Inside the GRU's Unit 29155 w/ former CIA Officer Doug London | EYES ON PODCAST

Today we were joined by former CIA Officer Doug London to talk about the article published by Insider and Bellingcat about the Russian operation to pay Taliban fighters $200k for every U. S. serviceman's death. We also dive a bit deeper into the GRU's Unit 29155, the unit responsible. Find Doug here Doug's book "The Recruiter" https://www.amazon.com/Recruiter-Spying-Lost-American-Intelligence/dp/0306847302 https://x.com/douglaslondon5?lang=en https://www.linkedin.com/in/douglas-london/ Support the show on Patreon:⬇️ https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse Find Andy Milburn here: ⬇️ https://twitter.com/i/flow/login?redirect_after_login=%2Fandymilburn8 https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewmilburn2023 https://amilburn.substack.com/ https://www.amazon.com/When-Tempest-Gathers-Mogadishu-Operations https://bsky.app/profile/andy-milburn.bsky.social https://open.substack.com/pub/amilburn/p/journal-of-a-plague-year?utm_source=app-post-stats-page&r=emo6q&utm_medium=ios Find Mick Mulroy here: ⬇️ https://fogbow.com/ https://www.loboinstitute.org/ https://x.com/MickMulroy?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-patrick-mulroy-31198b52/ https://bsky.app/profile/mickmulroy.bsky.social Find Jason Lyons here: ⬇️ https://www.linkedin.com/in/jason-lyons-666873316?utm_source=share&utm_campaign=share_via&utm_content=profile&utm_medium=ios_app https://bsky.app/profile/bgsilverback73.bsky.social #unit29155 #espionage Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rss.

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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• 1:08Speaker 02

  Hey, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Eyes On. A very special guest today, Doug London, former CIA officer. Of course, we have Andy Milburn, Jason Lyons. Mick Mulroy is in DC doing DC things. We're not supposed to talk about it. And Doug was a former guest of The Team House. Great episode. Check that out if you haven't. He's got the book, The Recruiter: Spying in the Lost Art of American Intelligence. Incredible book, really great, really like page turning. Really gives you a good glimpse of what goes into recruiting agents to spy against their countries. So Doug, thanks a lot for being here.

• 1:50Speaker 03

  Great, thanks for having me.

• 1:52Speaker 02

  Boys, how are you?

• 1:54Speaker 04

  Good.

• 1:55Speaker 02

  Great.

• 1:56Speaker 04

  Good. Right.

• 1:57Speaker 02

  The big story. Yeah, the big story was, uh, sometime last week, middle of last week, uh, Michael Weiss and a few, a couple of other journalists from the insider. Uh, Roman De Brokodov and Krista Grosev. Came out with a pretty, pretty lengthy investigative piece about the Russian bounties on American soldiers that were. They were pay basically paying Taliban. To kill American soldiers through Iran, obviously. I mean, it's a huge article. I'll put the link in the description for the article too. If you want to deep dive. Uh, that's why we have Doug here because Doug was, uh, quoted in it a bunch and Doug has extensive experience. So.

• 2:39Speaker 02

  Doug, let's just crack into it. I don't even know if I have a question. I mean, just break it down. Yeah, sorry. I'm not a good journalist.

• 2:46Speaker 03

  Well, you know, I, I was a little, a little snide. I think I had to confess when, uh, Mike Weiss reached out to talk to me about it. Because I was like, well, you know, I wrote about this in, uh, July of 2020. And he's like, what? And I was like, yeah, man, I wrote an op ed actually for the New York Times because the Times had put out. The initial story, right? Back then in 2020, talking about a bounty, all this kind of stuff. And. And I, I talked to the reporters who did it after they did their story. And I was like, you know, in a way you kind of undermined your own story with some of the wording you use. But the, the bottom line was true that the Russians, specifically the GRU. Were providing material aid and money with the specific goal of encouraging the Taliban to attack US forces.

• 3:32Speaker 03

  And, uh, at the time when I wrote that thing, and this is, you know, God, it's going to be five years ago, right? That I took a lot of criticisms like, oh, it's politically motivated and, and what have you. And you're taking a shot at, uh, outgoing President Trump. And, and I was like, no, the, the, the thing about it was, is that. It was once again demonstration that the Russians will do whatever they can get away with. Against the United States and its interests, including lethal activity. If there's no consequence and, and there hadn't been any consequence at that. And and at the time I wrote it, and again, as I talked to Michael, and I think, you know, I appreciate the way Michael depicted my comments.

• 4:11Speaker 03

  I was like, you know, I think by calling it a bounty, you make it a little bit more like Hollywood-esque, like, you know, like posters or whatever like that. It was an incremental process really that the Russians had followed with a very clear goal of trying to push the United States out of Afghanistan, which is, you know, just too close to their neck of the woods, given the Central Asian states that they still consider parts of Russia. When you look at how Putin thinks of the former Soviet republics, you know, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan down and on that little border area. And they had over time and over the course of my service in the region,

• 4:52Speaker 03

  decided to push the envelope because they could and went from providing the Taliban very limited aid and small arms, basically just to keep their toe in the water because they were still talking to the the existing Kabul regime. But as they saw the fortunes turn their way, that's when they kind of jumped on and and decided to pursue this program with a specific intent of bleeding US forces.

• 5:24Speaker 03

  Boys?

• 5:26Speaker 05

  Yeah, so, um, so first of all, Doc, I I know you, we we've already introduced you, but I think for the benefit of the audience, it's it good to hear what what you did, right? You headed um, uh, Central Asia uh, for uh, for that agency, what during what years?

• 5:45Speaker 03

  So, um, from two thousand fifteen to sixteen, I was in a job, uh, and again, I got to, uh, respect the parameters the agency requires me to respect, where you could say I was a coordinator for um, military special operation forces and our efforts to conduct lethal activity in the region. And that spanned pretty much globally, right? And then in two thousand sixteen,

• 6:14Speaker 03

  I became head of what the agency allows me to say was I was the CIA's chief of counterterrorism for South and Southwest Asia, and that included the war zones, Afghanistan and Pakistan and Iran, and the rest of South Asian countries with a real obvious focus on Al Qaeda and the Islamic State and the various partner groups. So my job was to be sort of that middleman, providing support to the field and executing their operations, everything from foreign intelligence collection to covert action activity and the lethal and kinetic aspects of it, as well as my link to the policymakers in terms of informing their understanding,

• 6:57Speaker 03

  decision-making and implementing their their policy decisions during that time. That's maybe a convoluted, but sort of effective way of explaining what I do.

