Now my understanding is international law posits that you have one hundred and fifty eight years to file acclaim.
So that to Alaska's good. But I think Hawaii like we're losing Alaska. Guys, that's done, Hawaii. I think the statute of limitations is out.
I'm John Cipher and I'm Jerry o'she. I served in the CIA's Clandestine Service for twenty eight years, living undercover all around the.
World, and in my thirty three years with the CIA, I served in Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East.
Although we don't usually look at it this way, we created conspiracies.
In our operations. We got people to believe things that weren't true.
Now we're investigating the conspiracy theories we see in the news almost every day.
Will break them down for you to determine whether they could be real or whether we're being manipulated.
Welcome to Mission implausible.
Bien venidos a la mission sine possible.
Yeah, because miss so today my brothers, John Zeifer and Adam Davidson, I have a question for you. What is it that cost eleven million, three hundred and sixty two thousand, four hundred and eighty one rubles and ninety four copex.
My guess, because I know what we're going to talk about. I think is the price that the Russians paid for Alaska.
Exactly right, and they wanted back. That's the conspiracy we'll talk about today, not one of ours, but a Russian conspiracy that apparently is pushing it. It's not just something we're bringing up. This is something that last week on Russian Channel one, which is sort of the Tucker Carlson of the Russian Television World, said that the Russians intend to take back the Baltic Steakes, Poland, Finland, Alaska and maybe even Hawaii. Did they ever have Hawaii? Yes, and
I'll come to that. But to underline this is that the Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman said that, yes, this is indeed an ongoing Russian project.
Whereas it is worth laughing about on one level, it is worth seeing what they're doing in Ukraine being outraged on the other level, and there's a lot of countries that have suffered from Russian imperialism. In fact, a lot of people in the United States chirp about imperialism and imperialistic this and imperialistic that. We are seeing what real
imperialism is with the Russians. And in fact, if you look at Russian history beginning with the reign of Ivan the Terrible in the sixteenth century, Russia has expanded literally at an average rate of fifty square miles per day for hundreds of years. Seriously, so their desire to take land is almost what defines the Russian character or Russia. There's never really been a Russia of just Russians in
Russian borders. It's always been this view that we need to grow and Russian needs to be bigger than it is.
So let's go down the Russian rabbit hole on this. So the Alaska payment conspiracy, also known as the Orkney conspiracy theory, has it that after the US agreed to pay seven point two million dollars to Russia, it's one hundred and twenty nine million dollars today. That was Seward's folly in eighteen sixty seven. That's two cents an acre
to Russia for Alaska. That the money, apparently, according to the conspiracy theory, never arrived and the gold was put on a ship called the Orkney in eighteen sixty eight, and that ship sank in the Baltic and the money never arrived, and it gets interesting and it is a deep rabbit hole. The ship would belonged to a guy by the name of Alexander Keith who was a Scottish Canadian American Confederate spy and was known for insurance frauds, and what he would do is he would sink ships
and then claim the insurance money for it. And it all went bad for him in eighteen seventy five when he sak a ship called the Mosl outside of Germany and eighty one people eyed on the ship by mistake, and so he committed suicide. So the Russians are claiming that this is the case. Now I do have to jump in and say that although they've got this ornate conspiracy theory about how they never got paid all those rubles,
there's really no historical undergirdy, no banking for that. Apparently they were paid, but claiming they're not is part of them saying that they intend to take Klaskoebec on the Hawaiian front. This gets even more interesting, and that they're the little known But on the island of Kawai, the Russians established sort of a trading post and for years there was a Russian fort called Fort Elizabeth in Hawaii run by this crazy German in the service of the Tzar.
And recently a woman by the name of Elena Branson, who has been charged by the FBI with being an agent of the Russian government showed up in Kawai and apparently paid off some of the local councilors with gifts and free trips to Ruussia to try to keep the fort from being renamed to its original Hawaiian name and pushing the fact that this is Russian land. So Russian agents have actually been to Kawai to try to stake their claim.
Explain how it could be Russian land.
Well, when the Russians showed up in the eighteen forties, they claimed the entire kingdom and especially the island of Kawai for the emperor. So why does Spain claim like most of Latin America Because Christopher Columbus showed up right and he stuck his flagle the Russians. The Russians did the same thing in Hawaii.
