I'm John Cipher and I'm Jerry O'sha. I was a CIA officer stationed around the world in high threat posts in Europe, Russia, and in Asia.
And I served in Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East and in war zones. We sometimes created conspiracies to deceive our adversaries.
Now we're going to use our expertise to deconstruct conspiracy theories large and small.
Could they be true? Or are we being manipulated?
This is mission implausible.
We now continue with part two of our conversation with Will Summer of the Bulwark and the newsletter False Flag. So will you write a lot about conspiracies and conspiracy theories and a lot of conspiracy conspiracy theories center around CIA or the deep state. We got two deep state guys right here, so ask away, what is your what is your favorite conspiracy theory having to do with a deep state or CIA? Or what do we have to
play to you? What lies doing conspiracies? Do we have to spin or lie to you on?
You know?
I would love to know. Obviously there's been a lot of coverage of the JFK files being released, and I'd love to know what y'all make of those in terms of any revelations or not.
We've talked to a couple of people about JFK stuff, and at first when we did this podcast, we're like, we got to stay away from the JFK thing because the people who get into that are like so deep into it that we're never going to be able to read enough so that we can like fix when they say something that they're completely focused on some little issue that we don't even understand or never followed. Our general view is, listen, we worked in the Clandestine Service for
thirty plus years. We were there doing operations around the world. Never heard anything suggesting that the CIA had anything to do with the Kennedy assassination. Where is essentially everything else that's been secret at some point you hear about or whatever, and then to look at something like that and think that you could put all of those pieces together to pull off that incredible conspiracy and no one would ever talk about it is the thing that makes it the
most unlikely. The one thing we learned about doing real conspiracies is you got to keep it very simple. It has to be very short term for a clear goal. Whereas the Kennedy thing assumes all kinds of complex moving parts and all these that kind of things, and so when the stuff came out, we weren't expecting anything. This
stuff has been released year after year. Clearly the stuff that hadn't been released is related to other operations or foreign governments or sources that helped us on this that we promised to keep secret, and now we've seen that when they've put out all the other stuff, it actually was.
It was kind of bad. It hurt some people in the Mexican government that had helped us, and it provided even prior to what social security numbers of people that were on the Warrant Commission, all this kind of stuff that there was a reason to keep that secret, not because it was covering up the kennedyssassination, for all these other normal security reasons.
Yeah, we cross file things and there's a lot of tangential things. I think John mentioned it once. If twenty years later you're talking to a diplomat from the Balkans who is a conspiratorial mindset, and he talks about his theory of JFK, well that goes into the JFK file, right, It's like, oh, he mentioned it, because you the way we write everything up. We're really good with records, So now that's in there. And so do you expose the fact that we were talking to this person who may
become a source later in the Balkans? Do you expose him because he's now in the in the files, So it's it gets sound right silly. And two it depends on what you want to prove. So generally the JFK thing is like, we know that we CIA was involved. Well, okay, it's a claim, but there's really no evidence for that. And the other is that we maybe know who did it. We know the Russians did or the Cubans were involved. And if that's the case, I think we bind out.
We would have revealed it. And we've been through how many presidents, right, you know, and you know to include Trump before, to include Trump before, if they alway a smoking gun, they would have put it out. And Trump is no friend of CIA, John and I can certainly attest to that. So if there was something bad in those files which people could read, they would have outed it.
On another topic kind of knatsek More broadly, I'd love to get your take. And you guys mentioned Tucker on what's going on with these these pete hegsath aids who were fired. One of them just went on to Tucker and was kind of making it out that he's the martyr for opposing the warrant Iron and I kind of lack the experience with the military to understand kind of all the contours here, but it seems like something interesting is afoot in terms of the various narratives going on here.
I think you're going to find out before we've had But it's really interesting because he turned on these people, and there are people he just brought in a month or two ago, So there's clearly personal things going on here, and I don't know that it actually ties to the military or anything NATIONALS, SECU purity related.