• 7:06Speaker 05

  And that overlapped, of course, this this operation, which ran the Russian operation, GRU operation ran from twenty fifteen to around twenty twenty. And and could you talk a little bit about the specific unit within the GRU two nine one five five and and then what its role was here?

• 7:26Speaker 03

  So again, I sometimes, and I don't mean to be too too oblique, but it's just I have to be careful treading classified information that I'm aware of and and what I can speak to that was referenced by Michael and and Bell and Cat and such. So so they specifically identified unit two nine one five five, which folks back here in the United States will know them for their association with assassination efforts, sabotage activities around the world. They were the ones that tried to kill Skripal and his daughter in Salisbury, UK, back in two thousand and eighteen with Novicek, a chemical weapon. They blew up a plant in Bulgaria, Czech Republic.

• 8:10Speaker 03

  They tried to overthrow the the government, a government in the Balkans, Montenegro during their time, and they've been tied to anomalous health incidents, Havana syndrome.

• 8:24Speaker 03

  For for better use of words. So they are sort of a special operations unit within GRU, which is Russian military intelligence. And for context, and again, my overlap was I was in the chair chief of CT for the region from sixteen to my retirement at the very beginning of two thousand and nineteen. And I know in the article, they specify a couple of incidents, actual attacks, specific attacks, one against Bagram, I believe. And there was a second, which they linked to two nine one five five, and they link to the program. As I was able to speak about it, and as we understood it at CIA, it was always been the GRU that was involved with supporting the Taliban in Afghanistan. That was their responsibility,

• 9:05Speaker 03

  their military intelligence. This was a military campaign going on. So that's their world. And it's obvious, it's evident that they would then use two nine one five, which is a specialized unit, to conduct specific operational activities and goals, such as though that would be lethal, training, preparing, enabling Taliban and Taliban units to to conduct that activity. So two nine one five five was little known, I think, to the public, at least, based at this time. I don't think they started really getting exposed until Bellingcat did his exposé of first the scribbles, and then they went on to look back over time

• 9:46Speaker 03

  and detected this unit's activities, going back several years, at least to two thousand and fourteen, and the little green men, if you would, two nine one five five, and Wagner private military troops that were used to annex basically Crimea and operate in Ukraine's eastern now occupied areas.

• 10:07Speaker 05

  Because twenty fourteen was kind of a catalyst, right, for GRU.

• 10:11Speaker 06

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• 11:10Speaker 05

  Stepping up operations and based on Putin's perception of us countering him in Ukraine. Of course, from our, you know, from our perspective on that, we didn't do enough to counter the Russians in Ukraine. And our, our partnership with Ukrainian intelligence services. In fact, our close partnership started off the 2014. But nevertheless, for Putin, 2014 and the United States's opposition, in his eyes, to the annexation of Crimea is what kind of launched GRU to step up its activities, right?

• 11:46Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think it's when they transitioned from using Spetsnaz, which is their traditional special forces, you know, our sort of Green Berets, SEALs, SOCOM, you know, the equivalent to where he dedicated the unit that was going to be much more forward-leaning in terms of what the Russians speak of as active measures. When they look at everything from political influence to sabotage, to assassinations, they call that active measures in their minds. We call it covert action because, you know, we have to do that in a way that's deniable to the US government because it's essentially illegal and it's grounds for war. I mean, if you think about it, we're being attacked, literally,

• 12:29Speaker 03

  having our forces being subject to lethal operations, that those are grounds for war. But I think the world has evolved so much into this hybrid warfare, multi-domain conflict that I'm sure a lot of your listeners, you know, are intrigued by and read about, where it's all measures short of war, but still entirely lethal.

• 12:52Speaker 05

  And that's an interesting point, too, that perhaps we can talk about later after we talk through the details of the program. But that seems to that acknowledgement that it is an act of war seems to lie behind, perhaps, US administration's reluctance to call the Russians out. As you pointed out, it was Bellingcat that did the legwork on this, right? And the acknowledgement, although there has been some acknowledgement from the administration, there has been no I'm talking about both administrations. I'm talking about both Democrats and Republicans.

• 13:35Speaker 05

  Acknowledgement, vague acknowledgement, but no assertive statements such that, hey, Russians have taken actions that have resulted in the loss of US life, as indeed they did right in Bagram in an attack. I know at least one that four Marines were killed in. And yet, because if we do acknowledge it, we acknowledge it, that it's an act of war, then the next question is, what do we do about it?

• 14:00Speaker 03

  Andy, you've really hit it down the head. And without sounding too geeky, from an intel-esque kind of point of view, folks have to understand that the intel community responds to requirements, right? You know, spying is fun. I was a spy for 34 years, and I loved it, though I took it seriously. But you spy on things that their policymakers, your decision makers want to know. So it's kind of interesting what we don't get asked to report on. And sometimes, it's to your point. Well, if the decision makers become sort of confronted with evidence of something they've got to respond to, they may not want to hear that because they don't want to have to respond to it.

• 14:44Speaker 03

  So to confront the administration with, hey, the Russians are killing Americans. And that becomes, you know, a matter of public knowledge that, OK, not the details how we found out, but that the administration knows, then the government has an obligation, or they're really... In a pickle, so to speak, right? Because it looks like they're, you know, they're accused of everything from cowardliness to whatever. So your point is really spot on. They they sometimes don't really want to know things. And and I think and without getting too political. You know, at the time, both administrations, whether it's the Trump administration or Nitzschein or the Biden administration, they don't want to get in a war with Russia. You know, Trump has his own relationship with Putin that he thinks is special and unique.

• 15:30Speaker 03

  And Biden believed he had enough problems going on internationally. The last thing he wanted was, you know, to sort of be a catalyst for World War Three. So I think from both administrations, there's been a reluctance to sometimes hear the news. And it's not just that. I mean, it's every administration going back. You know, I started out, you know, on Reagan was president. If if they're confronted with things like this, that they're confronted with, you know, without having a choice that they've got to do something, sometimes their their approach is not wanting to hear about it. And and from my experience in this program with the GRU and what they were doing, at least at the time, the Trump administration, they were being told about it, but they didn't really want to hear about it. And they didn't want to deal with it for the reasons that you you offer.