Now, my understanding is international law posits that you have one hundred and fifty eight years to file a claim that so Alaska is good. But I think Hawaii, like we're losing Alaska. Guys, that's done, Hawaii. I think the Statute of Limitations is out. I do love this element
of conspiracy theories. There's a lot of these of these, like sovereign citizen movements that have they'll read some document from the eighteen seventies or something and say that maritime law is actually the only law that oversees America and that we should dig into this at some point. The whole thing about how the United States stopped being a
country and became a corporation. It's nutty stuff, but it is all based on this idea that there's somewhere in some archives, some slip of paper that proves that this massive thing in history is different. I guess it also animates many a Nicholas Cage film. I'm trying to think, has that ever actually happened where something like that happens.
States only have authority if people accept it. And conspiracy theories are all about alternative narratives. So is this something that Kremlin is pushing or this is something that's just popular because it's Russians like to talk like this.
Well, it's not a new conspiracy in the sense I can remember Wulfovich Wolf, the Wolf Joe.
Who is he?
He's sort of the Russian Alex Jones and he ran for president every time until he died in twenty twenty two. Not a huge fan of the Jews, No, no, no, not at all, although there was a that he was Jewish, and yeah, he's sort of a crazy guy. I think the Krunlin let him run because it would make Putin look more reasonable. His opponent was this sort of nutty
right wing guy, Vladimir Jeronovsky. And interestingly, when I served in Moscow undercover as a diplomat, I went to visit him at his office and it was in this sort of nasty building with the urine soaked stairs, and I went into his office and I had to sit down with him, and he would talk about how Russia owns Alaska and Russia is going to take over the South, and we're going to take over India and he would had a big map on his wall and he smoke a cigarette and he goes, then we're going to take
New Della and he would take a cigarette, you'd burn a hole where New Delhi was on the map. He's funny though, so I remember seeing him at Estonian National Day. When I was there, it was very soon after Estoni had become a country, and they had a nice little country house which was their embassy, and they had a National Day celebration. And so I was sitting there, I was chatting with the new ambassador, the Estonian ambassador, and
Joronofsky saw me and knew me. So he walked up to me, said hi, and he said, who's this guy. The Estonian ambassador had a little bow tie on, look very diplomatic, and I said, well, this is the Estonian ambassador. And Joronowski grabs him by the shoulder and says, you know, I like you. I'm going to make you the governor of Estonia once we take it over again.
Let's take a breather and back in a moment, and we're back.
So this view that Alaska really belongs to Russia, just like Ukraine belongs to Russia, and Finland belongs to Russia and Poland belongs to Russia. These are things that have been going on for a long time.
There may be some in like on the right wing in the US that might actually appreciate Russia taking over California, because that's also a claim they're making.
I lived in San Francisco. I ran our office in San Francisco, and I used to go up to Fort Ross, which is the farthest south that the Russians got from the Alaska territories. They had a fort where they would deal with, you know, sea otters and send stuff back to their folks in Alaska. And it's a beautiful place right on the coast. There's a nice Fort Ross winery right there, right by Bodego Bay where the Russian River goes into the Pacific Ocean.
I love a Russian River pino noir. Is that why it's called the Russian River, because indeed it is. Wow, that's interesting. I remember in the early nineties I worked at the local public radio affiliate in Chicago, WBEZ, and
we had a local station. It was an international affairs talk show, but it was just a local talk show hosted by Sandra Guahre, and she would have this one guy on a lot who seemed completely nutty and was laying out this whole plan about how he was going to get an international coalition to take back Iraq and he was going to lead Iraq. And he just seemed like pathetic and silly, not Lisa, which by the fact that one of his main outlets seemed to be our
little local public radio station. That man, of course, was Ahmed Chalabi, who in fact accomplished that very thing.
You know, we might snicker at their conspiracy theories as they would as ours, but I think people in the Baltics, or Finland or Poland, which has been divided how many times in the last two hundred years, you know, the Russians have taken it over, let it go, taken it over, let it go. And I don't think they think it's quite so funny. If you're a Stonian or if you're finished, you remember, the Russians did still half of Finland, they
took the whole career, and they still have it. I think if fifteen years ago we had listened to some Russians saying that they were going to take over Ukraine again after Russia famously gave assurances to the Ukrainian government that it would recognize their sovereignty forever if they gave up nuclear weapons, which the Ukrainians then did, and then that the Russians would try to take Ukraine and deny that Ukraine even exists. I think those national narratives are really powerful.
