Adam curry John C. Dvorak. Sunday, December 24 2017. This
is your award winning give our nation media assassination
episode nine or fighter three. This is no agenda. Celebrating
the UN protector of shy Iraq and broadcasting almost live from
downtown Austin Tejas capital, the drone Star State in the
studio in the morning, everybody. I'm Adam curry
and from Northern Silicon Valley, where I'm not really
here today. This is a recording. I'm John C. Dvorak. Buzzkill.
We get better at these as we go along, don't we?
I don't think so. Okay. Well, Merry
Christmas, John. Tomorrow's the big day.
Merry Christmas to you. And Merry Christmas to everybody
listening. Yeah, tomorrow is the big day. And it's a nice Monday.
Christmas is perfect for everything. It's a little extra
time off. Although I think next week, everybody takes the whole
week off. So
Oh, really? Who gets to do that? We don't get to do that. We have
a we have full show of kids. Kids,
kids, kids. Yeah, we're going to be back on Thursday live.
Because this is a special show. So you could go to Chicago?
Yeah. And I could go shopping in the last minute
important stuff. Yes. Because you'd like to get everything on
the cheap and celebrate
the last myth ever. I'd like to get to the last minute because
like a men's club.
I've been a member of this club for many, many years. Yeah, you
go in there and it's not pretty.
Oh, no, it's not pretty. But everybody's everybody knows
what's going on in their soul men.
Yeah, y'all shop y'all give that look like? Yeah, we are the head
nod, right?
We're here again. Yeah. Hey, here.
How you doing this year?
Huge. I'm sorry. So I was just gonna say what do you have lined
up for us on today's show?
So we're gonna go on Infowars. Like was that about two months
ago when I met Steve Puranic.
Dungeon longer now? Wasn't
maybe everyone says Dr. Steve Chang. I know Steve. Steve
botanic, who is, as far as I'm concerned, the psychological
warfare master of our US government. could be it could be
it could not be.
There could be just a disinformation artists really,
you know, but if you look at his Wikipedia,
and you look at every other every other biography that he
does check out. I mean, he really did hold these positions.
He really was. You know, he was part of the hostage negotiation
team for the hostages in Iran. I mean, he's done so many things.
But the thing that annoyed me and, you know, after I did that
appearance on, on the seed man show, but he got in touch with
me. He's like, I want to talk with you. Right? I
said, become buddies. Yeah, he's my handler.
I always tell him that you'd think to nah, nah, nah, I'm not
your handler,
okay? Because he knows who the handler is not him. He knows
you.
And so he's, he's, but it's very interesting fellow that he loves
talking. But he always gets cut off whenever he certainly
whenever he is on, on Infowars. But I don't think I've ever
really seen him just in an in a normal interview without
commercials. And we can just tell his stories. And he's got
stories. You can use
that guy talk. Yeah, just the idea. Exactly.
No pre interview, no setup of questions. Just in this. Two
hours, I think. unedited crap. Yeah, well, it was easy to be
in. And what and while he's talking, I'm like, I'm listening
to the stories like, let me check this out. And, and he has
the names, the dates, he knows exactly what everyone was doing.
And so that must be a part of his of his thing. His skill. But
we talked about how man just so much it was it was, in a way a
bit like a bit unstructured, like the no agenda show. So it
kind of fits in with our format. No clips, no, no, of No, nothing
like that. Just him talking. And I think that for me, after
talking to him, I said, you know, like, I want to believe
everything he says. But it's some of it is so unbelievable.
That it's just hard. It's hard. It's hard. Yeah. And I'm the
first I'm a first guy to be to be an easy target for me like,
oh, yeah, I'm all in on that.
Well, I was thinking about this. And so I think we got together
and talked about not interrupting this conversation
with another words, when we do these shows. Typically, we stop
in the middle and ask for donations. And we're not going
to do that this time. We're gonna go right to the end, and
then just signing off. And I want to mention to people
though, that because we're not doing donations, I have to few
kind of housekeeping issues. One, anyone who was executive
producer for this show, or Associate Executive Producer,
based on the donations and any donations that come in, that
came in after last show, and it's coming in today and the
next day, that will all be pushed to Thursday. We're having
a real show on Thursday, and you get to be a lot longer donation
segment, but it'll all be there. So don't worry about that. And I
want to remind people that we do the shows, but we can't really
promote them as much donation part as much because there's no
thank yous. I want to remind you to divorce.org dv orak.org o RG
slash n A if you want to.
I have never ever ever in 10 years I don't think heard you
spell out your last name. Right?
Because I don't think I have ever before and I, I realized it
was a probably a mistake.
Yes. Because the way to remember this,
I don't know slash amp find a and find the D evey.
Where's the d value? I can't find the D Vol. rack.org. So
there you go. All right. Well, we'll say goodbye at the end of
at the end of this special show. But you're right, remember us
and our value for value model at devora.org/na. So now without
interruption, our special for this Christmas, which would be
nice to have with a little eggnog by the fireplace, and
everyone else looking at you like you're an idiot. As you're
snickering away with your earbuds in my interview with Dr.
Steve botanic says, you know, Steve, you're one of the most
interesting people I know. And, and, you know, this is really
why I wanted to speak with you, is because I never, I never
really get a chance to listen to you finish a thought or finish
the sentence except on your own, on your own videos in your own
website. Because you're always getting interrupted by
commercials or there's never enough time. And I feel like you
know, there's I've never really heard a longer interview with
you.
You know, that's a good point. And it's probably a metaphor for
my life. But one of the reasons that I never finished, or nobody
allows me to finish the idea, no, no, I think it's really
important to understand it in a way you picked up a very crucial
dynamic for me. Nobody really wants to hear what I have to
say. Many times, even in medical school, or elsewhere, I kind of
talked about the future. And it's obvious to me what's
apparent to me is not obvious to others. So they cut me off. And
I learned to keep quiet or, you know, make a joke, and then just
pass the time away. But you hit it on the head. I mean, this has
been true since I was a kid.
And I think this also determined your career, which has been is
almost like a dichotomy when you look at your Wikipedia for lack
of a better place to go look at your career. Well, you go ahead.
Good.
I'll tell you what, the Wikipedia is not accurate, but
it doesn't matter to me. I mean, that's it's not relevant. My
career really was a series of ideas and and ambitions that
could not be immediately realized. In other words, very
early on in my life, I understood that I was going to
do something creative. I was a piano player for a classical
pianist. That's a fancy way of saying it for many years. But I
knew I could never end up to be a composer
where you're not somewhat of a prodigy even when you were young
playing piano.
I don't know. I don't know about a prodigy. But I did play on the
young American artists series. And I did play many well known.
I hate to say tunes, but music, Chopin, Rachmaninoff and I
played on WNYC. And I played a town hall. Yeah, but one of the
one of the key issues and I think you get to it very quickly
as I didn't want to perform, or what I wanted to do was to
create now I knew I couldn't create music. I didn't have the
background. But there was a compulsion and neither really do
writing since I didn't speak English. And I came to this
country with only two languages Spanish, and French, it was a
real challenge for me to say, Wow, this is an incredible
language. And at school, we really didn't learn English very
well. And I it was incumbent upon me to learn how to say
things or to translate them and even till today, sometimes I
write in an awkward sentence. And and my significant other
stashes says, this is European, this is not America.
Sometimes even sounds a bit rude. Well, that's correct.
And and, and, you know, I don't intended to be rude at times.
But when I want to be rude, I'll be rude. But very often, I don't
intended to be rude. And then I understand that the construct
now was really was this when you were in Cuba?
No, actually, I left Cuba when I was about four or five in the
late 40s, early 50s. My parents were very prescient about the
notion of communism coming in because my mother had been
through the communist regime. She said, I'm not going through
another one. And he came here to the United States, and my father
was a physician. He had been in the French army and that,
unfortunately, was defeated in the six weeks. And his first and
last order on the French army was a retreat. So I pretty well
understood France from that point on.
Nothing. It's still the same thing. Well,
it's true, it's still the same except for the Vietnam War where
they literally hoodwinked us into a combat situation, which
was a name. And the French have a great ability to do that with
the Americans. They bring us into places we don't want to be
Vietnam, Africa, Djibouti, you name it, we're there. And so
why is there some special relationship that we have with
France that besides them coming up with the basic idea for the
Republic? What well, why is this?
The French, I hate to say this are quite seductive. And they
are very good at manipulating our intelligence service, as you
know, and your family I mean, they came forth with this
cockamamie idea that they thought they created called
counterinsurgency in Algeria, which was was a joke, because I
grew up in Toulouse and I saw how the Algerian colonels and
the French kernels blew up everything and they were angry,
and I saw the French round up the Algerians, but they
convinced a few of our intelligence operatives, that
it's such a great theory, let's do it in Vietnam. And John F k,
bought it and then LBJ bought it and the CIA bought it. And
before you know it, we were doing exactly the the exact
mistakes that the French had done and the NBN foo and before
that, and you see that and many parts of the Ken Burns a series.
I
so you know, so here you are, you're learning English. You
play kickass piano, and then a certain point in medicine is
where it is for you.
That's the key part, played rock mana show what I really love as
I was listening to Little Richard and Chuck, right. And it
really was in the 50s, where you didn't quite play that. So I had
to sneak it in. And I loved it. And I thought, Wow, that's a
miracle to me. When you're talking about rock and roll and
blaring music and the God that guitar riffs and the drumming
breath, I said, now that's what America means to me. And to me,
that was the beginning of my open eyes to American with the
real America was a band. I mean, very few people would go to
Carnegie Hall to hear somebody play Chopin, that dude or
Nocturne. But I would go to the Brooklyn Fairmont or downtown,
to hear the platters. Whatever other group there was, because
this was great. And I grew up in Harlem. So on 100, Nathan
Amsterdam, you know, I had this milieu around me, which was
really rock and roll and black, black and blue, blues and rhythm
are truly the roots of rock and roll. And I can't tell you that,
you know, he was the I would say at the beginning, but I've
certainly, you know, when I heard Antoine Domino, I and I
heard his blueberry hill. And I knew that his name, I could
understand that they were French people in this state called
Louisiana. And they have Falk agents. And so that influenced
me. I mean, eventually I listened to it to go on then
from there. I use those characters from the cage area
into my novels. And because it allowed me to be both American
and somewhat French at the same time, without being pretentious.
So that was an influence on Chuck Berry was an influence.
You know, most of my education was really listening to rock and
roll in the back of the room. And listening to the teacher. I
was not a great student, quite frankly,
but yet you became you became a doctor.
Yeah. Well, I knew the route to becoming. That's a good point,
Adam. It's the kind of thing where one of the things that
influenced me very early on was the realization. And because I
spoke French and Russian, and I would read with my mother would
read on my own. There were several physicians that
influenced me quite a lot. Somerset mom, who was a
physician, and he wrote a plays while he was a physician, as
well as novels. Not many but a few. AJ Cronin wrote the keys of
the kingdom and the Citadel. And then I had Sir Arthur Conan
Doyle, who wrote Sherlock Holmes. So very early on in my
career, rather than the look to music at Ah ha, what I see now
is, I can be a physician and at the same time, I can go through
the Kabuki of being adopted but at the same time, I can create
something that's on my own, was it we would say, sui generis,
but that only that fancy, so they influenced me and then the
idea that I'm going to be a physician, but at the same time,
I'm going to learn play, right. And in fact, when I went to
Cornell Medical School, which was an excellent medical school
and was very tough to get in. And they taught you quite a lot.
