean, the intelligent space, and there's still a lot of discomfort across the ICO. 30:32.316 --> 30:37.538 [SPEAKER_00]: A lot of CI veterans, for instance, are area uncomfortable with the idea of us getting involved. 30:38.398 --> 30:48.822 [SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, they were gathering, I mean, these are people who gathered and tell economic intelligence, which was past two policymakers, so they could understand, you know, what was going on at the 30:49.855 --> 30:52.096 [SPEAKER_00]: You know, the European Central Bank or something, right? 30:52.396 --> 31:02.678 [SPEAKER_00]: Um, and that would go into into that would go into intelligence reporting that was important, but it would stay closely held in those channels for a reason. 31:03.298 --> 31:06.319 [SPEAKER_00]: Um, and now the idea is that, you know, what you're going to do, you're going to open this up. 31:06.339 --> 31:09.280 [SPEAKER_00]: You're going to, you're going to pass information directly to Elon Musk. 31:10.068 --> 31:11.389 [SPEAKER_00]: You know, what do you do then? 31:11.650 --> 31:11.890 [SPEAKER_00]: Right? 31:11.970 --> 31:13.472 [SPEAKER_00]: I think there's some there's a lot. 31:13.632 --> 31:13.912 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. 31:13.972 --> 31:14.192 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. 31:14.453 --> 31:14.833 [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. 31:14.873 --> 31:15.093 [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. 31:15.754 --> 31:27.426 [SPEAKER_03]: There's been some commentary online in the crazy internet that the CIA people talk to you about this. 31:29.143 --> 31:42.190 [SPEAKER_03]: program and an effort to sort of strangle the baby in the cradle, they wanted to point out that the purpose of the article was to sort of, you know, shoot a torpedo at this Pentagon program. 31:42.230 --> 31:42.711 [SPEAKER_03]: What do you think? 31:43.511 --> 31:53.937 [SPEAKER_00]: Well, you know, I can't talk about that, I mean, you know, I can't talk about who I talk to or didn't talk to and why they wouldn't want to talk to me or didn't want to talk to me. 31:54.017 --> 31:55.398 [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I think, um, 31:57.005 --> 32:15.242 [SPEAKER_00]: I, just speaking very broadly, I think that both on the side of detractors and proponents, there's a lot, there's a lot of ferment right now around this, around the topic of economic espionage, economic warfare, 32:16.866 --> 32:23.410 [SPEAKER_00]: and the future of, you know, clandestine human collection of intelligence, which is under, you know, immense pressure. 32:23.771 --> 32:26.052 [SPEAKER_03]: Some parts of this is not new. 32:26.072 --> 32:37.319 [SPEAKER_03]: No, for example, I did a long piece for Newsweek a decade ago about the, I forget what is called these days is domestic contact division or whatever. 32:38.240 --> 32:43.143 [SPEAKER_03]: And they would run an ad in an Indian newspaper for engineers, for example. 32:43.763 --> 32:55.495 [SPEAKER_03]: I'm sure you're very familiar with this, you know, and they would get applicants and they would try to, you know, find somebody they could recruit as a spy in the Indian space program, for example, something like that. 32:55.935 --> 32:59.839 [SPEAKER_03]: So this has been going on for some time, it's not not particularly new. 33:00.600 --> 33:10.405 [SPEAKER_03]: Also, on this issue of cooperation with the or favorites that the intelligence agencies might get involved with. 33:11.906 --> 33:18.550 [SPEAKER_03]: For example, the case of the so-called billion dollar spy, the Russian or Soviet. 33:19.410 --> 33:38.962 [SPEAKER_03]: engineer who supplied radar secrets and so on to the CIA, these secrets were passed on to the manufacturers of our, you know, fighter bomber aircraft so they could develop better defenses against Russian technologies, so we've always had this relationship. 33:39.782 --> 33:52.153 [SPEAKER_03]: Also, other government agencies, this is not very well known, like I know of one particular example of the Transportation Department gave cover to a CIA officer, and you say, well, why would that be good cover? 33:52.193 --> 34:04.984 [SPEAKER_03]: Well, transportation agency inspects foreign airports, and so it gave a good reason for CIA officers to travel on this particular case with the Indonesia, where they did some 34:05.304 --> 34:07.167 [SPEAKER_03]: It's fine, I didn't need some aircraft. 