# Who Is on the DOJ's Secret "Domestic Terror" List

An episode of [SpyTalk](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1560016782), 21 Feb 2026, 56 min.

Audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/audio4.redcircle.com/episodes/4789652a-ad61-4c70-9e1f-2fe4f2303331/stream.mp3

Congressmember Mary Gay Scanlon speaks with SpyTalk's Michael Isikoff about the secretive government list of “domestic terrorist groups” Attorney General all but confirmed the existence of in her recent trip to The Hill. Then Karen Greenberg and Michael Isikoff talk with writer and retired American FBI agent, Mike German about the implications and consequences of the NSPM7 memo and the FISA court. Follow Jeff Stein on Twitter | https://twitter.com/SpyTalker Follow Michael Isikoff on Twitter | https://twitter.com/isikoff Follow Karen Greenberg on Twitter | https://x.com/KarenGreenberg3 Follow SpyTalk on Twitter | https://twitter.com/talk_spy Subscribe to SpyTalk on Substack | https://www.spytalk.co/ Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

## Transcript

[0:00] \[SPEAKER_05\]: M-S-W-M-D-M-S-W-M-D-M-D-M-S-W-M-D-M-S-W-M-D-M-S-W-M-S-W-M-S-W-M-S-W-M-S-W-M-S-W-M-S-W-M-S-W-M-S-W-M-S-W-M-S-W-M-S-W-M-S-W-M-S-W-M-S-W-M-S-W-M-S-W-M-S-W-M-S-W-M-S-W-M-S-W-M-S-W-M-S-W-M-S-W-M-S-W-M-S-W-S-W-S-W-S-W-S-W-S-W-S-W
[0:19] \[SPEAKER_02\]: I'm Michael Isakov, and welcome to a new edition of Spy Talk.
[0:23] \[SPEAKER_02\]: Jeff Stein is off today, and Karen Greenberg will be joining us later when we will be joined by a former FBI agent, Mike German.
[0:31] \[SPEAKER_02\]: But we're going to start off with a very special guest, Congresswoman Mary Gays scammer.
[0:36] \[SPEAKER_02\]: who, as a member of the House of Judiciary Committee, had a steely and highly illuminating exchange last week with Attorney General Pam Bondi.
[0:46] \[SPEAKER_02\]: Over a question with enormous civil liberties implications, has the Justice Department compiled a secret list of domestic terror groups as directed by a memo signed by President Trump last fall, and, if so, who's on it?
[1:01] \[SPEAKER_02\]: And why?
[1:02] \[SPEAKER_02\]: Let's listen to some of that.
[1:04] \[SPEAKER_08\]: Can we assume that you or persons under your direction at the Department of Justice have prepared that list of groups or entities who are designated as domestic terrorist organizations?
[1:16] \[SPEAKER_08\]: And I just remind you, that's, I guess, or no question.
[1:18] \[SPEAKER_07\]: Did you talk about the answer?
[1:20] \[SPEAKER_07\]: Yes, sir, no, but what I will say is, I know Antifa is part of that.
[1:25] \[SPEAKER_07\]: I will talk to you about the plan on my time.
[1:28] \[SPEAKER_07\]: I asked, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, and here you've been able to rest it in Minneapolis.
[1:34] \[SPEAKER_07\]: First of all, I'd like to ask you a question.
[1:37] \[SPEAKER_07\]: And don't want an answer.
[1:38] \[SPEAKER_07\]: The answer is yes.
[1:40] \[SPEAKER_07\]: I'm sorry.
[1:41] \[SPEAKER_07\]: I'm sorry.
[1:42] \[SPEAKER_07\]: I'm sorry.
[1:42] \[SPEAKER_07\]: I'm sorry.
[1:43] \[SPEAKER_08\]: Okay.
[1:44] \[SPEAKER_08\]: So will you commit to providing this committee with any list of organizations that you have recommended be designated as domestic terrorist organizations?
[2:00] \[SPEAKER_07\]: We will comply with the law and all matters.
[2:05] \[SPEAKER_02\]: Okay, we are now joined by Congresswoman Mary Gays Scanlin, a Democrat representing the fifth congressional district in Pennsylvania, encompassing mostly Delaware county suburbs, west of Philadelphia.
[2:19] \[SPEAKER_02\]: Congresswoman, welcome to Spy Talk.
[2:21] \[SPEAKER_02\]: Thank you for having me on.
[2:24] \[SPEAKER_02\]: So I have to say, congressional hearings these days rarely produce little new information.
[2:29] \[SPEAKER_02\]: Instead, they largely become an opportunity for members to post snappy, click-pate worthy videos about their political foes on the other side of the aisles.
[2:39] \[SPEAKER_02\]: But you are questioning of Attorney General Bondi last week.
[2:44] \[SPEAKER_02\]: You actually focus public attention on something that I think has gotten far to little coverage in the media.
[2:50] \[SPEAKER_02\]: And that is something called NSPM7 signed by President Trump last October.
[2:57] \[SPEAKER_02\]: Tell us what this memo is and how you got onto this in the first place.
[3:02] \[SPEAKER_08\]: Sure.
[3:04] \[SPEAKER_08\]: So I'm so pleased that that is what happened because as you said, congressional hearings have become much less about actually getting information, particularly from this administration.
[3:15] \[SPEAKER_08\]: Then it is about people trying to get sound bites.
[3:20] \[SPEAKER_08\]: A. G. Bondi was aiming for when she came in based on her prior appearances before Congress, but you're exactly right.
[3:27] \[SPEAKER_08\]: Well, we were trying to do was bring attention to this NSPM seven, this sweeping directive from the White House to really blur the lines between protected First Amendment speech.
[3:40] \[SPEAKER_08\]: And what this administration is calling domestic terrorism now there is no crime of domestic terrorism in our country and that is largely because it is so difficult to
[4:03] \[SPEAKER_08\]: And this memo from the president directing basically a whole of government approach to go after what it has generally characterized as leftist organizations.
[4:16] \[SPEAKER_08\]: whether using the Department of Justice, the Department of Homeland Security, the Joint Terrorism Task Forces, the IRS, basically bringing a whole of government approach to crack down on left-leaning organizations.
[4:31] \[SPEAKER_08\]: And when this memo came out in October, it really sent shock waves through some of the areas most impacted when people could notice it in amidst all the
[4:42] \[SPEAKER_08\]: but our concern was that it really did cross a line and really does seem to have the administration set up to have an enemy's list of folks to go after based on ideologies, speech, et cetera.