So in our world, our former world, when you're building a team to accomplish a mission or to set out a direction, it has to be fact based, right, Policies are based around facts. Okay, you know, here's here's our goals and directors and here's why. If it's completely ideological and there's nothing really that you can agree on other than like I'm the boss, do what I fucking say, then it's hard to maintain cohesiveness inside of your organization.
Because it's not based on anything that anybody that people can look at it and go, yes, that's true, because if nothing's true, or if it's realistic, and I think Pete Heggsaf has a group of people around him that they can't agree on anything, and I think what you end up with then if there's no facts, as you end up with a lot of backstabbing. And I think you're seeing it with the trade policy right on tariffs.
This is a non fact base set upon and of course everybody if there's no fixs and everybody can interpret what the ideology is and I'm not even sure there's an ideology behind it. It's all about just raw power. We see that in other authoritarian regimes. And the only way you can if there's no fis the only way you can keep cohesiveness is through terror. I mean, how did Stalin stay in control when they were breaking the laws of economics and everybody knew it because people were starving.
It was like do what I say or I'll kill you. Because beyond that there's nothing else that they can rally around.
One of the things I always find interesting is people put the CIA, Deep State and Trump and these and his people run agree there's some kind of danger to them. But frankly, from my experience, from just reality is the CIA doesn't care about Americans. We don't collect on Americans. Our job is to recruit foreigners to give a secrets, and we can't get to it in any other way.
And so people tend to think that we have all these records of Americans and we wouldn't have any res on somebody like Pete Hegseth, and I think even Donald Trump. If Donald Trump is traveling back and forth to Russia, the CIA doesn't care about that. If an American's traveling Russia, that's not something we try to collect or get someone to report on all those kind of things. So even now on the left or like our CI, you're obviously hiding, you must know that Trump is We don't follow Americans.
That's not our job unless they're in touch with the Russians. I'm just saying, Michael, going back to Michael Flynn, why he got fired, right, it is like we weren't collecting on him, but we were collecting on the Russian ambassador
in the United States. And when Flynn is on a telephone talking to the Russian ambassador telling him to ignore the administration, which is breaking the law, and then he lies to the FBI about the fact he was listening to the Russian So we listened to the Russian ambassador and we pick up Michael Flynn talking to him, and then he lies about it.
So in any case, it wasn't the CIA that was listening to.
No, there was NSA NFBI. Yeah, that's right, that's true.
You know, it is always funny. I consume so much news through right wing media, and especially during the Russia investigation, you ran into a lot of that, like they were spying on Michael Flynn or Carter Page or whatever, and then you run across it it's oh, who was he talking to at the time? How did that come up?
Yeah?
Yeah, and Michael Flynn, yeah, even you know, he went to Russia to deal with the GRU and then when he retired he went there to make money through the RT and then he was in Britain with a Russian girlfriend and the Brits reported and there's all kinds of stuff there that.
Yeah, no one's.
Following Michael Flynn or Pete haigsit, Donald Trump or any of those people. It's just yeah, if they're dealing with bad actors that we are interested in.
The right for the audience, Let's go back to Carter Page and the Russia thing. I just want to let's be clear on this, right, it's like because conspiracy. He goes to London and he talks to the Australian number two in the embassy and he says, look, I've been told that the Russian was a quarter page. Oh, Papadopolis, I get my conspiracies mixed up.
Yeah, Pardi Page is the one who was getting recruited by That's right, that's right New York because we heard the Russians talking about how easy it would be to recruit him.
That's right, that's right. I was just going to figure Papadopolos was saying that that the Russians have tapped into the Democratic National Committee and then they did, right, And so that's what began. It wasn't the Steel Dusty just for the artist.
The Australians who reported it exactly.
Yes, So yeah, Russia was behind all this. There is a conspiracy. As a CIA officer, that is a you know, that's a counterintelligence issue. Is how would actually put it.
We'll be back in just a moment. So will I have a question for you. Again, you're part of the media, you're an enemy of the people by definition, but you're also reporting specifically.
On the right wing. Have you been threatened?
What is it like if you go to it, for example, QAnon conference, What is that like? And do you worry for your security for example?
