#442 - "It Wasn't Russia" 27-Year CIA Agent Drops DNC Hack Bombshell | Ray McGovern

Watch every episode ad-free & uncensored on Patreon: https://patreon.com/dannyjones Ray McGovern is the former CIA analyst who personally briefed Reagan’s inner circle every morning, then spent the next three decades accusing the agency of lying the United States into wars. https://substack.com/@raymcgovern SPONSORS https://mod.com - Use code DANNY for 10% off. http://kalshi.com/r/dannyjones - Download the Kalshi app and use code DANNYJONES to get $25 when you trade $25. https://stio.com/danny - Get 20% off your order. https://whiterabbitenergy.com/?ref=DJP - Use code DJP for 20% off. EPISODE LINKS https://substack.com/@raymcgovern https://x.com/raymcgovern https://raymcgovern.com *NEW* DJP MERCH https://dannyjonespodcast.com Get paid to make clips from the show: https://discord.com/invite/dannyjones FOLLOW DANNY JONES https://www.instagram.com/dannyjones https://twitter.com/jonesdanny OUTLINE 00:00 - Joining the CIA in 1963 04:21 - Ukraine peace talks & the Minsk agreements 06:43 - NATO expansion after the Berlin Wall 11:29 - Bill Burns' warning about Ukraine joining NATO 13:00 - Victoria Nuland's $5 billion & the Maidan uprising 19:51 - Putin's missile warning & Biden's pledge 26:54 - China's backing for Russia before the invasion 29:32 - The Istanbul peace talks & Boris Johnson 35:03 - The balance of power: Russia, China & the US 39:06 - Ray's view of NATO without US support 42:51 - Russiagate & the DNC email leak 49:53 - Bill Binney & the challenge to the DNC hack account 56:49 - Shawn Henry's testimony on DNC data exfiltration 01:00:58 - Seth Rich's death & Ray's leak theory 01:07:37 - The Columbia Journalism Review's Russiagate investigation 01:10:23 - Ray's subpoena from Seth Rich's brother 01:13:03 - Comey, Brennan & Trump's prosecutions 01:15:30 - Oliver Stone's Putin interview & nuclear restraint 01:18:30 - Ray's Moscow trip with Oliver Stone 01:25:45 - Germany, Russophobia & Russia's threat perceptions 01:29:06 - JFK's peace speech & assassination theories 01:35:40 - Jane Roman, Oswald's file & JFK records 01:38:00 - Fred Janney & Mary's Mosaic 01:40:29 - Trump's orders & the federal bureaucracy 01:47:35 - France's unrest & Europe's Ukraine spending 01:49:58 - Iran, Israel & US national security 01:53:46 - Ray's proposed Iran peace deal 01:55:53 - Iraq's WMD claims & politicized intelligence 01:59:13 - Tom Fingar & the 2007 Iran nuclear estimate 02:02:34 - Nuclear weapons vs. uranium enrichment 02:06:58 - Netanyahu's election & nuclear escalation fears 02:12:11 - Arms sales, contractors & political influence 02:18:03 - James Angleton & CIA reporting on Israel 02:19:34 - Can analysts challenge the intelligence bureaucracy? 02:24:46 - Intelligence failures & Iran war planning 02:28:04 - The Houthis & Saudi Arabia 02:30:02 - The USS Liberty attack & its survivors 02:33:57 - Meeting USS Liberty survivor Bryce Lockwood 02:36:05 - The USS Liberty SOS & recalled rescue planes 02:41:36 - Ray's theories on why Israel attacked the Liberty 02:44:48 - The 1967 war & occupied territories 02:49:16 - Ray's account of intercepted Israeli communications 02:54:50 - Ray's work & Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 1:07Danny Jones?

  So you served 27 years in the CIA under how many presidents?

• 1:11Speaker 03

  Seven presidents and nine CIA directors.

• 1:15Danny Jones?

  Seven presidents and nine CIA directors. Wow. That's a stacked resume. What made you want to join the CIA?

• 1:24Speaker 03

  Well, you have to think back to the late 50s when I decided to major in Russian. I just saw that that was on a whim because I really liked the language and I didn't want to take any more French. And I got to learn a lot about Russia. And then all of a sudden, this fellow named John Kennedy got elected. And then his inaugural speech, he said, "Look, if you have something special to give, I don't ask what your country can give to you, but ask what you can give to your country." Now, you have to put yourself in those years. That didn't sound phony. That didn't sound odd then. And a lot of us, a lot of people my age, went down to Washington as soon as they could.

• 2:08Speaker 03

  I graduated from Fordham with a degree, bachelor's in Russian, then a master's in Russian. I was commissioned in ROTC, so I had to do my two years as an Army Infantry Intelligence Officer. But then the CIA grabbed me short of tour and I started there in April 1963, if you can believe it.

• 2:29Danny Jones?

  Wow.

• 2:30Speaker 03

  After being in the Army during the Cuban Missile Crisis. So it's a good back ways, but it gives you some sort of context and background to take a look at what's going on today and the ensuing years.

• 2:44Danny Jones?

  So you joined the CIA right before the president was shot?

• 2:48Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 2:49Danny Jones?

  A few months before John F. Kennedy was killed.

• 2:51Speaker 03

  My entry on duty was the 5th of April. In June, a month later, he made that wonderful speech at American University, saying, among other things, that, "Look, we've been through a lot. This is eight months after the Cuban Missile Crisis."

• 3:08Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 3:09Speaker 03

  "We don't want that to happen again. Let's remember that over 30 million Russians were killed in World War II," says Kennedy. "Let's remember that the equivalent of Chicago to New York was obliterated by our bombing, by the Nazis in World War II."

• 3:34Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 3:34Speaker 03

  And let's, above all, remember that we want the same things for our children. And the worst thing we could possibly do, as we've learned eight months ago in the missile crisis, would be to give another nuclear power a choice between humiliating retreat and using nuclear weapons.

• 3:56Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 3:56Speaker 03

  So that's June 1963.

• 4:00Danny Jones?

  Don't corner a mad dog.

• 4:01Speaker 03

  Yeah. And so I'm just saying that up till just recently, nobody picked a fight with an armed nuclear power, as we pretty much did by proxy with the Ukrainians, because it makes no sense. And recently, of course, the Soviet, the Russian leaders have made very clear that they're prepared to defend their country, to include all means at their disposal, sort of Oce, nuclear weapons as well. So the big change here came during Biden and a little bit Obama, but mostly now Trump, where we're challenging Russia on its boundary.

• 4:45Speaker 03

  It's very clear that this war was part of the NATO encroachment toward the East, where the US had promised not to do that way back when the Berlin Wall fell. And Ukraine was just a bridge too far. It's too long a border, too close to Russia. Middle-level missiles could go there in five minutes. You know, it's really a... So if you look at the Russian perspective here, as John Mearsheimer, the prominent professor at the University of Chicago says, Putin did everything he possibly could to get those Minsk agreements implemented, so he wouldn't have to invade.

• 5:30Danny Jones?

  Well, can you explain for people what the Minsk agreements are?

• 5:33Speaker 03

  Well, there were several agreements that were made after the Russians invaded Ukraine. The first and most important was Putin sent his top advisor, and so did Zelensky. Zelensky's man, actually still head of his parliamentary faction, his name was David Arachamia, okay? They went to Belarus and then they went to Istanbul. Six weeks after the invasion, they concluded an agreement. It was initial by both. "We're going to stop, there's a ceasefire. There'll be limits on the troop levels in each country. We'll not deal with Crimea.

• 6:18Speaker 03

  And there will be a referendum in Donbass, which is Donetsk and Lugansk. And the Russian language would be permitted there again."

• 6:30Danny Jones?

  And this is the Donbass region, this is the region right on the border of Ukraine and Russia?

• 6:35Speaker 03

  That's correct, yeah. These are the really two most important provinces.

• 6:39Danny Jones?

  And so Russia wanted to capture that area? Or they wanted just to permit them to speak Russian?

• 6:44Speaker 03

  Well, the Russian speakers there, which dominated those oblasts, about 70%, they were being shelled by the Ukrainians, armed to the teeth by NATO, by us. And about 14,000 people had already perished. We have documentation on that from the Organization for Security in Europe. They put out a graph about how the shelling increased, mostly during the month of February of 2022, just before the invasion. So the Russians wanted that to stop. And they couldn't get any... And they wanted NATO to say, "Look, okay, we don't need Ukraine.

• 7:27Speaker 03

  We'll stop with all the other countries that we brought into NATO, despite our promise not to in February 1990, for God's sake." Okay? Maybe for your listeners, I should probably say, when I was a Soviet foreign policy analyst for almost 30 years, if you count my military service, I was delighted when the Berlin Wall fell. I knew President George H. W. Bush. I had worked for him when he was CIA director. And I had briefed him every other morning for the four years during the first Reagan administration.

• 8:11Speaker 03

  And when he made a speech months before the Berlin Wall fell, he said, "Look, what I want is a Europe whole and complete and free from Lisbon to Vladivostok." Okay? Now, that was before the... When the wall fell, he calls up Gorbachev and he says, "Look, Mikhail, I'm not going to dance on the Berlin Wall, but we got a problem. What's going to happen in Europe now? You're losing all your satellites. Let's get together real quick." And Gorbachev said, "Oh, yeah, okay." So the next month, they met in Malta. Big summit, okay?

• 8:49Speaker 03

  And again, Bush reassured Putin, "Look, we have to work out this arrangement so there can be a Europe free and complete from..."

• 9:01Danny Jones?

  And Bush was saying, Bush called Gorbachev?

• 9:05Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 9:05Danny Jones?

  And this was when Bush was the CIA director?

• 9:07Speaker 03

  No, this is when he was president.

• 9:09Danny Jones?

  When he was president, okay.

• 9:09Speaker 03

  Sorry, I should have made that clear. So, yeah, this is 1989, 1990. So the summit in Malta was in December 1990. So he says, "How soon can you talk to us about what we do, about Europe?" And Gorbachev says, "Well, another month." So on the 1st of February, James Baker, Secretary of State for George H. W. Bush, arrives in Moscow. Now, he's a real smart Texas lawyer, right? Nothing against Texas or against lawyers. But he says, "Now, how would this be? We'd like to have a reunited Germany."

• 9:56Speaker 03

  Put yourself in position of Gorbachev. They just lost 26 million Soviet citizens from reunited Germany. This is a big quid, right? When I heard that this proposal was serious, I don't want a reunited Germany. I've lived in Germany five years. I mean reunited Germany was something that not only I feared, but of course to the nth degree. Anyway, so Gorbachev says, well, yeah, that sounds like a big quid. What's your quote? And Baker said, well, how about this?

• 10:37Speaker 03

  How about we promise never ever to expand NATO one inch east of East Germany, where East Germany now is. Well, they went back, they thought about it overnight and Gorbachev and his Foreign Secretary, Shifert Nudzi, said, well, you promise? Yeah, we promise. And so that was the promise. Don't move NATO one inch.

• 11:02Danny Jones?

  And it was not in writing.

• 11:04Speaker 03

  Pardon?

• 11:05Danny Jones?

  It was not in writing.

• 11:06Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's the point. Okay. Now, I asked Kuvaldin, who was one of the, Gorbachev's lieutenants there, his chief guy. And I said, this is about 10 years ago now, I met him in Moscow. Tell me, Professor Kuvaldin, why wasn't that written down? And he winced, you know? And he said, well, I'll give you the standard answers. Germany hadn't signed in yet and you really need Germany. And the Warsaw Pact still existed. Then he looked at me and he said, but the real reason, Mr. McGovern, was we trusted you.

• 11:47Speaker 03

  So trust evaporated when Clinton allowed all these other East European countries to get into NATO. And then when it came to Ukraine, the Russians said, no, that's a bridge too far. And they made that clear as soon as NATO, in its great wisdom, made a decision to incorporate not only Ukraine, but Georgia, the country of Georgia, into NATO. That was February, early February 2008. And our ambassador at the time, what was his name? I'll think of it a second. Anyhow, he was called in by Lavrov. Bill Burns is his name.

• 12:31Speaker 03

  He later became head of the CIA. So Lavrov says, look, you keep wanting to get Ukraine into NATO. Now, this is February before NATO decided. He says, Mr. Burns, do you know what a red line is? Yes, I do. Do you know what "nyet" means? Yes, I do. "Nyet" means "nyet". This is in Burns's cable. We have it, thanks to WikiLeaks.

• 12:59Danny Jones?

  Wow.

• 13:00Speaker 03

  Okay? He says, look, if you do that, you try to get Ukraine into NATO, there'll be a civil war there for sure, and we will have to think about whether we have to intervene or not. And we don't want to do that. So for God's sake, no, "nyet" means "nyet". It's all drawn out in this cable. And again, we wouldn't have it if WikiLeaks had, and as authentic as can be. So despite all that, two months later, on April 3, 2008, a NATO summit in Bucharest decided that Ukraine and Georgia will become members of NATO. So that was a bridge too far.

• 13:40Speaker 03

  What happened was, it took years, but there was a lot of cultivation of anti, well, they call it a color revolution, and it's run pretty much by people I used to work for.

• 13:55Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 13:56Speaker 03

  And the British people. And, you know, it was no secret because the Assistant Secretary of State, Victoria Nuland, bragged about having invested $5 billion, with a B, dollars in satisfying Ukraine's aspirations to join the West. She said that in December in 2013, in February, of course, we had the coup in Kiev. So this is how it all worked.

• 14:28Danny Jones?

  What specifically did Nuland say about $5 billion? What was the $5 billion for?

• 14:32Speaker 03

  To satisfy, to invest in Ukraine, to hope it'd satisfy its ambitions to join the West. Yelena Kovach, who was the head of Ukraine at the time.

• 14:44Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 14:45Speaker 03

  Had this difficult choice. Does he go with the EU or does he go with the well-established things that he had going with Russia? And he was betwixt in between. He couldn't make up his mind. And so they made up his mind for him. And what they did, actually, these crowds in Kiev, armed and, well, and supplied by Western intelligence services, they, well, they staged this coup. And when people, I have to tell you, after the coup, I was on Amy Goodman with a professor from Yale, Snyder is his name.

• 15:28Speaker 03

  And so we're talking, just a week after, so we're talking about, and I mentioned the coup in Kiev. And Snyder says, what coup?

• 15:38Danny Jones?

  This is the Maidan, right?

• 15:40Speaker 03

  Yeah, Maidan, yeah. Maidan's the big square there in the middle of Kiev. This is where Nuland, the Assistant Secretary of State, was giving out cookies and other things to demonstrators before the coup. So the reason I mentioned this is I said, now, Professor Snyder, are you unaware that there was an intercepted conversation between Victoria Nuland, Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs, and the US Ambassador in Kiev?

• 16:12Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 16:13Speaker 03

  Jeffrey Pyatt? And that it indicated, and she said, well...

• 16:18Danny Jones?

  Isn't this where she said, fuck the EU or something like that?

• 16:21Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. Well, that was it. Now, that was on YouTube on the 4th.

• 16:25Danny Jones?

  I remember seeing this on Oliver Stone's documentary.

• 16:27Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 16:28Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 16:29Speaker 03

  On the 4th of February. And so the coup wasn't until the 14th.

• 16:34Danny Jones?

  Wow.

• 16:36Speaker 03

  So McGovern sees this and says, oh, my God. So they were really gonna do it? Well, in our parlance, the coup was blown, right? I mean, you blow a coup by itself, it's not gonna happen. And it's not so much interesting, what I thought, it's what Gorbachev, I'm sorry, Gorbachev, what Putin thought. He was in Sochi, Winter Olympics there for the Russians, right? So he stays in Sochi, fully confident that when a coup is blown on the 4th of March, it's not gonna happen on the 14th.

• 17:09Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 17:10Speaker 03

  It happened anyway.

• 17:11Danny Jones?

  He just did it anyway.

• 17:12Speaker 03

  The interesting thing is that President Obama called Putin and told him, look, we got everything all set. This was the middle, just before the coup. Don't worry about it. Don't, don't, don't talk of, don't even think about meddling in this. And Biden called his counterpart in Russia, said the same thing. And so these guys feel like they were tricked because low and behold, there's this coup. The people that Victoria Nuland named, what was it? I remember his name in a second. They were named and all of a sudden they became Prime Minister and so and so.

• 17:55Speaker 03

  And then, you know, if there were any question about whether the intercepted message was authentic or not, well, as you already remembered, Nuland said, well, I didn't really mean to F the EU. I just, you know, what you said, right?

• 18:11Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 18:12Speaker 03

  So this is the background for Ukraine. And it took a, it took a while till Putin tried to, tried to maneuver things so that the Europeans and the West would recognize that this was really high stakes for Russia, that Russia would not sit down. And the best proof of that is the Secretary General of NATO, three years ago, before the EU, said, Putin offered us a treaty. And he said, if you, if you don't stop trying to get Ukraine in NATO, we will have to invade.

• 18:57Speaker 03

  And so we said, no. And so he invaded. And we got two extra members of NATO, Finland and Sweden. Ha, ha, ha. Half a million Ukrainian young kids killed at that point. So they got Sweden and they got Finland. My God, what kind of leadership do you have in NATO? Anyway, so he blew, he blew the whole thing by saying, yeah, it was about NATO. And those treaties that, treaties that the Russians offered both NATO and the US, treaties

• 19:39Speaker 03

  that took care of Russia's core interests, didn't let Ukraine in NATO, most important thing. They were just rebuffed in December of 2021.

