Can We Trust the Government? (with Adam Conover) - podcast episode cover

Can We Trust the Government? (with Adam Conover)

Nov 27, 202440 minSeason 3Ep. 12
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Episode description

Comedian and all-around expert Adam Conover (Adam Ruins Everything,  Factually!) made a series about the government with Barack Obama called “T G Word.” How does he feel about its reliabilty? Why are people suspicious of it?

Transcript

Speaker 1

We are saying inside as we collected intelligence, is that you can lead a policy maker to intelligence, but you can't make them think I'm John Cipher and I'm Jerry O'Shea. I served in the CIA's Clandestine Service for twenty eight years, living undercover all around the world.

Speaker 2

And in my thirty three years with the CIA, I served in Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East.

Speaker 1

Although we don't usually look at it this way, we created conspiracies in our operations.

Speaker 3

We got people to believe things that were true.

Speaker 1

Now we're investigating the conspiracy theories we see in the news almost every day.

Speaker 2

Will break them down for you to determine whether they could be real or whether we're being manipulated.

Speaker 1

Welcome to Mission Implausible.

Speaker 2

Adam Panover is a talented actor, writer intermediate and you're now doing You're not doing some stand up specials and Adam, two of your shows treck really closely with what Mission Implausible does your deconstruct conspiracy theories and commons misconceptions You've done. Adam ruins everything by telling the truth about stuff and more. Dear to Our Hearts The G Word show about what government the G word actually does and how it operates, and you did it with some guy called Barack Obama

and his wife Michelle. I'm not really sure.

Speaker 4

Just this guy's trying to get started in Hollywood, and you know I gave him a break by he had this little idea for a TV show and I helped him make it.

Speaker 2

Yeah, before we plunge into this podcast, I think you really hit the nail on the head when you said I think it was an interview with The New York Observer. We said that telling people the truth in your shows often only ends up annoying them, and I think that's something that we can It's something that we' we've found as well, so I guess. So the first question is why do you think telling the truth they're talking about fix why does it annoy people?

Speaker 4

Well, I think people construct a comforting reality, mental model of the world in which to live. Everyone needs to create a the image of the world where everything operates according to plan. You know, things are done with intention, the world is as it should be. Some people feel

the opposite. Some people are conspiracy theorists, and they want to create an image of the world where everything is out to get them and it's a sort of nefarious universe, a clockwork world where every choice was made by some shadowy figure. But either way, that's a false image of the world. Right, The world itself is far messier and more confusing, makes less sense, is not done intentionally, and that discomforts people to think of the world that way.

It happens to be true, right, that we live in a chaotic universe where things are not as they should be. But it's true, you know, and it bothers people either way if you tell people that we don't live in a perfectly constructed, benevolent democracy where you know, over the past couple decades we've defeated the forces of racism and corruption and all those sorts of things, which is the sort of liberal dream that I was brought up being told by my baby boomer parents. And you find it,

actually the world is a much more complicated place. It's uncomfortable to know that. It's also uncomfortable to find out that the world is not so full of conspiracy theories. I was talking to this dude the other day who was like, he was British. He was like, don't you think that the puppet masters are all pulling the strings and calling the shots. We're only doing what they want us to do, the people at the top. And I

was like, no, I don't think that's true. I don't think there's a couple of shadowy figures at the top. I think that there's nations that have leaders and they're in conflict with each other, and like a lot of bad things happen for that reason. But it's not the case that the world is even so orderly that there's a couple of shadowy figures behind the scenes. That's not the case. There is no new world order.

Speaker 3

And he was up.

Speaker 4

He was like, well, well you're talking about When I said that to him, he like couldn't handle that because it's a simpler world to think that there's only a couple of people pulling the strings at the tops.

Speaker 2

Even with this British accent, he couldn't win the argument. Not with me.

Speaker 4

I'm tougher than that.

Speaker 1

You've started to explore these things and dig into things, and you're a little like John Oliver. You know everything about everything, a lot of stuff. How is it that comedians have become the holders of knowledge these Ah, that's true.