34:07.467 --> 34:08.729 [SPEAKER_00]: Well, I want to hear more about that. 34:09.430 --> 34:13.976 [SPEAKER_00]: But, uh, uh, you just looked at it in there? 34:13.996 --> 34:15.157 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. 34:15.958 --> 34:18.902 [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I reported on that a little too long ago. 34:18.922 --> 34:19.563 [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I did. 34:20.144 --> 34:20.404 [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. 34:20.745 --> 34:22.387 [SPEAKER_03]: So, um, go ahead, Garen. 34:22.587 --> 34:30.989 [SPEAKER_01]: But I was just going to say, I don't want to run away from this issue of the Pentagon expanding and intelligence program. 34:31.049 --> 34:49.395 [SPEAKER_01]: I think it's a really important, I mean, look, after 9-11, we created a number of offices and intelligence around the executive, et cetera, et cetera, but it's, and of course, within the Pentagon, but this seems to me and maybe tell me that I'm wrong, not just an evolution of what they have, but something really, very different. 34:50.215 --> 35:03.459 [SPEAKER_01]: And what does that actually mean to move a kind of brand new and somewhat crazy feeling intelligence operation to inside our military establishment? 35:03.559 --> 35:07.740 [SPEAKER_01]: And it's not just about the lack of expertise that you pointed out in the beginning. 35:08.060 --> 35:16.703 [SPEAKER_01]: It's about how we think about our government and who controls what goes on within this very sensitive world of, you know, intelligence gathering and sharing. 35:18.275 --> 35:22.258 [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I think that's a pretty profound point. 35:22.338 --> 35:26.421 [SPEAKER_00]: I think that there was a reason why the Central Intelligence Agency is a civilian agency. 35:27.802 --> 35:33.387 [SPEAKER_00]: And I think that the Pentagon is so massive. 35:34.167 --> 35:44.795 [SPEAKER_00]: And it's resources to orf any other constituent element inside the IC that there's a lot 35:46.473 --> 36:01.234 [SPEAKER_00]: There's a lot there there has been a lot of concern in general about running these programs at the Pentagon because the ability for them to disappear inside the Pentagon and to live in a accountability and oversight free space. 36:02.135 --> 36:22.909 [SPEAKER_00]: and that has always been a critical problem is the creation of the special access programs that are spun up to do a certain thing and then there's very few people that have access to them that know what's going on in them and then you hear these kind of vague stories about 36:23.790 --> 36:30.978 [SPEAKER_00]: you know, somebody supposed to infiltrate, um, you know, um, Indonesian Islamist group, right? 36:31.038 --> 36:31.979 [SPEAKER_00]: And there's a sap for that. 36:31.999 --> 36:32.780 [SPEAKER_00]: I'm just making this up. 36:32.840 --> 36:33.040 [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. 36:33.060 --> 36:33.240 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. 36:33.560 --> 36:37.865 [SPEAKER_00]: And then two years later, somebody comes back in and says, well, how's that going? 36:37.905 --> 36:38.606 [SPEAKER_00]: They go, oh, that's great. 36:38.626 --> 36:39.267 [SPEAKER_00]: We're running to Bank. 36:40.045 --> 36:45.828 [SPEAKER_00]: You know, if you're like, what, that's not, you know, I don't know what we had to do it. 36:45.868 --> 36:46.608 [SPEAKER_00]: Well, how do you have to do it? 36:46.648 --> 36:48.169 [SPEAKER_00]: Well, because we need to get the money trail. 36:48.189 --> 36:53.211 [SPEAKER_00]: Well, if you get the money trail, well, we need a taxes, the Indonesian banking system, how do you access the Indonesian banking system? 36:53.451 --> 36:57.814 [SPEAKER_00]: Well, you need to, you need to purchase a bank and just start a bank and so exactly. 36:58.094 --> 37:08.779 [SPEAKER_00]: So these things snowball into these into these boom doggles that in the best case scenario can, can skirt the line across it ethically or morally. 37:09.139 --> 37:14.363 [SPEAKER_00]: And then you can also have just, you know, you could just have, you know, criminality to, right? 37:14.403 --> 37:19.586 [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, you could have people taking advantage of them like David Rush did the, you know, the former CIA officer. 