I still went to the new school and learn how to write three act
plays. And my influence at that time was a famous American
playwright named Sidney Kingsley, who wrote men and why,
and won a Pulitzer Prize. So throughout my dreams and
ambitions, excuse me, Madison was just the the, the bottom
starting point, but where I wanted to go, so I went from
medicine to writing. But then I got drafted, which was fine with
me, because out of the class of ADA, I was one of the one of the
two and maybe the only one, but that was the agreement I made
with America. And one of the things that I enjoy about
America, and I'm grateful for
it, and this is a key point, because this is something that
has gone by the wayside. That's the thing that is so
misunderstood today is kind of the deal, the agreement with
America, which you understood that it may be just was
understood that it has been forgotten and gone by the
wayside today.
Well, I think most people don't understand the social contract
that's implicit in coming to America. You know, so many
people wanted to come, my parents were fleeing the
Germans, they had to go through Spain, Portugal, and then Cuba,
from Cuba to the United States. So you know, when people say,
Oh, we should come in here automatically. That's not
correct. We were very loud. We had to learn a certain amount of
English, my father had to pass an exam. Or if he didn't pass,
he go back to loose but for me, when I was a teenager, very
early on the select Service explained to me that I had the
choice, I would be drafted. I said that I understand that and
in return, you know, I could become an American citizen. Now,
that was a rare contract. But it was listed in my world say,
yeah, yeah, if you want to be an American, you have to pay the
price. You don't pay the price with money. You don't pay the
price. By avoiding the draft, you pay the price by putting
yourself on the line, be it whatever war now, did I want the
Vietnam War? No, I knew about it. I probably knew much more
about it than the generals knew about or even our presidents
because I was in Toulouse at the time when Jim B and foo
occurred. And it was obvious to me that how it came about and
why they failed and why we would fail. Nevertheless, I was
drafted. And then from that point on, that agreement came in
and as a result, actually of that agreement, you know, I
served and then I went on to go to Harvard and MIT where they
paid for my education.
Now. Where did you serve?
Well, I first served at the St. Elizabeth's Hospital. They
brought me in first they brought me they they drafted me to Fort
Meade, and then it was switched over to the Navy in the Navy put
me in under the Public Health Service to St. Elizabeth's
Hospital where we had the criminally insane. In other
words, at that time in the 70s, you really had to have military
officers taking over now this was pretty much like we were a
GMOs general medical officers and I had three or four wards of
really criminally insane people. And I've said, is anybody going
to train me here? And they said, Well, you're in there, you know,
good luck. Some of Archer back? Well, yeah, I mean, again, it
was imperative that I kind of learned what I was doing. And
then what I did was to sneak into the actual residency
program that they had, and they were pretty nice about it. And
then I learned how to take care of schizophrenics and killers
and murderers. We ordered lobotomies. I hate to tell that
I was the last one toward the bottom. And unfortunately, oh,
yeah, that bothered me was they were they
were pretty effective. I mean, they they worked.
Well, let me put it this way. In principle, in theory, our St.
Elizabeth's had people who could verify that the bottom is work
in the last case that I had, unfortunately, it did not work.
And we did a autopsy. And it turned out that the young man
who'd been born in the prison or in the in the prison, insane,
insane asylum, hadn't half a brain so we couldn't control him
with anything else. But that was the last Labatt and the and then
from then on. I was told that I would go on, they give me
education for two to three years. So I went to Harvard to
actually learn psychiatry, even after I spent two years already
practicing psychiatry, but I had to get a degree but my real
interest was in intelligence and and bringing in psychiatry into
foreign affairs. Now, that was unheard of. Nobody even knew
about it. You know, when I got the orders to go, it was to go
to the Public Health Service, the public UC Health, Division
of Mass General or Harvard, as well as Harvard psychiatry, but
instead, I took the chance to go to MIT. And there, I had met
really what I was looking for Lucien pie if the the solar pool
and lo and behold, it was called the John McMullen Center, which
was the center for national relations at MIT. And it was
funded by none other than the CIA.
And that's when it got interesting.
Well, yeah, that's exactly it. And that's when it got
interesting. And at the same time, I was fascinated, and
emotionally, I could connect to the country and understanding
that, as a physician, and as someone who spoke other
languages, our country America needed these types of talents.
They didn't necessarily need me. But they needed to understand
how psychiatry and psychology would impact the evolution of
America, and particularly in not so ironically, how the
President's personality would affect the policy and the
outcomes of our nation. And so I had an incredible education and
illusion. Pi was my mentor. We, I kind of spent six weeks while
I was on night duty at Harvard, and immediately got through the
years, the undergraduate years, and then we went on to the
graduate years where I was trained. Here's the real kicker.
I was trained in the on the internet and social media by sal
de sola pool. And I don't know what year was this Steve? Set
the to to send the force? So I don't really know what Bill
Gates Zuckerberg did. And I don't know who the fathers of
or hadn't invented it. Yes, this is amazing. I
don't know, forehand and abandonded. And Google hadn't
invented all those narcissistic grandiose individuals had
invented it, and Silicon Valley was nowhere to be found. But
ironically, those people in the CIA and the DARPA, Defense
Advanced Research Projects, were really quite incredible and
picking out myself and others to say, Okay, now, you're going to
join us. And we would like to train you on the necessary
skills. So even though I was still in the maritime military
under the PHS, or the naval part of the PHS, I say, what is PHS
do public health service, so I worked at a national Institute.
Now you would know that there's no PHS now and there's no
surgeon. But at that time, it was a very effective system. And
immediately, I went back to the National Institute of Mental
Health on the Bert Brown, and I covered working both in
intelligence and at the National Institute of Mental Health, I
was able to go to Romania, Poland, and most importantly,
the Soviet Union. And it was there that I began to understand
the my innate ability to negotiate and understand the
dynamics of the Soviet Union and at the same time, incorporate
the training that I had from the CIA, and MIT. And what happened
was, the Soviet Union had a psychiatric hospital called
Pachenko Psychiatric Hospital, which was run by Armenian
brothers who were very nice KGB of our tanyon and his brother.
But the head of it was a an old Stalinist, who was actually
Stalin's last psychiatrist, or whatever that was, and I forget
his name, and I went there and what that hospital was doing and
what the KGB was doing, was a very clever incarceration, which
was, which went as follows. If you're a political dissident,
they didn't call you a political dissident. They created a term
called sluggish schizophrenia, which as a psychiatrist, we knew
didn't exist. It was absolute nonsense. But what I realized as
an intelligence officer, and that was when I was discussing
it with others involved not at NIMH, it was a way to
incarcerate political dissidents, where there was no
oversight from a judicial point of view. So I immediately went
in there and started to commoditize, the political
dissidents who, by the way, were Christians, fundamentalist,
Baptist Anabaptist, but I didn't say that, and I didn't say any
of that. And I didn't talk about human rights at that point. He
was under the Nixon administration. And what I did
was in discussing the individuals who are
incarcerated, I use their names, and then I would offer at that
time, Wang computer software. eautiful Yeah, the big way.
Exactly. Well, the big wing at that time was major, but you
know, eventually I commoditize Christianity, and most people
said what, as said well for this, but let's say for Mr. X, I
was quite important as Anabaptist. I said, I will give
you five Wang computers. I didn't say he was a political
dissident and the head of Pachenko hospital the Stalinist
understood what I was doing. And then for Mr. Why I would give
you four Wang computers, and so on and so forth. So I had about
15 to 20 political dissidents who were really Christian
dissidents who refuse to accept the Soviet system. And I knew
the Russians well enough that what they do is what we call in
the Soviet Union. Now here we go to the left. So we talk to the
right, in other words, I talk above the surface, but then
underneath the table, I know I have to control their back end
in what they do behind my back
in and so in Europe, we say, You talk left and you feel right.
That's exactly correct. Oh, I didn't write you talked a big
left game, but you fill your pocket with the right.
Correct. And and so what happened? That's a very good way
of saying it. And what happened there is I asked myself, I asked
the chairman of the psychiatry department who was more than
just KDB. I said, I need a letter of agreement between you
and me, Steve Pjanic, and blah, blah, blah, whoever that was.
And he said, Of course, he said, Why do you need it? I said,
Well, often we have trouble when we, you know, we try to
implement this problem. And of course, I anticipated there
would be major problems. And so when the Soviet delegation came
over, the Foreign Ministry said, No, we don't have any agreement.
We will not release any political dissidents. I don't
know where that came from. And I just pulled out the letter, and
I showed it to the foreign ministry. And they backed off
and they said,
Were you employed by CIA at this point?
No. The irony was, in reality, I've never been employed by the
CIA when I work. So it's kind of a love relationship, a marriage
of convenience and convenience. Although they train me, they
wanted me to come back in and, you know, bring me in full time.
And I said, guys, I like you a lot. But I really don't want to
be constrained by your top secret and all the other Kabuki
that you do, but I will work with you. So for the most part,
everybody thought I was CIA, which was fine. You just a
contractor, basically, no, I wasn't even a contractor. I was
really under military control. I really was a Navy captain at
that time. So quickly, went to the military side, but I worked
with, you know, it was an ad hoc arrangement. And to this day,
it's always been the head
up. Right. But it's interesting, because I would say you have
quite disintegrated disdain for today's CIA, and you're much
more on the military side. Did you already have that kind of?
No, that's a good point. Adam, I eventually got to have disdain
for the CIA after 911. For the most part, the CIA to me, was
represented by people like your uncle Don, Greg, or Jim Lilly,
or many others, whom I knew. And you know, I'm not going to say
who they are, but who worked with me in the State Department.
And that went, that's what it came down in and full blossom.
In other words, when I came in, I Eagleburger asked me, I want
you to work for Kissinger. And I said, I'm not working for Henry
Kissinger said, why not? I said, Well, he you know, I don't get
along. I don't, I don't. I don't respect him. I don't have really
any appreciation for his intellect. Remember, I was
trained at MIT. And Henry was at Harvard at that, that doesn't
help does it? Well, it's not only that, it's more than that.
It wasn't. It wasn't my sense of honour to MIT. What it was, is I
was trained in force structure and deterrence theory by a man
who was far more important than Henry Kissinger, and that was
built kaufen. And most people didn't know that. And so at MIT,
we really had the nitty gritty of combat issues to tactical,
strategic. You know, I was there with a bunch of guys who were in
the military, like myself, and then went on through the
military. So when I came in to the State Department, I had a
career fellowship from the Council on Foreign Relations,
which was very nice to me. And they offered me the deputy
assistant secretary rank, which man, they really didn't know
what to do with me, but they wanted me to run certain things.
And it would, it would appear, it was really ad hoc. So at the
same time, I had a relationship with Langley, I understood them,
they understood me. It was informal, but, you know, they
were like, colleagues. I had other colleagues in the State
Department and then I had Military, the DIA, which I
understood and ironically was jumping the gun now they're
always there when I when I needed them oversee. So the real
disdain came in not so much beforehand. It came in after 911
When I knew that the agency had really screwed up 10. And then
you had all the other guys there, Michael Hayden, I mean,
even though they were military, they had no idea what they were
doing. And it was stupid enough to create what I was teaching at
Fort McNair, which was stand down and false flags.
So you were teaching this?