[4:57] \[SPEAKER_08\]: And we did want to bring that to the attention of the American people in general.
[5:02] \[SPEAKER_02\]: And some of the language in there, which you quoted from in your question and which the president talks about common recurrent motivations and indisha, uniting this pattern of violence and terroristic activities, common threads animating this violent conduct include anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity.
[5:24] \[SPEAKER_02\]: support for the overthrow of the U.S. government extremism on migration, race, and gender, and hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality.
[5:36] \[SPEAKER_02\]: Yeah.
[5:37] \[SPEAKER_08\]: Yeah.
[5:38] \[SPEAKER_08\]: It was kind of a hit list of things that this administration and project 2025 quite frankly have been trying to attack and it was partnered with the administration's earlier pronouncements with respect to Antifa, which by all accounts is not actually an organization, but has been the left wing whipping post for this administration.
[6:02] \[SPEAKER_08\]: And it came out, all this came out in the wake of the murder of Charlie Kirk and this NSPM 7 memo focused just on assaults the attempted assassinations of the president and assaults on right wing figures and complete.
[6:25] \[SPEAKER_08\]: slightly ignored what had happened with respect to the Pennsylvania governor, the legislators in Minnesota, so just this warping of what is actually happening with respect to violence connected to political extremism at the same time that this thing was coming out.
[6:44] \[SPEAKER_08\]: they took down research on the Department of Justice website that made clear that for decades the greatest domestic terrorism threat for Americans has come from bright wing extremism.
[6:56] \[SPEAKER_08\]: Even as we have this administration saying, oh no, it's all left wing and then putting together tools that would allow the government to, as they put it dismantle organizations in which anyone
[7:12] \[SPEAKER_08\]: regardless of whether they act on it.
[7:14] \[SPEAKER_08\]: So it really is an authoritarian government style in position on Americans right to speak their minds to believe what they want to believe in the name of trying to brand it as domestic terrorism.
[7:31] \[SPEAKER_02\]: And you made a couple of important points on this that there's no mention of any right wing violence in this memo or terrorism.
[7:41] \[SPEAKER_02\]: No mention of the proud boys, no mention of January 6th at all, even though the memo calls for prosecution of groups according to the US code,
[7:54] \[SPEAKER_02\]: definition of terrorism, which includes attempts to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion.
[8:02] \[SPEAKER_02\]: That sounds like a definition of January 6 itself.
[8:06] \[SPEAKER_02\]: But you focused in particular on the idea of this secret list.
[8:12] \[SPEAKER_02\]: Now, tell us why that was so important to you that there is a actual list of groups that are being targeted by the Justice Department, but we have no idea who they are.
[8:24] \[SPEAKER_08\]: Well, that came from a couple places.
[8:26] \[SPEAKER_08\]: First of all, the NSPM7 issued by the president specifically directed, Ham Bondi as attorney general to compile such a list and provide it to the president and Steven Miller, his right hand, wingman, whatever he is.
[8:44] \[SPEAKER_08\]: So that was a directive, it was a concrete action that was supposed to be undertaken and in response to that Attorney General Bondi had put out her own memo on December 4 of 2025, which in some ways was more sweeping with respect to what kind of group she wanted to target and directed that this list was to be prepared by January 3rd.
[9:09] \[SPEAKER_08\]: of 2026 and then updated every 30 days thereafter.
[9:14] \[SPEAKER_08\]: So knowing that we had a show as I recalcitrant witness coming in, but she was under direct orders from the president to do something and she'd committed to doing it by a date which it already passed and even should have updated it once already.
[9:28] \[SPEAKER_08\]: It felt like there were some very concrete things we could focus on.
[9:33] \[SPEAKER_08\]: And in addition to that was this,
[9:36] \[SPEAKER_08\]: kind of growing buzz that we're hearing from around the country, particularly with respect to ice and customs and border patrol enforcement activities, that they are taking photographs of people.
[9:48] \[SPEAKER_08\]: They are saying to individuals, you're now on our terrorist database, that people who are observing these immigration enforcement actions are finding themselves followed to their homes,
[10:00] \[SPEAKER_08\]: So, clearly, someone is keeping data on someone, and we thought this was a way to get it, and we did get sort of an admission by a omission in which she said, well, Antifa's part of it.
[10:16] \[SPEAKER_08\]: So, you know, kind of a back-handed admission if I had thought.
[10:20] \[SPEAKER_02\]: We kind of know it was going to be Antifa, because the President had already signed executive orders
[10:27] \[SPEAKER_08\]: than the other other piece of it is, if we've gotten any kind of actual answers to questions, I wanted to dig into exactly what you mentioned there.
[10:38] \[SPEAKER_08\]: Okay, if it's, you know, people who want over through the government and paid law enforcement, et cetera,
[10:43] \[SPEAKER_08\]: Are the proud boys or the leaders of the proud boys and the oath keepers on that list because some of them were actually convicted and not pardoned their sentences were commuted, but so they are actually legally should be on that list and if they're not on that list, why not and then my constituents, the folks who are going to indivisible no kings rallies, et cetera, would like to know if they're on the list.
[11:07] \[SPEAKER_01\]: So what can you do about this?
[11:10] \[SPEAKER_02\]: You're in the minority.
[11:11] \[SPEAKER_02\]: I mean, are there other members?
[11:14] \[SPEAKER_02\]: Are there any Republicans who are as concerned about, you know, this kind of activity, which traditionally they have been authoritarian steps by the federal government to snoop on American citizens?
[11:31] \[SPEAKER_02\]: I mean, is there any, is there been any follow-up?
[11:37] \[SPEAKER_02\]: attempt, but you and others to press this issue to force at least public disclosure of what apparently Bambande has already done, which is compiled as list.
[11:49] \[SPEAKER_01\]: Right.
[11:49] \[SPEAKER_08\]: Well, the other thing we tried to do was draw the contrast because there actually is a law about designating foreign terrorist organizations, and that law requires publication in the federal register of who they are, and it has a process for people to
[12:05] \[SPEAKER_08\]: or for those organizations to appeal their inclusion in case there's a mistake.
[12:10] \[SPEAKER_08\]: So we wanted to raise the fact that since this is a made-up process, there is no way for Americans to get off this government list.
