127. Was Epstein A Russian Spy?

18:32John Sipher:I think that's fascinating because, you know, in the Epstein series that Gordon and I did back in January, you know... When are we going to make fun of Gordon, by the way? We could do it right now.

18:46David McCloskey:No, no. Let's wait till the end. We'll wait till the end.

18:47John Sipher:We got to try to weave it. Yeah, it'll just be a chunk at the end where we just tear into Gordon Carrera. He's on vacation right now.

18:55David McCloskey:by the way, on the regular podcast now.

18:57John Sipher:Thank you. I make it, it's one of my North Stars. It is my North Star for the podcast. It's targeting Gordon. I think, you know, we talked a bit in the series on the Epstein-Massad, or, you know, examining the sort of Epstein-Massad connection of, you know, about how, you know, really, like, for example, I think I texted like 20 formers from the agency and said, prior to Epstein's conviction, like, how would you have seen this guy? Like, would he have been a viable, you know, sort of target for recruitment?

19:36David McCloskey:And I hope everybody said no.

19:39John Sipher:Before the conviction, almost everyone said yes, John.

19:42David McCloskey:What?

19:43John Sipher:Yes, you were one of the outliers, if I recall.

19:46David McCloskey:Well, we don't recruit American citizens for the most part.

19:48John Sipher:Well, no, no, sorry, I'm putting that aside. I meant like, just the guy himself. Like, would he be a valuable, you know, would you want, would an intelligence service have an interest in him?

20:01David McCloskey:Well, that's what, as we talk here, that that's also the way to look at Trump too, is like, it's one thing for someone to have vulnerabilities that make you interested in that person. Oh my God, they have all these things that I might be able to take advantage of. Huge ego, corruption, they want money, blah, blah, blah. So that's interesting to like, you might have an interest in that person, but also at some point, the more you look at them, you realize, is it someone you could actually trust? Are they going to follow your rules? Are they going to follow your control? Are they someone who can, when they're giving you information on stuff they have access to, they're not embellishing?

20:36David McCloskey:So it's one thing to say, oh, that guy looks interesting, but then I want to have a secret long-term productive relationship where I trust this guy over a long period of time, and i wouldn't trust either donald trump or jeffrey epstein yeah well and so i guess that

20:53John Sipher:makes i mean so from the that's true from the agency side let's say but from the russian side of things i mean my understanding would be that just in general russian intelligence would have um they would look at a much broader target set as as potential not not necessarily as like assets in the way we think about them where it's a clandestine relationship where you've got some control and they produce intelligence that essentially they steal secrets for you in secret, right? That's kind of what we think about when we're talking about a case officer, agent or asset relationship. But the Russian view of that is more, I guess, flexible.

21:37John Sipher:Maybe you can talk a little bit about that or if I've characterized it right.

21:40David McCloskey:Sure. Yeah. So let me try to put it in context. Like I said, in the West, we collect intelligence to provide to the analysts, to provide to policymakers, right? In Russia, it's much more about keeping the leadership in power. So they have a much wider view of how they use their intelligence services. So to go back to in the West or the CIA, for example, we're looking for fully vetted, clandestine, controlled sources, that word control is important, who reliably follow our tasking and can keep themselves secure and safe. So in the US model, that's a defining feature of agent handling is control.

22:16David McCloskey:So case officers, that's what we were that ran spy networks. We really prize sources who can deliver unique, sensitive information and they follow, reliably follow direction. So the relationship stays covert, secure and productive. So we're looking for positive motivation. We want people who are doing this because it's in their personal interest and they want to keep it secure and safe, just like we do. The Russian approach, as you mentioned, being more elastic or expansive or nuanced, is they tend to, and this happened throughout the Soviet period just as well as now, so they draw value from a much wider range of individuals and groups that can benefit their interests, whether they operate as witting undercover spies or not.

22:57David McCloskey:So they'll leverage everybody from recruited penetrations like we did to semi-witting intermediaries. If you remember it in the Soviet time, there's that term fellow travelers. So it can be periodic enablers. It can be extremists. It can be fringe political actors, propagandists. So they would be interested in talking to journalists or people who may not even realize they're working for Russian intelligence, but they're helping them in some way. And I know you've talked about and you've used this in your podcast. There is a Russian term that they use called useful idiots, right? So they're looking, they don't just need this super secret motivated person to work for them.

