# Inside JSOC’s Most Secretive Undercover Missions | EYES ON GEOPOLITICS

An episode of [The Team House](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1492797340), 28 May 2026, 1 h 03 min.

Audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/pscrb.fm/rss/p/clrtpod.com/m/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/72175267/jsoc_nocs_spreaker.mp3

Jack Murphy, Sean Naylor, and Zach Dorfman break down the hidden world of JSOC non-official cover operatives — the military’s version of deep-cover spies — and reveal how elite units conducted clandestine missions in places like Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, and Iran. The episode dives into secret front companies, undercover tradecraft, failed training exercises, and why modern surveillance and AI may be making human espionage obsolete. Subscribe to The Highside here: https://thehighside.substack.com/ Find Zach Dorfman here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zach-dorfman-1a64608 https://x.com/zachsdorfman GhostBed ⬇️ https://www.ghostbed.com/team FOR 10% off! Support the show on Patreon:⬇️ https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse Subscribe to our newsletter!!!! https://teamhousepodcast.kit.com/join Andy's new article:⬇️ https://warontherocks.com/the-operational-case-against-israels-gaza-campaign/ Jack's news outlet:⬇️ https://thehighside.substack.com/ Find Jon Hackett here:⬇️ Jon's Twitter: https://x.com/jonathanhackett Jon's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thejonathanhackett Jon's books: https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B0C5L659N5?ccs_id=e11a2062-f8d3-498e-bfd7-7d2f3869caf6 Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thejonathanhackett Twitter: https://x.com/jonathanhackett Check out Mick's new podcast here:⬇️ Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/at/podcast/pub-and-porch-applied-stoicism/id1836955475 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1k3QPmkAMwnGJxMLDwUSSd?si=n6piIu8XRcag1Z0K43A3bQ Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@UCd0Hq6QFk8CoTu5j-VU0Ong Find Mick Mulroy here: Fogbow ⬇️ https://fogbow.com/ Lobo Institute ⬇️ https://www.loboinstitute.org/ Twitter ⬇️ https://x.com/mickmulroy?s=21&t=-Ze3F_Ix2vlJ18KFvORTCA LinkedIn ⬇️ https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-patrick-mulroy-31198b52/ Bluesky ⬇️ https://bsky.app/profile/mickmulroy.bsky.social Mick’s publications ⬇️ https://www.loboinstitute.org/publications/publications-of-michael-mick-patrick-mulroy/ Whitefish security summit ⬇️ https://whitefishsecuritysummit.com Find Marc P here: https://x.com/Mpolymer Find Andy Milburn here: Twitter ⬇️ https://twitter.com/i/flow/login?redirect_after_login=%2Fandymilburn8 LinkedIn ⬇️ https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewmilburn2023 Substack ⬇️ https://amilburn.substack.com/ Andy’s book ⬇️ https://www.amazon.com/When-Tempest-Gathers-Mogadishu-Operations Bluesky ⬇️ https://bsky.app/profile/andy-milburn.bsky.social Find Jason Lyons here: LinkedIn ⬇️ https://www.linkedin.com/in/jason-lyons-666873316?u Bluesky ⬇️ https://bsky.app/profile/bgsilverback73.bsky.social "Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio 00:00 — JSOC’s Secret Spy Program Exposed 02:40 — How Delta Force Built Deep-Cover Networks Overseas 03:38 — Inside America’s Secret War in Lebanon 06:17 — Why U.S. Intel Worked With Drug Smugglers & Terrorists 11:53 — How JSOC Trains Real-Life Undercover Operatives 13:50 — Why Special Operators Fail at Acting Civilian 16:59 — The “Pedophile Van” Training Disaster Explained 19:42 — CIA NOCs vs JSOC NOCs: The Real Difference 27:54 — The Legendary Delta Operative Known as “The East European” 36:06 — The Secret U.S. Mission That Infiltrated Iran 45:14 — Fake Retirements, New Identities & Spy Cover Companies 50:48 — Is AI & Surveillance Killing Human Espionage? Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

## Transcript

[0:00] Speaker 1: Shenanigan was fake retirement ceremonies that you'll have a guy
[0:06] Speaker 1: who has you know, maybe he already has his twenty
[0:08] Speaker 1: years in maybe not in the military, and they decide, Hey,
[0:12] Speaker 1: we're going to take this sergeant major or this lieutenant
[0:15] Speaker 1: colonel or whoever it is, and we're going to put
[0:17] Speaker 1: them under a nonofficial cover and send them to some
[0:19] Speaker 1: part of the world to gather intelligence. We'll actually hold
[0:23] Speaker 1: a fake retirement ceremony and everyone in that guy's unit
[0:26] Speaker 1: thinks it's real, thinks that guy is really retiring, except
[0:29] Speaker 1: for him. And then he will be given fake military paperwork,
[0:32] Speaker 1: like fake discharge paperwork, so that if something someone does
[0:36] Speaker 1: look it's like, wow, he's not in the military anymore.
[0:38] Speaker 2: That's done with.
[0:41] Speaker 1: And then sent out and do his mission for a
[0:44] Speaker 1: year or two, and then when he comes back, he
[0:46] Speaker 1: will have a second real retirement ceremony that puts him
[0:50] Speaker 1: out of the military.
[0:53] Speaker 3: He anybody, Welcome to another episode of AIS on geopolitics.
[0:56] Speaker 3: I got a special one today. I have Sean Naylor,
[0:58] Speaker 3: Jack Murphy, and Zachdorf and on. They are the authors
[1:02] Speaker 3: of an incredible new article on the High Side. Go
[1:04] Speaker 3: check that out. That link is in the description that's
[1:07] Speaker 3: Jack and Seawan's news outlet. They do. They do stuff
[1:11] Speaker 3: that you know, most investigative reporters or journalists don't do
[1:15] Speaker 3: at all. They dig deep. They probably have some of
[1:17] Speaker 3: the best sourcing too, and like special operations in the
[1:20] Speaker 3: national security world, this specific article was incredible. It was
[1:25] Speaker 3: about Jaysock Knox nonofficial cover and everybody thinks when you
[1:29] Speaker 3: hear Knock, you think CIA guys, Cia Knox and stuff
[1:33] Speaker 3: like that. But jay Socks had a pretty a relatively
[1:35] Speaker 3: robust program for going on forty years, probably right like
[1:41] Speaker 3: since the eighties. Yeah, uh so, guys, welcome. I don't
[1:45] Speaker 3: even know where to start.
[1:47] Speaker 1: Well, I mean, go ahead, Joe, I think maybe like
[1:49] Speaker 1: the genesis of the article was actually Zach approaching me.
[1:54] Speaker 1: And you know, Zach, do you want to plug your
[1:56] Speaker 1: book a little bit and explain like how this article
[1:58] Speaker 1: is an outgrowth of the larger research that you've been
[2:01] Speaker 1: working on.
[2:02] Speaker 4: Sure, although it's funny because I remember it's interesting because
[2:06] Speaker 4: the nature of memory being what it is. I remember
[2:08] Speaker 4: both of us having a conversation and then I don't
[2:10] Speaker 4: remember who actually like initiated the idea that we should
[2:14] Speaker 4: we should do this, but we were talking about the
[2:16] Speaker 4: book that I'm working on, which is a history of
[2:18] Speaker 4: CIA's Knock program, or it's a history of the CIA
[2:20] Speaker 4: essentially through its Knock program, and then you and I
[2:23] Speaker 4: were talking, I mean, I want to say almost like
[2:25] Speaker 4: the like December of last year, it was like holiday,
[2:28] Speaker 4: it was like around the holidays about how I mentioned
[2:32] Speaker 4: it to you, and then you started talking about the
[2:34] Speaker 4: jasock Knock program and how the Special Operations world had
[2:37] Speaker 4: been also engaged in the deep cover commercial cover space
[2:41] Speaker 4: for many, many years, and how there had never really
[2:45] Speaker 4: been a you know, an exhaustive look at that, or
[2:50] Speaker 4: there's certainly not been reporting on that anytime recently. And
[2:54] Speaker 4: from that we decided to kind of you know, to
[2:57] Speaker 4: start digging, and through conversations with a bunch of folks
[3:01] Speaker 4: in the in the space, we I think I think
[3:05] Speaker 4: we you know, I wouldn't say exhaustively, but I think
[3:08] Speaker 4: we we have uncovered a good at least first pass,
[3:13] Speaker 4: you know, history of where things have, where things began,
[3:17] Speaker 4: and where they've gone over time and the challenges that
[3:19] Speaker 4: are currently being faced by Special operations folks trying to
[3:23] Speaker 4: do deep cover work.
[3:24] Speaker 3: When did this, When did the program really get gone.
[3:29] Speaker 5: Probably in the in the early nineteen eighties. It couldn't
[3:31] Speaker 5: be before the nineteen eighties, because Jaysock wasn't established until
[3:36] Speaker 5: December nineteen eighty.
[3:38] Speaker 2: But as we as we.
[3:39] Speaker 5: Lay out in the article, Jaysock had a number of
[3:46] Speaker 5: operations going on in the nineteen eighties that they used
[3:50] Speaker 5: operatives under non official cover or commercial cover as it's
[3:54] Speaker 5: sometimes called four and these these stretched from Stiring to
[4:03] Speaker 5: to Haiti, but especially Lebanon, and Jack did a lot
[4:10] Speaker 5: of reporting on the sort of missions that they that
[4:15] Speaker 5: they were engaged in, the sort of people that they
[4:17] Speaker 5: were in contact with in Lebanon.
