133. Trump vs. Europe: Flattery, Pushback, and Powerplays (Congressman Jim Himes)

27:06Or what about, and it just, it infuriates me because there is no crime so severe that it can't be justified by a moral argument that we don't accept from our four-year-old children, which is that what about what my little sister did last week. And yet that excuses everything. And I really do worry, Alistair, here you get to some deeply seated fears. Again, there is a good, ethical, pragmatic America out there, but it is not hard to imagine a dissent into violence and a dissent into violence that is excused by a good chunk of the electorate. Case in point, healthcare CEO is murdered in cold blood on the streets of America and a bunch of young people in particular, not just justify it, but celebrate it.

27:53That is a sign of deep moral rot. And I fear that, you know, in addition to the secular religion of politics that we've adopted, the moral sensibility, the discernment has gone away. Okay, let's take a quick break and back for more in a minute.

28:11I'm David McCloskey, former CIA analyst turned spy novelist. And I'm Gordon Carrera, national security journalist. Together, we're the hosts of another goal hanger show, The Rest is Classified, and we bring you brilliant stories from the world of spies. That's right. And this week, we're talking about one of the most significant stories of the 21st century, Edward Snowden, and how he orchestrated the biggest leak of classified secrets in modern American history. It was 2011 when Snowden shocked the world by revealing that the American government was bulk collecting data on its own citizens and even spying on our allies.

28:46And it's a story which really also gets to wider questions about what privacy means in the modern world, how technology has changed our lives, and what the government and companies can do with data we might have thought was private. We will take you through the whole story from Snowden's early career in the CIA and the NSA to his life in exile in Russia. If this sounds good, we've left a clip at the end of the episode for you.

29:14Your own life and political career has seen you go from a moment, I guess, when you were at university, where there was still a belief in bipartisan procedures and the House of Representatives and the Senate. It's through a world that began to change quite rapidly, so that even by the 1990s, people were beginning to talk about pretty extreme political polarization and the collapse of these bipartisan procedures. And of course, on the surface, you seem like a kind of pretty reasonable, centrist, bipartisan potential candidate. Tell us about this cultural shift and what you think has actually happened in Congress over the last 20, 30 years.

29:56Yeah. First of all, I think it's overblown. We are a terribly polarized nation, but in terms of actual policy, the notion that we swing from one radical extreme to another is just not accurate, right? So in my own career, let's look at that moment in time in 2009, when the Democrats owned the House, the Senate, and the presidency, and not only the Senate, but they had 60 votes in the Senate. Did we implement an NHS-like policy, nationalization of the healthcare system? No. We didn't even do single-payer healthcare, which was hardly radical. I mean, hardly radical at all. We put in place this sort of Rube Goldberg Affordable Care Act, Obamacare thing.

30:34Did we nationalize the banks after the banks obliterated$18 trillion of household? No, we didn't. In fact, we bailed them out. And on the other side, a lot of the extremism, of course, is the rhetoric coming out of the Trump White House. But on the other side, if you look at the signature achievement in Trump's first term, it was a series of tax cuts that were somewhat radical, but not catastrophically so. You know, the corporate tax rate went from 35 % to 21 % or whatever it did. And in fact, the men negotiated, renegotiated NAFTA and got the Abraham Accords done. So I always object to the notion that there is no bipartisanship and that America swings from a policy standpoint from one extreme to another.

31:16That's just not what's happening. And inside the Congress, by the way, right now, I would tell you the Republicans, very interesting conference right now because half of them are appalled, absolutely appalled. I mean, these are Wall Street Journal Republicans who like immigration, who hate state conduct of the economy, industrial policy, but they are so scared of Donald Trump ending them that they have to behave themselves. So it's actually a much more interesting and complicated group of people than you might otherwise think. Jim, part of your history and expertise, as you always said, is in the intelligence world.