[12:19] \[SPEAKER_08\]: And that is the kind of thing that we think will be actually compelling to some of our Republican colleagues who've been so
[12:27] \[SPEAKER_08\]: You know, reluctant to allow the government to invade people's privacy and to compile enemies lists and certainly with this administration's track record, you are only a friend as long as you are useful and almost everyone ends up on an enemies list at some point, so I think it should be concerned, you know, clearly the most support that will get this will probably be from more libertarian members such as Thomas Massey, etc.
[12:52] \[SPEAKER_08\]: But,
[12:52] \[SPEAKER_02\]: Well, have you gotten any word that Massey or others might back you on forcing the solution to press it?
[13:02] \[SPEAKER_08\]: We just had the hearing last week and then Congress properly adjourned.
[13:07] \[SPEAKER_08\]: Um, Mr. Massey was still fending off a AG bondage attack on the Epstein files at the time, but we are reaching out.
[13:14] \[SPEAKER_08\]: We are following up, you know, as part of the hearing process, you have a number of days in which to submit additional questions.
[13:21] \[SPEAKER_08\]: So we are submitting the questions that we would have asked if the AG had been in any position to answer questions as opposed to hurling insults.
[13:31] \[SPEAKER_02\]: So well, she doesn't seem inclined to want to answer questions, but are there particular questions you have at this point and are there any further steps you can take while you're still in the minority.
[13:45] \[SPEAKER_08\]: Well, in the minority, obviously, it's difficult.
[13:48] \[SPEAKER_08\]: We will be trying to build a bipartisan coalition about this and, you know, they're going to force disclosure is that your first priority here?
[13:57] \[SPEAKER_08\]: I think forcing disclosure, who's on the list, what is the list, who's maintaining it?
[14:01] \[SPEAKER_08\]: We've also asked questions about how was the list compiled, because
[14:05] \[SPEAKER_08\]: You know, the big concern is that you've now blurred or crossed lines to protected first amendment speech.
[14:12] \[SPEAKER_08\]: So, you know, what kind of criteria did people use to compile this list?
[14:17] \[SPEAKER_08\]: We're seeing related concerns in a couple areas.
[14:21] \[SPEAKER_08\]: Again, impacting some of my constituents, we know that DHS is using this administrative warrant process to get the social media companies to unmask the identities of people who are being critical of DHS and ICE.
[14:41] \[SPEAKER_08\]: the American who's exercising their free speech rates in order to try to cautious the peanut that they may or may not get noticed up before they're actually unmasked and it's an owner's process.
[14:54] \[SPEAKER_08\]: So we're going to be pushing on that issue as well and then we've got the Pfizer reauthorization coming up and that has historically been an issue where we get by partisan
[15:07] \[SPEAKER_08\]: does, um, should this statute be amended or altered to require warrants?
[15:13] \[SPEAKER_08\]: So they're all kind of, and where are you on that one?
[15:16] \[SPEAKER_08\]: I've been on the side of if you're going to sweep up American state, or you should have a war at that because what the Constitution requires and and how does it look right now into, I mean, I think it only passed by like one vote to 702 reauthorization last time around.
[15:31] \[SPEAKER_08\]: I suspect that we'll end up with the judiciary folks, fighting the national security folks again, but everybody's attention has been elsewhere on big bad bills and Epstein files and everything else.
[15:46] \[SPEAKER_08\]: So I think that's just starting to come into focus, but I think it'll be a battle again.
[15:50] \[SPEAKER_08\]: And one where you start having these kind of strange alliances, AOC and Jim Jordan on one side and some other folks
[16:00] \[SPEAKER_02\]: Yeah.
[16:02] \[SPEAKER_02\]: So last question for you, a lot of people have compared this memo, the Trump memo to the Red scare after World War I when a young Justice bureaucrat named Jay Edgar Hoover began compiling lists of radical aliens who could be rounded up and deported.
[16:21] \[SPEAKER_02\]: And then of course there was the second
[16:26] \[SPEAKER_02\]: with Joseph McCarthy and Blacklist, do you see parallels to those dark areas?
[16:34] \[SPEAKER_02\]: Are we in the midst of a of a Trump-gendered anti-fascar?
[16:39] \[SPEAKER_08\]: Yeah, I mean, I do think there are parallels, although I find this one more disturbing because the president's memo explicitly invokes
[16:47] \[SPEAKER_08\]: a whole of government approach to pursuing folks who have these so-called ideologies, and we are already seeing some action of it, whether it's DHS folks following protesters home and saying, we know where you live.
[17:01] \[SPEAKER_08\]: Or in Minnesota, when I was out there for a hearing in January, there was reporting about a small business owner who'd offered support to protesters in the next
[17:15] \[SPEAKER_08\]: in their business office wanting to look at the books.
[17:19] \[SPEAKER_08\]: So we are seeing an administration that is only too willing to use prosecution, government action and just intimidation in order to
[17:30] \[SPEAKER_02\]: So you just to be clear, you think this is worse or more concerning than the McCarthy era and the anti-Communist red scares of the 50s?
[17:41] \[SPEAKER_08\]: I think in some ways because the people who hold all the levers of power right now are pursuing that.
[17:47] \[SPEAKER_08\]: I mean, McCarthy ginned up a lot of public sentiment and public pressure and pressured businesses, etc.
[17:54] \[SPEAKER_08\]: But was less successful in actually wielding all the power of government.
[18:00] \[SPEAKER_02\]: Well, that is a very concerning observation that I have to say, but look, I really appreciate you taking the time, we of course are really interested in this issue and I hope we can stay in touch and if you get any answers or can take any further steps, please let us know.
[18:22] \[SPEAKER_08\]: Well, answers any data you uncover whistleblowers, you know, we're happy to talk to folks.
[18:29] \[SPEAKER_02\]: Right.
[18:29] \[SPEAKER_02\]: Okay.
[18:30] \[SPEAKER_02\]: Thanks.
[18:30] \[SPEAKER_02\]: Thank you very much.
[18:31] \[SPEAKER_02\]: Really appreciate it.
[18:39] \[SPEAKER_02\]: And now we are joined by Mike German, veteran former FBI counterterrorism agent, former fellow at the Brennan Center for Liberty and National Security Policy and Former Policy Council for National Security at the ACLU.
[18:57] \[SPEAKER_02\]: Mike, welcome back to Spy Talk.
[19:01] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Thanks for having me.
[19:02] \[SPEAKER_02\]: So as I had mentioned, when we booked you, we were really struck by Congresswoman Scanlan's questioning of AG Bondi last week about the secret terror list.