• 16:14Speaker 05

  Yeah, the specific case I was talking about, just for the the audience, it was actually three Marines were killed, three wounded in Bagram in April of twenty nineteen. And and CENTCOM under then General McKenzie made an official statement because Bill and Cat, I I forget if it was Bill and Cat, but there was there were reports at the time that or or no, the following year, that's right, in twenty twenty, there were reports that this had been linked to the Russians. But McKenzie came out and said that they found no evidence to support such a such a link. And I want to go back.

• 16:48Speaker 02

  And the article too, no, no, in the article, it also says like, they kind of were like, hey, let's kind of pin this on Iran more than Russia. And like, they're not really working together. So there was, it looked like there was a concerted effort because I mean, Iran's easier to beat up on than like a superpower.

• 17:06Speaker 03

  Yeah, and we were already doing that, right? I mean, the maximum pressure, you know, and the threat of using hostile military action was always present during that time. So I think politically, it served the interest to kind of skew it over to Iran. And certainly, the Iranians were providing military aid to the Taliban at that time, and for very much the same reasons. And I don't mean to get off tangent here, so y'all could bring me back if you want to. But, you know, the Iranians have no love for the Taliban. The Taliban killed Iranian officials in the 90s in Herat. So they're, you know, the Iranians are Shia, and they're extreme Shia, and the Taliban are Sunni, and they're extreme Sunni.

• 17:45Speaker 03

  So the Iranian motivation was very similar to the initial Russian motivation, was let's just keep our feet warm in both camps, because the Iranians were also seeing our counterparts in Afghanistan and had these constructive relations. But they did not go into that design-specific campaign of, okay, we'll provide you aid specifically if you use it to encourage your folks to attack Americans. And just to understand contextually, you know, during the war, obviously, the Taliban was attacking everybody in the coalition. But if you're a Taliban foot soldier,

• 18:23Speaker 03

  you might be a seasonal fighter, you're a farmer, you're a pine nut farmer, literally, but you fight it during the fighting season and stuff like that. And you're not getting paid much, or you're getting paid enough, that's why you're doing it. And you've got a cheese between taking on the ANA, the Afghan National Army, or the AMP, the Afghan National Police, which are potent forces, but, you know, they're sort of limited, or you're gonna attack Americans with AC-130s and A-10s and F-16s and HIMARS. It's not a tough decision, right? It's like, okay, I think I'll take my chances with the ANA. So that's the real

• 18:58Speaker 03

  reason why the Taliban had to find a way to incentivize them. And that was my whole kind of issue, calling it a bounty, which I just, you know, maybe because I'm an intel guy, I don't like the language. It was specifically designed to to get their fighters who are already fighting to take on the AC-130s and the HIMARS and what have you, and our SOCOM forces, instead of, you know, a hit-and-run against the AMP or the ANA.

• 19:25Speaker 05

  But can you talk a little bit about how the operation was run? It was run out of Tajikistan, right? Out of Dushan Bay, the Russian base there around 2015. But can you talk a little bit about kind of the way it was set up and some of the lead characters involved?

• 19:43Speaker 03

  So I've got to be a little oblique on the details, right? And there's probably more details for your audience in your article. In fact, there are more details in the audience. But you know, you look at the geography and the Central Asian states that border Afghanistan in the north are Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. The Russians have the largest presence and best relationship with Tajikistan. And Tajikistan has an infamous past of supporting various Afghan rebel units, including the Northern Alliance, which we supported, obviously, in the 90s and used very much effectively to get rid of the Taliban after 9/11. Uzbekistan's relationships with the Russians are not quite as strong. They're tiding back and forth and Turkmenistan has a lot of its own problems.

• 20:27Speaker 03

  So it's a place where the Russians have more influence, but Tajikistan is a user-friendly place. So you're bordering provinces like Badis Khan and Kanduz and such like that, which the government, the Afghan government, held, but at great cost and not always successfully in the countryside, which is again where the Russians were able to take advantage of, you know, rat lines, pipelines, channels to be able to provide equipment and what have you. But, you know, they also had the luxury of meeting with Afghan Taliban in Tajikistan, right? It's an easy place for Afghans to travel to. There's a lot of, you know, confluence of ancestry and history.

• 21:11Speaker 03

  A lot of Afghans, like a quarter of the Afghans are Tajiks themselves. So it's really easy for them. So the Russians didn't really have to venture into Afghanistan proper to go ahead and engage in these meetings, provide material aid, but they could conduct their meetings with the Taliban members in Central Asia, specifically Tajikistan, for the most part, where the Tajiks were happy to allow it and look the other way, provide whatever material aid, money and such like that. And then the Afghans to whom they gave it could move it through their smuggling lines back into Afghanistan.

• 21:49Speaker 04

  So Doug, let me ask, going back to 29155, do we know what type of recruits that they pull? Or what their personnel are like? Are they specific, are they recruited specifically for their specialties? Whether it's cyber or special operations, things like that? And also, do we know if they use foreign agents as well?

• 22:15Speaker 03

  So your first question, and without besmirching arguments, which are, you know, far superior and obviously, but think about it as like selection for Delta, right? Where it could be everything from, you know, Rangers or regular ground folks who have very, very positive records and track records who go through a selection process. The GRU already has Spetsnaz forces, you know, the military, Russian military has Spetsnaz itself that it could draw from. So it's kind of similar. So it's sort of for them and an elite unit, but, but like our operators with a lot of cross training. Right?

• 22:55Speaker 03

  So they're also intel collectors and they're, you know, they have various technical skills that allow them to do active measures, everything from cyber to political influence, to assassination, to sabotage, and not just purely, you know, military combat operations. And here's what happened here. 29155 is essentially operating in an intel capacity, right? They were engaging, liaising, enabling, training, equipping, right? But not fighting. And they didn't really need to teach, you know, the Taliban how to fight as much as be that, that channel. Right? So do they use foreigners? Yes, but as agents, right?