31:51and you know how the whole five eyes system works where you and us and Australia and Canada and New Zealand work very very closely together and yet you you've been one of the few voices that has really been clear that Tulsi Gabbard as head of national security I think you wrote to her about the sacking of this guy General Tim Hall on the back of a meeting that Trump had with this kind of far-right online conspiracy theorist. And I mean, if you were a Brit right now, are these people trustworthy when it comes to the sort of intelligence arrangements that have built up over years? Yeah. Yeah. It's a fascinating question.

32:39You know, the partnership between the US and the UK is so important. And, you know, the United States provides the UK and our Five Eyes partners with intelligence that can't be gotten anywhere else. I'm not chest pounding there. I actually happen to think that the Brits are probably, generally speaking, per pound better at human than we are, but SIGINT capabilities are unique. And of course, everybody treads very carefully. So at no point is Sir Richard Moore going to say, well, we're dialing back our sharing of intelligence because that would obviously to be catastrophic. He's the head of MI6.

33:16Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. And so it's all very polite and careful, but there's no question in my mind that, you know, whether it's Tulsi Gabbard, look, the president himself has shared classified information on social media platforms in his first term and is loose with the way he talks about it. And, you know, there was this whole thing about how there may have been intelligence shared in the signal chat. So no, I mean, look, our Five Eyes partners are human beings. Of course, they're going to be more cautious with Tulsi Gabbard as DNI than they were with Avril Haines, you know, lawyer and punctilious and everything else.

33:50Did you get a reply to her letter about the sacking? Not yet. Not yet. On this question of European allies, one of the things that I think has been so difficult for people to understand is how Trump has taken 80 years of developing these relationships with European allies, which has included, in our careers, certainly for Alistair and me, enormous American charm, generosity, work in making allies feel that they're valued, which meant that the only time Article 5 has been evoked, it was about 9-11. And to be honest, European countries, when they said attack on one is attack on the wall, didn't mean it literally, right?

34:33It wasn't that most of them felt that they were an existential threat in Europe, they came to Afghanistan to support the United States. And they came to Afghanistan to support the United States because the US had been the linchpin of international security and it created the World Bank and the IMF and blah, blah, blah, blah. It now feels as though he's shattering all of that, that he literally, he, Vance, others, you look at that signal chat, totally despise Europe, have no idea at all that these alliances as matter, which presumably makes a complete nonsense of what's he trying to do with China?

35:07If he's alienating his European allies, how's he going to get a strategy together? So here's where I tread into dangerous territory of trying to analyze the man. But I think he's very unusual in the sense that his whole being, every thought he has, is about power relationships. I think the idea that anything could be not a zero-sum game is completely foreign to him. And I think that probably extends to his relationships inside his family, certainly the way he thinks about Europe. Trade, you know, trade is inherently a non-zero-sum game thing or it doesn't happen, but he can understand that. He sees trade as the payment of tribute in one direction or the other.

35:51And I don't know how he might explain the fact that our allies rallied to our side after September 11th. My guess is he doesn't think too much about it, or he's got some conspiracy theory about how it was really about trying to get at Afghan minerals or something. So everything in his mind is a power play. And it is critical that he always be on top of that power play, which is why, by the way, I'll say this to some British friends, which is why there are these elements of Europe that sort of make him swoon. The royal family. I think at some level he understands that this is a thousand-year-old institution that even if it's a little quaint now, you know, it commanded the seas and the sun never set and all that.

36:31I think at some level he understands that. And that's why he's sort of cowed, I think, by the monarch and the monarchy. It's why he was always a bit cowed by Nancy Pelosi because I think he understood that that woman had very real power. It's why he stands in Paris, a town that I think he otherwise would despise and loves it and will never forget the military parade because tanks and planes, it's all about power for him. And let's also face it, last point here, in my, you know, always trying to be a bit optimistic, you know, he also looks at the fact that in fact, the NATO relationship for a long time was one in which the US probably overspent on its military at a time when, you know, our NATO allies were underspending and that just, that sticks in his craw.