Speaker 4

I'll tell you the pompous answer, and then the real answer. I do think that comedy is intimately related with the truth. My personal theory about why people laugh is it's when a surprise is combined with the truth. Even Slapstick has that right if someone reacts in a surprising way, but a way that sort of makes physical sense at the same time when the three stooges are slapping each other. But also you might when you hear a good joke, like a really good stand up comedy joke, you laugh

and go, oh, that's true. I never thought of that, But I also have known that my whole life right, and comedy is a way of cutting to the truth in a way that is faster and more direct and a little blunter and hits people a little bit harder than just explaining it to them. That's the pompous reason. I think the actual reason is that people are bored giving them Giving them a little bit of giving them a little bit of spice with their information helps it

go down more easily. So I think, honestly, the trend that you're talking about is not necessarily a good one, because there's a lot of comedians out there who spread a lot of bullshit. If you don't mind me swearing on the show but I try to be the kind of comedian who brings people true information with the power of comedy.

Speaker 2

Unlike most people, You've delved into our you know, John and I as former CAA officers. You delved into our former world, and you've done it with President Obama. And what are some of the things that you've found out? And as a comedian, what are some of your takes on it?

Speaker 4

Well, you know you were was a sixth part series. Each explores a different area of American life and how the government affects it. We do weather, we do food, we do money, things like that. And by the way, it is some amazing things. We went up with the Noah's, the National Isceanic and Atmospheric Agency, I think went up with them with the hurricane hunters as they flew into hurricanes,

as we flew into a hurricane together. Really incredible. And we went to see how the people at the FD I see how they take over a bank in the middle of the night when the bank fails, not in the middle of the night, but a sort of somewhat clandestine manner. They do so very secretly. And we also talked about ways in which the federal government has hurt people deficiencies. In the COVID response, we talked about the

rise of drone warfare, for example. That was in an episode about how the federal government has actually created so many of our amazing technological advancements by government research and development or by funding research and development, but has also led They did it all for the purposes of war. That's why the government does it. That's why the government invests so much money into DARPA and agencies like that that are doing weapons research, and that's why we have

the Internet. It's also why we have the drone warfare that's killed so many innocent people that the United States government has killed many innocent civilians unjustly around the world. And I think one of my biggest takeaways is that the federal government resists easy classification. People want to say, oh,

is it good or is it bad? The United States Government is the largest single organization of any kind on planet Earth outside of like the Catholic Church depending on how you count, but by most measures, it's the United States federal government. And so you cannot say that it is all good or all bad, because you cannot say that the American people are all good or all bad, or that an institution is all good or all bad.

It does many incredibly important things, some of them extraordinarily destructive, right, and some of them an incredibly beneficial And so I think as a takeaway that makes you a what makes me want to resist people who want to kick down

sand castles? The sort of approach where you know, Rick Perry comes in and says, if you remember when he ran for president in twenty twelve or sixteen, I forget which year it was, but he says, I'm going to eliminate three federal I'm going to eliminate the Department of Education, Department of Energy in one other one and he forgot which were the three? That was his big gat What was the third one? I forgot? He said, I want to eliminate the Department of Energy. Well, guess what. Under

Donald Trump, he was running the Department of Energy. And I'm pretty sure that once he figured out what the Department of Energy did, he didn't want to eliminate it anymore. Because the Department of Energy is in charge of our nuclear stockpile, of our nuclear weapons stockpile, and also does some of the most important high energy physics work that is being done anywhere in the world. And he probably realized that pretty quick when he had his first briefing.

And so what was he speaking out of when he said he wanted to eliminate the department Pure ignorance, right, And my goal is to dispel some of that ignorance. Then we should also dispel ignorance about the bad things that the government does and not allow ourselves to be blinded to it and be, oh, everything is so great with our American system of government, because it plainly isn't what you.

Speaker 1

Just talked about. There is. The governmance is a complex, massive thing. It's not just good or not just bad, but there's become a narrative out there. But that sense of trust in government, there's all sorts of things behind it. But essentially, you know, when Nixon left government, that sort of trust that sort of was there among the American

people in general with their government really went away. And then when President Reagan came in, he ran on the fact that the government is the enemy, and the sort of more right wing Republicans have been in charge running on that ever since. And I think nowadays you ask most people, they tend to think negatively about their government, and they don't have any sense of just how integral it is to their life.