[4:22] Speaker 1: Yeah, and so this is kind of like the fun
[4:24] Speaker 1: part of being a reporter is that you meet with
[4:27] Speaker 1: some spooky character at a bar in Manhattan with a
[4:30] Speaker 1: notepad and ask him one hundred and fifty questions over
[4:34] Speaker 1: the course of an hour. And so this person that
[4:39] Speaker 1: I spoke to worked under non official cover. He was
[4:44] Speaker 1: a member of JAYSK. He spoke fluent Greek and also
[4:48] Speaker 1: learned Arabic, so he was you know, at least tri lingual,
[4:53] Speaker 1: and he was you know, based out of Cyprus, and
[4:57] Speaker 1: you know, JAYSK was establishing sort of a front company,
[5:01] Speaker 1: a logistics company that moved air freight back and forth
[5:04] Speaker 1: from Cyprus to Lebanon, and that was kind of a
[5:08] Speaker 1: way for JAYSK to get into the country, to get
[5:11] Speaker 1: people into the country, to get equipment into the country.
[5:14] Speaker 1: And then a lot of it had to do with
[5:16] Speaker 1: working through surrogates. There are different Arab groups and Christian
[5:19] Speaker 1: groups that we were working with in Lebanon at that time,
[5:23] Speaker 1: and the main effort really was about trying to recover
[5:26] Speaker 1: American hostages that were.
[5:28] Speaker 3: Being held in Beirut.
[5:29] Speaker 1: And this was just one of those intractable foreign policy
[5:32] Speaker 1: problems at the time, and Jaysak at the time was nascient.
[5:37] Speaker 1: It did just come into existence right on the tail end.
[5:42] Speaker 1: It was created because of the failed hostage rescue in Iran,
[5:46] Speaker 1: Operation Eagle Claw. So there are a few other interesting
[5:51] Speaker 1: tidbits that I think we pulled out of this stuff
[5:54] Speaker 1: in Lebanon that some Delta guys came in and working
[5:58] Speaker 1: with surrogates on the ground, wiped out some of the
[6:01] Speaker 1: guys that had killed the CIA station chief Bill Buckley.
[6:06] Speaker 1: So there's there's definitely some stuff that was going on
[6:09] Speaker 1: in Beirut at that time, but unfortunately, as my source
[6:13] Speaker 1: told me himself, He's like, we were not particularly successful
[6:16] Speaker 1: in getting the American hostages out. You know, there were
[6:20] Speaker 1: some like close calls where they're like, we think we
[6:22] Speaker 1: located them, we think they're being moved from here to there,
[6:25] Speaker 1: maybe we can interdict them. But those operations just that
[6:28] Speaker 1: they never reached enough. The intelligence never reached the physic
[6:32] Speaker 1: fidelity or the threshold that would need to be met
[6:35] Speaker 1: for those operations to be greenlit.
[6:38] Speaker 3: One of the things that I found pretty like wild
[6:40] Speaker 3: was like how they're working with a Lebanese like drug
[6:44] Speaker 3: smuggler essentially, like and it's just like em me and
[6:48] Speaker 3: Jack were talking about yesterday. He's like, you know, this
[6:51] Speaker 3: guy was just hyper capitalists, like whoever had the green
[6:55] Speaker 3: this drug smuggler was playing ball with you know what
[6:57] Speaker 3: I mean, Like if you could pay me, I'm down
[6:59] Speaker 3: to do almost anything.
[7:01] Speaker 1: Yeah, And I mean that goes back to this classic
[7:04] Speaker 1: question that I know Sean and I have written about,
[7:06] Speaker 1: and I'm sure Zach has probably written about or at
[7:08] Speaker 1: least encountered. Is is it moral, ethical, and legal for
[7:13] Speaker 1: our intelligence community to interface with known terrorists, with drug smugglers,
[7:19] Speaker 1: with like really bad people if you want to catch
[7:23] Speaker 1: you know, you know, a Pablo Escobar or a Osama
[7:27] Speaker 1: bin Laden. You probably have to talk to some really
[7:30] Speaker 1: bad people that are in his inner circle. Same thing
[7:33] Speaker 1: with people like Solmani, Saddam Hussein and so on. And
[7:37] Speaker 1: you know, on one they like pragmatic side of it
[7:40] Speaker 1: is like, yeah, of course you go and do it.
[7:42] Speaker 1: You know, you do what you have to do to
[7:43] Speaker 1: get the job done. But when that comes out in
[7:45] Speaker 1: the press, it doesn't look very good, like you've been
[7:49] Speaker 1: rubbing shoulders and maybe even making I'm not saying this happen,
[7:52] Speaker 1: but for instance, if you were making cash payments to
[7:55] Speaker 1: an intelligence asset that had American blood on their hands,
[8:00] Speaker 1: that does not look good, to put it mildly. So
[8:03] Speaker 1: I don't know what do you guys think of that conundrum.
[8:08] Speaker 4: So I think a couple of things that are interesting
[8:10] Speaker 4: that you raise. I mean, one is traditionally and you
[8:14] Speaker 4: know my you know, my knowledge of this is much
[8:17] Speaker 4: deeper on the CI side, just having spent a long
[8:19] Speaker 4: time done reporting in this space. But one of the
[8:24] Speaker 4: issues historically for the knock program inside the agency was
[8:30] Speaker 4: the the legal concerns and the strictures regarding the actions
[8:34] Speaker 4: of a staff officer versus an ascent or a source.
[8:37] Speaker 2: Right.
[8:37] Speaker 4: So it's like it's one thing to have a source
[8:40] Speaker 4: inside al Qaeda or inside a transnational criminal organization like
[8:46] Speaker 4: drug you know, drug trafficking organizations. Different thing to infiltrate
[8:49] Speaker 4: a staff officer and have that person actually be engaged
[8:52] Speaker 4: in the space, right. CIA folks will say that post
[8:56] Speaker 4: nine eleven they actually set up a very stringent regime
[9:01] Speaker 4: from the General Counsel's office, and I imagine this was
[9:04] Speaker 4: probably the case in Jaysuk as well. Although there's always
[9:09] Speaker 4: there's always exceptions, and these exceptions you can sometimes drive
[9:11] Speaker 4: a you know, you could drive a truck through these
[9:13] Speaker 4: exceptions right about what you can and cannot do. But
[9:16] Speaker 4: you know, the idea was that you didn't want the
[9:17] Speaker 4: actual shooters, right, you didn't want to You didn't want
[9:20] Speaker 4: to recruit a shooter. You wanted to recruit a logistics guy.
[9:22] Speaker 4: And logistics guys were much more less likely to actually
[9:24] Speaker 4: be the people that were, you know, that were engaged
[9:27] Speaker 4: in stuff with that of American blood on their hands.
[9:30] Speaker 4: CIA General Counsel post nine to eleven actually told people
[9:34] Speaker 4: in the field knocks in the field and assets. They
[9:37] Speaker 4: told case officers to tell their assets. By the way,
[9:41] Speaker 4: if you are ever in a situation where you think
[9:44] Speaker 4: you might be you might be engaged in a firefight,
[9:48] Speaker 4: you know with you know, you know, US citizens, US troops,
[9:51] Speaker 4: US personnel. You got to shoot over people's heads, the
[9:53] Speaker 4: people the US troops fire in it. You don't know
[9:55] Speaker 4: that you're a knock or that you're a you're a
[9:57] Speaker 4: CIA asset, but you you can't try to kill them.
[10:01] Speaker 4: They could try to kill you legitimately, and you can't
[10:02] Speaker 4: try to kill them. So it literally put people in
[10:05] Speaker 4: an impossible It put people in an impossible situation. And
[10:09] Speaker 4: the CIA lawyers knew they were putting their assets and
[10:13] Speaker 4: their deep cover officers in impossible situations. I mean in general,
[10:17] Speaker 4: one last thing, you know, having your source get close
[10:22] Speaker 4: to people that were engaged in the drug trafficking business.
[10:26] Speaker 4: Like part of me says, okay, yeah, that's why you
[10:31] Speaker 4: have people in a non official cover, right, Like you
[10:33] Speaker 4: want to get them close to people that folks under
[10:37] Speaker 4: official cover cannot get to the defense at Tache in
[10:40] Speaker 4: Beirut is not going to get close to that guy, right.
[10:43] Speaker 4: The second political secretary you know in the State department,
[10:47] Speaker 4: who's a CIA officer is not going to get close
[10:49] Speaker 4: to that guy. So the reason why you choose those
[10:52] Speaker 4: covers is to infiltrate those worlds that will provide you
[10:56] Speaker 4: that access. But then the paradox is by doing that,
[10:59] Speaker 4: you're putting yourself close to people who are doing very,
[11:02] Speaker 4: very bad things. And you get that blowback and you
[11:04] Speaker 4: get that Washington Post you know, smell test stuff.
[11:08] Speaker 3: Yeah, and you needed option.
[11:12] Speaker 2: I beg your pardon.
[11:13] Speaker 5: I think it's worth pointing out that in the High
[11:17] Speaker 5: Side we explored this issue some months ago with an
[11:22] Speaker 5: article about sort of an elite CIA proxy force in Afghanistan,
[11:30] Speaker 5: a sort of a CIA elite human intelligence unit that
[11:35] Speaker 5: was basically directed by the CIA, even though it was
[11:40] Speaker 5: all Afghans and they wanted to recruit. They had the
[11:45] Speaker 5: apparent opportunity to recruit one of the men who was
[11:51] Speaker 5: in the room when Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal
[11:56] Speaker 5: reporter was murdered in two thousand and two, in the
[12:01] Speaker 5: months after after nine to eleven, and that that.
[12:05] Speaker 2: That raised a lot of issues at at c I A.