• 19:52Danny Jones?

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• 20:52Speaker 03

  And let me tell you one of the story that really most people don't know. Not a story, it's what happened. The Russians are really getting antsy. Not only were their Russian stock people being, being killed by the shelling in Donetsk and Lugansk, but...

• 21:15Speaker 03

  There was a lot else going on. And the Russians were afraid that the US not only would take Ukraine into NATO, but would put the equivalent of middle-distance offensive rockets and missiles there. So this is what most people don't know. On the 21st of December 2021, so just two months before the invasion, Putin got up before all his admirals and his generals. I say all, well, all the four stars or three stars, so to speak.

• 21:58Speaker 03

  And he said, "Look, we're being confronted now by NATO. Already, there are missile sites that could be used in Romania and Poland to strike us. Okay, that would take nine minutes, maybe. But when the United States puts missiles in Ukraine, hypersonic missiles, which they are sure to do when they get them," says Putin, "I'll have five minutes, five minutes to decide how to react. We won't know if they're nuclear tipped or not. We can't take any chances." So now, I looked around, I watch all these things, and I looked around at these admirals

• 22:42Speaker 03

  and generals. Anyhow, nine days later, Putin calls Biden, calls the White House. "I need to speak to President Biden." Now, he's on vacation. "Look, I need to speak to President Biden, like, right quick."

• 22:59Danny Jones?

  Putin, Putin calls directly.

• 23:01Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, his people, his people. So what happens is, the White House, and to Biden's credit, he accepts the call. But he's alone.

• 23:12Danny Jones?

  He's what?

• 23:13Speaker 03

  He's alone. He's in a place called Delaware. Okay, right? He doesn't have Sullivan, he doesn't have Blinken, and he talks to Putin. And the readout says, "The President of the United States pledged not to put offensive strike missiles in Ukraine." Whoa. And that was the readout. Nobody has disputed that. That was the commitment, okay? So the next day, which was the 31st of December...

• 23:46Danny Jones?

  This is publicly available information?

• 23:47Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, yeah, if people listen. I can't get, well, I've got it published in some of my speeches and stuff. So this is what's key here. That's the 30th of December. My inference, I don't have this information, but I imagine those admirals and generals said, "Look, you know, five minutes, forget about it. You tell them not to put offensive strike missiles, hypersonic missiles, in Ukraine." And that's what Putin did. And Biden, bereft of his advisers, says, "Makes sense to me. Okay, no offensive strike missiles in Ukraine." Well, what happens?

• 24:26Speaker 03

  Ushakov, the main man for Putin, is delighted, because that's really what those treaties that they offered, you know, that's what it had to do, that no kind of missiles. So on New Year's Eve, this great celebration, and the Russians saying, "Look, the West, or Biden is finally taking our concerns seriously. Wow, let's wait until the bilateral negotiations start in Geneva on the 9th of January." The Deputy Foreign Minister, Yapkov, and Wendy Sherman, Deputy Secretary of State, start those on the 9th. And Yapkov says, "Wendy, let's get down to Brax Brechtax now.

• 25:10Speaker 03

  Let's work out the modalities of this thing." And she says, "A what thing?" He says, "The pledge that President Biden made not to put offensive strike missiles in Ukraine." And she says, "What? I don't know about that. I don't have any, I don't have any instructions on that." Lavrov, the Foreign Minister, corners Blinken two weeks later in Geneva.

• 25:37Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 25:38Speaker 03

  And he says, "Tony, Tony, what's going on here? Your president makes this commitment, and his negotiators here in Geneva don't know anything about it. What's going on?" And Blinken says, "Look, how do I say this? You know he was alone. You know that Putin took advantage of him. You know that I and Sullivan were not there. Forget about it. There's no commitment. Forget about it." Now, we might be able to, we might be able to talk about limiting the number of offensive strike missiles we put in Ukraine, but forget about it. That's gonna happen.

• 26:20Speaker 03

  Now, that was, I think, the 21st of January...

• 26:24Danny Jones?

  2021?

• 26:25Speaker 03

  Yeah, of 2020, 2022 now.

• 26:28Danny Jones?

  2022.

• 26:29Speaker 03

  Yeah, and so you have the next step here, where Putin and Biden have their last call, their last summit call. That was the 12th of February. And the readout from that says, "Biden did not discuss his former undertaking not to put offensive strike missiles in Ukraine, and he was unwilling to discuss the matter of Ukraine not being in NATO." That was the 12th of February. On the 24th, as you know, Putin invaded Ukraine. Now, this was not the only reason, but it was a token of how the Russians had lost

• 27:14Speaker 03

  all trust in what the US was trying to say. They were buoyant when Biden made this commitment. But now, this would be news to most of your viewers and people who listen, but I've been saying it, it's right on the record, and even Jeffrey Sachs asked me about this. He said, "Where do you get that, Ray? You have to read, the discipline is, you have to read all the stuff. Have to read what the US says, what the Russians say, and put it all together. It's very clear." So there's one other thing, which, in this whole scenario, needs to be included.

• 27:55Speaker 03

  Putin, by previous appointment, was going up to Beijing on the 4th of February 2022. Now, why? Well, they were opening the Winter Olympics in Beijing, okay? So he was, there was a great big statement of how close these two, Russia and China, were, okay? And now, my inference here is that he said to Xi Jinping, "Comrade Xi, I know this is not what you like. You're committed to non-intervention and the Treaty of Australia, and that's your whole Chinese foreign policy, but look what's happening. This is happening in Ukraine.

• 28:39Speaker 03

  I think I may have to intervene. So I just want to let you know ahead of time." And I think this is the way that went down, and Putin's, what's he gonna say? And she says, in my imagination, "You mean, you mean after the Winter Olympics are over, right?" Well, now, there's a fallacy, post hoc, ergo, propter hoc. And just because Putin waited for four days after the Winter Olympics were over in Beijing before he invaded Ukraine, doesn't prove that...

• 29:21Danny Jones?

  Interesting, right.

• 29:23Speaker 03

  But he gets back on the 20th, on the 21st...

• 29:26Danny Jones?

  If it looks like a duck and it quacks like a duck.

• 29:29Speaker 03

  On the 21st, Luns and Dniesk declare independence. They asked the Russians for help. There's a treaty signed, mutual defense treaty. And on 24th, as you know, four days after the end of the Olympics in Beijing, the invasion occurs. My notion, and I may be an outlier on this, but I think there's a good reason to think that if Putin didn't get the blessing from this great big brother, I mean, great big brother, he may have been more reluctant to do this. He may have done it anyway, but that was the icing on the cake, it seems to me.

• 30:13Speaker 03

  So he invaded, and then, as we said before, he immediately sent his representative to Belarus to deal with Zelensky's best friend, David Arachamia. And you don't have to believe me, you can believe what David Arachamia said. "I initial this agreement in Istanbul, six weeks later, okay? And we had it all set. We're gonna put off Crimea to..."

• 30:40Danny Jones?

  What was the agreement? The agreement between Zelensky and Putin?

• 30:43Speaker 03

  Ceasefire, integral Ukraine, no parts of Ukraine lost, because they hadn't been conquered yet, but an agreement to work out a regional autonomy for these, where they wouldn't, where they would be able to speak Russian, where they wouldn't be marginalized, where this shelling would stop, okay? Now, that was all kind of sealed with these signatures, and then two things happened.

• 31:15Speaker 03

  As you may recall, there were a lot of Russian tanks and other military up near Kiev. Not a lot of them, not enough to-

• 31:23Danny Jones?

  Now?

• 31:23Speaker 03

  No, there were back in-

• 31:26Danny Jones?

  Well, I remember there being a long period of time before the invasion where the Russians were posting a lot of their military equipment right on the border.

• 31:33Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 31:34Danny Jones?

  Like as if they were staging it.

• 31:35Speaker 03

  Now, it wasn't full scale. In other words, they had maybe 100,000 folks up there. And I remember looking at those photos and seeing, you know, seeing trucks all lined up like, you know, an infantry officer would see that as the craziest thing because in Falade, you could shoot them all up with one plane. Anyhow, they're there and they stayed there for weeks, remember?

• 31:58Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 31:58Speaker 03

  So what happens is Macron, the head of France, calls up Putin and he says, you know, this is a little embarrassing for Zelensky, not Zelensky, but yeah, because, you know, he looks like he's backing down with a gun to his head. So, so could you withdraw, you know, as a token of goodwill, could you withdraw those tanks and stuff? And Putin says, okay. And he does. Now, how do I know that? Putin said that. Is that enough? No, it's not enough. Putin says, we have that on tape. Now Macron does all this kind of stuff, all the time.

• 32:40Danny Jones?

  When was this? When was this phone call with Macron?

• 32:42Speaker 03

  This was when the, the people in, in Istanbul, David Arachamia and Putin's representative had just signed or just initial this agreement.

• 32:56Danny Jones?

  Right. Peace agreement.

• 32:58Speaker 03

  Yeah, peace agreement, yeah. And it's just what, six weeks after the invasion, so-

• 33:04Danny Jones?

  And it's not a ceasefire, it's a peace agreement?

• 33:06Speaker 03

  Yeah, no, it's a ceasefire and it provides for limited armaments on both sides-

• 33:11Danny Jones?

  Okay.

• 33:12Speaker 03

  And a degree of autonomy. This is important, a degree of autonomy for Donetsk and Lugansk, part of Donbass there. So, so what happens is they, Putin does withdraw these tanks, not that they were going to invade Kiev anyway, but Zelensky got religion. And he said, okay, well, I'll sign this thing, but please, don't make it so obvious. Would you withdraw your tanks? And Putin did. Now, what next? In comes Boris Johnson, gotta mess up your hair to see him, right? And he comes in and he says, look, forget about it.

• 33:52Speaker 03

  This is not about, not about your problems, it's about weakening Russia. We're gonna, we're gonna support you for as long as it takes. We'll give you all kinds of armaments and all the support, the Europeans and the United States. No deal. Tell them no. And now, and Arachamia has told us to the, to the Ukrainian Pravda, he was the negotiator, so this is all very, borders, not my interpretation. Johnson came in and he said, no deal. And Zelensky folded and said, okay, well, as long as you support us for as long as it takes.

• 34:37Speaker 03

  That sounds good to me. And now, unfortunately, now, now, it's as long as it takes. The US is not going to support him anymore. And the supreme folly, and this is what really gets me, the supreme folly of thinking, just not looking at a map, but thinking that you could weaken Russia by stirring up trouble in Ukraine and that the Russians wouldn't eventually win. It's crazy.

• 35:06Danny Jones?

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• 35:49Danny Jones?

  Event contract trading involves risk and may not be suitable for all investors. Kalshi products are not available in all jurisdictions. Prices, values, and available markets may differ from those mentioned. For more information, see kalshi.com/regulatory. Let me ask you this, what is your high level view at the moment of the power balance between Russia, United States, and China mainly? Like, how weak is Russia? Are they weakening? Are they getting stronger? Are they really a threat to Europe and the United States right now? Like, just give me like a very simple, high level of what you think's happening.

• 36:25Speaker 03

  Good. Well, maybe I'll start by quoting Biden in his last inaugural. You know, he looked around and he said, now, anybody in this room think that Putin is gonna stop at Ukraine? And then he won't go into Poland, and he won't go into the Baltic States? Anybody think that? And they said, oh, no. Whoa, you know, it's crazy, Danny. He did stop in Ukraine. I just explained how he stopped in Ukraine. Now, the notion that he wants to go on to Poland, why would anybody want to do that? Why would Russia want to do that?

• 37:01Danny Jones?

  He literally signed an agreement to stop the invasion in Ukraine.

• 37:04Speaker 03

  I'm sorry?

• 37:05Danny Jones?

  You're saying, you're saying he literally signed an agreement with Putin, with, with Zelensky's guy-

• 37:09Speaker 03

  Initialed, yeah.

• 37:10Danny Jones?

  Initialed the agreement to stop the invasion.

• 37:12Speaker 03

  And Boris Johnson came in and stopped it. Now, again, the Ukrainian negotiator himself, his name is Arachamia, he has told what the Ukrainskaya Pravda, in many interviews, this is exactly what happened. We had this all set and then Boris Johnson came in and he put the kapash on it. So, later, our own defense minister, our own defense secretary, Austin, agreed, you know, sort of admitted, yeah, this is really about giving Russia a strategic, a strategic loss, you know? This is what it's all about.

• 37:52Danny Jones?

  A strategic loss.

• 37:54Speaker 03

  Yeah. In other words, using Ukraine to, to cause this, cause all kinds of problems in Russia.

• 38:06Danny Jones?

  Deplete their resources, deplete their military equipment, deplete their ammunition.

• 38:10Speaker 03

  It's also delusory that, that I can hardly say it, but to think that they can dismember Russia as the head of the so-called foreign minister of the EU, Kaya Kalas, has said, they're gonna break it up and gonna seize the resources and all that kind of stuff. You know, so you asked for a high level-

• 38:28Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 38:29Speaker 03

  High level view. China, to a lot of people's surprise, including mine, came in with both feet. Sure, they like non-intervention and sure, they don't like the people invading other countries and meddling in internal affairs. But they stopped saying that for the next six weeks after the, after the Russian invasion. What they said instead was, each country has core interests. Russia has core interests in Europe and Ukraine. We have core interests vis-à-vis Taiwan.

• 39:07Speaker 03

  Core interests are what you can explain the things that are going on in Ukraine now. Eminently sensible, but what about the Westphalia treaty? What about non-intervention? Well, Chinese propaganda stopped all that for about six weeks and then it resumed. Yeah, the Westphalia is important, but we support people who are trying to defend their core interests. So you have China lining up with Russia on this and the US and NATO. Now, one has to remember that NATO is nothing without the US. I mean-

• 39:45Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 39:46Speaker 03

  So, what does that mean when the US says, well, that's enough with Ukraine? We're not going to give them any more arms. We'll sell arms to, to Europe. They can give them to Ukraine, but actually, we don't have any kind of, we'll run out of the arms that they really need. So, yeah, give it a try, Europe, but we're out of there. Now, NATO is, is no more. And for those who, who think that the Europeans can kind of get, get Trump or any other president to come back in for Ukraine, misled.

• 40:25Speaker 03

  High level, US, okay.

• 40:27Danny Jones?

  Did you say NATO is no more?

• 40:30Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 40:31Danny Jones?

  What do you mean by that?

• 40:32Speaker 03

  Well, I mean, you have to kind of watch this stuff. There have been two recent NATO summits. Two years ago, Trump came into the summit a little bit late. And the Secretary General, Mark Rute, said, oh, oh, finally daddy's here. Hey daddy, come on and daddy. Those are the words, okay? So, long story short, Danny, daddy is a deadbeat. A deadbeat. He doesn't pay child support. He doesn't pay alimony.

• 41:17Speaker 03

  He doesn't pay anything, okay? And that's what daddy decided to do. So, these NATO summits, the last one, was pretty void of any meaning. They did repeat, oh yeah, Article Five. Article Five indicates that if one is attacked, all are attacked. But Article Five doesn't mean anything anymore. And Trump has pretty much made that clear. So, any European that would think that if, let's say Estonia went after part of Russian territory, that the US would automatically be, be, be accepted to, accepting of an invocation

• 42:02Speaker 03

  of Article Five, it's crazy. So, the Europeans are really on their own now. And when I say they're on their own, that means they're nothing. Because, you know, like, when Stalin told, was told that the Pope was really against, against what he's doing, he said, well, how many divisions does the Pope have? Well, NATO doesn't have very much in the way of divisions or armaments. And the way they're acting is really bizarre. Because they're acting as though they do. They're acting as though there is a great threat from Russia. And they're pouring all, a lot of their money into defense expenditures.

• 42:46Danny Jones?

  The UK specifically, mainly, right?

• 42:48Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, Germany as well.

• 42:49Danny Jones?

  Germany. Well, there was, there was an interesting interview I watched the other day with Tucker Carlson and some, some, you know, high society, noble Englishman with an insane accent. And he was trying to, they were arguing the case for building up more armaments to be prepared to fight Russia. And making this big case on how like Russia's this huge threat to the UK. And they need to be more, you know, I don't know, be more scary and be more intimidating to Russia. What do you make of all that stuff?

• 43:26Speaker 03

  Well, it's BS.

• 43:27Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 43:28Speaker 03

  You know, if you're gonna say Russia's a big threat, then you have to have some evidence. And there isn't any. There's not even a scintilla of evidence that Putin never thought they would have to do things like go into Ukraine until we made it necessary for him to do that. So, for, for Biden to say those things and have everybody jump up and clap, a lot of it, Danny, has to do with Russiagate.

• 43:55Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 43:56Speaker 03

  Which kind of conditioned Americans to think the worst of Putin after all. What could be worse than giving you Trump? I mean, that's how Americans look at it.

• 44:08Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 44:09Speaker 03

  It was, it was, it was all made up stuff. It was made up stuff.

• 44:13Danny Jones?

  It's so crazy. I have people, we talk to people all the time in here that still believe that whole thing was real.

• 44:18Speaker 03

  Yeah. You know, I think maybe, maybe I'd say a word of that now before we.

• 44:22Danny Jones?

  Of course, yeah.

• 44:24Speaker 03

  We saw it was fake. When the Democrats during their convention decided to blame the Russians for hacking into the Democratic National Committee computers and exposing all these emails from Hillary Clinton and the DNC.