[19:17] \[SPEAKER_02\]: That was apparently she was authorized to create by something called NSPM7, a memo, not an executive order, but a memo from the president.
[19:28] \[SPEAKER_02\]: about investigating and listing, identifying domestic terrorism groups.
[19:37] \[SPEAKER_02\]: I got to say, I don't know about you, but when I actually read the text, there's some pretty chilling passages, give us your take on NSPM7 and what it means.
[19:53] \[SPEAKER_00\]: So, largely, I think it's saying the quiet part out loud, which is part of what the Trump administration brought.
[20:04] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Both the first Trump administration and this Trump administration in reviving language that was
[20:13] \[SPEAKER_00\]: all too prevalent in the past, from the first red scare during an after-world war one to the second red scare that there was this tendency to view any leftist protest or advocacy as a threat to the nation.
[20:31] \[SPEAKER_02\]: I just break in for one moment on your reference to the red scare of after World War I, which of course is how Jay Edgar Hoover got his start at the Justice Department identifying radicals for deportation.
[20:52] \[SPEAKER_02\]: from the United States and it made up master lists of thousands of people.
[20:59] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Exactly.
[20:59] \[SPEAKER_00\]: The index lists.
[21:01] \[SPEAKER_00\]: You know, it's so named because he was an old, had been trained as a librarian and used index cards to identify troublesome individuals and that list took several different iterations
[21:21] \[SPEAKER_00\]: tenure, the multi-decade tenure of J. Edgar Hoover at the FBI.
[21:26] \[SPEAKER_00\]: So this creating enemy's list is something that's been part of our national security strategy for 100 years or more.
[21:37] \[SPEAKER_06\]: And yet when you say, saying the quiet part out loud, which I think is such a good overview of what's going on with Trump 1.0 and now, do you really think that, I mean, that would be a secret list if there were one now, right, would be the idea and as you say in the past, these lists have been secret, but they've known about the list, but not necessarily who's on them, do you expect that at some point this would become the quiet part out loud or.
[22:03] \[SPEAKER_06\]: that this is as secretless is important to whatever would follow from having such a list.
[22:11] \[SPEAKER_00\]: I don't think that who is on the list is nearly important as the chilling effect of creating such a list, particularly using the guilt by association methodology that again was used during the
[22:33] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And frankly, the resurrection of this radicalization problem.
[22:41] \[SPEAKER_00\]: that the government adopted after 9 11, you know, this idea that the people who are doing harm aren't the problem, it's the people who are spreading ideas we don't like that are the problem.
[22:54] \[SPEAKER_06\]: And would you include, do you, by that, are you talking about material support statutes?
[22:59] \[SPEAKER_06\]: Are you, are you talking about the idea of material support and how broadly it can be applied and was applied after 9 11?
[23:05] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Absolutely.
[23:06] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Yes.
[23:07] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And you know, those statutes,
[23:10] \[SPEAKER_00\]: We're created to move the locusts of the investigation away from the people who are actually doing harm, away from the people who are making bombs, who are planning bombs, who are committing assassinations, and move it to people who are engaged in political organizing.
[23:27] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And we've had conspiracy laws on the books for a long time.
[23:32] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And in fact, it was fascinating to me over the past 10 or 15 years
[23:40] \[SPEAKER_00\]: move from international terrorism to domestic terrorism.
[23:45] \[SPEAKER_00\]: There was this idea that material support statutes didn't apply to domestic terrorism.
[23:50] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Right.
[23:50] \[SPEAKER_03\]: And they couldn't pass an act.
[23:52] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Right.
[23:53] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And had never been through.
[23:55] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Right.
[23:56] \[SPEAKER_00\]: They were just rarely used, and people would say, well, how come they're not, they're so rarely used in domestic terrorism, and I would explain because we have conspiracy statutes.
[24:07] \[SPEAKER_00\]: To the extent that there is somebody who is assisting in a criminal act, they can be charged under conspiracy, which had been on the books for decades.
[24:17] \[SPEAKER_00\]: So the judges understood them, the prosecutors understood them, juries understood them.
[24:22] \[SPEAKER_00\]: You bring up a new material support statute and it's a little more complicated and a little harder to understand and prosecutors.
[24:31] \[SPEAKER_00\]: know that there isn't a long lengthy body of case work that they can rely on in making their prosecutor decisions.
[24:39] \[SPEAKER_00\]: So they would rely on conspiracy statutes instead.
[24:43] \[SPEAKER_00\]: But now because we're trying to create this chilling effect, I think you'll see more cases that could have been charged as conspiracies now being charged as materials.
[24:53] \[SPEAKER_00\]: But Mike, seriously.
[24:54] \[SPEAKER_02\]: The distinction between domestic terrorists,
[25:00] \[SPEAKER_02\]: a domestic terrorist list, and a foreign terrorist list, is that the foreign terrorist list is public.
[25:09] \[SPEAKER_02\]: So if you're giving money to an organization that's supporting an identified foreign terrorist organization, you're unnoticed that you're doing something illegal.
[25:20] \[SPEAKER_02\]: But if we have a secret list,
[25:22] \[SPEAKER_02\]: domestic terrorism.
[25:24] \[SPEAKER_02\]: How can you be charged with material support for an organization that has not been identified publicly as a terrorist organization?
[25:33] \[SPEAKER_02\]: How are you supposed to know that the money the group you're giving money to is on this secret list because it's a secret list.
[25:45] \[SPEAKER_00\]: So I challenged somewhat the idea of a public list versus a secret list, you know, you go try to find all the entities that are on that list, and it's very difficult in the first place.
[25:58] \[SPEAKER_02\]: But for terrorist organizations are designated by the terrorist, by the State Department, right?
[26:04] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Through a completely opaque,
[26:06] \[SPEAKER_00\]: methodology that doesn't give them a proper means to challenge that designation.
[26:12] \[SPEAKER_00\]: So yes, but if you are very sophisticated and have good lawyers who know how to search those lists, you can try to apply for a license to assist them in a defense against some charge or
[26:33] \[SPEAKER_00\]: The difference is two, three, three, nine, section, two, three, three, nine, A versus section, two, three, three, nine, B, which is the foreign terrorist organization list.
[26:42] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Two, three, three, nine, A, which is what applies to domestic terrorism, links to a domestic terrorist act.