• 23:37Speaker 03

  So they'll, they'll recruit, you know, Afghans or Syrians or what have you. And yes, the Russians writ large do use foreign or mercenary forces. We see this a lot in, in Ukraine. We see them recruit a lot of Central Asians directly into their regular army, their traditional army. So they do have the potential, but again, think about. Of security clearance, are they going to trust actually as a staffer, somebody in two nine one five five who's from Turkmenistan? Or from Syria, or will they use him as an agent? So more often than not, they'll use them in an intel capacity as an agent? And not actually as a staff member of two nine five five, if that, if that makes sense.

• 24:19Speaker 04

  Yep, perfect. Thank you.

• 24:21Jack Murphy?

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• 25:02Speaker 05

  So the, um, the, uh, a highly sensitive operation or one that has to go well. Uh, and that has a high risk of compromise, like the Skripal operation in 2018 would be carried out directly by G I U. Agents, you know, they didn't, they didn't try and recruit Brits or any other, any third national to, to do that.

• 25:29Speaker 03

  Yeah, I would just interject, Andy, because what they, they might do though, as, as, as you all know, and, and I know you, you have a lot of folks. Our service members who, who watch your program, listen to your program. It's, um, operations like these are usually in phases, right? You know, we're very focused on the end. You know, two guys come into Salisbury and, and try to kill Skripal, you know, and then, and then the daughter. Operations like these generally have like casing phases, right? Trying to determine patterns of life and activities and such like that. And they're often used with teams. So one team does not burn the other team. Right? So you might have folks which would include local agents and, and I don't. Believe this occurred in the case of Skripal, it might have occurred in some of the sabotage

• 26:12Speaker 03

  operations in Bulgaria. It absolutely did occur in Montenegro with the coup, right? Where they were recruiting local assets to enable the ultimate active measure, whether it was going to be assassination, sabotage, or what have you. But certainly, the lethal component, most often, they want somebody they could trust holding the Novacek, right? Or with the explosives. But I think we see in Germany, some of the sabotage operations, quite the opposite, where they're basically enlisting even sometimes criminals, criminal organizations, to try to find a better way to buffer themselves and insulate themselves, where they're not using their own folks, because they know there's

• 26:57Speaker 03

  a good chance of getting caught. And it's one thing for the Germans or the Poles to say, you know, we caught these, you know, Poles or Slovenians, or whatever the nationality might be, or Germans, who set a fire or blew something up, and we believe they're tied to the Russians.

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• 27:44Speaker 03

  Yeah, but you don't have the Russian there. So it does give them some insulation. You know, their tradecraft, and one thing I've always rebelled against, and I've worked the Russian target, I speak Russian, it was my first jobs, it wasn't in Russia, it was chasing Russians outside of Russia, where it's a lot easier to recruit them. They're not 10 feet tall. And I think some of the success Bill and Cat has had has been tradecrafters where they've used like passports in series, which is just, I was like, are you kidding me? Why would, why would you do that? Uh, people with records that were already out there, whether it was, you know, military, uh, careers or pictures or whatever like that.

• 28:24Speaker 03

  So their tradecraft is, is, is not exceptional, which is why it seems to me they get discovered every time by the press. Uh, you know, separate from whatever the CIA or MI6 or, you know, intel services might know. I mean, they're added by the press because they leave a trail that's, that's detectable.

• 28:47Speaker 02

  Another trail that was in the article was, uh, the gemstone company that they used to launder the money. Was like down the block from GRU's offices. Like guys.

• 28:56Speaker 03

  Come on. Yeah, right.

• 28:57Speaker 02

  Let's pick something somewhere else. Maybe. I don't know.

• 28:59Speaker 03

  So, uh, you know, I, I think the, the Russians, they operate in volume is one of the things, you know, they're kind of a volume, volume service and they do a lot of stuff and, you know, good operations are ones that are few and rare and, you know, because you're trying to limit your footprint as well. But in this case, as you say, the gemstone place, I mean, what were they thinking? I mean, that's just like, that's a tradecraft 101. It was being expedient, right? And convenient over security that they were working towards. So I, again, yeah, we've got to worry about, uh, the damage these groups could do because they do damage. They kill, they blow things up. Um, I do believe they were involved in anomalous health incidents, Havana syndrome.

• 29:44Speaker 03

  Um, they're getting away with it not because they're good, they're at it, really good at it. They're getting away because of the political environment. And, and as a discussion that, you know, Andy's point about, well, you know, if you, if you, if you say, yeah, we know it was them, then you gotta do something about it. And if you don't do something about it, there's no cost. There's no, there's no payment for the Russians. They go, okay, we'll just, you know, we'll just keep doing it.

• 30:09Speaker 05

  Yeah, amusing and amusing anecdote to your point, Doug, on on Trey Craft. The two guys, the two GRU agents involved in Skripal poisoning, Chapega and Mishkin, were reportedly they they bought a bag of cannabis and a prostitute in London, you know, before heading down to Salisbury, I mean, which is, you just can't imagine the agency doing that. Well, no.

• 30:38Speaker 03

  And I guess, you know, luckily, the agency doesn't have to have like a separate class to go, okay, guys.

• 30:45Speaker 03

  Don't get a prostitute, you know, stay away. I mean, it should be kind of obvious, but I think that we see that again and again.

• 30:53Speaker 05

  One, you know, to the point of calling them out and then being committed to to action. It's kind of interesting when you trace and administrations have changed in the UK, but there remains on both sides of the political aisle there a resolve that Russia is the enemy that that we don't always see here. So and it may trace from 2018. But when you look, I mean, the UK is all in on support of Ukraine, both the Labour and the Conservative Party. There's no fudging, you know, the the issue. Whereas here we see this very strange convergence on both the left and the right of people who are apologists

• 31:34Speaker 05

  for for the Russians. And, you know, as you commented, that that has affected, well, you didn't comment, but I reading between the lines that has affected the both the intelligence agencies ability to do things and and the military's ability to to do things. But in the but but it's even undermined our own resolve, our recognition that we are at war with Russia. In in Russia's eyes, we are already. We have been since 2014. And that I find disturbing.