37:11What would you advise to Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron, Friedrich Merz coming in as chancellor in Germany. What would you advise the European leaders in terms of their overall strategy, but also in terms of how they deal with him as a human being? I think two things, and really no one should take my advice on it, if you can get Navarro to come speak to you. But I think two things. Number one, look, flattery is everything with him. Every other sentence he says, he's evaluating, you know, like, oh, that was a very, that was a beautiful thing to say about me, or that was a nasty woman. So flattery is everything.

37:48And by the way, this worries me right now about the potential for a war in Iran, because I think that the Prime Minister of Israel probably has his number and will achieve one of his long held objectives through flattery. But flattery combined with, again, remember that power relationship. If Macron or Starmer is having a conversation with Donald Trump, flattery, flattery, flattery. But then there is a moment in which there is a bullying statement. I would say you need to push back on the bullying in a polite and flattering way. But, you know, no, Mr. President, you know, if he doesn't sense that resistance, he will just keep pushing.

38:25You're a wonderful optimist. So how in the most optimistic scenario, let's say the Democrats come in again, we get a Democratic president. How do you rebuild Europe's trust in the United States? I mean, just to illustrate, you know, one small thing, When I was chairman of the Defense Committee, we talked seriously about basically dismantling British defense production, buying all our kit from the US because it was cheaper, turning ourselves into a version of the Marine Corps and just attaching ourselves to the American military. And literally nobody in 2015 said one of the risks of that is the United States could cease to be a reliable ally.

38:59The only reason we didn't do it is we were worried about jobs or people in the Navy were straying their weight around. Once that's broken, once 80 years of trust is broken, once people begin to think, wait a sec, this is a country that could try to take Greenland from us, that we might actually need to have doctrine in NATO defending ourselves in the United States, we can no longer rely on American intelligence, American defense equipment, because we just had a president who's threatened to turn it off. How do you turn that around? So I think the story, again, and maybe I'm being over optimistic.

39:31The story begins where we are today, which is that the president's approval ratings continue to go downward. Again, remember that auto dealer who explains why the car is$4 ,000 more expensive. In the next four weeks, the Republicans will be telling America what it means to cut 25 % of Medicaid. All of these things are going to create political heat for Republicans. So you're going to start to see cracks form. So then here's the story in 2026. And by the way, if we can't do this, take the majority in the House, I'm giving up because if we can't, under these conditions, if the Democratic Party can't reassert itself, I'm going to go do something else.

40:05A Democratic House now serves as a legitimate check and a balance. We've got subpoena power. We open dialogues that don't exist today with our allies. And there is some set of political circumstances that mean that for a period of five, it takes us five or six years to get out of this isolationist moment back to a more internationalist view. In the meantime, one thing has happened that is good and another thing hasn't happened. The thing that has happened that is good is that Europe has sorted out its defense and come up with a defense industrial base that makes sense for Europe that is hopefully collaborative amongst the NATO countries.

40:42I think that's a good thing, not a bad thing. It'll be very independent of US defense capability. I the US defense manufacturer, it's not great use because increasingly the pressure will be sovereign, independent. We don't want to depend on American kid anymore. Yeah, but that's okay. I mean, I always want there to be a partnership. And I always want, you know, us to use the same gauge of ammunition and that sort of thing. But I actually think it's very healthy for Europe to be less dependent on the US for its security, and in particular, defense manufacturers. So I don't think that's a bad thing.

41:17The thing I was going to say that doesn't happen is in this weird moment, whether it's two, three, or four, or five years in which I do think we'll reestablish our traditional relationship with the Europeans, different though it may be, Russia does not invade. I mean, I just, you know, in Washington, it's a cottage industry saying, well, you know, what happens when they move into Finland? They are not going to do that. They can't move two miles in Ukraine right now. And so, I worry about, especially if Russia comes out of the Ukraine conflict having won something, I really don't worry about the next two, three, four years.