• 44:48Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 44:49Speaker 03

  And so, there was a considered decision there at the Democratic National Convention to blame the Russians. Why? Well, what did these emails say? They said, there was very clear that the football field was so stacked or inclined against Bernie Sanders that he didn't have a snowball's chance in hell of winning the nomination. In other words, it was very clear, not only from Hillary's emails, but from all that, all those people who had to quit exactly when they were released, that this showed that Hillary won, Hillary defeated or made it impossible for Bernie Sanders to have a

• 45:33Speaker 03

  chance, okay? So, that had to be concealed, okay? How do you do that? Diversion. How do you do diversion? The Russians did it. Did what? Doesn't matter what they did. The Russians did it. No, really. So, what happens is, what's her name? Palmyra. His, her PR person was a person named Palmyra.

• 45:59Danny Jones?

  Clintons?

• 46:00Speaker 03

  No, yeah, Clinton.

• 46:03Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 46:04Speaker 03

  Feminine Clinton, Hillary, yeah. So, Palmyra was her PR. She, she said, she wrote some articles where she said, she went with her golf cart around to the various outlets and the cable stations there at the convention and tried to sell this notion that the Russians had hacked into the DNC computers. And it's all the Russians and they're trying to blacken Hillary so she'll, she'll lose and all that stuff. And she said, it was really hard because I, they were, I mean, they, they looked at me weird and they wouldn't, I mean, they didn't think that, they, they smelled the rat. And, and then Palmyra says, but then, when we got back to Brooklyn, Hillary Clinton's

• 46:48Speaker 03

  headquarters, then intelligence people, people from the intelligence community and, and pundits and journalists connected with intelligence came and told us, no, no, this is real. The Russians really did hack, okay? And then, we still didn't have anything official. But then, on the first of October, now we're talking 2016 now, right?

• 47:12Danny Jones?

  Yes.

• 47:13Speaker 03

  So, November.

• 47:14Danny Jones?

  First, Trump won.

• 47:15Speaker 03

  Right, okay, okay. So, the first of October, Obama insists that the intelligence community put out a memo saying the Russians hacked. Now, there was a problem. They had no evidence, okay? They had co-opted, well, they had hired a tech firm called CrowdStrike, headed by a guy who had worked for Mueller and the FBI forever.

• 47:43Danny Jones?

  CrowdStrike.

• 47:44Speaker 03

  CrowdStrike.

• 47:45Danny Jones?

  Yes, I've heard of this.

• 47:46Speaker 03

  And so, the, the question was, why didn't FBI do the forensics?

• 47:51Danny Jones?

  Who, by the way, who hired CrowdStrike?

• 47:53Speaker 03

  This was the head of the FBI.

• 47:55Danny Jones?

  Is that your phone?

• 47:56Speaker 03

  I'm sorry.

• 47:57Danny Jones?

  What is that? Is that your phone?

• 47:59Speaker 03

  It could be mine.

• 48:00Danny Jones?

  Oh, okay.

• 48:01Speaker 03

  Sorry.

• 48:02Danny Jones?

  No, that's okay. Yeah, just throw it on silent real quick, we'll be good.

• 48:04Speaker 03

  Yeah. I thought I had turned it off.

• 48:06Danny Jones?

  Perfect.

• 48:07Speaker 03

  Sorry.

• 48:08Danny Jones?

  No, you're out, you're good, you're good. So, CrowdStrike was, what kind of a company was it?

• 48:15Speaker 03

  Well, the head of CrowdStrike had worked for Bob Mueller at the FBI for about 20 years. He was a big tech guy, right?

• 48:21Danny Jones?

  Okay.

• 48:22Speaker 03

  And then he set up his own firm called CrowdStrike. And for some reason, Bob, Bob Mueller and James Comey at the time, FBI director, thought, well, let's not send our own specialists into the DNC. Let's pick CrowdStrike with Sean Henry, who is running CrowdStrike, and he'll do their job. The point here is that CrowdStrike had not even reported on any of the forensics on October 1st, October 2nd, October 3rd, 2016. So, here Obama's looking around for an intelligence assessment. Who could he get to do this? The FBI and the CIA refused to do it because there were no forensics.

• 49:07Danny Jones?

  Wow.

• 49:08Speaker 03

  Okay? So, what did he do? He went to the Homeland Security guy, J, J Johnson, okay? And he went to James Clapper, who famously said.

• 49:20Danny Jones?

  Yikes.

• 49:21Speaker 03

  You know, the Russians, they're almost genetically inclined to be deceptive and do all these.

• 49:29Danny Jones?

  That's what James Clapper said?

• 49:30Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. He said that after he left office a couple of months, yeah.

• 49:35Danny Jones?

  And who also famously said the NSA is not spying on Americans.

• 49:38Speaker 03

  Yeah, right. So, he goes to Clapper, a known provaricator, and J Johnson, who's sort of a nice guy, you know? And J Johnson complains later. He says, you know, Obama leaned on us to do this before there was any forensics because we knew he wanted this done right away. And, and you know, I'm glad that, my wife's a Catholic, says J Johnson, and I'm glad I didn't convert because I'd have to go to confession for all this.

• 50:10Speaker 03

  He says this, okay, not only for this kind of thing, but for approving the extralegal assassination of of US citizens by drone strike earlier on, all that kind of stuff. Anyhow, so he goes to these two guys and they say, sure enough, the Russia attack. It's a terrible thought. One paragraph and a lot of frou frou. But my point is Paul Mieri, the PR person for for Hillary Clinton says, then we had something to chew on first October. Okay. And then there was lots of other stuff before the election. And then after the election, of course, a definitive memorandum saying, yeah, sure as hell, the

• 50:52Speaker 03

  Russians. Well, you know, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, which I was co-founder of, we attracted some really neat people. And among them were two former technical directors from NSA, from the National Security Agency monitors, all these things. Bill Binney and another fellow who I'll remember in a second. Anyhow, they joined us. And we said, well, could the Russians have hacked the DNC? And they said, this is knowable. Let us look into it. And on the 12th

• 51:31Danny Jones?

  Bill Binney is like a legendary cryptographer.

• 51:33Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah. I'm the smartest guy around. Yeah, he's a good friend of mine, too. Yeah. And Ed Loomis is the other fellow. Okay, he's, you know, Princeton PhD, and he's the computer whiz. Okay, he and and Binney pretty much constructed a lot of the collection devices and the way that gets stuff. And we know what's what's necessary. Yeah. They said, Ray, we could do something right quick because it's easy. Why is it so easy? Well, because we built the systems. Okay. And we have the slides from from from Ed Snowden.

• 52:15Danny Jones?

  Oh, yeah, right, right.

• 52:16Speaker 03

  So, so we have this Snowden. He wrote a memo, and we put it out on the 12th of December 2016. Okay, before Trump took office and after he had been elected. Now, forget about it. It's impossible. This was an inside job. It's we can we can show and we did, we included all these slides and we said, look, it's physically impossible. The physics, the principles of physics, what we know about having constructed these collection devices and cream on the coffee, it's Snowden's revelations show us this is impossible. Now, of course, we didn't get the first base with the mainstream press until later, when we

• 52:59Speaker 03

  thought other anomalies and we could in in July, we found more stuff and said, this proves that it couldn't have been a Russian hack. But the Russian hack was was a big deal, right? That's what they were going with. And it started right during the Democratic National Convention in July of 2016. So, so what happened was this. There were a couple of people in Congress that wanted to get to the bottom of this. So the House Intelligence Committee asked Sean Henry to testify. Sean Henry, being the head of CrowdStrike.

• 53:40Danny Jones?

  Okay.

• 53:41Speaker 03

  The forensic guys who didn't give these other guys that because and, you know, they're the ones that people were relying upon. When the Senate asked James Comey why he didn't do it himself, he said, Well, yeah, best practices would have indicated FBI technician. But but CrowdStrike, just gold and right. CrowdStrike is cool. Okay. Anyhow, they get Sean Henry before the House Intelligence Committee under oath.

• 54:09Danny Jones?

  This guy's the head of CrowdStrike?

• 54:11Speaker 03

  Yeah. And this is December 5, 2017.

• 54:16Danny Jones?

  Okay.

• 54:17Speaker 03

  Now, just to remind you, on December 12, 2016, we, that is, our former technical directors of NSA had already proven that it had to be an inside job. It wasn't a Russian hack. We have no brief for Russia, for God's sake. But if it was impossible to be a well, okay, so they get Henry under oath. And they now, what's his name? The guy Schiff, Adam Schiff. Hmm. He said, Now, Mr. Henry, tell me how it was that the that the Russians hacked into the DNC. And Henry starts, Well, it was and his lawyer. What the [inaudible]? You're under oath?

• 55:02Speaker 03

  You're under oath. Well, actually, actually, there's no technical evidence that the Russians or anyone else hacked into the DNC.

• 55:15Danny Jones?

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• 55:56Danny Jones?

  double charge jacket and pants are my go to. Ski season is almost here, so gear up now the way the locals do. Go to stio.com/danny for 20% off your order. That's S T I O dot com slash Danny. Stio.com slash Danny. Stio, designed and tested in Jackson Hole. This is on video?

• 56:15Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 56:16Danny Jones?

  Can you find this?

• 56:17Speaker 03

  You couldn't.

• 56:21Danny Jones?

  What is the guy's name again? The head of CrowdStrike?

• 56:24Speaker 03

  His name is Sean Henry.

• 56:26Danny Jones?

  Yeah. Okay, you want me to try? I want you to try our little tool, our little AI tool, search?

• 56:31Speaker 03

  S H A W N. Henry, the last name.

• 56:37Danny Jones?

  Hey, Robo Steve, find the video clip of Sean Henry, who was the head of CrowdStrike in front of Congress, talking about evidence for the Russia gate scandal. That's our little new AI thing.

• 56:56Speaker 03

  We have the transcript.

• 56:58Danny Jones?

  Okay.

• 56:59Speaker 03

  I'm not sure it was.

• 57:00Danny Jones?

  Okay, transcript's good. Transcript works.

• 57:02Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 57:03Danny Jones?

  I'd be really interested to see this.

• 57:04Speaker 03

  I have the transcript in here.

• 57:06Danny Jones?

  Oh, do you really? I'm sure he can find them, too.

• 57:08Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 57:09Danny Jones?

  Okay. If he can, then we'll pull them up. So this was when Sean Henry was in front of Congress being questioned. This was December of 2017.

• 57:18Speaker 03

  Right. It was December 5. Okay.

• 57:20Danny Jones?

  Okay.

• 57:21Speaker 03

  So we had already pretty much decided conclusively enough to satisfy me.

• 57:27Danny Jones?

  Is this the transcript? Okay, cool. See if you can find the part in the transcript. Good luck. 80 pages.

• 57:31Speaker 03

  No, no, you can go just down to the third page.

• 57:35Danny Jones?

  Oh, okay. He already knows it.

• 57:36Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 57:37Danny Jones?

  My man.

• 57:38Speaker 03

  This is good.

• 57:39Danny Jones?

  Okay, Mr. Schiff says, Thank you, Chairman. I have a couple of follow up questions. Then I'm going to turn it over to Mr. Castro. Welcome and thank you for your for coming to testify. My colleagues have asked you whether the damage that was done to the DNC through the hack might have been mitigated had the DNC employed your services earlier. Do you know the date in which Russia exfiltrated the data from the DNC? Mr. Henry, I do. I have to just think about it. I do know. I mean, it's in our report that I think the committee has, Mr. Schiff says. And to the best of your recollection, when would that

• 58:20Danny Jones?

  have been, Mr. Henry says? Counsel just reminded me that as it relates to the DNC, we have indicators that data was exfiltrated. We did not have concrete evidence that the data was exfiltrated from the DNC. But we have indicators that it was exfiltrated, Mr. Schiff says. And the indicators that it was exfiltrated, when does it indicate that would have taken place? Mr. Henry says, Again, it's in the report, I believe. I believe it was April of 2016. I'm confused to the date. I think it was April, but that's in the report. Mr. Schiff, Mr. Schiff says, It provides in the report on 2016, April 22, data staged

• 59:01Danny Jones?

  for exfiltration by the Fancy Bear actor. What is Fancy Bear?

• 59:07Speaker 03

  They accused that of being Russian.

• 59:09Danny Jones?

  Oh, okay, that was the Russian guy. Mr. Henry says, Yes, sir. So that again staged for which I mean, there's not an analogy I used with Mr. Stewart earlier, was we don't have video of it happening, but there are indicators that it happened. There are times when we can see exfiltrate, when we can see data exfiltrated, and we say conclusively. But in this case, it appears it was set up to be exfiltrated, but we just don't have the evidence that says it actually left. Mr. Schiff says, Did the technology vendor,

• 59:50Danny Jones?

  did the technology vendor, could you tell us who the technology vendor was that you were working with? And Henry says that the DNC was working with? Schiff says, Yes. His company is called MIS, and the actual contractor's name was Yared Tamim.

• 1:00:11Danny Jones?

  Um, okay. Interesting. So is that, is that, we already read it? I mean, he pretty much said he doesn't have any evidence that it was exfiltrated at all. He just says they have indicators that there was an exfiltration set up.

• 1:00:23Speaker 03

  Now, um.

• 1:00:25Danny Jones?

  After his attorney.

• 1:00:26Speaker 03

  Yeah. Now, the, the way our, Bill Binney and Bill Loomis, Ed Loomis and Kirk Weeby are NSA experts explain that is that, yeah, if you want to exfiltrate this stuff and you don't want to leave any evidence on electronic evidence.

• 1:00:47Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 1:00:48Speaker 03

  You copy it. You copy it from your computer, but before you copy it, you put it all together so it's prepared for either exfiltration, which you have a, a, a indication of, or just pressing copy, putting it on a thumb drive.

• 1:01:08Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 1:01:09Speaker 03

  Getting on a plane and taking it to wherever.

• 1:01:11Danny Jones?

  Wouldn't that also be considered an exfiltration, even if you're just exfiltrating a copy?

• 1:01:16Speaker 03

  Well, the question is whether the Russians did it or not. And if, if you're going to prove the Russians, you have to have some technical evidence. And if there's no technical evidence, which is what Schiff found out.

• 1:01:30Danny Jones?

  So you're saying.

• 1:01:31Speaker 03

  There's no technical evidence that it left the computer. So in other words, as my NSA folks tell me, if it's hacked, then there's electronic signatures that have to appear. So not only is it assembled, the data assembled for exfiltration, but it would be exfiltrated. And what Sean Henry is saying, there's no evidence that it was actually exfiltrated. So it supports the hypothesis that whoever it was, and there is one prime candidate, his name is Rich, Seth Rich.

• 1:02:09Danny Jones?

  Seth Rich.

• 1:02:10Speaker 03

  Yeah. Um, that he was working in the DNC. Um, now, I don't know this definitively, but there are all kinds of odd things that happened to Seth Rich. Um, matter of fact, he was murdered on the streets of Washington.

• 1:02:29Danny Jones?

  What?

• 1:02:30Speaker 03

  Yeah. Just three weeks after Julian Assange indicated that he had emails related to Hillary Clinton. So if we want to do the chronology here, it was, uh, uh, Julian Assange announced that he had emails related, related to Hillary Clinton on February 12th, I think, 2016.

• 1:03:05Danny Jones?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:03:06Speaker 03

  Seth Rich was, uh, was killed, um, I'm sorry, Seth Rich was killed on July 10th, I believe. So it would have been.

• 1:03:18Danny Jones?

  Steve can look it up.

• 1:03:19Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:03:20Danny Jones?

  Uh, Rich was walking home around 4:20 a.m. when he was shot twice in the back. Jesus.

• 1:03:28Speaker 03

  July 10th, yeah.

• 1:03:32Danny Jones?

  Likely, uh, part of a botched robbery. The case remains conveniently unsolved. It's a cold case.

• 1:03:39Speaker 03

  Yeah. It was a robbery, but they didn't take his watch or his wallet or anything like that.

• 1:03:45Danny Jones?

  Really?

• 1:03:46Speaker 03

  Yeah. And the.

• 1:03:48Danny Jones?

  Is that true? Can you look that up?

• 1:03:50Speaker 04

  Yeah, I can look it up. If that's, if that is true, then it's not a robbery.

• 1:03:54Danny Jones?

  Was there anything taken from, from Rich? Nothing was stolen from Seth Rich during the shooting.

• 1:04:07Speaker 04

  Then that's not a robbery.

• 1:04:08Danny Jones?

  They're saying it was a botched robbery.

• 1:04:10Speaker 03

  Yeah. So that was July 10th. Now, it was June, June 12th.

• 1:04:17Danny Jones?

  I'm sorry to interrupt.

• 1:04:18Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 1:04:19Danny Jones?

  But can't we, can't we do a better job of covering it up when we whack people? I mean, we're the United States. Like, if we need to, if we need to crack a couple of legs, can we, can't we be, uh, more prepared to create our cover story? Like, look, take the guy's wallet, you know?

• 1:04:37Speaker 03

  Well, there are indications this was a hasty job and the Metropolitan Police are pretty good. Uh, it was a, a high crime area.

• 1:04:48Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:49Speaker 03

  Uh, so my guess is that these guys were, were just hired to make sure he's dead. Uh, didn't matter anything else, they got the hell out of there right away.

• 1:04:59Danny Jones?

  They didn't cross their Ts and dot their Is.

• 1:05:01Speaker 03

  But to get back to the chronology, it was just less than a month earlier, June 12th, that Julian Assange announced that he had these emails.

