What the CIA Really Thinks About Trump & Russia | John Sipher | FO544 Raj Shamani

26:03What's going on? Well, I think now it's almost like personal, it's almost like the president or prime minister, which one of Pakistan has sort of worked on Donald Trump and Donald Trump. It's about who's up to him the most. And so he likes that person. Doesn't matter what country or whether they're democratic or not, he doesn't care about those kind of things. But in general, your point's a good one. Yeah, we should be natural partners with India. Now there's a history there in the Cold War was powerful for the United States. The notion that the Soviet Union could destroy us and we're challenging them around the world.

26:36And at one point, Pakistan seemed to be a more supportive ally in that sense that we eventually invested and put in there. But of course, by the 1990s, they were developing their own nuclear weapons and the relationship was souring and probably would have continued to sour and become less important. But then 9-11, the war on terror, found us having to work with them more than we did before. Now, of course, those days are over too, and therefore we obviously want to make sure Pakistan, which has stability problems, huge population, poor economic issues, terrorism charges with nuclear weapons, we can't afford for Pakistan to become a terrible rogue state with nuclear weapons run by terrorists or whatever.

27:24So we can't. Pakistan falling apart is not in our interest. But you're right. As a natural ally, India seems to be, you know, and there's so many Indians in the United States and these relations have developed for years and years. And, you know, economically, you're just growing and it seems to be a much better market both ways. And so I think you're right. And maybe just based on the natural evolution of things, it will get there, but it should have been there earlier. I tend to agree. But, you know, I think world politics had us on the Cold War sort of found it way. And then the war on terror ended up sort of going a certain way.

27:59But, you know, and so Pakistan, you know, I don't want to dig into it too much, but despite all of its problems and the fact that, you know, it does things that are very much against our interests. I mean, the support for the Taliban and some of the things with terrorist groups and attacks in India and these kind of things, which are horrific. It also has helped. It probably was more involved in helping kill al-Qaeda and stop al-Qaeda than many other countries were. And so it's a weird, weird relationship. So, you know, you're almost dealing with this sort of group that, you know, you don't want to, but there's a piece of it that's helpful to you.

28:38And so we've continued to invest in that. So you're right. I think naturally it will and should change. I don't know if this administration will get that and do that because we're mistreating people who should be our natural allies. Exactly. But now you guys have interests. I think there's a personal interest in crypto world. And I don't know what all is going on with the family. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's true. I mean, you guys are super personally invested in Pakistan now. Well, let me put it this way, which hurts me as a former CIA officer. I took pride in largely what we were doing. I think the United States in general was a force for good and sometimes overstepped and wasn't.

29:19And the CIA was a supporter of that and did good work. And I liked living overseas. I liked working with foreign partners and things. But in the spy world, the espionage world, Americans don't have any super secret sauce. I think we were probably the most effective and most powerful espionage intelligence service in the world. We probably still are. But it wasn't because we were like naturally better, super secret like Hollywood spies. It was because we represented the United States. And so if I went to you and you were in a country and you were upset with the corruption and the behavior in your country, you could see the United States as – if I give the information to the United States, that could help.

29:58You know, sometimes my changes in my country or changes to our effect. So it wasn't that we were super secret great spies. It was that we represented the United States. and if you're in a corrupt country, the United States looked like it was something special. Now, if we are going to be a country that the world sees as corrupt, is you can pay off the leader, you can pay off people. We lose that ability. Why would you need to come to the United States if we're just another country with hands in your pockets? When a new leadership comes in, it's time to steal, steal, steal, till the next guys come in and there's their chance to steal, steal, steal.

30:33So if we're going to become that, then we aren't anything special. We're not going to get those kind of sources that used to work for us years ago. And so I worry about that. The corruption thing in this country, we did work around the world. You did see that a lot. But frankly, and I'm sure there's views out there that differ, but it wasn't like that. Like I never saw ever working in the U.S. government people trying to take money or make deals or sources. Literally, I carried suitcases with like millions of dollars to hand to people. Like I never ever thought about taking some of it or using some of it.

31:10I never saw any of that kind of stuff. And if somebody did, they would be immediately arrested and fired. So if we're going to become the corrupt country, then I don't know. Yeah, maybe some people will become rich, but we're going to lose out in the long run. Talking about Russia, you've said Russia doesn't need Trump to be an agent, right? Something like that. What was that? That was very interesting for a former CIA guy to say something like that, that you don't want, like Russia doesn't. What was the statement? Can you repeat it? Well, I've done some writing on it. So it was a big deal here in 2016 when Trump ran for president.

31:53His campaign had all sorts of contacts with Russians, which makes no sense in domestic politics. Why, if you're trying to win elections in some state in the Midwest, why do you need to be talking to Russians? And at the time, the FBI was investigating these contacts. And this, in fact, my podcast today just interviewed Christopher Steele, who was the British intelligence officer who wrote this Steele dossier about the Russians and suggesting the Trump administration. This Trump campaign had these secret contacts with Russians. It became a big issue. So when Trump won the election, there was all this stuff that was looking into Trump.

32:29And there was people were saying, oh, my God, Trump's relationship with Putin is such and all of this money and things. And they're trying to hide these relationships. And still to this day, a lot of people on the anti-Trump side in America say, oh, he's a Russian asset. He he works for Putin. Back in the 70s, the Russians built a relationship with him, gave him money, corruption, you know, prostitutes, all this kind of stuff. There's this view that Trump somehow is owned or run by the Russians. and I had no intention whatsoever when I retired to have a public face, like doing this kind of stuff.

33:03I had no interest in that. And all of a sudden in the U.S. media, there's, oh my God, what is all this stuff? What is this notion about he was in a hotel room and they filmed it? That doesn't make any sense. What do the Russians do? And so all of a sudden I found myself people saying, well, you know, you worked with and against Russians in Russia. Like, does any of this make sense? So I found myself speaking and talking and going on TV and starting to write about Russian espionage and intelligence to say, hey, listen, pieces of this do make sense. This is how the Russians operate. They, you know, when I lived there, they had audio and video of my house inside and followed me everywhere for two years.