41:49I worry about five or six years when Russia has had an opportunity to rearm, to learn from its mistakes in Ukraine. So again, maybe I'm being over optimistic, but I think that more independence in the European defense space is actually a very good thing. Is that not a very optimistic view of the current sort of state of affairs regarding Russia? And surely right now, Putin, even though, as you say, he's got economic challenges, military challenges, but he kind of does feel that with Trump in the place that he seems to be in, yet again, blaming Zelensky for the war, yet again, pointing the finger at anybody apart from Putin for terrible things that are happening.

42:34Putin must be thinking that he just has to sit tight. And eventually, in his mind, he thinks he can take Ukraine. If he takes Ukraine, then these small, you know, the Baltic countries, Moldova, they're easy. I'm surprised you think that that's not a realistic possibility. It's hard to understand the political pressures on Vladimir Putin. And I think it's a mistake to say that there aren't. You can't wipe out 150 ,000 of your own citizens, though they may come from the provinces and not from St. Petersburg and Moscow, and not face some political upwelling. And in Russia, famously over the centuries, those political upwellings have come brutally, unexpectedly, and violently.

43:15So my guess is that he probably feels a bit more constrained than we can appreciate in the West. he's in no position, again, militarily speaking, to move on a NATO ally. It would be insane and suicidal to do that soon. And I do think he certainly understands that Trump has a bizarre affinity for him, as he does for many strongmen. But I also think he sees Trump as very unpredictable, and Trump is unpredictable. And so, you know, it was all of what, five days that intelligence sharing and arms were cut off to Ukraine. Had that been permanent, I might think differently, but he's unpredictable. And I think that probably serves as a check on Putin's thinking.

43:56You're going to win this next election partly on your ability to convince Americans that you're going to be able to produce decent jobs going forward. And a couple of things. Firstly, what went wrong with Biden's economic package? And secondly, what economic vision can you provide and how would you hedge against the risks from AI? Yeah, I felt this very personally. So, I can't tell you the number of celebrations and ribbon cuttings and earth-moving ceremonies I went to to celebrate the bipartisan infrastructure law and the IRA, the biggest investment ever in climate change. You know how many electric charging stations we built in the state of Connecticut now five years after the passage of the IRA?

44:40Zero. Zero. We built nothing. We paved a bunch of roads. inflation took the biggest investment in our infrastructure in a generation. And the end result because of inflation was that we ended up building less after the bipartisan infrastructure law was passed than we were building pre-COVID. And we talked briefly about this. This is a transformation that is happening and needs to happen inside the Democratic Party in particular. I know you talked to Ezra Klein. This is this abundance theory, and it has political reverberations for the left, which is our whole premise is that we can, through government action, make your life better.

45:19We can build that bridge. We can build out the rural broadband. And guess what? We don't. And we didn't. And America felt that. And so we will either figure out how to deliver on the infrastructure that allows for jobs. I object to the notion that government creates jobs. I know that we say it, but it doesn't, right? We put in place the infrastructure, the networks, the training that allows for the private sector to create jobs. And we didn't do that. And I think at some visceral level, Americans felt that. So there's a very exciting movement now that Ezra Klein is one of the sort of intellectual godfathers of, of how do we get back to a world where we can actually build things in this country?

45:58AI, my gosh, here's where my optimism runs out. I really am, as you've sensed now, a temperamental optimist. And I've always He's been a tech optimist in the sense that, and by the way, easy to say from Connecticut as opposed to Youngstown, Ohio, but changes in technology have historically created more jobs than they have ended. That's been true for centuries. AI seems to me to be different in two respects. Number one, it's not going after the manual labor jobs. It's accountants and radiologists and lawyers. And let's remember, revolutions are led by lawyers and doctors, right? And so, I'm very, very concerned about that.