Yeah, it's a good question. I mean, you know, there have been some threats, maybe not as many as you'd imagine they are. You know, they're sort of eering degrees, you know, when I'm covering like neo Nazis or something like that, that's much more intense than often qan On people, although they have committed murders and things like that. I mean, for the for the most part, they're they're a little
moor sedate. In the case of this q and On convention in twenty twenty one, I was in Dallas, and so I wanted to go, but you know, already qan On people had started recognizing me. Some of them wanted to, you know, obstutly beat me up or whatever. Some thought I was maybe working for q because I wrote about it so much and kind of a backwards way. This guy at January sixth yelled Will summer, and I said,
oh god, you know it's over for me. And then no, he just wanted a selfie, so you know, I declined on that. But so going to Dallas, I had grown out my you know, here's my trade craft, let me know. But I had I had grown out my beard, and I a baseball cap and sunglasses when I could, because
the organizers I knew would recognize me. But I just bought a ticket and they hadn't rejected it, and so I made it two days there and then basically another reporter had been there and really like taunting them on Twitter, and so they were really on the hunt. And basically I think they saw me looking less than like I
didn't have a bloodlust that everyone else did. And so suddenly I start seeing all these I think they're mostly gone now, but there was this kind of like paramilitary called First Amendment preetorians, and they would start these guys start sitting around me, and I'm going like and I figured, you know, hey, I'll go to the bathroom and they lose these guys for bits sit elsewhere when I come back, and then a guy grabs me and he looks at
my idea and he said, all right, that's fine. Then I come back to the crowd and Michael Flynn is on the stage and he goes, yeah, this media is really opt to get us. In fact, there's a reporter here who infiltrate it. And I start looking around like, oh, who's gonna get busted? And it was me, so you might imagine. And so the police who were there, they kind of escorted me out. This whole crowd was chasing me, a couple dozen people just screaming at me. There was
a shirtless guy. It was very bizarre, very kind of heavy set, shirtless guy, you know. And then I got in my rental and I left, and then, you know, like a genius, I had decided to stay in the same hotel as the convention because I wanted the color. So then I've got to go back to the hotel and kind of hole up there because obviously they're kind of on the hunt for me. So it was that's maybe the most intense that's ever gotten.
Yeah, so I have a admission to make to you, and I do. Yes, it's a confession. So I live in kind of a rational bubble with the people I know and the information they consume. I'm not confronted, except with some of my family. I'm like one of ten kids. But in my personal life, I'm not confronted with people who believe in these conspiracies on a day to day basis.
And in fact, I have never sat down with a conspiracy q and honor or a really deep trumper and handed like a fit based conversation friendly like you know, hey, let's let's talk as opposed to you pre me or them. Have you had that where you can actually sit down with somebody who I believe that may be a nice person, someone who pets puppies and is nice, but believes this stuff. How would you sit down and have a conversation with them?
They're like you eat babies? No I don't, but let me tell you what I do do and like I don't believe. How do you in your own life? Do you have like constructive friendly conversations with people?
Yeah, well I wouldn't say they're constructive, but I do have you know, you know, I have had, you know, plenty of friendly conversations with with QAnon people or other conspiracy theorists. I mean often, you know, some of them really have no sense of humor about it. I mean they take it very seriously, and you know, they do think that I'm in the cabal and out to get them and other people. Kind of even if they believe that, you know, I'm in this sinister group, they they they're
happy to play ball with me. One thing about covering the right that's fun is it's extremely factional, and the people are often they're lot of like personality defects going on, and they rub up against each other a lot, and so often they'll say, well, will I think you're a scumbag, but I also really want this article to get out about my rival in QAnon world, or so let me tell you what he's up to. And these are more like kind of rank and file people, they kind of
want to save me, you know. I remember there was one person I had interviewed about her police in QAnon, and she was so concerned that sort of the big moment of retribution would come where Tom Hanks and Oprah would get shipped to go on Tomamobay, and she was concerned that I would be among them. And so she said, I think you really need to come clean. You need to talk to James O'Keefe. Maybe he'll make you cut you a deal, you know, and you can you can flip sides.