Well, yeah, I was teaching at Fort McNair once a year toward
college, and I was teaching, you know, false flags, strategic
notions of how you go to war, but with jumping the gun, so
that distain came in much later on, when you had amateurs, you
didn't have 10. It was not a function of the CIA. Many of the
others were not a function of the CIA, and I can go through
the whole list. And instead, they were imposed by Bush, Jr, a
moron, literally known as on his committee to get him in and get
elected. And I regret it that day. But I since I worked for
the old man, I understood where the agency came in, and
suddenly, they decided to create a war. And since I know Paul, I
knew Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Pearl, and all these neocon
Jews. I knew they had never served, they had never really
given to the country, and I knew they created some nonsensical
piece of paper with zombie Hala Zod saying that America has to
be great again, under Clinton, and therefore Israel will be a
pivot point in the Middle East. And I said, this was the most
moronic, idiotic idea I've ever heard of. But anybody who picked
it up was not only stupid, they would have been incompetent and
criminal. So
why did they want to do this? What was what was the
every president wants to put a landmark issue underneath his
auspices, and most presidents, most people don't realize really
can't do very much after 100 days, and the only thing they
really can do is to go to war. And in the case of Bush, Jr, who
had no idea whatsoever, but I knew Cheney, Cheney was a lot
smarter than Bush, much more Machiavellian. And many of these
guys Cheney, Rumsfeld, Hadley and others, were trained by a
man who was at the office now now I'm jumping the gun of
Office of net assessment by a man called Andy Marshall. Now,
Andy Marshall had trained at the University of Chicago, he never
served in World War Two said he had a heart murmur, but he lived
to the age of 99. I still think he's alive. But he came up with
a cockamamie idea and sold it or these guys came up with it with
Zalmay Hala, Zod and all the boys out of the University of
Chicago, who they were they were trained in this another name by
Wolf steder, who said that Pearl Harbor was a false flag and a
standout I mean, they wrote about it. And then and then they
wrote that we needed another false flag and standout but they
didn't call it that. So Andy Marshall, Marshall, all of his
do fights, Cheney, Rumsfeld, all the morons. And the cowards I
mean, to me, Cheney, when I had to deal with the generals, I
asked all my generals around the table, how many times that
Cheney refused service? And they went around? I said, once twice,
I say, No, no, it was 11 times. And so the general said to me,
Wow, how did you get to ask? Well, he didn't feel that
Vietnam War was really to his liking. So when I came in to the
State Department, now we go back to the 70s. I was a deputy
assistant secretary with the rank of Navy and basically
Eagleburger. His first assignment to me was to evacuate
Vietnam and literally deal with our ambassadors, Graham Martin,
and Ellsworth bunker. And that was a problem. Because one of
the things that I saw and it was clear in that Ken Burns series
was that grant Martin and Ellsworth bumped about gray
Martin in particular, was totally focused on the notion
that we had not lost the war. Now, this is where the agency
which had initiated the war, but was smart enough to put in guys
like Richard Armitage and others, whom I kind of knew on
the side, basically said, look, we've lost the war, and we got
to get out of here and correctly depicts how we did not
understand what was happening. Then, of course, your uncle was
a part of that Don Gray, and he explained it, but the
ambassador's didn't want to believe it. And so that was my
first assignment with gray Martin. I don't want to go into
detail as to you know what I had to do. Unfortunately, he ended
up to have a sad career. My second assignment came almost as
an ad hoc situation where there was a gentleman by the name of
our Father who decided to take one of our ambassadors hostage.
And that was the PLO, and we had what was called the office to
combat terrorism, but it really wasn't all that effective. So my
job was to reorganize the office, create a policy, where
we could effectively take out hostages, and in that particular
case, it happened to the serendipitous. 17 students from
Stanford had gone to Tanzania, under the auspices of the famous
self aggrandizing individual Jane Goodell. And,
unfortunately, Jane, the gal doesn't want to really explain
how much of a coward she was.
I mean, Jane Goodell, the gorilla lady,
Jane Goodell and a husband both work kind of miscreant, and
basically what they have done. They had told the absolve
themselves of any responsibility for the 17 Stanford students who
were taken hostage by the Tanzanian Liberation Army. And I
never forgot that Larry said, get into that negotiation.
Just need a little a little background. Were they there with
her the 17 students?
There I think under Dr. borns auspices, study, chimpanzees are
monkeys. I mean, I really didn't, you know, know, at that
time, who Jane Goodell was, but subsequently, I found that she
was a very self aggrandizing, you know, cowardly individual,
and she could sue me, I don't particularly care. But that's
exactly what happened. And we took it over. And then Stanford,
really didn't know what to do. And so I said to Larry, I need
to have a policy which I concocted at that moment, where
we can basically take care of humanitarian concerns, meaning
that I can get the hostages out. But I have to be able to pay the
a terrorist, so called terrorists,
which is something we're not supposed to do. Right.
But from the very beginning, I could not afford to allow 17
young kids from Stanford, and I didn't know very much about
Stanford then, or any university on the west coast to allow them
to get executed. So basically, what happened is one of the
fathers came out and provided the money and, and these kids
were released. So Larry said to me, why don't you take over the
office to combat terrorism, but why don't you also look at the
office of medicine since you're a doctor. And subsequently would
happen, I became a das for management. And not only did I
get into terrorism, counterterrorism at this very
early stage, but I also got into the business of really working
with physicians overseas and realizing that we were spending
a lot of money bringing back our Foreign Service officers who had
alcoholism, or drug dependency. And part of that was both
personality oriented, but it was also socialization. And we had
very good Foreign Service officers, but it costs us the
fortune to bring back these people. And eventually, some of
them we would lose, literally, they would commit suicide, and
we weren't able to treat and so the first thing that I did, when
I came into the office of Madison was I looked at the list
of psychiatrist all of whom were psychoanalysts. And I
immediately fired them.
You were pretty much developing a field here. Were there any or
any peers that you had in this psychological department? Or in
the field that that all?
Yes, actually, I was not the new one. I actually had founded that
with all due respect to Harold Lasswell, who wrote in 1926,
about psychiatry and personality, and I'm really
based it on his experience at St. Elizabeth. And then
eventually I did have appear in the CIA, I think I can talk
about him, Jerry Post who did some brilliant psychological
profiles. Now you have to understand or your audience has
to understand one thing and I will go backwards. Now. The CIA
or the forerunner of the CIA was the OSS and the forerunner of
the OSS were people who Walter lacquer, while Bill Donovan who
was a military officer, but brought together all the people
from Yale and particularly the white Anglo Saxon Protestants
from Yale and elsewhere, but what he emphasized was the
importance of psychoanalytical theory as it was applied to
anthropology and political science. And so I was a An heir
to that. So for example, during the OSS, one of the great
individuals, there was Ruth Benedict, who applied
psychoanalytical theory to anthropology. She wrote
chrysanthemum in the sword. As a result of that, she was able to
predict the fact that Douglas MacArthur would have to deal
with Emperor Hirohito, as the leader of Japan, of course,
MacArthur was above him. But at that time in the 40s, a week
before the end of the war, there was a question as to whether we
should get rid of hero heat or not. And she predicted that we
needed to have Hirohito then. There were also other individual
who are psychoanalytically trained Walter lacquer, who
wrote about the analysis of Hitler's mind and when that was
released, I mean, now it's a real treasure, of understanding
how Hitler really performed and what he would do under various
circumstances. And it was brilliant work. And those people
and cluding, Julia Childs, Greta Garbo, Hedy Lamarr, who actually
not only was a famous actress, and beautiful, but she was also
the mother of telecommunications, working with
others in the OSS. So the OSS really started around the notion
of psychiatry and psychoanalysis, and its
application to national theory, and to theory of nation state
behavior. So I was really the recipient of a lot of lot of
work and brilliant work that was done by Everett Hagen, and many
others, Lucien PI on China, and many, many others who had
graduated from the OSS in the CIA, and literally came back
into MIT. So I was not the inventor of all of this, I was
probably the first applicant, who really applied to Harvard at
one time at MIT, at the same time to come in as a political
psychiatrist. But there was many who preceded me, and we were
already in the CIA. So the CIA understood this intuitively.
What I did subsequently, to that I went into use it for
counterterrorism. And as I explained, and for other issues
like regime change, that became a lot more sophisticated,
because as I began to understand the Soviet Union, and
commoditizing, the Christians, I also began to see the weaknesses
in the late 70s of the Soviet Union. In other words, you'd see
men already drunk by eight or nine in the morning, and I was
saying, Oh, my God, this is amazing. That wasn't just a few,
it was quite a lot. And then I would, on my own go to the
various factories that were there in Moscow and around
Moscow, though I was limited in what I could do, and see that
they were really doing make work. And ironically, I worked
very well with the KGB, contrary, the common image of
you know, American shooting KGB and vice versa. It wasn't like
that. The KGB would follow me and in times, where they had
personality, personal problems, I would say to them, how's your
son said, I need money for the antibiotic, and I would give him
money. Right? And, and it was that kind of personal
relationship where they would allow me to go to Leningrad and
St. Petersburg, on a train by myself knowing fully well that
I'm not going to play games in the Soviet Union. But at the
same time, they understood that I was accumulating information
that I subsequently used at the RAND Corporation. Now I'm
jumping to take down the Soviet Union.
Can I step back for just one second, I just want to go back
to Hedy Lamarr, and Julia Child, because it's pretty well
established what they were doing. I don't think people
realize it anymore. Think about probably miss the revelations.
But were they actively, I guess, two questions. Were they
actively working in psychological operations towards
an audience or?
No, it's a good question. And they were actually awkward is in
what we would say. Now the CIA and case officers, Julia Childs
worked with a gentleman named Swift. And she was the handler
for Hachi men, really China. So the notion that whole Chi Minh
was anti American was absurd, because he loved America and he
loves cooking. Yeah, well. Well, you could say that Adam,
actually he wasn't the cook. He was the dishwasher, in New York
and in London. But all of his intellectual narratives came out
of the United States and Abraham Lincoln. At the same time, Hedy
Lamarr, whom I didn't know what was beautiful, had gotten
herself involved. her former husband had worked with the
Nazis. She understood what they do. What the transfer technology
was and she eventually got into telecommunications. The ones who
I knew were particularly operative or specific to
operations because of my operative who I had in
Intelligence and Research a very bright man by the name of Phil
Stoddard who ran Greta Garbo. He ran because she was Swedish and
one of the issues during World War Two contrary to what they
liked to talk about the wall and burden this in the Wallenberg
that and how great he was to the Jews. Of course, that was a
storyline that was contrary to the real storyline of the
Wallenberg they both the uncle and the father, who were pro
Nazis and funded the Nazi war machinery, as did Sweden. But
Sweden was supposed to be neutral. And so getting a Greta
Garbo along with Niels Bohr, we basically said to Alfonse, the
King, who is German that if you don't maintain your neutrality,
you will go to prison, as we said to both the Father and the
uncle,
and how was Garbo used as an asset in that?
Well, she spoke Swedish, I can't directly tell you that it was
told to me because she was very famous. She was silent. She was
highly disagreed. And she, I believe, went with Niels Bohr to
Sweden to explain it to them offline. And as a result, I
think are now being I'm jumping the gun that the so called Son,
the Wallenberg was sacrificed to say, oh, yeah, well, let's get
the storyline where he saved the lives of Jews. So that the
notion of what really happened World War Two, and what covers
whether the story covers are totally different. And that's
pretty much what you began, I began to realize in terms of the
history and what the Hidden History was, and how nation
states that will collaborators really go back and try to
explain what they did, for example, the Anne Frank story,
that's Apsara. It was a nonsensical story. And, you
know, they say the father wrote with a ballpoint pen, and he
was, yeah, there's
a lot of discrepancies, even in recent history about, well, it
was
absurd, the two cities, right, the reason and they don't talk
about it is that because it's
the third rail, you can't talk about Jews, unless you are one.
That's correct. And then that way, if you happen to me, this
is good. That's right. And I happen to be a Jew who can be
quite critical as American Jews or Israel and at the same time,
maintain, maintain my identity and be proud of it. But the key
there was, I said, Something is wrong in Holland. And
we're having grown up there. I concur.
Well, yeah, but you saw it firsthand when I saw it was
secondhand. And I said, the greatest percentage of Jews
killed was in Poland, number one, by the Germans. However,
the second greatest percentage of Jews killed was 93% versus
96, and Poland, but they were no Nazi officers in German in
Ireland. And it was done by the Dutch. And also at the same time
years later, when I write wanted to write about Colin and its
collaboration in World War Two we're talking about as a NSBE.