Speaker 4

And as you say, it's a very maligned part of American life and one that most people are I think deliberately ignorant about. People don't want to know about it. It's boring, and we don't valorize the people who work for the government the same way we do the people who work for the tech industry. Right the United States government doesn't do a good job of telling it story, and so people like the hurricane hunters or the FDIC. There are so many people who work for the federal

government who they are mission driven. I was up with those hurricane hunters, you know what I mean. They could have been commercial jet pilots that could have been flying private jets making a lot of money. But these guys are They work for the military and they fly into hurricanes almost every day during hurricane season, and they do it because they want to protect people. And they also feel like hot shots. I'm sure there's some machismo two

it's fun, but that's why they do it. People at the FDIC really care about their mission, So why have we lost that trust in them? I Mean, nobody was feeling that great about the government in nineteen ten or nineteen twenty, but the Great Depression nine destroys American life. Yeah, nineteen twenty nine, exactly. There are all these bad periods in the United States. Government was pretty fucked up in the nineteenth century. People were not happy about it, and

the government was like very ineffectual and small. What happens the capitalists take over the economy and crash it right in the Great Depression. What happens next? FDR comes along and rebuilds American society through the might of the American government, right, puts people back to work, literally says the government's going to pay you to dig ditches and build highways and

stuff like that. What happens next? World War Two, the biggest crisis in the world, and the United States wins, and wins by investing massively more money, so many Americans were employed, went off to war in this great victory, this great collective struggle that we won. Oh my god, incredible. And of course people feel at that point, yes, the government is doing the right thing. And if you look at the series of presidents at that time, from FDR

through Nixon, hey, they're all pretty good presidents. Like they got their problems, but they're you know, they're true statesman. Nixon, of course, incredibly corrupt individual. And also Nixon starts starts specifically trying There's a wonderful book called nixon Land by the historian Rick Pearlsteine about this. It's an incredible book.

He is the first president who starts trying to divide Americans politically as a political strategy, tries to turn white Americans against black Americans, older Americans against younger Americans.

Speaker 1

The Southern strategy.

Speaker 4

The Southern strategy, yes, exactly, and it's one of dividing people. It's saying, we are going to turn people against each other. And that's the beginning of our current politics. As Parstin argues, Reagan then supercharges that Nixon just got it started. Reagan does that to create an entirely new political regime, and

it's an anti government political regime. And that came out of both Nixonian sort of racial grievance, and then also big businesses saying hey, we want to lower our taxes, or rich people saying we want to lower our taxes. We don't like these World War two year at tax rates. They had a multi decade camp paying to spread propaganda and reduce faith in the federal government. And we've all

been living in that world ever since. And then even Obama many administrations later, he was trying to pull the lever back in the other direction. He was trying to increase faith in federal government and do government programs again. But he's still living in this world in which people

have this huge skepticism. So when it comes to the Affordable Care Act, for instance, his big initiative, he's not able to get the ball across the finish line in terms of having a true government sponsored healthcare program, which would have been cheaper and would have worked better. He has to do this sort of public private partnership which only half works, and people are like, ah, is it good?

Speaker 3

Is it?

Speaker 4

My insurance is still crappy. I use this government marketplace. It's a little bit better, but it's not that much better, et cetera. So we're stuck in this middle ground where we don't trust the government entirely, We don't let it do its job. We undermine it as we attempt to have it do things. And a lot of that undermining is purposeful by people who are ideological and want to destroy it or want it to be smaller so they don't have to pay for it, and as a result,

people don't feel positively about it. The average person when they try to go to their health insurance marketplace here in California, they're like, it's a little too confusing, it's a little too expensive, and so they have a bad experience with it, and then their trust for with it goes down. So it's a combination of that free floating cynicism that Reagan really got started. Ah, there are all just a bunch of crooks up there, combined with a

sort of bad experience of it. Now, it's not across the board right if you look at for instance, people do love the National Weather Service once they know what it does. People love the Post Office, people love NASA, they love the military. There's a lot of love for the federal government still out.

Speaker 1

Three out of four, though the publicans are trying to privatize exactly right.

Speaker 4

The guy who runs Acuweather has been I believe his name is Barry Myers, has spent the last thirty years trying to prevent the National Weather Service from communicating with the public when the weather when every I love talking about this, every single weather prediction that you ever see starts with the National Weather sce Service. When the local newsance we've got Doppler ten thousand, that's bullshit. They do

not have any special technology. What they do is they take the government weather predictions that you are paying for that has some of the most the best meteorologists in the world working for the National Weather Service. We have weather stations all over the country, et cetera. We've got literal people flying planes into hurricanes every single day. We have satellites they have. The government is bruising that prediction, and then your local weather person takes that prediction. They

put their own little special spice on top. They take a look at the maps themselves and adjust it and then say, here's what I think is going to happen in your area. But it's coming from the government. And but what are people like Barry Myers from Mackyweather want to do. They want to prevent the They want to protect prevent the government from communicating with you directly so that they are the only ones who get the data. And then they want to make you pay them to

get it, even though you've already paid for it. So I compare it to somebody who is on the show. We use the metaphor of somebody bottling government tap water, bottling city tap water and trying to sell it to you and prevent you from getting it directly.