37:19.987 --> 37:20.927 [SPEAKER_00]: Gold bars guy. 37:20.967 --> 37:25.331 [SPEAKER_00]: Gold bars, the Gold bars guy who took you know, $100 million and bought a, you know, 37:31.695 --> 37:46.024 [SPEAKER_00]: by moving these programs to the Pentagon, you are decreasing oversight into an area that already has where oversight is so is so acutely lacking and where Congress frankly does not know what is going on. 37:46.165 --> 37:52.909 [SPEAKER_04]: So I don't, you know, we've talked about the propriety of doing economic 37:53.249 --> 37:59.251 [SPEAKER_04]: espionage of the sword, but under the category of you don't bring a pop gun to a knife fight. 37:59.872 --> 38:15.517 [SPEAKER_04]: I don't know if you had a chance to look at the story, your competitors at the New York Times just popped about how the Chinese had a female spy who had what they described as a close 38:22.903 --> 38:36.334 [SPEAKER_04]: And that she was, the concern was, was supplying both, you know, Jensen Young is very close to the White House. 38:36.394 --> 38:37.194 [SPEAKER_03]: He's the A.I. 38:37.234 --> 38:38.936 [SPEAKER_04]: guy, he's the A.I. 38:38.976 --> 38:39.916 [SPEAKER_04]: guy in a video. 38:39.956 --> 38:41.538 [SPEAKER_04]: They provide the computer chips. 38:42.118 --> 38:45.140 [SPEAKER_04]: They put up $20 million for Trump's ballroom. 38:45.221 --> 38:46.742 [SPEAKER_04]: So they're in good standing. 38:47.182 --> 38:50.585 [SPEAKER_04]: And he's been kind of very close to Trump. 38:51.661 --> 38:52.581 [SPEAKER_04]: as discussed all this. 38:52.901 --> 39:13.546 [SPEAKER_04]: So the Chinese have a spy who can provide insights that she gets from Wong into Trump's thinking, as well as, you know, insider info on video and whether they're going to be able to sell computer chips to China or their work around so all that. 39:13.946 --> 39:16.046 [SPEAKER_04]: I mean, there's a whole host of questions here. 39:16.186 --> 39:19.907 [SPEAKER_04]: And in a way, it's kind of the flip side of what you were 39:21.067 --> 39:23.768 [SPEAKER_04]: But only in this case, it's the Chinese doing it to us. 39:25.329 --> 39:28.110 [SPEAKER_03]: Well, the Chinese and the Russians have been doing it for a long time. 39:28.130 --> 39:36.593 [SPEAKER_04]: But I'm just saying here's a fresh example of what might be motivating the Pentagon to get go down this road. 39:38.414 --> 39:40.135 [SPEAKER_00]: We don't know what I want to 39:41.133 --> 39:42.595 [SPEAKER_00]: I want to be really clear that I have not read. 39:43.075 --> 39:52.166 [SPEAKER_00]: I saw the headlines, and so I know the takeaway, but I don't want to get over my skis about what is precisely in the piece or what's not in the piece, although it looks extraordinary. 39:52.947 --> 40:00.375 [SPEAKER_00]: And even just read between the lines from the headline and the first paragraph, I was like, okay, this is a big one. 40:00.435 --> 40:00.595 [SPEAKER_00]: But, 40:02.057 --> 40:07.561 [SPEAKER_00]: But we don't know if she was just an asset of the Chinese services or an actual intelligence officer. 40:07.641 --> 40:10.843 [SPEAKER_00]: You've got to be an intelligence officer to be a knock or an illegal or whatever you want to put it. 40:12.164 --> 40:17.447 [SPEAKER_00]: And let me put it a different way. 40:17.487 --> 40:17.647 [SPEAKER_00]: Right. 40:18.147 --> 40:21.009 [SPEAKER_00]: Years ago, I wrote a story about 40:28.960 --> 40:42.771 [SPEAKER_00]: who was in the Bay Area and it's got very close to a lot of local politicians in the Bay Area, including a prominent congressman, now under investigation by the feds. 40:43.272 --> 40:43.512 [SPEAKER_00]: Yes. 40:44.173 --> 40:49.697 [SPEAKER_00]: And she was not necessarily gathering economic intelligence. 40:49.997 --> 40:50.798 [SPEAKER_00]: She was 40:52.159 --> 40:56.140 [SPEAKER_00]: participating in what, or some what we're honeypots essentially. 40:56.500 --> 41:05.683 [SPEAKER_00]: Other services use not official cover officers, illegals and the Russian parlance, like however you want to put it, to do all sorts of intelligence gathering. 41:06.204 --> 41:11.425 [SPEAKER_00]: And so it's not, it's not a shock. 41:11.445 --> 41:17.767 [SPEAKER_00]: And we don't know precisely the status of the person in the time story. 