[12:11] Speaker 5: So I think, you know, like I mean, I'm just
[12:13] Speaker 5: really trying to plug plug the high Side here, but
[12:17] Speaker 5: we uh, you know, we we've looked into this, uh
[12:20] Speaker 5: in you know, in in one of our other in
[12:22] Speaker 5: one of our other articles.
[12:25] Speaker 2: All the more reason to get a paid subscription.
[12:27] Speaker 3: Yeah, the link is in the description I got you, Sean,
[12:30] Speaker 3: do' worry?
[12:31] Speaker 2: Okay, thanks.
[12:34] Speaker 1: I'm so maybe start talking a little bit about like
[12:39] Speaker 1: how the military creates knocks and sort of the system
[12:44] Speaker 1: in which that works, because I think that's sort of
[12:47] Speaker 1: like part of the the mystery of it for a
[12:49] Speaker 1: lot of people. And you know, I think in the
[12:52] Speaker 1: article we talk about both trying to take operators and
[12:56] Speaker 1: you know, you know, people who are trained special forces
[13:00] Speaker 1: guys to become knocks, but also it seems like it's
[13:05] Speaker 1: really more common and more effective to use support personnel.
[13:08] Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I.
[13:09] Speaker 5: Think the the military historically has for for missions like this,
[13:18] Speaker 5: with your ability to pass as as a local or
[13:24] Speaker 5: as a member of whatever community you're supposed to be,
[13:29] Speaker 5: you know, you're penetrating has to be basically perfect. The
[13:35] Speaker 5: military is going to prioritize native language skills, native cultural skills,
[13:42] Speaker 5: and ethnicity beyond you know, how quickly you can get
[13:48] Speaker 5: the long walk finished to get into you know, to
[13:52] Speaker 5: get into delta.
[13:53] Speaker 3: So they don't want them to look like Jack basically,
[13:56] Speaker 3: like six foot one inch, white guy, two hundred pounds,
[13:59] Speaker 3: like pepper hair, blue eyes, unless they're going into into
[14:02] Speaker 3: Ireland or something.
[14:04] Speaker 1: You know, Zach, do you want to tell some of
[14:05] Speaker 1: the stories that you reported on about, you know, these
[14:08] Speaker 1: attempts to train guys who are operators into knocks, because,
[14:13] Speaker 1: I mean, I think one of the things we talk
[14:15] Speaker 1: about in the article is that it's very hard to
[14:16] Speaker 1: take somebody who grew up in a ranger platoon or
[14:19] Speaker 1: a seal platoon or something like that in this like
[14:22] Speaker 1: team environment and then turn them into this sort of
[14:24] Speaker 1: like lone wolf intelligence operative.
[14:28] Speaker 4: This has been a consistent, persistent problem for the j
[14:33] Speaker 4: Suck Knock program for many decades, and I don't know
[14:36] Speaker 4: if they've ever been able to solve it. And it
[14:38] Speaker 4: may actually be the like the great unsolvable problem. Doesn't
[14:42] Speaker 4: mean that there haven't been brilliant operators. It just means
[14:45] Speaker 4: that doing this at scale has been very very difficult. Now,
[14:51] Speaker 4: I mean it's been very difficult for CIA too, But
[14:54] Speaker 4: but I think that.
[14:55] Speaker 6: The the the history of folks, I mean a lot
[15:03] Speaker 6: of it is overt right, and it's very hard to
[15:05] Speaker 6: scrub if not impossible to scrub.
[15:08] Speaker 4: And then there's the cultural stuff, right, I Mean, the
[15:10] Speaker 4: the joke always is is like you can recognize these
[15:13] Speaker 4: guys because they all have the operator beard, they all like,
[15:16] Speaker 4: they're wearing the Mirroll watch, they got the boots, they like,
[15:19] Speaker 4: they're all super fit, Like they look, there's a certain
[15:21] Speaker 4: type and anybody who is trying to spot them. When
[15:24] Speaker 4: you when you marry that up with the open source
[15:27] Speaker 4: data about their past, it's not hard to be like,
[15:31] Speaker 4: what's going on here? This isn't legit, right, You've got
[15:34] Speaker 4: like three guys open up a dive shop and the
[15:37] Speaker 4: Maldives and it's like, what are these guys doing here?
[15:39] Speaker 4: We know something, something is a miss, right. It doesn't
[15:42] Speaker 4: take you don't have to be the world's greatest counterintelligence
[15:45] Speaker 4: service to figure out that something seems wrong about a
[15:49] Speaker 4: certain place and the folks that are working there. You know,
[15:53] Speaker 4: when we were reporting this out, I had a source
[15:55] Speaker 4: of former contractor who you described exercises that he and
[16:01] Speaker 4: others would put on for uh for operators who were
[16:06] Speaker 4: who were looking to get into this commercial cover space,
[16:09] Speaker 4: and one aspect of it was they would these guys
[16:12] Speaker 4: would fly into as part of the exercise. They would
[16:15] Speaker 4: fly into airports in the US, and they were the
[16:19] Speaker 4: airports were supposed to be quote unquote foreign airports, and
[16:22] Speaker 4: it was supposed to be like, this is a you know,
[16:23] Speaker 4: this is a denied area, this is a you know,
[16:27] Speaker 4: walk through the airport, and we want to see if
[16:28] Speaker 4: you could walk through the airport. And the the trainers
[16:31] Speaker 4: didn't hadn't necessarily seen the guys' faces beforehand, and the
[16:36] Speaker 4: trainers were saying, I'm gonna be able to spot every
[16:38] Speaker 4: single one of you, and more often than not they
[16:42] Speaker 4: would do it. You know, they would literally they would watch,
[16:45] Speaker 4: they would do surveillance on these folks getting off different
[16:47] Speaker 4: airplanes from all over the country and all over the
[16:49] Speaker 4: world flying into these US airports, and the trainers would say,
[16:53] Speaker 4: that guy's an operator, that guy's an operator, that guy's
[16:55] Speaker 4: clearly an operator. And so you're already you're blown from
[16:58] Speaker 4: the moment you get in this. We're not even talking
[17:00] Speaker 4: about biometrics, we're not even talking about facial recognition, we're
[17:03] Speaker 4: not even talking about data analysis or whatever. I mean,
[17:06] Speaker 4: this is just good old fashioned CEE I work. And
[17:11] Speaker 4: these guys would not necessarily know how to comport themselves
[17:15] Speaker 4: either they would get dragged into secondary as part of
[17:18] Speaker 4: the exercise. They thought they would, you know, they were
[17:20] Speaker 4: super slick. They get dragged into second secondary. The folks
[17:23] Speaker 4: in secondary, who knew who they were, right, would try
[17:26] Speaker 4: to you know, you know, ruffle their feathers a little bit.
[17:29] Speaker 4: You know, one story that I was told, which is
[17:31] Speaker 4: quite humorous, actually is as part of the exercise, these
[17:35] Speaker 4: guys were told to surveil a location. This story, this
[17:39] Speaker 4: story is amazing, right, yeah, derail this location and do
[17:43] Speaker 4: it in a way that is not going to draw
[17:45] Speaker 4: attention to themselves. So they got what, you know, like
[17:48] Speaker 4: a windowless van.
[17:49] Speaker 6: You know.
[17:49] Speaker 4: What my source said was basically like you know, your
[17:51] Speaker 4: class of pedophile van, right, And they didn't realize that
[17:56] Speaker 4: where they were supposed to be surveilling was right next
[17:59] Speaker 4: to like an elementary school or nursery school, and they
[18:03] Speaker 4: just posted up there, and of course all of these
[18:06] Speaker 4: all these local moms were like, yo, who the fuck
[18:09] Speaker 4: is that? You know, and they call the cops. They
[18:11] Speaker 4: call the cops on these guys, and the cops knock, knock,
[18:13] Speaker 4: knock on the van and there's like three buff dudes
[18:16] Speaker 4: or whatever you know, with beer it's just sitting in
[18:19] Speaker 4: the van, and of course they get taken in right,
[18:21] Speaker 4: of course they get taken into the local cops. And
[18:24] Speaker 4: then there's this whole ordeal because if they call the FBI,
[18:28] Speaker 4: they get a little jed get out of jail free
[18:30] Speaker 4: card right where if they're in real trouble, they can say, hey,
[18:36] Speaker 4: I'm sorry, sir, you know, mister officer, like I'm actually
[18:40] Speaker 4: doing elite military training.
[18:42] Speaker 3: Yeah, like one of you guys.
[18:44] Speaker 4: Yeah, here's you know, here's a number of a local
[18:46] Speaker 4: FBI agent. Who can you know, who can attest to
[18:49] Speaker 4: the fact that I am, in fact a employee of
[18:52] Speaker 4: the US government. But you don't want to do that
[18:54] Speaker 4: because then you can fail out of the exercise. So eventually,
[18:58] Speaker 4: after spending some time I'm you know, in the local
[19:02] Speaker 4: jail or being interrogated by these police officers, they say, okay, fine,
[19:06] Speaker 4: we give up, and they you know, they admit to
[19:10] Speaker 4: who they are and what they're doing, and everything gets
[19:13] Speaker 4: worked out and it's fine. But like, it's just an
[19:15] Speaker 4: example of I don't want to say the hubris, but
[19:18] Speaker 4: just the difficulty in getting these guys in the mindset
[19:21] Speaker 4: of doing something so radically different than what they've done.
[19:27] Speaker 1: Hey, guys, I want to tell you tonight about my
[19:29] Speaker 1: new novel, The Most Dangerous Man, coming out June ninth.