I just want to have a rejoinder to that. So John and I in our past lives, and I can remember conversations with going back Soviets right where they would they would look at you in a conversation at a diplomatic function and then you know you're a running dog or capitalist, but there's always this glimmer in their eye like you know, I don't believe this shit, right, you know, this is I've got to say so or even like I remember one Libyan diplomat who was going on about
how evil I was, and he pretty much knew I was CIA, but you could see in his eyes like this is all a kabuki play, right, He's like, you know, I don't buy into most or any of this, right, And you know we can go off and hit him drink later, but in front of people, this is what I got to do. But I don't get that sense with a lot of these Q non folks right that they are true believers.
I mean, yeah, they're definitely, and you know, in kind of the right wing media more broadly, I mean a lot of these people are are real believers, but they're also you know they have, you know, and there's a lot of similarity between the work of an intelligence agent and a journalist and that you're evaluating someone's motives, what
is their short term goal? Often and so in that way, I mean, they'll they'll talk to me because they you know, they want publicity or something like that, and so there is a way to cover them. It's not always easy, and it involves a lot more I think soul searching on their parts. I mean there's a lot of like I've been called and people say, why did I ruin
my life? You know, I've done all these crazy things for attention often and now I've alienated everyone, and you know, yeah, you know that's how it goes.
So what is the hierarchy of danger? Like of these conspiracies, theorists and people, which ones do you think are a real threat and danger? Which ones is it like entertainment? Which ones are there because this moment and they're Trump people, but they're may be not. Like you know of QAnon and Proud Boys and oathkeepers and you probably know of a lot of other people that haven't even come together yet.
Where's the danger? Which ones you think are going to sort of go away, And what's your sense of that?
Yeah, And I mean I know, I think there's kind of like different types of danger, right, I mean there are elements of like is this person going to try to swap me or try to murder me, or or as someone else they perceives as a foe. And then what about our democracy?
Right?
I mean in the case of you know, q Noon, for example, we had or these militias, I mean these they have murdered people in case of Quton. And then also you know, they whipped up this army of people that a lot of them were at January sixth, who were convinced that this was like a utopian moment for America. I think you know of Ashley Babbitt and other people who died then as well, who kind of made up this rabble.
You know.
Similarly, you look at the Proud Boys so much. I mean I started covering the Proud Boys right when they started, and so much of it was so ridiculous. You know, they had these rules about masturbation, oh, you know, the no wanks agenda or whatever, and they would have oh, you can't wear flip flops. I mean, just ridiculous stuff.
And then you know famously right, they would they would punch their members and then you would have to name five serials to join the band, right, And so then cut to January sixth, and they're trying to participate in overthrowing the government. And so in that way, I think there are people who are like really hardcore members of it, who have devoted their lives to it. There are people who have who are just along for a good time
until it stops being fun. Certainly in the case of QAnon, I think when Biden was inaugurated, you saw a lot of people who said, oh, I guess maybe that's over, or maybe the plan isn't happening. I'll go off and do something else.
By my my sordid background before the Agency, I studied history, right history degree, and in the US in the eighteen fifties, you know, the second political party after the Whigs flamed out was the American Party, the know nothing Party, and it was all focused around basically some of the same things we got now, but it was papist Catholic plots focused on Irish immigrants and immigrants from southern Germany who
were Catholic. God forbid the you know, the Italians who were not even seen as white right in those days, and they fielded serious political candidates for president and so forth. But we moved on beyond that, right, I mean, you know sort of now Catholics, you know, people of Irish extraction are q ANDON members.
So do you see this as that's a real thing. They really moved up from.
The d yes pressure right, from being victims of to like we're betraying the same conspiracies about.
In the run concentration camps others.