33:43Never, ever a break. Every time I went out, people follow me. Every time I went around a corner and they didn't see me, they'd bring people behind to make sure I didn't put down some sort of secret dead drop or something. In my house, there's cameras in there. When I'm in there, if I wasn't married at the time, if I had somebody in there, they would have video. They'd break into my house when I wasn't there. They did that on all Americans. So this oppressive secret security service thing, I found myself trying to explain to it. But I also then tried to explain the differences in how CIA runs sources and how Russia looks at spies and sources and tried to put Donald Trump into context.

34:23So there's always people saying he's clearly a Russian spy. And so I wrote some articles is essentially is Trump a Russian asset? And I tried to explain how Russians look at this world and how CIA looks at the world. And just simply, you know, I can leave you with some of these articles and things. But the CIA, again, it's a bureaucracy. We're small. We're trying to run spies that give us secrets that we can't get any other way. So we have to focus on those types of things. And for me and my world to get recruited, to get promoted, to do well, I have to find someone who has secrets, develop a relationship with them, validate and vet to make sure that they are who they say they are, that they have this access they have.

35:11train them and continue to get this intelligence information, check the intelligence, see if it makes sense. And then when I leave, keep that secret relationship to pass over to another CIA officer and they come in. So we were trying to develop very secret, controlled, understood, motivated sources who work for us. So it's like, and that's how I get promoted. Russian intelligence, on the other hand, because the way it grew up and the way it worked through communist parties during the Soviet Union days and all these other types of things. They're much more interested in a much wider variety of people.

35:46And there's even – they use even different terms for this. They call useful idiots or fellow travelers or these type of things. Whereas I only get recruited if I have this super secret spy who's providing information and that person works for the U.S. government. So I'm leaving and they're passing it over. The Russians, on the other hand, if they can like funnel money corruptly to some journalist to write something, that's fine. Even if they don't spy and meet on the street, that's fine. If they can develop relationships, if they can give money to a right-wing motorcycle group that beats up people, then that's fine.

36:19So yes, they run some super secret spies like we do, for sure. They give them intelligence and they have analysts. But they also run this wider group because their goal is not just intelligence information. It's to create this chaos and create problems. And so we've seen recently like Epstein, you know, this guy's traveling back and forth to Russia. He's got, you know, he's had this sex thing and island and girls and powerful people and money laundering. Like that person would be of great interest to the Russians. They don't have to like treat him like he's a spy. Meet me in the corner. And like he's already benefiting them and they can help each other and scratch each other's back, as we'd say.

36:57And so if you look at Donald Trump, he would be the worst spy. Like in my world, because like, can you imagine like, okay, here's the rules you need. We're going to meet once a month at this place. Make sure you show up on time. Make sure you follow these rules and no one's following you. And then make sure, you know, you provide, let's sit down and debrief you. What happened? What, you know, give me more details. What did this? Tell me about the report. What didn't it say? Like he, you know, he's crazy. Like he, you know, he's only about himself. So he would never fit that model of a spy that we see in the West.

37:32But on the Russian side, he could be of use to them because he's involved. It's almost like more like organized crime, the way the Russians see things, right? So it's like if you're in that world where everybody has compromising information on anybody and, you know, there's a little money and you're paying off this and I'm helping you here. And, you know, I'll share some information or we're trying to give you things like it's it's it's that sort of the system is not one that's, you know, legal and lawful and all this type of thing. It's more of a sort of free for all corrupt system of compromise.

38:11Who has compromise on who? Like, like if he's been over there and maybe there's been process, maybe he's been filmed in rooms. Maybe he's met people. Maybe he's got shady deals going. And so they would come to him like and he doesn't know what they have on him. He doesn't know what they could. So, you know, they help each other a little bit. It's not spying per se, but it's so I've written articles trying to say, like, I don't think the notion that Trump is a Russian spy and always has been. And he's been a Manchurian candidate who's worked. But I do think his sort of brazen behavior and corrupt behavior and sort of not caring about democratic norms, not caring about legal norms, comfort dealing in sort of the criminal side of things is a real benefit to Russia.

38:56So I think he's an asset in the way we use that English word asset. He's helpful to the Russians because he only cares about himself. And so if the Russians give him information that helps him beat Hillary Clinton, yeah, give it to me. so yes, he's useful he's not an Asian but useful useful to the Russians and again that's a Russian term useful idiot, it's like hey if we can get this guy to say this stuff you know what do you think is more dangerous? the guy who knows that he's working for an enemy country or the guy who has no clue that he's he's working and he's just a fool well the Russians in a sense they're smart in their system to them it doesn't matter You're benefiting.

39:38These people are all helpful. Like if I went to CIS, I have this guy, you know, he's just saying this crazy shit, but it's useful to us. And I wrote that headquarters and they'd be like, no, this is not like, you know, stay away from that. There's no, which is more dangerous? I mean, I would argue at this point, if Donald Trump was a long-term secret mole spy that's worked, I don't think he could do more damage than he's doing as he is. And so, I mean, I personally think, you know, and this is me going further than, you know, intel knowledge is, I think it's gotten to a point, there's almost like a mental illness thing here.

40:17I think he's a narcissist and he can only see the world that benefits him and his people. And it's doing damage, I think, to our fabric in our country. Isn't he doing good for America? No. Just as an American, don't you think he's doing good for the country? Because probably what he's essentially saying that he wants to bring back jobs to America. He wants to bring back manufacturing to America. He wants to make this economy better. He wants to make trade imbalance equal. He wants to make sure that all the threats in the world, they don't get a second chance. They get demolished and finished. Right.

40:50Right. So probably he must be doing something right for Americans. I'm just asking. No, no, it's a good question. And I think that's what has made him successful politically is that, you know, he says these things and a lot of Americans are like, hey, that makes sense to me. And he says one of his sort of standard things is that we've been ripped off, we've been treated poorly, you know, and it's either foreigners are screwing us or the Democrats, the people who don't support me are against us. They're making us weaker. And so that appeals to a lot of people. This is a simple argument. It makes sense.

41:24But I think if we look at sort of the actual outcome of that, yeah, I'm going to bring back manufacturing jobs. There's no evidence whatsoever. And a lot of presidents have said they're going to bring back manufacturing jobs. And the economy, the world economy and the way things are moving, we're bringing back health care jobs and AI jobs. Other than that, we're not bringing back many manufacturing jobs. And I think he's taking actions that are going to cause us larger economic problems over time. You know, just cutting back on immigration. I mean, I can see creating a better immigration system.