[19:32] Speaker 1: I think, like a lot of you, I read in
[19:35] Speaker 1: high school the short story The Greatest Game, which is
[19:39] Speaker 1: almost a century old at this point, but it's the
[19:42] Speaker 1: classic premise of man hunting man for sport. This book
[19:48] Speaker 1: is based off of that a little bit, but also
[19:51] Speaker 1: on stories that I have heard over the years about
[19:54] Speaker 1: Safari guides that have actually taken hunting parties, wealthy people
[19:58] Speaker 1: hunting poachers, and West Africa. That idea kind of cooked
[20:03] Speaker 1: off in my mind when I was asked to write
[20:06] Speaker 1: a novel and get back into writing fiction again. And
[20:09] Speaker 1: this book is about a ranger with the Ranger Reconnaissance
[20:12] Speaker 1: Company who's on a mission in West Africa and gets
[20:15] Speaker 1: kidnapped and hunted for sport by a group of wealthy
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[20:22] Speaker 1: this book, and I think you'll have a good time
[20:24] Speaker 1: reading it. It's quick, fast and furious, fast paced action
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[20:32] Speaker 1: It's up there. You can find it wherever books are sold.
[20:35] Speaker 1: The hard copy, the hardback, the soft cover and also
[20:40] Speaker 1: the Kindle e book edition. We'll have some links down
[20:43] Speaker 1: in the description for you. The book comes out June ninth,
[20:46] Speaker 1: and I hope you all let me know what you
[20:48] Speaker 1: think of it.
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[22:40] Speaker 1: There's a you know I didn't mention this, It's not
[22:43] Speaker 1: in the article, but I remember there were a couple
[22:46] Speaker 1: Americans that appeared to be operating under some sort of
[22:50] Speaker 1: official cover diplomatic passports. They got hemmed up in Libya.
[22:55] Speaker 1: This was quite a while ago, This was like ten
[22:56] Speaker 1: years ago or more by by this point, and so
[23:00] Speaker 1: made the news. You know, these Americans got arrested trying
[23:02] Speaker 1: to cross the border from Tunisia to Libya.
[23:05] Speaker 2: What the hell's going on?
[23:07] Speaker 1: The Libyans had taken pictures of these guys passports when
[23:09] Speaker 1: they detained them, and I went and looked up one
[23:12] Speaker 1: of the guy's names and oh, look, he had run
[23:14] Speaker 1: an a marathon Inville, North Carolina, right next to Fort Bragg,
[23:20] Speaker 1: you know. So it's just it's very hard to erase
[23:25] Speaker 1: the past of someone who is a career soldier. Just
[23:28] Speaker 1: their footprint is so strong, and their associations with the
[23:31] Speaker 1: military are so strong, and eyven those cultural things, you know,
[23:35] Speaker 1: the way soldiers walk and stand and things like this.
[23:38] Speaker 1: Their mannerisms just separate them from the average person. I'm
[23:44] Speaker 1: I think one of the other interesting things that came
[23:47] Speaker 1: out of it was the difference between how the CIA
[23:50] Speaker 1: uses Knox and how Jaysak uses them.
[23:52] Speaker 3: Which is because isn't jaysk Usually it's like a short
[23:54] Speaker 3: term kind of thing. CIA is usually more of a
[23:57] Speaker 3: long term kind of thing. That's why maybe they run
[24:00] Speaker 3: into those issues because they're not like really homegrowing these knocks.
[24:03] Speaker 1: Well, the short term versus long term thing is like
[24:07] Speaker 1: a product of what they're trying to accomplish. Really, Jaysak
[24:11] Speaker 1: uses knocks for targeting and and and for logistics too,
[24:16] Speaker 1: but they're more interested of like go in, find the
[24:19] Speaker 1: bad guy, locate him, you know that kind of thing.
[24:23] Speaker 1: Or maybe you drive this van around this country with
[24:26] Speaker 1: some surveillance equipment and or whatever the case may be.
[24:29] Speaker 1: Where Zach do you want to go into like kind
[24:32] Speaker 1: of the difference of how the CIA utilizes.
[24:35] Speaker 4: Them, Yeah, I mean as far as I know. I
[24:37] Speaker 4: mean the Jaysac folks. Also, it's it's kind of like
[24:39] Speaker 4: somebody gets into country, you get arms, caches, you get
[24:43] Speaker 4: you recruit a you know, a local vet who can
[24:46] Speaker 4: serve as a you know, as a doctor if things
[24:48] Speaker 4: go like really really south. It's that kind of stuff.
[24:51] Speaker 4: It's like intelligence preparation for the battlefield. I guess it's
[24:55] Speaker 4: a lot of it. C i A has a much
[25:01] Speaker 4: different history. Traditionally, things are changing because of the difficulties
[25:09] Speaker 4: surrounding what they call ubiquitous technical surveillance and just the
[25:15] Speaker 4: way in which it's much harder to stay hidden than
[25:18] Speaker 4: it used to be in the past. But CIA we
[25:21] Speaker 4: try to nat We try to grab people very young,
[25:24] Speaker 4: put them on the deep cover knock commercial cover track,
[25:28] Speaker 4: and keep them there for their whole careers, like no
[25:32] Speaker 4: connection with the US government ever. And it was pretty
[25:36] Speaker 4: successful in doing that for a long time. I mean,
[25:37] Speaker 4: there were people who never went to the farm, They
[25:42] Speaker 4: never set foot in Northern Virginia. Necessarily, they lived abroad
[25:47] Speaker 4: for thirty years. They never went to Langley. They never
[25:51] Speaker 4: went there after they retired. They retired under cover. Some
[25:54] Speaker 4: of them never touched US soil or very very rarely.
[25:59] Speaker 4: And if so, they did it, they did it in
[26:01] Speaker 4: a way that, you know, if they had a connection
[26:03] Speaker 4: to South Florida, they would like go to South Florida
[26:06] Speaker 4: for reasons that comported with their cover. They sometimes successfully
[26:13] Speaker 4: ran businesses, sometimes not. I mean, that's that's another that's
[26:16] Speaker 4: a whole other issue, right that I think Jaysock and
[26:19] Speaker 4: Cias both had, which is like.
[26:20] Speaker 3: Yeah, when I found this out where you're about to say,
[26:22] Speaker 3: it blew my mind, like somebody's working as a high
[26:25] Speaker 3: powered lawyer, let's say, and it is also a knock
[26:27] Speaker 3: for thirty years and supports were making half a million
[26:30] Speaker 3: dollars a year. They can't keep the money. No, they're
[26:32] Speaker 3: getting paid as like a CIA officer. Yes, yes, yes,
[26:36] Speaker 3: absolutely nonsense.
[26:37] Speaker 4: So there was I mean not to so in the book,
[26:40] Speaker 4: I get into this because in the early day, in
[26:41] Speaker 4: the early days of the knock program, I mean I
[26:43] Speaker 4: mean early days, like nineteen fifties, like right after the
[26:46] Speaker 4: CIA was founded, there were debates about this, and there
[26:49] Speaker 4: were folks within the CIA that were like, if we're
[26:51] Speaker 4: gonna make this work here, we need to actually let
[26:55] Speaker 4: these guys make a buck doing their jobs, because you
[26:58] Speaker 4: can't have a guy be a uh you know, be
[27:02] Speaker 4: a CEO at ge abroad and working two jobs and
[27:08] Speaker 4: just making a civil servant salary. It doesn't it doesn't
[27:11] Speaker 4: make sense. It also doesn't make sense as a cuffer mechanism, right,
[27:14] Speaker 4: because if you're supposed to be a high roller, you
[27:17] Speaker 4: gotta you gotta have that Mercedes, you got to have
[27:20] Speaker 4: that apartment. You know, you got to be able to
[27:23] Speaker 4: go on vacations where people in your kind of class
[27:26] Speaker 4: group go. Right, Like everything has to become part of
[27:29] Speaker 4: your cover. And that has historically been an issue too.
[27:33] Speaker 4: And there's a lot of resentment in CIA because there
[27:36] Speaker 4: used to be this sense that CIA people under a
[27:38] Speaker 4: non official cover were just kind of like gaming the system,
[27:41] Speaker 4: you know, like, oh, I gotta be I'm a big
[27:43] Speaker 4: you know, I'm a big shot. I gotta drive the bends, right,
[27:45] Speaker 4: Like I gotta go to the south of France for
[27:47] Speaker 4: three weeks because everybody else in my firm does, you know,
[27:49] Speaker 4: in the summertime. But yeah, I mean over time, CIA
[27:55] Speaker 4: would use Knox for intelligence gathering. They would use them
[27:57] Speaker 4: to handle ultra sensitive sources. Like if some he was
[28:00] Speaker 4: recruited by a case officer under diplomatic cover, the moment
[28:04] Speaker 4: that person was let's say it was a high level
[28:06] Speaker 4: government official, right, they would not want that case officer
[28:09] Speaker 4: to ever have any any interaction with that senior government
[28:13] Speaker 4: official again, right, So what they would do is they
[28:15] Speaker 4: would turn that person over to a knock who had
[28:18] Speaker 4: no USG connections, and that knock would generally fly in
[28:21] Speaker 4: from another country just to have meetings with that person.
[28:26] Speaker 4: There's a whole bunch of other stuff that CI has
[28:28] Speaker 4: done over time. It's not that's not really the like
[28:30] Speaker 4: the core of this article, so I don't want to
[28:32] Speaker 4: get too far afield, but the agency had had developed
[28:36] Speaker 4: a much deeper, a broader theory of the case, right,
[28:40] Speaker 4: a theory of the case for why you would have
[28:42] Speaker 4: folks like this doesn't mean it didn't have a lot
[28:45] Speaker 4: of problems. It just means that they had deck. They
[28:47] Speaker 4: had decades of lead time on Jaysock to figure this
[28:51] Speaker 4: stuff out, and they had a broader set of uses
[28:54] Speaker 4: for their knocks, and Jaysack came at it from a
[28:57] Speaker 4: I think self consciously not needing it for quite as
[29:00] Speaker 4: many things, and it had many decades it had to
[29:04] Speaker 4: play catch up, and I think it's still playing catch up.