• 32:08Speaker 03

  Yeah, I would, you know, my own, my own assessment is that's probably the biggest success that Russia intelligence has had. Oh, because they very actively, that's been part of their active measures to influence public opinion in the United States and globally. Right. And they've been tremendously successful in the United States by over the years. And it certainly predates President Trump. So again, I'm trying, I don't want to make this political. It has always been their effort to influence public opinion. I mean, I'm a Cold Warrior, right? I, I started in the agency from nineteen eighty-four to two thousand and nineteen. So I kind of spanned the Cold War. And then, you know, War on Terror and back into strategic competition again, right?

• 32:52Speaker 03

  And I saw that always, it was always a persistent effort of the Russians to use opinion and influence covert influence is what we would call it. To achieve strategic goals. So back in the eighties, it was, you know, something as limited as trying to keep American intermediate nuclear missiles out of Europe by making it look like the United States were the bad guys, the Russians were good guys. You don't need these missiles, you, you're not threatened by us, yada, yada, to where we saw in the teens, the United States and then, you know, two thousand and sixteen and, and, and, and predated two thousand and sixteen, this idea that, hey, we're not, we're not your enemy. Right. And, and we're actually, you know, we're just minding our business and we're the ones who are the victim.

• 33:33Speaker 03

  We're the ones who are under threat. And I think, um, and again, without looking too inward and studying the politics of the United States there. I think a lot of the US political landscape became shaped by this victimization idea. And the Russians really tapped into it and it, it just kind of aligned with a trend we saw that made the US political landscape more divisive. Uh, the Russian aim isn't to love Biden or Trump or whatever. The Russian aim is to weaken the United States and a country sort of at war with itself becomes less of a threat externally. And that has been really, if I'm gonna give the Russians credit,

• 34:18Speaker 03

  it's been masterful. They've done it with, with, with aplomb.

• 34:23Speaker 05

  And arguably more dangerous, you know, their trade crop in that area is much better. And for the audience, there's a great, not great, but it was a very good Washington Post article that came out in June, I believe, that talks about funding, Russian and actually Iranian funding for US news media outlets. And some of these are quite mainstream outlets. I mean, the Gray Zone is mentioned there, for instance. And so, again, it's not just the right that is susceptible to this. The Gray Zone is quite far to the left by US standards, headed by our old friend Max Blumenthal. And, you know, the Washington Post comes

• 35:06Speaker 05

  out and says that Iranian government paid thousands of dollars to Wyatt Reed, who is Washington-based editor for Gray Zone. And Max Blumenthal, who's the site's founder, regularly appears on Russian TV and, you know, accepted a trip to Russia in a celebration of RT, which is a Russian-controlled network. And, you know, it was an event attended by Putin. And, you know, no one thinks through that, hey, this is an enemy of the United States. And yet, mainstream media, and they've hardly seen the shame by it, are fully being

• 35:47Speaker 05

  supported by it. And their output reflects that. Gray Zone has been a big, well, has been an opponent of US contributions to Ukraine, for instance.

• 36:00Speaker 03

  Well, I think it's really telling when you look at, at least at what's released publicly. And of course, Americans no longer trust institutions that release information anyway, whether it's, you know, a US government agency or a news source that's not aligned with their own particular interests, they question it. But the Russians went from introducing false information and using bots to simply amplifying information that was already appearing from American politicians or journalists or whatever, making it easier to deny that they're up to no good anyway. Because if they're actually amplifying the same content and the same themes that Americans are, then that makes it a lot easier for them to hide

• 36:44Speaker 03

  in that noise with the protection of the very people they're targeting.

• 36:51Speaker 03

  That to me as a spy, that's really scary.

• 36:54Speaker 02

  I mean, you saw like the indictment on tenant media where they were being paid and there was a back and forth between a producer there. And one of the guys, you know, paying them that was like, you should really do this type of thing. I think it was the Tucker Carlson and in the Russian supermarket thing, like really talk about this. And he's like, I might be too obvious. I'm paraphrasing clearly. And he's like, no, I think it's good. He's like, all right, whatever. Cause like they're getting paid like literally six figures of video.

• 37:21Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 37:21Speaker 02

  You know, which is unheard of. Like even if you're a huge, if you're a huge podcast, maybe you make that kind of money, but for standalone videos, you are not making that kind of money.

• 37:31Speaker 03

  Yeah, but they didn't decide they wanted to question it, right?

• 37:34Speaker 02

  No, they were just cashing the checks.

• 37:36Speaker 03

  They happened to take the money.

• 37:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:38Speaker 03

  And that's what foreign intel services are taking advantage of.

• 37:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's interesting. It's kind of gotten into like the producing of the content. You know, rather than amplifying it and doing like that, they're actually like, I mean, but I guess that's the risk we run with having free speech, free press, right? We can pretty much say anything we want. But I guess it's up to the reader, listener, viewer to discern it.

• 38:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, go ahead. Sorry. We started talking about like podcast world. So I got interested. I got.

• 38:09Speaker 03

  No, I'm cool with that. But I, I mean, just you've got to think about, okay, the CIA, when we do anything like that, and we conduct covert influence as well. Right? We're very focused on, okay, what does the end user certificate look like, right? When you think about, oh, you know, US arms, you can't sell to somebody that lets you know who's actually at the end of that line. We're supposed to say the same thing. We want to make sure that where like our cover is, is, is going to hold up. Where the Iranians and the Russians, I mean, they, and even the Chinese, the Chinese talk about a volume business. I mean, we've got TikTok now before the Supreme Court and it is, it is undebatable that Chinese intelligence uses TikTok to gauge, pulse, and then manipulate American opinion.

• 38:54Speaker 03

  I mean, and I, and I know the, the various lawyers will make their cases and stuff, but it's just. It's just indisputable where it has been, for the most part, previously a bipartisan issue where, you know, the Chinese are dangerous and TikTok is dangerous. And and here's why, and we could actually like graph it out and and they thus not really worried about their end user. I mean, they they own TikTok, right? And they own anything Chinese. There's literally a law in China where if you are a Chinese national business academic institution, you are legally required to work with the intelligence security services. By law.

• 39:35Speaker 03

  Yeah, my soapbox, sorry.

