1243: Christopher Whitcomb | A Life Among Spies Part Two

21:45And they leave their people behind to integrate with the culture. And you now have an infrastructure that gives you any information that you want. And that's what they've done around the world, including the United States of America. That's their model. The United States model at the time, this is not an exaggeration, this is specifically, the United States came in with$12 ,500 to buy t-shirts that said, support Timor, buy local. There were these ugly brown t-shirts with gold lettering, and that was the contribution the United States government made to one of the potentially primary important sites near the nuclear highway and with this oil and natural gas.

22:24And you take those two models together and you realize how we've been asleep at the wheel for quite some time. It's over. I mean, that's a very small metaphor that I would use to explain where we are in the world right now. Russia doesn't do that. Iran doesn't do that. North Korea doesn't do that. China has done it. And I've seen these things living in those environments, how they work on a day-to-day basis. So he's sitting there doing the math like 12 guys, two of us, no guns, four hours to the safe house. that is a word problem they don't give you on the SATs. Speaking of math, let's run the numbers on keeping the show going.

23:00Here's a quick word from the people who make it possible. We'll be right back. This episode is sponsored in part by Bioptimizers. It's Black Friday saving season. This is huge. You know, the Bioptimizers products I always talk about, the ones that are science backed and lab tested like magnesium breakthrough for sleep support, mass zymes for digestive support. From November 23rd through December 3rd, you get 25 % off. This is the once a year sale you don't want to miss. Sure, you can always get 15 % off with code Jordan, but if you want the biggest savings and gifts, load up on your cart now. Check out between November 23rd and December 3rd to lock in an even bigger discount of 25 % off.

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25:38Now back to Chris Whitcomb. I was in Laos about this time last year And not in the touristy areas Generally just kind of driving around Farming around the country, hiking, stuff like that And you see this big dam And you're like, wow, that's out of place And looks really new And there's Chinese writing on it This is a really nice highway This looks pretty new Yeah, yeah, it's brand new It's built by the Chinese All right, we're going to take the train And I'm like, oh, nice What's a Laotian train going to look like? Am I right, guys? Let's hope this thing stays on the tracks And you go and it's a brand new station there's a Chinese police officer in the corner all the writing is in Chinese there's a video playing in Chinese they're selling Chinese snacks at the train station and a bullet train arrives and I'm like what country am I in?

26:19Yeah yeah yeah because I thought I was allowed I just got out of the jungle swatting away bugs that probably have some kind of venom that rots your skin away and I'm getting on a bullet train with air conditioning where even the writing and all the parts are in Chinese and the bathroom signs are in Chinese they didn't even bother making it readable to the local population they were just like nah All the Chinese nationals watching this podcast right now, you're the best. Yeah. I mean, I speak Mandarin and a part of it is just because, look. They're so smart. I need to be able to talk to the rest of the world.

26:49They're smart. They're committed. I'm not saying that it's good. Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying it's right, but I'm saying the gig is over. I don't even know how we could try to catch up at this point. It's like an insurmountable task. That's true. Yeah. Listen, I'm a patriot. Well, yeah. I've lived and died for my country. You are, right? Haven't died. I make these statements out of the reality of the life that I've lived in those worlds. I'm not saying I want it to be the case. I'm not saying I have an answer of how it happened or where we go from here. I'm just saying people need to realize when you're watching all these stories about what's happening in the world right now, you may be looking in the wrong direction.

27:22The Chinese are really committed. The only way that I can see us getting ahead is either AI or quantum supremacy that allows us to just have a crazy edge, which is they're investing in that as much or more than we are. There's some economic bubble or something that bursts in China that just sets them back 20 years and gives us a chance to seize that advantage instead of just going, oh, look at that guy tripped over his own shoes and then continuing to pick our nose and watch television, which is anyway, like you said, another conversation. Can we talk about Waco and Ruby Ridge and the FBI? I'll talk about it only because you're a great guy and because people are going to ask, right?

28:01People are going to ask, yeah. But I'll say it this. There's no way to sugarcoat this. Waco, people know what Waco is. Some people know what Ruby Ridge is. I don't know if people know Waco. I mean, we're old. You got to realize. Well, it's become a folk thing. It's become like the Kennedy assassination. And because a friend of mine named Tilla Russell, who's a brilliant movie director, did a big Netflix show called Waco American Apocalypse. It popularized it. If it wasn't popularized enough, he brought four people in to talk about it. An FBI hostage rescue team sniper, which is me, a negotiator who tried to talk the thing out, which is a guy named Gary Nesner.

28:34Oh, yeah. And the guy that ran it and then a branch of Davidian. And he talked to Dick DeGarren a little bit, who was an attorney that came in for David Crush. Bottom line, it was a shootout with the ATF. A lot of people died, both sides. The government didn't really have anything, any backstop to take over once the firefight ended and it was war. And that was us. We were the final backstop, the Hush Rescue Team. We flew in. 51 days later, the building burned down and 80-something people died. Now, this is 30 years ago. I remember watching it on TV. 32 years ago. Many people that would watch don't even know what we're talking about.

29:08However, it's become a very, very big controversy because people have very strong things to say about the government, about the FBI, about how these things happen. I was involved in it. So people ask. It was not an issue in my life for 30 years because I've lived such a broad life. It was a very, very small event. It was a tragic event where 80-something people died. I'm not belittling the impact, but I'm saying, imagine what happened to your life, not 30 years ago, but like two-thirds of your life. Got my learner's permit. Two-thirds of life ago, something happens. Yeah. And it did. So people always ask me about it.