42:01And that's the problem is Congress has never really dealt with creating a legitimate economic immigration system where people can come to this country and work or bring people in. But doing it in such a brutal way is going to hurt us in terms of immigration and bringing in talent and bringing in skills into our country. And so I think on all of these fronts, he's a charlatan, a salesman. And essentially, even if something is not true, if you just say yes, and you saw it in his speech the other day about Iran. Oh, my God, this is the best. We're winning like no one's ever seen. This is the biggest success the world has never seen.

42:40war like this, everything is going perfect. That's how a carnival salesman says, like, oh, yes, that's great. And they sort of sell you why they hide the bad things. And if you're a narcissist, you're never going to admit problems. You're never going to take guilt. You're never going to accept those things. And so the things he says that he wants, of course, those are things everybody wants, but I don't see almost any sense that those things are actually happening. Even people in the conservative side of the United States are now starting to realize, yeah, our economy isn't getting better. These things that you say you're fixing don't seem to be getting fixed.

43:28He just talks about it. Yeah, he just claims, and that's what he's going to do some point with Iran, he's just going to say, we won and then walk away. Like everyone else in the world is going to be like, yeah. Do you know one of his thesis, one of his principles is right. That never accept defeat. You know, out of his top three principles, that's one of them. Yeah. One is attack, attack, attack. One is never accept defeat. I'm forgetting the third one, but that's his philosophy throughout from his days when he was mentored by Roy. yeah yeah yeah yeah and he meant like it was roy's principles yeah and then he mentored donald for a very long time never it became never and never accept you know fault or accountability like yeah never accept order so so probably that's something that he's doing it's visible right like you can see it which is fine if you're like doing low-level real estate i suppose but he's the president of the united states i mean the world is so huge so complex so many people so many things.

44:32Do people like him? I think it's funny. Like I have a lot of people now who've worked for him or around him. And, and I've seen some things were saying like, essentially anyone who's ever been around him, even the people who support him and like the in the Congress, it's like, no, they don't like him. He's a he's a mean, nasty, ignorant person who nobody likes. But there's a group of people in America who like, like the bullying. They like that his enemies are their enemies, right? So he's, you know, if they heard me talking, they'd say, I hate that guy. And Donald Trump hates that guy. And so, you know, I'm Donald Trump on his first day in office wrote an executive order, you know, stripping us of our security clearances.

45:15And I'm not supposed to go in government buildings anymore and all this other kind of stuff because somehow I'm an enemy because I've expressed my opinion. And so there's a core group of people, oftentimes, you know, white, evangelical, hardcore Christians, very right wing that have sort of almost like a cult. They followed him. They believe in him and almost nothing can change them. They might have, they might have two months ago said, oh my God, I never want another foreign war. We're sick of foreign wars. And then now they'd be like, well, Donald Trump did it. So it means it's the right thing to do.

45:51And so he won election twice, frankly. So the issue is not just him, it's our country. And there are people who believe in this and support it. So is it our civic education is not as strong as it should be? Is it real structural problems in our economy where people are willing to risk taking somebody like this to be president because things are so bad? there's a lot of bigger issues than donald trump here yeah but uh so yes there are people who love him and follow him i i don't know i wonder if 10 15 20 years from now whether those people be like oh that was a mistake or whether there still will be that cadre of people who think that he did wonderful things probably both yeah probably both that's what that's what happens with these kind of personalities and some people would admit that they were wrong either right And some people won't admit that they were wrong either.

46:43Yeah. Yeah. See, that's what happened with strong personalities like him. Yeah. They polarize their audiences. It's either love or hate. There's nothing in between. Well, yeah. So there'll be like diehard fans and there'll be like diehard haters. Yep. And anger works and scaring people works politically, all those type of things. And like I said, we were chatting earlier. Like, I mean, there's a large portion of the United States. You know, we're a big country. We've been successful economically. economically, you know, richest country in the world, arguably, you know, in the history of the world.

47:14So there's people who live in a lot of parts of the United States who never, ever see a foreigner, never travel overseas, but live comfortable lives. And if somebody like you or I come in and tell them, hey, you know, this is causing problems in the Philippines and in India, and this is, you know, there's a worldwide market here, and blah, blah, blah, they're like, we don't care about any of that. Talking about world problems, CIA tracked Khamenei's records, right? And they shared that intel with Israel. Israel used that targeted data by using AI and traffic cams and attacks. I thought, my understanding is, yeah, Israel was using the traffic cams to figure out where people are going.

47:57So, yeah, and then CIA's data actually confirmed all those targeted targets. Like, that's what, that's what is out there in the world. Yes, that's the one thing. I have to say, after 9-11, When the United States really moved towards focusing on terrorism, it was a different target set. So in the old thing that I grew up in, in the Cold War, it's like, OK, we need someone in the Kremlin to give us the secrets of what the Russians are doing and what the Russian KGB is doing, all those type of – after 9-11, it was a different set. It was almost, you could argue, more of a law enforcement set. Like, these guys are terrorists.

48:32They're moving in small groups. They're trying to blow up things and hide.

48:39And collecting against a nation state is different from finding individuals, essentially criminals who are traveling around the world. Over time, we became really good at using networks, figuring out who's who, making arrests, pulling in the data from them to figure out who else is connected to who. And we became really good, arguably manhunters, finding people, finding bin Laden. It took a long time, but we got much better at putting together those maps, using data, using big data, using all this type of stuff to figure out where people are. So that, yes, I think you say it's CIA, but it's probably a mixture of the NSA and CIA and overhead, all of those things together.

49:22Yeah, intelligence agency with foreign partners. And it may have been Israel, but there might be others that have some roles in all this type of stuff. So, yes, we've become much better at that. So, yes, it's certainly possible that CIA had information on locations of people. But then the word is that American agency shared that data with Israel. Israel said, let's attack, and the regime change would follow. And CIA said the regime change won't happen. Right. And yet they continue doing the thing, and now we can see the result. Yeah, that's a good way to look at how the system works together. And so I mentioned when I talked about CIA, there's the spy side, the espionage side, and there's the analytics side.

50:04And so the spy side might be working with the Israelis and working with NSA to put together like, okay, where are these people? The analysts are the ones that are collecting it. And so if the question comes to them is, okay, if there's a war and we take out the leadership, will that mean regime fault? That's a different group of people. And they say, no, it doesn't make sense. Now, that information then goes up to the White House for decision makers. The State Department, the National Security Council, the president, they're going to make a decision on that. And they'll say only one part of this is like, what's intelligence say?