Well, that's why these countries, including Finland recently, but other countries in Eastern Europe want to join NATO because they understand the long history of Russian imperialists. And when Russia says these things, there's a lot of experience to show that they mean them.
And it's gotten so bad that even Sweden, breaking four hundred years of neutrality, has decided to join NATO. So they clearly, those people closest to the problem, they see it as a real issue.
They know it's not a conspiracy, right.
But even in US history, I mean, we had manifest Destiny or forty two to forty or fight, which basically said that we were going to take Canada too, which we didn't do because we didn't want to like tangle with a British empire. But we did take all of the US and the Spanish parts and the French part.
I just am thinking through the practicalities, like when has this happened? I mean, I guess that happened with the creation of South Sudan. What happens so are people offered like now you're a Russian citizen.
Well, we see examples in Ukraine as immediately after they moved into Ukraine, they gave Russian citizenship and they made everybody in the dombas in Crimea get Russian passports, and the schools they brought in teachers, so the schools, the kids all have to learn Russian and not Ukrainian. And yeah, I mean they're pretty they're pretty serious about it. That's why those countries there know.
That it's not a joke.
You know, every conversation like this comes back to the Nazis. One of Hitler's main goals in the East was what Laban's realm?
Right?
He was going to take back ancestral German Lands and he did for a little while. And what did he do with the local populations? You know, he tended to kill them all off?
Like how do we define conspiracy?
So in one way we define it as like this specific thing either did happen or didn't happen.
I think the conspiracy is to create a conspiracy theory, which is the fiction. But when the Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Maria Zarkarova says that, yeah, taking back Alaska is part of an ongoing project, people sit around and hit a meeting. We know from the US government. Before the Foreign Ministry makes a statement, they sit around and they talk about it. This isn't just hear this is the
Russian government. So there were meetings and people conspired to say we're going to push this conspiracy theory.
I will say a major learning for me from this podcast, not from either of you. You've never ever learned the thing, but that in spite of us, in spite of you, somehow some of our guests occasionally get a word in and that conspiracy theories are often the conspiracy. That creating conspiracy theories is a major tool of state craft, of scamcraft. If we can call whatever Alex Jones is doing, but then that should be even easier to figure out why.
Like we know, Russia wants to sew confusion and chaos about anything, right, So if college kids are fighting over you Israel power sign, we'll send stuff that supports both sides just to create more anger, and we'll try and get both sides to be more extreme. The goal isn't to change that policy, it's just to sow discord.
Well, the conspiracy to invade Ukraine, there was a conspiracy, right, so they decided they were going to do it. They conspired, then they decided to lie about it. We're not going to invade, No, 're not those troops. Is just an exercise, And of course they invaded this where they're open saying, yes, we are interested in retaking Finnish Land and Alaska and
these other kind of places. You could argue its possible they mean it, but it might be more possible that they're just trying to sow fear to give them an advent. They just position when there's negotiations.
So in Hawaii, this one, you know, local chairman, she's brought back to Russia, she's faateed, she's given gifts and money, and she goes back to Hawaii. And what she does in return is she writes this article where she basically supports Russian claims to Kauwai.
Well, they don't want Vermont because they already got it. That's my joke about how a bunch of lefties.
The Russians aren't necessarily lefties anymore.
Oh yeah, that's right, your point.
Yeah, but I think the average vermontra has updated their understanding of global politics in about nineteen sixty eight.
So I'm going to stay here in Hawaii, standing guard to keep the Russian hordes at Bay.
My advice is you have a lot of alcohol on the hand, so when they get there and they get drunk, they'll give us some time to then coalesce our forces.
That was something I remember the soldiers in Iraq, the American soldiers talking about how they heard that Russian MREs.
The meals ready to eat.
Their soldiers get contained little bottles of vodka and they were very jealous.
Is that true.
No, the MRI doesn't stand for that, It stands for meals. Refusing to excrete that is true.
They do join us next week on mission implausible