46:36And just its pervasiveness, right? This isn't putting automation into silk mills anymore. It's everything. And we don't know how to deal with that. So you've got these forward thinkers talking about things like universal basic income. And, you know, okay, maybe in theory that makes sense. But, you know, a job is much, much more than a paycheck to people. It's status. It's a sense of meaning, a sense of belonging to a community. And there's a very real risk that AI completely upends all of that. How's that for pessimism? Yeah, well, I'm going to get you back on the optimistic side by asking you this.

47:12We've talked a lot about the character of Trump, and particularly in your polities, I think, but in everybody's polities, but particularly, I think, in yours. The individual who is on the ballot to lead the country is so fundamental. So all the debates we're having now about the future of the Democratic Party, yeah, they're important. But ultimately, you've got to find the person. Now, you've ruled yourself out, partly by being born in the wrong part of the world, but also by the other stuff you said. So is there anybody that we maybe don't know that we should be thinking about looking out for?

47:47Are there people coming up that you think, with all your political experience, do you know what, that might be the guy, she might be the woman who can do this? So, again, let's go back to something that I feel, and this goes back to Boris Johnson and the conservative win, and it's Joe Biden as a person, which is left-leaning economics, centrist to right-leaning culture, religion, patriotism. The name that jumps off the page there is Governor Andy Beshear of Kentucky, who not only gets elected, but gets elected in a deep red state. And I'm not saying that he should be the candidate, but somebody like that, who is also relatable and authentic.

48:31There are any number of other governors, a couple of other governors that fall into that category. I think it's going to be hard for legislators to be in the mix right now because there is this sense in the Democratic Party of business as usual is not going to cut it. So I think there's likely to be a lot of disappointed Democratic senators who find that they lose out to a governor who is less associated with the uncomfortable status quo. the other thing I would say is, let me make that statement. And let's think about this with some humility, because transformative democratic candidates have often come out of sort of come out of nowhere.

49:04I'm thinking of Bill Clinton in the 90s, and Barack Obama. Now, Barack Obama was on people's radar screens. But, you know, it's also possible that we don't even know who the candidate is going to be at this point, three years out. Final one for me. And it's pushing back against your optimism. But tell us a little bit about what you've learned about being a politician in the age of social media, and not just the upsides and the wonderful stuff that you'll communicate with your voters, but some of the negative sides that you can be more honest about and some of the stress and some of the pressure of being a contemporary politician.

49:41I think it's a version of why it must be brutal to be a teenager today because our predecessors in politics at the end of the day would go home and they would get no feedback until they opened the paper the following morning. All of us, we're in this business for a reason, right? We need constant feedback. And of course, now we have the tool to provide it. So I can be lying flat on my back in bed at 1230 in the morning, scrolling what some idiot in Cleveland, Ohio thinks of what I had to say about Tulsi Gabbard. And there are very few politicians who are disciplined enough to not at some level absorb that.

50:23Again, I think, can you imagine what it's like to be 14 years old today where just every moment of every day is consumed with a pecking order and this sort of thing? That makes it very, very hard. It also takes away our ability to focus. I feel this myself. I wish I didn't have to be on social media, but I do, given the job that I do. You don't, you don't, you don't, you don't. Really? You don't. You need to use it, but don't be on it so much. No, you're absolutely right about that, which takes me back to the constant need for affirmation that anybody who gets into this business does. You're right.

50:59And by the way, here's an interesting little anecdote. My staff runs Facebook and Instagram. I do my own Twitter or X or whatever. And by the way, it's become just an absolute cesspool. So, I have to get away from it. But it is a vehicle for authenticity. So, when I put up a tweet that says, I'm celebrating the return of the astronauts from whatever it is, it is utterly uninteresting. But I happen to be a beekeeper. When I put up something about how I've just drawn honey out of my business. Oh my God, the world goes bananas. So it is a scalable opportunity for authenticity. You're probably right, Alistair.