50:42And intelligence says, no, it won't work. And they're like, yeah, yeah, great, go away. You know, Israelis say it'll work. I believe it'll work. All these other kind of things. We used to have a saying in CIA is you can bring intelligence to a policymaker, but you can't make them think. So you can we can say here's what we think, but that doesn't mean they have to take it or act on it. And this administration, Donald Trump, from the beginning when he came in in 2016, is he said, I don't trust these intelligence people. They're a deep state. They worked against me. They tried to make it look like I work for Russia.

51:14Like, you know, go away. I'm not interested. So I'm sure, yes, the CIA, the CIA, come to say, yes, this, this, this, this. That doesn't mean they care or they're going to – even this guy, Witkoff, who's been involved in – his golfing friend who's involved in negotiations with the Russians and Ukrainians and the Iranians. The CIA said, we'd be glad to brief you on these things. And he said, no, I don't need any of that. So essentially they're making their own decisions. And presidents can choose to use intelligence or not. They can use – and so what you say is probably true, but it shows how our system either works or the dysfunctions in our system.

51:51I think that's fair. That's fair. One thing you're very confident about, that's your knowledge on Russia. That's something that you've been very vocal about, very confident about. And you've compared Russia's escalation to al-Qaeda before 9-11. Why? Geez, did I? So if I did, it's in the sense that... It's like ignoring al-Qaeda before 9-11 is as good as almost like ignoring Russia today. Well, I think when I look at Russia, we talked about it a little bit earlier, is the Russian security services, the intelligence security services are the central policymaking issue. Like I said, it's almost an intelligent state, right?

52:36So Vladimir Putin is a career KGB officer. He's been involved in these things. And you have to understand the mentality. I use the term KGB, the old sort of Cold War security services. it still encompasses what is an external service, an internal service, a variety to protect the regime, is they grew up from the czar's security service through the Soviet days till now, using all of these tools we talked about, asymmetric tools. So it's all about weakening your enemy from the inside. It's like, okay, we can't take you on directly, so we're going to do all of these things, subversion and sabotage and disinformation and assassination and all these kind of things.

53:16We've seen that we're learning and learning and doing more of those things. So if I look at, if I want to compare Al-Qaeda to the Russians, it's that. It's essentially Russia, you could argue, is almost a terrorist state. It is looking for our weaknesses, just like a terrorist organization does. It's like Al-Qaeda says, I can't take on the U.S. Army and its tanks and its planes, But what I can do is find weaknesses and political places where I can cause pain for you that cause bigger issues. So I can hit the World Trade Center and that's going to cause so much more overreaction and pain than it would be if I tried to like attack your soldiers in the field.

53:57And that's the way Vladimir Putin and the Russians look at things. It's like I'm looking for ways to look for your weaknesses and take advantage of them. So we saw in 2016, they came to the United States and said, Jesus, Americans are fighting each other. These political parties hate each other. Let's get inside the system and turn Americans against each other. We don't even have to. In the Cold War, they had to like create fake stories. Like they had to create a story that the Pentagon created the AIDS virus and sell that story around the world. And people still believe it. But now they don't have to do that.

54:31They can just look at our social media and they say, oh, look, he's saying these horrible things about him and she's saying horrible things about her. Let's just amplify and push that and use those tools to make Americans turn on each other. Because the more they fight each other, the less of a threat they are to us. And so if I talk about Russians as al-Qaeda, it's that. It's the skill of looking for your weakness and exploiting it is what a terrorist group does and it's what the Russians do. Interesting. thing you were you were in russia for a very long time i was there just a couple years but i but over the years um i worked on russia so i was at our headquarters working on yeah you ran the cia russia house right i was deputy if it's russia house yeah i was there and then so you were the deputy there and you have seen the rise of poutine very closely give me tell me about poutine tell me about what's your view on him, not how the world sees it.

55:30What's his demeanor? What's his agenda? What is he like psychologically? I think, and I'm going to sound like a one-trick pony here to come back, is that you have to understand the Russian intelligence services to understand Vladimir Putin. So in Russia, when the Bolsheviks took over in 1917, I said they created this new security service and it was called the Cheka. And it was, again, they, it was, they even said the head of the Cheka, the new guy that Felix Dzerzhinsky said, we are a terrorist organization that are going to destroy any potential opposition to the Bolsheviks. So like from the beginning that, that was their job.

56:10And so they, the Russians have a term called Chekis, Chekis. So ever since the original Cheka that was there to destroy opposition and create this, you know, Soviet Bolshevik security service. All Russian security service intelligence people since then on until now call themselves Czechists. And there's a day, the creation of the Czechos is, I think it's December 20th. I'm not exactly sure, but they celebrate this every, and Vladimir Putin makes sure that every December 20th, he goes to the SVR, FSB offices to celebrate Czechoslovakia with the security services. So he grew up in this system. He worked in East Germany, working with Middle Eastern terrorist groups and funneling money and smuggling operations and things like that when he was in East Germany.

57:03And he was there when the Soviet Union fell apart. So, you know, you can think about how does that, you think that you are part of the elite organization in the Soviet Union, the KGB, the sword and the shield. We're what keeps the leadership in power. And your country falls apart while you're in the field, you know, working with agents and giving money and your country falls apart. You can think psychologically how does that work? Like you think you are in the most important job in a superpower, one of the big superpowers in the world and your country falls apart while you're there. He has to go back.

57:42He goes back to his hometown in Leningrad, becomes known as St. Petersburg. He gets some jobs, works with the mayor there, gets involved in doing some sort of foreign business as it comes in. And then as the new regime, Yeltsin, take over in the 1990s, he does some work for them. As a former KGB officer, they put him in charge of the FSB, which was the domestic political security service in Russia in the 90s. And when Yeltsin starts to go out of power, he has developed enough compromising information on Yeltsin's enemies that he sort of leveraged that into Yeltsin saying, I want this guy to be the president.

58:21He runs like literally in a month later and they make him the president. And he's been in power ever since, since 1999. And so, but, and he would describe himself this way as a Czechist. And he says, once a Czechist, always a Czechist. There's no such thing as a retired intelligence officer, which is not true. I'm a retired doctor. But to him, you know, this is the central organizing view, mental view of him. And as he's been in power since that period of time, he has very much brought back all those kind of things to keep those security services powerful. He's all of the people that are close to him are all also former KGB officers, former security service people.