Speaker 3

More of this after a quick break, and we're back.

Speaker 1

It is now the fiftieth anniversary of Robert Carroll's The Power Broker, which is a famous book about Robert Moses' important figure book Yeah in New York City. And one of the things that Robert Carroll does very well is talks about what life was like before, and he talks a lot about what the government was like in the late nineteenth century earliest twentieth century. And it was essentially the spoils system. It wasn't based on law, it wasn't

based on regulations. It was politicians handing out jobs, people having to give money to get things done.

Speaker 2

And it was the good.

Speaker 1

Government effort by reformers to try to create a system that created professional civil servants that would be trained in their job. They just given free jobs for free money. And we forget about that. And how over the years as that's moved on, and there's been more and more reforms and more and more regulations and laws put behind it. One of the great gems of this country is a professional civil service and public servants who do, for the

most part, incredible work. And we lionize the military, but there's lots of professionals that work in national security and in other places that take their jobs just as seriously and are just as professional.

Speaker 4

Yeah, and it's a shame that we are not that we don't lionize them more. Because one of the problems that the government has is brain drain, because we do not promote what these folks are doing. Or there's the ads for joining the Air Force and you know, travel the world, but we don't say the same thing about the FDIC or Noah or all of our various government departments.

Are the USDA, which changes lives. You know, we have the revolving door problem where people leave the government service and then they go straight to corporations, and the corporations employ them because they want to know how to better cheat the government or screw the government. I have friends who have gone that path, and I'm disappointed in them, but I also understand they need the money. And part of that is because government works and it doesn't pay

well enough. Because we've had leaders who for the past couple decades have had a specific strategy of starving the federal government. It creates a it's a vicious cycle.

Speaker 3

Right.

Speaker 4

If you denigrate the people doing the work, then you don't get as good people, which means the work is worse, which means you denigrate them more and make fun of them more. Everyone's had the experience of going to the post office and having a bad experience, right, and say, I had to wait so long in the line, and everything on the post office sucks. Everyone also knows that the post office is the only place that delivers everywhere

in the country. You could have a community of three people in the mountains and they have to have a post office there because of federal law. And everyone knows. I think the American public wants a healthier postal service, right, because that's one that we touch every day. We also want a healthier government in all respects.

Speaker 2

And you're a comedian, and Ronald Reagan wasn't, but he had the stick that he did where it was a joke where he says, I'm from the government and I'm here to help.

Speaker 4

The scariest words in the English language.

Speaker 2

You said, Yeah, I remember talking to my dad about some of the things that you mentioned. It was, where did the highways come from the post office? The military? Right, we have policemen who don't pull you over like in Mexico or in Africa where they're looking for a bribe, right, Or you don't have judges that are taking money under the table. I don't know. I thought the government isn't

doing so bad. And in my youth, I'd lived in places like India, and you know, I'd been to Iran and syst places where Africa where there really is corruption. And I got the feeling that this was a conspiracy theory that to paint or at least an alternate myth, to paint the federal government in a bad way that they're all corrupt somehow, and yet playing out most recently in North Carolina where FEMA is coming in to help people as best they can, and rumors are being spread

that they need to be hunted down. People will be better rested doing that. And I was wondering if you could comment on your journey from where you thought the government was and now that you've looked into it and you've met with some of us, but what's your senses of where you are now? With what the government can and can't do.