Now, that's correct. Yeah. Yeah. And and, and so what happened
is, you know, Beatrix, ran, the Germans came in and that the
German the Dutch said, Oh, we didn't understand we thought
they were speaking Dutch. When the when the Nazis were paired
to the to Rotterdam, which is all nonsense. And the Dutch were
really culpable. So they came up with this nonsensical story of a
girl who was hidden and blah, blah, blah,
would you say this is one of the that story in particular was one
of the longest lasting greatest psychological operations ever?
Well, yes, I would say Holland went out of its way to create
this absurd facade, that they were free of any guilt or any
collaboration, most of them are collaborators. I mean, that was
very clear. The Germans didn't need to have Nazi enforcers the
Dutch were more than happy to do what the Germans didn't do. As
matter of fact, the Germans was stung as to what the Dutch did.
And that's not only the Dutch, the French, when the French
police rounded up 76,000 Jews who are in a stadium, the
Germans were totally taken aback. The Nazis said, we didn't
order you to take the 76,000 are women and children. So the
storylines get totally distorted. But let's go back to
the major storyline. But because of this discrepancy, I began to
realize that the national character of countries was still
running very deep, but like the people at MIT or the CIA, you
have to study the specifics
of our seconds. Sorry, I'm sorry, you can continue
But is that? Is that a conditioning? Yes,
yes. Yes. It's Pavlovian, you're doing well.
Am I okay?
I mean, am I gonna get ahead? Only if you sit up properly?
Yeah. Okay. Thank you. It's fun. You're good man. So, basically,
let's move forward. So you know that what I call the manifest
story is usually the nonsense story or the bullshit. The
latent story is that story which history has to really inspect.
And it's true of America that mean, you know, we say we want
to World War Two, I don't minimize what the heart soldiers
who fought both in Japan and in Europe, but it was really the
Soviet Union that won World War Two losing about 20 to 30
million men. By 1943. We couldn't, we couldn't have done
it without them. No, there's no way. I mean, even General Omar
Bradley and George Marshall, who added great respect for said we
couldn't have done this, and we couldn't have entered the war
till 1943, without the Soviets. But again, our Presidents Obama
didn't show up for the 75th anniversary of Vladimir of the
Soviet Union. And, you know, subsequently Do I have any
animosity to the Soviet you know, and and when I, when we
took down the Soviet Union, I explained to our policymakers
and others in the intelligence community, remember, all I did
was to change the deck chairs and make sure that the guys who
were running the system, were no longer there, but don't in any
way think that you took over Russia, and that we defeated
Russia, on the contrary, and what happened then, and I was
not involved in this. And I, you know, I don't blame anybody.
Yeltsin was put in power. Now, for the most part, most of the
leaders of Russia or foreign countries. I won't say we urge
them, but we certainly have a hand in it. And I don't blame
anybody in the agency or whatever intelligence unit was
involved. But Yeltsin was put in and I wasn't that time, but he
was a drunk. It was a total disaster. And it was clear that
Russia was falling apart under his auspices. And so we had then
that revolution, and we had Gorbachev and under Gorbachev, I
had a clear idea in the Reagan administration, how we could
approach him with Reagan and your your fellow countrymen and
the intelligence community. At that time, there was a gentleman
named Fritz airmass, who would worked on the national
intelligence office. And what I prepared for them was a strategy
paper where you had an opening movement, a middle movement, and
then movement between Reagan and Gorbachev. And I knew Reagan was
very terse, Gorbachev was an engineer who was very
loquacious. So we had a method by which we could deal with
Gorbachev in an negotiations. And that's what I would prepare
in the Reagan administration. But before that, I am going out
of sequence, but I'm saying to you that the appearance of
Vladimir Putin was severely sanctioned by us.
Well, let's just stop there for a second because what I'm just
listening to you, what was unfolding, was the realization
by the intelligence community and military intelligence, that
we could pretty much do whatever we wanted, we could tell the
American public whatever we wanted, they would not be the
same thing. And it sounds like this period in time, they were
so cocky about it, like they got out of control, we can do
anything we want.
Well, I think you're right. I think I, the point where I would
say it's a bit different is the fact I don't think we would
cavalier about it. I think whoever was involved, they had
the best intentions, and they were picking whoever they
thought was appropriate. I was not in that selection process.
But it was clear to me subsequently, that there were
mistakes made, you know, like any situation, you don't really
know what's going to happen until it happens.
But, but the morality, because OSS days, I understand, you
know, we're doing stuff covert, we're still jumping out of
airplanes, we're saving the world. But then you get to this
point where there's just no, maybe I'm mistaken. This just
seems like there's no morality of what's being done.
I wouldn't say that, I think with all due respect to those
whom I worked with, both in military and intelligence and
the CIA, there was always a moral cover to it, if anything,
it was almost too moralistic because, you know, the notion
that we're going to bring freedom and we're going to bring
transparency to Russia or to any country was self delusion
running. And I would say to them, Look, guys, you know, we
can't do it. I'm in the business of people and nations, but I'm
not in the business of changing their behavior, irrespective of
what you think. They said, but you're a psychiatrist that said,
Yeah, but I know my limits, and I can't do what you guys think
you can do. And I think that was where we made mistakes. It
wasn't the cockiness, it was really the fact that we wanted
to bring a what we were enjoying here overseas to a country that
had been under repression, and a czar or Stalin or dictator for
most of their life. So Vladimir Putin made a lot of sense. I
didn't know him but ironically, when I was in Lubyanka, when I
was in Jersey Square where I personally visited the KGB
headquarters before he was even there a couple of years before
the KGB would say to me, what do you think is going to be our
next leader? The Moscow people didn't know. But I had a pretty
good idea. I said, you have a guy from East Germany, who's an
East German intelligence. He wasn't Stasi. He's Russian, but
I think he's very talented. And his name is Putin, Vladimir.
They say who? And they did now. And I mean, it's again, you, you
don't have this notion that everything works, you know, with
the touch of that with the push of a button.
Right. So Putin was a suggestion, he seemed like a
good idea, which inherently means we'd have contact with him
in that regard. Still, he didn't go rogue or anything.
No. And contrary to what everybody's saying, Now, which
is nonsensical, you know, does Russia affect our elections,
nothing affects our election, the only people who have been
affected our elections are our own politicians, and the people
who work the dipole machinery and know how to make it corrupt.
We're very good at screwing ourselves. The Russians don't
need to do that, whether Putin or any of that talk to Jared
Kushner, I talked to Trump, we talked to Mickey Mouse is not
relevant here. We have more corruption at the local and the
state and the federal level than anyone else. So it's irrelevant.
And Vladimir Putin knows that he makes no pretense and he kind of
is enjoying that. And I'm absolving him of that. But
that's not the issue that's really at hand. The issue at
hand is Russia is always been a strong ally to the United
States, we'll always be an ally, because our intelligence
services work very closely together. And the Russians have
been very helpful in Central Asia with the issue of
counterterrorism as we've been helpful to them, along with our
military intelligence, CIA, but let me go a little bit
backwards. So under the Carter administration, I was asked by
Eagleburger, he was the only one who remained but he was a career
Foreign Service officer, an excellent man became our
Ambassador to Yugoslavia. And then I had a very nice gentleman
come in, who was at that time, my boss named Ben read a
mainline Philadelphia family lovely. And and I really enjoyed
both Ben Reed and his boss, Cyrus Vance. And they kind of
understood what I was about. They were lawyers, and they
understood well, a psychiatrist has some impact here. And what
happened, domestically really changed the course of my own
career and the course of how I got involved in in overseas
issues. And let me tell you what happened. In 1977, or 78, Jimmy
Carter had created a situation where three different buildings
were being held by a gentleman named by a gentleman who was
part of what was called 150, Muslim, Black Muslims. And the
reason he held 150 hostages and three buildings, and he shot a
couple people, was the fact that he had seen his child being
drowned by Farrakhan and the black Muslims. So it was an
internal fight between the black Muslims and a sect called Anafi
Muslim. Now, I was not privy to the beginning of the situation
of the hostage siege. And a gentleman by the name of Earl
Silbert, whom I knew and was friendly with had been the
prosecutor. He come in and this was after about 10 hours of of
where's the taking place in Washington DC, okay, right in
three buildings, the mosque, City Hall, and B'nai Brith. So
it was about 100 hostages or 150 hostages and B'nai Brith, about
150 hostages in the mosque, and another 50 or 70 in at City
Hall, along with Mayor Berry and people were killed. This was a
serious situation. But the FBI had been in charge of this and
apparently they really screwed up, their profile was wrong.
They didn't really know what they were doing. So Earl called
me up about midnight and I came down and my usual uniform for
hostage situation, which is blue jeans and a T shirt. And I saw
three different ambassadors sitting there. One was a Jakob
Kahn, who was the general from Pakistan a brilliant man i
artist she is a Hedy also excellent from IE Ron, and go
ball from Ambassador go above from Egypt, all three
intelligent, very learned individuals, and they were doing
nothing there. So immediately thanks to my background and as a
fiction writer and as a play writer, I saw exactly what was
missing. I needed to have a voice which was not an American
voice, but basically had a more a Quranic overtone to it. So I
started some Egyptian guy. Well, not only the Egyptian, I had
Iranian, I had a Shia, Sunni, and I had a Pakistani who was
really quite formidable. And even though I didn't know the
Koran, I knew the Quran had to have some notion of generosity,
and compassion. So I sat with the three ambassadors, and I
said, Okay, I'm going to be the terrorist, police. That was his
name. And I understood what he did, and and I, and I had
empathy for it. I didn't agree with his killing, but that
nevertheless, was the secondary issue. So I basically talked to
the three ambassadors as if they were police. And then I trained
them to talk on the phone, I never got on the phone, the
person who was in charge and did a brilliant job was a policeman
by the name of colonnade of the DC Police Department. And he was
the voice and in turn, I would give him strategies and tactics.
And in turn, we would send the ambassadors to see colleagues
and talk about chronic issues, and you have to release the
hostages. Well be it as it made it 36 hours later. And after I
had been ordered by Jimmy Carter, the president to stand
down and leave, I refused. And that was my first act of
insubordination, possibly treason? And the answer was no,
I will not leave these hostages. I'm a physician.
What was the what was the plan when they said, a board? What
were the what was the idea just because
the FBI had failed already, after eight hours, and they felt
that this was really not going to go anywhere, and that it
would be a disaster anyway. And he felt, you know, let it
aboard, and there was nothing else to do. So I was ordered to
stand down. Now I was a military officer, I was a Das. And I'm a
physician. So I quickly switched to the role of saying, as a
military officer, you can you can put me on for treason as a
Das, you can fire me but as an MD, I'm gonna stay here. So I
really don't care what the President has to say. And for
the next 10 hours, we basically worked the phones and his mind
to the degree he knew, at least knew he was being manipulated,
but he could not. He could not stop it. And he said it on the
phone. And that was the power of the ability to manipulate using
the Koran and three different Muslim ambassadors. And we were
successful. And
did you have to did you have to offer him anything like you did
previously in these types of negotiations? No, I
didn't offer him anything. But I did do the reverse what I did at
this time, and that was the first time I began to take away
things. So I took away air food. And I made it his situation
worse. And what I did was if he were to release 20 or 30
hostages, I would give him the air conditioning back and we
were faced another 20 or 30 hostages, I would give them
food. But what was not known at the time, and we were concerned
was that there was napalm on the stairwell. And when I went to
the head of the FBI unit, I said, Look, you got a lot of
scopes here and you've got a lot of snipers, and you don't want
to shoot, but I don't want you to shoot but I do want you to go
on a helicopter and repel off the helicopter on the roof so
that you can get inside. And the gentleman I don't remember his
name, but he was quite nice. He said, Doctor, I gotta tell you
this. We can't repel. We don't know how to get on. Really?
Well. If we repel, we get dizzy. I said, Oh my God. Now you're
telling me so it was a total disaster for the FBI. Needless
to say, of course, two years later, the FBI had a movie on
showing how well they did.