59:06and you know one of the interesting things is as the soviet union fell apart you know the system fell apart and it was trying to refigure itself the kgb was the place who ran the communist party's money so the money of the communist party the soviet union was handled by the kgb and kept it in foreign bank accounts and all these other things so so the security service guys are the ones that when the system fell apart knew where the money was and how to deal with it so the The security service, the diplomatic service fell apart, the government fell apart, the economic fell apart, but the security service did not.

59:40It maintained power. And when he came back in power, he used that group to continue to strengthen himself and stay in power. So to understand Vladimir Putin, you've got to understand the mentality of a KGB officer as a security officer. And that's using those tools to keep your enemies off balance, to manipulate, to bully, to threaten, to use those, you know, to smile at you while he's trying to steal from behind you, all of those kind of things. And so he's an interesting character. I also think he's a paranoid character. And I think that's something— What do you mean by paranoid? I think in a certain sense, all dictators are paranoid because they have to worry about – if I run for presidency in India or in the United States, the electorate puts me in charge.

1:00:32So my power is legitimate in the sense that it's been proven with voters and I might get voted out, but I might get voted out. If you're a dictator and you've sort of controlled, you want to control the media and the courts and the businesses and the money and the oligarchs and all these type of things to maintain your power, and you have this small cadre of people that deal with you, as time goes by, you're talking like 26, 27 years he's been in power. Over time, you become like this cadre of warriors, like, is there anybody out for me? Is there anybody that's trying to overthrow me? Or anybody in this system?

1:01:09traitors and they're going to try to kill me, all these type of things. So for a dictator, every day you have to worry about like, okay, what's the threat to me today? How can I do it? I don't know. I have no real means of knowing how popular I am because essentially everyone's going to smile and say, oh, you're the boss. But will they stick a knife in my back as soon as they get a chance? And so the paranoia in the sense that he's a KGB officer and you are paranoid, distrusting, because that's what you do for a living as you sabotage and put false information, disinformation. Also paranoid in the sense that you're now in power, but you don't really have the proof or knowledge or the authority to know whether you, you know, power, and so you always have to worry about where threats come from.

1:01:53And so you have to sort of, you know, if this security service and this guy seems to be getting more powerful, I have to find a way to like pop them down by putting this person up in charge. And so I think he's in a situation now where he really was, you know, he bet everything and going into Ukraine and it's been a disaster. Like you're talking like million people killed or injured or more and, you know, claim that you're going to take over the place and you didn't and you've coalesced enemies against you. Now you're sort of more a vassal of China. China owns you sort of financially. It's been a disaster for him.

1:02:30But he has to worry about if the war ends, he has to go back and try to explain to these sort of powerful people around him, you know, why it was a success when they would be looking at him and say, you essentially just screwed our country. So they might be coming after him at any point. And so I think paranoid in that sense. And there's been a report, you even highlighted it, that the internet system has been down in Moscow and for a while. Iran, Moscow, everywhere, all over the world now. And one of the things that they're suggesting, or at least I read, and be interested in what you thought, is that he saw what happened with Khomeini and found out that the Israelis and Americans were tracking him through the traffic cams, and he became paranoid that, oh, my God, this could be a way that, you know, they're going to come for me too.

1:03:17Now, of course, nobody, you know, no one's coming for Vladimir Putin. I wish they would, but they're not. But that's the kind of mentality. If he actually believes that, say, the Americans are watching him on traffic camps and are going to come kill him, that's the kind of paranoia that he has, I think. What do you think? What does he actually want, which he cannot say publicly? Who? Putin?

1:03:45I don't know. I mean, I think he can say things publicly. I think he, like any dictator, and we're seeing it actually with Trump now, is they want to be seen in history as Peter the Great or Catherine the Great, one of the sort of the great czars and powerful leaders in Russian history. And I think he has to worry now that he may have jeopardized that by this sort of failure in Ukraine. You know, he wants to go down in history as one of the great Russian czars, and he's potentially jeopardizing this with what's happening in Ukraine. And so he's got to try to find a way to pull a victory out of a defeat, or at least a claim to a victory.

1:04:30And so in that way, he and Trump are like the same. They're going to have to find a way to say something terrible is really a great success. he's a good friend to us though yeah well because he has to be because you know he's with the sanctions and stuff he needs money and he can sell you guys cheaper oil which is good for you for your economy it's good for him but I don't think that that saves him necessarily he's doing what he has to to say but do you think Russian people also want this what he's doing that's a good question he certainly doesn't give them the opportunity to tell the truth or to vote for him.

1:05:07I mean, they have rigged elections. So it's interesting. So there's two ways to look at this. I just had a discussion with a group of sort of Russia experts recently at the Hayden Center where we talked about this. Is there something unique about Russia and Russians that creates this sort of imperial mentality that's been there? Because you can argue if you go, they've always had strong leaders, There's czars that sort of oppress the peasants and keep people down. And so it was the same with the czars in the 18th, 19th century. It was the commissars and the communist leaders. And, you know, and they've always bullied their neighbors and they've.

1:05:46It's always been like that. You can argue, so it's always been like that. Is there something about Russia that makes it that way? or is it an economic system which created a thing where there became more power in the leadership, but that obviously given an opportunity to become a different kind of more European system, if you will, would people want it? And I think both of those things exist in the Russian people. There's a lot of really well-educated, serious Russian people that probably would like to have, from my time there, one of the things you often hear from sympathetic Russians, It's like we just want to be a normal country.

1:06:24Every time there's a chance that there could be reform and change here, it always reverts to this. What we see with Putin or what we saw in the Soviet days is please, please, we just want to be a normal country. And so it hasn't been. I mean, I tell a quip oftentimes that in the Cold War, probably the most famous diplomat in U.S. history after World War II is this guy George Kennan. And he was a diplomat. He was in Moscow after World War II and wrote some of the famous early pieces that led to like the U.S. Cold War stance against the Soviet Union. And when he retired from the State Department senior positions, he went to Princeton University.