41:18.487 --> 41:19.788 [SPEAKER_00]: They got close to Johnson, but 41:21.118 --> 41:34.398 [SPEAKER_00]: You know, it's, it's, it is no surprise that the Chinese or the Russians or the Israelis or the French would throw a great deal of resources at somebody like him. 41:35.139 --> 41:35.359 [SPEAKER_00]: Sure. 41:35.579 --> 41:36.841 [SPEAKER_00]: And, and, and so. 41:38.482 --> 41:55.086 [SPEAKER_03]: having clandestine officers try to get into his orbit makes perfect sense and that's what we do we we throw a lot of resources to try to get close to traveling Iranian scientists, Russians, Chinese or whatever. 41:55.527 --> 42:00.908 [SPEAKER_03]: I want to talk more about the resistance inside the Pentagon, this idea too, but we have to take a break. 42:05.123 --> 42:06.384 [SPEAKER_03]: Okay, we're back. 42:06.964 --> 42:18.848 [SPEAKER_03]: You know, I've been reading a biography of forthcoming biography of Patrick Lang and the former top late and he died a couple years ago, top defense intelligence agency officer. 42:19.669 --> 42:28.212 [SPEAKER_03]: And the book goes into great detail about the difficulty, the resistance inside the Pentagon to creating a defense, clandestine service. 42:28.752 --> 42:33.094 [SPEAKER_03]: So opposition, I was suspect strongly that opposition to this is not 42:33.774 --> 42:43.458 [SPEAKER_03]: coming just from CIA people, but from inside the Pentagon and in any event, this is going to take years to get off the ground. 42:43.698 --> 42:45.699 [SPEAKER_03]: I don't see this happening anytime soon. 42:45.979 --> 43:01.706 [SPEAKER_03]: We're not going to be suddenly sending graduates of the Fort Wachuk intelligence school, dressing them up as plastic salesmen and saying them out to recruit some, you know, 43:02.646 --> 43:04.627 [SPEAKER_03]: recruiting some very difficult environments. 43:05.528 --> 43:12.671 [SPEAKER_00]: I think you're absolutely right that anything any program like this takes a long time to develop and backstop. 43:12.751 --> 43:22.696 [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, there used to be in the agency I want to make sure I'm getting these numbers correct, but there used to be something like five to 10 support officers for every knock. 43:23.196 --> 43:26.578 [SPEAKER_00]: So it's not simply getting the knock officer trained up, 43:32.841 --> 43:37.505 [SPEAKER_00]: cover a solid and that they are, um, okay, in the future. 43:37.525 --> 43:42.609 [SPEAKER_03]: Well, you brought up a wonderful example from Argo, right, right, right. 43:42.669 --> 43:54.219 [SPEAKER_03]: I'm really, I'm really, I'm really, I'm really, I'm really, I'm really, I have to set up because the Iranians got suspicious and they call, you know, to see if there was a real movie company and just a good man answers the phone. 43:55.600 --> 44:05.363 [SPEAKER_00]: And that was a discrete operation that they knew would probably be over within a relatively short period of time, let alone somebody that's supposed to go overseas for 15 or 20 years. 44:05.423 --> 44:11.845 [SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes it's because real deep cover is supposed to be persistent over many, many, many years. 44:12.105 --> 44:15.966 [SPEAKER_01]: Did you get the sense that there was an understanding of that at the Pentagon? 44:22.972 --> 44:26.996 [SPEAKER_00]: the person at the pentagon who was overseeing the stuff, Tom recussin. 44:27.016 --> 44:27.236 [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. 44:27.556 --> 44:35.003 [SPEAKER_00]: The again, the former, the former, you know, the CIA to deputy director of operations. 44:36.777 --> 44:47.323 [SPEAKER_00]: this is somebody that understands that because they directly oversaw every every, everything that was operational inside the agency. 44:47.763 --> 44:49.084 [SPEAKER_03]: Maybe he's a plant. 44:49.724 --> 44:50.724 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. 44:50.884 --> 44:54.767 [SPEAKER_03]: Well, the agency sent to destroy the program well. 44:55.007 --> 45:00.930 [SPEAKER_00]: No, I, I, that's quite the theory, but I think that I think that 45:05.845 --> 45:08.554 [SPEAKER_00]: We're, we're cruising did a lot of ferry. 45:10.110 --> 45:13.433 [SPEAKER_00]: very hard-edged operations over over many years. 45:14.033 --> 45:19.897 [SPEAKER_00]: He was the chief of the Chief of the European Mission Center. 45:20.358 --> 45:24.101 [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, he did something very unusual, which was after he was D.D. 45:24.321 --> 45:24.481 [SPEAKER_00]: U. 45:24.981 --> 45:29.885 [SPEAKER_00]: He took, it normally be seen as a demotion to run the Europe Mission Center. 