• 1:05:10Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 1:05:11Speaker 03

  Related to, uh, so Rich is killed on the 10th of July and Julian Assange offers a $20,000 reward for information leading to the apprehension of whoever killed Seth Rich. It's all on the record, okay? Now, the interviewer immediately, so, so was he your source? And Julian says, we don't actually ever say who our sources are, but we're very concerned about this and we're offered $20,000 for, for a reward for information.

• 1:05:47Danny Jones?

  Wow.

• 1:05:48Speaker 03

  So, so, you know, it's not like, uh.

• 1:05:50Danny Jones?

  And I'm sorry for my, my ignorance on, on the history of Julian Assange, but where, was Julian Assange locked up at this point?

• 1:05:56Speaker 03

  No, he wasn't. Uh, this is before they locked, well, let's see. Uh, I forget when they locked him up. I think it was, yeah, it was later, it was later that they locked him up.

• 1:06:06Danny Jones?

  Okay.

• 1:06:07Speaker 03

  Uh, I forget. I used to visit him, actually, in the Ecuadorian embassy.

• 1:06:12Danny Jones?

  Did you really?

• 1:06:13Speaker 03

  And, yeah. Yeah, he's a friend.

• 1:06:15Danny Jones?

  April 11th, 2019 is when he was locked up.

• 1:06:18Speaker 03

  Okay. So this is 2016.

• 1:06:20Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 1:06:21Speaker 03

  So he's still able to communicate, uh, uh, let me see, okay, yeah. So he wasn't imprisoned until April 18th. Before that, he was in the embassy.

• 1:06:35Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 1:06:36Speaker 03

  So, uh, yeah, the interesting thing is that, um, Seth Rich had two computers and Metropolitan Police immediately saved the computer that they could, but then the FBI came in. Huh. And the FBI took the computer and then they took his work computer and then they denied that they had any information about Seth Rich, even though there were court cases that said, look, you have the computers, what information do you have on Seth Rich? We want all FBI records on Seth Rich.

• 1:07:20Speaker 03

  They've been stonewalling that for about six or seven years now. Luckily, there are two judges in the Eastern District of Texas who are finally showing some signs of, uh, pointing a special master or pointing to somebody other than the, than the FBI and the DOJ to go into this. But what we do know is that the FBI first denied the lawyers that are pursuing this, that they had any information about Seth Rich at all. Then, uh, two years later, they said, oh, we have too much and we're just, COVID's going on here, we just don't have the manpower.

• 1:08:04Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 1:08:05Speaker 03

  And then later, uh, they've been back and forth denying, but lately, just this week, a judge from Texas has said, look, uh, we're gonna, we're gonna pursue this some more. After that judge in particular had, had delayed for four years, maybe people are starting to say, well, look, you know, this is a young guy that could kill, you know? Let me, let me just digress. Well, uh, let me just add this. There was a, a very thorough investigation of Trump and the media to include Russiagate,

• 1:08:47Speaker 03

  uh, done for the Columbia School of Journalism. And, uh, it was meticulous and it was done by a really good author, whose name I'll remember in a second. And, uh, he included this indication, this, uh, five December testimony, uh, where Sean Henry, the head of CrowdStrike, said that there was no information, that any information had been exfiltrated, namely into the internet or into the ether.

• 1:09:22Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 1:09:23Speaker 03

  Um, all of a sudden, uh, when his mammoth, his very detailed appreciation of this appeared in the Columbia Journalism Review, they forgot. They left out the part about Sean, Sean Henry's testimonies saying there was no exfiltration. And the author said, well, why did you cut that out? And it's, oh, we sent you, uh, sent you a final copy. We knew you had COVID, but we sent you a final copy. Oh, he sold that copy that didn't show what the corrections were? Yeah, I had to read the whole thing again. Yeah, that's a copy. So the Columbia School of Journalism found this to be so heinous, found this to be such

• 1:10:08Speaker 03

  a, a vivid illustration of the deep state.

• 1:10:13Danny Jones?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:10:14Speaker 03

  Let's say the, the media, um, the DNC in this case, and the intelligence community, all together, um, uh, trying to suppress information about Seth Rich. So we're dealing not only with a, with a terrible kind of cover up, but with a homicide, with the killing of a, I forget what he was.

• 1:10:39Danny Jones?

  Twenty-seven year old man.

• 1:10:40Speaker 03

  Twenty-seven year old male, yeah. So that's how bad the media is to include the Columbia Journalism Review. Uh, you know, it's, it's really, it's no, it's no surprise that people don't know these things. I do my best last 25 years since I retired. Uh, I speak whenever, whenever asked to speak and I'm delighted that I could speak to you because you have a different audience than the one I usually have. But these things are, I mean, you have to be human about these things. My God, you know, I have two sons. If that, if I'm one of mine, man, that'd be really, anyhow.

• 1:11:20Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:21Speaker 03

  Here's another little side note. I was subpoenaed by Seth Rich's brother.

• 1:11:31Speaker 03

  Yeah, I had to produce all information indicating why I felt the Russians did not hack into the DNC.

• 1:11:42Danny Jones?

  What? How does this happen?

• 1:11:45Speaker 03

  Well, the NSA technical directors, Bill Binney, Ed Loomis, and Kurt Wiebe, they were subpoenaed to come up with all information that said that the Russians didn't hack. And I thought maybe, I had sort of what I called-

• 1:12:06Danny Jones?

  Subpoena by who?

• 1:12:07Speaker 03

  By lawyers for Seth Rich.

• 1:12:12Danny Jones?

  Got it, okay.

• 1:12:13Speaker 03

  Yeah, and not Seth Rich, but his brother.

• 1:12:16Danny Jones?

  Okay.

• 1:12:17Speaker 03

  Anyhow.

• 1:12:18Danny Jones?

  And what is his brother's belief about what happened?

• 1:12:20Speaker 03

  Well, his brother was, well, I don't know what his brother believes about what happened, but the Rich family were taken into the confidence of prominent Democratic Party lawyers. The Rich family has gotten a lot richer. And of course, there are indications that not only Seth, but his brother Aaron were involved in leaking disinformation, one way or another, to...

• 1:12:59Speaker 03

  So, this was an attempt to intimidate us from keeping our story alive. And I had, when my friends got all these subpoenas, I had a little subpoena envy. And then they served me. I couldn't believe it. So, I just said, you know, "Well, my friends have everything." They, "Oh, no, you gotta come, and, you know, we're gonna prosecute you, they're gonna pursue you." So, I asked to some lawyers, "You know, if there's a subpoena, you gotta answer it." So, I just gave them, you know, what I had in my computer pertaining to this. But, isn't that odd? I mean, I had just moved down to North Carolina. Some of my neighbors knew where I had worked before, and first thing you know, there's

• 1:13:44Speaker 03

  a subpoena guy serving me a subpoena on my front thing, and this one, "Oh, my God, he must be one of those torturers." So, anyhow, that's how far they went. So, it all spills to high heaven. And, you know, it's all on the record, it's just that Trump, however much you would like to go after these people, he's so inept, and the deep state is so strong. And I'm talking about James Comey, and John Brennan, and all those guys. And, you know, the one time he wanted to go after James Comey, for cause, you know, this is not a digression, people say to me, "Well, come on, Ray, the head of the FBI

• 1:14:29Speaker 03

  involved in trying to turn the election one way or the other?" I say, "Yeah, how do you figure that?" I said, "Well, look, Comey wrote a book, right? And he said in this book, and I quote, 'We were operating in an environment in which Hillary Roden Clinton was clear to be the next president of the United States,' end quote. Well, if you're operating in that kind of environment, you take all kind of liberties with the law and the regulations, and you do what you can to foster this notion about Russiagate, including the Russian hacking, which was pretty much the cornerstone of it, at least in the beginning.

• 1:15:11Speaker 03

  And you investigate the hell out of Trump, even though there's not much to investigate."

• 1:15:16Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 1:15:17Speaker 03

  So, you know, that's why, and then, of course, when they went after Comey about a year ago, or half a year ago, Trump pointed a lawyer who didn't know what she was doing, and she made some fatal missteps procedurally. So, Comey walked, now he's being prosecuted for some photos of a threat to Trump on the sand beach or some, I mean-

• 1:15:45Danny Jones?

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 1:15:46Speaker 03

  They're so inept, you know? I mean, the record-

• 1:15:49Danny Jones?

  Eighty-six, forty-seven, or whatever, that same thing?

• 1:15:52Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, forty-six. So, anyhow, what's, what the bottom line here is that the deep state is very strong. I don't think anything is gonna happen to either Comey, or Brennan, or Clapper, or any of the people in DOJ that cooperated in all this stuff. It's because Trump either is too afraid to, or thinks you can't, or just, it's not worth the candle. So, he points inept lawyers to go after Comey, and maybe he doesn't know, if they look really nice, then maybe they're not inept.

• 1:16:30Danny Jones?

  My favorite quote from the Putin interviews with Oliver Stone, where he's interviewing Putin directly, and they're standing in like a garden somewhere, and he says, "What do you make of what Hillary Clinton just said about you the other day, equating you to Adolf Hitler?" And Putin smiles at him and says, "Oh, she's a very dynamic woman."

• 1:16:52Speaker 03

  Well, his cool hand look.

• 1:16:56Danny Jones?

  He's very cool hand look, and I get it, like, I understand. He, I mean, it's great, he agreed to do that interview with Oliver Stone, it puts him in a great light, he handled himself incredibly, like, that's what you do if you're the president of Russia, I get it. But, man, it's hard to look, watch that, and be like, "This is a bad guy." Like, it seemed like this is a very pragmatic, level-headed guy who just wants the best for Russia. I know it's not as simple, I know it's not black and white like that, right?

• 1:17:23Speaker 03

  Well, it is sort of, you know, it's ninety percent white.

• 1:17:27Danny Jones?

  Right, but everyone, you know, anyone who you say that to, for the most part, will be like, "Oh, he's a monster, he murders innocent people," you know, there's the Chechen thing, where they blew up the apartments and all that stuff, like, which is true too, right?

• 1:17:44Speaker 03

  Well, yeah. Look, we're lucky to have him. He's not gonna be provoked by either the Europeans, or by some of the crazy things that Trump does. He's winning in Ukraine. He's got the biggest big brother that you could ever have in China behind him. They're gonna support Iran in a measured, kind of deliberate way. Iran's not gonna lose this one, because largely, their support. And it's just waiting, waiting Trump out. Now, with respect to Russophobia, I talked a lot about Russiagate, and at one point,

• 1:18:28Speaker 03

  one radio commentator asked me, "Ray, for God's sake, why are you so obsessed with Russiagate?" I mean, and I said, "Well, I guess it's because Russia has nuclear weapons." It didn't seem to parse, but there it is. That's why I think that giving, portraying Putin as a monster is a very, very dangerous thing, because most people don't understand that he's very perspicacious, he's very gradual,

• 1:19:07Speaker 03

  he will not rise to the bait by the Europeans, or by the Ukrainians, or, he's gonna win in Ukraine, that much is clear, and Trump's gonna let him, because he doesn't have any other choice. And the reason he's in Ukraine is not to seize Ukraine, but rather to defend Russia. And I tried to make that before, that point before. I was with Oliver Stone in Russia in May of last year.

• 1:19:36Danny Jones?

  Oh, really?

• 1:19:37Speaker 03

  Yeah, he asked me to come with him. We were invited to celebrate the 80th anniversary of victory in Europe.

• 1:19:45Danny Jones?

  Oh, wow.

• 1:19:46Speaker 03

  It was a really big deal.

• 1:19:48Danny Jones?

  In Russia?

• 1:19:49Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:19:50Danny Jones?

  What was that like?

• 1:19:51Speaker 03

  Yeah, oh, I've been there several times, but this was, I guess, the most recent, yeah.

• 1:19:56Danny Jones?

  Did you ever meet Putin?

• 1:19:57Speaker 03

  Well, I almost did. I was not, Oliver made the college try, but since I had been inoculated, there were very serious steps you had to start a week before. I wasn't, wasn't able to be in the three or four people that-

• 1:20:18Danny Jones?

  Inoculated?

• 1:20:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, for COVID, and for all other kinds of things.

• 1:20:23Danny Jones?

  Also, anyone else to see him has to get-

• 1:20:25Speaker 03

  No, no, well, I mean, they were invited to a special session with him, just-

• 1:20:31Danny Jones?

  Oh, I see.

• 1:20:32Speaker 03

  Together.

• 1:20:33Danny Jones?

  Got it.

• 1:20:34Speaker 03

  Now, I saw him at the parade, and I, Scott Ritter, my friend, that took photos of the parade, and there I was with the head of the Russian Duma, the head of the, their equivalent of the Senate, the Orthodox bishop, and a couple other people, you know, when you travel with Oliver Stone in Russia, you're in special treatment.

• 1:20:58Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:59Speaker 03

  But here's a little point that I like to make. We had a small dinner given by not Putin, but somebody just below him, who sees him almost every day, okay? And I had made a speech, a major speech, at a big youth gathering, and I recited a Russian poem about the horrors of war, and trying to identify the fact that we understand that 26 million Soviet citizens died in World War II, that we were allies then, there's no reason why we couldn't be allies now, as John Kennedy said after Cuba. And it went over really well, especially doing the thing in Russian.

• 1:21:44Speaker 03

  So, this fellow just below Putin says to me, "Mr. McGovern, why is it that you don't hate Russia?"

• 1:21:58Speaker 03

  I'm saying, and then it dawned on me, my God, you know? So I explained, you know, when I studied Russia, I didn't study just the language, but the history and the culture and opera and the music and the Stevsky and Tolstoy and Russian history, most of all, for God's sake. And we just, well, you get a feel for what Russia has been through and what they're like, how they handle the Germans and how they won a degree of, of security in Europe right now and feel they've been tricked once or twice or three time.

• 1:22:35Speaker 03

  Well, that's, and my teachers were not like Richard Pipes of Harvard or Brzezinski of Columbia, who drank Russophobia from their Polish mother's breasts, you know? My teachers at Fordham University in New York, yeah, they, they hated communism, but they loved Russia. And it came through, you know? I mean, they, they wished Russia as well. And we had an, we had a Russian Orthodox chapel right on campus there and I could go to the literature there. So anyhow, I got a feel for Russia.

• 1:23:17Speaker 03

  And when I started at the, at the CIA, of course, in 1963, 64, of course, the big challenge was Russia.

• 1:23:27Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 1:23:28Speaker 03

  And it was a real threat. Of course, it was a real threat. And did they want to take over the rest of the world? Well, there's a reasonable argument to say, yeah, that's what they'd like to do. Were they able to? Hmm, not if we were. Anyhow, my whole career in our priority as the, as the, the main target was Russia. So when I got to be 50 years old and I qualified for early retirement, that was 1989 and the Berlin Wall fell. And my friend George H. W. Bush reached out to Putin and said, wow, now we can have a

• 1:24:09Speaker 03

  peace dividend, peace from Lviv to Lisbon. And I'm saying, way to go, Ray. Now, it wasn't all you. But Russia's not a threat anymore. You can go, I, I wanted to work down in the inner city where I had been volunteering a lot of time. And I finally found a job down there. But I felt so euphoric. I mean, I had felt euphoric when I was in Moscow for the signing of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 1972. My branch, the branch that I, I led there on Soviet Foreign Policy were instrumental

• 1:24:49Speaker 03

  in helping Nixon and Kaczynski figure out, well, is this possible with, do they really want to do this? And we told them, yes, partly because they're afraid the trainer will steal a march on them, have better relations with you than they do. So it was really complicated, but not so much. Anyhow, in those days, I kept thinking, my God, you know, as a kid growing up with the, the threat of the Russian atomic bomb, right? Hiding on the desks, that's me, hiding on the desk. Walking down Central Park thinking, my God, those big buildings, don't they know they're building another one? Don't they know that one misstep? And then 72, I was in Moscow for this.

• 1:25:33Speaker 03

  I'm saying, my God, at least we have a balance of terror now. Okay? No anti-ballistic missile defenses to speak of, which prevents anybody from thinking they could make a first strike and not suffer immediate retaliation. And that's what it was until Bush got out of it, the younger Bush. And then, of course, Trump got out of the other treaty that limited middle range ballistic missiles in Europe. So this is after I retired that, that that happened. But, you know, when, when Trump got out of that and Bush got out of that, it was, it

• 1:26:16Speaker 03

  was more impetus for me to say what I know and, and not be afraid to say, look, look at the evidence, for God's sake. Where is your evidence that, that Putin wanted to take over all of Donbass?

• 1:26:32Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 1:26:33Speaker 03

  He agreed not to. And April 2022, 20, yeah, yeah. That he wanted to take Poland, the Baltic States? Now, it's just as bad in places like Germany. And I have right here, I think I brought it. Okay. Now, this is a, check out there. This is a, this is a little button. I don't know if the camera can see it, but.

• 1:26:59Danny Jones?

  Putin ver Verstehe.

• 1:27:02Speaker 03

  Verstehe. Yeah. Now, I saw that in.

• 1:27:05Danny Jones?

  Got it, Steve?

• 1:27:06Speaker 03

  Yep. I saw that in Germany about seven years ago and I said, my God, verstehen is to understand, right? So this is a, somebody who understands Putin. And I said, oh, my God, that's such good news. People trying to, let me have five of those. And my friend said, no, no, no, no. It's a perjorative.

• 1:27:27Danny Jones?

  Oh.

• 1:27:28Speaker 03

  Anybody trying to understand Putin is in Putin's pocket.

• 1:27:33Danny Jones?

  Oh, I see.