1:07:05He was a professor there. And all of the new ambassadors that were getting ready to go to Moscow all through like the 80s, 90s would always go up to Princeton to see him before they went to Moscow. And it was sort of like, you know, to go see the great man, get advice. And he reportedly would give the same advice. And his advice was, say this is, you know, 1994 or whatever, you know, and whatever's happening there and Yeltsin. And he would say, what you should do is just go to the academic library here at Princeton or any big library, pull out any book on 18th or 19th century Russia and read that.

1:07:42That's all you need to know about today. what it was so what he's suggesting there's a russian mentality behavior history politics that that are sort of eternal in this this sort of imperial russia this is something that's been there forever and yeah it wasn't communism that made the soviet union that way it was russia that made the soviet union that way right and it's russia that's making putin this way so those are those are things that people have to debate about but i don't think the russian people have ever been given an opportunity. And I also think if Vladimir Putin's done, maybe the worst thing he's done for the Russian people is like, yeah, he's sort of screwed the economy and he's killing his people in this war and all of these other kinds of things.

1:08:25But potentially the most dangerous thing is he's created a system where there's no opposition. There's no potential follow. If Vladimir Putin drops over tomorrow, what happens? There's no system. There's no political parties. There's no political leaders. There's no successor. There's no system of creating a successor. Conceivably, Russia could fall into a civil war like we had in Yugoslavia. Like it could be. So, I mean, perhaps the worst thing he's done is, yeah, he's gained all power on himself and he's oppressed everybody to make sure there's no threat to him. but he may have set Russia up for terrible things in the future rather than, you know, you're always taught in the business world or even in the government world is the most important thing of a leader is to build new leaders behind you so that, you know, yeah, they understand what to do.

1:09:18You know, you don't think other people can make good decisions. And by the time you leave, there's a good system of people behind you. And that's one thing that hasn't happened in Russia for sure. There's a saying that it says, don't call yourself a leader until you have two more people who are way more capable than you to lead your position. No, that's right. Right behind you. Yeah, I mean, good leaders, they're comfortable with really talented and smart people around them. Like, you know, I often say, like, I want to be in a room where, like, the people who work for me are smarter than me. Like, I want good people around me.

1:09:51Whereas there's the other view, maybe the Putin and the Trump view of the world is like I'm in charge. I'm the smartest. Anyone who seems to have their own sort of sense of power or smarts is a threat to me and therefore I got to cut him down. So the people – Trump is Trump. I'm going back to America. He's put in these positions of great power are completely unfit for the job, like no experience. their only real qualification is they're willing to suck up or they're willing to do whatever Donald Trump says to do. And so there's people in the intelligence community now, Tulsi Gabbard, who like shouldn't even get a security clearance.

1:10:30Like, you know, a junior 23-year-old person joining the CIA would have a better chance of getting a security clearance than some of these people who are in place. And so it's sort of all about loyalty, not about talent and skill. And And I think that's a dictator thing too, isn't it? I don't know. I don't know if he has the successes or no. Yeah, I mean, the system... I wouldn't know the leadership that well. I've not done enough research on that, so I won't be able to comment. Come on, you know these things. No, for real. I don't know if there are really, really good, capable people right after him.

1:11:11I have no idea. Probably there are. After Putin? I mean, there's... Not Putin. I'm talking about Trump. Who do you think will be successive? To Trump? Wow, that's a big thing. So there's congressional elections coming up this fall. Trump is trying to change election rules to try to rig the system so that his people win or what have you. I don't know if they will, and I hope that doesn't happen. But it is happening. And so that's going to impact it a little bit. So who wins these sort of congressional and smaller races? Then immediately in this country, which I think is a weakness, we start into this effort, political effort to create for new elections like a year or two beforehand.

1:11:57You see in France, they have like one month where people run for like, oh, my God, that would be great. But in here, it's like this constant effort. And so there's going to be lots of people on the Democratic side and the Republican side trying to put themselves in positions. there's like a big article as I was reading on the plane on the way up here about you know Rubio it's between sort of Rubio and Vance are sort of fighting each other internally to like you know put themselves in a position where to take over sort of the voters that vote for Trump so they can be in the best position to run for president but in the United States oftentimes those early things of who looks like they're going to win don't win like No one would put Trump in 2014, 2015 as the person who would win elections.

1:12:41So it's so hard to predict. So let's say, but this side you said Rubio and Vance looks like right now the early. And the opposition, who do you think was a good chance? Young and up and coming. So there's the governor of Illinois, Pritzker. There is, in fact, the mayor of Chicago who worked for Obama, he was the chief of staff. There's the governor of California, Newsom, who might run. The governor of Minnesota, who was the vice president candidate last time running against Trump, is a possibility. There's governors of Pennsylvania and Kentucky who have won Democratic elections in states that are very, what we say, red.

1:13:31They're more sort of centrist or Republican. Who do you think if you have to choose one, which you would like to see? You're trying to get me in trouble. Who would you like to see? I think that the future of the Democratic Party, frankly, is these really talented women that we have that often worked in military intelligence services. So I live in Virginia. The governor of Virginia, Abigail Spanberger, was a CIA officer for a number of years. She then ran for Congress in areas where we say red, very sort of Republican leaning. And she's a Democrat, but won two times in Congress and then ran for a governor.

1:14:11And so she's very, I think, very talented, very serious. The senator from Michigan, Alyssa Slotkin, worked for CIA and the Defense Department. She's a capable senator. These people are very smart, very sensible, very focused on national security and issues. The woman who just became the governor of New Jersey was a former Air Force fighter pilot, really, really quality kind of person, very serious. So what I would like to see is people who are really serious about the problems we have. I mean, this is a huge country with huge issues, huge problems. we can't just continue to treat them like they're just slogans or easy to solve or you know it's one thing to like say things to win elections but once you win election you need to govern you know you need to actually do things and you know it seems to be that people are more interested in like winning than they are and actually doing something once they win walk me through a trade Tradecraft.

1:15:11Tradecraft. So tradecraft is like, it's like, what mean through? How would you exactly recruit a spy? Well, I'd like to say that there's like one way to do it or like I have some super skill in it, but it's just, it's just human nature. How do you find the person that you marry? Right. I mean, how do you find somebody who's compatible with you? By accident. It is a nature of trying to find people who might have access to secrets that we need, right? So, you know, if I develop a great relationship with you and I think, hey, you know, you're willing to spy for me and you have needs and money and you want your kids to move to the United States and I can help do that.