Oh, yes, of course. They nailed it. Yes, no. So that was
the beginning of understanding that and so the these people
were released. I was interviewed for the first time and I really
normally don't get interviewed and I really didn't know
anything more other than that. What I said was this is a local
event or what I did do and had an impact later and I forgot
this one I had him. I stopped the the journalists from
reporting on the situation. So I cut off all communications from
ABC and the television so that I could control all communications
between the terrorist and in a colony and I was accused of
violating the First Amendment. I said later on, I sat down at
lunch with somebody from ABC or so. And they said, you know, we
have the right to do this. And then I said, I don't you don't
have the right to do anything.
No, your right to publish whatever you want. You don't
necessarily have the right to access everywhere.
Correct. And that's the key Adam and I said, No, whenever I'm in
charge, you will have no access to the hostages or the
terrorists, because I don't need to have the feedback problems
that you create. Well, and you know, they have a path, but the
answer was no, it's not acceptable. From that. I went on
to deal with another situation, which I don't want to get into
too much detail, which was the kidnapping of Val dimauro. And
that's where Cyrus Vance had asked me would I help out, and I
said, Fine. And what I didn't know and was that at that time,
I had a work with Francesco Sega, who's the undersecretary
for security. And we all D'Amato, again, out tomorrow was
the prime minister of Italy. And he was stitched by the regatta
Ross or the red brigade. And over a six week period, we were
negotiating for his release. And unfortunately, he was killed.
And I returned back, and but at that point in Italy, I was
singled out as an individual who should be taken out by the red
brigade. And so that's where my, that's where I started getting
into some problems. I came back. And subsequently, I realized
that a nation state can be very fragile. Once the leader of that
country is removed, it was removed. Subsequent to that I
was, had to go to Afghanistan because one of our ambassadors
were taken hostage as spied dogs. And we really messed that
up. And I don't want to get into the names of the individuals.
And as a result, we had to bring back his body and I had a
stopover, both in Islamabad and in Tehran. And at that point, in
June of 78, or 79, I realized that the Russians, the Soviets
were leaving to Iran, because they said, is going to be
problem here. We're going to have Muslims taking over. So
when I came back, I said to the secretary of state, but Vance
understood it, that we have to evacuate our embassy and that,
in turn, was reported to the White House. And at that time,
it was Brzezinski was in charge in not a fan of Brzezinski
basically led us into Afghanistan, didn't he? Correct?
That's correct. And so as a result of all of this would
happen is we were taken hostage instead of withdrawing our
embassy. Would they put in a 50 or 60, new FSOs and civil
servants and I thought that was a big mistake. And then, once
they were taken, I was ordered by Carter to become a hostage
negotiator with some other guy forgot about kind of a left wing
guy who was a political hack. And I said, No, I will not go to
see Ayatollah Khomeini. As part of the delegation. I will go
privately, but I cannot afford to lose the opening movement. So
I resigned. And then six months later, a Cyrus Vance resigned.
And then eventually we had that helicopter crash, it was a Black
Hawk Down. Right? Well, that wasn't black. Ford wrong
country. Well, no, it's ironically, the same man who's
in charge of Blackhawk down. Jerry Boykin was a great soldier
who I've worked with later on special forces. He was involved
in the helicopter problems that occurred in Iran. And I really
was not involved in that anymore. So I was taken to the
RAND Corporation where I was asked to develop the strategy
and tactics for the regime change both military, political,
and cultural. And I did that under the direction of a friend
of mine, but at that time, the head of the RAND Corporation,
what
was it at the time of Charlie Wilson as well?
Whoa, yes, as a matter of fact, you're right, Charlie Wilson. I
had indirectly met Charlie Wilson and his wife, but it
didn't make any. He made no impression on me. I mean, I
didn't realize his relevance to anything other than the fact
that he was at a dinner table. So I was not impressed. And when
I saw the Charlie Wilson war, I said, Oh, the CIA's gone gone.
Oh, again, to explain how wonderful they are.
So it's not true. That's another farce, I can't believe it.
Well, it's not a farce. I mean, the CIA likes to promote what
they do or don't do. That's their right. The same thing with
the FBI. But one of the things I said many years later, and I saw
it came true, I said, I will predict that the FBI and the CIA
will have offices in Hollywood, and lo and behold, right office
and Holly. So, you know, again, the manifest stories, what they
want you to see the latest stories, not what really
happened, as a result of and I was brought back in under the
Reagan administration, and then I got involved with a General
Antonio Noriega, whom actually I admired. He, that was subsequent
to that. That was the Bush administration, I should say,
and I, I liked Noriega, he and I had dinner together at night.
And I explained to him I was sent down to basically help them
leave or make the offer, like The Godfather, and this
was like a regime change.
Yes, yes. Right. And at that point, I had a DIA officer who
was just wonderful. And I said, Look, you got a lot of people
who don't like you up there. I don't know why they think you're
stinky. You know, I don't even know whether you're stinky or
not. And, you know, he was like any other leader, he had the
good parts, the bad parts. But one of the things that he said
to me at night, I'll never forget us, Steve, you learn one
thing, never never become an ally of the United States. And
that's stuck with me.
Now. Can I ask how did you befriend him? You just happen to
be in Panama Island?
No, I was flown down to Panama by by the agency and the agency
actually had a handle on this as well as dia or am I military
intelligence. And I came in to talk to him I was authorized by
the State Department to talk to him on behalf of the ambassador
in the State Department asked him would he be willing to leave
and as a result, he was very friendly. It wasn't you know, it
was in the a it was what we call a safe house. And he had
interpreted but we didn't need any he made chicken soup for me
and my dia officer. And I said look, they want you to leave
your here's what we're willing to offer a plane with gold the
plane with your mistress, a plane with your wife, blah,
blah, blah. And he turned it down.
Why? Why did we want him to leave? What was he not the
perfect partner for our drug trade already?
Adam, that was the most objective questions. Pretty
good. How
leading the witness.
That's exactly. And so he hit it on the head. He was our foremost
drug trafficker, and then he went into detail about the Bush
family and drug traffic and I told him, okay, basta, enough. I
didn't want to hear more than I had to. And
so they wanted to cut them out. They were done with him, or he
screwed him over something. Something went wrong. Yeah,
I mean, the details of this, because it wasn't exactly what
Bush seen. You said that we had a terrible man who killed many
people and right
it sounds how it always goes, the dictator evil dictator,
killing his own people is horrible. We gotta get rid of
him. We need to get we need to save the children.
Correct. But what happened? Subsequently, I left and I was
compromised by the CIA. I mean, that was why I could smile.
Although I doubled one of their operatives, and they compromised
me in the newspaper, say that I was this and that. And they
couldn't spell my name, right. But I knew it was the agency,
but I had a smile. And basically, I left I mean, I was
then persona non grata. And by my leaving, I was called into
the White House, and actually, I was reprimanded by your uncle,
and the first time and I didn't mind it. He said, what we're
doing there was inappropriate, and I just nodded my head and
just gave an excuse that, you know, I was told to come down
and I did what I was thought would be best, although he knew
I was doing agitation, propaganda, and I couldn't
bullshit them. And I didn't and I knew I knew how to do that.
But I was flown out. And then I was severely reprimanded. I
didn't hit my hand or anything. And then I left I left to do
well, but
CIA had they already had their own. I guess the Iran Contra
deal must have been brewing at that point.
That's correct. And at fortunately for me, a friend of
mine, Mort Abramowitz, who, and Richard Salem and two guys at
the State Department said stay away. And it was a guy by the
name of Elliott Abrams, whom I had known because we had gone to
the same synagogue I knew was involved in this chicanery and
nonsense and I remember when I came back from Panama, I was
very much impressed by the FSOs and the CIA operatives in. I was
about to debrief up on the seventh floor with a bunch of
other desses. And in my usual boorish way, Elliot said some
comment about the fact that these were cowards at the State
Department and I was furious. So I jacked up his neck and held
him by the neck and said, you ever say that again? I'll kill
you. And Schultz walked right in. So I knew right then in
there, I wasn't part of the State Department per se. The
regime changing but I really found it offensive that the
people who worked with me both in the CIA in the State
Department were deprecated by this little coward, and this
idiot, whom I never respected, and eventually, I got to see his
image chicanery again in 911. And then absurd of absurdities.
He became the head of quote, democracy and human rights, the
Council on Foreign Relations under Richard Haass, and other
piece of work. So you could see how by that time already, I had
already realized that this is nonsense.
You are a member, as you said earlier of the Council on
Foreign Relations, I was
proud to be a member. And then I realized that it was being taken
over by Neo cons and by people who wanted to reminisce about
their days in the State Department. And it had a cross
between neocon idiocy and going to war and a nursing home. And I
said, I don't understand really why I'm paying for this. And I
just left. I was probably one of the first and only people to
leave the Council on Foreign Relations, but I had no need for
it. I understood its, you know, it was basically a nursing home
for those who had memories and wanted to relive their lives
drinking club.
You could say that, and um, you could say that, I don't say
they're alcoholics. That
didn't mean it like that. But
no, but you're right. I mean, I had other things to do. And
actually, I went out to California to, to build up the
franchise on the the Clancy name, and then you know, do a
few TV shows. And as Tom and I were talking about, I worked
with ABC and Walt Disney. So I got to meet a bunch of other
character Eisner and ovitz who I really liked, I got to enjoy
Michael Ovitz and Eisner who I didn't know that well. But there
was a guy who I really enjoyed Mark Pedowitz, who was head of
ABC, and they allowed me to run, you know, the unit and I had
about 130 people on the set and 22 unions, so I wanted to break
the unions, but I wanted to recompense my people. And so I
had ordered all my truck drivers to go from Los Angeles to
Fredericksburg, Virginia, which was a right to work state. But
in turn, I gave him triple salary. So I said, just
remember, you're working for an entrepreneur, not for the Union.
Now, when did you miss all the things you were doing? When did
you find time to write?
I was always writing. That's a good question, Adam. And that
was my passion. Even in medical school, I had time to I found
time to go to the new school to write plays. And then when I was
in charge of 4000, screaming criminals, mentally ill and
criminally insane. I would write in the evening, otherwise, I
would go nuts, because you could hear the screams going through
St. Elizabeth's. And even when I came back at home, I would write
a fiction. And in one of the things while I was at MIT, I sit
solution pi, whom I admired and adored. He was really a
brilliant man. And I said, Lucien, I'm gonna write my
thesis on terrorism and counterterrorism in fiction. And
he said, wow, and he said, why? I said, Because fiction will
allow me the latitude to really go into the hidden stories
behind the terrorist and myself and the dynamics of what a
counter terrorist is in, in many ways. It's very similar to a
terrorist. And I had allow me to go to those dynamics, which I
don't have to footnote it. So he said, Okay, this was by T at its
finest, said, that's fine. So I think I wrote the only PhD in
fiction and then I wrote another 300 pages to explain why I used
fiction. And then I invoked, you know, through cities, Heraclitus
and Disraeli. Of course, I didn't say I was the equivalent.
I just said they wrote fish. And I was, you know, part of the PhD
is you get questions and you get interrogated by a board and I
And I loved it. They really asked me some serious questions
and I answered them, and I explained why fiction was of
great value. I subsequently used fiction to basically explain
what I had done and what I would see in the future of the United
States. And that's where I'd use the Tom Clancy franchise,
particularly Ops Center. In then I began to write novels about
one I saw was the military coup that would eventually occur in
any given presidency. I didn't say any a particular presidency,
but I said that eventually time would compel a certain
individual to really regress, let's say the President, if he
regresses in any way, will compel our military to be able
to access the White House or be in the White House. And it
wouldn't be a simple military coup.