[26:49] \[SPEAKER_00\]: So there are 52 federal crimes of terrorism,
[26:55] \[SPEAKER_00\]: that are included under the terrorism chapter of the criminal code.
[27:00] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Again, you know, this was part of this false narrative that there were no domestic terrorism statues.
[27:06] \[SPEAKER_00\]: It their dozens of them.
[27:09] \[SPEAKER_02\]: So if the dozens of statues that could be used to target domestic terrorism, that are called federal crimes of terrorism,
[27:18] \[SPEAKER_00\]: There is an entire chapter of the U.S. criminal code titled Terrorism and then it lists all the federal crimes of terrorists.
[27:27] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And so
[27:28] \[SPEAKER_06\]: But why were they so have done having a federal domestic terrorism act done?
[27:34] \[SPEAKER_06\]: Wasn't the reason so they could have a list that was what they called an official list?
[27:38] \[SPEAKER_06\]: I mean, isn't that part of what it was?
[27:40] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Absolutely, to make it easier to do what Trump's doing now.
[27:43] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Right.
[27:44] \[SPEAKER_00\]: The right.
[27:45] \[SPEAKER_00\]: This idea, this concept of radicalization,
[27:50] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Through empirical studies has been just proven and discredited that the theory is that people adopt radical ideas, then they engage in radical political activities, then they become a terrorist.
[28:07] \[SPEAKER_00\]: So if only you move up the chain, you can stop them before they, by focusing on the people
[28:17] \[SPEAKER_00\]: the animated The Lost Committee in New York City in the 1910s, the Overman Committee in Congress, this idea that it's not the people doing bad acts, it's the people spreading dangerous ideas that we need to suppress, which of course goes against the whole notion of the First Amendment.
[28:36] \[SPEAKER_02\]: on that point I referred earlier to some chilling passages in that memo.
[28:47] \[SPEAKER_02\]: Now, as you point out, there is statutes, of course, for terrorism, terrorist crimes.
[28:56] \[SPEAKER_02\]: But what this memo does is vastly expand how the federal government is going to look at that.
[29:04] \[SPEAKER_02\]: And I'm just reading a couple of
[29:06] \[SPEAKER_02\]: passages from this memo signed by the president back in October.
[29:12] \[SPEAKER_02\]: There are common recurrent motivations in addition using this pattern of violent and terrorist activities under the umbrella of self-described anti-fascism.
[29:20] \[SPEAKER_02\]: These movements portray foundational American principles, for example, support for law enforcement and border control,
[29:26] \[SPEAKER_02\]: as fascists to justify and encourage acts of violent revolution, common threads, animating this violent conduct include anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity, support for the overthrow of the U.S. government, extremism on migration, race, and gender, and hostility towards those who hold
[29:56] \[SPEAKER_02\]: That seems like awfully loose language through which a lot of conduct, which we traditionally view as first amendment protected, can be fit in and used to cross-catch smoothly.
[30:11] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And that is entirely the point that it's directed at those groups that advocate.
[30:16] \[SPEAKER_00\]: in favor of those ideas or could be accused of doing so so that they are chilled from engaging in the type of political activities and protests that they would normally engage in, right, that that the whole point of it is to suppress political opposition.
[30:35] \[SPEAKER_00\]: But I don't think the FBI or the
[30:43] \[SPEAKER_00\]: of a push to do that, right?
[30:45] \[SPEAKER_00\]: You might remember after 9-11, I'm the domestic terrorism front, the FBI publicly declared eco-terrorism, the number one domestic threat.
[30:56] \[SPEAKER_00\]: There wasn't a single homicide, identifiable and related to environmental activism, and yet the FBI was putting its domestic terrorism resources into chasing animal rights activists and environmentalists, and have been doing that for 25 years.
[31:13] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Just the other day, there was this round of FBI agent visits to activists who were part of extinction rebellion, I think it's called.
[31:28] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Yeah.
[31:29] \[SPEAKER_00\]: So, and in 2010, the Department based on a ACLU Freedom of Information Act expose a of Joint Terrorism Task Force investigations targeting leftist groups, PETA, Greenpeace, the Thomas Merton Center for Peace and Justice, the Inspector General Report, which didn't
[31:58] \[SPEAKER_00\]: found that the FBI joint terrorism task force had indeed investigated these groups without proper predication.
[32:07] \[SPEAKER_00\]: At the time, under the 2002 FBI guidelines, the FBI just needed an allegation to open what was called a preliminary investigation.
[32:18] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And they opened these investigations based on allegations, the agents were making.
[32:24] \[SPEAKER_00\]: against these centers and kept them open for long periods of time.
[32:28] \[SPEAKER_00\]: So this tendency of the FBI to target left this group much more aggressively, left this protest than an advocacy group, much more aggressively than they investigate white supremacist violence has been prevalent throughout the history of the FBI.
[32:44] \[SPEAKER_02\]: And on that note, I should point out that there's in this memo in which it identifies all the actions of Antifa
[32:53] \[SPEAKER_02\]: and political plots against conservatives, including the president himself, of course.
[33:02] \[SPEAKER_02\]: These, there's no mention of right-wing violence, terrorism, extremism.
[33:09] \[SPEAKER_02\]: No mention of January 6th at all.
[33:13] \[SPEAKER_02\]: And the part of the,
[33:16] \[SPEAKER_02\]: federal code that this memo directs the FBI to prosecute under after they've identified these groups is the definition in the code includes attempts to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion.
[33:37] \[SPEAKER_02\]: Well, what was January 6th other than that?
[33:42] \[SPEAKER_02\]: And there's not a single mention of it as an example of terrorism.
[33:48] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Or even a recognition that at least one of the attempted assassination of President Trump involved somebody who's viewpoint fit more in anti-Semitic right wing than you would characterize him as an anti-capitalist or any of the other.
[34:08] \[SPEAKER_06\]: And there doesn't seem to be a fear that use this way as a weapon against political opponents and enemies would reverberate back on them once there was somebody else, some other government in power.
[34:21] \[SPEAKER_06\]: Is that, it was just that, do you think it's that they're just not worried about it?
[34:24] \[SPEAKER_06\]: Or is Jay think that this kind of rain is going to go on indefinitely?
[34:31] \[SPEAKER_00\]: I think they have a better understanding
[34:36] \[SPEAKER_00\]: the Department of Justice and the FBI are so inherently predisposed to not view right-wing extremism that way.