[29:06] Speaker 4: But to be honest, I think for CIA, there's also
[29:10] Speaker 4: been huge issues over the last well arguably since it's founding,
[29:14] Speaker 4: but particularly in the last ten, fifteen, twenty years and
[29:18] Speaker 4: making the program work. So it's not you know, not
[29:22] Speaker 4: to skip to the end of the article, but like
[29:24] Speaker 4: there's there's a lot of questions about the future of
[29:27] Speaker 4: the practice in general, not just for CIA, but you know,
[29:30] Speaker 4: for Jasog too.
[29:32] Speaker 1: I think one of the other big differences that came
[29:34] Speaker 1: out during our research was that these sort of non
[29:39] Speaker 1: official cover businesses that the CIA stands up can generate profit,
[29:44] Speaker 1: whereas the military cannot generate profit. One guy even told me,
[29:49] Speaker 1: he's like, if your cover is a carpet salesman and
[29:51] Speaker 1: you buy a bunch of Persian rugs in the Middle East,
[29:54] Speaker 1: when you bring those back to the United States, they
[29:56] Speaker 1: all have to go into the burn pit and be.
[29:57] Speaker 3: Destroyed, one for the house, for the crib. Nothing.
[30:01] Speaker 1: Even one of the guys told me, he's like, we
[30:05] Speaker 1: had there was a mechanism to return our frequent flyer
[30:07] Speaker 1: miles crazy.
[30:10] Speaker 2: Yeah.
[30:10] Speaker 4: I want to just say one quick thing, which is
[30:12] Speaker 4: that that is a really important difference. And there's a
[30:17] Speaker 4: there's a phrase that I heard a couple of times
[30:20] Speaker 4: called non appropriated income no appropriated budget, and that refers
[30:25] Speaker 4: to the ability to take those profits and plow them
[30:28] Speaker 4: back into operational funds. But it is a black hole
[30:33] Speaker 4: and there is no there is very little oversight over
[30:35] Speaker 4: non appropriated funds or income. So there's anybody listening to
[30:38] Speaker 4: this podcast who has any experience or insight into that world,
[30:42] Speaker 4: because it's a very important world, and it's one that
[30:45] Speaker 4: gets very little attention because it tends to escape not
[30:48] Speaker 4: only congressional oversight, but also oversight within the buildings themselves,
[30:53] Speaker 4: because you can just take the money that you have
[30:55] Speaker 4: earned and use it to I don't know, purchase more
[30:59] Speaker 4: real state or go on operational missions like there's we
[31:05] Speaker 4: are talking. We are talking tens hundreds of millions of
[31:08] Speaker 4: dollars over time that can be that can be earned
[31:11] Speaker 4: in some of these in some of these proprietary schemes.
[31:15] Speaker 4: And so it's a it's a topic that generally does
[31:19] Speaker 4: not get any uh the contras. Yeah right, yeah, yeah, yes,
[31:24] Speaker 4: that is I think that is a great example now
[31:26] Speaker 4: that we've got to run back in the news. Right,
[31:27] Speaker 4: this idea that you are yeah, you're you're taking COVID
[31:30] Speaker 4: action funds that you should not that are arguing in
[31:34] Speaker 4: around country is legal from the jump, but like and
[31:36] Speaker 4: then you are plowing it into something else, and uh,
[31:39] Speaker 4: it is it is a kind of dark side of
[31:41] Speaker 4: the moon aspect to US intelligence activities.
[31:48] Speaker 3: I want to know about the East European. Tell me
[31:52] Speaker 3: about that free sewn about that one Sean, give us,
[31:54] Speaker 3: give us the scoop.
[31:57] Speaker 2: You're on. Mute.
[32:00] Speaker 5: The East European was the uh the sort of the
[32:05] Speaker 5: name if you like or that that that I gave
[32:08] Speaker 5: to an individual who's whose true identity is known by
[32:13] Speaker 5: by by Jack and me. But I first encountered when
[32:19] Speaker 5: I was reporting Relentless Strike, my my book about Jaysock,
[32:25] Speaker 5: and uh, some of the material in in fact, most
[32:30] Speaker 5: of the material in the article about the East European
[32:33] Speaker 5: comes comes from the book, because he was sort of
[32:38] Speaker 5: the quintessential successful knock.
[32:41] Speaker 2: I mean, even though we had.
[32:43] Speaker 5: Sources that were claiming, oh, Jaysock's knocks only do short
[32:48] Speaker 5: term missions and so forth, this this guy sort of
[32:52] Speaker 5: was the antithesis of that. He had joined Delta Force
[32:58] Speaker 5: early in its in its existence, and he he spoke,
[33:06] Speaker 5: he was, you know, born in an East European country
[33:10] Speaker 5: and had the you know, had all the cultural and
[33:14] Speaker 5: linguistic skills therefore to pass us as a native of
[33:19] Speaker 5: that country. And in addition, as as with others from
[33:24] Speaker 5: the Jasok and particularly the Special Mission Unit community, he
[33:29] Speaker 5: had a convenient missing part of his career because in
[33:35] Speaker 5: the army, those folks go into something called the DASA,
[33:40] Speaker 5: the Department of the Army.
[33:42] Speaker 2: What's the S stand for? Jack, do you remember?
[33:45] Speaker 3: Maybe I can't remember either, but.
[33:47] Speaker 5: It's basically the it's basically a restricted list of names
[33:52] Speaker 5: that isn't made public, that doesn't appear in other Army databases.
[33:59] Speaker 5: So this this guy was sort of converted into a
[34:04] Speaker 5: knock and he had a sort of a commercial cover alias.
[34:08] Speaker 2: I believe that his original uh.
[34:12] Speaker 5: Uh you know, country of birth, you know, helped out
[34:17] Speaker 5: with this. And he traveled the world, uh basically under alias,
[34:28] Speaker 5: doing doing doing the the Jaysox bidding and uh in
[34:35] Speaker 5: in you know, one of the cases that that.
[34:39] Speaker 2: We describe in the article.
[34:41] Speaker 5: He he drove a he drove an s u V
[34:45] Speaker 5: I believe arm or certainly a cab from Jordan into Baghdad,
[34:52] Speaker 5: completely kitted out with hidden antenna.
[34:57] Speaker 2: So that it could pick.
[34:59] Speaker 5: Up all sorts of communications from Iraqi government types in
[35:07] Speaker 5: the run up to the two thousand and three invasion
[35:10] Speaker 5: of Iraq. And then he sort of parked this vehicle
[35:12] Speaker 5: there and then you know, and then basically stayed in
[35:16] Speaker 5: Baghdad for a while and again undercover, and.
[35:20] Speaker 2: Then and then left.
[35:22] Speaker 5: You know, there's another episode of again a guy with
[35:27] Speaker 5: a I presume a fairly long term cover.
[35:31] Speaker 2: I was leaving.
[35:34] Speaker 5: A country near Lebanon, but not Lebanon itself, but was
[35:40] Speaker 5: passing through Lebanon as as part of his as part
[35:44] Speaker 5: of his cover, and was basically jumped by some guys. Now,
[35:49] Speaker 5: whether this was a sort of just a street crime
[35:52] Speaker 5: and he was in the wrong place at the wrong time,
[35:55] Speaker 5: or whether this was Hezbollah or somebody like that trying
[36:00] Speaker 5: to kidnap him, it's unclear. But he they you know,
[36:04] Speaker 5: they had guns. He fought them off, He wrestled one
[36:07] Speaker 5: of the guns out of their hands. But in the
[36:10] Speaker 5: in the sort of process of all of this, he
[36:13] Speaker 5: got shot in the gut and.
[36:18] Speaker 2: He had to.
[36:21] Speaker 5: Basically go back to his hotel and then he called
[36:25] Speaker 5: a US government doctor whose contact information he had and said,
[36:31] Speaker 5: here's my problem, but you know, I've been shot.
[36:33] Speaker 2: What do I do?
[36:34] Speaker 5: The doctor talked him through how to sew himself up,
[36:39] Speaker 5: and then he continued.
[36:41] Speaker 2: With his mission.
[36:42] Speaker 5: So, you know, there were all these steps he had
[36:45] Speaker 5: to take to keep himself as they say, clean arm
[36:49] Speaker 5: and and he did all of that before leaving the theater.
[36:56] Speaker 5: Uh So he went through all the steps that he
[36:58] Speaker 5: would have had to have gone through had he not
[37:00] Speaker 5: been shot, despite the fact that he had a gunshot wound.
[37:04] Speaker 5: And then he had to fly out commercial and and
[37:09] Speaker 5: you know, finally he flew into a you know, a
[37:13] Speaker 5: friendly country that's not in the Middle East and got
[37:16] Speaker 5: some real medical care. But that became a sort of
[37:19] Speaker 5: a legendary, a legendary episode.
[37:23] Speaker 2: He he was.
[37:24] Speaker 5: Part of the sort of intelligence special ops intelligence unit
[37:29] Speaker 5: often referred to as Task Force Orange. It's had a
[37:32] Speaker 5: lot of different cover names over the years, and he
[37:37] Speaker 5: received a Silver Star for his actions. But the citation
[37:43] Speaker 5: for that silver star is classified. I found out about
[37:47] Speaker 5: it many many years ago and and sort of looked
[37:50] Speaker 5: into it. But that that that he you know, I
[37:53] Speaker 5: was told that that's a legendary, legendary case of a
[37:58] Speaker 5: of a commercial cover operative you know, getting in the
[38:03] Speaker 5: shit if you like, and then having to get himself out.