Did you develop this theory based upon your experiences with
other countries and observing
them? Yes, yes, as well as my experiences in the United
States. I don't want to go into detail on which ones but I, I
can tell you that having studied a John F Kennedy, I didn't know
him personally, but I did know him as a medical doctor at
Cornell University Medical College where they had treated
him several months before. And they gave us a case history of a
man who had back problem and had surgery and went psychotic. And
I said, Wow, what happened and the the doctors who treated me
from a clinical perspective told me that that individual had
Addison's disease. And of course, that was John F.
Kennedy, and the history and the legend making of John F.
Kennedy. They don't talk about how seriously ill he was and how
indecisive he was how depressed he was how psychotic he was at
times in Lausanne in Fetta. mean, he was on vitamins, he was
on all kinds of drugs. But when you listen to the manifest
history that the Kennedys created, you thought this was a
sweet little darling, who knew exactly what he had to say. But
in reality, he was a very poor congressman, a very poor
Senator, I checked it out with many of my other friends. And it
was really quite an inept president. And the reason we had
the missile crisis and other crises occurring was because he
had this mental fluctuation, but they don't talk about it. So
guys at Harvard, like Ted Sorensen, and others made up the
bullshit, let the 13 days, and the most important days and you
studied it? And the answer was, they really didn't want to put
in the issue that he was mercurial, he was mentally sick,
he should never have gone into the Navy. It was his father who
pushed them in. And of course, that was the hidden message of
all of this, but it was covered up by Oh, John F. Kennedy said
this. And John F. Kennedy said that, well, what John F Kennedy
did was to create a lot of wars, all over Latin America and
Vietnam. And you really alienated the CIA, Allen Dulles
in particular, and many others, and really was out of control.
And his handlers would never admit it. And so whatever
happened happened, but it was, it was predictable that he would
have been assassin.
This This probably also solidified your theory, that
President really is not that effective after 100 days, but is
very effective in being the figure for the public. And
well, yes, I mean, the notion, you hit on something, Adam, the
notion of the presidency as being a unifying symbol, in the
50s 60s, and 70s, was legitimate. In other words, you
had Eisenhower, then you had Nixon and Nixon had a problem,
but we could go on, and then we had Ford, and then from Ford, we
could go on and have Jimmy Carter so that the the sequence
of events allowed the Republic to maintain a certain integrity.
And the reason why that was important is because quite
frankly, there was nothing behind the dollar bill. And the
only thing behind the dollar bill is the notion that we have
a system or Republic, it's not necessarily a democracy, but a
republic that maintains its integrity from one time to
another time. Now all of that broke apart. And I could see
that with the advent of the internet, because the internet
eventually broke down the nation state. And that was what I was
beginning to write in my net four series under the Clancy
franchise. When I wrote about a cyber nation and people said,
and years later, the generals would ask me, Well, how did you
come to that idea? I said, What do you mean? If you have a
nation and you have the internet, the nation state is no
longer valid. It really is the Connect Since that I have
between one and zero and the people I might have in Uganda or
in the Soviet Union or in Russia. So from that point on, I
was really writing and fiction what was gonna happen in the
future.
And so you would already pivot be pivoted beyond what the
intelligence services thought at the same time, which is, hey, we
control media, we have messaging, that's, you know, we
can kind of make things work that way. But you foresaw that
this would be this would remove that entire capability,
correct. It would not only not only that, it would always
remove it, it would also undermine the credibility of our
military, because at that particular point, and even now,
we don't really need soldiers shooting guns, and aircraft
carriers and all that nonsense, the hardware, what we really
need, it was a que pasa the capacity to deal with cyber
terrorism, Cyber Command cyber warfare. And when I wrote about
it, that was way ahead. But there was a general who
understood that Keith Alexander, whom I had worked with in GE,
too, and he had several degrees in software. And
he later became the the read and write, write.
But he understood that and unfortunately, what happened
when you had Keith and he certainly made some mistakes,
but you want you expect to make that. So what happened then is
you got an officer, a naval officer, I'm sure it's a good
man, Mark Rogers, who was a submarine commander, now that
has nothing to do with cyber command or cyber terrorism. So
what was happening in the future, what was happening in
the present time was a total disconnect, from what I had been
writing in terms of cyber nation, cyber terrorism, cyber
warfare. And then in my other novels, I was writing about
water wars, because I saw water is an issue. And then I wrote
about a little, a bunch of islands that nobody believed in,
don't tell me some Japanese islands somewhere around these
with Chinese islands. Depends on how you look at it Japanese and
Chinese. Right?
You're right. And, and it was, again, James Lilly, who
understood what I had written 20 years ago. And I said, this will
be the focal point for a potential war with China
to them. So that must have been frustrating the people that you
were spelling it out for them, and that they weren't seeing it
or worse, they were refusing the entire notion?
Well, it goes back to your initial statement about me, they
shut you off, before you finish, you're the only one allowing me
to do that. And that, so I get used to it, you get socialized
to it. And you basically say, Okay, I mean, you know, I'm not
going to spend my hours getting frustrated over it, you know,
you can either buy the book, but you don't have to buy the book,
it was that kind of attitude. But I kept on going into other
areas in what I began to see was that eventually, you know, the
realizations of what I had seen 20 years ago, would eventually
come through with a water wars in California and Nevada,
Montana. And it has happened now in Florida, where we're fighting
the phosphate mines coming out of Minnesota mosaic mines, where
the RV parks, so you're beginning to understand that
water is like one of the crucial issues in the world that will
will create a war. And so when you have the Chinese you already
Bhutan now? That's correct. So also water. Correct.
And that that point of conflict between the Indians and the
Chinese is a major conflict point. And I've warned that to
our military, or our intelligence saying, Listen, if
I would look at any other place in terms of potential serious
wars, it would be between Pakistan and India and Indian
China because Pakistan and China are really very close. But you
have Bhutan, as you said, right? Well,
the Chinese were their One Belt, One Road their deep in bed with
Pakistan, which India does not like at all.
Correct. And you have the Chinese also who really had they
don't have enough water, because he Pong has to deal with the
fact that about 300 to half 300 to 500 million people don't
really have enough water, the Yangtze and the Yalu the totally
contaminated. So they have to be able to get the water from the
Himalayas. And that will be a problem for China. Steve.
So you at this point, you understand where the future is?
You understand I don't know if you've ever read Kaczynski is
industrial society and its future. But there's a lot of
your thinking that is very similar to that in a good way.
I mean, that's all right. I
mean, the blowing up people like,
no, Adam, I mean, what you have to understand about me, I don't
have to feel that I'm right. I just have to write what I feel.
And then if it happens, fine. If it doesn't happen, fine, but I
don't need that credit. I basically write it because it's,
it's internal for me. It's not something I want an approval of
of.
Right but so but so now, I think, and this is I think where
you are greatly misunderstood. You see the future of the
psychological operations, warfare, whatever you want to
call it, certainly in the United States, and you see the
internet, and I think around this time, you may have seen
Alex Jones early, early days. And where I believe there's
probably a misconception that you're handling him or anything
of the like, you're really doing what you've always done you you
continue to tell the future. And whether it's an A Novel whether
that novel becomes a television series or a movie. Correct. You
want to expose people to what that I guess that's just in you.
That's, that's in me. I mean, and I can't I understand
that, believe me, I understand this inside, because that's one
of the reasons I do our show at all is, you know, it's, it's
always I find it fun to say, oh, what's really going on here,
this is way different than you're being told.
Well, that's why you and I can get along, or I and Alex and get
along. No, I don't handle Alex. Alex is a phenomenon which I
particularly enjoy. I mean, when I first heard him, and I said,
you know, I think this is going to be the future where somebody
like him who can riff, literally, intellectually riff,
at a far greater rate than I could ever dream of. It's almost
like a jazz riff. I said, myself, my God, you know, what
comes out of him in any particular moment, is quite
amazing. But at the same time, he has that sense of self
deprecation and humor, that I admire. And I can relate to and
I've always liked that about Bill Hicks. Well, that's true. I
don't want to say that. I don't want to get into that argument.
I as I said, I don't care if he was Mickey Mouse and Donald
Duck, if he's Bill Hicks, or not Bill Hicks, whatever talent he
has its talent that said, and the same with you. And you know,
you relate, you basically relate to people who you feel
comfortable with, you know, I can't relate to the, to the
arrogant to the pompous, I mean, people used to say to me, What,
oh, well, how come you're not teaching in academia? Are you
kidding? I wouldn't last three minutes in academia. Why don't
you teach the Chairman of the Department of Psychiatry, I
wouldn't last four minutes in psychiatry. So in a way, I find
my own neighborhood, which is guys like you and Bill Hicks, or
Alex Jones, or whoever it may be in. And I limited to that, and I
enjoy it. Because it doesn't have to prove anything, we don't
have to be correct. And if we are correct, we can smile about
it. But you and I know it doesn't mean much to be correct.
I mean, if let me put it this way, in the worst case scenario,
if I turn out to be correct, and I say to people, I'm a
physician, I don't want to be correct. If I'm saying to you,
the patient's got cancer, you better listen. And so after a
while, since I'm not in the business of being their doctors,
I just walked away and say, look, they want to self emulate
or they want to self destruct, that's their business, not mine.
So that's basically how I approach it.
So if I go back to what may have been a turning point for you,
and your, in your, certainly trust in the agency was 911. And
from this stems, you know, the term false flag, which is thrown
around very easily, these days, and it's probably the biggest
point of contention. Whenever I explain something to someone
say, Well, you know, this is the possibility it was a so called
false flag, here's how they work, here's why they've done
here's historically how they take place, but it seems,
whether it's through the advent of the the propagation of the
internet, and how the information flows, but it seems
like there are more of them, really, for less reason than
ever.
Well, that may be true. But again, what I go back to is it's
easy to say that's a false flag, or, you know, it's whatever it
is, but what's not easy to do is to hold the people accountable
who've done it, and instead they get retread through the garbage
of government. I mean, no Bush has been indicted. No Bush has
gone to prison. None of the chain he hasn't gone to prison.
You know, you say anything about Cheney, you got the Secret
Service suddenly standing over this holy, you know, idiot, who
basically coward. I mean, that's all he really is. And then you
get the self righteous attitude, and then you suddenly hear, you
know, then you get the black baby coming out of the CIA name
Obama, and then the Wonder yourself, yeah, what's going on
here? This is not the Republic. I mean, the agency has failed
and the agency will continue to
under whose leadership did that fail when the when did this
really happen?
This really happened under the Bush administration senior and
then Junior and it began to go down the hill
and it's just great. It's just greed on their part that they
know
it's it's also arrogance and stupidity far, far greater
problem than greed is arrogance and stupidity when you don't
know what you doing and you think you're right. It's deadly.
And you had that under Clinton, who was oh, you know, reported
to the agency. You had it under Obama, who was totally a baby in
the agency. His mother was an anthropology spoke Russian. She
was a PhD, they sent her to Jakarta. And you don't send a
white woman from the middle of wet Midwest, to Jakarta unless
she's agency and his maternal grandmother and grandfather
worked at the East West Center, and which I was in charge of,
and they were CIA bankers. So the whole notion that he came
out and the narrative that he came out and he was a, you know,
street, whatever it was nonsense, it's stupid. It's just
nonsense. The American public is not going to buy it, and he's
not going to be effective. And so we saw the problems with the
Clintons. How corrupt they were. There wasn't anything new did
Bill Clinton really wise mother was a nurse now his mother was a
prostitute in Hope, Arkansas. Hope Arkansas was the place
where the mafia in the 1920s and 30s would go to in order to go
before they go to Miami if they don't want to be caught, right.