45:30.185 --> 45:34.749 [SPEAKER_00]: So to oversee the agency's response to 2016, 45:36.830 --> 45:42.273 [SPEAKER_00]: So he actually retired in a lower position than the position he had before. 45:43.893 --> 45:47.655 [SPEAKER_00]: And there's some other stuff that he did. 45:48.696 --> 45:57.740 [SPEAKER_00]: One thing that he did that's in the story was he would travel under he's a Czech American and he traveled with a Czech passport to a rock. 45:58.600 --> 46:06.286 [SPEAKER_00]: Um, there's some other stuff that he did that I probably shouldn't talk about without asking the agency for comment first. 46:06.927 --> 46:26.242 [SPEAKER_00]: Um, but, um, oh, please, yeah, we can dispense with such foreign maladies, but he was, uh, I mean, he was somebody who, um, at a very high level dealt with and understood commercial cover operations all over the world. 46:27.183 --> 46:31.487 [SPEAKER_00]: And so, you know, it's a serious person, yes, it's a serious person. 46:31.527 --> 46:35.791 [SPEAKER_00]: Is this somebody who understands how this stuff is done? 46:35.871 --> 46:46.581 [SPEAKER_00]: Yes, does that mean that somebody can just port that over to the Pentagon and create a coherent program that is going to be viable over the long term? 46:46.701 --> 46:47.582 [SPEAKER_00]: No, those are different things. 46:48.282 --> 47:07.065 [SPEAKER_04]: So in your piece, you report that this is all being done under the sponsorship of Steve Feinberg, the Deputy Secretary of Defense, or Secretary of War, excuse me, what about the Secretary of War himself, Pete Hexeth, is he on board with this, is he signed off on it? 47:09.346 --> 47:09.767 [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know. 47:10.447 --> 47:11.148 [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I don't know. 47:11.208 --> 47:17.274 [SPEAKER_03]: There's a reference in your piece to one and more muscular programs, and that's a piece I mean. 47:17.494 --> 47:19.496 [SPEAKER_00]: Well, I mean, it's very hard to imagine. 47:19.576 --> 47:20.017 [SPEAKER_00]: It's fun. 47:22.678 --> 47:35.824 [SPEAKER_00]: What I can say is this is, I mean, this is something being a recuse and Tom recuse and worked for, worked for Fineberg before he went into government. 47:36.965 --> 47:46.309 [SPEAKER_00]: Again, once before he returned to government, Fineberg has had interests that go back. 47:47.349 --> 47:49.991 [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, he has very close connections 47:52.434 --> 48:06.103 [SPEAKER_00]: the agency that predate, obviously, him, the predate Trump won, but he was the chairman of the president's intelligence advisory board during Trump won, right? 48:06.163 --> 48:15.269 [SPEAKER_00]: So there were there are things that are being pushed now that were in their nascent form under Trump won, right? 48:15.289 --> 48:18.331 [SPEAKER_00]: Or there were there were there were there were things that people wanted to do under Trump won. 48:20.582 --> 48:39.809 [SPEAKER_00]: One would assume that Deputy Secretary of Fineburg would not engage in something of this magnitude without, without the Secretary of War and given the given the latitude that they have broadly, they have broadly in the economic warfare space. 48:40.549 --> 48:49.402 [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, with the creation of the economic defense unit and the office of strategic capital, which predates this administration, but is, but has been, you know, seriously plus stuff. 48:49.963 --> 48:51.546 [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I think you're you are seeing. 48:52.710 --> 49:02.738 [SPEAKER_00]: You are seeing a little bit of the public, like you're seeing the kind of the the the top of the iceberg right in terms of what they what they're trying to get it. 49:02.839 --> 49:19.673 [SPEAKER_04]: My question about hexaf was really an opening to bring up something I've wanted to discuss with you for some time, which is that you and I and a former colleague of ours on nailer are singularly responsible. 49:20.641 --> 49:29.386 [SPEAKER_04]: May have been singularly responsible for Pete Hexeth being Secretary of War in the first place and Secretary Hexeth you're welcome. 49:30.266 --> 49:30.787 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. 49:30.827 --> 49:31.307 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. 