23:35David McCloskey:They want, they'll meet with a variety of people, some who are super secret spies and some who are, you know, they can just get their propaganda message out. There's some people who are just, you know, believe their bullshit and then regurgitate it. There's people who just are looking to make some money. We see all over Europe now, for example, they're putting these message boards out there to give people money to go do things like spray paint Nazi symbols on Jewish synagogues or to blow up trains that are going to Ukraine, all these other kind of things. So they use a much wider group of people than we do.

24:13Yeah. And I guess, I mean, so that brings us then directly to the question of Epstein, which is if you put on, you know, I think one of the things we should say is it seems quite unlikely that Epstein or

24:29John Sipher:anyone who was handling him or interacting with him from an intelligence service, if indeed that was happening, would have ever been doing this over his like G vacation Gmail account. Right. So like we're unlikely in many of the files that have come out to ever really be able to substantiate a connection with an intelligence service, because by definition, if we're going to see anything, it just.

24:55David McCloskey:But like you said at the beginning, though, separate channel.

24:58John Sipher:Right.

24:58David McCloskey:Yeah. But but like you said at the beginning, they're willing to use other resources. So if you're the ambassador jerking at the UN, you will do what the Kremlin and the intelligence services want you to do. So if they say, hey, listen, you need to go out there and engage with this guy because he's doing things that benefit us and like, you know, put some information into his head or like talk to him and see the kind of people he's in touch with because we want to know about that. So that's part of the sort of more nuanced thing is like, he's useful to them even if he's not, you know, meeting them on a street corner and following, you know, your directions, A, B, C, D.

25:31David McCloskey:Like the world, the dirty world of money and money laundering and girls and blackmail and, you know, sleaze is something that they're really interested in. They want to know what these important people in the West are doing that's corrupt or criminal.

25:49John Sipher:Yeah. Yeah. So Russian Intel hat on, John, which I know you love to put that hat on, the fur, the dog fur Ushanka of Russian intelligence, which I believe you actually do possess a dog fur Ushanka.

26:03David McCloskey:When I lived in Moscow, I remember going out to look at an election out in the middle of Siberia somewhere. Obviously, the economic situation was quite bad. And literally, these old people would stand in the street with their one or two possessions to sell. And this woman had this big, you know, Russian shopka, like big woolen, it was the winter hat. And it looked really warm. And I went up to her. I said, oh, yeah, that's nice. How much is it? She goes, oh, this is top quality fur, dog fur. I'm like, oh, dog. Okay. Yeah. So I had this big, big fur dog hat.

26:36John Sipher:So putting on the big fur dog hat of a Russian intelligence officer.

26:39David McCloskey:This might be a problem for us on the pod, right?

26:41John Sipher:Yeah, exactly.

26:43David McCloskey:Epstein's bad enough, but that dog fur is.

26:46John Sipher:Yeah, exactly. We're going to add animal rights activists to the list of enemies on the podcast. But I guess the question is, Russian intel hat on. How would you view someone like Epstein? What is he useful for? Again, in theory, if you're a Russian intelligence officer, Jeffrey Epstein, what's he good for?

27:07David McCloskey:Well, he's good for, he obviously is willing to engage with Russians. And for years, that we all knew that Russia was involved in, was an enemy of the United States or an antagonist, and they were involved in corruption and money laundering. His comfort in dealing in that world, dealing in the dirty world, is one thing. As they learn about what he's doing in the United States and the people he's in touch with and how he's engaged in this sort of dirty business, that's important to them as well. And then there's probably practical things. One of the things he was doing for Bill Yakov or for Cherkin and these people, So he's probably helping them understand the Western economic situation and financial markets and stuff, right?

27:50David McCloskey:Because they're interested in laundering dirty money and putting their money out. And his, not father-in-law, but Ghislaine Maxwell's father, Robert Maxwell, this is the thing he did for the KGB as the Soviet Union was falling apart. The KGB are the ones that ran the dirty money in the banks in the West for their spy cases. So when the Soviet Union fell apart, the KGB was the place that had the money and had western money and people like robert maxwell helped them protect that money and keep it and invest it and and launder it and do all those kind of things in some ways they probably were looking at epstein probably in a more sophisticated way now that they you know they're used to dealing with western bankers and lawyers and things so he's of you so he's of use to them on a variety of levels and and they're of use to him as well because you know that's where he got girls that's where they can help him on criminal things.