He talked about, you know, he talked basically about a
whorehouse where Bill Clinton comes in there. And he thinks
he's smart. And Strobe Talbott at the time magazine covers him
and explains how good he really was when in fact, he was a
disaster. Then you got Hillary who's not as bright as she
thinks it is. And I was saying to Alex, she's going under. And
he said, why? I said, well, because when you're spending 100
million, and you don't know what you're doing, and you got a
gentleman there who's playing with a Twitter, and doesn't bend
anything, the problem is already solved, she's gonna lose, it
doesn't matter what happens stupidity is stupidity. So in
our world where you and I and others or Tom has to be held
accountable, we would be held accountable for that. But in the
world of the Republic, and the people who play around there,
it's It's nonsense, it becomes a theater of the absurd, but even
it becomes to the point where it's just a not approach. And
why,
why why is it that this goes has gotten so far, because it seems
like now, we are really in a state of total, nobody's
been arrested. Nobody's been arrested. You see, when you put
them in prison, and the FBI gets their act together and stops
being the extension of a crossdresser J. Edgar Hoover,
who manipulates people and thinks that they can do things
that they can, and you have an agency and you have Homeland
Security that start as to be real, yeah. Fictional
institutions, which are providing jobs, then you don't
get real outcomes.
And I always remember, and it was the most bizarre thing to
me. And it came up recently, again, with the Muller
investigation. You know, 10, year term limit was set on the
director of FBI for a very specific reason it was so we
wouldn't have another J. Edgar Hoover, and so that, you know,
power could transition and no one can become, you know, the
kingpin again. And yeah, they extended Mueller's tenure by two
years. You know, the force, obviously for to cover something
up?
Well, look, once you commit the crimes he committed, it's just a
constant series of lies and rationalizations. With Muller. I
mean, he was appointed a day before two days before 911. Give
me a break. Mueller had a great history as a war veteran in
Vietnam, and really did well. And then he blew it. And he
thought that as a was coming out of Princeton, or wherever he
came out, and he thought he could ride the high, the high
ground and the bushes to guarantee him that neither one
was true.
So why why would he step into this arena again, does he have
some validity,
and arrogance, but also the notion that he was invincible,
and that he had to correct in his mind, the malfeasance, he
created a 911. But in fact, what he's doing is just repeating it
again and again. And remember, in that business, once you're
vulnerable, any side can manipulate you. So Muller isn't
beholden to himself. He has, he's not a man of integrity.
He's a man who has to prostitute himself either to the bushes to
the Trump's, or to the Clintons. And in the world of the law, you
know, that's basically what they think is is fine. I mean, they
can rationalize it. But in my world, in the world of medicine,
we would have fired him a long time ago for malpractice.
When I met you, Steve, which was a viewer, we were both guests on
the Alex Jones Show. And, you know, we talked for a little
bit, you know, it's what you do now is this. Well, let me put it
let me strike that go back. You spoke about being under
continuity of government and how you are a part of this. So
there, there does appear to be a network. And I would say this
There's multiple networks, but you have CIA network and you
have or intelligence services, and then you have military
intelligence military. And it seems almost like a constant
battle, depending on whoever's running the president, since
back to JFK days, you know, who's really keeping the
Republic on the rails, which we've already established really
doesn't have that much to do with the president after 100
days?
Or that's a good question. I don't want to promote myself say
that I'm essential to that I'm not a basically because I've
been around he is what makes it unusual, from my point of view
and unusual from the intelligence community. As I
said, the agency was very nice to me, EMI has always been nice
to me. I mean, literally, when I say that, and and when I was
promoted to an O six, or a Navy captain or Colonel. And then I
was promoted to 39 years old 207 to two bucks a Rear Admiral, a
brigadier general, they wanted me to continue they being the
system, which was very gracious for what I had been doing in
different areas. And, and I said to them, in a very polite way,
gentlemen, I didn't come from Cuba, to the United States to
wear a uniform or to wear strikes on my chest, or I have a
fruit salad. Really, I came here to screw up. And and I really
enjoy this country, and I want to make mistakes. And I'm a
physician. But I'd like to do businesses. And I'd like to do
things I do. But not only was, in a way, it was arrogant, but
it wasn't arrogant. I was saying to them, I don't want your
money. I don't want the pension, I don't really need the uniform.
And I don't need the metals. And it wasn't that was deprecating.
And I just said, I just want to be what any American is a chance
to make mistakes, not a chance to succeed, just a chance to
make mistakes. And boy, did I make mistakes. And I was
grateful for that. And I think in turn, it's again, what you
said in the very beginning it it kind of punctuated very quickly.
They didn't quite get it until years later, when they said,
Well, can we pay you for your advice? I said, No. Why? I said,
Well, why would you pay me I'm more than happy to help you. You
control me basically? Well, not only you control me, that's
correct. But the other issue was, you know, I'm really
grateful for what I received in this country, or what I was able
to get I got an education, I was able to serve the country, I was
able to do businesses, I was able to fail many times. And you
know, that, to me was sufficient and necessary to just remain,
you know, part or parcel or indirectly, part of the
Republic. And I said, Look, my loyalty is not to the presidency
as much as it is to the Republic, because it constitutes
a far greater entity than any presidency. And so when you when
you look at a country that's as large as ours and as diversified
as ours, you really begin to appreciate it particularly
having come out of France or Europe, or Cuba, where it's much
more narrow. So it was nothing noble, it was just simply
something I said, Hey, give me a chance to screw up guys. Thank
you.
So you mentioned earlier, the military coup is inevitable.
Hasn't that actually kind of happened already in this
presidency?
Would you repeat that? Again? Would you with with the right
emphasis? You mean that we have generals around one president?
Yeah. I would say that would be you wouldn't be wrong. Okay. But
the difference here is that the generals are placed there in
order to maintain the continuity of the Republic, and in fact, to
terminate certain wars, and one of the wars that they did
terminate, and nothing nobody's ever talked about, um, shock. Is
ISIS. Now they've eliminated
well, they, I guess they just turned off the CIA spigot and it
ended.
Well, that was part of it. But yeah, that's part of, yes, the
Hillary Clinton portray us and others, Brad, but that was one
part. But the second part was the Syrian army, the we were
defeated, and we accepted it. And now the words the special
forces or generals accepted it, and we didn't make a big point
about it. But at the same time, we didn't need to overthrow
again, the CIA, this concept of overthrowing Bashar Assad. And
now in turn, they want to go into Afghanistan. I think that's
a mistake. They know, I know it's a mistake. It's a
recapitulation of what happened. And
is this again, just stupidity and arrogance, or is this for
more geopolitical reasons?
I don't think it's geopolitical as much as it is a dereliction
of duty. McMaster wrote about it in Vietnam and now they want to
go back Get in and try the very same things that didn't work in
Vietnam or a form and, you know, heart win the hearts and minds
absolute nonsense. I mean, Afghanistan is barely a country,
it's totally corrupt will always be corrupt. The military is
corrupt, the police is corrupt. A only one who's ever talked
about Afghanistan was another neocon who never served this.
And that was Zalmay follows ads. So it's a waste of time, it
would be criminal for them to go back in literally criminal, but
they will do it. So any happy notes you want me to say?
No, no, no, no, no. No, with your knowledge of human behavior
with your knowledge of how the sausage is really made? How it
how everything works under the hood? Where do we go from here,
you must be very concerned about the state of the Republic, not
just how the system is running, but about the citizens
themselves?
Where are we gone through here? It's not optimistic for me. I
mean, I would like to say we're doing very well, unfortunately,
I spent time with some school teachers recently. And they are
saying we're getting a dumbing down of the classes. That's
very, very bad. We need an education system that is the
equivalent to what the Chinese have. And when Shanghai grade
students out, perform 200 other countries including us, in
mathematics, and in writing, it's a very bad sign. And right
now, our academia is in trouble. I mean, it's so self assured and
self congratulatory. We have too many professors who aren't
tenure, too many professors who are not relevant. Academia in
many ways has become irrelevant in certain ways. So what they do
is rationalize their existence by sending all kinds of
nonsensical magazines back to me to tell me how great they are.
But in turn, I watched China, and I see presidents eg Pong,
assume the leadership of both the Communist Party and the
nation. And what he's determined to do. And I think he's made two
mistakes. One, he's tried to cut off the internet, that's a
major, major mistake for GG pawn. And the second one, he's
tried to cut off the fast loans. So the money loans that are
required to the middle class to have money. And that's a major
mistake. But what he has not made a mistake. And he ordered a
400 mile railroad from Djibouti to Ethiopia. And what do we have
in Djibouti, we had our drone base 1000s, we have a drone base
and 8000 soldiers, so we're totally mismatched for the
future. We're not looking at the future in the right way. We're
not concerned about the nature of jobs in the future, we're not
talking about the fact that many jobs will be eliminated. And
we're really not addressing the issue of of, we're going from a
digital to a quantum era, which means we're going 1000 times
faster than we are right now, in terms of the internet. And
that's mind blowing. That is basically what we call a
paradigm shift. And neither party has addressed it, the
leadership hasn't addressed it. And what we're wasting is little
people fighting little wars for nothing, I mean, and wasting our
money. Meanwhile, she is gone all the way through Laos,
Vietnam, he controls the Mekong Delta controls a lot of the
waterways and China's not looking for war. Even though we
have 100 bases around China, they're really not relevant.
What do you find your experience with the Chinese? Have you ever
negotiated with them? Do you know that drives them?
Yeah, yes, very much. I have negotiated and actually created
a format for negotiations with the Chinese. The most important
element for the Chinese negotiations, what we call they
call Guan chi, qu a and xi. That's the personal relationship
between the individual and the other individual it can, it
occurs more often than not over meals in and ironically, most of
our senior officials really never understood how important
the Chinese meal is, which is seven, eight courses. And as
well as the drinking that come by, and all of that that's where
you develop the relationship. And then the Chinese at the end
will say to you, oh, no, no, no, we can't agree with you. And
then as you just boarding the plane, they'll say, oh, one
minute, so you have to really be knowledgeable about the Chinese
national character, which hasn't changed all that much. Even
under President Xi. He assumed what was called article 79. I
knew he would take over the both parties, the party and the
nation state. Because unlike our leaders, she had one
characteristic and I used to say it to the Chinese beforehand,
when there was who Jintao and other leaders who were not In
the Cultural Revolution, I said you will need a leader who has
been debased by the Cultural Revolution and at the same time
be the present princeling of famous Chinese communist leader.
And that leader turned out to be Gee, she had suffered a major,
major humiliation under the Cultural Revolution, as well as
his father who was arrested twice. But despite that, and you
can imagine what kind of character he must have to absorb
the humiliation and redirect it into a positive attitude, then
I'm going to climb again, the Chinese ladder on the Bala
Politburo and become a leader, you have to have an internal
drive and a discipline that we don't have here. And that's why
I can respect President Xi and what he's doing. He's not
looking to win wars. He's not even looking to have
confrontations with us or the Russians. He wants to do exactly
what the Dutch did, then, you know, better than i in the 16th
century, God trade with everybody. Correct. And he has
effectively gone all over the world to trade with everybody.
He has a problem, he has to balance out his economy, which
is heavily dependent on credit and debt. But I think she will
do that. But he has to back off from the internet, he has to
back off from all of those things that he thinks are an
eternal problem to him, which they're not as the bar.
Go ahead. No, no, please, please continue finish up here.
Boy Heath represses or thinks he suppresses the the the Chinese,
a student, the more problems he will have, he doesn't need to
close Momo or any other of the other companies, he doesn't need
to have control over the loan companies, that's not going to
help them. What's going to help them is that he can mobilize the
young people and send them out just as he's doing now to the
United States to Europe and let them integrate. Okay, so
then I definitely want to come back to, to to China, because
it's fascinating to me, when I see the you know, they're
Economic Belt, they're the actual, the train. So it's One
Belt, One Road initiative, which is kind of funny, because it's
there's pretty much three belts, no roads, it's all trains
anyway, they got the maritime routes, they have all of this,
but your say something very important. Where should he not
restrict the internet? And send the young people out? Why can't
we do that here?