29:44I respect that. And I'll answer specific questions that you have about it. I think most people forgot what it was. And I'm going off memory here, but wasn't it, so David Koresh started a cult. They built a compound in Waco, Texas. And then they decided we're going to buy a bunch of guns and stockpile weapons and ammunition. ATF got wind of it and said, you probably don't need this unless you're going to be up to something. And then I assume there's licenses required for the amount of weapons and ammo they had. They were kind of preparing for an apocalyptic situation, right? Yeah, but just really quickly, you hit all the major points.

30:14A guy named Vernon Howell changed his name to David Koresh because it was prophetic and he became the second coming of Christ. This isn't me. This is widely written about. He said it in his own words. You can watch it on YouTube. a thousand times, right? When he did that, he built this compound. People came to stay there to worship with him. He took all their stuff, took their women, none of which anybody really cares about. It's people do in America. However, what happened was there's no license to buy a bunch of guns or to buy a bunch of ammo. But if you put fully automatic trigger seers, converting a regular gun to fully automatic, you do need a license for that.

30:49He didn't have those. And he was buying hand grenade husks. He was putting the components back together to build hand grenades. So at the time, there's always some kind of terrorism. There's always some topic du jour that people are worried about. At the time, it was a Christian national white supremacy domestic terrorism thing wrapped around this thing called the Turner Diaries, which was the government's coming to get you. And Zog was the Zionist occupational government. It was a big thing at that time. And agencies looking for something to do sought out people. It was like a crime with a scene way to happen.

31:26Okay. And so ATF went in with a search warrant to look for those guns and to look for those grenades. The people in the compound led by David Koresh said no, and they had a hellacious gunfight. So that's what it was. I'm not saying it was right or wrong. I'm not saying they couldn't have picked him up in town. All of these things are widely debated. People are going to yell at me and say, whatever, call me all these names. But the reality is this went on for 51 days. At the 51st day, Janet Reno, the Attorney General of the United States, said, as enough is enough, we inserted tear gas into the building with tanks because they were shooting the shit out of us.

32:00I remember watching a video of this tank without a cannon. It had a, I don't know, a wall pusher in or whatever you call it. Yeah, it had a boom on it. It looked like a gun. Yeah, but it was like square and boom, it knocks a wall in. And it shoots tear gas and we were shooting tear gas in it. But they were hosing us, man. I mean, they shot, the Branch Davidians inside that compound shot so many bullets, so many rounds. They had to weigh them. They picked them up with a front end loader and they had to weigh them. He had millions of rounds of ammo and they shot a lot of them at us. So there's not a lot to say except that I now have come to terms with the fact that it's an American story.

32:38Yeah. A bad one. Yeah. A very bad one. Do you feel like you carry moral weight when this mission, like a mission like that goes, becomes so tragic and shitty? Why? Not like it's your fault, but I just mean like, oh man, maybe I wish I wasn't part of that or anything along those lines. Nobody wants to be part of something like that. I mean, you join the military and you storm the beaches of wherever and you save the world for democracy. That's what you want. Yeah, yeah. You ask military law enforcement people writ large over the last 200 years, you ask them how many actually got that. Not many.

33:08Right. You sign up, waving the flag, saying, send me. You get a politician involved. It doesn't go well. We just came off the longest two wars in American history, Iraq and Afghanistan. And you look at the countless heroes, heroes that said, I'll go after 9-11. And you look at what came back. War is always bad. In my experience, and I've been a shitload of it, it's always bad. I wonder what sort of psychological toll that stuff takes on you emotionally, even like spiritually. I know you think about that more now than you used to. I went down hard, man. I think I've done well in my life. Now I'm happy and I have a good life.

33:45that was not the case for a long time. You were drinking a lot. I mean, the book mentions alcohol several times. Yeah. Those people who drink moderately don't have that many alcohol references in one publication. Well, that's probably true, but I think many people that live life experiences wouldn't write as intimately as I did. You read that thing. Yeah. How many people have you ever known that said, I did this and I did that? That book didn't do me any good in terms of being a paradigm of virtue in the world, right? No. But the reason I wrote that book was because I feel that the people that do take my path, and there aren't many, and that have the ability to write it down, need to do that.

34:21Because somebody's got to tell that story. Not everybody wants to admit that story exists. They can take aim at me for a lot of different things. But it's the truth about that world in a way that I felt I could write down that would make sense to people, good, bad, or otherwise. I should have a little bit of context. But I wanted to be a writer, so I came to California. and I wrote for Orange Coast Magazine, trying to be a rock star. Lived in Orange County, didn't go well. I went back and was an English teacher at a boarding school. Then I went and worked for a newspaper. Then I got hired to be a speechwriter in DC.

34:54Then I ended up in the FBI. So there's the media side, the government side. Then on 9-11, my first book came out September 12th, 2001. So I'd already resigned from the FBI to go into writing. I said, well, I've done all I can in the FBI. I'm going to go after this now. NBC hired me. So I went to work for NBC. So I was on air. I was that talking head talking about all this stuff. So I was on the Today Show and Nightly News. My first book signing was September 12th, 2001 at a Borders in the South Tower of the World Trade Center. So September 11th, I was supposed to go to New York for a book signing on the next morning.