[34:50] \[SPEAKER_00\]: I mean, that's what was fascinating to me in the post 9-11 counterterrorism world where
[34:56] \[SPEAKER_00\]: you had this viewpoint that allowed them and the change in the FBI's authorities that allowed them to target people two or three times removed from the person who committed a terrorist act.
[35:09] \[SPEAKER_00\]: But they wouldn't do that in cases involving right-wing violence, where they would almost immediately after an example of it would come out and say this was a lone wolf.
[35:22] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Yeah, that we don't, we don't see any further problem.
[35:26] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And in fact, they don't even bother to count the bodies, right?
[35:30] \[SPEAKER_00\]: They don't have an accurate count of the number of people, white supremacists kill every year.
[35:36] \[SPEAKER_00\]: They don't collect that information.
[35:38] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And there was a bill passed in Congress in 2020 of the National Defense Authorization Act.
[35:43] \[SPEAKER_00\]: that required them to file reports annually that provided that kind of accounting, and they admitted openly, we don't collect data on domestic terrorism attacks.
[35:57] \[SPEAKER_00\]: what that's you well now they do but but but but the kind the only the domestic terrorism count right and again I think it was less about identifying instances of domestic terrorism than about chilling you know it so you're you're a group that believes in any one of these you know open borders or
[36:22] \[SPEAKER_00\]: So, some idea, you know, anti-capitalism, whatever, one of the list of ideas that are listed as dangerous in the memorandum, and you want to fund groups that go out and do protest.
[36:39] \[SPEAKER_00\]: 99% of the groups that go out and do protests do that in a peaceful way and engage in non-violent civil disobedience.
[36:49] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And now all of a sudden, if one person throws a brick at a police officer, oh wait a minute, you know, is that now going to make the government come down on me as a
[37:04] \[SPEAKER_00\]: protest, I think, are valuable to increasing our democratic participation.
[37:11] \[SPEAKER_00\]: You know, that's what it's intended to do.
[37:14] \[SPEAKER_02\]: Good question.
[37:15] \[SPEAKER_02\]: We've got to take a quick break now.
[37:17] \[SPEAKER_02\]: And when we come back, we have some questions about the current state of the FBI under cash potential and upcoming 702 reauthorization, which is going to be a major civil liberties issue coming up.
[37:35] \[SPEAKER_02\]: and we are back with Mike German.
[37:37] \[SPEAKER_02\]: I believe Karen you had some questions.
[37:41] \[SPEAKER_06\]: So I think you sort of we sort of addressed this a little before, but you know given how the FBI reacted after 9-11 to be able to broaden and in fact weaken categories and specifics about who and what they were going after and for what reasons.
[37:58] \[SPEAKER_06\]: I'm wondering if you get the sense that there's any kind of pushback in the FBI about the kinds of policies that are now being either unleashed or suggested that may be unleashed going forward is there or is there something where we in order to fix it we need to have a complete rethinking of how the FBI is structured and and how it operates.
[38:23] \[SPEAKER_00\]: that's a great question.
[38:26] \[SPEAKER_00\]: I'm sure that there are still lots of good people in the FBI who are doing their best to resist this kind of these changes to the FBI.
[38:43] \[SPEAKER_00\]: But I think people don't realize how much the Department of Justice and the FBI being an element of the Department of Justice were politicized after 9-11.
[38:53] \[SPEAKER_00\]: You know, people talk about what the Trump administration has done, which is egregious, but the Bush administration, I'd remember, did ideological purge of U.S. attorneys and, you know,
[39:10] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And you know, I was part of that, you know, if you don't like what we're doing, here's your options, leave or get kicked out.
[39:20] \[SPEAKER_02\]: And so, but there's a big difference between firing.
[39:28] \[SPEAKER_02\]: U.S. attorneys who are presidential appointees for a reason, they're supposed to follow the president's policy guidance, right?
[39:37] \[SPEAKER_02\]: And as, you know, what made the firing of the U.S. attorneys scandalists, like I sure was a scandal, but it was scandalists.
[39:45] \[SPEAKER_02\]: was the idea that in particular cases there were cases that a voter fraud that the White House wanted them to pursue and didn't feel that the fire US attorneys were doing that.
[39:59] \[SPEAKER_02\]: That's bad, but it's nothing like firing.
[40:03] \[SPEAKER_02\]: Assistant U.S. attorneys, ranking FBI special agents, ranking FBI executives, because they don't pledge a loyalty to the president to the United States, and, in fact, ordering those who aren't getting fired from bringing particular cases against the president's political enemies identified by the president, that's a huge leap from where we were in the day
[40:34] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Um, so I would suggest you read Carol Leonex in justice.
[40:42] \[SPEAKER_02\]: I have read it.
[40:43] \[SPEAKER_02\]: We had her on the podcast.
[40:44] \[SPEAKER_02\]: We had her on the podcast.
[40:45] \[SPEAKER_00\]: We've discussed with which discusses how much the FBI was resisting.
[40:51] \[SPEAKER_00\]: to conducting January six investigations and particularly making this leap that they make in the memorandum that, oh, it's the people who are spreading the ideas, the people who are or conceiving the tactics that are the trouble, not just the people who are doing harm, right?
[41:08] \[SPEAKER_00\]: It's the opposite.
[41:10] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And yet what you saw was FBI strongly resisting that.
[41:15] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And in fact, the justice
[41:19] \[SPEAKER_00\]: you know, I don't think there's enough recognition of how far these institutions had moved, which goes to Karen's question, is it retrievable at this point, right?
[41:30] \[SPEAKER_00\]: I mean, if the Democrats dreams come true and they're able to
[41:36] \[SPEAKER_00\]: When the mid-terms and take control of Congress and somehow blunt the further destruction of our democracy through the Trump administration and we elected Democratic President three years from now.
[41:54] \[SPEAKER_00\]: It is anybody going to trust the FBI and what their agents say in a courtroom is anyone going to trust prosecutions are done based on facts and not fear or favor of some political retribution for those acts.
[42:10] \[SPEAKER_00\]: I think we're in a very dangerous place and I think we have to start conceiving of a national security and law enforcement establishment that doesn't involve
[42:23] \[SPEAKER_00\]: had a long history of abuse under jagged or Hoover, had a relatively short period of reform, which wasn't perfect, right?
[42:32] \[SPEAKER_00\]: There were investigations of leftist groups like the committee in solidarity with the people of El Salvador, who says lasted way too long and targeted them for their political advocacy rather than any actual connection to violent activities.