28:44David McCloskey:He can hide some of the stuff he's doing. He worked with Russian banks to get money. So they're benefiting each other. And so the Russians don't need to see this as like a secret person in the White House, but it's someone who's benefiting Russian interests, criminal interests. Yeah.

29:03John Sipher:Yeah. One of the more, I guess, kind of, I thought somewhat shocking reports was there's a report in the recent dump, I believe, that's from an FBI confidential informant that claims that Epstein acted as Vladimir Putin's money manager, which seems on the face of it kind of absurd. but then you start talking about the like, you know, his Epstein's comfort dealing in this kind of pretty shadowy world of money laundering and kind of semi illicit and illicit banking. I guess, is it possible that he's handling Russian money or what do you make of that claim?

29:45David McCloskey:I think it's possible he's handling Russian money. The notion that he's Putin's banker, I find sort of silly. Like, I mean, Putin's maybe the richest man in the world. He can buy and sell like 20, 30, 40 Jeffrey Epstein's every day. But as an intelligence officer, playing to someone's ego is like, you know, I'm sure someone's like, oh, you know, we really, you know, your advice on how to avoid sanctions and how to protect money, you know, Vladimir Putin's very interested in that. He, you know, if you can give us his banking advice, you know, I can imagine the Russians very easily playing to his ego and maybe someone around him or him thinking that, oh, you know, one way to look at him is Putin's banker.

30:26David McCloskey:Like, yeah, I don't think that's real. And who knows? One random, that's part of the problem with a dump like this is there's like all these random pieces of information that you can run with and create separate conspiracy theories. So it's certainly true that he's dealing in this dirty world of banking, finance, and Russian money, but is he Putin's banker? Nah, I don't buy it.

30:46John Sipher:Yeah. Yeah. Do you think, I mean, and we'll label this very clearly as speculation. But do you, again, with that Russian intelligence officer hat on, like, it strikes me, if I put on the dog for Ashanka, that there would almost be, there would almost be, it would almost be like malpractice for someone somewhere inside the FSB or some other piece of the Russian intelligence kind of world to at some point have not asked somebody to ask Jeffrey Epstein to do something for them. It seems, you know, and by the way, I'd probably make the same case at this point on Mossad, right, where just this is a guy who's operating in with a bunch of overlapping adjacent networks that are all connected in some indirect way to intelligence services.

31:40John Sipher:And he's the guy that strikes me as kind of, you know, he's like a deep pockets guy who can do stuff for you, even if he's not a, you know, he's not a handled and recruited asset. I mean, does that, what say you to that? It just seems like I would have less respect for the FSB if they hadn't, you know what I mean? If they hadn't asked him to do something at some point, right? It just seems implausible. What do you think?

32:06David McCloskey:I'm certain that Russian intelligence was interested in utilizing Jeffrey Epstein in some way. And so that goes back to the thing. So in the US, if there's some person out there who's of some value to the United States, you know, that the CIA might play a role in that. The State Department might, depending on what's going on, the Commerce Department, USAID, like there's all these different things that play a role in our system. But the Russian intelligence is the main player are in foreign policy for, you know, so like if a Ministry of Foreign Affairs person meets him or a banking person meets him, that's going to get into the Russian intelligence system.

32:42David McCloskey:Like they're not as separated as ours and the Russian intelligence dominates all the others. You got a KGB president of the country, mind you, and you have a system. I mean, let me just give a sense of the Russian system to understand how this sort of plays, right? So there's a word called Sistema. And there's a really good article. The guy who does the podcast with us, who you may know, Adam Davidson, writes for The New Yorker. And he wrote this piece maybe back in 2017 called The Theory of Trump Compromise, I think. And he talked about this thing called the Sistema, the Russian system. So in the Russian system, legal safeguards are weak or non-existent.

33:21David McCloskey:They're whatever the Kremlin wants them to be. And power is personalized, right? So all elites and intermediaries, everybody behaves like they're under constant threat of personal, political, or financial exposure. So like the whole system is this informal corruption-based hierarchy structured around who holds compromise on whom. So think of it more like a mafia system, right? Where power and money and who has the goods on everybody else, right? So stability in that system, such as it is, rests on the dependency and fear, right? So everybody's complicit. Everybody has some information on everybody else.

33:55You don't know what people have on you.