35:30And I was in my FBI office when the towers went down. And I'd already been scheduled because it was a big press tour. My first show was Larry King Live. Do you remember Larry King? Sure, yeah, I used to know Larry. Really? Yeah. Is that right? Yeah. That was the first show I ever did. And then it went from Larry to all the other shows and NBC and ended up getting a show on NBC with Martha McCallum who went to Fox, a daily show. Yeah. And so I worked in TV for five years. GQ excerpted my first book and I had the inside cover of GQ magazine, which was wide ridicule, hatred from guys I worked with.

36:05It was absurd. It was so bad. It was so stupid. It was so idiotic. But they excerpted the book and they put me on the masted. So I wrote for them. And then the New York Times hired me to write op-eds. So I was writing for the New York Times, GQ, and I was on NBC. But I went out to Langley and set up a thing where I could work using those covers for elements within the intelligence committee. That's how I got into the intelligence side of things. So basically you were a journalist and then you were like, hey, I could use this to be a spy and a journalist. That's right. Yeah. That's right. I didn't necessarily do spy stuff.

36:40I worked with spies, but I had specific skills that worked in those environments in support of spies, if that makes sense. It does. There was one part in the book you said you were selling technology to intelligence organizations or something like that. Yeah, that's another element of it. That was much, much later because when I grew up, I grew up with this guy named Harold Janine, who was one of the world's first multinationalists. and he, this is also widely written about because I know you get the bullshit factor like shut this guy up, he's just bullshit but it's all documented. When Random House bought this book they made me prove everything, photographs.

37:11I'm surprised that publisher gave a shit honestly because I read stuff and I go there's no way any of this is true and the publisher's like That's what they said. We don't really care. Yeah, no, they said they cared. They cared. So they wanted to see the plane ticket from Somalia. They wanted contracts from the United Nations. Which publisher? Random House. Props to them for giving a shit. I swear, a lot of the books I read I go, I'll call Penguin and go guys, come on ask anybody who's ever worked in this industry and let me introduce you to somebody who will tell you that this isn't even possible I gotta give a shout out to the legal department at Random House because I've done two books with them, I did this book and I've got another one a true crime book that's coming out shortly both with them and they're the best, I mean I think the world of those guys they're remarkable, my previous publisher was Time Warner, they were fantastic and now I'm at HarperCollins They're good.

37:56But anyway, they verified absolutely everything. But going back to the intelligence side of things, my Uncle Harold was, he started ITT, which is now community colleges or something like that, but in the day was the world's first multinational corporation. He's a Time Magazine Man of the Year. He's the highest paid executive for a decade. He's a remarkable guy, but he was a private money financier for the CIA. He would use his money or the company's money to finance CIA operations, one of which was in Chile. He paid cash money to overthrow the government of Salvador Ande in Chile in 1970 or 71, something like that.

38:35What's in it for him to use his own money to do that? Because ITT was International Telephone and Telegraph. They used copper for the wires. A lot of copper was produced in Chile. They had a general strike. Chile nationalized the companies, and they put ITT out of business to a certain extent. The company of ITT had an interest in getting copper from Chile, the U.S. government had a vested interest in keeping communications. So the government needed phones and telegraphs and everything else, which were produced by ITT. So it was an interface, and there is to this day. People don't realize that much of, almost the vast majority of what the U.S.

39:13government buys and uses is produced by private corporations. Electric Boat, General Dynamics, Raytheon, et cetera, et cetera. DARPA, the Defense Advanced Advanced Research Projects Agency. I believe that's what it is. And I've done a lot of stuff with them. A lot of stuff. Like an invisible suit. We made this invisible sniper suit using light fiber optic. That's awesome. Oh, they do crazy stuff. Does it work? It worked pretty well, but I don't know what happened. I mean, I don't know where it is right now. Yeah, current. They do crazy stuff. You can't see it. That was kind of a generic. Could be a guy sitting in the corner wearing one right now.

39:45Yeah, like a Monsanto ghillie suit, right? Yeah. It's just going on. You step on the carpet and you're like, what the hell? There's a person under here. I mean, it seems possible. It was kind of like that thing in Predator. You know when Predator's got the cloaking thing? Yeah. It was very much like that. It had sensors that would read what's around you and it would feed it to the fiber optics. It was actually very, very good. Just projects what's behind it to the front. Here's another thing. I remember I had this project one time and if you shoot from a helicopter at something, it's hard because the helicopter's moving.

40:13If you're shooting at a boat, the boat's moving, the helicopter and the boat's moving, the odds of hitting something are small. Yeah. It's bad. Yeah, yeah. So a buddy of mine in Hollywood, a movie director, was whatever. I called him up and I said, how do you stabilize the cameras? Yeah, that's a good idea. In a helicopter. And he said, go see this guy in the valley. I fly from Quantico, Virginia, out to LA, go over the 405, and I end up in this guy's place. It's the same guy that invented the jet pack. The guy flying around in the jet pack. The water one? I don't know if it was water. I think it was air.

40:41The first one was air. It became, now it's like you go to Cancun and you drink two margaritas and go for a ride. Yeah. Back in the day. But he was a fascinating guy. So we pioneered a sniper platform based on what was the Steadicam concept, which generates artificial mass with inertia. It just spins a wheel and it stabilizes. Anyway, the point of the story is that going back to all these organizations, that many of them are private. They produce money. And the interface between the application from the federal government and the private industry behind them, that interface is massive, massive, massive money.