49:31.347 --> 49:36.790 [SPEAKER_04]: Now, you know, this will become even more relevant in assuming the Democrats take control of the House because. 49:37.170 --> 49:41.513 [SPEAKER_04]: You know, first on the agenda may be to impeach Pete Exeth. 49:41.673 --> 49:43.434 [SPEAKER_01]: But do you want to fill us in on the details? 49:43.454 --> 49:44.675 [SPEAKER_01]: Yes, yes, yes. 49:44.875 --> 50:00.364 [SPEAKER_04]: So some years ago, I'm going to set it up for Zack to explain, but some years ago, when we were both at Yahoo News, we collaborated on a story about Mike Pompeo as director of the CIA. 50:03.375 --> 50:13.847 [SPEAKER_04]: aggressively trying to develop plans to kidnap Julian Assange from the Ecuadorian embassy in London. 50:14.468 --> 50:32.921 [SPEAKER_04]: Um, why don't you remind us what that story reported and how through of all people Tucker Carlson, this came back to life to sabotage Pompeo's hopes of being Secretary defense in the second Trump administration. 50:32.941 --> 50:34.442 [SPEAKER_03]: Here's a big relapse for you. 50:34.802 --> 50:35.082 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. 50:35.162 --> 50:35.423 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. 50:35.483 --> 50:36.464 [SPEAKER_00]: This is a crazy story. 50:36.484 --> 50:37.905 [SPEAKER_00]: And I will basically try. 50:38.045 --> 50:42.308 [SPEAKER_00]: I will try to give the the capital version of it because it spins out in a lot of wild directions. 50:42.368 --> 50:50.495 [SPEAKER_00]: But essentially folks may not remember that in the early first Trump administration, I believe was April 2017, but I haven't checked those dates in a long time. 50:51.096 --> 50:51.456 [SPEAKER_00]: There was a 50:52.837 --> 51:06.057 [SPEAKER_00]: vast leak of CIA related data from CIA Center for Cyber Intelligence or CCI, which is their hacking, basically their hacking wing. 51:06.798 --> 51:06.958 [SPEAKER_00]: And 51:08.440 --> 51:22.473 [SPEAKER_00]: It became clear that there was a, that there had been a CIA officer working inside their name, Joshua Schulti, who had passed this information on to Wikileaks and Wikileaks released it. 51:22.493 --> 51:23.795 [SPEAKER_00]: They called the vault seven weeks. 51:23.915 --> 51:28.059 [SPEAKER_00]: It was the single worst leaked the single largest. 51:29.420 --> 51:47.367 [SPEAKER_00]: tranche of leaked data, stolen data from the CI ever like ever released to in the public sphere, because the Snowden disclosures did not do so, right, that was all, that was then I say, that would, and then before then, you know, Wikileaks dealt with the state department capals, but the CI had been spared until salty. 51:50.103 --> 51:51.543 [SPEAKER_00]: At the time, Pompeo was director. 51:51.623 --> 51:54.164 [SPEAKER_00]: He went completely out of electric. 51:54.664 --> 51:55.985 [SPEAKER_00]: And he had just taken over. 51:56.485 --> 51:59.986 [SPEAKER_00]: And the CIA essentially declared war on Wicked Leaks. 52:00.186 --> 52:04.687 [SPEAKER_04]: They were like, where did a non-state hostile hostile intelligence service? 52:04.707 --> 52:07.048 [SPEAKER_00]: They started treating it like they've treated Hezbollah. 52:07.068 --> 52:08.168 [SPEAKER_00]: Something like that was an ISIS. 52:08.228 --> 52:08.728 [SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely. 52:08.748 --> 52:10.028 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, wild. 52:10.429 --> 52:14.070 [SPEAKER_00]: Whatever Wicked Leaks was, it's different than Hezbollah. 52:14.790 --> 52:14.950 [SPEAKER_00]: And 52:16.792 --> 52:38.170 [SPEAKER_00]: So at the time, a song had been for years, hold up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, and much to the annoyance secret and anger of the U.S. And what Pompeo started pushing for was an operation 52:40.587 --> 52:46.689 [SPEAKER_00]: basically doing extraordinary rendition of a song from the from the Ecuadorian embassy in London. 52:47.570 --> 52:53.752 [SPEAKER_00]: And there were even discussions inside the entity at the time, like, well, what if we did like a more lethal action type type of operation too? 52:53.892 --> 52:56.993 [SPEAKER_00]: So although that was not as seriously considered. 52:57.013 --> 53:01.075 [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, the the rendition part of it was very seriously considered. 