• 39:38Speaker 05

  Doc, from a kind of a Russian policy perspective, is it fair to say that, you know, all these actions in Bulgaria, Montenegro, Chechnya,

• 39:52Speaker 05

  and and Afghanistan, though, are are kind of sideshows. What Putin really cares about is Ukraine. And, you know, this is kind of classic. It attempts to to affect the outcome there. I mean, do you think that's that's fair to say? Or is it? Because these activities all, you know, as we mentioned earlier, seem to have stepped up since 2014 and certainly have become, with the exception of Afghanistan. But but the ones in Europe have, you know, the German sabotage, attempts at sabotage, for instance, have become perhaps, had stepped up, escalated in in the last couple of years.

• 40:34Speaker 03

  You know, I I think the way I look at it and the way I would encourage others is, you know, Putin doesn't do things tactically. He does things strategically. So you got to step back a little bit. And what is his his overall goal? And he has one. Again, Putin Putin was a KGB guy that came up in my day, right? He was out there in the seventies and the eighties as a KGB operative, as a KGB case officer. That was his job. And there's various books, Catherine Belton, Denisova have written that suggests, you know, Putin's main job when he was in Dresden, which was in Israel. I mean, again, I'm trying not to get too off on tangent, so reel me back in if you need to. Was to operate with, you know, active measures organizations, foreign terrorist organizations, for one thing, right?

• 41:16Speaker 03

  So he's looking at a world that he wants to return to, where, where was the Soviet Union as a legitimate world power in a bipolar kind of system of, in his mind, more or less equals? That's what he wants again. Russia doesn't have the capability of it, not, you know, directly toe to toe, and that's why the active measures, that's why the intel, that's why the sabotage. So, you know, the Russians invaded Georgia in 2008, six years before Ukraine, right? To just to remind ourselves of that, because in his mind, the former Soviet republics are still part of Greater Russia.

• 41:58Speaker 03

  He sees them that way, and ultimately, he wants to restore that relationship, even if they're not physically parts of Russia, that they're basically vassals of Russia. So whether Chechnya or Dagestan or all these places, that's how he started, was the Second Chechen War, when he was first prime minister in 2000, right? Oh, you know, peace dividend, we're all good friends. No, that was never his inclination, and I think we really hurt ourselves, the United States government, by thinking that was ever a possibility. Again, we're Americans, we tend to think with our hearts more than than than our minds sometimes when it comes to the world, but he's always been committed strategically to

• 42:38Speaker 03

  reestablishing Russian power as a superpower and conquering territory, even if it's not by having troops everywhere, by maintaining a sphere of influence. He thinks in seventies terms. We don't even use these terms from our spheres of influence. Nobody even talks about that that way, but to understand Putin is to understand that is the way he thinks. So his job, I don't believe Putin necessarily wants to invade Western Europe, he wants to subjugate Western Europe. That's his aim. It's all very strategic, and he needs to exclude the United States as a threat and competitor to accomplish that, and he's done this through this hybrid, multi-domain approach.

• 43:20Speaker 03

  As he himself has tried to get Russia healthier and then and even if you're a if you you think Putin was doing it for the right reasons, made a tragic mistake in Ukraine in the sense that his forces were not as good as he believed them to be. The resistance was far greater than he thought it would be. And that's a systemic failing of an intel service which tells their leader what they want to hear. As opposed to telling their leaders what's going on to make their decisions, something I worry about back here, regardless of political party. Right? So his goals are strategic, his goals, Ukraine is a part of the greater puzzle. Uh, and it's really reestablishing Russian power. He took a bruising hit in Syria.

• 44:05Speaker 03

  Right? Just recently, and that is that is a a serious element that once again Russia is projecting power in Africa and in the Middle East. Well, you know, their their PMC forces, their Wagner's are getting their asses beat in Africa right now, and they are, I'm sorry, wrong language, maybe. Um, and in Syria, they're gone. Right? They bet on they bet on the wrong horse. So things are not all rosy, but strategically he will persist. And the way to address, and again, just for my Russian background is it's not, you're not going to shame Putin. You're not going to show him logic. You're not going to show him even incentive. Oh, it's better. Sell your gas to the Europeans. You'll make money. It's it's about here's the cost of what you're trying to accomplish.

• 44:50Speaker 03

  And so long as there is a cost and I believe we saw this in the potential use of tactical nuclear weapons. I fully believe Putin was prepared to use a tactical nuclear weapon in in the conflict with Ukraine. And I also fully believe that, uh, Director Burns of the CIA went to Turkey to see his counterpart in Rishkin in the SDR and said, here's exactly what's going to happen. And Putin's like, oops, okay. So we're gonna, we're gonna pull back here. Because that's the only reason that that that tenor changed. And the only reason is it was a price he knew he couldn't afford to pay.

• 45:30Speaker 05

  Which gets back to the fact that, you know, as he focuses perhaps more on these special activities in 2022, according to the article, the

• 45:43Speaker 06

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• 46:14Speaker 05

  You know, the GRU formed a Department of Special Activities, and 29155 was one of three units under that Department of Special Activities. And the, kind of the chain of command from GRU, I believe, goes to the Chief of the General Staff, but it's, you know, but it's really, I mean, there's no one doubts that it's Putin that is taking a direct interest and giving direct orders via that chain of command. And yet, you know, as we talked about here, we, in the West, we seem kind of powerless, have been powerless to counteract this. What would you like to see done from a policy perspective, or let's not even talk policy

• 46:59Speaker 05

  perspective, the type of actions that might work in your opinion? I think that keeps you on safer ground, right?

• 47:06Speaker 03

  Yeah, I, you know, the US clearly is not powerless. I think the US worries about repercussions and consequences, which we touched on earlier. If we play in that same world, that same shadowy world, we're really good at it, and we have incredible tools. And we could do things through cyber, through influence, through active measures, if you want to use those terms, and even using deniable kinetic power, right, in a way that would be superior. To what the Russians or the Chinese for that matter could do. The the problem with the United States policy in my mind, in my opinion only, is it tends to be very symmetrical, right?