41:21And that's what I wanted a piece of. Who's the guy that paid to overthrow the government? His name is Harold Janine. Google him. Harold Janine. It's widely written about. But anyway, they killed, I think it was Salvador A.N. they killed, but they sent, they being the Chilean government, sent a hit team after him and they blew up their offices building in New York. And he went to hide out in an estate that he had in northern New Hampshire. So I grew up, he hired a guy named Jack McCone, who I call Jack. It was John A. McCone, I think. But he was the acting director of the CIA and Harold Janine hired him to come to work and made him a board member at ITT.

41:54So I grew up with these guys, spies and the money behind them, just hanging out in this house in New Hampshire. And it was an interesting interface as my life moved forward because I had that perspective in youth. So he pays to overthrow the government in Chile. And in return, he gets access to copper and the CIA gets to overthrow the government in Chile. Yeah, but the CIA per se did not have an interest in overthrowing the government in Chile. Okay. The U.S. government had a strategic national security interest in having communications. at the time in order to have communications you needed to have wires in order to have wires you needed copper and where do you get the copper you get it in chile they needed to make that friendly enough to buy the copper basically they shut the copper off they nationalize the interest i just mean they wanted to undo that the government yeah yes right so who's the mechanism for the federal government at that time right the cia you're not going to send the postal service after him right you're not going to send a marshal service after him so the cia put it together but the money in these things, Jordan, we can't talk about this in one conversation, but the money is fascinating.

42:56The dumb question is why doesn't the CIA just pay to have the government overthrown? Why do they need Harold's money? Because the way you spend it. Remember, here's a perfect example. Remember the Oliver North thing with the birthday cake and the Sandinistas? I was just going to bring that up because I had Oliver North on the show and I asked him about this and he gave me the most ridiculously upside down answer ever. Look, he's not going to say it, but I am. I'm going to tell you. Not that anybody cares because this is ancient history. Does it still go on? Of course it does. Of course it still goes on.

43:21I mean, ask anybody, ask a private first class who was in Interlinked Air Force Base or whatever, the joint base, about pallets of$100 bills flying into Iraq and Afghanistan for 20 years. The world operates in cash. We buy stuff. It's so much easier to pay money for something than it is to blow it up. Sometimes you got to do both. But the world, my exposure to how the world of money interface with a government world of intelligence operations was the most fascinating thing I've done in my life and finding out how to work in that world and how complex that world is. And on a very, really pedestrian level, you could see in Timor because it was the money was coming in from China and it was, you know, a UN guy from Africa would take his money back to Africa.

44:10He'd take all those fake dollars back to Africa. But my Uncle Harold growing up was bigger money with bigger operations. And today, the money and the bigger operations are astronomically exponentially larger. Private money in the government intelligence community around the world, in my life, that's the most fascinating thing I've ever been involved with. Yeah. Give me another example of this because I think, I mean, is there another sort of common example? Okay. Well, I'll give you an example that I'll try not to get in trouble with, but I I helped build a company that had a technology and it was a very cool technology and it appealed to intelligence agencies.

44:48So vague. I don't want to be because because I really I love the guys. Yeah. The company still exists to a certain extent. OK. And I don't want to step on a bunch of cranks, but I'll just talk conceptually about how it goes. Let's say you come up with a phone and this phone could it could count to 10. OK. So you find all the intelligence agencies in the world that want to count to 10. and you label them. And because of my connections, I could get ahold of them. So I would go to Mozambique. I would go to Israel. I would go to Lebanon. I would go, well, maybe not Lebanon, because there are exclusion lists.

45:23There are countries that you can't talk to. Yeah, Iran or whatever. I never talked to Iran. But did I talk to elements within Iraq? Yes. Did I talk to countries that did not necessarily have great relationships with Israel? Yes. Because they all want it. And it's business. That's the way business works. I mean, if you think that But Raytheon is not selling missiles to other places you're out of your mind, right? I mean, that's the way it is. It has to be approved on some levels. Anyways, I've got some crazy arms steel stories for you. So I have this watch, and a watch can count to 10. What people don't know about the watch that can count to 10 that I'm going to sell to you, let's say, pick a country.

45:58You're the intelligence agency for Turkey. Let's go to Turkey. So I was a former FBI agent who had worked for intelligence community, including the CIA. and it was fairly widely known because I'd talked about it on CNN or CNBC and NBC. And I did it for about five years. So it's not like I was a secret. I'm not saying I was famous, but I was not a secret. So I ended up in this office in Ankara. I didn't end up there. I went there all the time. I was in Ankara all the time. Ankara, Turkey, it was just like Santa Monica. So I ended up in this office with this guy who was a retired military officer.

46:34I'm not going to say his rank because I don't want to get him in trouble because you can get in real trouble dealing with these guys. So we're in this place. It's on the second floor of a beach house in Santa Monica. So I'm sitting there with a buddy of mine who is a crazy out there guy. He's a full-on arms merchant who's dead now, so we can talk about him. But he was very high up in the Republican Party of the United States government. He was married to a woman who was a name. Okay. So we're on a couch and this military officer who's retired, who's putting the whole together is over here. French doors that open this nice sunny day.