33:57David McCloskey:They don't know what you have on them. So everybody's sort of vulnerable and so like you want to be careful about attacking someone because you don't know what they might Have on you you can't count on judges law system processes. It's this sort of informal compromise laundromat if you will mafia system so in that kind of system People like Jeffrey Epstein those guys are sort of perfect Donald Trump is too. They're comfortable working you know is sort of money and criminals and corruption and whatever it takes to get what you want. And people might use compromise against you, but they might hold it and never use it.

34:37David McCloskey:It's more subtle and vice versa. So you have to understand that system before you understand how someone might look at somebody like Jeffrey Epstein.

34:46John Sipher:Well, I guess in that sense, a Russian intelligence officer or targeter looking at at him would have said this guy seems like a fellow traveler. It's very similar kind of mafia type networks, right? Where this is a guy who is sort of playing and he's kind of swimming around in the same cesspool as a lot of Russian intelligence officers.

35:10David McCloskey:He knows he's got these Russian girls and sex things. They know that he's with Ghislaine Maxwell, whose father played this, was likely spying for the Russians and helping them financially, playing these same criminal networks. So this person is the perfect person for them to be interested in. How they use him, that's where it differs from the Western system, right? So they can use him informally, semi-witting, whether he's like a spy or whether he's just beneficial to them. So that's the part that we're not going to know until somebody opens up Russian intelligence files or something. And that's part of the problem with a dump like this.

35:49David McCloskey:So you just don't know what, yeah.

35:52John Sipher:Yeah, yeah. Well, I should say also for our viewers, please do use the chat function to pass along any other questions you've got. John and I will deal with some of them toward the end of this time. So please do put any questions in that you've got. I know, uh-oh, indeed. I wanted to ask you about, so you talk about Compromat, and I like the way you described it because I think usually you think about Compromat as some poor businessman ends up getting entrapped in a hotel room and the Russians take pictures of him with a prostitute and then they go and tell the businessman or the politician or whomever they got the goods on him and then he's under their control, right?

36:36John Sipher:Which I guess certainly that would be a form of compromise. But the way you described it as much more subtle and kind of systemic, right? And the, I think really, maybe the heart of some of these theories around Epstein's connection to the intelligence world, be it Russia or, or Mossad, are that he was running a kind of compromise in like factory, Right. And he's it's this nexus of the intelligence world with his criminality and him using, you know, video, photos, his own knowledge of what his associates have done on his island or at his penthouse in Manhattan. And then being able to use that to benefit, in this case, you know, Moscow.

37:28John Sipher:Right. What do you what do you make of that of that claim? Because I think that is the most sort of, you know, I guess, direct way of stating the case that I think many of our listeners have probably heard, which is there's a real nexus between the criminality of Jeffrey Epstein and his intelligence work. Yeah.

37:50David McCloskey:So the Russian system is built on, like I mentioned, that system, that compromise of who has what on people that are some sort of mafia criminal kind of network. and i apologize for this phrase but it's a russian phrase which is ugly but it makes make some sense it's there's a russian phrase saying you should beat your wife even if you don't know what she's done she does and so compromise sort of bet is like in that

38:12John Sipher:there's actually a rush that is a russian there's a russian phrase right but that's the notion is

38:17David McCloskey:it's like for example there was all this talk about donald trump in 2016 it's like oh they might have compromise on them the thing the beauty of the system not the beauty this the system is is such that like if you're working in that criminal dirty world like you're like yeah I know I've done things I don't know what they have on me like Donald Trump it may not be with a pee tape or something like that but it might be he's done deals or whatever and he doesn't know where he's gotten help or what's happening but I just you know again the stability is kept by the fact that like I don't know what people have on me what do I have on them I just sort of let it go so compromise is much more subtle like if if Donald Trump knows he did something illegal that the Russians might know about or when he was in Russia the Russians don't have to say we know this you already know it right you're you're like okay I just you know I'm not gonna mess with you because yeah you probably you may know or have this other stuff you could use against me so it's it's that informal criminal sort of view of things and so they're interested in and Jeffrey Epstein is number one he's shown he's willing to play in that world of sort of criminality and girls and stuff it would be wonderful to get into even just to get into his computer and his system to see the kind of stuff he has and if he's traveling to Russia that's that's cake you can get it you know just go into hotel and get his stuff from him you then might realize that he's willing to sort of play dirty games on the side that are valuable to to you and it doesn't even you don't have to direct him to do things he's already doing them and then he can help he's helping you with with you know financial money thing.