• 47:51Speaker 03

  So if we get hit cyber, we wanna complain about it or do something cyber, but overly. If we get hit in an attack, right, we we rattle the chains, whatever. We're fighting an asymmetrical enemy symmetrically, and I just don't think that works. And and I think we need to tap into our own asymmetric capabilities, which I would tell you from firsthand experience, is superior to what either the Russians or the Chinese, and certainly the Iranians, can bring to bear. But I think we're worried particularly of exposure, right? The Russians, Chinese, don't care about exposure. They don't worry about their public, they don't worry about the press, they don't worry about international opinion. We do, and and legitimately so, we have to, right?

• 48:32Speaker 03

  Because we are a democracy and we're among the liberal democracies in the world to talk about values and and doing things that are just by the law and stuff like that. So I think it's partial that worried about escalation, right? Because the Russians, even if it's asymmetrical and shadowy, we want the Russians to know we did it. If we, you know, take down their stock market or, you know, suddenly billions of Russian dollars or rubles disappear, or their pipelines start malfunctioning or what have you. In a way, we want them to know, and who else would have done it but us, right? But at the same time, we're worried about, okay, will they then, you know, go overboard?

• 49:13Speaker 03

  Will they then retaliate, you know, with a tactical nuclear missile or or something else? And what happens when the post of the Times, you know, leaked this? And how will we look? And what will the Brits say and the Germans say and such like that? So I think we worry a lot. And I understand that I'm not a politician, I was a spy, you know? But but I could tell you at least from the mechanics of that world, these are things that would work to demonstrate consequences, you know, provide consequences which would influence Russian, Chinese, Iranian behavior. But there's a political cost to it and one that I'm honestly, you know, I admit, I'm not well equipped to address.

• 49:57Speaker 04

  I wonder what the uh if the those consequences would be amplified if one of them was caught within our borders operating.

• 50:07Speaker 03

  Yeah, I'd like to I'd like to think so, but I I think the the Der Spieger and New York and what was sixty Minutes expose down on AHI anomalous uh health institute did show activity within our borders, right? In a very compelling case, right? And and you believe it or don't believe it based on what's presented. But talk about a Russian who uh you know, their investigation proved was Russian military intelligence was GRU, was quite, I think, in Texas and his footprint aligned with uh what we, you know, the victim certainly believes was an AHI attack in the United States. Um, so I just, I just don't know. I think, you know, uh, Americans are so,

• 50:51Speaker 03

  you know, fused into what their belief system is and their process and which institutions they believe or don't believe. I don't know that exposes like that even within our borders are compelling, though necessary. And and and, you know, hopefully they do sort of at least inform how people think about the issues.

• 51:10Speaker 04

  Yeah, and that makes sense because uh recently the story came out about the Wagner uh guy that was caught at the border um with the passports and the money and everything. It was just kind of was like a blip on the media's radar and then was gone. It's almost like it just didn't matter.

• 51:28Speaker 03

  Look at all the lethal operations the Iranians have conducted or tried to conduct to the United States. They're trying to blow up the Saudi ambassador at a restaurant I go to in Georgetown. And it's no question about it. They tried to kidnap an American journalist in in Brooklyn, D, just letting you know, close to your home, right? The people are like, yeah, that's terrible. What a shame. The Russians tried to kill um and again, I have to put it this way deliberately. According to the press, there was a Russian intel defector in the United States that the Russians tried to kill using a Mexican academic, right? And it was uh in um the book Spies called Watson's book and then run in the press. And the press kind of vetted his story with their sources at FBI that, yeah, this was, you know,

• 52:12Speaker 03

  an assassination effort, casing kinetic, and it was the Russian hand behind it. And people like, ah, well, you know.

• 52:20Speaker 03

  Who's playing today in the playoffs?

• 52:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 52:22Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 52:22Speaker 03

  Yeah. Yeah. What's priorities for folks?

• 52:26Speaker 02

  I think for it to get to a point where it's gonna move things like the like move the political like meter up would be a mass casualty event.

• 52:34Speaker 03

  Yes, I agree.

• 52:35Speaker 02

  You know, that's like the only thing that would really spit up the American public to be like, who is this? Send everybody.

• 52:42Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 52:43Speaker 02

  It's like nine eleven.

• 52:44Speaker 03

  It was weeks ago, just weeks ago, that a couple of media outlets ran the story, which seems, you know, compelling that the Russians had put incendiary devices, um, sent them via US couriers, what DHL I think it was, that did blow up, I think in Germany and in the UK, right?

• 53:04Speaker 05

  The warehouses, yeah.

• 53:05Speaker 03

  Right, and and the police services in both countries, Germany and the UK went, yeah, this this looked like it was a Russian intel operation. Uh, we saw a comment said, yeah, this was this was casing, this was testing to see, you know, what it would take. They were mailed from Lithuania, right? And how much reaction did that get? That's ladies and gentlemen, that's an act of war.

• 53:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:27Speaker 03

  You know, that is that is literally by law, by the law of conflict, that's an act of war. And, you know, I didn't see a lot of enthusiasm about dealing with that one.

• 53:38Speaker 02

  It was barely reported.

• 53:40Speaker 03

  It barely reported.

• 53:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:41Speaker 03

  It was.

• 53:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:41Speaker 03

  I was like, really? I would think that'd be front page news.

• 53:45Speaker 02

  Right.

• 53:45Speaker 03

  But you're right, if that same DHL plane blows up over LaGuardia Airport and kills a bunch of Americans, you know, yeah, maybe then, but do we need to wait for that?

• 53:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:58Speaker 05

  Yeah. And and even when that happens, I I can't help thinking that there's going to be a sizable portion of of the public, and maybe even the administration, regardless of the administration who are in denial.

• 54:09Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 54:10Speaker 05

  About Russian, Russian things.

• 54:12Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 54:13Speaker 05

  Or something like that. I mean, you know, we talked about it on this show that uh, it's just incomprehensible, I think, regardless of which which end of political spectrum you fall, that we are dragging our feet. On aid to Ukraine, you know, here is a means to hurt our adversary. We're at we're at war with them in many ways. We're or I mean, they are. There's no doubt about it that they are our adversary, the Russians. And here's a way to hurt them at a cost in dollars, not in lives, right? Not not US lives at least. And yet we we we've been dragging our feet about that. And there's all this talk about this is such a high price.