47:06Santa Monica. These two guys come in and this one guy looks like something straight out of a Van Damme movie. Like Chuck Norris movie. He's got the chest hair. He's got a cheap suit. He's got gold chains. He's got like food. Turkish odd job basically. He's got crumbs in his chest hair. And he's got a walleye. I say walleye. My dad is a walleye. So I'm not trying to piss people off. Is that like a lazy eye? Yeah, yeah. So he's looking at me like this. But the other guys The other eye is looking over here, and I'm trying to figure out what he's looking at because I know he's loaded. I know he's carrying a gun.

47:37Sure. And I'm thinking, I'm not sure how this thing is going to go. And I was going to their organization, the organization they called it. There's an intelligence component. So I'm there selling this thing, the watch that counts to 10, with this guy. And then this little tiny guy that's with him is the money guy. And he's doing all the talking while Oddjob is staring at me with this. One of his eyes. With one of his eyes. And I'm not trying to make fun of this. It was hysterical. It was funny. I mean, I was trying not to laugh the whole time because it was so stupid, but it was so real. It was bad.

48:10So anyways, I'm there to sell the watch that counts to 10. All of a sudden, my buddy over here, who's a real guy in government, all of a sudden, they start talking about buying this very specific brand of machine guns and proximity fuses for projectable ordnance. And at some point in that thing, I go, wait a minute. We're not selling watches. is we're here, we're selling proximity fuses for ordnance and various types of machine gun. Then they stopped talking, whatever else. They were going to Sudan. So they're talking about delivery to a certain place. This big arms deal is going down at this nice looking house in Santa Monica that's in Ankara, Turkey.

48:47And so we do this deal and we say, okay, then we go to this, the meeting that I was really there for to sell the watch. It counts to 10. Is this making sense? So far, so good. Okay, good. So I know this meeting that we're going to is with Erdogan's intelligence organization. I know that. They know I'm coming. I walk in the room and there's a conference table, 10 chairs, any conference room in the world could be wherever. There's a board and I'm going to make my presentation on the board. I walk in, there's three guys at the table sitting down and there's a guy standing over on the side looking out the window, nefarious looking, right?

49:22right? You make these assessments very simple and very quickly. There's nothing, I mean, anybody could, you know the game. So the guys turn around and one of them stands up and shakes my hand. The other two just stare at me. It's all posturing. And so we go through the whole thing and I'm making my pitch. And this guy from the window turns around like 45 minutes into this conversation. The guy at the window turns around and looks at me and he goes in perfect English, almost on accent and English says, why would I listen to a former FBI agent who works for the CIA who talked about all the stuff on NBC, come in here and sell me this watch that counts to 10?

49:59And I said, because all your enemies already have. He has to. What he didn't know is that the watch that counts to 10 has a backdoor in the service agreement that downloads me everything he does. Right. Yeah, sure. Just a Trojan horse. So does that happen constantly in private industry? Yes, of course it does. You buy a phone and, you know, Nokia or iPhone wants to listen to whatever else. Tim Cook's listening to our conversation right now. Exactly. But that's the world we live in. Yeah. But what happens is that you get in these situations where somebody decides that it's not a good thing that they're doing with that.

50:37And then private industry decides to go in a certain direction that does not jibe with the Biden administration going to the Trump administration because all of the intelligence objectives change. Or a general gets fired, another one gets hired, and things change. It becomes outrageously complex because it's very difficult to tell what the common denominator is at any given time. So you see that in business all the time. You start a hotel, it goes out of fashion. Another one comes up, a new shoe, a podcast is up, a podcast is down. It's the world. But when you do it and the consequence is you lose a lot of money in investments, that's one thing.

51:15When the consequence is you just don't come home, that's a little different. And I like that. I like that consequence. You like that consequence? Yes. You like it's more exciting to you? I don't know if it's exciting. It's more complex. I like the problem-solving mechanism that goes along with that. I see. So what are you doing now to scratch that itch now that you don't live in East Timor? Write books. Is that doing it for you? It's not doing it in the same way. Yeah, I can imagine. I'm not pitching a new book, but I got to say this. You know that story, the Brian Koberger case in Idaho? Oh, is he the one, the guy who killed the college kids in the house?

51:50Yes, pled guilty to killing four college kids in Idaho. Yeah. horrible crime, tragedy in every imaginable way. And it is not what you think. Say more about that. I got to be careful what I say, but it's widely talked about. It's probably the most widely true crime case in quite some time. For sure. Yeah. And the police department, meaning the Moscow police department, the Idaho state police, various organizations have given out a lot of information, but under a 1964 Supreme court case, Brady versus Maryland, the prosecution has to give all of their information to the defense, meaning everything, scopulatory information and everything.

52:26The defense has to farm that out to get experts to interpret it. Like we all know about the DNA in a knife sheath. We know about the cell phone tower pings. We know about the white car that was subpotted. We know Bill Thompson's case, the prosecutor, we know about his case because he said at the hearing, the plea change hearing, what those things were. So a lot of this information is out there. What people don't know is that files about 59 ,000 separate items, comprising hundreds of thousands, well, I don't exaggerate, well over 200 ,000 bits of information, data points in this thing. And hypothetically speaking, if somebody looked at that and had six months to analyze that, it is astonishing what people don't know and what actually happened.

53:08I find the consequence extraordinary because you have the murders of four young people and you have a guy in prison for the rest of his life who pleaded guilty to this. And when people find out what happened, it'll be shocking. Yeah. I have no theories. I don't speculate anything. All I do is line up documents as they were found and presented. I don't know how to explain it except that it's baffling. Only at Gitmo do you find McDonald's and moral crisis in the same zip code. That is a weird combo meal. Speaking of mixed feelings, here's a quick word from the fine folks helping us keep the lights on.