Yeah, I know, but they proved historically, I wouldn't say a flash in the pan. They formed our history parts of it, but they didn't determine it. The guardrails. We had the strengths of democracy that even from those days we had came through. And so do you see these as these set of conspiracies, the spectrum of conspiracies as something that simply reflects popular discontent and it is a deep vein of like concerned as the world changes too fast maybe for some people, or is this genuinely a
threat to our democratic way of life? I suppose there's a middle ground too that, yeah, we'll have democracy, but it'll be a more authoritarian version thereof.
Yeah, I mean I think it's a serious issue. I mean people, you know, on one hand, people can say we always had conspiracy theories. I mean, you know, in a lot of times they sort of resurface. I mean, in the case of QAnon that draws on Jewish blood lib while going back almost a thousand years, and we have these other examples. But at the same time, you know,
it can get worse. And you know, I think in the Internet, the combination of social media and having someone like Donald Trump who really validates people for he's saying, well, you know, I believe in conspiracy theories, so you know the president does, why not you? And so I think in that way it is a really serious issue. I mean, you have people who believe that essentially, at best, that there is no objective truth or no kind of shared
reality that we live in. I mean, the idea that you would have roughly half the country and I think probably nearly every Republican member of Congress who claiming that the twenty twenty election was stolen. I mean that alone, that's terrible for democracy, right, And so I do think these conspiracy theories, and this is certainly something that experts on Russia that said kind of runs a muck in Russia.
This idea where if anything bad happens for the regime, you can say, oh, it was these sinister forces, and so that that is.
Yeah.
I think it's awful for democracy, And in terms of having an informed public, yeah, it's not good.
No, especially if everyone who gets a job. These are serious jobs. These institutions are very powerful and if they're misused, can really be dangerous to Americans and foreigners around the world. So you got the FBI, the CIA, the Defense Department, our Army, Navy, all of these things are really powerful organizations. And to get those jobs, have to agree to follow conspiracy. You have to say the twenty twenty election was stolen
and the January sixth was a day of love. Just to get in the door, you have to be complicit in a lie, and most of those people at some level have to know they're lying and they're complicit to get those jobs. And that's a real dangerous place, especially for the intelligence community. Intelligence is about trying to find truth to the extent that you can try to provide
your best guess on what's really happening. We take pride in giving intelligence to policymakers that they may not want to hear because this is you know, Jerry works in India or Afghanistan or Germany, and he's trying to explain to our policymakers what's really happening on the ground, so that they may be upset because it's not fitting with their policy, but eventually it's going to make them make
better policy. But from the outset, if you can't tell your leaders the truth, that's a real dangerous thing, and that can cause things to go away quickly.
More of this after a quick break, and.
So let me ask you one question I just thought of. This is not connected to that. Is Ivan Rakeland. Whatever happened to him? He was like the guy the secretary of Retribution and he was coming after Jerry and I and I haven't heard about him lately, So what's his.
Yeah, this was the guy with the list of the all the enemies we're going to get to when Trump gets elected. You know, it's interesting, I think some of these guys, you know, there was a lot of coverage of him and this idea, you know, he's going to come in and then showed Trump the list in the
Oval office. But that's a guy it's a little unclear to me how much sort of cloud he actually enjoys with the administration, you know, you have, But at the same time, you have some of these figures who seem so outlandish, and you think Laura, well, and I was gonna bring that up, I mean, and now she's just a person who has done all these stunts. I mean, for many years she was considered like too crazy or too embarrassing for even a lot of right wing people
to associate with. And now she's purging the National Security Council, supposedly getting rid of the NSA director, and that story that is such a crazy story. And yet there's that was almost like brushovers, like well, what can you do? That is crazy stuff that on a nine to eleven conspiracy theorist is going in and saying, yah, you should get rid of this guy because he used to work in the republican relatively sane foreign policy establishment.
Apparently one of the questions to get a job in the Trump administration, yes, formally or informally, is nine to eleven an inside job. In January seventh, I don't even know what inside job means, because there's such a broad spectrum of conspiracy theories about both of them, right it was like it was the Jews, or it was the US government, or it was the Saudis, or January sixth it was Antifa. No, it's not Antifa. It was the FBI. No, it wasn't FBI because nothing bad happened, it was all good.