39:46David McCloskey:So there's a variety of things here that are likely that are interested to the Russians and interesting to Jeffrey Epstein. And so in the Russian system, he's definitely an asset in the definition of how we talk about an asset of benefit to the Russians.

40:05John Sipher:But do you think, what would you make of the claim that this is, because what I'm getting from you is the sense that this is all...

40:13David McCloskey:Yeah, more informal, right?

40:15John Sipher:Yeah, it's more informal, which makes the answer less satisfying, you know, less satisfying is because you want the centralized, like FSB guy goes to Jeffrey Epstein and says, we have an idea for a massive blackmail operation that you will be the centerpiece of, and we will be collecting everything from it and then using that intentionally to gain control over a large number of elite scientists and business people and politicians in the US and elsewhere. I think that's kind of the cartoonish world that maybe it'd just be easier to understand, I think, if that were the case. But what I'm hearing you say is that's probably not the best way, the best lens through which to view Epstein's connection to Russia.

41:02David McCloskey:Yeah, I don't think they need to. I think they benefit without having to do that. So the Russian system. You got some people that are just spouting your nonsense. They don't know any better on social media. They got some people that you're putting crap out there and they're just buying it and they're spreading it. That's good for you. You got some journalists that you talk with and spend and try to get over to your side of the thing that are helping you out. You got someone like Jeffrey Epstein who's doing what you would want him to do anyway. You can just nudge him. What's that book in economics?

41:28David McCloskey:Nudge, right? You don't need to say, okay, here's the deal. Sit down. You're going to do this, this, this, and I'm going to give you that, that, that. I mean, it's sort of implied, you know, criminals and mafia people understand this implied world. It's certainly possible. And some people, you know, there's that French historian woman who wrote a big article. Her last name is Tom, I think. And Mr. Steele and the polls are looking at it. It suggests there might be an explicit thing here. But as far as I've seen from the dump, and frankly, I haven't read three million pages of whatever there is.

42:00David McCloskey:I'm not a good age. is that, you know, that he would, and I suspect there won't be a smoking gun of, you know, he specifically did this at their tasking, blah, blah, blah. But what I'm trying to say is it doesn't matter. He's doing stuff that's in their interest anyway. And that's the same argument with Donald Trump is, right? He doesn't have to meet on the street corner and get a piece of paper that says, you got to do A, B, C, and D, or we're going to do this to you. It's like, he already gets it and he's already benefiting them in all sorts of positive ways for them. no re no reason to push him and may have him say no right and and to the point you raised earlier

42:37John Sipher:but we didn't fully kind of flesh it out uh I I take it your view of Jeffrey Epstein as kind of a target as a to be an asset in a kind of controlled secretive way that feels hard given his personality and who he is like you wouldn't with your case officer sort of brain on you would not look at him as, oh, I want to recruit Epstein and run him secretly and have a combo plan where we communicate with each other secretly and he responds to tasking. That's not... They don't need to. They don't need to. And it'd be hard given who he is, I guess.

43:15David McCloskey:They don't need to. And yeah, in our world, yeah, you want someone who's doing something, they're motivated to do it, they know why they're doing it, whether it's they need money, They need something for their kids. They hate their boss. They want to work with the United States to reform their system. So a spy who's working for me or when I was in CIA, they're working positive. That's why we don't use people. I always talk to CIA, use blackmail. We never blackmail because you want sources who want to work with you. If you blackmail people or use sex or something like that with them, they're going to look to get out of it.

43:49David McCloskey:They're going to look to screw you the first chance they get. We want people who know what they're doing, willing to do it for a long period of time, follow our direction, and give us stuff that is the specific access they have, and we can sort of trust what they're giving us and can check it out. Whereas you look at Jeffrey Epstein, a Russian intelligence officer might say, oh, this guy looks really good to recruit. And the more you learn about him, you're like, he's a little too sleazy. He's constantly playing everybody against everybody, which means he'll probably play us if I try to like say you know you give me this I'll give you this money like like I don't I think it's better to keep him as an informal person who's benefiting you than trying to control him because he's probably actually would make it harder and worse for you in the process yeah I just want to ask you about your thoughts on the actual dump of

44:41John Sipher:files itself. And I guess, what do you think about the way that the information came out? And then I guess my second question is, given that you as an intelligence officer spent a lot of time dealing in a world of incomplete and fragmentary information, how should people actually view the files themselves and the information that's come out? What's the way to think about it?