53:42We'll be right back. This episode is sponsored in part by Quince. Cold mornings, holiday plans. This time of year, I just want to feel cozy and look sharp. That's Quince. I love wearing Quince's Mongolian cashmere sweaters, which are 50 bucks. They're so warm. They're so soft. As well as their wool coats. They're stylish, durable, and about a third of the price you'd pay at some fancy department store. And Quince isn't just clothing. They've got everything. Home goods, travel gear, bedding, accessories. I actually just grabbed one of their expandable large suitcases because I'm gearing up for a two-week trip to Patagonia.

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54:46Free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince dot com slash Jordan. This episode is also sponsored by Tonal. I like strength training. I work out often, but realistically, I am not the guy who pushes himself real hard when I work out alone. And I think that's just human nature. That's why Tonal is so great because Tonal is the ultimate strength training system. It's basically like having a full gym and a personal trainer built into your wall. Sleek, compact, available 24-7. It gives you the convenience of a full gym with the structure and accountability to stay on track. It starts with a quick strength assessment to set the perfect weight for every move, then automatically adjust in one-pound increments as you get stronger.

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55:54Tonal dot com for$1 ,000 off. This episode is also sponsored in part by Progressive. You ever find yourself playing the budgeting game, shifting a little money here, a little there, hoping it all works out? Well, with the Name Your Price tool from Progressive, you can be a better budgeter and potentially lower your car insurance bill too. You tell Progressive what you want to pay for car insurance, they'll help you find options within your budget. Try it today at Progressive.com. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates. Pricing coverage match limited by state law. Not available in all states.

56:23If you like this episode of the show, I invite you to do what other smart and considerate listeners do, which is take a moment, support the amazing sponsors, they make the show possible. All of the deals discount codes and ways to support the show are searchable and clickable on the website at jordanharbinger.com slash deals. If you can't remember the name of a sponsor, can't find a code, please do email us. Jordan at jordanharbinger.com. We are happy to surface codes for you. It is that important that you support those who support the show. Now for the rest of my conversation with Chris Whitcomb.

56:52It seems like a wide departure from setting up a security company in East Timor or meeting warlords in Afghanistan. saying you're like next stop true crime podcast yeah yeah yeah yeah it's uh no it's not a podcast i'm just i know i'm kidding but it's like in a similar vein right yeah you stay busy man yeah you gotta find something so the complexity of that is what appeals to you the complexity appeals to me and i did another one i did another another book that's coming out before after that i don't know a cold case 32 year old cold case in springfield missouri and found the guy in solve the crime and that was the same thing putting you found the guy in solve the crime yes really yeah Yeah.

57:26In writing the book. Yes. Can you speak to that a little bit? That's actually kind of crazy. Okay. 1992, three women disappear from a house in Springfield, Missouri. It's called the Springfield Three. Google it. There are a very large number of blogs, podcasts, documentaries. It's been everything, 48 hours. The Oprah Winfrey Show is a very, very widely known case. 33 years after the fact, I was looking, I was saying, what am I going to do now? And I got access to the entire file. the case has never been closed in 33 years. The police department kept it open so they would not have to disclose information.

58:00If a case is open, it's not discoverable under freedom of information laws for your request. Right. That's what journalists like us used to go, you have to tell me this. And they go, no, I don't. And then we say, I'm going to compel you to do it. So the way around that is to go, sorry, this is an ongoing investigation. Can't talk about it. Well, that was the case for 33 years. But I was friends with people that did the initial investigation. One of them took a bootleg file of the entire case and had it in his garage for 33 years. And he says, go get him, kid. So I started going through it and it was very obvious, very quickly what happened.

58:32And it's taken all this time to get the police department, they're fully engaged with it right now. But it was a mother, her daughter and her daughter's friend disappeared after graduation on a Saturday into Sunday morning, disappeared. And no clue has ever been found. Nothing until now. You can't tell us what happened or did it? I don't want to tell you right now because that would blow the book and I don't have the publication date on it. Oh, it's not out yet. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You did say that. No, but I will say this. The case is not that far behind JonBenet Ramsey in terms of people that know the case.

59:03Yeah, sure. And it's really fascinating, compelling. And the solution, what actually happened, I went out and interviewed one of the two guys that were involved in it. And the truth about what happened in this case is stunning. I got to get handed to you. Whenever I see these complex investigations, I just think, man, somebody's looking at all these grains of sand and just arranging them into a picture. I don't have the patience. They don't. Oh, yeah, that's what I'm trying to do. Yeah. I don't have patience, but I'm disciplined. I don't have any patience, but if I've got a matter of hand, I can be very focused on it.

59:36This is so funny, right? Because it's like, oh, what are you going to do when you retire? Oh, I'm going to do jigsaw puzzles. You see these old people doing jigsaw puzzles? And you're like, yeah, me too. But what you're doing is you're taking - But I want 200 ,000 pieces and no picture. And no picture on the front. Just white. That's right. And then you're going to make a page. So you're like the Chris Whitcomb version of the little old lady doing a thousand piece jigsaw puzzle. Yeah. I don't know what Chris Whitcomb is a version of anything. I have no clue, right? People come on and they're a rapper or they're a sports star or they're a celebrity, whatever else, and their life makes sense.