51:35I should probably receive a lot less, but we do need to transmit. Yeah. Have receipt analysts doing the job for you. Just don't look at it. It's pointless. Thank you very much. You've been very generous. Thank you so much for very generously having us in your home. It's been a real privilege. And I think it's a real privilege for us to be able to get so close to somebody able to be so frank about the business of politics. Thank you. Thank you. Real pleasure to be with you both. Great to see you again, Jim. Take care. He seems a very nice man. He lets you into his house. He leaves the room so that we could talk about him behind his back.

52:12He's a very nice chap. And very kind. He had me to stay last night with Shoshana. I had a kind of fascinating evening with him. I think we're also getting, for people who aren't American, an amazing cross-section of the House of Representatives, having had Nancy Pelosi, Rosa DeLauro, Richie Torres, Jim Hines. I mean, they couldn't be more different people. Rosa, absolute classic, traditional, street progressive, right next door to Jim, who I guess is picking up all these kind of Rockefeller conservatives, kind of Goldman Sachs workers who are coming up to the Democratic Party. Richie Torres, didn't go to university, African American, very surprisingly, very firmly pro-Israel and a pro-Palestinian constituency.

52:59Nancy Pelosi, machine politician. What sense are you getting if you put those four that we've interviewed together about the Democrats in the House? Well, I think the first thing to say is they're all Democrats. And And it's probably good that we do have Kevin McCarthy coming up sometime soon. And we've also got Steve Bannon constantly promising that he's coming on. They are very different. And I'll tell you something I was really interested in that he said. And I don't know how many of his colleagues listen to our podcast, but some of them will have been a bit taken aback when he said, I think that if you're a senator or a congressman or a congresswoman, you're going to struggle to get on the ticket.

53:36So, friend, we talked about Andy Beshear, didn't we, when we were talking about who the running mate for Kamala Harris might be. It's interesting what he said about this idea of, you know, left economically, centre-right, right on social, cultural things. I think that feels right. However, I just wonder if the scale of change that's needed means actually a change of approach in what sort of candidate you need as well. I don't know, but he's a bright guy, very bright guy. I'm very frank as well about his own party's failings. Yeah, he's also, I think, isn't shining a light on another issue that is clearly going on, and that I hear a lot from congressmen off the record, which is the unbelievable divisions within the Democratic Party.

54:25So hidden within it is the sense that you're not going to be able to become a senator from Massachusetts unless you endorse quite a left-wing position. There's going to be this whole conversation about we should be moving more towards Joe Biden. Well, that doesn't sound so great if you're more on the AOC side of things. Him blaming the woke agenda makes sense to you and me and many pollsters because it's about going to the center, but there will be many people in the Democratic Party who will find that very difficult to hear, particularly colleagues in Congress and other divisions. You know, Rosa DeLore, who I like so much, who's another Connecticut congressman, his neighbor, has just come out in favor of tariffs because she's on the kind of left-wing protectionist side of this when he is on.

55:11So all that stuff, I think, you know, is beneath the surface. The other thing, I guess, that I'm less optimistic than him, I find it very difficult to believe that you can rebuild trust in the special relationship, trust in the US, however charming the next president is. I mean, at one point he was almost saying, well, where we are right now in the cycle with Trump in there, so noisy, so dominant, there's not much that we can do. We've kind of got to wait for the midterms. Now, you do kind of feel that the midterms are sort of a bit last chance saloon for all sorts of things, for the Democrat Party, for democracy.

55:52That spoke to something we've discussed with all of these Democrat politicians and with Ezra Klein and with others like Michael Lewis and what have you. with Moises Naeem, with Michael Wolff, is this, how do you get the analysis right about what's gone wrong so that you can build something for the future? And I think Ezra Klein misunderstood what I was saying about that. I wasn't saying kind of dig into that, but unless you work out, and I think Jim's onto a lot of the things that went wrong, but unless you really have an agreed sense of that, I think it's going to be very, very difficult to rebuild.