1:15:55But you don't have access to those secrets. Like, I can't. It's stupid. Like, I have to find someone who has those secrets and might be willing to work with me. And so what we call – what's called the recruitment cycle. So it's called spot, assess, develop, recruit, handle, and terminate. Terminate means to stop the relationship, right? It doesn't mean – So the first part of that is spotting, like finding someone, finding the people who might have access. And so in the old days, before there was data and computers and internet, you essentially would just try to go to events. That's why we often would work as diplomats overseas because you're in that milieu of meeting people who might be in government places and you're working on it.

1:16:40It might be like a military attache. You might meet somebody and you befriend them. You meet them at parties or you go out or you find ways to, you know, international schools and meet people who have their kids there, what have you. Whatever it is to find someone and try to just essentially human to human talk to them. So there's spot assesses that next play. Okay. I met you. I found a way to meet you. And then I'm going to just find out about you. Like, who are you? What do you like? What's important to you? What motivates you? You know, tell me about your job. Tell me what's important to you.

1:17:15You know, tell me about your family and, you know, and, and you're not just getting this from people you're talking about yourself too, right? You're actually trying to build a friendship, right? Because no one's going to, no one's going to put themselves at risk and spot for you unless they trust you. Right. So it's not just I'm trying to figure these things out from you. I'm trying to make clear to you that I care about you. And I'm actually asking these things because they matter to me and try to develop some trust. So spot assess. And then you're also writing this stuff up. You're sending it back to Washington.

1:17:47They're going through their day base. Do we know this person? What do we know? He says he works in this place. Over the years, we've learned that they do this, this, and this. Maybe ask them some of these kind of questions. So spot assess and then develop. So develop is now you look like you're an interesting candidate. It looks like you have this information. You seem to be willing to talk to me more. You know, you have some issues. You know, you might have mentioned a little bit problems with your boss or whatever. And then I'm going to like deepen that relationship to find out whether those things really are important and matter to you or whether the kind of motivations or vulnerabilities that I could take advantage of to see if you're actually willing to spy.

1:18:24And then that person has to say yay or nay. And then I have to make it clear that this is a dangerous situation that we're going to have to meet secretly. We might have had this sort of open relationship, but we can't have that anymore because it puts you in a difficult situation. We're going to have to meet different places, different ways, maybe in a car, maybe in a hotel room, maybe, you know, by dead drops here and there to work for us. So spot assess, develop, recruit, and then handle. And that's what once we develop this professional relationship, you know, we found a way to meet secretly and share the information.

1:19:00And I might be giving you money. I might be like helping you like an agreement. Like if you work inside the Iranian nuclear program for five years and share with me everything, you know, and answer all of our questions, I can arrange for you and your family to move to France or United States and we'll support you for the rest of your life. So there's different things for different people. So that's what we call the recruitment cycle. But it sounds much cleaner and fancier. It's essentially building a relationship and understanding people. So let me get back. And I'm sorry, I feel like I'm not answering your question.

1:19:34I'm just talking too much. But that was like in the old days, just trying to find a way to meet people. The thing that's come in the last certainly 15, maybe 20 years, but much more now is the big data revolution, right? So there's, and this really came about a lot as we started to move after 9-11 to go after terrorist stuff, is the world has its data online now, right? So what we've created is another professional cadre in the intelligence service called targeters. And so their information, so rather than me just like going out and hoping to run into someone who's of interest and meet someone, there's enough data out there that people could pull together and look through and figure out, like, who are the right people in this place?

1:20:24Again, just to use Iran. We can pull together who we think are in this organization. Who are they? And then let's just go through, like, the dark web, everything, to figure out what have they put online? What is their people that are around them put online? Families? What is their academic state? What are their bank records? What are the, you know, we can, like I said, go through their movements. It's like you might be able to build a picture of that person before I ever meet you physically now, right? And we didn't have this when I was coming through, but you can create essentially like, okay, I've learned this person doesn't put much of his own stuff online.

1:21:02But I've learned now that, you know, friends and family around him say all these things, which has allowed us to look through big databases of movements and family. And like there's just so much out there now. Everything. Our cars. Like our car tires send signals out to make sure there's enough air in them to like, you know, every place you go, everything. And so using AI now, you can pull all of that stuff together and I can put together a picture before I ever meet you about what is this person? What are they like? What appeals to them? What doesn't appeal to them? So that when I meet you, we might be able to move that assess, develop thing much faster.

1:21:38Tell me what's going on between FBI and CIA. Traditionally or now or what? Tell me traditionally and now. Yeah, so the FBI is a law enforcement organization. It's the part that we're going to talk about is that counterintelligence part. So the FBI gets involved in, you know, everything from bank heists to politicians, you know, corrupt politicians. And, you know, they're making sort of federal cases, right? So they're essentially a supercharged federal police organization. But they have a subset of that organization who's the counterintelligence and now called – now after 9-11 intelligence too.

1:22:22Their job is to be able to defend against potentially terrorists, foreign intelligence officers, other things. So their job is – Internal. Yeah. So there's a Russian embassy. There's a Chinese embassy. There's all these people coming, foreigners coming in the United States. Their job is to make sure that if there's people like me coming into the United States that are trying to steal information from the United States, they need to be able to track them, know them, cause problems for them, put things in their place, maybe try to recruit them. So like a lot of the people who spy for us and CIA, they worked in the United States and the FBI looked at them and said, hey, this person, and they might have recruited him and then pass them over to the CIA.

1:23:02So then when they went home, we ran them. So that might be, you know, it might have been an Iranian who was studying at Cal Berkeley, studying physics or whatever, and made it known that, like, he wants to stay in the United States. And they said, hey, I have someone for you to meet. And they introduced him to a CIA guy who says, yeah, we can arrange that, but you've got to go back for – so their job is to try to thwart, stop, and map threats to the United States from abroad. So foreign spies, foreign terrorists, those type of things. But the culture is different. So each – an organization builds up a culture, doesn't it?

1:23:38So a military – military people have a way of thinking in the way they build their culture and CIA does. It's sort of a – and so we often joke like the FBI and CIA really sort of need each other and work together on this issue of counterintelligence and intelligence. but the mentality and the systems they have are very separate, the culture. And so the culture of the FBI are cops and the culture of the CIA are robbers. Our job is to, you know, figure out a way to steal the thing we need overseas. Their job is to stop anybody and take them to court or arrest them or whatever. And so everything they do in terms of how they're recruited, how they're trained, how their computer systems work, how their filing systems work, how the way they write things, all of that is built on those cultures.