1:00:08Mine doesn't make sense. No. It doesn't. That's true. Man, I have a question for you. You mentioned in the book, so you started doing those extraordinary renditions. And first of all, tell us what that means, because a lot of people will think, oh, I've heard of that, but I don't know what that is. There are two laws under the Reagan administration, 1984 and 1986. I think it was like the Diplomatic Security Act or something. They're very obscure laws, but you can Google them. And I talked about them. I cite them in the book. Okay. But at that time, the government looked for terrorists as they wanted to arrest them and prosecute them.

1:00:39And prior to 9-11, there were a lot of them. When I left the FBI, the entity that I worked in the FBI, we classified 66 different organizations as terrorist organizations. Okay. Including, I talked to somebody the other day about what's going on in Gaza with Israel. I've been to PLO headquarters in Gaza with Yasser Arafat with a machine gun under my jacket pocket. I'll show you a picture of it after this if you're interested in. Yeah, sure. Definitely. So I had a lot of exposure doing these really out there things. But when the U.S. government decided somebody was bad and they needed to come back for justice, they would usually be hiding in a country that did not want to give them back.

1:01:18Yeah. So we'd have to go get them. So you don't just walk up, knock on the door and show them an FBI badge and say, could you come with me, sir? Doesn't work that way. So I will just use this as an example. There's a very famous case that people can Google where I think it was 12 CIA employees were indicted in Italy for an operation that went bad. and that was very, very widely publicized. So it would be that type of an operation. You put together a surreptitious entry into a reasonably denied area with the objective of arresting somebody, bringing them back to the United States and trying them and putting them in jail.

1:01:54That's the idea. When you go into a country like that, you just don't show up and stay at a Marriott. Well, actually, you do show up and stay at a Marriott. Okay, good. But you're selling like tripods for cameras or something, right? Sure, yeah. Yeah. And - Got that titanium status. So that rendition means the extraction of someone charged under U.S. law at the time, charged under U.S. law to be brought back without the, necessarily without the consent of the government of the country you need to go in to get them. Gotcha. Okay. And you say in the book, if you want someone tortured, you send them to Syria.

1:02:28If you want them disappeared, you send them to Egypt. If you want them interrogated, you send them to Jordan. The uncomfortable question is who gets tortured, who gets disappeared and who just gets interrogated? What kind of people get put in each place? Well, they're all bad. Well, I would hope so. Well, actually, that's not true. Because look, I've been to Guantanamo Bay. Yeah. And I've seen a lot of people that I didn't necessarily think were bad. And I can tell you this, it doesn't matter who I thought was bad. Somebody else made that decision. Yeah. And a whole lot of the time they were wrong.

1:02:56We all know about enhanced interrogation. Yeah. And the compliance gestures and sick and adobament pinch on somebody where they're wearing women's underwear on their head. The abuses are widely written about. I was never the person who made that decision. Wasn't there a 13-year-old kid at Guantanamo Bay? Yes. I mean, how can that guy be that? There's no scenario in which that kid is the best. I wrote about most of these stories I read about in the book. But when I went to Guantanamo Bay, it was surreal. When I was a little kid, there was this thing called a TV show. And this person was trapped on an island, and they were trying to escape.

1:03:28And this bubble would come over and wrap them up every time to escape. A surreal island when nothing made sense, that was Guantanamo Bay. And I went down there and I saw how these prisoners were being held, who they were, what their process was like. And it would take five of these episodes just to explain that because a lot of the people doing these interrogations, I had trained. I taught interrogation for the FBI and to the CIA for a short period of time. But anyways, looking around this thing with a government minder, They'd show you, now we do this and they have a balanced meal and they get a Bible or they get a Koran.

1:04:02And this is, you know, there's an arrow pointing to Mecca. And then you go out there at night and you hear them screaming. I mean, it sounded like it was hell on earth in certain ways, right? And everybody that's walking around would greet each other not by saying, hey, how are you doing this morning? Good morning. They would say, fair, firm, and impartial. It was this mantra. That's creepy somehow. Creepy. You just walk around and everybody you see goes, fair, firm, and impartial. You go, what? It's like a 1984 scene. Yeah, it was just, the whole thing was surreal. Those were stupid examples.

1:04:32Writ large, it was bizarre. However, they had one little compound set off to the side. I think they called it Camp Iguana, but it was a house and a building. And it was completely surrounded by, it looked like a tennis court. You know, the 10-foot fence with a green cloth that you have around tennis courts. You know what I mean? Oh, yeah. It's like a green tarp. Yeah. So that you couldn't see in. But they wouldn't admit at the time that it was a 13-year-old, but they had three, at the time they had three kids that were 13 and younger there. Why? But listen to this story. So the guy that ran Guantanamo Bay when I was there, his name was General Jeffrey Miller.

1:05:11And he left Guantanamo Bay to take over Abergrave Prison, where they had the dogs on guys, same guy. Yeah. And he had kids of his own. I don't know this. I talked to him, but I didn't ask him this question. But I was told by one of the people that worked for him that he was upset that these kids were being held on Guantanamo Bay. So he cut a big square out of the green cloth in the 10-foot high concertina wall where they were imprisoned 12 ,000 miles from home so that they could look out into the ocean so it would make them feel better. That's just so, it's so horrible somehow. You just see things that, But in those situations, in my experience, in my experience, you see so many things that don't make sense.