[38:08] Speaker 3: Uh Jack, I remember we had George hand On. He worked.
[38:12] Speaker 3: I don't know if he was a knock suppose supposed
[38:15] Speaker 3: like you know, Jay Sock Knock, but he was in
[38:16] Speaker 3: Delta Force and he was he would go with like
[38:18] Speaker 3: a female operative to was it Bosnia, Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[38:24] Speaker 1: After that, Uh, non official cover.
[38:26] Speaker 2: I don't believe.
[38:27] Speaker 1: I think they were under official cover for the most
[38:30] Speaker 1: part when they did that.
[38:31] Speaker 3: But it's just to say like there's women that are
[38:33] Speaker 3: doing this job too.
[38:35] Speaker 1: Well, yeah, yeah, absolutely, And I mean I think one
[38:38] Speaker 1: of the more interesting aspects of this is that, you know,
[38:41] Speaker 1: they recruit people from across the Army and across the Navy,
[38:45] Speaker 1: not just special ops guys, because they're looking for people
[38:48] Speaker 1: who have those language abilities and that ethnicity, that the
[38:52] Speaker 1: that they the mission requires, and then they put them
[38:55] Speaker 1: through a training course, actually a series of training courses,
[38:57] Speaker 1: depending on what they need.
[38:59] Speaker 3: Uh.
[39:01] Speaker 1: But it's interesting that you know a lot of them
[39:03] Speaker 1: are one and dons or two in duns. So they'll
[39:05] Speaker 1: go and do one or two missions and then they're going,
[39:09] Speaker 1: you know, presumably they'll get a bronze star and sent
[39:12] Speaker 1: back to their their parent unit. So, I mean, it's
[39:17] Speaker 1: it's interesting the way it works. You know, as one
[39:19] Speaker 1: person told me, you know, the CIA plays the long
[39:22] Speaker 1: game with these programs, but JAYSK just doesn't have a
[39:25] Speaker 1: long game. There's no such there's no such thing.
[39:27] Speaker 3: It's got to be it's gotta be weird. You do
[39:29] Speaker 3: a couple of missions like super Squarely Secret Ship, and
[39:32] Speaker 3: then you go back to your parent U unit.
[39:35] Speaker 1: There's there's an even crazier story. I mean that Sean
[39:39] Speaker 1: and I will try to write about in the future,
[39:41] Speaker 1: about a guy who's a conventional Army dude, had those
[39:45] Speaker 1: language skills, that ethnicity, and the army pucked him up
[39:48] Speaker 1: and put him under cover with some really bad people.
[39:52] Speaker 1: And when that mission was done, he was awarded a
[39:55] Speaker 1: silver Star and sent back to his unit the motor
[39:58] Speaker 1: pool or whatever.
[39:59] Speaker 3: Jesus it was a year under cover. Oh my god. Yeah,
[40:05] Speaker 3: talking about like the male female, like the TFO couple
[40:09] Speaker 3: that when it's Iran in twenty fourteen, and they were
[40:13] Speaker 3: doing it several times since nine to eleven. Tell us
[40:17] Speaker 3: a little bit about that, because that sounds like insane
[40:19] Speaker 3: even before, like we had all these crazy tensions and
[40:21] Speaker 3: the sanctions and everything with Iran. Oh, showing you're on
[40:26] Speaker 3: mute again, beg your pardon.
[40:27] Speaker 5: I'm trying to protect everybody from my dog, Veto's barking.
[40:31] Speaker 4: No problem.
[40:34] Speaker 2: Yeah. That was a case in which.
[40:38] Speaker 5: Orange and Jaysock writ large had been sort of pondering
[40:43] Speaker 5: how to get people into Iran, and it turned out,
[40:49] Speaker 5: you know, actually to be a little easier than some
[40:53] Speaker 5: of them thought. They they had imagined that the easier
[40:59] Speaker 5: way would be to drive overland and cross at a
[41:04] Speaker 5: land border, rather than go through where you can pick
[41:09] Speaker 5: up a visa as you're going through the sort of
[41:13] Speaker 5: the border checkpoint. But it turned out that they were
[41:17] Speaker 5: able to come up with cover identities that withstood the
[41:25] Speaker 5: visa application process at at an Iranian embassy, and we're
[41:32] Speaker 5: able to fly in commercially into an airport. It's usually
[41:37] Speaker 5: considered that's usually considered a higher bar to get through,
[41:43] Speaker 5: the higher bar of security than just crossing it, you know,
[41:46] Speaker 5: at a desert checkpoint somewhere. But it worked and they
[41:50] Speaker 5: were able to. It was a male female couple, which,
[41:54] Speaker 5: as we've discussed it is usually is thought to attract
[41:58] Speaker 5: less scrutiny than singleton military age male or you know,
[42:04] Speaker 5: multiple military age.
[42:05] Speaker 2: Males hanging out together, and they were able to.
[42:13] Speaker 5: Stay in a hotel in a large in a large
[42:16] Speaker 5: Iranian city, you know, drive around.
[42:21] Speaker 2: They could have.
[42:24] Speaker 5: Sort of undertaken a sort of a mission, a mission
[42:28] Speaker 5: there and then to sort of collect on the Iranian
[42:33] Speaker 5: nuclear program, but since that wasn't originally part of their mission,
[42:36] Speaker 5: they chose not to and they returned basically I think
[42:43] Speaker 5: the same way they came in via commercial commercial air
[42:49] Speaker 5: and when they got back to the States, they briefed
[42:54] Speaker 5: the president on there, which was President George W. Bush
[43:01] Speaker 5: at the time, on on their accomplishments. It was considered
[43:05] Speaker 5: a you know, a terrific success and a and a template, uh,
[43:12] Speaker 5: you know, to to base future missions on.
[43:17] Speaker 3: That's safe to say. We've been doing it since ever
[43:21] Speaker 3: since we saw that it's relatively easy to get in there.
[43:26] Speaker 2: Yeah, I would, I would.
[43:27] Speaker 5: I would say that's probably true. I mean, with anything
[43:31] Speaker 5: like this, And I'm just sort of I think stating
[43:36] Speaker 5: the obvious. You don't want to do missions like this
[43:41] Speaker 5: just because you can. There has to be a real
[43:46] Speaker 5: need to do.
[43:46] Speaker 2: It, because.
[43:49] Speaker 5: Just because it worked the previous time doesn't mean that
[43:52] Speaker 5: somebody somewhere in the Iranian government hasn't retro actively or
[43:58] Speaker 5: retrospectively figured out what you did and taking steps to
[44:03] Speaker 5: prevent it in the in the future. So you know,
[44:07] Speaker 5: I mean, there's some good fictional TV series, both Israeli
[44:15] Speaker 5: and French, about people conducting non official cover missions against
[44:21] Speaker 5: the Iranians, some in Iran, some some elsewhere.
[44:25] Speaker 3: Yeah, the Bureau, right, that's the French one.
[44:28] Speaker 5: It's a French one, and I think the Israeli one
[44:31] Speaker 5: is called Tehran.
[44:33] Speaker 2: But I'm not sure, and.
[44:36] Speaker 5: I mean that you know, they give you a pretty
[44:38] Speaker 5: good sense of just the sort of the white knuckle
[44:42] Speaker 5: ride that that that that can be.
[44:45] Speaker 1: The other difference, Sorry, Zach, I'll let you go there.
[44:48] Speaker 1: The other difference to point out to listeners between official
[44:51] Speaker 1: cover and non official cover is that if you get
[44:54] Speaker 1: busted under official cover that you're posing as a State
[44:57] Speaker 1: Department person, even if you're in Moscow or some where,
[45:00] Speaker 1: like maybe you get your shoulder pulled out of the
[45:02] Speaker 1: socket when they arrest you and then they w you
[45:04] Speaker 1: persona non grata and you're deported out of the country.
[45:07] Speaker 2: You're going back home.
[45:08] Speaker 1: But if you're under non official cover, you're getting taken
[45:10] Speaker 1: down into a basement somewhere and shot, like the US
[45:13] Speaker 1: government is not going to claim you at all. So
[45:16] Speaker 1: the pucker factor in a place like Tehran has got
[45:19] Speaker 1: to be incredibly high.
[45:23] Speaker 4: Yeah, that's one hundred percent true. I mean, the best
[45:25] Speaker 4: case scenario is that there's an implicit understanding that you
[45:30] Speaker 4: know you're actually like you never actually admit to it,
[45:34] Speaker 4: but but Iranian or Chinese or Russian counter intelligence knows
[45:40] Speaker 4: that you're actually CIA or JASAK. And then there's somebody
[45:43] Speaker 4: that they're willing to trade you for. But I mean
[45:46] Speaker 4: there have been cases where there was one case of
[45:49] Speaker 4: a of a CIA knock in the nineteen fifties in
[45:53] Speaker 4: China who spent a decade in a Chinese dungeon and died.