45:06David McCloskey:Yeah, I think it's worth having that discussion. So like you mentioned, the podcast that you came on, we have a podcast called Mission Implausible that talks about conspiracy theories. And we recently did a series on the JFK assassination, right? And so, you know, a mass release turns what otherwise would be investigatory material with a professional investigative agency and a justice department into a public scavenger hunt, right? So the more we get publicly, the more we insist that we need and we're never satisfied. It just fits into more and more conspiracy theories and I need more and more.

45:39David McCloskey:So Donald Trump just released all of the CIA files on JFK. We've had like 50 years of JFK nonstop books, podcasts, movies. There's all these crazy things happening. So now it's all out there and it did nothing. People will still say, ah, there must be other stuff. You know, they've created. So the problem with these dumps is when people demand this wholesale disclosure so we can finally know, you know, they mean well. But what they're signaling is they don't believe the system is capable of doing its job. Like we want a serious justice law enforcement system that can pull these things, that can push stuff that doesn't make sense, that can then take a piece of information that doesn't understand and then can go out and query it, find it, look into the system, question people.

46:25David McCloskey:So now I worry that if our standard of justice becomes just dump everything and let the internet sort it out, we're not strengthening accountability. We're just making it to this freaking spectacle. So I'm against this kind of thing. But the Trump administration said, I don't want to make this political, but they made the Justice Department into a political weapon that can't be trusted. So the answer is then just give us this information and we'll figure it out. But frankly, we're not going to figure it out. And even if all the information is out, no one's going to be trusted. It's all out.

46:58John Sipher:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It does also seem to just reflect the sense that if there was a, you know, a massive DOJ report on this that was done based off of the files, the emails, whatever, all the evidence, that there would be huge segments of the population that just would dismiss it outright. We've lost trust. They're hiding something, right? And we can't trust the institutions anymore. more. You know, I mean, I think one of the questions, I mean, I think there was one earlier, actually, I'm scrolling through some of them, which this will give, I think, John, I want you to address this one is earlier, Vuchko Ukraine had commented in the chat about how the FSB is not just internal to Russia, they operate here in Ukraine and most former Soviet republics and also do cyber attacks and burnout warehouses in Europe, also the SVR.

47:51John Sipher:We talked, I think a lot about the FSB sort of domestically, which obviously is true, but can you talk a bit about kind of Russian intelligence more broadly? What are the major agencies and kind of how, excuse me, how do they operate? Because my understanding is, yeah, the FSB internal also operates a lot outside the country. So essentially, it's just during the Soviet

48:08David McCloskey:period, it was the KGB and it had other names before that. So when the Bolsheviks took over in 1917, the first thing it did is create this security system, which essentially was a terrorist operation to kill off all the opposition and keep the leadership in power. And then it created a foreign piece of this that would do the same to their overseas enemies. And it grew and grew and grew. So the Russian KGB, the security services, you're talking like 600, 700 ,000 people, like massive compared to like the US security and intelligence system. So when the Soviet Union broke up, it took those pieces of the KGB and made them into separate organizations.

48:46So the domestic part of the KGB was the second chief directorate that squished opposition and watched everybody inside and all those type of things.

48:56David McCloskey:That became the FSB. The external service, like the CIA piece of that, became what's called the SVR. These are just the Russian acronyms for it. And then it had like an NSA version of a technical thing. It had a security thing that protected the leadership. So there's a variety of places that came out of the old KGB. And the main ones are this FSB, domestic, SVR, foreign, and then a variety of technical and other places. So what's interesting is it just shows the Russian mentality. When the Soviet Union broke up and Ukraine became a separate country and all these other former republics became separate countries, they often used the FSB for what we would think of as foreign intelligence, but in those countries.

49:39David McCloskey:Because in their mind, they still belonged to us. Like Ukraine is still part of Russia and we belong. So the FSB played a much bigger role, even though in our system, we'd see that as a foreign country that should be the SVR operating in. So and the FSB is far larger, more powerful because it's the thing that's closest to Putin and protecting his regime. And he was the director of the FSB before he became president. And so that's the difference between these different things. And so the person who commented is right, that the FSB was in charge of Ukraine and was sort of preparing the invasion of Ukraine.