56:30And look, I agree with you. It's great that Bernie and AOC are getting these massive crowds, but when you see them on the stump, they're pretty much saying the same things as they were saying at the election, or they were saying the same things that Bernie Sanders was saying to us when we interviewed him. You've got to find a message that adapts to the changes that are happening. yeah and nancy pelosi seems to be convincing people that it's dangerous to have policies at the moment that if the democrats announce policies they'll just be shot down and that what they need to do is wait for trump to immolate himself and taken in the midterm that's james carville's view as well i saw james carville a couple of weeks ago and that was his view just you know there's no point at the moment just sit back well maybe maybe okay alice well thank you of your time.

57:17And I thought that was great. Not at all. Lovely to see you. See you soon. Bye bye.

57:30I'm David McCloskey, former CIA analyst turned spy novelist. And I'm Gordon Carrera, national security journalist. Together, we're the hosts of another goal hanger show, The Rest is Classified, and we bring you brilliant stories from the world of spies. Here is that clip we mentioned earlier on. June 5th, 2013, this first article drops and it's a massive one. It is a massive one. The world doesn't yet know that the source for this article is Edward Snowden. All they get is this remarkable story. And I mean, I remember it dropping and thinking, where has this come from? It just felt so kind of unusual as a story.

58:04We should explain what it was and why it's so significant. It's a court order to the company Verizon that demands it hands over the details of every phone call in America. And what it was after was what's called the metadata, not the content of the call. So it's basically saying these two phones connected at this time for so long, not necessarily what was said in that phone call. But it allows the idea for the NSA and then the FBI to kind of carry out searches on it to look for terrorists or other suspects. The point being, though, that this looks like domestic surveillance. by the NSA. And that was stunning, partly because the US Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, just a few months before had been asked in Congress by a senator, almost a question which suggests that the senator knew about this program, because the senator said, does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?

58:59And Clapper's reply was no. There is a tremendous gap between the understanding of this program I think inside sort of the upper reaches of Congress and the intelligence community and the White House and what the American people think is happening. And that's where this article is such a bombshell, because Americans prior to this, ordinary people, did not have an understanding that any of this was authorized. Exactly. I think what's interesting, if it had just been that one story, it would have been big. But actually, it's really an American story. It's about the kind of American constitution and legal protections.

59:31But, and I think you can imagine U.S. officials going, OK, well, you know, that's bad. But then The Guardian tells US officials who they're in contact with, that they've got another story coming down the line. And I think that's important because it makes clear that it's not just a single document that's been leaked, but there's more. And it's coming from what looks like the inside the NSA. So the next day, there's a little race, but The Guardian publishes a story on something called Prism. Now, this is another biggie in terms of a reveal. And I think for a lot of people, this is perhaps, particularly around the world, this is the more famous one.

1:00:04This is about the content of emails and communications, which are coming from big US tech firms. So this is about basically the idea that the NSA had access directly to companies like Microsoft, Facebook, Google, Apple, to things like Gmail, Outlook, Photos, all the data that people are sending around the world. This is in some ways a more stunning revelation because everyone around the world uses American tech companies. Those were basically the only companies you used for email and for everything else. And suddenly this program is being revealed saying the NSA appears to have access to it and is able to target and get particular accounts and details of it.

1:00:52But if you go back to that time, I mean, if you then talk to people now about what it was like in GCHQ, you know, Britain's intelligence agency, I mean, there is blind panic. Ian Lobin, who was then the director, later said, when I heard the news, I lay awake saying to myself, I hope this isn't a Brit. Because, you know, they've realised they've got a leak. Some of it looks like it relates to Britain. He's reported to have gone round colleagues asking, is anyone in your teams at GCHQ taking a long holiday? And I think meanwhile, in NSA as well, there's this kind of desperate panic as they realise their secrets are being unfurled.

1:01:26But what's interesting is that they are kind of narrowing it down and they're certainly kind of heading towards Snowden if they don't know it already at this point. Typically, someone who'd done this would keep themselves secret. But luckily, he's a massive narcissist with a massive ego. And if you want to hear the full episode, listen to The Rest is Classified wherever you get your podcasts.