[42:47] \[SPEAKER_00\]: But, you know, the rapidity at which the FBI snapped back to that J. Edgar Hoover methodology.
[42:55] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Again, bringing up this same language of radicalization, even though
[42:59] \[SPEAKER_00\]: It had been discredited it over 30 years after that the Regestified putting Martin Luther King on the index lists as a dangerous person.
[43:11] \[SPEAKER_00\]: So I think we have to come with a recognition that these institutions are severely damaged.
[43:21] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And at this point, maybe past the point of weather.
[43:25] \[SPEAKER_00\]: trying to retain them as useful.
[43:27] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And this was a debate you guys remember you were part of it it right after 9 11.
[43:31] \[SPEAKER_00\]: When we were talking about just tearing apart the FBI and creating new institutions.
[43:37] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Or when the United States had created an even worse monstrosity of homelands cured.
[43:47] \[SPEAKER_02\]: Karen 702, it's all yours.
[43:50] \[SPEAKER_02\]: Tell us what it is and what's your question for Mike?
[43:53] \[SPEAKER_06\]: Well, I want to so seven or two instances like that.
[43:57] \[SPEAKER_06\]: I'll let my describing his or anyway, seven or two was basically the what I call compromise legislation for the for Pfizer that basically said yes we can.
[44:09] \[SPEAKER_06\]: surveil people who are said to be in touch with foreign terrors and if Americans get swept up in the incidental thing well we're going to store it you know in a place where you have to ask for that information if you want it and it was a way to say we're not being as abusive as we were with this warrantless mass of program.
[44:28] \[SPEAKER_06\]: On the other hand, it is, you do not need a warrant to query the information and as part of that information, queries have been made into Americans and people who are not covered under Pfizer, right?
[44:41] \[SPEAKER_06\]: Is that an accurate... Sure.
[44:44] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And you know, just to place it in time, it's basically what was the warrant was wiretapping program under President Bush.
[44:52] \[SPEAKER_06\]: ultimately Congress legalized under right, we're trying to looking like it had some restraints upon it and and establishing some of the procedures of some procedures at all, right, except that now the procedures are instead of getting a so-called, you know, right to investigate you, um, it's for a,
[45:11] \[SPEAKER_06\]: group rather than, you know, sort of category rather than foreign individual, which sort of, you know, right?
[45:19] \[SPEAKER_06\]: So that sort of takes away the sort of kind of authorization we would have liked to see, the kind of curtailment we would have liked to see.
[45:26] \[SPEAKER_06\]: So it's up for reauthorization again.
[45:28] \[SPEAKER_06\]: And again, of course, I think the warrant issue will come up that was not approved last time.
[45:34] \[SPEAKER_06\]: How do you see
[45:40] \[SPEAKER_06\]: article, or the last article you did for the Brennan Center, you talk about what power state and local have, right?
[45:49] \[SPEAKER_06\]: And I'm just curious, because I really don't think I've seen this written about or talked about elsewhere, do state and local as you see it, authorities have the kind of power to block this kind of surveillance, to interfere with this kind of surveillance, to challenge this kind of surveillance, and I was just curious
[46:09] \[SPEAKER_00\]: So, you know, I retired from direct advocacy, so I'm not directly involved in any of these conversations, but my understanding is, you know, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act has been abused throughout history.
[46:27] \[SPEAKER_00\]: You know, they created a secret court
[46:30] \[SPEAKER_00\]: monitor the government's use of national security warrants and foreign intelligence collection.
[46:36] \[SPEAKER_00\]: But that's what happens in secret, often degenerates.
[46:40] \[SPEAKER_00\]: That's well-known, and it often had,
[46:44] \[SPEAKER_00\]: and the guidelines that they tried to put around this warrantless wire-tapping program for 702 were routinely abused.
[46:55] \[SPEAKER_00\]: But there was a process, so those abuses would be discovered in new guidelines would be set.
[47:01] \[SPEAKER_00\]: But it was the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, regular FISA that was used to,
[47:13] \[SPEAKER_00\]: So Trump became very anti-fice, and a lot of the MAG a world became very anti-fice.
[47:21] \[SPEAKER_00\]: So there's an opportunity, if Trump maintains his skepticism of whether
[47:38] \[SPEAKER_00\]: uh, retired at this point.
[47:40] \[SPEAKER_00\]: It would.
[47:40] \[SPEAKER_02\]: Let's remember that Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence was a consistent opponent of 702 and the failure.
[47:50] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Right.
[47:50] \[SPEAKER_00\]: A lot of the people in in the establishment now were following Trump's lead.
[47:54] \[SPEAKER_02\]: Would you both agree, Karen and Mike, that it is a critical tool in identifying foreign terrorist plots?
[48:03] \[SPEAKER_02\]: Do you agree, Mike?
[48:06] \[SPEAKER_06\]: uh... i don't think there's any public evidence suggesting that's true but there are a lot of public statements about i haven't i'm my god there's so many national security officials leaders et cetera who have said without seven o'clock they literally have said without seven o'clock democrats i would say they said the same thing about section two fifty yes i thought that was retired
[48:27] \[SPEAKER_06\]: Right, right.
[48:29] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And it turned out when information was made public through Edward Snowden, not through any watchdogs, you know, oversight committees, that in fact it wasn't very useful.
[48:40] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And that's kind of the point is if I take all internet traffic that goes overseas and put it into one basket, of course that basket becomes useful because I don't have to do an individual wiretap.
[48:54] \[SPEAKER_00\]: But that doesn't mean that that's an appropriate way to do it.
[48:58] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Then it would be white, white, white stop at the border.
[49:01] \[SPEAKER_00\]: You know, it would be useful if they
[49:04] \[SPEAKER_00\]: we're able to kick down every door that they want it to, would they ever make it?
[49:09] \[SPEAKER_06\]: Okay, let me just push down here to just further your point in another way.
[49:13] \[SPEAKER_06\]: More doesn't mean more focused, more specific, more intelligent about who's doing what.
[49:20] \[SPEAKER_06\]: It's like rounding people up in the war on terror and detaining them and not really having information on them, like we did at Guantanamo.
[49:27] \[SPEAKER_06\]: And then,
[49:28] \[SPEAKER_06\]: trying to figure out who they were, what they were, what's going on.