53:01.095 --> 53:04.336 [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, there were all these, I mean, I remember reporting this out of the time with you. 53:07.837 --> 53:29.088 [SPEAKER_00]: you know they talked about well what happens if you know he tries to get because you know he was trying to get away rush at the time maybe there was like some right there was a man tell that the rush that he's my direction spirit amount spirit amount of the country and saying basically because they would get the equidorians would have given him diplomatic passport and then the then the Russians would have put him in a in a limo and put a and got in race to a airfield and got in the sea 53:29.968 --> 53:36.873 [SPEAKER_04]: actively talking about shooting out the tires and the Russian Jeep that was carrying us on and walking it from entry. 53:36.933 --> 53:44.698 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I mean, they're like we're not letting this guy go because there was this idea within the, within the sea, I see that snowed and got away. 53:45.339 --> 53:47.420 [SPEAKER_00]: And we will never let a song get away. 53:48.641 --> 53:50.102 [SPEAKER_03]: And magical thinking. 53:50.762 --> 53:51.843 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. 53:52.623 --> 53:55.786 [SPEAKER_00]: And so what ended up happening was 53:56.645 --> 54:03.028 [SPEAKER_00]: You know, as Sons became a cause celebrant on the civil libertarian right, as well as left. 54:03.688 --> 54:15.534 [SPEAKER_00]: And that included a Tucker Carlson who, you know, I think views a Sons as a, as a, as a truth teller, you know, and somebody who was prosecuted for doing journalism. 54:16.654 --> 54:23.638 [SPEAKER_00]: And so apparently, you know, he was very instrumental, Tucker Carlson was in, 54:24.982 --> 54:32.024 [SPEAKER_00]: when he was quite influential, I guess, in the Trump work, but telling saying that Trump, you cannot have Pompeo in your second administration. 54:32.104 --> 54:52.331 [SPEAKER_04]: Because he was, as I reported some years ago in Spitalk, he was specifically citing our story in Yahoo and kind of mis-translating it saying, we reported that Pompeo had approved the assassination of a song, which is not what we had reported, 54:55.019 --> 55:11.170 [SPEAKER_04]: that he's Tucker Carlson obviously distorted things and was heavily influential and basically as the Wall Street Journal reported at the time, he sabotaged Pompeo's hopes of becoming secretary defense, which led us to 55:12.498 --> 55:13.779 [SPEAKER_04]: be Texas. 55:13.839 --> 55:20.942 [SPEAKER_04]: Yes, I think we have contributed to what. 55:21.363 --> 55:23.804 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I think it's over determined. 55:23.824 --> 55:30.808 [SPEAKER_00]: There are probably a lot of reasons why Pompeo was not was not tapped again, but the reporting 55:32.505 --> 55:35.908 [SPEAKER_00]: seemed very credit for what that was it that was at least a significant reason. 55:36.108 --> 55:43.674 [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, that and more broadly look Pompeo was a neocon hawk and Carlson has become a right wing dove. 55:44.075 --> 55:55.204 [SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, although it's ironic like neocon right I mean it's ironic because of course all the things that Pompeo you would imagine Pompeo have wanted to do have been done so 55:57.130 --> 56:01.724 [SPEAKER_00]: go in the end, it was kind of a half dozen of the other from a policy perspective, but that's the whole other. 56:02.165 --> 56:03.088 [SPEAKER_04]: We bombed around. 56:03.108 --> 56:04.431 [SPEAKER_00]: Right, exactly. 56:04.472 --> 56:04.793 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. 56:05.463 --> 56:12.289 [SPEAKER_01]: Can I ask a really wonky question getting back to the, you know, art of course, yeah, and that's my role here. 56:12.329 --> 56:18.595 [SPEAKER_01]: So you're a, you're a, you know, there are some, there is a legal dimension to this, right? 56:19.175 --> 56:29.485 [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, is there no sense in anybody you talk to that there would be need to be some kind of authorization for creating this unit and for doing this kind of economic espionage. 56:30.005 --> 56:35.628 [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I remember back in the Obama days when it was, you know, the PPD saying we're not doing this. 56:36.388 --> 56:39.910 [SPEAKER_01]: Is there no authorization needed or how do you see that? 56:40.610 --> 56:41.591 [SPEAKER_00]: That's a great question. 