50:13David McCloskey:It was the intelligence service there. Very brutal, very ugly, very terrorist organization. And so the SVR, like the FSB has a role in other places around the country. Like they do have FSB people who work in the United States that would coordinate with the FBI and other things on sort of police and law enforcement stuff. But the SVR is the main one for most foreign countries.

50:38John Sipher:Yeah. Yeah. And there's another question here. I think this is worth addressing because I've actually scanned through a lot of the comments in here and many of them, even though, of course, we started the conversation. analysts are good at scanning through stuff. We're good at scanning things. That's right. We started the conversation by saying, we're going to have a conversation about the Epstein Russia connections. There are many comments in here like, ah, Epstein and Mossad. And a couple things I'll just say on this. Gordon and I, an actual question here is that, Gordon and I covered this recently in our series.

51:08John Sipher:It seems like you guys ruled out this Mossad connection. And I think I think it's maybe worth a little, I don't know if we ruled it out. What I said on the pod, if I remember correctly, was that I thought the idea of Mossad in a similar way that we've talked about with Russia, running Epstein as a controlled asset and using Epstein as a sort of industrial feedback of blackmail in a centralized way and using that is to kind of get control over a large number of American politicians, scientists, and businessmen, I don't buy that. I don't buy that. I think the risk reward from Assad's

51:52David McCloskey:standpoint doesn't make any sense. Yeah, if they get caught doing that, I mean, running an American citizen against American interests, like they're supposed to be our friend. I think, again, more informally, it would benefit them to do that without doing it formally. Because if you get caught running him as a spy in the United States, I mean, that turns the you know we're friends working together to like you're actually trying to screw

52:16John Sipher:us yeah and so I think I don't I don't buy the kind of centralized you know Mossad running him and running the blackmail operation I just don't to me the risk reward doesn't make it the risk reward makes more sense from the Russian standpoint because it's a very hot they don't care the Israelis of course do attempt the Israelis of course do attempt to spy on us and have the past But they have to balance that with the fact that they're also a friend. Like it's an allied service, right? It's a friendly service. And so the risk reward doesn't make sense to me from the Mossad angle. But what does make sense is similar to the way we've talked about Epstein from the Russian side, seen from, you know, sort of the FSB as like a guy who could potentially be useful in certain circumstances.

53:06I think the same, you'd have to make the same case from the Mossad side as well, that this is a guy who's got a bunch of, to them, interesting connections, who has the ability to move money, who has the ability to

53:21John Sipher:do things for you on an ad hoc basis, if someone asks. I like to be Epstein's operating in these networks of kind of you scratch my back, I scratch yours. We've all got some dirt on each other, maybe. And so it's kind of these mafia type networks we're talking about, where they certainly like kind of below the waterline networks. It he's bumping up against all kinds of, you know, intelligence adjacent people and networks in his in his sort of daily life. And it makes a lot of sense to me that any global intelligence service would have seen him as someone who might be willing to do something for them.

54:02John Sipher:But to your point exactly, it's not like, hey, I'm blah, blah, blah from Mossad or blah, blah, blah from the FSB, and I'm here to tell you to do this thing. It's like you find someone who knows him who can be who in pattern could ask him to do something that's beneficial to you. And that feels like it just, that feels to me like what the story is so far, which again is like not satisfying. Satisfying. It's hard. I think it's hard to kind of wrap your head around exactly what that is.

54:31David McCloskey:When we were at training, one of the sort of things you talk about as you develop relationships with people is called give to get, right? So if you're trying to network and meet people and you have to give something yourself for them to start talking to you. And if anything, Epstein was a great networker. He was trying to pull in big people all around. And then some of them he would then maybe put them in compromising positions or that he could then maybe use other places. So probably Israelis, they could talk to him and he would probably give all sorts of information that was valuable to them without them even having to request it or ask it or something.

55:09David McCloskey:He's networking. He's in this group. He's with the former Israeli prime minister. or he's given this kind of stuff. And so, yeah, I tend to look at it the same way, is they benefit whether they direct him to do things or not. He's likely to give them stuff that's of value to them.