[49:31] \[SPEAKER_06\]: I mean, as I understand law enforcement, they're supposed to follow evidence and follow leads, not just because it's lawful, but because it's the best way to figure out who's responsible, who's guilty, and who's the sort of argument against the warrants, at least in the days when I was covering this, was,
[49:51] \[SPEAKER_02\]: that it just takes too much time.
[49:53] \[SPEAKER_02\]: You've got to go through a court.
[49:54] \[SPEAKER_02\]: You've got to have an FBI agent file an affidavit and when you're dealing with foreign terrorist plots often, you've got to deal in real time.
[50:03] \[SPEAKER_02\]: You pick up something that suggests a plot is underway.
[50:09] \[SPEAKER_02\]: Target has been identified and if you have to go through and wait for a federal judge to sign off, it could delay your
[50:23] \[SPEAKER_00\]: So, you know, as I said, the FISA process has always been broken, and you might remember that the so-called 20th, 9.11 hijackers, Aquarius and Sally, Agents and Minneapolis were attempting to get a FISA worn, but, uh,
[50:47] \[SPEAKER_00\]: gatekeepers at FBI headquarters said no you didn't have enough information.
[50:51] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Six months later, after 9-11 they were brought before the Joint House Senate Intelligence Committee, where they acknowledged they didn't know the legal standard to get a foreign intelligence surveillance warrant.
[51:05] \[SPEAKER_00\]: They didn't know the legal standard.
[51:07] \[SPEAKER_00\]: So if the bureaucrats are saying you have to protect us from ourselves by giving us more authority,
[51:14] \[SPEAKER_00\]: You're going to still have that bureaucratic and aptitude, but now you're going to have access to a lot of information that law enforcement shouldn't.
[51:22] \[SPEAKER_00\]: So, you know, if you look at how actual failures have occurred, it's not often because of a lack of information, right?
[51:32] \[SPEAKER_00\]: The 911 Commission report would have been 13 pages long, not 413 pages long.
[51:39] \[SPEAKER_00\]: It's that there's too much information.
[51:41] \[SPEAKER_00\]: It overwhelms everyone.
[51:43] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And that's what we've created after 911 is this constant warning machine.
[51:47] \[SPEAKER_02\]: All right.
[51:48] \[SPEAKER_02\]: If AI is going to change the equation on this at all.
[51:51] \[SPEAKER_00\]: That's always been the promise that somebody is going to invent some algorithm.
[51:56] \[SPEAKER_00\]: But what I always tell on force from a national security folks who talk about this is who on Wall Street is buying it.
[52:04] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Because if nobody on Wall Street needs one half of one percent, if your firm can get
[52:15] \[SPEAKER_00\]: all of it.
[52:17] \[SPEAKER_00\]: There will be no Wall Street anymore.
[52:18] \[SPEAKER_00\]: You will get it all.
[52:20] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And if Wall Street isn't buying it because these algorithms, no matter how good they are, can't predict the future.
[52:28] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And even if they can predict trends, they can't predict rare events like acts of terrorism, like acts of espionage, right, that they come out in such a random fashion that it's very
[52:41] \[SPEAKER_00\]: for for anyone to predict what is going to happen.
[52:44] \[SPEAKER_00\]: So it's it's a flawed methodology from the beginning and the problem and the reason that they went to these master-violence programs is because they didn't work.
[52:54] \[SPEAKER_00\]: So so that math, you know, Section 215 isn't working.
[52:57] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Well, we need Section 702.
[52:59] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Well 702 is in working.
[53:01] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Okay We need AI and we need power and here and we need we need these outside groups to start helping us identify because none of this is working
[53:10] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And that's again, this sort of ever-expanding national security ratchet, where pretty soon, there are no rules anymore.
[53:19] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And particularly when the rules are being enforced in secret, they can't... And particularly when so much has been turned over, as you say, to the private sector.
[53:29] \[SPEAKER_06\]: That's really.
[53:30] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And who is the private sector, right?
[53:32] \[SPEAKER_00\]: I mean, you know, it's fascinating.
[53:35] \[SPEAKER_00\]: We built the part of my last Brennan Center paper.
[53:39] \[SPEAKER_00\]: You know, I talked about fusion centers and these State and local law enforcement intelligence fusion centers that are linked with the military and terror counterterrorism efforts of DOJ and DOD and the FBI.
[53:56] \[SPEAKER_00\]: There was a hack in 2020.
[53:58] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Hactivists went through a contract or to these fusion centers and got an enormous cache of data.
[54:07] \[SPEAKER_00\]: So our tax dollars are being used to create these centers that are collecting information about us, absent from any probable cause, a reasonable suspicion, that is then handed over to anyone who can pack the system.
[54:22] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And I would suggest that if
[54:25] \[SPEAKER_00\]: activists could have gotten that information and did get that information that sophisticated hostile intelligence agencies had it a long time ago, right?
[54:34] \[SPEAKER_00\]: So it's like we're creating one stop shopping for foreign entities and involving these private contractors that don't have the same borders and values as the U.S. government does.
[54:49] \[SPEAKER_00\]: We create just exponentially increases the risk that that collection about innocuous information about all of us can be used to do us harm.
[55:00] \[SPEAKER_02\]: And on that sobering note, I want to thank you, Mike, for a very thoughtful and important discussion.
[55:07] \[SPEAKER_02\]: And these are obviously issues that we will be following closely at Spytock.
[55:14] \[SPEAKER_02\]: So we will continue to monitor them and continue to check in with you.
[55:18] \[SPEAKER_02\]: Thanks a lot for joining us.
[55:20] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Thanks for having me.
[55:22] \[SPEAKER_02\]: And that's it for this week's spy talk.
[55:24] \[SPEAKER_02\]: Be sure to check out our complete podcast archive on Apple or wherever you get your podcast, and if you haven't already do check out the spy talk.co new site on sub-stack where we offer a steady diet of scoops and original analyses on the intersection.
[55:38] \[SPEAKER_02\]: intelligence, foreign policy and military operations, just Google's fight talk and you'll quickly find your way there.
[55:45] \[SPEAKER_02\]: This edition of the spy talk podcast was smoothly produced as always by can I and expertly edited by Molly Hawkey for MSW Media.
[55:54] \[SPEAKER_02\]: That's it.
[55:55] \[SPEAKER_02\]: See you around on Michaelisakov.
[55:57] \[SPEAKER_02\]: Thanks for listening.
[56:01] \[SPEAKER_05\]: For more original reporting and insights like this, subscribe to SpyTalk.co on Substack and follow us on Twitter at Talk Under Score Spy.
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