• 1:27:35Speaker 03

  And I'm saying, my God, I mean, how vivid is that? Verstehen, understand, you want to understand Putin? That's verboten. So here's another little thing here. The Glavny Vrak, the main enemy of the United States, of course, was Russia and the main enemy of Russia was the United States until two years ago. The Russians always say Glavny Vrak, not only in their intelligence apparatus, but you know, just now you know who it is? The main? Germany. There was a big poll two years ago, who's the Glavny Vrak? Who's the main enemy of, of Russia?

• 1:28:20Danny Jones?

  This was a poll done where?

• 1:28:21Speaker 03

  In, in Russia.

• 1:28:22Danny Jones?

  In Russia.

• 1:28:23Speaker 03

  Yeah. So, I mean, this is more of a sea change where, where, you know, they, they fear a guy like Friedrich Merz. Oh, look at that.

• 1:28:33Danny Jones?

  According to a recent survey data from Lavenda Center, Russian public perception of hostile nations has shifted. The top hostile nation is Germany, 55%. The UK, 49% and Ukraine, 43. We're not even top three anymore.

• 1:28:48Speaker 03

  No, we're down to what, 40%?

• 1:28:52Danny Jones?

  We've dropped from the top spot down to fourth place.

• 1:28:55Speaker 04

  Their, their greatest ally is Belarus, whoever that is, and then China.

• 1:29:00Danny Jones?

  Belarus and China.

• 1:29:02Speaker 03

  Yeah. So these are, you know, little.

• 1:29:05Danny Jones?

  That's crazy. I didn't not know that.

• 1:29:08Speaker 03

  Yeah. And of course, you know, if you look at Russian history.

• 1:29:11Danny Jones?

  It's a shift, a massive shift of power, the balance.

• 1:29:14Speaker 03

  What I appealed to the Russians that I spoke before, late April last year, was for remembrance of the fact that we fought together, that we were allies. I had a, I showed a big photo of the meeting on the Elbe, on the Elbe River where, for the first time in four years, Russian and US forces came together and there was a medical doctor from the US side and a nurse from the, from the Soviet side. And that was right before the end of the war. Yeah, there, there's some good ones there. Let's see, where is, so I showed one of those things and, oh, there it is. Yeah, that's meeting on the Elbe.

• 1:29:59Speaker 03

  That's staged, of course, but, so the Elbe River was, so there's so much in common. And John Kennedy, to his great credit, after Khrushchev and he had been through the real tough crucible of almost destroying the rest of the world, he made that great speech at American University on the 10th of June, 1963, saying, look, we need to understand each other better. We need to remember that of all the major countries in the world, we too have never

• 1:30:42Speaker 03

  been at war one with the other. Let's keep it that way. Let's proceed forward. And I hate to say this, but that's why they killed them.

• 1:30:54Danny Jones?

  That's why they killed them?

• 1:30:57Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:30:58Danny Jones?

  Yeah, there was the, in June of 63, I believe it was, where there was that Joint Chiefs of Staff meeting where they wanted to nuke China and Russia all at once. And the idea was because we had, that was the point in time we had the most and the end the least amount of nuclear.

• 1:31:16Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:31:17Danny Jones?

  Warheads.

• 1:31:18Speaker 03

  Yeah, they were like crazy people.

• 1:31:20Danny Jones?

  Right. Yeah, it was like Lemenzer.

• 1:31:22Speaker 03

  Lemenitzer.

• 1:31:23Danny Jones?

  Yeah, all those guys, they wanted to do this. This was called a SIOP meeting, from what I understand, like S I O P and, and.

• 1:31:33Danny Jones?

  Um, Robert Kennedy and told was there at the meeting and told JFK about that and they were like, oh no. And, um, John Newman has talked to me a lot about this. He, he, he seems to believe that the whole thing was a military coup.

• 1:31:51Speaker 03

  Well, um, the military was involved for sure.

• 1:31:54Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:54Speaker 03

  But Allen Dulles, the head of the CIA who was canned by, by Kennedy.

• 1:32:00Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 1:32:01Speaker 03

  And for the Bay of Pigs invasion.

• 1:32:04Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 1:32:04Speaker 03

  Stupid thing. Uh, I think he was pretty much the main orchestrator. And, uh, when LBJ, uh, saw fit to establish the Warren Commission, uh, guess who was the prime mover? The most influential member of the Warren Commission?

• 1:32:23Danny Jones?

  Yep.

• 1:32:25Speaker 00

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• 1:33:25Speaker 03

  Uh, Allen Dulles. Interestingly enough, that's where, uh, conspiracy theory comes from. Uh, a lot of us, even relatively young naive people like me thought, oh, wait a second. Who has it in for John Kennedy? I mean, who, who, who cashiered Allen Dulles and, and who kind of gave him a bad reputation? Well, I mean, hello, does it make sense to have Allen Dulles, uh, pretty much orchestrating the whole committee because he knew all the people to invite and all this stuff?

• 1:33:59Danny Jones?

  He knows who to invite and who not to invite.

• 1:34:00Speaker 03

  And the answer to that was conspiracy theory.

• 1:34:04Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 1:34:04Speaker 03

  You're making a conspiracy theory. So Allen Dulles.

• 1:34:07Danny Jones?

  Didn't the CIA create that term conspiracy theory or like put it out there?

• 1:34:11Speaker 03

  Well, my first recollection was when Allen Dulles used it in exactly this context, you know? This is conspiracy theory. Well, you know, it's, it's a easy way to dismiss people who aren't really that interested. But when I read Seth Rich, uh, people automatically think, oh, conspiracy theories, because they don't know, because they don't know that the FBI has his computers, that they don't know that the FBI swore on the oath that they didn't have his computers. And then they said, oh no, we have too much information on Seth Rich. And then more recently, burn bags were found in this little alcove there in the DOJ.

• 1:34:54Speaker 03

  And the, the suspicion is there's lots of information on, on Russiagate to include the, the rich stuff. So luckily, as I said, there are two judges in the Eastern District of Texas who are, are trying to give a, a decent hearing to something called the Transparency Project, which is working on behalf of the people who, um, well, the people who have been wronged by all this and, uh, and who have been actually hurt financially as well as other ways.

• 1:35:27Danny Jones?

  Mm-hmm. Yeah. The JFK thing, there's so many different flavors of the JS JFK assassination. It's just overwhelming. Everyone has their own opinion, their own reason. It's like, you know, you have the, the people like John Newman who believe it was, you know, mainly like, you know, Allen Dulles and the, and the, um, Joint Chiefs of Staff taking him out so they could go ahead and continue the Vietnam War and Kennedy want to pull everyone out. And, um, you know, then you have the people who think it was all Israel who did it because they wanted the nuclear material. And then you have the UFO nuts who think it was all because he was interested in UFOs and all that stuff. And it's just like, you know, I, I think there's a legitimate way to like break down and dismantle a lot of

• 1:36:08Danny Jones?

  those other theories. But I think the one, you know, the Allen Dulles, the Vietnam War, him saying he wanted to pull everyone out of the Vietnam War and those Joint Chiefs of Staff, like all the stuff that they wanted to do and like the meeting in, uh, I think it was Hawaii, like the weekend before that he was shot and all that stuff. Like the way, um, Newman lays it out is incredible. And, you know, as far as like the Israel theory about it, from what I understand is like, even if Israel wanted to kill Kennedy, they wouldn't have the means to be able to do it, especially in 1963.

• 1:36:42Speaker 03

  I think that's probably true. I think you have enough when you have, um, you know, there's one good book on this that is better than all the others. James Douglas, Douglas with two S's on the end of it, uh, JFK and the Unspeakable.

• 1:36:57Danny Jones?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:36:58Speaker 03

  It's 15 years old now, but it's still the best. And he, he goes into glory detail on all of this stuff. And, uh, uh, I think if people are interested in knowing what I think is the best book, that's the one that's out there. Um, JFK had issued two executive orders to pull, pull troops out of Vietnam. Uh, the military was certainly against that. Uh, there's even some suggestion that LBJ was not a prime mover of this, but that he knew enough about it to stay out of, stay out of harm.

• 1:37:37Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:38Speaker 03

  And I wouldn't put that past him knowing what else.

• 1:37:40Danny Jones?

  So Newman, a really interesting tidbit that he, that really stuck with me when I was talking to him was he went to go interview a woman by the name of Jane Roman, who was, um, she was working the, I believe, the Mexico City desk.

• 1:37:56Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:37:58Danny Jones?

  And what Newman discovered was there was this thing called a flash stop on Oswald's file, on his FBI file. And I guess, I mean, you probably know way more about this than I, what I know, but I'm going to try to, um, explain it the best I can. But the flash stop means that like, um, whenever this person comes across your desk or whatever, there's like, all the red flags go up. Like, we have to pay attention to this guy. This guy can't be here at this time. And, um, Newman says, because of that flash stop being on Oswald's file, him being on that route in, uh, Dealey Plaza that day was the equivalent to a flea

• 1:38:36Danny Jones?

  being at a Lysol convention. But two days before or a day before, um, Kennedy was shot, that flash stop was removed from Oswald's file. And there was a cable that Jane Roman signed off on, who was the head of the Mexico City, not, I don't know if she was the head, but she worked the Mexico City desk. She signed off on this cable acknowledging that the flash stop was removed from his file. So this was like, whatever, 30, 40 years later, 50 years, who knows how many years later. Newman goes to interviews her, you know, she's really old now. She's one of the last people alive who was like listed on some of these cables. And they said, why, he asked her, he's like, why did you sign off on this and not say anything about it? Like, what was this in your opinion? And she

• 1:39:21Danny Jones?

  goes, uh, she goes, and she, she, he explained like the way she reacted to it. She like tensed up and like, you know, she was like, this is indicative of something known about Oswald that was above my head that they wanted to keep secret. And she just didn't say anything else about it. But that was pretty freaky. I mean, that's, that's pretty much a smoking gun, that there was some sort of level of, there was a cover up done by the CIA.

• 1:39:48Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:39:50Speaker 03

  Yeah. I think that.

• 1:39:51Danny Jones?

  Whether they did it or not, people like to say CIA killed him. I don't believe the CIA killed him, but like, it's pretty, I, I think it's pretty fair to say that they covered it up.

• 1:39:59Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm. Well, it's demonstrable that they've covered it up.

• 1:40:04Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 1:40:05Speaker 03

  And I'll tell you why. Uh, I know something special about that. When I entered the CIA in, uh, the analysis division in January of 1964, uh, two bosses over me was a fellow named Fred Janney. His, uh, son, Peter Janney, has written a book, Mary's Mosaic.

• 1:40:30Danny Jones?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:40:31Speaker 03

  Uh, you might want to have him on sometime. Uh, he came to see me when I was working in the inner city after I had retired. He said, uh, I'm, I'm Peter, did you work for my dad? I said, yeah. He says, well, you know, I, uh, and he told me the whole story about his dad was directly involved in the cover up to include the murder of Mary Meyer on the tow path, on the CNO tow path, uh, in, in Georgetown, uh, in, in Washington DC. And we have, in the back of his book, he has some exemplars of, uh, uh, memos that

• 1:41:11Speaker 03

  Fred Janney wrote, uh, to make sure that, uh, this court in Texas, uh, didn't pursue this, this case that this fellow who knows something, something about what happened, uh, against the, the assassination. In other words, there were, there was a cover up committee chaired by Fred Janney, uh, to make sure that, uh, there was no, no Texan or nobody else who would be able to say definitively, uh, that the CIA was involved. Um, so it's right there in black and white. And I recognize the signature, of course. And, uh, uh, you

• 1:41:55Speaker 03

  know, the bottom line here is that, uh, there is a deep state. Um, it's still around. Uh, it even inhibits what Trump want to do, might want to do, whether it's on Ukraine or whether it's on whatever. And, uh, that's the reality that is really hard to contend with because it's very real and, uh, it's sort of inchoate, but it's there and it, uh, has to be taken into account by anybody who looks into this, this kind of thing.

• 1:42:29Danny Jones?

  It doesn't seem like Trump's in charge.

• 1:42:32Speaker 03

  Trump what?

• 1:42:32Danny Jones?

  It doesn't feel like Trump is in.

• 1:42:44Speaker 03

  Doug McGregor worked for Trump for the last couple of weeks of his first administration in the Defense Department and says outwardly that many of what he wanted to do or the orders he gave were just disregarded or not implemented by slow walking or by simply not doing that at the Pentagon. That's firsthand account, okay? He was a special advisor to the Secretary of Defense. And more recently, who was, oh yeah, this fellow Kent, Joe Kent, okay?

• 1:43:25Speaker 03

  He said in a recent interview, and I try to catch these things, he said, "Look, you know, there are all kinds of bureaucratic impediments for Trump to do whatever he wants to do." I watched this. He was head of the counterintelligence, counterterrorism center. I watched this happen. He says, "It's the bureaucracy if it doesn't want to do something. Either slow walks it or doesn't do it." And so this is the deep state. Joe Kent, are you a head of the counterintelligence? Are you talking about the deep state? Are

• 1:44:05Speaker 03

  you not part of it? Not part of it. It's the power, gosh, the money, the corporations, politicians, the people who make even more money.

• 1:44:23Danny Jones?

  The craziest thing about the Joe Kent thing is how he said that he was literally stonewalled. He was talking to these two podcasters that Trump brought into his administration, Dan Bongino and Cash Patel. And I think he was talking directly to Bongino about investigating, it was either Butler, the Butler assassination, or the Charlie Kirk assassination.

• 1:44:49Speaker 03

  Charlie Kirk.

• 1:44:51Danny Jones?

  Charlie Kirk assassination, yeah. And he wanted to investigate it and wanted to look more into it, wanted to see the evidence. "Give me some stuff. Let me help you with this. Let me figure this out." And he was like, he stonewalled, didn't let him get access to anything. And I think he said something similar happened with the Trump assassination, where he was not able to touch any of it or look at any of it.

• 1:45:13Speaker 03

  Yeah. That's not supposed to happen.

• 1:45:15Danny Jones?

  That's not supposed to happen. That's his job. That's his job title, like, quite literally. Like, why would you stonewall this guy from looking into these things? And if you are going to intentionally hide the truth, then you should expect people to come up with conspiracy theories, because that is like, by definition, what happens when you don't give everyone the facts, they're forced to fill in the blanks when, where their gap of knowledge is.

• 1:45:42Speaker 03

  That's right. Yeah. Now, Joe Kent would have the purview over any foreign involvement in Charlie Kirk or the other one. In other words, he would be fully entitled to this kind of thing. And as you say, he was kept out of it. And by his own admission, they didn't let me, they didn't, they cut me out of it completely. His whole counterterrorism center was cut out of this by the FBI acting on behalf of whom, you know? It's really,

• 1:46:21Speaker 03

  so you're right. This is, there's another thing. Professor Mearsheimer and Professor Sacks both addressed this deep state issue from their academic, their academician point of view. It was highly enlightening, the things that they ran into with respect to the deep state. I asked John Mearsheimer one time at a public gathering before 100 people, "John, you're in Washington now. Did anyone from the State Department or CIA or Pentagon, they get in touch with you to talk to you about?" And he says, "Ray," he

• 1:47:04Speaker 03

  says, "Come on, Ray. I've been doing this for three decades. Never once has a US government analysis shop or anything gotten in touch with me asking for my opinion." Wow.

• 1:47:19Danny Jones?

  Why is that?

• 1:47:22Speaker 03

  They got their own little parameters. They don't want to be, they don't want to be deflected by actual different opinions or maybe facts that they don't want to entertain.

• 1:47:34Danny Jones?

  They're trying to construct their own reality.

• 1:47:36Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:47:37Danny Jones?

  They don't need him interjecting his views.

• 1:47:39Speaker 03

  Yeah. In my day, you invited the academic, academicians in and you wanted to hear what they had to say. But, so that's, that's a real conundrum. Because if Trump can, if, let's say Trump wants to deny intelligence to Ukraine. And there are signs now, of course, that he's actually, some of his people are doing that. Will he be able to do that? Who's running all that stuff? Well, the CIA is. Why? Because we're not literally at war with Russia and Ukraine. And so you have to, can't have the military do this. You have to have

• 1:48:23Speaker 03

  the CIA do it. So will the CIA, if Trump says, "Look, no more Starlink, no more, no more Starshield, no more satellite imagery for Ukraine," would that instruction, would that order be honored? I don't know. That's how bad it is. That's how bad it is. And of course, he would take all kinds of flak here at, here at home for, for doing that. That's why he's waffling, even though the Ukrainians are saying they're being denied this kind of stuff. Trump is, "Oh, not to my knowledge, somebody might have turned off Starlink, but it wasn't me."

• 1:49:04Danny Jones?

  Right. Right. And that would make sense, because, you know, the UK and Germany are two of the biggest countries that are supporting Ukraine in this fight against Russia right now, too, which all goes back to what you were saying, how they are now the number one enemies of Russia.

• 1:49:21Speaker 03

  And France, yeah.

• 1:49:22Danny Jones?

  And France.

• 1:49:23Speaker 03

  Yeah, but they're all on their way out, you know? I mean, look at the riots in France now.

• 1:49:27Danny Jones?

  Oh, my God, it's insane. I want to talk about, let's talk about, I want to take a quick break. I need to use the restroom real quick.

• 1:49:31Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 1:49:32Danny Jones?

  So we'll jump right back in. We'll get into that stuff.

• 1:49:33Speaker 03

  Okay, sounds good.

• 1:49:34Danny Jones?