It's a good question, Adam, you'd have to answer that, and
others would have to answer basically, we don't have the
same culture. And we don't have the same discipline. We are a
nation that has been spoiled for probably the past 50 to 60
years. We believe in entrepreneurship yet, you know,
you see these startups. And then when you get these startups, you
have companies that are totally blown out of proportion, that
have no relationship to their real value. I mean, when you
look at Amazon and Google, and they really don't make that kind
of money, and you look at Google type, controlling what I'm doing
or saying how much I'm making, or D monetizing me, you're
getting a fascist organization, you're getting institutions that
have no relevancy to the day to day problem, the ad, on the
other hand, they controlling it or think that controlling it,
and what they're going to do, they will they'll implode, it's
easy for guys like me and others to make them implode. It's not
hard, you have Amazon that's taken over the grocery stores
and they want pharmacy, big, big, bigger and without any
relevancy to really what the basic values are, and what are
the inherent net asset values of what they're doing. When we're
evaluating companies in the biotech area, they make no money
and our value to millions of dollars, or hundreds of millions
or billions. So a billion when you say to somebody who's making
a billion dollars, it means nothing. It's just paper. So
we've lost the inherent value of what our work ethic is about.
Doesn't that doesn't that just prove that capitalism has a very
dark downside?
Well, we're not in capitalism anymore. Well, we are in no, no,
no, I think you're right in that we are really into what's called
crony capitalism, which isn't the same, the entrepreneurial
spirit that we had in the 1900s. And then in the beginning of the
beginning and the end of the 19th century, in the beginning
of the 20th century, that's been lost. What's happening now it's
becoming almost a travesty a bunch of kids get together. They
get funded when I started angel investing or means the initial
investment into companies that was 2030 years ago, we put in a
couple of 1000 bucks and we put our sweat equity in it. And it
was a bunch of us guys sitting around in Northern Virginia. And
you know, we decided this company or that company right
now, if you walk across the street from Google, and you Go
to a startup that that person walk across the street is valued
at $2 billion. So the net asset value of a company before it
even makes any penny is already absurd and obscene. And so
eventually you get companies that produce nothing, do
nothing, and then become an extension of Yeah, well, we have
a greater extension and penetration. I remember when I
had my last company, which was a nutraceutical company, and
Google came around to us, and we're virtual in Montana, and
said, Oh, we can't use these words. And if we want to use the
words, other words, we have to pay more. And I said, Who the
hell do you think you are? Now Google 10 years later is telling
me oh, we're going to de monetize you. So when I called
up guys who are involved in Google, they said to me, it's
part of an algorithm I said, bullshit. It's part of greed,
and it's part of your own self destructiveness. Google was
created by bunt to Jews out of out of Stanford who I knew about
one who came out of the Soviet Union, but had I not worked on
the SOTA unit, he wouldn't have been here. So what is he doing?
Now he's flying around in planes and goes to the Bahamas, he
became exactly the spoiled baby that most of these guys are.
Whereas you and I, and others who are in the 60s 70s, were
still hustling,
they still they pretty much became what they fought against
their entire life.
Exactly. They became the entitled spoiled brats. And you
see that in Silicon Valley, you see that in Hollywood, you see
that in a lot of places. That's why in the rural south, and
elsewhere in the Midwest, and in Texas, you see a different
attitude or Elan Vitara. Basically, people here want to
work, they want to create their own little business. We're
coming to the point where let me get to this issue, if you don't
mind. No, I go to Steve, as long as you wish. You don't mind my
riffing on this
entire reason I called you
all You're so sweet. And I like you. This whole issue of net
neutrality was just busted two days ago, that is one of the
biggest mistakes. And you're very nice. Engineer here, Tom
and I nodding our head because what didn't happen, what in fact
has happened is we've destroyed the net. And to allow Comcast
and AT and T to take over the net is to cut our own throats
because they're going to charge us a premiere $1 for access to
the net, which didn't belong to them. And at the same time, on
the other side, I've got Google and Apple and Facebook saying,
oh, we can't have that we need net neutrality, when in fact,
they never had net neutrality. So we have this issue coming in,
and the FCC incorrectly said, we're not going to monitor the
net. That's absurd.
I'm gonna push back a little bit on that. Go ahead. Because I,
having been around when the commercial Internet was, was
being shaped and how peering agreements work, and how traffic
flows, and it was kind of a karmic democratic system, of
fairness of I give you this much traffic, I'll take this from
you. We'll all and by the way, it's Google and it is Amazon.
It's all in it's Netflix, although they've withdrawn
somewhat, because they've already figured it out. And you
know that, oh, fuck it, we'll just put our boxes inside the
networks, we don't have to deal with the peering and getting
stuff off the internet. So you know that that was already
broken, to a certain extent. But the regulations that are being
once you regulate the internet, then it's over, then no, because
they're talking about illegal traffic, illegal content. So
there will be all of these rules, which will now be
cemented, which I think actually gives the power to the, to the
telcos. It gives them the power to turn stuff off based upon,
you know, some very ill defined terms such as illegal network
traffic, which could be it could be peer to peer that could be
deemed illegal. It could be Bitcoin blockchain traffic that
could be deemed illegal. I think that's worse.
I think you're very articulate. I understand what you're saying.
But that my point is this is what basically I'm looking at is
the Real Net Neutrality was there before we had Google and
Amazon in any of those companies. That's really what I
was talking about. Yes. The reason why I was talking about
net neutrality, not as the fine now which you're correct data.
I'm talking about net neutrality when I was trained in 1970s on
the internet and social media, I don't remember that Facebook or
Google or any one of these self aggrandizing idiots created the
internet when it was DARPA and the agency right
but now, but now we're coming right into your field, Steve,
because what has happened is through I still believe mistake,
but was understood very quickly through the Pavlovian system of
rewards with the views and likes and engagement, et cetera, et
cetera. People have been suckered into it. And don't even
realize that they have the power literally with the click of a
mouse, to be to start something different to be in a different
realm and not participate in this so called Internet.
Well, they could do that. But my point is that we need a paradigm
shift away from this internet and break up Google and Apple
and the rest, because they really don't. What they're doing
is changing the dynamics of what we have, but not allowing for
what I would create paradigm shifts. I don't see the paradigm
shifts right now, I think quantum will be a major paradigm
shift, for example. But when I was asked, what is the most
severe problem we have in the Internet and the covert
industry? Well, you'd have quantum encryption, they don't
know how to do that. And so when you have quantum encryption,
there aren't many companies that do that. And instead, we have
all kinds of antivirus and antivirus companies. And all of
that is nonsense. Because you and I saw a week ago, and nobody
said anything the NSA imploded. Yeah, it was it imploded. Nobody
said a word 100,000. So called geniuses, destroyed themselves.
And that's what I had predicted that eventually they would have
their own destruction in there. And they don't know what to do.
yet. We're spending billions of dollars to create absolutely
nothing to monitor nothing, and to be vulnerable to any hacker
from God knows where. And but nobody said a word. And instead,
they're interested about sexual harassment, as opposed to the
NSA. So it tells me there is a distraction, denial and
distortion, you
know, totally, totally. But what to do about it. I'm not saying
you have answers, but you do have more insight into the
masses and how psyche works. And what is how
I'm a little bit more primitive than that, I believe in firing
people. And that's what I was hired to do. I was brought in
and we just fired them,
which is exactly the problem today, there is no firing, we
can't make no sad or triggered or unhappy,
correct. You hit it on the head. And that's what I said, What you
need is a sweeper. And I've said that in the Trump
administration, I've said that in every administration, that's
what I was brought in for you clean him up, you leave. He
said, you don't say goodbye, and you don't. And that's it. You
don't take a position. He won't do that. And unfortunately, as a
businessman, I thought he would have the capacity to clean sweep
or sweep.
He is the you're fired guy the drain the swamp guy?
Well, you know, it's very nice to say drain the swamp, it's a
lot harder to go up to somebody and say, Okay, you're fired,
you're fired, you're fired. I mean, right across the board.
Same thing in the military. I mean, we're wasting over 100
billion just on administrative issues, this should be a
takedown of a lot of the programs, we don't need more jet
fighters, we don't know, we don't need an aircraft carrier.
I mean, I can take out an aircraft carrier when an extra
set missile that was done in the Falkland Islands 30 years ago,
what we need to do is deal with the 21st century and we're not
there.
So whether this is random number theory, or however it happens.
Here we get, you know, here we are, we're in this almost like
an iron, you know, we we are most connected, most informed
and most irrational, I think, in our behavior in the United
States specifically, is it but is this coming from an overall
mission to keep everybody stupid, and we can go about our
merry way? You know, that's like the big there's one big
conspiracy of people who want to destroy America, or is it just
our own doing?
I don't believe that many. Well, I talked about conspiracy, but
I'm not a great conspiracy theorist. That way, I believe
that we're just, it's our own doing, Adam, just what you said.
It's coming out to the point if you have an education system,
that's faltering. And we're funding that faltering. When you
have an education system that works at the lowest levels, when
you have a medical system that's basically reinforcing money and
not care. When you have a hospital system that's
reinforcing greed and not care. When you have a military that's
really used all over the world without any strategy and the
nonsensical retort from generals is oh, we have terrorists who
can come to our homeland bullshit, nonsense. That's
that's absolute nonsense. There aren't any terrorists that came
from Afghanistan and aren't a terrorist that come from Iran.
They know it, I know it and what you have instead, is the
pervasiveness of KBR and L three, and all those mercenaries
who want to get out there and make money. But if you don't
have a president who can rein it in or you don't have a leader
who can rein it in, then we're going to we will be the product
have our own entitlement and our own expenditures. And
unfortunately, I don't believe Trump can do it. I don't see
anybody there who can do it. And quite frankly, most of our
generals, they are just trying to keep Trump in position. And
and but I'm not a great believer that politicians have been a
great asset to our country, one of our greatest presidents
Eisenhower was really not a politician. He did what he did.
He didn't look for money he became our president got us out
of the wars, and that was the George Marshall the same thing.
But we've had nothing but self aggrandizing, manipulators, all
of whom had some medical problem or mental problem. If we
continue on this course, we will self destruct, I can assure you,
do you see anyone who would be lined up for 2020? Who could do
a better first 100 days?
Yup. And I don't want to bring it out right now. Okay. All
right. There's already put it this way.
There's always plans on debts.
I love that. That's next. That's for our next talk.
Well, if you'll do another one with me, I would greatly
appreciate that. Adam,
you guys are amazing. I didn't realize this was a volunteer
program. Adam, you should be proud of that. If you're asking
me what is the future, then what you're doing is the future for
me. You know, people who care people who do things you are the
future, but we have to break it through and in turn, what I
believe is probably we're going to devolve power to the States
and to the counties and to people like yourself, who can
create those communities that are both virtual and real. So I
want to thank you for this opportunity.
Wow, that was a hell of debt is one long and interesting
interview. I have to give you credit for that.
Thank you. And I think we should do it more often.
Yeah, I've got a bunch of people lined up. I think we should do
more interviews with it because they're good. They fit in and
our thinking is always that nobody's really listening to the
show on some of these holidays. And they'll listen maybe
sometime in the future, right. It's not, you know, it's not
needed that we do a show probably run over some material
that should be used as
a bonus a Christmas present from us to you.
Well, at least Yeah. That at least is worthwhile. That was a
good interview. i Congratulations. I'm
glad you liked it. All right, everybody. We return on Thursday
live. I'll be here in FEMA Region six. John will be in
northern Silicon Valley. Please remember us at the
vortech.org/na and we'll be listing all of our executive
producers, producers and thank yous for both shows until then,
kind of from Austin, Texas in the morning, everybody. I'm Adam
curry,
and live on tape. I'm John C. Dvorak.
We'll be back on Thursday right here on no agenda until then.
Adios mofos. MOPO tooborac.org/in a minute.