Speaker 4

I've never been a real conspiracy theory type person, and I've never been that cynical. I've always tried to be clear eyed about here's what's good and here's what's bad. I've always liked groups that are like, genuinely trying to help people. I've always've always been the kind of guy who loves my public library, you know what I mean. And the government has a lot of that in it. These are the people who are just trying to help. At the same time, I think we need to be

clear eyed about how the government hurts people. Foreign policy wise, the US government has primarily been a disaster throughout the rest of the world. I understand why in some other countries people go, oh, fuck the US government. Look at what they did in my country, and you got to go, yeah, I can't argue with that. People died, right, cities were destroyed,

et cetera. And there are people in the United States who feel similarly about the federal government that like a freeway was put through my neighborhood and everyone was forced to leave, or look at different ways that different communities received care. During COVID nineteen, it was sure, seemed like we had a great government response here where I live as a white guy in Los Angeles. But we went to a largely black rural community in Alabama and the

federal government was nowhere to be seen. There was one doctor in the entire county that we visited, and he was employed by the federal government. But the's one guy treating thousands of people trying to get them all their vaccinations. And this county as a result, had the highest COVID rates in the nation at one point because they did not have the full court press that communities might like.

Speaker 2

Mind.

Speaker 4

God, you know, there's conspiracy theories and cynicism, and then there is having to acknowledge when things can actually be better and when the government has made mistakes.

Speaker 1

So in your show, obviously you were working with the Obama's as producers, and we served under Obama and under many other presidents too, and there was some concerns, like you said about droll and warfare and all these other kind of things and terrorism issues.

Speaker 2

Is right?

Speaker 1

Are there are there areas that you'd like to talk about that have to do with a security that we might have some insight on.

Speaker 4

Yeah, Oh good, that's a good question. We worked our hardest to make sure that we did not steer clear of areas because of the Obama's involvement. You know, we talked about the rise of drone warfare during the Obama administration and the number of civilians killed in that program

and how in my view that's that's a mistake. He and his administration will give you their reason of this allows them to avoid setting America soldiers into battle and results in less loss of life overall, and it's targeted, et cetera, et cetera. There is a rationale given. I disagree with it, and you know we had to fight tooth and nail to get that on because not him himself, but folks who work in the organization are like, should

we really be talking about this? And I just say, guys, people aren't going to take the show seriously if we don't, if we don't cover these topics. When we did the show with the Obama's what's the number one thing people think we won't be able to do, it's talk about drones. And we did an episode that we left on the cut ding room floor, and it wasn't because it was too controversial. It was just we had a little bit

of trouble. It was such a complex topic that we had a little bit of trouble getting the script to work, and we decided to go with a different one. But it was about American power. It was the episode was called Power, and we were talking about the power grid and also nuclear power. Right, how the government is in charge of controlling the nuclear waste that comes from nuclear power plants. Right, But the government, the same department, the Department of Energy, is also in charge of our nuclear

weapons stockpile. And that stockpile gives us enormous power in the world and allows us to do whatever we want in the world in a way that other countries are not able to. And for instance, we were going to talk about how on the Marshall Islands, which is a little island chain that's like what it's I believe it's a it's a separate nation, but it's like under the

US umbrella a little bit. There's like an enormous stockpile of US nuclear waste from atomic bomb tests that stored there, and the people there are like, why the hell is this on our island? Like it's making people sick and stuff, and it's like, yeah, we can put it there because we're America. We could do whatever we want. You guys are in foreign intelligence. How do you see American power operating? How do you think about that?

Speaker 1

We are saying inside as we collected intelligence, is that you can lead a policy maker to intelligence, but you can't make him think. So there are times when policymakers get to make decisions, whether we agree with them or not. I think the invasion of I Rock was obviously a disaster for this country that has ramifications even today. Now that doesn't mean that I think the people who are involved in trying to follow through and do some of those things didn't do serious work or good work, and

as well as some bad work. But I gotta be a little careful here on the drone thing, because it's still very sensitive the CIA's role in those type of things. But I saw some of what I saw was in fact, incredibly focused. There is a narrative out there that other governments, for their own purposes, have put that we've killed a lot of civilians with drones, and I didn't see it.

I'm telling you there's times where I know specific what happened, that the right horrible terrorist was killed and the next day it was in the papers and spread through and followed up with then Joe said, oh, all these people were killed and it was terrible, and the places where this happened had an interest in making it look like

those are happening. No, that doesn't mean there weren't mistakes, but in general, there is a view out there that civilians were killed a lot in these type of things, and I didn't see it, but I can't go too deep into that.

Speaker 4

Obviously, that's fascinating to know.