  We're back. All right, we're back. So we were just talking about, yeah, all the crazy stuff that's happening in France and how they're burning things down. It's also happening in Albania right now, too.

• 1:49:45Speaker 03

  Yeah, and to a degree in Rome and elsewhere in history. You know, the, the leaders of those European countries who, for whatever reason, thought that Ukraine was more important than taking care of their social democracies, for most of them, doesn't really force, except that they're a little divorced from reality. And then it can be around very much longer. I wouldn't give mouths in Germany many more months. And Macron, not even got a year left, probably less, already had a change in leadership in the UK. You know, I think that

• 1:50:25Danny Jones?

  It's already been, so they're already trying to frame it as like a Muslim invasion and blaming it on the Muslims.

• 1:50:30Speaker 03

  Yeah. Islamophobia is, is almost as thick, well, as thick as Russophobia. But they're not going to get away with that. They've frittered away billions and billions. And I think that the younger generation or the people who replace the current leadership could be smart enough to say, "Now, what about this Russian threat? Where's your evidence that Russia wants to, did you know that the Soviet Union fell apart? Did you know that? Did you know that the Russians aren't trying to take over the rest of the world now, or

• 1:51:08Speaker 03

  not even Europe? I mean, maybe we could spend our money on programs of social uplift, as Martin Kagan would say. So, yeah, I hope that, and I think, I think that's what Putin is thinking. And, you know, the, the time is on his side that this craziness has got to disappear. But meanwhile, he's got to keep his powder dry and wait for the Europeans to come to their senses. Most important, that NATO is no more in any real defensive sense. The US is NATO. The US is not going to defend NATO, the, the other members of

• 1:51:51Speaker 03

  NATO in the way that they assumed would be the case before.

• 1:51:58Danny Jones?

  Now, what is your view on everything that's happening in Iran right now?

• 1:52:03Speaker 03

  In Iran?

• 1:52:07Speaker 03

  Well, I guess one starts with the fact that Iran is no threat to the United States.

• 1:52:13Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 1:52:14Speaker 03

  The Israelis perceive Iran to be a threat to them, simply because it's the only country in the area that's willing to step up to them. So this is an Israeli operation. I mean, that's why Joe Kent, we were talking about before, quit. Not only did Joe quit, but he said why he quit it. Very respectful letter to the president he still admires, okay, President Trump. He says, "I quit because this is really not our war.

• 1:52:53Speaker 03

  It's a war on behalf of Israel, and that Iran poses no threat at all to national security, much less an imminent threat." Whoa. Well, when people quit, they usually don't go that far, but Joe, to his great credit, said, "This is why I quit." So, three days after the US joined Israel in attacking Iran, so three days after February 28th, Secretary of State, and who was also the assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, Marco Rubio got up, and the press was right there. It's still available. So, "Why'd you do it?"

• 1:53:38Speaker 03

  He said, "Well," and this is virtual quote, "The Israelis told us that they were going to attack Iran, and we thought that Iran would probably retaliate against us as well, and so we wanted to preempt that attack so that it wouldn't be as damaging as it would otherwise be." Huh?

• 1:54:03Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:04Speaker 03

  So, we did it for the Israelis? We did it because the Israelis started it? I mean, so, that's the bottom line. Now, the way things have evolved, I don't know who is advising Trump with respect to military affairs, but, you know, the British talk about inventories, inventories. Did the US look at its arms' inventories? Well, if they did, they invented their inventories because they ran out of weapons, for God's sake. How do you defend that?

• 1:54:47Speaker 03

  I mean, did they really believe what Deng Xiahou said, "It'll be over in a couple days"? I mean, so, I guess as a former military person, and a fellow who was trained in the infantry, to always have a plan of action which included an estimate of the situation.

• 1:55:09Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 1:55:10Speaker 03

  You know, like you find out how many enemy there are, where they are, how they're armed, you look at the weather, and then you look at the terrain, and then you look at the lines of communication and control, we call them "the locks," okay? You know, look at a map, for God's sake.

• 1:55:31Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 1:55:32Speaker 03

  And you look at your own inventories, and you make sure that they're not invented, but that they're real. So, anyhow, the Iranians have fought us off, and now my main concern is whether Trump will realize that to get the oil flowing again, and to prevent an actual worldwide depression, he's got to give. He's got to make some concessions, and I have a plan for him.

• 1:56:07Danny Jones?

  You do?

• 1:56:08Speaker 03

  Yeah, I do.

• 1:56:09Danny Jones?

  What's your plan?

• 1:56:10Speaker 03

  Here's the plan. Mr. Trump, you said that the most important thing is preventing Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. Now, maybe nobody told you this, Mr. Trump, but the intelligence community way back in 2007 said that Iran stopped working on a nuclear weapon in 2003, and has not continued, has not re-begun or restarted. So, look, here's what you do, Mr. Trump. You say, "Aha, I have this agreement with the Supreme Leader.

• 1:56:54Speaker 03

  He is stumped working on a nuclear weapon, and he pledges not to resume." Okay? So, victory? We're going to work out the regulation of the Strait of Hormuz and the Bab al-Mandab Strait, and we'll declare victory, and he will not have a nuclear weapon. In other words, most Americans don't know what I just said, that the intelligence community ever since 2007, every year have said Iran is not working on a nuclear weapon.

• 1:57:30Danny Jones?

  John Kerryakou told me there was multiple things called "national intelligence estimates."

• 1:57:37Speaker 03

  That's right. That's the supreme genre of intelligence analysis. I chaired two of them myself when I was sufficient.

• 1:57:45Danny Jones?

  Can you walk me through how that works?

• 1:57:47Speaker 03

  Sure. Well, let's take this one specific national intelligence estimate. You have to realize that in 2002, 2003, the intelligence was corrupted to justify, in quotes, "the attack on Iran," on Iraq.

• 1:58:10Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 1:58:11Speaker 03

  In other words, it wasn't a mistake, okay? And you don't have to believe me, the Senate, after eight years of investigation, the Senate Intelligence Committee came up with a conclusion, which said, and I quote, "The evidence it used to justify the attack on Iraq was either uncorroborated, contradicted, or nonexistent." Period, end quote.

• 1:58:46Speaker 03

  Bipartisan committee with two Republicans joining that conclusion, June 2008, okay? Now, I ask you, what does nonexistent intelligence look like?

• 1:59:05Danny Jones?

  That's a good question.

• 1:59:07Speaker 03

  They made it up out of whole cloth. And sorrowfully, when people ask me, I testified in Congress after the invasion, the Democrats, they're almost even, "What do you..." So, it wasn't weapons of mass destruction, it wasn't ties between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda, what was it? I answered with an acronym, OIL. Now, Jon Stewart had a big thing, he said, "McGovern, you can't, that violates the rules of acronyms, you can't have..." So, it's O for oil, L I for Israel, and L for logistics, the permanent military bases

• 1:59:49Speaker 03

  that we coveted up there in Iraq, right? As soon as I said "Israel," most of the Democrats, Congress, oh my God, no, no.

• 2:00:03Danny Jones?

  Convulsing.

• 2:00:04Speaker 03

  Well, suffice it to say, that in retrospect, it looks like, to me at least, that it was more than 50% Israel. I know that they had their generals crawling all over the Pentagon. I know that Doug Fith and all the people, Rumsfeld himself, and Cheney, were manufacturing this nonexistent intelligence, and it was mostly because Saddam Hussein was perceived to be a threat to Israel, and they got rid of him. Next in line was Iran. Now, that's, I'm getting to the Iran estimate now. After this debacle, there was only one unit in the intelligence community that took a

• 2:00:48Speaker 03

  lot of footnotes on the estimate having to do with Iraq, and they said, "No, it's not really clear that they have weapons of mass destruction." This was INR, it's the Department of Intelligence and Research, it's part of the State Department, and people looked all around because they knew that Bush and Cheney had Iran in their sights next, right? Before they went off into the Western sunset, 2008. And so they looked around for somebody who could shepherd, who could manage an honest estimate on Iran nuclear. They couldn't find one in the CIA. So they went to the State Department and got this fellow named Thomas Finger, who was

• 2:01:31Speaker 03

  head of State Department Intelligence, and they said, "Tom, would you come in and do an objective?" This was Congress asking them to do this, right? So, he said, "No, I don't want any part of that." And they finally persuaded, twisted his arm, told him he could take his own people in, they'd give him a whole year to do it, he'd have his own access to all the information, but it would be sealed off, and so he did. And in November of 2007, they issued this estimate on Iran nuclear, and it went against all the estimates in the past, which were based mostly on Israeli intelligence, and it said, and I quote,

• 2:02:14Speaker 03

  We have high confidence in our judgment that Iran stopped working on a nuclear weapon at the end of 2003 and has not resumed work on a nuclear weapon. We say that with high confidence, we say that unanimously, all 16 intelligence agencies at the time.

• 2:02:38Danny Jones?

  Wow.

• 2:02:39Speaker 03

  So a national intelligence estimate is where you get all the intelligence agencies together. And this, of course, was on whether, how close Iran was to a nuclear weapon. And it was a little embarrassing because there had been previous NIEs, National Intelligence Estimates, going back to, let's say, 1990. And they were all sitting, you know, it's about five years away. They're about five years away. And 1995, well, maybe four and a half years away, you know, 2004 was all, made a whole cloth a recipient of intelligence from, guess who? The Israelis.

• 2:03:20Danny Jones?

  How could you do that with Israeli intelligence?

• 2:03:22Speaker 03

  Israel, Israel intelligence had a lot of influence within US intelligence because the people brought in were people who sniffed the prevailing winds and realized that people had Israel's interests at least as much in mind as they had US interests. So that was the situation before they brought this guy in from the State Department, Tom Finger. Good guy. So they stopped working on a nuclear weapon, high confidence, unanimous. That was 2007. Every year since then, Danny, every year since then, the so-called threat estimate annually

• 2:04:06Speaker 03

  required by Congress repeated that judgment until this, this year. Now, this year Tulsi Gabbard said, well, we can't really tell because we've obliterated all the sites, right? That's what the president said, so.

• 2:04:21Danny Jones?

  This was the June, the June bombing where they hit him with the bunker busters?

• 2:04:25Speaker 03

  Yeah, back last year, I guess, wasn't it?

• 2:04:28Danny Jones?

  Yep.

• 2:04:29Speaker 03

  Yeah. So, but she let, let it open, in other words, and there's no, no evidence that they are working. Now, we have to distinguish between the nuclear weapon and the enriched uranium. They're two separate distinct things. They have to be married, of course, in the end, but we can verify, or they have been verifying, that they weren't working on a nuclear weapon. And of course, there are all kinds of cameras and all kinds of, as, as long as the IAEA, International Atomic Energy Agency, was there. Matter of fact, Bill Burns, who I mentioned before, head of the CIA until the new administration

• 2:05:11Speaker 03

  came in, just two weeks before he went out of office, he said, look, you asked how close Iran is to getting a nuclear weapon? They stopped working many years ago and, you know, we will find out right away. I mean, there are all kinds of ways to find out that they were, I mean, we get cameras all over the place, we got the IAEA, of course, that was the case at the time. And so, look, we'd know right away. So, don't worry about it.

• 2:05:40Danny Jones?

  Does, does the CIA have people on the ground embedded in there, you think?

• 2:05:45Speaker 03

  People on the ground?

• 2:05:46Danny Jones?

  On the ground embedded inside Iran's programs?

• 2:05:50Speaker 03

  Not inside Iran, but they have agents of influence inside the IAEA.

• 2:05:56Danny Jones?

  Okay, got it. So they're able to get people inside where they're in those facilities?

• 2:06:00Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, that's, you know, I don't know that for sure, but I know that.

• 2:06:04Danny Jones?

  It's a, it's a reasonable assumption, though.

• 2:06:07Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:06:08Danny Jones?

  Okay.

• 2:06:09Speaker 03

  Anyhow, it's, it's not like there's any doubt that they were not working on a nuclear weapon. Now, about the enrichment, the interesting thing is that back in 2015, when the JCPOA, the Joint Comprehensive Act on Nuclear Weapons.

• 2:06:29Danny Jones?

  The Iran Deal, right.

• 2:06:30Speaker 03

  Right, the Iran Deal, that was Obama. And the Russians said, look, you worried about the highly enriched uranium? We'll take it. We'll take it, we'll take 90% of it. And the Iranians said, oh, okay. And the Russians are saying that again. Look, if you're worried, Mr. Trump, about the, they say this publicly, Putin himself, we'll take the highly enriched uranium if that's a problem for you. Now, that's a little embarrassing because then Trump has to explain why the JCPOA was not, you know, was not good enough for him. But it's the basic, so he's got a way out of this thing. If all he has to do is say, look, I stopped Iran from working on a nuclear weapon, the

• 2:07:15Speaker 03

  Russians are taking 90 or 80% of the highly enriched uranium.

• 2:07:19Danny Jones?

  Why wouldn't we take it?

• 2:07:21Speaker 03

  Well, I think they want to give it to us.

• 2:07:23Danny Jones?

  Oh, right, okay.

• 2:07:24Speaker 03

  Where they'd never get it back.

• 2:07:26Danny Jones?

  Right, right, right.

• 2:07:27Speaker 03

  So, now, here's what's really curious. It's a really bad thing, in my view, that our press is so bad, that our media is so co-opted, okay? But in this case, my God, what would you guess the proportion of Americans believe that Iran is working on a nuclear weapon?

• 2:07:54Danny Jones?

  Percentage of Americans total?

• 2:07:56Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 2:07:57Danny Jones?

  I'm gonna say 30%.

• 2:08:00Speaker 03

  Oh, really? Okay, I would think it'd be a majority because that's what the, that's, that's the assumption, that Iran is working on a nuclear weapon, that's what President Trump is trying to prevent, and, you know, that's, that's why we can, you know, really have to be afraid of Iran. Whatever it is.

• 2:08:17Danny Jones?

  What, do you know what the percentage is?

• 2:08:20Speaker 03

  No, I don't.

• 2:08:21Danny Jones?

  Oh, okay.

• 2:08:22Speaker 03

  I just guess it. But, you know, talking to neighbors or even family, what do you mean, Ray? That, I mean, that's why we're there. That's what we're trying to prevent. So anyhow, all I'm saying is that if I'm right, if ironically, the, the media has prevented us from getting the right story, namely, that they haven't been working on a nuclear weapon.

• 2:08:44Danny Jones?

  Can you find that percentage, do you?

• 2:08:45Speaker 03

  Oh, that'd be good, yeah, see if there's any, yeah. So, so this has been a real sticky wicket because Netanyahu, of course, has always been advertising how close the Iranians are to getting a nuclear weapon.

• 2:08:59Danny Jones?

  His election's coming up soon, huh?

• 2:09:00Speaker 03

  What's that?

• 2:09:01Danny Jones?

  His election's coming up pretty soon, huh?

• 2:09:02Speaker 03

  Yeah, two weeks now, yeah, that's the big thing. And I really worry not so much about whether Trump might go to.

• 2:09:14Danny Jones?

  He just endorsed him.

• 2:09:15Speaker 03

  What's that?

• 2:09:16Danny Jones?

  Trump just endorsed him.

• 2:09:18Speaker 03

  Yeah, he endorsed him big time, and I think that'll probably help Netanyahu. There's not many people in Israel that, that are against what's going on now, and that's the real disturbing thing. So let's say, let's say he wins. Will he be feeling his oats and try to persuade Trump to have another go at Iran? Yeah, I think he may. On the other hand, maybe our senior military would say, hey, Mr. Trump, there's this thing that the British call inventories, and we have inventories and we don't, we, we have invented our inventories to the point where we don't have any more weapons.

• 2:10:03Speaker 03

  That's the reality. We really don't have any more weapons to defend Israel or to defend our bases in the area, those that are left. And so hopefully, somebody will talk sense into, into Trump and say, look, you know, let's cut a deal. This deal that I'm suggesting is, seems to me, an easy way out for him. He'd have to swallow some crow, eat some crow, because it's very similar to the JCPOA 11 years ago. But, so, yeah, I, my main concern is that Netanyahu will go nuclear.

• 2:10:47Speaker 00

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• 2:11:49Danny Jones?

  That's, that's, that's terrifying.

• 2:11:51Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:11:52Danny Jones?

  I mean, the fact that you can even say that.

• 2:11:54Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:11:55Danny Jones?

  About a country who is not supposed to have nuclear weapons. They haven't signed the treaty.

• 2:12:01Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:12:02Danny Jones?

  They haven't acknowledged they have nuclear weapons.

• 2:12:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, and the US people are still prohibited from acknowledging it officially, even though some people have said it here and there. In other words, we don't dwell on, on Israel having nuclear weapons, but they do. So all I'm suggesting is that Iran has shown itself up to facing not only Israel, but Israel's patron, the US, down.

• 2:12:29Danny Jones?

  And all the Gulf states have been paying for it.

• 2:12:32Speaker 03

  Yeah. So what would, if Netanyahu were in extremis?

• 2:12:42Danny Jones?

  This is, we asked Steve, the question was, what percentage of Americans believe the story that Iran has a nuclear weapon?

• 2:12:55Speaker 03

  Yeah, I'm, what I'm saying is that, let's say Netanyahu loses. There would be an interregnum where he would still be in power until some sort of coalition.

• 2:13:10Danny Jones?

  Well, the opposition is just as hawkish, if not more than he is, right? So, nothing would change when it comes to the genociding in Gaza and the war in Ukraine, or the war in Iran and all that.