I'm not even sure you know what the conspiracy theories are. I get the conspiracy theory clear first. I know, it's like there's such as there's such a wide spectrum of moment ie put them all straight.
Well, often it is tricky because often there is there's not like one specific conspiracy theory they're asking you to believe. They're saying, don't you think that's a little odd? You know, it's sort of that reflexive and I think offense, sort of immature skepticism that is really what they're pushing, rather than a specific one idea which could be disproven or not, Rather than you're just being asked to say, don't you want to look behind the curtain? Don't you really want
to understand the world and outside? They draw people in, and I think some of.
It is obviously for entertainment. Some of it is just taking advantage of people's predilections. A lot of it is for domestic politic. So you want to say the Democrats your enemies, you need to create stories to make them enemies. But then when people start to believe those things, then it goes to that next level. And that's what's unusual about this administration is they seem to be happy weaponizing that without worrying about what the implications are further down
the road. And we've seen a lot of people Republicans who are probably even in the first Trump administration, ready to follow along, who at some point couldn't keep up with it and then they got turned on. So the question for you is like, how do we get out of this? And I know that's a hard question maybe the right answer, but is this something that is this a Donald Trump phenomenon that is bringing it to the surface and it's always going to be there, but it's
never gonna be as bad as it is now? Or are we going past the rubicon and it's going to be part of our life and we might not be able to get away from it.
I think in many ways, I think, at least for the foreseeable, the next couple decades or something. I think this kind of conspiratorial thinking and this populism is really with us for a long time, whether it's going to be in and out of power. But I do think just so many fact actors, whether it's the Internet or the rise of Trump or anything else, I think this
is very much going to be with us. And you know, yeah, I mean I think unfortunately it's something we're gonna have to learn to drapple with.
It's we're sort of seems like we're stuck in and never before. It's like, on one hand, now we've got a cult, right, it's no longer that the cult is the GOP. There's not a And then we've got the Democratic Party, which is you know, has a lot of warts and it can be kind of wishy washy, and I'm not really sure what the Democrat because it's a conglomeration of like different factions and not a whole lot
of people with powerful magnetic personalities. Although Chuck Trumer may be like talking sense, but he's not like inspiring anybody, right, I mean, he just isn't. Sorry Chuck, but you know, is this sort of what we're stuck with is boring and insipid but maybe right and then just deadly wrong, but sort of like simple and charismatic. Yeah, I just don't. I don't quite know what to For most people, it's an easy choice, it should be, but it's more fun to go with a cult, right.
About giving Yeah, Well, I mean I do think democrats are hopefully I think these kind of these stunts, and I mean that in a positive way. About Chris van Holland going down to El Salvador, for example, I think we're starting to see democrats or Cory Bookers filibuster more examples of Democrats realizing we need to do things that are getting attention, not just going on the same place
as where I was going on and just complaining about it. So, you know, if you look for a little optimism, I think it's there is that hopefully Democrats are starting to realize that you have to compete in these spaces, whether it's podcasts or vertical short form video or.
What have you. I just hope that to get out of this, we don't have to crash the economy and right, that's the other way of burning it out is have it been just such a friggin failure that except for the twenty percent hardcore who don't mind losing their four to one case and houses.
And they'll just blame somebody. Well, yeah, yeah, Russia. Russia's economy has gone to hell. They've had to give it over to the Chinies. They're slaughtering more people per day in Ukraine than we lost in twenty years in Afghanistan. But Putin is able to blame it on. It's the Americans, it's a NATO, it's there's always somebody to blame in those situations. And Trump has that skill, right.
Yeah.
You look at after the financial crisis, and they basically the Republican line became it was too easy for minorities to get houses, and that's why the financial crisis happened. And I think they can always come up with some shred of evidence to blame somebody.
Biden.
Yeah, so, Will, thank you very much. We will continue to follow your reporting. He reports for The Bulwark and he has a newsletter called The False Flag. I would encourage you to continue to follow him.
Will.
It was a real pleasure.
Yeah, well, thanks for having me