1:24:28And so they're very different. And so oftentimes there's friction between the CIA and FBI because they're like, I can't trust you. Usually you guys are slimy like spies and, you know, we're like buttoned down, you know, you know, if they're going to meet someone, they often have to have two of them to do it because, you know, they, I don't know, have to make sure that, whereas like I was telling you, I can go out to meet a spy out in the woods somewhere with a bunch of money to try to buy myself and my organization trusts me that I'm going to be honest. I'm going to report exactly what happens.

1:24:57If I screw up, I'm going to report it. The FBI, it's like, you know, there's two of them to make sure that none of them, you know, all this kind of stuff. So it's just different. But why don't they trust each other? Even though they work for the same cause? They do in general and we work together and we share things. It's just, you know, personalities and differences in looking at some. So if the, If the FBI is looking at, you know, an activity taking place in the United States, let's just use like terrorism. They're following someone who's on the fringes of supporting money to a terrorist group.

1:25:30They're in like Detroit where there's lots of Arabs or something. And they find this thing and they share it with us. They're doing this and they're like, OK, we're going to arrest this person. And we're like, why don't we just wait and see who else they meet to try to map a bigger thing? And then maybe there's someone we recruits because in our world, if we can find someone in that organization who spy for us, it might eventually open up a much bigger knowledge base. Whereas that person, if I in their world, culturally, if they get an arrest, that's how you get promoted. You're in a bureaucracy.

1:26:02I did arrest. Well, last year I did, you know, six arrests, four cases to court. Whereas in my world, it's like I did. Two recruitments and three would like to try to collect this much intelligence. Right. I'm judged on how much intelligence I receive that goes to policymakers. They're judged on how many arrests they make. And arrest versus intelligence sometimes. And intelligence and evidence are two different things too, right? So evidence is, you know, collection of something that you'd be able to take in front of a court and say, yes, yes, yes. Intelligence is more, you know, patterns of analysis that's not 100 % certain because you're just getting from different sources and stuff.

1:26:42So they're just different cultures, mentalities, but they do work together. Here's a last question for you, which is if you were given like the unlimited budget and 90 days and there's no Senate, no government, no White House, no permissions, like you have everything. Like what would you want to do which no government would ever approve for? I would like to think I wouldn't want to do things that were wouldn't get approval what do you want to do? I think it's I don't even know

1:27:21I mean if assassination was possible I do think killing Vladimir Putin would make the world a better place although maybe not because like I said if he dies and there's no system to follow up I might create the world's worst civil war and I don't want to do that so let me take that off the table um I don't know. I enjoyed... Think about the biggest problem which is going on in the world and you think... Well, if I could help solve it, that's a good point. I have to say, what is the biggest disruption in the world? What is the biggest problem that everybody has to face as they look to the future?

1:27:55What might be inhibiting in them? What is it that sort of making sort of healthy, comfortable life where you're making money and doing well for yourself? The biggest problem probably the United States, is the United States of America itself, right? So we are the biggest, richest, most powerful country with a massive, massive army, massive intelligence capabilities that is now being used actually to disrupt the world order rather than support the world order. And so every country in the world, even small countries have to think like, oh my God, what's America doing? I have to figure out my place in the world because America, we could count on for these years, despite foibles and problems that we all know, generally we could support it.

1:28:38This is how they looked at the world. This is how, and I could figure out how I operate in that world. The biggest disruptor right now is, is Donald Trump and his movement. And so if I could do something and use that money, I would try and not as a CIA person, it would be try to help work on, on civic training in the United States, um, work with politicians to try to build up like a political system. I'm an institutionalist. I grew up in an institution. I worked with people who I thought were really smart, really professional, who cared about America, that didn't care about politics. That's the one thing I would say about working like in the CIA and probably was the same.

1:29:18We never, ever talked about politics or who's the president or we like this person or not that person. I work with people all around the world, all these kind of places and all kinds of situations. And I have no idea whether they're Democrats or Republicans or whatever, actually until I retired. And then you see him like on Facebook and you're like, oh my God, I had no idea that he was a Trumpy or whatever it is. Because, you know, because essentially you're professional, you're trying to do your work, you're overseas, you're focused on your mission. And so, I don't know, I think the biggest disruption is the United States.

1:29:50How would I find a way to deal with that? I don't know. Maybe I I would try to find ways to strengthen the democracies of Europe and Asia so that they're resilient against what's happening now until America can get itself back together again. There's one thing which is very curious. I didn't ask you that. I was just curious when I found that something that I found online. You have a brick from Osama bin Laden's house. I do. How did you get that? What is the story behind that? And why have you kept it? Well, I have sort of behind my desk, I have a brick from the Berlin Wall, and then I have a brick from Bin Laden's house.

1:30:31It's sort of like from the Cold War to the War on Terror. So when I was in Pakistan, after we got Bin Laden and he left and stuff, the Pakistanis were, I think, upset and embarrassed and came and destroyed the house right away. And we had some people that were helping us and work with us that, like, when they did that, They just went and scoped up a bunch of the bricks. And so to the people who had been working on the Bin Laden thing for a long time, they would use the bricks. Mine isn't, but a lot of people, like the senior people, they would take one of the bricks and they would put a little thing out, like, thank you for working on this issue.

1:31:05It's just sort of a silly memento. So I have this brick from his. What does it remind you of? Why have you kept one of the biggest terrorists of the world? Well, it's not to support the biggest terrorists of the world. Not to support. Obviously not support. No, it's just a reminder about sort of the dedication, the amount of really serious, hardworking people that work for a long time to deal with that threat and what it means to finally succeed and find them and crush that threat. I think, you know, it's just a memento of that to me. I don't know. All right. Okay, well, thank you so much. Thank you so much for watching this episode till the end.

1:31:44Now you have to do three things. Number one, subscribe to this channel right now. The more you subscribe, the better the guests we will be able to get for you. Number two, please comment and let us know what did we do wrong and what did we do right. Because the more you give us feedback, the better we will be able to make episodes for you. And number three, please share this episode with at least one person because one conversation can change someone's entire life. I'll see you next time. Until then, keep figuring out.

1:32:19Thank you.