• 2:13:23Speaker 03

  That's my point. You know, when you talk about a guy who does genocide, forced starvation, assassinations galore, you told me that he would shrink away from using nuclear weapons in extremis. And I say to you, I think he probably would.

• 2:13:43Speaker 04

  This is funny. I found something that, that breaks it down by, uh, party.

• 2:13:47Danny Jones?

  25% of Americans believe Iran currently possesses nuclear weapons. Nearly twice as many, 45% believe Iran does not have any nuclear weapons, but is actively working to develop them. Another 26% says not sure. Okay, interesting.

• 2:14:03Speaker 03

  Yes, I was wrong. I thought maybe it was over 50%, but 45% is pretty, pretty high. And as I'm saying, um...

• 2:14:12Danny Jones?

  I've noticed that just not many people I talk to believe much of anything they hear the government say, which is very concerning to me.

• 2:14:22Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's, uh...

• 2:14:23Danny Jones?

  And it's just like, they don't, they don't put in the effort to even hide it anymore.

• 2:14:28Speaker 03

  That's the problem. Well, as I see it, they have nowhere to go that's easily accessible. They have two jobs, they go home from work, they feed the kids, they put their feet up and they watch Fox News to be entertained. So, that's why I'm delighted to come onto a program like this where, where we can talk candidly and say our truth and put it out there for people to, to, to take in.

• 2:14:58Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 2:14:59Speaker 03

  But not many people are clued in that way. And even though we're, we're making inroads, it's still a uphill struggle to put out the real facts on many things, including this, you know?

• 2:15:12Danny Jones?

  And, you know, it seems like one of the biggest underlying things here beneath everything that we see on like the, the political layer of society is, is like the financial institutions that are below it pulling the strings. Like, the fact that, you know, Tucker reported on this thing a couple of weeks ago about how the United States was selling Israel something like a couple thousand, 2,000 pound bombs.

• 2:15:43Speaker 03

  Right.

• 2:15:44Danny Jones?

  And the way that deal worked was, we gifted them a couple billion dollars so that they could in turn purchase, purchase these bombs from us.

• 2:15:53Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:15:54Danny Jones?

  So, it's like this weird money laundering scheme to boost our GDP or something like that, or to, to funnel more money into industries. And at the same time, you also have all these people that are in the administration who are like picking stocks early on certain companies or that are, you know, making a tremendous amount of money, like fucking Howard Lutnick is one of them. And, you know, it's just like, they do it right in front of our faces and we can talk about it until we're blue in the face on social media and in front of a microphone, but that's not, it doesn't seem to have any effect, like they don't care. It's just like the mask's off and they're gonna rake in as much money as they possibly

• 2:16:37Danny Jones?

  can because it, if you look at this, the, the landscape of these, these wars and these conflicts that the, that Israel and the US are getting into, especially from the US perspective, it, none of these things are beneficial to the United States, right? They're not a, they're not a beneficial to the people who live here, they're not beneficial to the economy or to the security of the country. So, it's like, okay, the math isn't mathing here if you're trying to say the politicians are making these moves. So, like, maybe if you look a step above that and look at the financial layer of these

• 2:17:19Danny Jones?

  things and, you know, these corporations like BlackRock and Vanguard and State Street and all these, you know, companies like Palantir and Lockheed Martin and all these companies that are, you know, maneuvering and getting themselves into position prior to when these decisions are made and seeing how much money they're making and how the people that are the politicians who are allegedly making these calls are enriching themselves from that. It just seems like, it's just this extraction of money. They're trying to just make as much money as they possibly can in the shortest amount of time before shit hits the fan and we're no longer, you know, the most powerful country in the world or the US dollar is no longer, you know, the primary currency, you know? That's just my, my view of it.

• 2:18:02Danny Jones?

  It just seems like, it just seems like chaos and greed.

• 2:18:05Speaker 03

  No, I agree. You know, I come from proletarian stock and I can never understand why enough is not enough. I mean, why do people have to have more millions or more billions of dollars? I just don't understand it. But it's, it's the deep state.

• 2:18:22Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 2:18:23Speaker 03

  And the Palantirs and the others that you mentioned, you know, those really want, there are the ones that are calling the shots. And how do we get at that? Well, let's see what the midterms do. I think we are in for some real surprises with the midterms. I think that the, one of the main factors is that the, the automatic favoring of Israel is no longer the case, especially among younger people.

• 2:18:51Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 2:18:52Speaker 03

  Yeah. Now, back in 2001, I think it was, yeah, Netanyahu was in the dining room of a, of a supporter, and you may have seen this clip, but he says, "Turn off that video camera." And forgot to turn it off, right? So, here's the, the woman of the house saying, "Now, Bibi, if we do that to the Palestinians, we're gonna be isolated from the rest of the world and it's gonna look really bad." And he's, now this is all on tape, okay? And he says, "Ugh, the rest of the world. It's the Americans that matter. And we can bend the Americans anywhere we want, anytime we want.

• 2:19:37Speaker 03

  Do you know that no matter what we do, 80% of the American people will support us no matter what we do? It's incredible."

• 2:19:47Danny Jones?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:19:48Speaker 03

  Period, end quote. It's on YouTube. Look it up, okay? Now, that's no longer the case. That's no longer the case.

• 2:19:56Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 2:19:57Speaker 03

  And whether that can be translated into, into electoral results or not, we might be see the beginning of that, uh, just in a couple of weeks when we have our midterms.

• 2:20:11Danny Jones?

  Well, it's crazy that Thomas Massey still lost.

• 2:20:14Speaker 03

  Yeah. Well, yeah, it's crazy.

• 2:20:17Danny Jones?

  It's true what you're saying. There's a, there's a huge uprising among the youth who are aware of the undue influence of Israel on our politicians, but despite that, he still lost.

• 2:20:27Speaker 03

  Yeah. That's, it brings us back to reality, but, you know, it, it's a, it's a reality that I observed from the very first time I was working on Soviet foreign policy in 1964, right? If I wrote something that mentioned Israel, however casually or kind of like a footnote, I had to make sure that that was, that was seen by the top brass of the agency before, before it was approved.

• 2:21:03Speaker 03

  Now, James Jesus Angleton was the guy, and he was like this with the Israelis and with the British, and he was pretty much in charge of whatever anybody said with respect to Israel. I often asked myself, how come there are no national intelligence estimates on Israel? Hello? I mean, McGovern, when are you gonna wise up? Now, that was all so secret and so, so compartmented to the degree there were any estimates.

• 2:21:39Danny Jones?

  Were there ever national intelligence estimates on, on other friendly countries?

• 2:21:45Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, sure. We had them on Western Europe, we had them on all countries but Israel.

• 2:21:50Danny Jones?

  Really?

• 2:21:51Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, sure. I did one on, one of the two that I actually shared was on Spain after Franco. Go back a ways, but what was gonna happen then?

• 2:22:01Danny Jones?

  But never one on Israel.

• 2:22:03Speaker 03

  And one, one other I did was on, on Italy, and that was when people were really worried about the Communist Party of Italy getting a share of the power. Uh, yeah, so I just don't know of any national intelligence estimates on Israel. That was not my focus, but I know about most of them. And such as there were, were probably kept really under tight hold, as we say.

• 2:22:33Danny Jones?

  Do you think there's any level within the current intelligence community that is aware of this and trying to come up with a solution to it? The Israel issue?

• 2:22:53Speaker 03

  No.

• 2:22:54Danny Jones?

  No.

• 2:22:55Speaker 03

  Well, you know, what happened was...

• 2:23:00Danny Jones?

  See, I often, go ahead, continue, continue.

• 2:23:03Speaker 03

  The, the analysis directorate in which I, I worked was able to do its thing. In other words, I was privileged to be an analyst of Soviet foreign policy. People were interested in honest assessment of that, and I was able to give it, even though I had to, if I mentioned Israel, I had to make sure that James Jesus Angleton said that was okay. The other, the other parts were, were not so much so independent. Latin America, for example, there were a lot of ideologies at play there, even in the analysis thing.

• 2:23:45Speaker 03

  But what was I gonna say here? What was your question again?

• 2:23:53Danny Jones?

  I was, I was asking, is there any level of organization or understanding inside the intelligence community today? I know this would be pure speculation on your part, but that is aware of the, the actual threat of Israel and its, and its influence that it has. And if it has infiltrated, which it clearly has infiltrated our agencies and our government and to, to, and I think John Kerry, I who told me like, when the last time he was in the CIA, he had estimated that there was, you know, over 250 undeclared Israeli Mossad spies in the country.

• 2:24:37Danny Jones?

  And he says it, it must have ballooned by now, but do, do you think there's anyone in the current intelligence community that is aware of this and actively working on it? Or is it just one of those things that it's like, it is what it is and let's just do our job and like, we are one with them. Have they accepted the fact that it's like this problem, like this, I hate to, I hate to make it sound like it's, you know, like Hitler, but like it is a bad analogy, but like, like when a parasite eats an animal, the animal eventually becomes the parasite to where there's no distinction anymore. Has it become like that to where there's no distinction between Israel and the United States?

• 2:25:21Danny Jones?

  They just feel like this is a problem that is too far gone and we just have to accept it.

• 2:25:27Speaker 03

  Well, let me answer it this way. When Robert Gates came in as head of analysis under Bill Casey, people got promoted by towing the company line. In other words, even on Russia, of course, you know, the Russians would never lose power with a, without a violent revolution. Gorbachev was just a clever commie. You couldn't deal with him, all this kind of stuff. So the people got hired were people who, in, in the Russian realm, that kind of were, were trained by people I mentioned before, Richard Pipes, or Brzezinski, or people like that.

• 2:26:11Speaker 03

  And it, it evolved in other areas as well. The reason why the continued insistence by, by the intelligence community that Iran was not working on a nuclear weapon, the estimates one after the other, every year from 2007 until this year, is because it's the exception to the rule. In other words, I've been amazed that those analysts have been able to stick to that line, that Tulsi Gabbard stuck to that line until she kind of waffled too much and was discarded.

• 2:26:54Speaker 03

  So unfortunately, that's the good news. That's why I, as an analyst of these things going on, I was reluctant to throw the baby out with the bathwater. In other words, the analysis function out with all those operators that are overthrowing governments and causing wars and stuff like that. But that's the exception now. Right now, I just don't know if there are people that are taking issue with our deference to Israel, whether they're still there, whether they have a voice, whether, if they, if they spoke out, whether they'd be transferred to stacking books in the library.

• 2:27:38Speaker 03

  I just don't know, but the whole thing has been corrupted to the point where, except for this one exception, so to speak. And, you know, it's, it's really sad to see this because a nation can't really function without somebody telling objective truth to the, to the, to the point where they can arrive at objective truths to the policymakers. In other words, did no one, did no one tell Biden that it was a fool's errand to think they could weaken Russia by building up Ukraine? Did no one look at the map? Did no one look at the inventory? Inventory? I mean, it defies explanation.

• 2:28:22Speaker 03

  And then with Trump, did no one tell Trump that they're gonna run out of ammunition? Did no one tell Trump that the Iranians spent three decades digging in and building hypersonic missiles and so forth? In other words, it's not only the intelligence community, it's the military who have been sort of towing the line and not speaking up. This fellow, this fellow Raisin Cain, Dan Cain, who's the chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff, you know? I mean, doesn't he tell Trump what's possible and what's not possible?

• 2:29:00Danny Jones?

  I thought he did say something early on.

• 2:29:01Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's what he told some press guy, you know? But when push came to shove, when he, with the head of the CIA, the head of the Defense Department and so forth, all together, when Bibi Netanyahu had Mossad brief how easy it was gonna be to, to conquer Iran, they didn't say diddly. They didn't say diddly. Now, the next day or two days later, when the New York Times interviewed him, they said, well, yeah, we had certain misgivings, so we had some problems with that. But that's the way it goes in Washington.

• 2:29:36Speaker 03

  And, you know, if the, if the uniformed military is so corrupt that they're peopled by, by ones that have their next eye on a job with Lockheed Martin or with Raytheon, and they don't really care much, as long as they get their four stars or their three stars and, and retire, then we're, we're in a really difficult place. And I hate to be so pessimistic, but maybe cold reality will set in. Maybe the fact that Iran has faced us down.

• 2:30:16Speaker 03

  Maybe the fact that maybe even these, these pliable military will say, no, Mr. President, nuclear is not gonna be a good idea. Okay? Maybe there's hope that the thing, things will calm down, particularly since nobody wants, especially Trump, a worldwide depression, which is what's gonna happen if the Strait of Hormuz is not really open. It's not really open now, except to some of the, some of the ships that are going to China and elsewhere. It's not open to the people who are, who are supplying Europe or the United States or other places.

• 2:30:55Speaker 03

  So, so we're in for a real economic hardship, and maybe that will kind of beat people over the head with the tuba four.

• 2:31:04Danny Jones?

  And now the Houthis are bombing Saudi Arabia.

• 2:31:08Speaker 03

  Yeah, it looks like Saudi Arabia is not long for this world.

• 2:31:13Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 2:31:14Speaker 03

  I mean, they don't have much. And when they asked Trump to come to their aid, Trump said no at least twice. And then they asked Pakistan and they asked Turkey. Now they've asked Egypt. I don't think there's any real way that any of these armies can insert themselves in a way that can do more than just defend the capital of Saudi Arabia, not much more than that. And the Saudis are not making any money. And, you know, it looks like the House of Saud is finally for the history books.

• 2:31:53Danny Jones?

  Hmm. And so, so the, from what I understand, you want me to get you a napkin?

• 2:31:59Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:32:00Danny Jones?

  See, will you grab, will you grab him a napkin, please? Or some paper towels?

• 2:32:04Speaker 03

  I don't know what this is.

• 2:32:05Danny Jones?

  He's got a cut on his hand. All right, we're back. I want to ask you, you, I saw a video of you explaining the, the USS Liberty story.

• 2:32:18Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:32:19Danny Jones?

  Better than anyone else I've ever, you, you explained all of it, because there was, I think you were, you were analyzing a video where somebody was asking Ben Shapiro about the USS Liberty and he was explaining it from his perspective. And you, you explained that there's like all of these transcripts or something about it. So for people who aren't aware, can you just give, first of all, what, what is like the, the general consensus on what happened with the USS Liberty? And what is the truth?

• 2:32:46Speaker 03

  Yeah. Well, I know some of the USS Liberty survivors. Some of them are very good friends of mine, the ones that, the ones that weren't killed or wounded, well, some of them are wounded. USS Liberty was a intelligence collection ship run by the Navy and NSA, the National Security Agency, eavesdropping off the coast of Sinai during the June war in 1967. They were told to stay in international waters, namely farther out than 12 miles, and they did.

• 2:33:34Speaker 03

  And they were snooping on, well, truth be told, they had Israeli translators, they had Hebrew translators, as well as Russian and Arabic.

• 2:33:45Danny Jones?

  On the ship?

• 2:33:46Speaker 03

  On the ship, yeah, it was pretty much intelligence, it was the most expensively and most up-to-date intelligence collection ship in the US Navy.

• 2:33:57Danny Jones?

  Oh, wow.

• 2:33:59Speaker 03

  So, what happened was that on June 8th, 1967, in the morning, they were reconnoitered by Israeli fighter bombers and so forth, and they flew over, and they flew so low that a couple of the sailors was waving to them, waved out the window and all. It wasn't so happy afternoon, because they appeared, and they strafed the ship, and tried to do everything they could to sink it, to include dropping napalm all over the deck,

• 2:34:40Speaker 03

  shooting out all the active communications sites they had, antennae, and so forth. And this came as a big surprise to the crew of the Liberty, of course, and couldn't understand what was going on. Meanwhile, back in Washington, we had the intercepted messages, where Israeli pilots were talking to the control centers, "But this is an American ship, it's got a big American flag, follow your orders, follow your orders." And there was one pilot that refused to follow the orders, he ended up in prison when they got back to Tel Aviv, okay?

• 2:35:22Speaker 03

  But what happened was, not only were they strafing and bombing out all the antennae, but there were three torpedo boats that appeared, two of them missed.

• 2:35:35Danny Jones?

  Submarines?

• 2:35:36Speaker 03

  Three Israeli torpedo boats, right.

• 2:35:40Danny Jones?

  So, there's a difference, that's not a submarine, it's a boat that shoots torpedoes.

• 2:35:43Speaker 03

  No, these are kind of surface torpedo boats.

• 2:35:46Danny Jones?

  Got it.

• 2:35:47Speaker 03

  And one of them hit mid-ships, where the marine detachment, there was a marine detachment on the ship, and hit that and put a big hole in the Liberty. Now, one of the, the head of the marine detachment, whose name I will remember, Bryce Lockwood, Marine Sergeant, Gunnery Sergeant, was behind a bulwark when his men were hit, okay?

• 2:36:25Speaker 03

  And he told me later that he was knocked unconscious, but then he woke up and he saw there were two Marines left in there, the others had all floated out into the Mediterranean. He jumped in, he pulled out one of them, and, damn, they locked the hatch, he got the hatch open, got one up, and went down for the other, and the other guy had slid out to sea. He lost all his men. Bryce Lockwood. How did I meet Bryce Lockwood?

• 2:37:01Speaker 03

  I talked a lot about Iraq, after the Iraq War, and I was down in Springfield, Missouri, giving a lecture in a church hall, maybe 300 people, and someone asked me, "Tell me, what did you think of that Mearsheimer and Walt's article on the Israel lobby?" And I said, "Well, I thought it was very good, except it missed the main point." And he said, "What do you mean it missed the main point?" I said, "It missed the one time when the Israelis learned for sure that they could get away with murder." "What was that?"