1:05:57So they don't end up in the New York Times and they don't end up on CNN. I mean, they do brilliant jobs. I'm not knocking those news agencies. I'm saying that the craziest shit that you see living in a life like mine, eventually it all just seems like a few silly Jerry universe. You know, it all seems nonsensical. That's true. Man, your book, the one I read will be linked to the show notes. and then the new one's coming out sometime. One of them is coming out in February and one I think is coming out in April. Okay, so we won't leave. But Anonymous Mail is the one here. That's the one out, yeah.

1:06:29And I really, I wanted to come and talk to you and you got to write a book to do it. You're about to hear a preview of the Jordan Harbinger Show with geopolitics analyst Peter Zion. We're kind of in this soft moment in history where everyone's holding their breath and wondering if the next time there's an incident the U.S. is going to intervene or not. And I would argue we are not. safety on the waves is what allows us to have the East Asian manufacturing model. Less than 1 % of that shipping happens on land. And that is a recipe for 1910s and 1930s style conflict and competition. Countries are increasingly finding in their best interest to kind of hoard what consumption they do have and not allow trade access to it and then producing more locally.

1:07:13We were moving this way before the Ukraine war, before the Chinese started to break down. and before the German industrial model started to implode. This has just sped everything up. So we'll probably see significant drops in agricultural output next year, especially in the second half of next year, which should suggest that we're going to have significant problems with food supply on a global scale in the months that follow. I mean, the food issue is the issue that gives me nightmares because I don't see a way to fix it. The biggest loser by far is China. Everything about China's functionality is dependent on a globalization and a demographic moment that has passed.

1:07:49I think we're in the final decade of the European Union because without that Russian energy, there is no German manufacturing model. And without the German manufacturing model, you don't have the money that is used to keep the EU in existence. The pace of the disintegration here is really difficult to wrap your mind around. We've had a really good run the last 75 years. It was never going to last. It's going to be a rough ride. So anyone who thinks this is going to be easy is wrong in every possible way. For more about how globalization and our way of life will change dramatically in the coming decade, check out episode 781 of The Jordan Harbinger Show.

1:08:27Man, what a ride from FBI standoffs and warlords in Afghanistan to black magic in East Timor and a full-blown identity crisis somewhere between God and a surfboard in Indonesia. Man, Chris Whitcomb's life is proof that you can run 100 covert ops, dodge death a dozen times, and still wake up one morning realizing the real battle is the one going on in your own head. Some people are just built different. All things Chris Wickham will indeed be in the show notes at jordanharbinger.com. Advertisers, deals, discount codes, and ways to support the show at jordanharbinger.com slash deals. Please consider supporting those who support the show.

1:09:02Also, our newsletter, We Bit Wiser, we've revamped this a little bit. It's a two-minute read. It's very practical, something that'll have an immediate impact on your decisions, psychology, relationships, every Wednesday just about. And if you haven't signed up yet, I invite you to come and check it out. It is a great companion to the show. JordanHarbinger.com slash news is where you can find it. Six Minute Networking. Don't forget about that as well on SixMinuteNetworking.com. I'm at JordanHarbinger on Twitter and Instagram. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn. And this show is created in association with Podcast One.

1:09:29My team is Jen Harbinger, Jace, Sanderson, Robert Fogarty, Tata Sidlowskis, Ian Baird, and Gabriel Mizrahi. Remember, we rise by lifting others. The fee for the show is you share it with friends when you find something useful or interesting. the greatest compliment you can give us is to share the show with those you care about. If you know somebody who's into this black ops undercover type stuff, these episodes are quite popular. Definitely share this episode with them. In the meantime, I hope you apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you learn. And we'll see you next time.

1:10:01Thank you for listening to the Murdoch Murders podcast. The show that started it all. 93 episodes will take you on a journey of twists and turns, ups and downs, tears and belly laughs. We continue this mission with our newest evolution, True Sunlight. Luna Shark's True Sunlight podcast is the antithesis of true crime. True Sunlight values accuracy over access journalism. True Sunlight is shed with empathy, not exploitation. True Sunlight is the intersection of journalism, true crime, and systemic corruption. We continue to shed light on Stephen Smith's case and Alex Murdoch's co-conspirators. But also, we like to take deep dives into other cases around the country.

1:10:47True Sunlight empowers listeners to understand their legal and judicial systems with our unique brand of pesky journalism. Listen to True Sunlight wherever you get your podcasts or visit truesunlight.com to learn more. This episode is sponsored in part by Cup of Justice Podcast. Ever feel like you want to understand the legal system better? Well, you can start that journey by diving into the Cup of Justice podcast. It can be tough to grasp the complexities of our justice system. I'm a lawyer, non-practicing now, and it's complex even for me, but it can be a lot easier when you've got the right guides.

1:11:18Mandy Matney and Liz Farrell, the journalists who famously cracked open the Murdoch case, teaming up with renowned attorney Eric Bland. This trio brings together a blend of legal expertise, journalistic rigor, and a relentless pursuit of truth that makes the murky waters of justice clear and accessible. We're all bound to encounter the legal system at some point, so why not get savvy about it while enjoying captivating stories from both the newsroom and the courtroom? It'll be your gateway to gaining the knowledge and tools you need to navigate or even challenge public authorities. Check out Cup of Justice wherever you get your podcasts.