Speaker 2

Yeah, so John and I were both chiefs of station, which means that the countries that we were in they knew exactly who we were. We would liaise with that, we would work with them and their intelligence services, sometimes friendly, sometimes less friendly. But I got to tell you, at no point do we walk in and everybody goes, WHOA, this is the powerful Americans. They're mostly like you get a lot of fuck us. And like if you think the Germans of the French are like, oh the Americans

are here, it's oh the Americans are here. Let's see what we can manipulate them into doing for us. So I like I served in Zimbabwe. Zimbabweans know who exactly who I was, and a lot of that time. When I was in Zimbabwe, I found myself defending from the Zimbabwean government officials talking lot is there, like, we know you guys created AIDS. That was a conspiracy theory operation

at Fecsion. We know all about it now put out by the Soviets, right, and it costs hundreds of thousands, if not millions of African lives because they were basically saying there's nothing you can do about it, don't protect yourself. And you talk about power when you're on the inside, it's a whole lot more complex.

Speaker 4

But I do think that there is a power and balance between the countries that results in the US calling the shots in the world, and in a way that was not always beneficial. And by the way, if you look at the instability in our government, imagine if your angela Merkel or another person who's just part of the liberal order right that is running the world, and then one day you wake up and your counterpart is Donald Trump,

and you're like, hold on a second. The most important, the most powerful country in the world also had a political system that can lead to this outcome. Having that much power can be a bad thing because when the wrong person gets in and it gets the keys. That's bad for the world.

Speaker 2

Early when after he was elected, President Trump tweets that the Germans, he doesn't like the Germans very much. He accuses them of manipulating their currency so that they can export more to improve their economy at others expenses. And so this led to a comedy of errors inside of the German government and they finally came to the US side and said, look, we know that Donald Trump understands that we don't have a currency, right, I mean the currency the Euro is the rules and regulations are all

made in Brussels. We have the same currency as the Greeks do. We can't manipulate our currency to help our export because we don't controul Because it was just beyond them that like Donald Trump didn't realize that the Germans don't have the mark anymore and have it for for the last ten years. And I think it's since dawned on them that no.

Speaker 4

Yeah, And that's a real dynamic by the way, throughout the federal government that you've got the electeds and then you've got the political appointees they put in, and then you have the career civil servants for INDs of the FDICE. I keep bringing up some of the smartest, most committed people. These are the people who keep your money safe in the bank, right, These are some of the best experts and most competent people I've ever met in my life. You need to trust those civil servants to know what

they're doing. And when Trump us talking about the deep state, that's what he was really talking about, was like civil servants who actually give a shit about their jobs and are paying attention. And yeah, I think again, conspiracy theories come out as a result. But I think the truth is a lot of times people are just ignorant or stupid, or incompetent or lazy, because that's what people are. That's what humanity is as a whole.

Speaker 3

Right.

Speaker 4

We have as much ignorance and stupidity and laziness as we do bravery and intelligence and determination.

Speaker 1

Sometimes bravery intelligence, these things are still not enough. The world is so complex.

Speaker 3

We'll be right back in OVID. All right, let's get back into it one.

Speaker 2

This is a bit sound, but on as a civil servant, John and I both were in the Agency. I voted against George Bush and yet when the Iraq War started, I volunteered to go. And I spent over a year and a half of my life in Iraq, and I've had friends killed there, and so you know, this isn't something that I supported or started, at least I didn't not once I realized that there were no weapons of mass destruction supported or stut And yet I'm the one

who paid the price. We take the hit often for bad policies of our politicians who actually look with mails of forthought to shove their bad policy outcomes into our shoes.

Speaker 4

Absolutely. And look, there's also people in the federal government, by the way, who are just collecting a paycheck and or maybe seventy five percent as good an employee as the person next to them. But that's humanity. And guess what, they also deserve to slack off a little bit and collect a paycheck, just like we all do some days.

But as a whole, the civil services, like my experience was, it's full of these incredible people who really give a shit about their jobs and about making the country work. And yeah, the problem, when there is one, usually starts at the top. It certainly did with the Iraq War and the Vietnam War as well.

Speaker 2

To be quite honest for your next episode.

Speaker 1

If you want, I can give you a list of slackers in the government if you want.

Speaker 4

Oh, that would be great again. I think people should be allowed to slack off. I think that's part of human life. A real memory of mine, and this maybe really informed my perspective on this. I was on the subway. I lived in New York City at the time. I was on the subway. They say, hey, everybody, the train is canceled. You all got to get off the train, like we're shutting down this line. And I got off the train. Everyone's so mad, and we all get in cabs.