56:41.631 --> 56:43.812 [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I would think that speculating a little bit. 56:43.832 --> 56:51.055 [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, this is something that would probably go through just NSC legal and there would be a determination, either covered action finding or. 56:58.581 --> 57:00.323 [SPEAKER_00]: I don't have a good answer for you there. 57:00.584 --> 57:02.987 [SPEAKER_03]: I don't see again going, but I don't see this coming. 57:03.067 --> 57:10.377 [SPEAKER_03]: I think you'll be finished with your book on the hox before this program ever gets close to getting off the ground. 57:10.397 --> 57:12.520 [SPEAKER_03]: By the way, what's, what's, you got to try it for it? 57:13.321 --> 57:14.263 [SPEAKER_03]: It's going to be called deep cover. 57:15.582 --> 57:17.945 [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, and this is a book about Knox. 57:18.425 --> 57:21.348 [SPEAKER_00]: It's a history of the Knox program from the school. 57:21.468 --> 57:24.311 [SPEAKER_00]: It's a history of the CIA essentially through the Knox program. 57:24.491 --> 57:32.158 [SPEAKER_00]: It started as a history of Knox and became a history of the CIA through the Knox program from 47 to the second Trump administration. 57:32.178 --> 57:35.502 [SPEAKER_04]: So it's sort of you'll be getting into Valerie Plain among others. 57:36.614 --> 57:46.140 [SPEAKER_00]: Yes, Valerie Plain was definitely in her, her story is in the book and a lot of stories that I've never been told before. 57:47.020 --> 57:55.085 [SPEAKER_00]: And it's a, it's a really fascinating part of the agency's history and it gives you it was a way to get into a whole different. 57:56.220 --> 58:00.123 [SPEAKER_00]: whole different dimension of the work that CIA is done from its founding. 58:00.403 --> 58:02.525 [SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, it's fascinating. 58:02.545 --> 58:03.545 [SPEAKER_00]: I spoke to you. 58:04.066 --> 58:07.148 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, yeah, back on when it's out. 58:07.688 --> 58:09.790 [SPEAKER_00]: Man, I will be, I will have a little company come. 58:09.910 --> 58:12.212 [SPEAKER_00]: You and I told this to Mike, Mike, was it, can you come on? 58:12.232 --> 58:13.472 [SPEAKER_00]: I was like, I'll come on anytime. 58:18.235 --> 58:24.437 [SPEAKER_03]: We have admired your work from various distances, from the fire and close-up for a long time. 58:25.358 --> 58:27.459 [SPEAKER_03]: So, you know, right on, keep it up. 58:27.759 --> 58:29.059 [SPEAKER_03]: Keep up that work. 58:29.139 --> 58:33.581 [SPEAKER_03]: We'll post and we'll look forward to your book and have me back on the show. 58:34.262 --> 58:34.642 [SPEAKER_03]: Wonderful. 58:34.702 --> 58:35.642 [SPEAKER_03]: Thank you so much, Jeff. 58:35.782 --> 58:36.302 [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you. 58:40.345 --> 58:42.045 [SPEAKER_03]: And that's it for this week's ByTalk. 58:42.105 --> 58:46.787 [SPEAKER_03]: Be sure to check out our complete podcast archive on Apple or wherever you get your podcasts. 58:46.847 --> 59:01.711 [SPEAKER_03]: And if you haven't already, do check out thespitealk.co news site on Substack, where we offer steady diet of scopes and original analyses from the intersection of intelligence, foreign policy, and military operations. 59:01.751 --> 59:03.031 [SPEAKER_03]: Just Google Spitealk. 59:03.571 --> 59:05.252 [SPEAKER_03]: You'll quickly find your way there. 59:06.153 --> 59:15.225 [SPEAKER_03]: This edition of the SpyTalk podcast was smoothly produced, as always by Cani, and expertly edited by Molly Hawkey for MSW Media. 59:15.986 --> 59:17.528 [SPEAKER_03]: See you around, I'm Jeff Stein. 59:17.909 --> 59:18.710 [SPEAKER_03]: I'm Mike Rose Gough. 59:18.990 --> 59:19.851 [SPEAKER_01]: I'm Karen Greenberg. 59:20.352 --> 59:21.253 [SPEAKER_03]: Thanks for listening. 59:22.215 --> 59:30.618 [SPEAKER_02]: For more original reporting and insights like this, subscribe to spytalk.co on Substack and follow us on Twitter at Talk Under Score Spy. 59:31.098 --> 59:38.240 [SPEAKER_02]: If you enjoyed our podcast, subscribe and leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. 59:38.260 --> 59:46.083 [SPEAKER_02]: M-S-W-M-S-W-M-D-A-L-A-L-A-L-A-L-A-L-A-L-A-L-A-L-A-L-A-L-A-L-A-L-A-L-A-L-A-L-A-L-A-L-A-L-A-L-A-L-A-L-A-L-A-L-A-L-A-L-A-L-A-L-A-L-A-L-A-L-A-L-A-L-A-L-A-L-A-L-