[45:59] Speaker 4: I mean, the US government they disavowed him and they
[46:03] Speaker 4: just said he's not one of ours, and the Chinese
[46:05] Speaker 4: governments that we know he is, and the US government
[46:07] Speaker 4: said no, he's not, and he wrought it away in
[46:10] Speaker 4: the dungeon and died. I mean, it doesn't get much
[46:14] Speaker 4: more serious than that. Since we're talking about Iran, I
[46:18] Speaker 4: think it's pretty interesting actually because you know Iran, this
[46:21] Speaker 4: is the case with these raelities too, but we don't
[46:22] Speaker 4: have diplomatic relations with the Irunian government, right, so you
[46:27] Speaker 4: cannot operate under a US passport, and frankly, you wouldn't
[46:32] Speaker 4: necessarily want to operate under a passport of a friendly
[46:34] Speaker 4: Western country either, although more or less some have been useful, right,
[46:40] Speaker 4: I mean there have been times where we've had allies
[46:43] Speaker 4: from Eastern Europe who have provided cover for people going
[46:46] Speaker 4: into Iran, and you've had people that have been able
[46:48] Speaker 4: to speak those languages, and so it's been like pretty
[46:51] Speaker 4: effective but again, these are sophisticated counterintelligence services. They know
[46:57] Speaker 4: what they're looking for, and so then you need to
[47:00] Speaker 4: really think about who do we have that can operate
[47:05] Speaker 4: under a third country passport. Who is not going to
[47:09] Speaker 4: attract any attention of Irani encounter intelligence. And that's really
[47:13] Speaker 4: really hard, And I don't want to take anything away
[47:15] Speaker 4: from the folks that Sean spoke about, but I think
[47:18] Speaker 4: it's very illustrative that as a mirror proof of concept
[47:22] Speaker 4: of getting what they call a tandem couple, you know,
[47:25] Speaker 4: which is like when you have two operatives, two deep
[47:28] Speaker 4: cover officers working together pretending to be almost always like
[47:33] Speaker 4: a romantic couple marry something like that. Going into a
[47:37] Speaker 4: country like Iran, checking into a hotel and walking around
[47:41] Speaker 4: and leaving unscathed was considered notable enough for those people
[47:47] Speaker 4: to then brief the President of the United States. I
[47:50] Speaker 4: mean that tells you about how difficult this stuff is
[47:53] Speaker 4: considered to be, how dangerous it is, and how rare
[47:56] Speaker 4: it is. I mean, it's the truth is is that
[47:59] Speaker 4: we don't do a lot of this in denied areas
[48:02] Speaker 4: because it's so dangerous, because the stakes are so high,
[48:05] Speaker 4: because there is no recompense for people if they get caught,
[48:10] Speaker 4: and there have always there's also been periods of more
[48:16] Speaker 4: or less willingness to undertake missions of this kind of dangerousness.
[48:21] Speaker 4: Like you have folks at the operator level who are
[48:24] Speaker 4: willing to go in, and then you get people in
[48:27] Speaker 4: the bureaucracy who pull people back and that's been a
[48:30] Speaker 4: source of attention too over the years.
[48:33] Speaker 3: Talking a little bit about the biocracy, Uh, just reminded
[48:36] Speaker 3: me when you know the if Jaysock sets up a
[48:39] Speaker 3: shell company or a fake business to a cover business
[48:42] Speaker 3: to like and starts making money, or they want to
[48:43] Speaker 3: make a business decision, they have to to make that decision.
[48:47] Speaker 3: They have to like shoot it up the flag back
[48:49] Speaker 3: to the flag officer to see like if it's a
[48:51] Speaker 3: yes or no. And it's like what the fuck is
[48:54] Speaker 3: a one star or two star general or whatever a colonel?
[48:57] Speaker 3: How are they making the business decision that's like happening
[49:00] Speaker 3: on the ground, Like why would that even be in.
[49:03] Speaker 1: Like the described to me as you know, you're undercover
[49:07] Speaker 1: as a businessman that can't make any business decisions, right,
[49:11] Speaker 1: so it makes it the cover just very difficult to
[49:13] Speaker 1: work under.
[49:15] Speaker 3: That's the great and isn't like the key thing keeping
[49:17] Speaker 3: your cover as clean as possible. It's like, hold on,
[49:19] Speaker 3: I have to call my wife or whoever he's trying
[49:21] Speaker 3: to you know, act like he's gonna make it. You know,
[49:24] Speaker 3: it just makes no sense.
[49:26] Speaker 1: Yeah, there's all kinds of like shenanigans that go into
[49:29] Speaker 1: trying to like maintain those covers. As we found out
[49:32] Speaker 1: that they'll go in and electronically delete all of your records.
[49:37] Speaker 1: They'll go to like credit card companies, and they have
[49:39] Speaker 1: relationships with a lot of these companies that they're like, okay,
[49:42] Speaker 1: we're working with the US government. They'll delete your credit
[49:45] Speaker 1: history and it's like you're born again. And it creates
[49:50] Speaker 1: a lot of difficulties because when you come back to
[49:52] Speaker 1: the United States and you're trying to integrate back into
[49:56] Speaker 1: life as a civilian, it's like on paper, you don't exist.
[50:00] Speaker 1: Even just guys who are official cover guys that go
[50:02] Speaker 1: on the DASSER and they've been on that DASER for
[50:05] Speaker 1: like ten fifteen years, it takes several years to just
[50:08] Speaker 1: come off that damn list. And that's just official cover
[50:11] Speaker 1: guys we're talking about there.
[50:15] Speaker 3: Yeah, it's pretty unbelievable.
[50:18] Speaker 1: There was one of the other interesting Shenanigan was fake
[50:22] Speaker 1: retirement ceremonies that you'll have a guy who has you know,
[50:26] Speaker 1: maybe he already has his twenty years in maybe not
[50:29] Speaker 1: in the military, and they decide, hey, we're going to
[50:32] Speaker 1: take this sergeant major or this lieutenant colonel or whoever
[50:35] Speaker 1: it is, and we're going to put them under a
[50:37] Speaker 1: non official cover and send them to some part of
[50:39] Speaker 1: the world to gather intelligence. Will actually hold a fake
[50:43] Speaker 1: retirement ceremony, and everyone in that guy's unit thinks it's real,
[50:47] Speaker 1: thinks that guy's really retiring, except for him, and then
[50:50] Speaker 1: he will be given fake military paperwork, like fake discharge paperwork,
[50:55] Speaker 1: so that if something someone does, look it's like he's
[50:58] Speaker 1: not in the military anymore.
[50:59] Speaker 2: That's done with.
[51:01] Speaker 1: And then sent out and do his mission for a
[51:05] Speaker 1: year or two, and then when he comes back, you
[51:07] Speaker 1: will have a second real retirement ceremony that puts him
[51:11] Speaker 1: out of the military. But again, I mean that just
[51:16] Speaker 1: is again one of these problems with finding someone who's
[51:19] Speaker 1: very late in career.
[51:21] Speaker 3: You know, you imagine.
[51:22] Speaker 1: Finding a Special Forces command sergeant major that's been doing
[51:26] Speaker 1: the job for twenty years and then trying to put
[51:28] Speaker 1: them under that cover versus trying to find a kid
[51:31] Speaker 1: in basic training and then putting him in that cover.
[51:35] Speaker 3: Jack, you mentioned about like us hitting up like credit
[51:38] Speaker 3: reporting companies and whatever to like delete information. Wait did
[51:43] Speaker 3: you did you say it? Where they do this even
[51:46] Speaker 3: if the company says no, we'll just go in and
[51:48] Speaker 3: do it ourselves anyway.
[51:49] Speaker 1: Yeah, I had a guy tell me that that, Like, yeah,
[51:52] Speaker 1: if they don't cooperate, there are ways.
[51:54] Speaker 3: To hack into it and do it anyway.
[51:56] Speaker 1: There's something that the nerds that the Pentagon do to
[51:59] Speaker 1: delete all that stuff. And we talked about. This is
[52:05] Speaker 1: another facet of knocks that we haven't really talked about
[52:08] Speaker 1: is that when they're under a commercial cover, that cover
[52:11] Speaker 1: company that they're extensibly working for is maintained. Sometimes up
[52:15] Speaker 1: to twenty people are maintaining that cover. So it's super
[52:19] Speaker 1: expensive to create and maintain non official covers. It's a
[52:24] Speaker 1: really big undertaking. And that's why, as Zach was saying,
[52:27] Speaker 1: we don't do a lot of it. You know, it's
[52:30] Speaker 1: not super prevalent.
[52:32] Speaker 4: Yeah, just to like put an exclamation point on what
[52:35] Speaker 4: Jack just said, every knock, whether J Socker and CIA,
[52:42] Speaker 4: requires an immense amount of support. All the support people
[52:45] Speaker 4: have salaries, all the support people may or may not
[52:47] Speaker 4: want to be doing something with their careers that involve
[52:50] Speaker 4: supporting a knock full time. And then you got the
[52:53] Speaker 4: actual costs of the knock. Right if if you're going
[52:56] Speaker 4: traditional and you have somebody that's a business person, there
[52:59] Speaker 4: might be those associated costs that I mentioned before, right,
[53:02] Speaker 4: kind of keeping up keeping up the the illusion of
[53:06] Speaker 4: the lifestyle. So like one knock can be an extraordinarily
[53:11] Speaker 4: expensive proposition. And if you have somebody and you have
[53:14] Speaker 4: eight people supporting them and that knock, all they do
[53:18] Speaker 4: is meet with the sensitive sources in a couple of
[53:21] Speaker 4: countries and people start looking at budgets. There's the kind
[53:26] Speaker 4: of the value proposition can be very controversial. It doesn't
[53:32] Speaker 4: mean that they don't have really important uses. But historically
[53:35] Speaker 4: there has been a stream of thought, a very powerful
[53:39] Speaker 4: stream of thought within the US intelligence community that the
[53:42] Speaker 4: juice is just not worth the squeeze for knocks in general.
[53:47] Speaker 4: And so, you know, for various reasons, there has been
[53:51] Speaker 4: a lot of skepticism over the years about whether they
[53:54] Speaker 4: are worth it. You have other folks who are totally
[53:58] Speaker 4: you know, evangelized about it and say, well, you know,
[54:01] Speaker 4: you're not read into it right, so that you get
[54:02] Speaker 4: you get into that game where it's kind of like,
[54:04] Speaker 4: if you understood the compartments that I was read into,
[54:07] Speaker 4: you would know why Knox are so valuable. But since
[54:09] Speaker 4: ninety nine percent of the people don't actually know, they
[54:11] Speaker 4: don't know what they don't know, and it's it's impossible
[54:16] Speaker 4: to to to make a like an honest assessment, you know,
[54:20] Speaker 4: when people just kind of they just say, well, you
[54:24] Speaker 4: don't you know, you're not written right. So but overall,
[54:27] Speaker 4: I would say that that the attitude has been pretty
[54:33] Speaker 4: skeptical over time, and I don't think it's getting any
[54:35] Speaker 4: less skeptical.