And I get in a cab with this guy because we're going in the same direction, and he goes The MTA is so screwed up. They're just sitting around giving each other pay raises over there. And I didn't arg you with the guy because I don't want to argue with the real New Yorker, you know, in the back of a cab. He was really pissed off because he

was late for work. But I was reading Robert Carrow's book, right, and I know that the reason the MTA has trouble is it was created by the government and the Mayor of New York City as a way to separate themselves from responsibility because they didn't want to have to raise fares or take the blame. So the MTA was literally created as like a whipping boy for the New York

City Mayor and the government of New York. And then they spent the next fifty years starving it of money, right saying, we're not going to give you enough money to fix the trains, to improve service, to build new train lines, God forbid, or any of those things. And that's what happened, right the electives. The public doesn't want to spend the money, and the electors don't want to take responsibility, so they create this agency called the MTA that everyone just you know, takes a crap on all

the time. And this guy's been reading the New York Post his whole life and he's gotten that perspective. Oh, it's the MTA. It's the people who work there. They're just sitting around giving each other pay raised and instead of getting work done, I'd say, number one, what do you do at your job, sir? You said, trying to figure out how to do less work, how to get a raise. That's a human condition. Right, But why does

the MTA specifically have problems. It's because the people in charge of the city and the state we were being cowardly and venal and trying to preserve their own skins rather than actually make the subway work better.

Speaker 2

So I'm not a fan boy of any politician, but I thought a lot of Barack Obama.

Speaker 3

Right.

Speaker 2

I didn't agree with him everywhere, but I thought he was a guy who had some basic integrity. But I did want to ask, what is it like working with somebody who is, you know, an icon and that people have strong opinions about one way or another, and somebody like yourself who's clearly a comedian and iconic class What was it like working with the Obamas to the extent you you know, you're willing to talk about great question.

Speaker 4

Yeah, I'm happy to. First of all, he I think really interestingly lives his life as though he's still president. So when we had to get him a script, it's like, Okay, that script has to be in by so and so on Friday, because it's got to go in his weekend briefing book, because he gets a briefing book every weekend.

And that's like what the president gets right. The president gets a briefing book where all his staffers put in a document that he has to read, and you know he's going to set it's the same time to read this, and so I was like, dude, you're not president anymore. You don't have to have a briefing book. You know, George Bush is just sitting around making paintings. And they gave us our room to work. You know, we had to fight sometimes to do our drones segment or to

do some other segments. We were also critical about the origin of the Affordable Care Act, which on balance is a good act, but was still a compromise with the anti government forces who don't want the government to actually put in place a program. Was less than it could have been because it had to compromise with the Reagan era ideologues. When it came to him appearing on the show, I wrote a comedy scene for us to be in together. He's incredibly funny. He has no right to be that funny.

It annoys me professionally as a comedian that he's as funny as he is. We started the show with a comedy scene with the two of us. We ended it with me and him having a long form conversation about the government and how people should feel about it and the possibility for change, right because I experienced when he entered office in two thousand and eight, I was in my twenties, We're going to have change. By the time he left, I think a lot of us were thinking where was that change?

Speaker 3

And I have.

Speaker 4

Complex feelings about that, and I was able to have a really substantive, long form conversation with him, and that was one of certainly one of the highlights of my career.

Speaker 2

You've got another project, factually, why don't you? Why do you tell us about that a little bit?

Speaker 4

Yes, it's a long form interview podcast I do. I talked to experts and fascinating people from around the world of human knowledge speaking of the government. We've had the chair of the FTC, Lena Khannon. We've had a dot had Pete Boudaje John, We've had local politicians here in Los Angeles on to talk about the work that they do. We have journalists, we have scholars, academics, anybody who knows something fascinating that the public doesn't know that I don't know.

And you can catch that out you guess that on YouTube. Tube on YouTube and wherever you get your podcast. It's called Factually Jeremy Cia. Guys, here's my question for you, as too spies. I used to read a lot of John la Coray novels, but I was always like, this is a fantasy, right, But do you ever read any book like that and go, okay, wait, that one actually happened to me.

Speaker 1

John McCarey is probably one of the ones that we that worked in the Clandestine Service, the spy side of the agency, most trust and follow because it's about the human relationships rather than many of the movies and shows are about sort of action and shooting and stuff like that. For the most part, we weren't carrying guns, we weren't involved in shootouts. We were trying to develop relationships with people and build trust in an area where there's potential betrayal.