• 2:37:42Speaker 03

  I said, "Well, I'm talking about the USS Liberty." Blank faces, 300 people. "Oh, anybody know about the USS Liberty?" "One guy in the back, one guy in the middle, one guy in the front." "Sir, you in the front, tell me what you know about the USS Liberty." "Sir, Sergeant Bryce Lockwood, Command, USS Liberty, Crew, Sir." "Mr. Lockwood, did I hear correctly, you were in command of the marine detachment on the USS?" "Yes, I was."

• 2:38:27Speaker 03

  "Well, would you be willing to, would you be willing to tell people what happened?" "Sir, I've not been able to do that yet, but I'd like to try to do that now." This is 2006, Witness 1967. Okay. He came up, and he talked for about five minutes, and then he was pretty much overcome and went back, and he told me, he told us all this story, and the only reason why it

• 2:39:10Speaker 03

  was only 178 people wounded and 34 people killed, was because one enterprising sailor found an antennae, an antenna that wasn't obliterated by the Israeli fighter bombers, it hadn't been active, so they didn't know it was there, and he stringed up some kind of device, where he got an SOS out, okay? And the SOS went out, and the torpedo boats immediately left, because they intercepted the SOS as well, and the fighter bombers stopped. What happened? Well, the SOS went to the commander of that part of the Navy Fleet, 6th Fleet in the

• 2:39:55Speaker 03

  Mediterranean, and he immediately launched some of his fighter bombers to do battle with whoever it was attacking his ship, right? And he was called back. "Called back? By whom?" By Secretary McNamara, the Secretary of Defense, who said, "Pull those fighter bombers back." And I said, "I can't, they're attacking my ship." "Well, you pull it back anyway." And they think his name is Admiral Geiss, okay? He said, "Sir, I'm willing to do that, I would need to speak to your supervisor."

• 2:40:38Danny Jones?

  Wow.

• 2:40:39Speaker 03

  LBJ. LBJ is right there. "I tell you, I don't want to embarrass our ally, Israel, you pull those bombers back." "Yes, sir." Now, we have this directly from that Admiral, who swore one of the sailors to secrecy until he died, that the Admiral died, he finally died, and we have that, we have that verbatim, this is exactly how it went down. In other words, the Israelis learned that they could get away with murder, 34 sailors,

• 2:41:21Speaker 03

  174 wounded, of a crew of about 300, and the US would not only not do anything about it, but would cover it up.

• 2:41:31Danny Jones?

  For Israel.

• 2:41:32Speaker 03

  To include the US Navy covering it up. Okay, I'm sorry.

• 2:41:36Danny Jones?

  Covering it up for Israel, to not embarrass Israel.

• 2:41:39Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, so that...

• 2:41:41Danny Jones?

  And who was sworn to secrecy?

• 2:41:43Speaker 03

  This sailor who interviewed Admiral, it was Geiss, I think, was his name, it was the Admiral who was in charge of these two ships, the USS America and USS Saratoga.

• 2:41:56Danny Jones?

  Okay.

• 2:41:57Speaker 03

  They're both aircraft carriers, if I recall. So, in other words, my God, the Navy, I guess to its credit, fought for Captain McGonagall, who was wounded in the leg and kept the ship right, and they reached Malta, I think it was, and then they took all the sailors to Athens, to where the hospital was. But anyhow, the Navy did say, "Could you please, pretty please, give Captain McGonagall a Silver Star," I think it was. "Well, no, it was the Medal of Honor."

• 2:42:37Speaker 03

  And finally, they prevailed, Admiral Moore was one of the people, and they gave him the honor, but not in the White House, but in, I don't know if you know, the Anacostia River Navy Base, but they gave him very exceptionally, they gave him this honor amid the stench of this base, with very little publicity, and no precedent to make the honor. So, Captain McGonagall was honored by nobody else, and I'll tell you one thing, I became so close with these survivors, that when I heard that one of the Navy people who were

• 2:43:20Speaker 03

  instrumental in getting the SOS out, you know, from the radar, from the antenna that wasn't demolished, he was getting an award in Vesalia, California, the valley there.

• 2:43:36Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 2:43:37Speaker 03

  Yeah. And the congressperson was a fellow named Devin Nunes, who was a name already to me, and he had this fellow, Terry Harbadye, working for him, and he found out that Terry was one of the survivors, and when he heard the story, he petitioned the Navy to give him the Silver Star, which is the second most big medal. So, as soon as I heard that, I got on the next plane, I went out there, rented a car, and drove down, and it was a wonderful ceremony, because many of the survivors, many, there were about five survivors there, and Terry, the press, local press, it was not a big

• 2:44:19Speaker 03

  deal, local press said, "Terry, you have chapeau, chapeau off you," he takes over his shirt, shows the chapeau wounds.

• 2:44:27Danny Jones?

  Wow.

• 2:44:28Speaker 03

  "But you want to know about..."

• 2:44:32Speaker 03

  Hey, there it is.

• 2:44:32Danny Jones?

  That's the boat after it got struck.

• 2:44:37Danny Jones?

  So, why did Israel do this?

• 2:44:39Speaker 03

  What's that?

• 2:44:39Danny Jones?

  Why did Israel do this?

• 2:44:41Speaker 03

  Well, you know, that's the big question. You're good, you ask the right questions. We don't know for sure, but we know, there are two very plausible reasons.

• 2:44:51Danny Jones?

  What evidence do we have?

• 2:44:52Speaker 03

  Well, the evidence is circumstantial.

• 2:44:58Speaker 03

  Israel is gonna go up on the Golan Heights the next day, okay? They're gonna go into Syria. They're gonna take over the Golan Heights, which they have, and which they still have, okay?

• 2:45:11Speaker 03

  They didn't want us to know. Israelis are much, very much in the, in the habit of asking us for forgiveness after the fact rather than permission before. And they knew that this intelligence collection ship would surely be able to intercept the messages that went up back and forth about the next attack, the next day, the 9th of October on the Golan Heights. That's one theory. The other one is that the Israelis had captured a whole bunch of, of Egyptian soldiers in the Sinai. And they had take them, taken them to, to a place very close to the shore.

• 2:45:53Speaker 03

  And they had to feed them, they had to give them water, and, and they had to guard them, and they're supposed to go up on the Sinai. So, there were two Israeli journalists there who recorded that these Egyptians were shot, put into a trench, and, and just done away with. And that's a theory, that, that happened. Those, that was attested to by these Israeli journalists.

• 2:46:24Danny Jones?

  Okay.

• 2:46:25Speaker 03

  The theory is that the USS Liberty, just 13 miles offshore, would have gotten word of that as well, and they didn't want the USS, the US to realize what the Israelis had done to these prisoners. You know, if you take a step back, this was an unprovoked war.

• 2:46:48Speaker 03

  And the reason I say that is because not, not many people know that Menachem Begin, six or seven years later, he had been the Prime Minister of, of Israel. He was in Washington, and in a real moment of chutzpah, said, "Look, we have to be, we have to be honest about the 1967 war. Nasser, Nasser was not really provoking us. Those soldiers in the Sinai, they, they were, they were not a threat to us. We decided to attack him." And so, let's be, let's be candid about that. We decided to attack him.

• 2:47:30Speaker 03

  This is Menachem Begin, former Prime Minister of Israel, speaking to, I think it was the National College, National Military University or so. It's in a Washington, it's in the New York Times the next day, okay? So, what's that mean? That means this whole six-day war was waged in a pretext. They decimated the Syrian Air Force and the Egyptian Air Force, and more, more important, they took over what is now called the occupied territories. Gaza, West Bank, okay? Okay.

• 2:48:12Speaker 03

  So, when you're talking about the occupied territories, they were occupied in 1967 by the Israelis, who, Prime Minister admitted that this was not provoked, they just wanted to take over this territory. That was June. In November, the UN Security Council voted unanimously that Israel had to withdraw from the occupied territories. Resolution 242, UN Security Council, November 1967, same year. That's what we're talking about now. They never withdrew.

• 2:48:57Speaker 03

  And, you know, when the, when what's going on in Gaza, what's going on in, in the West Bank, and when the other Arabs see all this, you know, they have this, what they call this arc of resistance. Resistance, what kind of resistance? Well, are they entitled to resist occupiers? They damn well are, under international law. International law says that it's, it's not only okay, it's necessary in some instances to resist occupiers who occupy a land. "Oh, but are they allowed to use violence?" Yes.

• 2:49:38Speaker 03

  International law says that they're allowed to violently fight for their independence against occupiers. So, this arc of resistance is really led by Iran, but it's, it's talking about Lebanon now, it's, it includes Gaza, it includes parts of Iraq, and now the Houthis. So, it's a real deal, okay? This is a, this is a, a group that cares about what's happening in places like Gaza, even though, you know, the, if I were Iranian, you know, and I am a Real Politique guy, and I say, "Oh, I got this dusted up with the US and Israel," but I can cut a deal.

• 2:50:21Speaker 03

  Why complicate it by including Lebanon, what's going on there, you know?

• 2:50:26Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 2:50:26Speaker 03

  Well, they're not like me. They're insisting that Lebanon be included, and now Gaza, and now Yemen, the Houthis. So, this arc of resistance is exactly that, resistance to occupation. It's legal. I hate violence, but violence is, is, is, and the people against this, of course, are Israel and the United States, who, who for, for reasons that Israel wants, resist all this, and are afraid that Iran might, might be able to take back the occupied territories.

• 2:51:11Speaker 03

  It started in 1967. The Liberty was just, as I said, the time when I thought, you know, when Mearsheimer and Walt wrote this book about the Israel lobby, I looked for mention of the, of mention of the Liberty, there was no mention there. When I got finished here in, in Missouri, Springfield, Missouri, I called up John Mearsheimer, I said, "John, why, hello, you know, you missed the Liberty." "So, oh, yeah, we, yeah, we, we had so much, Ray, we had so much, so, yeah, but this, get away with murder."

• 2:51:55Speaker 03

  Yeah, but, so, John is a great guy, I love him, I've learned a hell of a lot from him. I don't know how to explain it. He didn't make a very convincing case that he had so much else, you know? What other proof was there that they could literally get away with murder, and that the US Navy, my God, would cover it up?

• 2:52:17Danny Jones?

  So, what were the transcripts again, that you were saying that?

• 2:52:20Speaker 03

  These were intercepted messages, which a lot of people had, and which were used, actually, in some of the intelligence courses at Fort Halibur, where the intelligence school used to be in Baltimore, to show what happens in war. And it was, you know...

• 2:52:39Danny Jones?

  They were, they were intercepted by whom?

• 2:52:41Speaker 03

  By us.

• 2:52:42Danny Jones?

  By us?

• 2:52:42Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:52:43Danny Jones?

  At what, when did we intercept them?

• 2:52:45Speaker 03

  Right, simultaneously, yeah. I mean, the state of the art even then was, you intercept, "Tum," NSA has it immediately, and so did we at CIA headquarters.

• 2:52:56Danny Jones?

  And the communicate, the messages were from who, to who?

• 2:52:59Speaker 03

  From Israeli fighter pilots to a control tower. "But these are American ships, these American ships, those big American flag there. Follow your orders, follow your orders." As I mentioned, one of those fighter pilots did not follow orders, flew back to Tel Aviv and spent a lot of considerable time in prison for violating orders. So, it's not like any of this is made up. We have the survivors, we have the intercepts. Your, your real question there was, is the only one that I can't answer definitively, why, why they would do this? And those are two real possibilities.

• 2:53:39Speaker 03

  There's another, another possibility, well, now, they, they made various excuses about a Egyptian horse-carrying ship that was mistaken, that they mistook for the Liberty or something like that, that never held much water. And there's some speculation that...

• 2:54:01Speaker 03

  Well, I won't go into the other. Those are the two main theories. I lean toward the one about the Golan Heights. They did go up the next day. I think that the Israelis didn't want us to know about that lest we intervene and say, don't, you took enough now. Don't take the Golan Heights in Syria. And they, to prevent that, they just kept us in the door.

• 2:54:23Danny Jones?

  Do you think there was any, any intention to possibly blame it on someone else? Or would it have been too obvious?

• 2:54:29Speaker 03

  Well, you mean, the Israelis blaming on somebody else?

• 2:54:37Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 2:54:38Speaker 03

  You know, if, if the ship-

• 2:54:40Danny Jones?

  Would that even be possible?

• 2:54:41Speaker 03

  If the ship had been sunk, which was fully the objective by the Israelis, that would have worked. But with so many survivors and so many witnesses to exactly what happened, only a cover up, a monster cover up by the US Navy and the US government would prevent it from coming out. But no, there was no way that they could accuse anybody else of, of striking the liberty.

• 2:55:11Danny Jones?

  Hmm.

• 2:55:12Speaker 03

  I'm glad you asked that question, because recently Bryce Lockwood came to a, to an event I arranged up at the National Press Club in Washington in March. And he's sharp as a tack. He's, he's my vintage, but he's still pretty sharp.

• 2:55:31Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 2:55:32Speaker 03

  And he just got up there and without a note, just talked about what had happened and how, how his co-survivors, you know, you want to talk about PTSD. My God, when I had lunch with the survivors after Terry Harpogee was awarded that medal from Congressman Nunes, I mean, those guys couldn't tell their wives? They were enjoined against talking to each other about what happened on the plane of court martial? And I mean, as I say, this was what, 67? This was 2007, I think was. So what, do the maths, what's

• 2:56:13Speaker 03

  that, 40 years later? Bryce Lockwood finally says, okay, I think I can talk about it tonight. And he gets up and he explains what happened. So, I mean, if further proof were needed about the Israelis knowing that-

• 2:56:29Danny Jones?

  We've got a flea problem in here, Steve.

• 2:56:32Speaker 03

  That would-

• 2:56:33Danny Jones?

  It's a gnat, yeah.

• 2:56:34Speaker 03

  Yeah. That they could get away with murder, literally. And murder of US, US Armed Forces sailors and NSA employees. Well, they learned that then. And ah, whether that would obtain right now, probably. But when Trump goes, I don't know, it's speculation. But surely the hole that Netanyahu explained back in 2001, where he said, it's amazing, amazing was the word he used, how much the US can bend to the will of the Israelis.

• 2:57:18Speaker 03

  80%. 80% of the Americans will support us, whatever we do. It's amazing. End quote.

• 2:57:28Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 2:57:29Speaker 03

  It's on the tape. YouTube.

• 2:57:31Danny Jones?

  It's insanity. It really is.

• 2:57:33Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:57:34Danny Jones?

  Well, Ray, thank you for doing this, man. We just did three hours.

• 2:57:38Speaker 03

  Oh, it was very-

• 2:57:39Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 2:57:40Speaker 03

  Well, Irish extroverts like to, like to talk, so.

• 2:57:44Danny Jones?

  You're a great talker.

• 2:57:45Speaker 03

  You're the great guy.

• 2:57:46Danny Jones?

  You're a great talker and a fantastic storyteller, and I appreciate your time.

• 2:57:48Speaker 03

  Most welcome.

• 2:57:50Danny Jones?

  Very enlightening.

• 2:57:51Speaker 03

  Keep up the good work.

• 2:57:52Danny Jones?

  Yeah. Tell, tell people who are listening more about where they can find more of your talks, more of your work.

• 2:57:56Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 2:57:57Danny Jones?

  All that stuff.

• 2:57:58Speaker 03

  Well, I'm on Substack, Ray McGovern. I do X at Ray McGovern. And I have my own website, which is actually easily searchable. It's raymcgovern.com.

• 2:58:11Danny Jones?

  Okay.

• 2:58:12Speaker 03

  So, and YouTube, I'm on a lot of YouTube.

• 2:58:15Danny Jones?

  And what's your, what's your organization that you founded right before the Iraq invasion?

• 2:58:19Speaker 03

  It's called Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity. And the word, the sanity came advisedly, because back then, there was no real way to collaborate. In other words, at the CIA, you had analysts and you had various booths and so forth. And if you're going to write that the Vice President of the United States was lying through his teeth, well, you were going to check that out.

• 2:58:47Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 2:58:48Speaker 03

  Well, what do you think? So it was all email sanity checks, right? So we're doing sanity checks all the time. And of course, there wasn't much sanity in Washington at the time. So that we kind of said Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, we do have quite a record now, about 60 memoranda, mostly addressed right to the president. And that one from December 12th, 2016, where we said that it wasn't a hack by Russia

• 2:59:28Speaker 03

  or by anybody else. It had to have been an inside job. And so we had a, a copy, not even a download, a copy from the computer onto a, a external storage device, probably a thumb drive.

• 2:59:47Danny Jones?

  Somebody who was there in person.

• 2:59:49Speaker 03

  Yeah. And the only suspect is a fellow named Seth Rich. You mentioned Seth Rich. You're immediately branded a-

• 2:59:56Danny Jones?

  Conspiracy theorist.

• 2:59:58Speaker 03

  Conspiracy theorist.

• 2:59:59Danny Jones?

  I've already been branded, so I'll lean into it.

• 3:00:00Speaker 03

  Welcome to the club.

• 3:00:02Danny Jones?

  It's good to be here. Ray, thanks again. We'll link all your stuff below. This has been very fun. I appreciate it.

• 3:00:07Speaker 03

  Thank you.

• 3:00:08Danny Jones?

  All right. Good night, folks.

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