[54:38] Speaker 3: Is that because like we're like more and more uh
[54:41] Speaker 3: reliant on like technical surveillance rather than actual human intelligence,
[54:46] Speaker 3: because there's no way we have a huge network in Iran,
[54:49] Speaker 3: Like yes, there's no way, I.
[54:50] Speaker 4: Mean, I mean, yes, that's it. I mean you could
[54:54] Speaker 4: we could write a you know, we could write an
[54:56] Speaker 4: entire encyclopedia worth of books, you know, you know, like
[55:00] Speaker 4: I mean, yeah, if you're a bureaucrat, are you more.
[55:04] Speaker 1: Comfortable with like signals intelligence and technical surveillance or do
[55:09] Speaker 1: you want to rely on human beings which have a
[55:12] Speaker 1: track record sometimes of being unreliable and as Zach points out,
[55:15] Speaker 1: costing a ton of money and a ton of grief
[55:17] Speaker 1: if they get caught.
[55:20] Speaker 5: Yeah, although of course the play Devil's advocate. I mean,
[55:23] Speaker 5: oftentimes what the United States is relying on is human
[55:27] Speaker 5: intelligence from partner nations. And it's not as if those
[55:35] Speaker 5: satellites that are collecting all the imagery for the National
[55:40] Speaker 5: Reconnaissance Office and all the audio and other signals intelligence
[55:45] Speaker 5: for the National Security Agency are cheap either. So there's
[55:51] Speaker 5: you know, there's you know, swings and roundabouts. There's there's
[55:55] Speaker 5: a number of angles to this. The I suppose the
[55:59] Speaker 5: intelligence communities polite, politically correct responses. They want all sources
[56:07] Speaker 5: of intelligence to feed into one big guess.
[56:10] Speaker 4: Sure, but without question though we have we have grown
[56:16] Speaker 4: accustomed in US intelligence to relying predominantly on sigant That
[56:21] Speaker 4: has not changed, that has only become more prevalent over time.
[56:27] Speaker 4: We do get important human from liaison from intelligence partners,
[56:33] Speaker 4: but like what they call unilateral human sources that are
[56:36] Speaker 4: like recruited and handled by US intelligence community officers from
[56:43] Speaker 4: various three letter agencies, has declined significantly over time. And
[56:49] Speaker 4: what that means for the future of intelligence is like, man,
[56:51] Speaker 4: that's a whole nother podcast that we could talk about
[56:54] Speaker 4: for many, many hours.
[56:55] Speaker 3: But yeah, what's the case officers Union saying about this?
[56:58] Speaker 3: Like they can't be happy?
[57:00] Speaker 4: Yeah, I don't know, Yeah, I don't know, actually, but
[57:02] Speaker 4: I don't know if there's a lot of questions about
[57:04] Speaker 4: whether those folks are going to be able to operate
[57:05] Speaker 4: the way that they did right, Because again, part of
[57:08] Speaker 4: the so if you look at one level up on
[57:11] Speaker 4: this whole debate, it's about if we can't get human
[57:14] Speaker 4: the way we used to do, we need to change
[57:18] Speaker 4: the cover mechanisms that we have been using predominantly in
[57:21] Speaker 4: order to get closer to sources that we need. Right
[57:24] Speaker 4: and so if we can't rely on being military at
[57:29] Speaker 4: tesches and diplomats of various sorts, do we need to
[57:33] Speaker 4: move out of those embassies to then do our jobs.
[57:36] Speaker 4: Non Official cover has always been the pot of gold
[57:40] Speaker 4: at the end of the rainbow for folks who think
[57:43] Speaker 4: that official cover is just not getting as close to
[57:45] Speaker 4: the people that we need to. But it has so
[57:47] Speaker 4: many problems and structural issues of its own that it
[57:50] Speaker 4: has created other issues along the way, and neither has
[57:53] Speaker 4: been able to come close to pacing with the technical
[58:00] Speaker 4: collection capabilities that the US government now has.
[58:06] Speaker 3: Yeah, it's gonna be an interesting next couple of decades. Boys.
[58:11] Speaker 3: Excellent episode, excellent article The high Side. The link is
[58:14] Speaker 3: in the description, Zach, when is the book coming out
[58:18] Speaker 3: about the CIA? Knox?
[58:19] Speaker 4: Are we working on that next summer? Yeah, next summer
[58:22] Speaker 4: enguin Random House. The provisional title is deep cover. But
[58:28] Speaker 4: it's uh, it's I mean, I got a long way
[58:32] Speaker 4: before publication, but the book is written. It's in revisions.
[58:35] Speaker 4: It's a it's a. It's a it's a. It's a
[58:37] Speaker 4: new history of the CIA through this very problem that
[58:40] Speaker 4: we've been we've been discussing, going back to the founding
[58:43] Speaker 4: of it to to today. So it should be.
[58:46] Speaker 5: I haven't seen a word of it, and I can
[58:48] Speaker 5: already tell you it's gonna be well worth buying.
[58:51] Speaker 3: Yeah. And and and for Teamhouse listeners and Eyes On listeners,
[58:55] Speaker 3: I want to put Zach's links in the description. He's
[58:57] Speaker 3: written a couple of times, a few times with Jack
[59:00] Speaker 3: before you guys did the the Solomani strike article, right?
[59:04] Speaker 3: Credible one? Another one to which other one? Have you
[59:06] Speaker 3: guys worked on this one? Blanket?
[59:08] Speaker 2: Yeah?
[59:09] Speaker 3: This is the second one. Haven't you guys done something
[59:11] Speaker 3: else to think? So okay, now, Solomani article is incredible
[59:14] Speaker 3: to really good work.
[59:17] Speaker 4: As Shawn A bunch worked as Sewn on a big
[59:19] Speaker 4: article on the first Trump administration's plans to potentially kidnap
[59:24] Speaker 4: WikiLeaks founded Julian Assange from the Ecuadorian embassy in London
[59:27] Speaker 4: and some discussions they were having about even targeted target assassinations.
[59:33] Speaker 3: So obviously on Julian Assange are just in general.
[59:37] Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, So I mean always had.
[59:42] Speaker 3: A high profile at all, not high profile at all.
[59:44] Speaker 3: Let's smoke the guy from Mukiliks.
[59:46] Speaker 2: Yeah.
[59:47] Speaker 4: Yeah, well it got stopped. But I mean that's a
[59:49] Speaker 4: whole nother discussion, you know. But it was a it
[59:51] Speaker 4: was a it was it was a it was a
[59:52] Speaker 4: wild ordeal. Man. They were thinking about doing gun battles
[59:55] Speaker 4: just you know, in the streets of London with you know,
[59:57] Speaker 4: the Russians that they thought that we're gonna put them
[59:59] Speaker 4: on a plane so to Moscow.
[1:00:00] Speaker 3: But yeah, was somebody smoking fucking meth before they came
[1:00:04] Speaker 3: up with that fucking idea?
[1:00:06] Speaker 4: No comment, Like what kind of fuck?
[1:00:08] Speaker 3: I mean, how are these people like even working like
[1:00:10] Speaker 3: in the in the government.
[1:00:13] Speaker 4: Wow, that's that question is to answer it?
[1:00:16] Speaker 3: Yeah, everybody check them out. Check out Sewan, check out Jack,
[1:00:20] Speaker 3: check out Zach. Those links will be in the description
[1:00:22] Speaker 3: of course the High Side check that out, check out
[1:00:24] Speaker 3: their substack and uh anything else. Oh yeah, Patreon dot
[1:00:28] Speaker 3: com slash the Teamhouse. You get both Eyes On and
[1:00:30] Speaker 3: Team House episodes ad free and early and you help
[1:00:34] Speaker 3: support the show. Guys a pleasure.
[1:00:37] Speaker 4: Yeah, thank you everyone, Thanks guy, Thank you.
[1:00:43] Speaker 2: Hey, guys.
[1:00:43] Speaker 1: I want to take a moment to tell you about
[1:00:45] Speaker 1: the Team House Podcast newsletter. If you go and subscribe,
[1:00:49] Speaker 1: it's totally free, and what it will do is aggregate
[1:00:52] Speaker 1: all of our data, all of our content that we
[1:00:55] Speaker 1: put out, uh, the things that are on the Teamhouse,
[1:00:59] Speaker 1: on our geo politics podcast, eyes On, things that I
[1:01:03] Speaker 1: write journalistically with Sean Naylor on the high Side, anything
[1:01:07] Speaker 1: else that we have going on books, we recommend upcoming
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[1:01:15] Speaker 1: you know, filtering in some fun stuff in there as well.
[1:01:18] Speaker 1: If you go and check it out, we send it
[1:01:20] Speaker 1: out just once a week. We don't want to spam you, guys.
[1:01:23] Speaker 1: It's just a kind of roll up of all of
[1:01:25] Speaker 1: our content on a weekly basis. You can find our
[1:01:28] Speaker 1: newsletter at teamhouse podcast dot kit dot com slash join again.
[1:01:34] Speaker 1: The website for that is teamhouse podcast, dot kit dot
[1:01:37] Speaker 1: com slash join So we hope to see you there.
[1:01:41] Speaker 1: The link will be down the description

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