55:26John Sipher:Yeah. No, I absolutely agree with that. And I think that is, insofar as maybe this is a good place to end the conversation. I mean, I think insofar as we've seen from these files, we're probably not going to get much more than this, right? I mean, at least on, and I'm talking here specifically of the intelligence story, because, I mean, let's just say, John, maybe we close it with this, which is what, how would, how would an intelligence service have communicated with him? because my sense is we're never going to see that in these files. You would have to have the FSB turn over its cable traffic to essentially ever be able to really demonstrably prove that they asked him to do something because it's going to, you know, before we get there, before we ever get to that, you know, all we're going to have are just sort of, you know, these kind of email traffic between these different networks of people with stuff that by definition they were willing to put in electronic communications.

56:31Yeah.

56:31David McCloskey:So my guess would be, and again, I don't know, but my guess would be, you know, like if he was spying for us, we would then, you know, we'd meet him on a street corner or in a hotel, or I'd go in alias to meet him in a third country, or we might have a super secret, you know, way to communicate through fancy device or a secret encryption and computer. Like that's how you handle real spies. But in this, I think some of the clues are there. So there's Vitaly Cherkin, there's the guy Bill Yakov. So if I'm the Russian intelligence and I'm looking for kind of stuff, and I'm reminding you again that they are the main players, if the Russian intelligence goes to the ambassador in the UN, Cherkin, and says, go see him, tell us what he's thinking, ask these kind of questions, tell him that we'd like him to talk to somebody else.

57:21David McCloskey:So I think that's the way you do it. It's like, again, you're willing to be one or two steps away from directly tasking him. He already has those contacts that are used to them. Conceivably, he could say, you know, Cherkin, let's have a dinner with him and I'll bring an intelligence officer who will be able to ask more questions. But Cherkin can do that too. He swims in that same system.

57:45John Sipher:Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Well, John, thanks for coming on today. And we didn't get as many attacks against Gordon Carrera in as I was hoping. We actually got surprised.

57:59David McCloskey:It's a little, you know, these British guys, they're so British centric, but you know, Frank, it's a little like poking animals in a zoo. It's a little too easy, right? There's no... And you're doing a fine job of it, so you don't need me to do it. But I have great respect for Gordon. I love his books. I've read all of his books. I'm a big fan. So, So, you know, it doesn't mean we can't poke him a little bit when he starts talking about all this sort of over-the-top British stuff.

58:22John Sipher:Well, I do try to tone down his Britishness as much as possible.

58:25David McCloskey:You do a good job.

58:25John Sipher:But it's just, it's very hard. It's very hard. Well, thanks, everybody, for joining this live stream. I do want a couple reminders. One is we are going to be launching an upcoming series, a six-part series, actually looking in depth at the Russian active measure in 2016 against the American election. So we're going to do that. We're going to be doing that from a very sort of rest is classified lens of like, what was the actual operation? How did it work? What was its intent? Going deep, John, into topics that you know a great deal about, which is sort of Russian active measures and disinformation operations and subversion.

59:03John Sipher:And we're also pairing that with a series for our club members on the side, looking at John as we were talking a bit, looking at this Trump-Russia nexus and trying to make sense of the sort of bizarre connections between Donald Trump and Russia. So we'll have that for our club members. And a reminder, of course, you can join the Declassified Club and should join the Declassified Club at theresdisclassified.com to get access to all of that wonderful bonus content. But John, it has been a real pleasure. And thanks for joining me today for this live stream.

59:39David McCloskey:Always my pleasure. Thanks so much. You guys do a great job.

59:42John Sipher:Thanks, John. Bye, everybody.

1:00:03John Sipher:and waiting, folding, and queuing, now spent challenging and innovating and pushing your way to greatness. So pick up the Irish flute or those calligraphy pens or that daunting Beef Wellington recipe card and leave the laundry to us. Rinse. It's time to be great.

1:00:20David McCloskey:If you're a content creator, you know the struggle of picking between quality and quantity to grow your channel, especially if you're on a tight budget. But why not choose both? With Storyblocks, you get everything you need to create amazing videos fast. Instead of expensive pay-per-clip pricing, you get unlimited downloads from a library with millions of stock assets for one set price. Go to storyblocks.com slash Spotify to learn more.

1:00:47John Sipher:Thought Sweetgreen was just salads? Think again. There's a new way to do Sweetgreen. Wrapped and ready. These handheld wraps pack bold flavor and 40 plus grams of protein into something hearty, satisfying, and built for life on the go. From craveable sauces to satisfying textures, they're designed to keep you going without slowing you down. So put that fork down. Try the new wraps today in app or at order.sweetgreen.com. Available at participating locations only.