Speaker 2

And what we did human intelligence is about, at its core, two people sitting down and telling each other the truth. So you know, you get someone from an authoritarian government and they look over both their shoulders and they say, I can't live like this anymore. I need to tell you the truth. This is what's really going on. I love my country, but my government murders, people, murders us and I just can't do this anymore. And for whatever reasons,

love hey, And it's always a cocktail of reasons. They've opted to sit down and talk to someone from the agency, and we talked about power earlier. I think mostly their hope is that we can do something about it. When an Iranian nuclear scientist sits down and says, we're building these things to commit genocide and we're beggaring our country. This is wrong. I need to talk to you about this.

Speaker 4

That's really cool.

Speaker 2

So I'll give you one anecdote to underline that I'm sitting in a car driving through the wilderness at two o'clock in the morning, and sitting with me is a representative of a radical Islamic regime whose whole raisondetra is like to kill Jews and kill Americans. And this guy has something eating on his soul and he can't tell anybody about his wife, who he loves, families, friends, And he looks at me and he says, do you think there's a God? And I look at him and the like,

this is a tiny be truth. And I said, you know what, I don't think there is, but maybe I'm not sure, and he's like, I don't think there is, he says, but you have to understand. I get up at four in the morning and pray with my wife and I look at her and think she faking it. And then I pray with my friends and I look

at them and they faking it. And my whole life is you know, this with missionary zeal to carry out something that very something deadly, like we're looking to kill Jews and Americans, and I can't live with this anymore. I have to talk to you. I'm like, okay, now that where you look them straight in the eye, you tell him I can keep you alive, but what do you want to do about it? And this is where the professionals gits involved.

Speaker 1

That's so cool, But at both sides it actually is transactional in the sense that we even though that relationship is very serious and I will do anything I can to protect that person, I need that relationship to provide information to the US guy to do something with it. And he not always a heat but usually a he needs that relationship hoping that we can do something that can help solve his problem. What if his problem is his kid needs medical care and he can't get it

from his government. That is something I can solve. If it is I want us to change his policy so that you destroy my regime. It's not always something that's going it's going to happen.

Speaker 4

I do want to ask, do you guys ever like people say, oh, the CIA is like top bled democracies. This is stuff decades ago, top of democracies because it was in the US's best interest to do so, and some folks there would say, not in the best interests of the people who live there. Do you ever, Are you ever in a situation where someone is giving you information you're like, actually, this is maybe not in your best interest. It's in the United States's best interest.

Speaker 1

That's I mean, you are working for the US government and you work on behalf of the u's government. If you're uncomfortable with that, you need to leave or you need to try to push back if you think a policy is silly. Now, ninety to ninety five percent of what the Clandestine Service does, the part of the spot side of the Inciaward Jerry and I worked is collecting intelligence to give information to policymakers so they can make

better policy. But there is that five percent, which is called covert action, which is action, which is the stuff you're talking about in the fifties, trying to in Chile or in Guatemala or what have you. Now, there was very serious reforms in the nineteen seventies. I think the US got involved in a lot of those overthrowing regime things that you talk about in Iran and other places, and they had blowback to them. And in nineteen seventies there was a lot of reforms to try to change things.

In fact, the US comment can't be involved in assassinations, and there had to be a process by which if the CIA was going to be asked to do something, it had to be done in writing from the White House and shared with the Congress before Eisnawer could just say hey, listen, get rid of that guy, and the CIA would do that. So it is different now than it was then. But in some ways it's not like if we were talking about toppling governments. Now it's done

pretty overtly. The US military goes in in topples of government, we're not necessarily doing it nefariously from the inside. And so the CIA that Jerry and I grew up in for our thirty years was a post reform CIA where we were brief in Congress and we weren't getting somebody whispering in our ear to kill a politician or something like that.

Speaker 4

For your sakes, I'm glad, yeah, me too. You didn't have to like poison Dart anybody exactly.

Speaker 1

Thank you very much for your time. It was really exciting and interesting to talk to you and enjoy what you're doing.

Speaker 4

It was a thrill to be here. This was so much fun.

Speaker 5

Mission Implausible is produced by Adam Davidson, Jerry O'shay, John Cipher, and Jonathan Stern. The associate producer is Rachel Harner. Mission Implausible It's a production of honorable mention and abominable pictures for iHeart Podcasts.

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