• 54:55Speaker 05

  Uh, on one side, on the other side, there's talk about fear, again, fear of escalation, which gets your point that actually ironically, the fear of escalation is the one thing that will deter Putin. Nothing else, not not talk of, hey, wouldn't it be greater for the world order if we had a Russian reset and all this other stuff? It is simply, he's got to be told that that his his decisions, his actions will result in greater pain to him than than uh than you know, not taking action. And that's the only way he can be deterred.

• 55:31Speaker 03

  Yeah, but there there isn't that universal acceptance in the United States, or even a majority of Americans who think Russia is our adversary.

• 55:37Speaker 05

  I was just gonna say that.

• 55:39Speaker 03

  You know, and our nominee for Director of National Intelligence is basically depicted her opinion that, you know, Russia was the victim of Ukraine and NATO. Assad was the victim, right? So um, I wish there was sort of a universal acceptance of what I I believe are empirical truths. But today's environment, that is just not the case.

• 56:04Speaker 05

  There was even there were even those, you know, I I would guess those who have not served in Iraq and Afghanistan. When the New York article came out, defended Russia by saying, well, this is what we did to them in the eighties.

• 56:16Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 56:17Speaker 05

  You know, I mean, it's like, yeah, totally different situation. Why was Russia in Afghanistan? Why were we in Afghanistan? But they willfully ignore all that stuff and take and and swallow the Russian propaganda line.

• 56:29Speaker 03

  No, it's, I mean, again, is it's it's distressing, right? That the Russians have been that successful and the the biggest reason is we need to look near to home of why they've been that successful. You know, we've we've sort of enabled them to be that way.

• 56:50Speaker 02

  Anybody? Jason?

• 56:52Speaker 04

  This is awesome.

• 56:53Speaker 03

  Now they've depressed everybody.

• 56:55Speaker 05

  Yeah. On that happy note.

• 56:58Speaker 03

  Happy note, right?

• 57:00Speaker 05

  No, but I think I, your, your point is well taken Doug, that certainly the United States has, I, I mean, no one, no one surpasses us when it comes to our ability to strike back. It's just a question of having the political will to do so.

• 57:18Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 57:18Speaker 05

  That is what is tripping us up.

• 57:19Speaker 03

  All we've done so far in terms of, at least publicly, you know, and, and, and I'd like to think there's things we're not doing publicly, but maybe that's just wishful thinking. We've only established offices whose jobs are to call out false information. State Department has one, I think, you know, DHS has one, the Bureau probably has one too. But that's, you know, one, I, I, I, okay, yeah, you gotta do that. But those offices need to have credibility and there need to be teeth. And there's, there's, there's no teeth. I saw Jim Hines, he's the ranking member on HIPSE, the House Oversight Committee on Intelligence, right? And, and, and so he's got to know what's going on. Lord knows I was up on the hill enough times telling these folks what we were doing.

• 58:03Speaker 03

  And he, and he was even in a wishful thinking, yes, and we should and could be able to do more ourselves to punish China when they, you know, do salt typhoon and go into our telecom, which leads me to believe, I guess we're not, for all the reasons we just discussed.

• 58:20Speaker 02

  That's scary.

• 58:21Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 58:22Speaker 02

  We can't just let it go. I mean, I mean, even if we did hit back somehow, whether it's cyber or anything else on China or Russia cyberly, like, will people really give a shit? At the end, like, American, American citizens, will they actually care at the end of the day? Especially if it's more, more of a covert, non kinetic like, you know, people actually dying.

• 58:44Speaker 03

  But think about it, right? And here's what they're thinking about in the White House, regardless of who's in the White House, Republican, Democrat, whatever like that. Remember the, the pipeline, the gas pipeline that got taken down by ransomware? And that actually, I think was grim. I don't even think that was tied to a, to a state actor and such like that. People freaked out. Prices were going up, all that kind of stuff. So when you're at war, whether it's in the daylight or the shadows, you know, there's a price, you're going to take casualties, there's going to be hits.

• 59:12Speaker 00

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• 59:40Speaker 03

  So we'll take a few hits. I don't know that any White House is prepared for, you know, prices to spike or people to panic or, you know, people to do a run on the supermarkets because they think, oh, the supply chain for toilet paper is going to be interrupted again. So while they seem irritants and minor in terms of the overall cost and what we are getting in return, you know, saving lives, keeping countries from being invaded, protecting our allies, that's probably part of the political calculus that the decision makers are thinking. You know, do I want that to happen on my watch and then for people to blame me for it?

• 1:00:22Speaker 03

  And the Russians know that and the Chinese know that. That's the thing. They get it.

• 1:00:27Speaker 02

  I guess it's easier when you're like an authoritative government, right? Like you don't have to worry about political opponents.

• 1:00:34Speaker 03

  Yeah, you know, they don't have to worry about free speech or in or polls or any of that kind of stuff. You know, luckily they have other problems.

• 1:00:44Speaker 02

  Doug, this is incredible. Check out Doug's book, really good book, The Recruiter. The link is in the description. The story we've been mentioning, the link will be in the description as well, really well researched, incredible article about all the GRUs

• 1:01:02Speaker 02

  fuckery, for lack of a better word.

• 1:01:05Speaker 03

  Best term I could have thought of.

• 1:01:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. And where it goes from here, I mean, it's gonna be interesting with the new administration. I mean, I hope Trump kind of lets our intel agencies a little bit off the chain where they can at least, I don't know, do something like go and slash entire, just make their lives a little bit difficult. With like, cause China's, the infiltrating the telecoms is pretty gnarly, like, and they're just, they're just in there, like, are we gonna get them out? Like, what's gonna happen next?

• 1:01:39Speaker 02

  It's gonna be an interesting four years, for sure. Uh, boys, any other thoughts?

• 1:01:46Speaker 04

  No.

• 1:01:47Speaker 02

  All right, I want to tell, I want to tell everybody to check out Doug's book again, The Recruiter, the link is in the description. Of course, Andy Milburn, his book, When the Tempest Gathers, in the description. Any and all links to find Doug, to find Jason, to find Mick, to find Andy, the links will be in the description. Patreon.com slash the team house, if you want to help support the show, you get no ads whatsoever. And you get two, two podcasts for the price of one. Can't beat that anywhere on the internet, so. Guys, this is awesome. Thank you.

• 1:02:19Speaker 03

  Thanks very much.

• 1:02:21Speaker 00

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